Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History

by Unknown

  In the face of crisis which seemed insoluble, my great predecessor Solomon Schechter used to say, “You must leave a little bit to God.” He did not mean that we are free from responsibility to alleviate human agony. He tried to express in a single aphorism the insight of Rabbi Tarfon, a sage who flourished in Judea toward the end of the first century, and who taught his disciples, “You are not obliged to complete the task (that is, the task of making the world a better dwelling-place), but neither are you free to desist from it.” Or, as he put it on another occasion, “Do not flinch from a task which by its nature can never be completed.”

  How little the mightiest of us can hope to accomplish, and how much we have to leave to God! And how secure we may be that, no matter what follies we may commit, he will ultimately save us from the worst results of our errors! After all, here we are, all sentient human beings, yet all descended from primeval bits of protoplasm, themselves incredibly combined from inanimate bits of protein. Perhaps some three billion years were required for those primeval cells to become thinking men and women; but that is surely a brief span for a bacterium to graduate into manhood.

  The primeval cells had no notion of purpose. Neither did the earthworms, who, in the course of eons, began the adventuresome roads to mammals, primates, and humans, impelled by a force which still eludes our understanding. Heirs to all their strengths and weaknesses, we are their direct descendants, thinking, writing, speaking, speculating, planning, and even from time to time communing with God himself.

  Having brought us so far, did this cosmic force desert us, simply because we are sentient human beings, rather than unicellular bacteria and amoebae? Instead, must we not rationally assume that—privileged to think, to have purpose, to work toward goals—the divine power that brought us from such humble origins will continue to guide us, turning our very folly into wisdom?

  As men, we alone among animal species have the power to envisage the future and to choose. We can act wisely, and we can also act foolishly. The machinery which constantly saves us from our sins of omission and commission appears most clearly perhaps in the life of society. American history could properly be told in the style of the Book of Judges. Whenever self-induced danger threatened, leaders have been sent to save our country for its intended destiny of service.

  Where would we be today, where would be the hope of the free world, where would be the future of civilization, if in the crises at the beginning of the Republic it had lacked the redoubtable figures of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton, to mention only a few? That great tragedy the War between the States arose from many failures of human judgment. But—remarkably—the compassion and wisdom of Abraham Lincoln became available just when they were most essential. Where would the Western world (including our own country) have been today, if Winston Churchill had not, through what seemed at the time mere chance, become the articulate leader of Britain, standing alone between impending barbarism and civilization, guarding us, until we could protect ourselves and others?

  Miracles occur not only in historical crises; they are happening every day, all the time, for each of us. Everyone in this room is alive due to uncounted miracles, as commonplace as the rising and setting of the sun.

  A student at our seminary once asked whether I really believe in the miracle of the ancient Israelites crossing the Red Sea. (Actually, properly interpreted, Scripture says that they crossed not the Red Sea but a “Sea of Reeds,” which may have been a smaller body of water.) As related in Exodus, the story is about as remarkable as the American defeat of the Japanese navy at Midway, a turning point in the Second World War. I might have mentioned this fact. I might also have mentioned the miracle of the American Constitution, a document drawn up by human beings, but which seems to reflect almost divine wisdom, which has guided us for generations and become a model for many other peoples. I might have mentioned the miracle of the Second World War, during which, in 1940, the Allies seemed hopelessly defeated, and yet emerged victorious in 1945. As he was himself a refugee from oppression, who had fled to Jerusalem before coming to the United States, I might have come very near his own experience by mentioning the miracle of the emergence of the state of Israel, an event unique in the annals of mankind.

  However, all these answers only occurred to me on my way home from the seminary. My answer to him was different. I said, “I was not present at the crossing of the Red Sea, so that I cannot add to what is recorded. But I certainly believe in miracles; and one of the miracles in which I most firmly believe is that you and I exist, and that despite the fact that our lives are in dire jeopardy momentarily, and would cease if everything depended on our conscious thought.” I recommended that he read a book by Walter B. Cannon, professor of physiology at Harvard, called The Wisdom of the Body. It is learned and wise; though doubtless since its appearance early in the century, others have superseded some of its facts. Professor Cannon shows what miracles go on at every moment within us; what ingenuity beyond the power of the cleverest engineer enables the eye to see, the ear to hear, the hand to touch, and above all the mind to think. How strange it is that no matter how much liquid we drink, our blood never becomes diluted, but is kept in proper balance! How incredible that the single cell from which each of us developed should carry the potential of every quality destined to appear in us, in its proper season; that the cells multiplying from this original one should have separate functions, one becoming a brain cell, another a red blood corpuscle, a third a bone cell—without confusion or error!

  Of course, sometimes the miraculous is obscured. There is much that is imperfect in man’s life, both individual and communal. That is what we should expect. Why should it be otherwise? What needs explanation is how much happens to be right, even though the world in each of its parts is far too complex for the wisest of us to comprehend.

  Once more, as Solomon Schechter said, “You must leave a little bit to God.” He has been; he is; he will be. We must try to do what we can, and are enjoying a great privilege when we do well and find the path of the right. At such times, we are cooperating with God: in the rabbinic phrase, we become his partners. And he is working through us, and with us. Happy is he, who, like Lincoln, is privileged to save his fellows when they are threatened by their own misdeeds, whose life represents an intervention of the divine into human affairs.

  The faith that all will be well enables us to be steadfast in peril, and modest in success; to escape foolish hand-wringing and paralysis, as well as thoughtless panic and fear.

  Once more, as Schechter said, “You must leave a little bit to God.” I hope that it is not presumptuous for me, a guest of the president of the United States, to pray that, looking back at our generation, a future historian may say, as I have said of Lincoln, “In a period of great trials and tribulations, the finger of God pointed to Richard Milhous Nixon, giving him the wisdom and the vision to save the world and civilization, opening the way for our country to realize the good that the twentieth century offered mankind.”

  President Ronald Reagan Inveighs against the Sinfulness of Communism

  “I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire….”

  Speaking on March 8, 1983, to the National Association of Evangelists meeting in Orlando, Florida, President Reagan delivered a politically controversial sermon on an undeniably moral topic: the sources of evil in the modern world. The address was drafted by Anthony Dolan and delivered with appropriate evangelistic fervor by the president to a group that agreed with him on such issues as prayer in public schools and limitation on abortion, but tended to accept the Soviet position on nuclear disarmament. Liberal historian Henry Steele Commager called this speech the worst ever given by a president, savage criticism that did not trouble the conservative president or his aides a bit. Although the “evil empire” phrase
was derided by accommodationists as extreme and simplistic, it set forth with clarity and force the basic Reagan beliefs before the onset of Gorbachevian perestroika, and was recalled with respect at the President’s state funeral in 2004. Here is his sermon’s conclusion:

  ***

  DURING MY FIRST press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.

  I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas or ideas that are outside class conceptions; morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war; and everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.

  I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates a historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930s; we see it too often today. This does not mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them….

  Let us pray for the salvation of all those who live in totalitarian darkness, pray they will discover the joy of knowing God.

  But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples of the earth—they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

  It was C. S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote, “The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

  Because these “quiet men” do not “raise their voices,” because they sometimes speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before them, they are always making “their final territorial demand,” some would have us accept them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses.

  But, if history teaches anything, it teaches: simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly—it means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.

  So I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position of military and moral inferiority. You know, I have always believed that old Screwtape reserves his best efforts for those of you in the church.

  So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation blithely to declare yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong, good and evil.

  I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for this administration’s efforts to keep America strong and free, while we negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world’s nuclear arsenals and one day, with God’s help, their total elimination.

  While America’s military strength is important, let me add here that I have always maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs or rockets, by armies or military might.

  The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

  Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a “witness” to one of the terrible traumas of our age, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the degree to which it collaborates in communism’s attempt to make man stand alone without God.

  For Marxism-Leninism is actually the second-oldest faith, he said, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation “Ye shall be as gods.” The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, “but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom he enjoins is as great as communism’s faith in man.”

  I believe we shall rise to this challenge; I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material but spiritual, and, because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man.

  For, in the words of Isaiah, “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increased strength. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary.”

  The Exiled Dalai Lama Espouses a Philosophy of Compassion

  “When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. These beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction…. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Nonviolence is the only way.”

  Tenzin Gyatso enthroned as Dalai Lama (“ocean-wide priest”) in 1940 at the age of two, is the fourteenth person in a line of leaders of Buddhist Tibet that began in 1641. His Buddhist followers believe he is the divine reincarnation of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, ancestor of the Tibetan people. He was driven into exile in 1950 after vainly resisting the Communist Chinese takeover of Tibet (escaping in the disguise of a soldier), and has led a government in exile, headquartered in India, in the generations since.

  Though he has addressed world bodies frequently in his crusade to achieve a degree of autonomy for his people, the red-robed “god-king” of an oppressed nation is at his most impressive in a small gathering. And though he once told an interviewer, “I think this lifetime as Dalai Lama is the most difficult of all the Dalai Lamas,” the world’s best-known monk comes across to an audience as determinedly optimistic, involved, interested, and good-humored.

  His lecture accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1989, was a formal presentation of his government’s Five-Point Peace Plan, concluding a fairly dry address with a moving prayer “to dispel the misery of the world.” That evening in Oslo, however, he spoke again informally, from notes, to a group more interested in his philosophy. His “Nobel Evening Address” is tightly organized, each thought linking to the next, presented in deceptively simple declarative sentences. The passage about smiles—“How to develop smiles?”—walks the listener into the theme of compassion and then to nonviolence, toward a conclusion asserting the power of nonviolence and the weakness of anger and force.

  ***

  …SO NOW, FIRSTLY, what is the purpose of life for a human being? I believe that happiness is the purpose of life. Whether or not there is a purpose to the existence of the universe or galaxies, I don’t know. In any case, the fact is that we are here on this planet with other human beings. Then, since every human being wants happiness and does not want suffering, it is clear that this desire does not come from training, or from some ideology. It is something natural. Therefore, I consider that the attainment of happiness, peace, and joy is the purpose of life. Therefore, it is very important to investigate what are happiness and satisfaction and what are their causes.

  I think that there is a mental factor as well as a physical factor. Both are very important. If we compare these two things, the mental factor is more important, superior to the physical factor. This we can know through our daily life. Since the mental
factor is more important, we have to give serious thought to inner qualities.

  Then, I believe compassion and love are necessary in order for us to obtain happiness or tranquillity. These mental factors are key. I think they are the basic source. What is compassion? From the Buddhist viewpoint there are different varieties of compassion. The basic meaning of compassion is not just a feeling of closeness, or just a feeling of pity. Rather, I think that with genuine compassion we not only feel the pains and suffering of others but we also have a feeling of determination to overcome that suffering. One aspect of compassion is some kind of determination and responsibility. Therefore, compassion brings us tranquillity and also inner strength. Inner strength is the ultimate source of success.

  When we face some problem, a lot depends on the personal attitude toward that problem or tragedy. In some cases, when one faces the difficulty, one loses one’s hope and becomes discouraged and then ends up depressed. On the other hand, if one has a certain mental attitude, then tragedy and suffering bring one more energy, more determination.

  Usually, I tell our generation we are born during the darkest period in our long history. There is a big challenge. It is very unfortunate. But if there is a challenge then there is an opportunity to face it, an opportunity to demonstrate our will and our determination. So from that viewpoint I think that our generation is fortunate. These things depend on inner qualities, inner strength. Compassion is very gentle, very peaceful, and soft in nature, not harsh. You cannot destroy it easily as it is very powerful. Therefore, compassion is very important and useful.

  Then, again, if we look at human nature, love and compassion are the foundation of human existence. According to some scientists, the fetus has feeling in the mother’s womb and is affected by the mother’s mental state. Then the few weeks after birth are crucial for the enlarging of the brain of the child. During that period, the mother’s physical touch is the greatest factor for the healthy development of the brain. This shows that the physical needs some affection to develop properly.