Members of the Board of Regents, President Thompson and Members of the Administration, the Faculty, and the graduating students: I am honored to be with you this evening. It is such a beautiful day. Where else in all the world is there a place more beautiful in the springtime than right here in these valleys of the mountains? Life takes on a new luster. Leaves form on the trees and flowers come into full bloom. It is a wonderful season, and this is a wonderful place.
I thank you for the great honor you have given me. I appreciate it tremendously and will always be thankful to you for your kindness.
This evening I have felt to talk about America. This is your land and my land. There are likely some here who are not citizens of this commonwealth. I think I have been to the places from which you come, and I have found much of goodness and beauty there. Beauty is to be found all over this earth. But today I wish to speak of America.
She is in trouble. Can anyone doubt that?
Take first the matter of guns, so much now being discussed. The shooting that occurred in the Church Family History Library, with three killed, has been etched indelibly upon our minds. The terrible thing that happened in Littleton, Colorado, has distressed all of us. It was preceded by nine other school killings.
"What is happening?" people ask. Some 6,000 students have been apprehended for carrying guns to school. What is happening with entertainment? By the time an individual reaches the age of eighteen, he is said to have witnessed 40,000 killings on television. Can anyone deny that this may have had some serious adverse affect upon young minds?
Killing by guns has become the number one cause of the death of youth in California. Who can deny that this is an age of violence, a culture, the kind of which we have not previously experienced?
And there are many other things. There is the matter of abortions. Between 1972 and 1990, there were 27 million abortion procedures performed in this country. What is happening to us concerning the sanctity of human life? The home is in jeopardy, with so many homes headed by single parents. There has been a small decrease in teenage pregnancy, but there are still far too many single parent families with the untoward consequences that flow from so many of these. We seem to make no headway in the matter of drugs. They utterly destroy many of those who use them. The burden of their use falls upon the mothers of the first generation, and upon their children, and upon society which pays a terrible economic and social price for this very serious malady that we seem unable to control.
We have unseemly behavior in high places. What has happened to the moral leadership of our nation? And now we are at war. We are all in pain as we witness on television the suffering of the distressed people of Kosovo.
This is the day of the doomsayer. He can quickly enumerate scores of situations that bespeak a decadence in the nation and the manifold failures of our society.
Do we have problems? Of course we do. Are our public forums noisy with argument over what is wrong? Yes. There is trouble in the land. There are problems we do not seem capable of handling. But I come here with a plea this evening that you do not lose faith in America.
Why are people from across the world willing to risk their lives to come to this land? I dare to say that this nation, when all is said and done, is the greatest stabilizing force in the world. It leads in military power. It leads in economic strength. It is not a perfect nation, but it is a great nation.
I have had the opportunity of traveling across this broad world. I think there is not a large city on earth that I have not been in, and I have been in many smaller ones. I have seen the wealth of the wealthy, and the utter despair and poverty of the poor. I have witnessed the arrogance of dictators and the impotence of the people in trying to secure liberty and freedom. Every time I have traveled abroad, I have come home grateful for America.
My wife and I visited Israel the first time before the 1967 war. Jerusalem was a divided city. A fence ran through it. We hired a guide. He was an Arab, a man of learning, bright and intelligent and able.
We climbed a little knoll, a high place in the city, and he pointed out his home, on the other side of the fence, which had been taken from him. He said something I have never forgotten: "You belong to the greatest nation on the face of the earth. Yours is the only nation which has been victorious in war and never claimed any territory as a prize of conquest. Your people have given millions, even billions to the poor of the earth and never asked for anything in return. Rather, even after coming off as conqueror, you have poured in other billions to revive those who had been your enemies in bloody conflict."
This I learned from a man in Jerusalem long ago. The nations of the earth through the centuries of time have waged war to gain territory. I think ours is the only nation on the face of the earth which has not claimed territory gained out of conflict.
I have stood in the American Military Cemetery in Suresnes, France, where are buried some who died in the First World War. Among those was my eldest brother. It is a quiet and hallowed place, a remembrance of great sacrifice "to make the world safe for democracy." No territory was claimed by America as recompense for the sacrifices of those buried there.
I have stood in reverence in the beautiful American military cemetery on the outskirts of Manila in the Philippines. There marble crosses and the Star of David stand in perfect symmetry marking the burial places of some 17,000 Americans who lost their lives in the Second World War. Surrounding that sacred ground are marble colonnades on which are incised the names of another 35,000 who were lost in the battles of the Pacific during that terrible conflict. After so great a sacrifice there was victory, but there was never a claim for territory except for some small islands over which we have had guardianship.
I have been up and down South Korea from the 38th parallel in the North to Pusan in the South, and I have seen the ridges and the valleys where Americans fought and died, not to save their own land but to preserve freedom for people who were strangers to them but whom they acknowledged to be brothers under the fatherhood of God. Not an inch of territory was sought for nor added to the area of the United States out of that conflict.
I have been from one end of South Vietnam to the other in the days of war. More than 55,000 Americans died in the sultry, suffocating heat of that strange and foreign place fighting in the cause of human liberty without ambition for territory. In no instance--not in the First World War or the Second, not in the Korean War or in Vietnam--did our nation seize and hold territory for itself as a prize of war.
During more than 200 years of our history we have lived through many troubled times, including the great and terrible Civil War, without any kind of a coup or change of government other than by elective, constitutional process. The document wrought by the men of 1787, in what became the miracle of Philadelphia, has provided for orderly changes of government; and the wonder of all this is that through two centuries of time, order has been observed and preserved. We have witnessed nation after nation go through coups and seizures of power while this nation has remained with its remarkable constitution as the backbone and the genius of its ways.
I love America for this great constitutional strength, for the dedication of its people to the peace and the prosperity of the entire earth. I love America for the tremendous genius of its scientists, its laboratories, its universities, its researchers, and the tens of thousands of facilities devoted to the improvement of human health and comfort, to the extension of life, to better communication and transportation. Its great throbbing and thriving industries have blessed the entire world. The standard of living of its people has been the envy of the entire earth. Its farmlands have yielded an abundance undreamed of by most people of the earth. The entrepreneurial environment in which has grown its industry has been the envy of and model for many other nations.
I love America for its great spiritual strength. It is a land of churches and synagogues, of pulpits and altars, of temples and tabernacles.
On one occasion a journalist asked me about my belief regarding the Constitution. I replied that I felt it was inspired, that both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were brought forth under the inspiration of God to establish and maintain the freedom of the people of this nation. I said it and I believe it to be true. There is a miracle in its establishment that cannot be explained in any other way.
Consider George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and their associates who signed the Declaration of Independence or who participated in the constitutional convention. Where in all the world today can even one or two such men be found, let alone the great aggregation who participated in the birth of our nation.
Barbara Tuchman, renowned historian, has written that "Washington had a character of rock and the kind of nobility that exerted a natural dominion over others, together with the inner strength and perseverance that enabled him to prevail over a flood of obstacles." Speaking of the Founding Fathers as a group, Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. has written, "They were the most remarkable generation of public men in the history of the United States or perhaps of any other nation." Ms. Tuchman goes on to say: "It would be invaluable if we could know what produced this burst of talent from a base of only two-and-a-half million inhabitants" (The March of Folly, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984).
What a singular and remarkable group they were. As I look across the world today I search in vain for such a group as walked together across the stage of history when this nation was born. It is my conviction that while we have had a few great leaders since then, there has not been before or since so large a group of talented, able, dedicated, and inherently wise and good men as those whom we call the Founding Fathers of this nation.
For as long as they lived and led, they acknowledged the hand of the Almighty in the affairs of this republic. Our coinage and our currency carry the national motto. It simply says, "In God We Trust." I believe this is the foundation upon which this nation was established, an unequivocal trust in the power of the Almighty to guide and defend us.
I invite you students of history to go back in your minds to the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in the hot June of 1776. There was drafted the Declaration of Independence, which concluded, "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Those who signed that document gave their lives, some literally, rotting away as prisoners of war. They gave their fortunes. But they kept their sacred honor.
I take you again to Philadelphia in the muggy heat of 1787. It was May, when 55 men met together. There were differences of opinion, sharp and deep and bitter. But somehow, under the inspiration of the Almighty, there was forged the Constitution of the United States. On September 17, of that same year, 39 of the 55 signed the document which began with these remarkable words: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution of the United States of America."
William E. Gladstone, four times prime minister of Britain, wrote: "As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most powerful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man" (Hold Fast to the Constitution, J. Reuben Clark Jr.).
It is the keystone of our nation. It is the guarantee of our liberty. That original document, with the Bill of Rights, constitutes the charter of our freedom. Through all of the years that have followed we have had some ambitious men who have sought to subvert the great principles of the Constitution, but somehow we have endured one crisis after another. We have been involved in terrible wars during this, the bloodiest of all centuries in the history of man. All of this is part of the miracle that is America, the struggle, the travail, the bitterness, the jealousies, the cynicism, and the criticism. But beyond and above it all is the wonder of a nation that for more than two centuries has remained free and independent and strong, the envy of the world, the hope of the world, the protection of free men everywhere, the manifestation of the power of the Almighty.
Today, we stand upon the shoulders of those who preceded us who were men and women of courage and conviction, who, in the midst of adversity, put their trust in the Almighty and worked endlessly to make their dreams come true; men and women who had nothing to sustain them but hope and faith but who nonetheless brought to pass the nation that now graces this land.
I could go on but I must not. I wish only to say in conclusion to you young men and women who leave this great institution to take your place in society, do not lose faith in the goodness, the strength, and the generosity of this nation of which you are a part. We have our troubles. We have our problems. We have our crises, but we shall survive them as we have done in the past.
We shall go forward as "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." We shall go on singing:
Our fathers' God, to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light.
Protect us by thy might,
Great God, our King!
(Hymns, no. 339)
The very conflict in which we are presently engaged holds no future territory for America. We are there, in the Balkans, where men have quarreled for centuries, trying to establish peace, freedom, and to safeguard the rights of those who have been driven from their homes.
May God bless this nation of which you and I are a part. Bless her leaders that they may rise above pettiness and live after the tradition of the Founding Fathers. Bless our industry that it may benefit all mankind. Bless our science that out of it may come health and happiness for the peoples of the earth. Bless the people of this nation, you, every one of you, and me, and all who walk beneath its glorious flag with gratitude and appreciation, with respect and reverence, as well as with love. Thank you very much.
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