On
each national day of inauguration since 1789, the people
have renewed their sense of dedication to the United
States.
In
Washington's day the task of the people was to create and
weld together a nation.
In
Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that
Nation from disruption from within.
In
this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and
its institutions from disruption from without.
To
us there has come a time, in the midst of swift
happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock to
recall what our place in history has been, and to
rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not,
we risk the real peril of inaction.
Lives
of nations are determined not by the count of years, but
by the lifetime of the human spirit. The life of a man is
three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less.
The life of a nation is the fullness of the measure of its
will to live.
There
are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that
democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is
limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial
fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and
slavery have become the surging wave of the future and
that freedom is an ebbing tide.
But
we Americans know that this is not true.
Eight
years ago, when the life of this Republic seemed frozen by
a fatalistic terror, we proved that this is not true. We
were in the midst of shock but we acted. We acted
quickly, boldly, decisively.
These
later years have been living years fruitful years for
the people of this democracy. For they have brought to us
greater security and, I hope, a better understanding that
life's ideals are to be measured in other than material
things.
Most
vital to our present and our future is this experience of
a democracy which successfully survived crisis at home;
put away many evil things; built new structures on
enduring lines; and, through it all, maintained the fact
of its democracy.
For
action has been taken within the three-way framework of
the Constitution of the United States. The coordinate
branches of the Government continue freely to function.
The Bill of Rights remains inviolate. The freedom of
elections is wholly maintained. Prophets of the downfall
of American democracy have seen their dire predictions
come to naught.
Democracy
is not dying.
We
know it because we have seen it revive and grow.
We
know it cannot die because it is built on the unhampered
initiative of individual men and women joined together in
a common enterprise an enterprise undertaken and carried
through by the free expression of a free majority.
We
know it because democracy alone, of all forms of
government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened
will.
We
know it because democracy alone has constructed an
unlimited civilization capable of infinite progress in the
improvement of human life.
We
know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it
still spreading on every continent—for it is the most
humane, the most advanced, and in the end the most
unconquerable of all forms of human society.
A
nation, like a person, has a body a body that must be
fed and clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a
manner that measures up to the objectives of our time.
A
nation, like a person, has a mind a mind that must be
kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that
understands the hopes and the needs of its neighbors all
the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of
the world.
And
a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something
more permanent, something larger than the sum of all its
parts. It is that something which matters most to its
future which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its
present.
It
is a thing for which we find it difficult even
impossible to hit upon a single, simple word.
And
yet we all understand what it is the spirit the faith
of America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in
the multitudes of those who came from many lands some of
high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here,
early and late, to find freedom more freely.
The
democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human
history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient
life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the middle ages.
It was written in Magna Charta.
In
the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has
been the New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not
because this continent was a new-found land, but because
all those who came here believed they could create upon
this continent a new life a life that should be new in
freedom.
Its
vitality was written into our own Mayflower Compact, into
the Declaration of Independence, into the Constitution of
the United States, into the Gettysburg Address.
Those
who first came here to carry out the longings of their
spirit, and the millions who followed, and the stock that
sprang from them all have moved forward constantly and
consistently toward an ideal which in itself has gained
stature and clarity with each generation.
The
hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either
undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.
We
know that we still have far to go; that we must more
greatly build the security and the opportunity and the
knowledge of every citizen, in the measure justified by
the resources and the capacity of the land.
But
it is not enough to achieve these purposes alone. It is
not enough to clothe and feed the body of this Nation, and
instruct and inform its mind. For there is also the
spirit. And of the three, the greatest is the spirit.
Without
the body and the mind, as all men know, the Nation could
not live.
But
if the spirit of America were killed, even though the
Nation's body and mind, constricted in an alien world,
lived on, the America we know would have perished.
That
spirit that faith speaks to us in our daily lives in
ways often unnoticed, because they seem so obvious. It
speaks to us here in the Capital of the Nation. It speaks
to us through the processes of governing in the
sovereignties of 48 States. It speaks to us in our
counties, in our cities, in our towns, and in our
villages. It speaks to us from the other nations of the
hemisphere, and from those across the seas the enslaved,
as well as the free. Sometimes we fail to hear or heed
these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our
freedom is such an old, old story.
The
destiny of America was proclaimed in words of prophecy
spoken by our first President in his first inaugural in
1789 words almost directed, it would seem, to this year
of 1941: "The preservation of the sacred fire of
liberty and the destiny of the republican model of
government are justly considered ... deeply,... finally,
staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the
American people."
If
we lose that sacred fire if we let it be smothered with
doubt and fear then we shall reject the destiny which
Washington strove so valiantly and so triumphantly to
establish. The preservation of the spirit and faith of the
Nation does, and will, furnish the highest justification
for every sacrifice that we may make in the cause of
national defense.
In
the face of great perils never before encountered, our
strong purpose is to protect and to perpetuate the
integrity of democracy.
For
this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of
America.
We
do not retreat. We are not content to stand still. As
Americans, we go forward, in the service of our country,
by the will of God.
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