Beyond Peace

by Richard Nixon

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  Contents

  The Eulogies

  from

  THE STATE FUNERAL

  for

  PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

  Wednesday, April 27th, 1994

  The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace

  Yorba Linda, California

  I

  Our Challenge Beyond Peace

  II

  A New World Beyond Peace

  America Must Lead

  Russia and the Victory of Freedom

  America and Europe: New Missions for Old Friends

  Asia and the New American Century

  The United States and Japan: In Lockstep into the Next Century

  China: “The Biggest of Them All”

  Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea: The Closed Door or the Open Door?

  Building New Bridges to the Muslim World

  The Developing World: Freedom’s Last Frontier

  III

  America Beyond Peace

  Strong Government, but Limited Government

  Equal Opportunity, Not Equal Outcomes

  Hardheaded Idealism and Enlightened Realism

  The Media: Freedom Without Constraint

  The Myths of Government

  Health Care “Reform”: More Steroids for Big Government

  Old-fashioned Learning for a New Era

  Welfare: Sickfare for America’s Cities

  Crime and Race in America

  The Corruptions of Popular Culture and Drugs

  God and Family: Rediscovering the True Heart of America

  Individual Mission, National Mission

  Author’s Note

  Index

  For Patricia Ryan Nixon

  Ambassador of Goodwill

  THE EULOGIES

  SERVICES OF

  RICHARD NIXON

  37th President of

  The United States

  1913–1994

  Wednesday, April 27th 1994

  Remarks of

  DR. BILLY GRAHAM, OFFICIANT

  DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER

  SENATOR ROBERT DOLE

  GOVERNOR PETE WILSON

  PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

  State Funeral for

  President Richard Nixon

  1913-1994

  Wednesday, April 27, 1994

  Four o’clock in the afternoon at

  The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace

  Yorba Linda, California

  Reverend Billy Graham

  Opening Remarks

  On behalf of the family of Richard Nixon, I welcome you who have gathered to join with them in paying final respects to the memory of Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States.

  Today, in this service, we remember with gratitude his life, his accomplishments and we give thanks to God for those things he did to make our world a better place. Through this service, may our dedication to serving others be deepened, and may our eyes be lifted to that which is eternal. Let us hear the word of the Lord. Now, help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Our God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

  Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.

  Now, we have a program, you all have one, and we are going to follow that program without any further announcement. You may be seated. Thank you.

  Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

  Former Secretary of State

  During the final wake of Richard Nixon’s life, I often imagined how he would have reacted to the tide of concern, respect, admiration and affection evoked by his last great battle. His gruff pose of never paying attention to media comment would have been contradicted by a warm glow and the ever so subtle hint that another recital of the commentary would not be unwelcome. And without quite saying so, he would have conveyed that it would mean a lot to him if Julie and Tricia, David and Ed were told of his friends’ pride in this culmination to an astonishing life.

  When I learned the final news, by then so expected yet so hard to accept, I felt a profound void. In the words of Shakespeare, “He was a man; take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.”

  In the conduct of foreign policy, Richard Nixon was one of the seminal presidents. He came into office when the forces of history were moving America from a position of dominance to one of leadership. Dominance reflects strengths, leadership must be earned. And Richard Nixon earned that leadership role for his country with courage, dedication and skill.

  When Richard Nixon took his oath of office, 550,000 Americans were engaged in combat in a place as far away from the United States as it was possible to be. America had no contact with China, the world’s most populous nation; no negotiations with the Soviet Union, the other nuclear super power; most Muslim countries had broken diplomatic relations with the United States; and Middle East diplomacy was stalemated. All of this in the midst of the most anguishing running domestic crisis since the Civil War.

  When Richard Nixon left office, an agreement to end the war in Vietnam had been concluded and the main lines of all subsequent policy were established. Permanent dialogue with China; readiness without illusion to ease tensions with the Soviet Union; a peace process in the Middle East. The beginning, via the European security conference, of establishing human rights as an international issue, weakening Soviet hold on Eastern Europe. Richard Nixon’s foreign policy goals were long range, and he pursued them without regard to domestic political consequences.

  When he considered our nation’s interest at stake, he dared confrontations, despite the imminence of elections and also in the midst of the worst crisis of his life. And he bore with some pain the disapproval of long-time friends and allies over relaxing tensions with China and the Soviet Union.

  He drew strength from a conviction he often expressed to me: The price for doing things halfway is no less than for doing it completely, so we might as well do them properly.

  That’s Richard Nixon’s greatest accomplishment. It was as much moral as it was political to lead from strength at a moment of apparent weakness to husband the nation’s resilience and thus to lay the basis for victory in the cold war.

  Shy and withdrawn, Richard Nixon made himself succeed in the most gregarious of professions and steeled himself to conspicuous acts of extraordinary courage. In the face of wrenching domestic controversy, he held fast to his basic theme that the greatest free nation in the world had a duty to lead and no right to abdicate.

  Richard Nixon would be so proud that President Clinton and all living former presidents of the United States are here symbolizing that his long and sometimes bitter journey had concluded in reconciliation.

  I wish that in his final hours I could have told him about Brian McDonald, who, during the Cambodian crisis, had been fasting on a bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House until, as he said, President Nixon redeemed his pledge to withdraw American forces from that anguished country in two months; a promise which was, in fact, kept. Across the chasm of the decades, Brian called me the day Richard Nixon fell ill and left a message, “When you talk to President Nixon, tell him that I’m praying for him.”

  So let us now say good-bye to our gallant friend. He stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipice. He achieved greatly and he suffered deeply, but he never gave up. In his soli
tude he envisaged a new international order that would reduce lingering enviousness, strengthen historic friendships and give new hope to mankind, a vision where dreams and possibilities conjoined when Richard Nixon ended the war. And he advanced the vision of peace of his Quaker youth. He was devoted to his family. He loved his country and he considered service his honor. It was a privilege to have been allowed to help him.

  Honorable Robert Dole

  United States Senator

  Senate Republican Leader

  I believe the second half of the 20th century will be known as the age of Nixon. Why was he the most durable public figure of our time? Not because he gave the most eloquent speeches, but because he provided the most effective leadership. Not because he won every battle, but because he always embodied the deepest feelings of the people he led.

  One of his biographers said that Richard Nixon was one of us, and so he was. He was a boy who heard the train whistle in the night and dreamed of all the distant places that lay at the end of the track. How American. He was the grocer’s son who got ahead by working harder and longer than everyone else. How American.

  He was a student who met expenses by doing research at the law library for 35 cents an hour while sharing a rundown farmhouse without water or electricity. How American.

  He was the husband and father who said that the best memorial to his wife was her children. How American.

  To tens of millions of his countrymen, Richard Nixon was an American hero. A hero who shared and honored their belief in working hard, worshipping God, loving their families and saluting the flag. He called them the silent majority. Like him, they valued accomplishment more than ideology. They wanted their government to do the decent thing, but not to bankrupt them in the process. They wanted his protection in a dangerous world, but they also wanted creative statesmanship in achieving a genuine peace with honor. These were the people from whom he had come and who have come to Yorba Linda these past few days by the tens of thousands, no longer silent in their grief.

  The American people love a fighter, and in Dick Nixon they found a gallant one. In her marvelous biography of her mother, Julie recalls an occasion where Pat Nixon expressed amazement at her husband’s ability to persevere in the face of criticism, to which the President replied, “I just get up every morning to confound my enemies.” It was what Richard Nixon did after he got up every morning that not just confounded his enemies, but turned them into admirers.

  It is true that no one knew the world better than Richard Nixon, and as a result, the man who was born in a house his father built would go on to become this century’s greatest architect of peace.

  But we should also not underestimate President Nixon’s domestic achievements, for it was Richard Nixon who ended the draft, strengthened environmental and nutritional programs, and committed the government to a war on cancer. He leap-frogged the conventional wisdom to propose revolutionary solutions to health care and welfare reform anticipating by a full generation the debates now raging on Capitol Hill.

  I remember the last time I saw him at a luncheon held at the Capitol honoring the 25th anniversary of his 1st inaugural. Without a note, President Nixon stood and delivered a compelling speech, capturing the global scene as only he could, and sharing his vision of America’s future. When it was over, he was surrounded by Democrats and Republicans alike, each wanting just one more word of Nixonian counsel, one more insight into world affairs.

  Afterward the President rested in my office before leaving the Capitol, only he got very little rest. For the office was filled with young Hill staffers, members of the Capitol Police and many, many others, all hoping to shake his hand, get an autograph or simply convey their special feelings for a man who truly was one of us.

  Today our grief is shared by millions of people the world over, but it is also mingled with intense pride in a great patriot who never gave up and who never gave in. To know the secret of Richard Nixon’s relationship with the American people, you need only to listen to only his words: “You must never be satisfied with success,” he told us. “And you should never be discouraged by failure. Failure can be sad, but the greatest sadness is not to try and fail, but to fail to try. In the end what matters is that you have always lived life to the hilt.” Strong, brave, unafraid of controversy, unyielding in his convictions, living every day of his life to the hilt, the largest figure of our time whose influence will be timeless. That was Richard Nixon. How American. May God bless Richard Nixon and may God bless the United States.

  Honorable Pete Wilson

  Governor

  State of California

  Richard Nixon has a beautiful family, and he was devoted to them. Anyone who ever saw them together knew his beloved Pat and his girls, Tricia and Julie, were everything to him. He was so proud of them, of his sons-in-law, Edward and David, and his grandchildren. But he also had a much larger extended family. A family of those who worked for him and with him, and I was and am very lucky to be a part of that family.

  I was one of the many young men and women in whom he inspired the same fierce loyalty that he gave to us. From the first, I was struck by the quality of his personal generosity. When we met in 1962, he had already debated Khrushchev and President Kennedy, he’d already run for president, he had been a major political figure on the world stage. But still he had time to talk to and to help an eager, young advance man who could offer him little but energy and enthusiasm.

  Then in the Fall of 1965, when I was 32, he honored me by asking me to come to work with him on his potential bid for the presidency in 1968. But he had heard from Bob Finch and Herb Klein that I was thinking about running for office myself. I told him it was true, and he grinned. He grinned and he said in that deep rich voice of his, “Is it a good district? Can you win?” And then he said, “Because if you can, then Pete, you’ve got to try or you’ll never forgive yourself.” I was just another young lawyer trying to find his way in the world, and he was a former vice president preparing a bid for the highest office in the land. And yet that day, he was as concerned with my future as he was with his own.

  Time and again, not just with me, but with many others, he was always there, willing to share his insight and his experience, and no American in this century had more of either to share.

  It’s hard to imagine a world without Richard Nixon. For half a century he played a leading role in shaping the events that have shaped our lives. It’s not just that he served for three decades in high office, it’s not just that he garnered more votes than any candidate in American history; it was because his intellect, his insight and his indomitable will could not be ignored. He moved on the world stage, he voiced bold ideas and he left global footprints.

  But for all his world grasp and mastery of global strategy, it was right here in this small house in this little town in Orange County that Richard Nixon learned and never forgot the values that shaped him and helped him shape our world. He learned the value of hard work. He learned that to make important change you must take risks. And he learned the Quaker virtue that if you were born with a good mind and good health, you were obliged to help others, to give back to your community.

  But he had something more, much more. When most people think of Richard Nixon, they think of his towering intellect, the incisive quality of his mind. Well, I will always remember him for another quality. It’s the quality that great fighters have. They call it heart. Heart is what let Richard Nixon climb back into the ring time and again when almost anyone else would have thrown in the towel.

  It was his heart that taught us the great lesson of Richard Nixon’s life to never ever give up. To him, it was no disgrace to fight and be beaten. The only disgrace was to quit, and he never did. Like this golden state that bred and shaped him, he knew adversity was a challenge to overcome. He loved returning to California, and he shared California’s optimism. And as he saw the state he loved facing the harshest economic times since the Great Depression, his message to us was, “Keep walking, k
eep working and keep fighting, and you’ll come back better than before.” The world will remember Richard Nixon rightly as a fighter of iron will, but the greatness of a man can sometimes be best measured by the times and the reasons that he chooses not to fight.

  After the 1960 election many urged Richard Nixon to contest one of the closest and most controversial elections in American history. But Richard Nixon said no, he would not go to court. He refused to fight, and he urged others not to on his behalf. He would relinquish the prize that was his life’s ambition. Why? For a simple, but these days remarkable, reason. It was because he so loved his country that he refused to risk it being torn apart by the constitutional crisis that might ensue.

  Forgive my parochial pride, but in the modest home just a few feet from this stand was bred a grocer’s son and a great American, with deep love for his country, with limitless courage, and above all with the faith and the brimming spirit and energy that creates only a handful of great leaders from among the tens of millions of their fellow citizens. Dick Nixon’s heart shaped by the grit and mores of this small town never left California, and now we return it to the soil that bred him.

  He ended his own eulogy to Everett Dirkson with a favorite quotation from the poet Sophocles, “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.” And in Richard Nixon’s evening, his light burned bright with hope and wise prescriptions for America and for the world. Today, as we take him to rest, as we seek to measure the greatness of the man in his legacy, it is clear how truly splendid Richard Nixon’s day has been.

  President Bill Clinton

  President Nixon opened his memoirs with a simple sentence: “I was born in a house my father built.” Today we can look back at this little house and still imagine a young boy sitting by the window of the attic he shared with his three brothers, looking out to the world he could then himself only imagine. From those humble roots, as from so many humble beginnings in this country, grew the force of a driving dream, a dream that led to the remarkable journey that ends here today, where it all began; beside the same tiny home mail-ordered from back East, near this towering oak tree, which back then was a mere seedling.