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IN [today's] world, at such a time, decent respect for the opinion of mankind—in the words of our Declaration of Independence—requires that we state plainly the purposes we seek, the principles we hold. What" are the true marks of our America, and what do they mean to the world? We are a people born of many peoples. Our culture, our skills, our very aspirations have been shaped by immigrants and their sons and daughters from all the earth. We know, as our forefathers knew, the firm ground on which our beliefs must stand. Freedom is rooted in the certainty that the brotherhood of all men springs from the fatherhood of
God. And thus, even as each man is his brother's keeper, no man is another's master.
So it is that the laws most binding upon us as a people are laws of the spirit, proclaimed in church and synagogue and mosque. These are the laws that truly declare the eternal equality of all men, of all races, before the man-made laws of our land. And we are profoundly aware that in the world we can claim the trust of hundreds of millions of people across Africa and Asia only as we ourselves hold high the banner of justice for all.
We are proudly a people with no sense of class or caste. We judge no man by his name or inheritance, but by what he does, and for what he stands. And so likewise do we judge other nations. There can be no second-class nations before the law of the world community. We, finally, look upon change, the ever-unfolding future, with confidence rather than doubt, hope rather than fear. We as a people were born of revolution and we have lived by change, always a frontier people, exploring, if not new wilderness, then new science and new knowledge.
Principles tnat Cannot Bend
W/ E cannot and we will not condone armed aggression, W no matter who the attacker and no matter who the victim. We cannot, in the world any more than in our own nation, subscribe to one law for the weak, another law for the strong, one law for those opposing us, another for those allied with us. There can be only one law, or there will be no peace.
We do not speak, let me emphasize, in any angry spirit of self-righteousness. We value deeply and lastingly the bonds with those great nations, those great friends with whom we now so plainly disagree. And I, for one, am confident that those bonds will do more than survive. But this we know above all: there are some firm principles that cannot bend—they can only break. We shall not break ours.
We believe that integrity of purpose and act is the fact that must most surely identify and fortify the free world in its struggle against Communism. We cannot proclaim this integrity when the issue is easy—and stifle it when the issue is hard. To do this would be to do something much worse than merely making our great struggle in the world more difficult. For if we were ever to lose that integrity, there would be no way to win a true victory in that struggle.
This would be a surrender that we shall not make.
A Vital Paradox