Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (152 page)

Maybe for the first time in its history, the United States is faced with doubts about its destiny. In less than twenty-five years we have gone from the American century to the American crisis.

The United States today is a country in transition. It is in transition from being the world’s dominant military power to sharing that role with the Soviet Union; it is in transition from an industrial to a service society; from being a predominantly white, northern European society based in the Northeast and Midwest to being a multiracial society with its center of gravity in the Sunbelt. A society in transition cannot be governed by
rigid dogma; on the contrary, it requires a government which is flexible, pragmatic, even sometimes deliberately ambiguous. Shared values must be clear, but the means to the end cannot be rigid. From fascism to communism, from monarchy to anarchy, the ends of government are purportedly the same. Justice with opportunity, higher standards of living, peace in our time. The means to the end are very different, however, and the means are what determine whether we live in a free society.

The critical issues we face today are not the levels of interest rates or what kind of package finally comes out of budget negotiations. These things are important, but our fascination with numbers must not obscure the real issues. These are, in no particular order:

To be fair and evenhanded, I should probably attempt to sketch the many reasons today to be optimistic about the future. The new technologies and inventions, the exploration of space and the oceans, communications and education, advances in medicine and knowledge of the human body, plus the myriad new developments we cannot even conceive of today. We must also be realistic in recognizing that we are today the strongest economic power in the world and that we are facing a Soviet system which is spiritually and financially bankrupt.

If I seem to dwell on the problems, it is probably for two reasons. First, because I have been trained, professionally, to look after the bad news first and let the good news take care of itself. Second, because I believe that in our problems lie the most serious challenges to our system and in their resolution lie some of the greatest opportunities for tomorrow.

And yet the list of problems that I reviewed is by no means a complete
list, and their diversity and complexity indicate the futility of trying to deal with them by across-the-board economic theories and “hands-off” government. The role of government, in the last decades of this century, will be
the
paramount question to be decided.

Today, we are witnessing a paradox: a government which abdicates to a theoretical marketplace most of its responsibilities for the welfare of the people, while wishing to intrude on people’s most private decisions. How does one equate the conservative passion to intrude on such issues as abortion, school prayer, and the death penalty with its equally fervent passion for the free market as the fount of all benefits? Today’s conservative experiment will fail because it has no relevance to the world we live in, just as yesterday’s liberalism failed for exactly the same reason. We are soon, however, going to run out of time for experiments.

Benny Wissler once snappily explained to me that there was no such thing as
the wrong answer
; there was only
a wrong answer
. It was only recently, however, that I concluded that, especially in government and public life, there may not be any such thing as
the right answer
. There may, at best, exist a process whereby trends can be affected and the direction of social and economic behavior temporarily influenced. This is the antithesis of the planned, central domination of government, but it means government committed to oppose destabilizing trends before they become flood tides. It is a permanent but ever-changing process.

A Rabelaisian friend of mine once compared saving New York City to making love to a gorilla. “You don’t stop when you’re tired,” he said to me; “you stop when he’s tired.” The gorilla never tires, and government can never abdicate its responsibilities….

There is no reason why a hardheaded liberalism cannot live with the reality that we cannot spend ourselves into bankruptcy.

There is no reason why social programs, impeccable in their objectives, have to be grossly abused, or expanded to include those who really don’t need them.

There is no reason why an economy, geared mostly to private-sector growth, cannot at the same time permit limited government intervention where needed. A modern version of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the 1930s could help rebuild our cities and restructure our basic industries without threatening our basic free-enterprise system.

There is no reason why limited and temporary protection for our hard-hit industries cannot be conditioned on restrained wage and price behavior by labor and management; this might become the model for an incomes policy where wage and price behavior could be linked to productivity.

There is no reason why large savings cannot be effected in defense, and particularly in reducing nuclear delivery systems, if we are willing to pay the price of larger standing conventional forces.

There is no reason to abandon human rights abroad and deal with murderers from the right because they happen to be anti-Communist. Nor is there reason to tolerate murderers from the left on the romantic notion that they are agrarian reformers.

However, although there is no reason why these results cannot be achieved, we must be realistic about the political difficulty of bringing this about. Without the active support of the American people and the active cooperation of business, labor, and government, it cannot happen.

In times of upheaval, the passions must be for moderation and not for extremes. As Anwar Sadat well knew, the passion for moderation may be one of the most dangerous passions today, and yet it is especially vital to our future. Sadat took the risks and paid the price. Even though today’s technology provides us with mountains of instant data, it is useless without judgment. And if judgments are to have value, policy decisions have to be made early. When the crisis is clear, it is often too late to act. That is the dilemma of statesmanship and the possibly fatal flaw in a political system which only seems to act when it is too late.

France has given the world a lot; not least is the skepticism of Montaigne and of Voltaire. Skepticism is what is needed today—skepticism of easy solutions, of cant, of ideology of the left or right. Skepticism does not equate with cynicism; it is not inconsistent with the fiercest patriotism or the firmest belief in basic values. But it can be the anchor to windward when our basic institutions seem to be adrift with the tides.

Yesterday, your president spoke to you of the American dream; today, I speak to you of the American reality. They are not inconsistent with each other, but unless you face the latter, you will never achieve the former. Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 1982, I do not envy you, but I do not feel sorry for you. You will have an exciting time, and it is likely to be hard going. The United States is in need of change, and your challenge will be to provide it as well as to adjust to it. As the rate of change accelerates, as the problems become greater and the solutions more elusive, get involved in public affairs. It is a great adventure.

Politics is not the only way to become involved in public life. There will be many structures such as Municipal Assistance Corporation, where private citizens can play important roles. I had the privilege of participating in a great adventure, the rescue of New York City. It was an experience both terrifying and exhilarating, which I would not have missed for anything. It taught me what you will find out. To be skeptical and always
look over your shoulder, but to get involved deeply and to shoot for the moon. To beware of lawyers and consultants and people who do not take risks and who do not get their hands dirty. There are even more experts today than there are problems, but there is no greater strength than an open mind combined with a willingness to take risks. Middlebury opened my mind, as I am sure it did yours. In order to take risks, however, you have to go in harm’s way. What happens then and how you perform, will depend on the fates as well as on your character.

The governor of New York is often a political leader with the potential for national stature, and Mario Cuomo made the most of a keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention to establish himself as a party leader; his emotional evocation of “family values,” combined with a view of the nation as an extended family, marked him as a politician to watch.

In that same summer, on June 3, 1984, he delivered a commencement address to Iona College, in New Rochelle, New York. As he wrote to the
anthologist, “This is certainly not a great speech, but it is my favorite. Others have received more attention; this one says best what is most important to me.”

Cuomo is a politician, like Adlai Stevenson, who pays close attention to words and writes many of his own speeches. When a columnist chided him for convoluted “Jesuitical reasoning,” the governor quickly countered with “That’s how little you know—it’s Vincentian reasoning.”

***

…IT WAS AN
Irishman who gave me the best advice I’ve ever been given about the art of delivering a commencement speech. Father Flynn was the president of my alma mater, St. John’s, and the first time I was ever asked to speak at a graduation, I asked him how I should approach it.

“Commencement speakers,” said Father Flynn, “should think of themselves as the body at an old-fashioned Irish wake. They need you in order to have the party, but nobody expects you to say very much.” That’s advice I intend to remember today….

I know that you are thinking—good parents and grandparents, loved ones of the graduates—what I’m thinking. “We’ve been through it all, at least most of it, or a lot of it. There’s so much ahead that they ought to know about. So many temptations they should ignore. So much we can tell them about how to begin answering these hard questions.”

We have the
obligation
to tell them, to reduce as much as possible the pain of their learning only from their own blunders.

We have the obligation. But do we have the right?

Can we, who found the ultimate truth so elusive for so long, tell them with confidence now of the futility of gathering up riches and the things of the world?

It’s clear to us that all the newly won power over space and time, the conquest of the forces of nature, the fulfilling of age-old challenges, have not made us any happier or surer of ourselves.

We have built rockets and spaceships and shuttles; we have harnessed the atom; we have dazzled a generation with a display of our technological skills. But we still spend millions of dollars on aspirin and psychiatrists and tissues to wipe away the tears of anguish and uncertainty that result from our confusion and our emptiness.

Most of us have achieved levels of affluence and comfort unthought of two generations ago.

We’ve never had it so good, most of us.

Nor have we ever complained so bitterly about our problems.

The closed circle of pure materialism is clear to us now—aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit.

All around us we have seen success in this world’s terms become ultimate and desperate failure. Teenagers and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide.

Entertainers and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace or stimulation of drugs.

Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions, new mates, games, new experiences—anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity.

We know because we’ve been there. But do we have the right to tell these graduates that the most important thing in their lives will be their ability to believe in believing? And that without that ability, sooner or later they will be doomed to despair?

Do you think they would believe us if we told them today, what we
know
to be true: That after the pride of obtaining a degree and maybe later another degree and after their first few love affairs, that after earning their first big title, their first shiny new car and traveling around the world for the first time and having had it
all
—they will discover that none of it counts unless they have something real and permanent to believe in?

Tell me, ladies and gentlemen, are we the ones to tell them what their instructors have tried to teach them for years?

That the philosophers were right. That Saint Francis, Buddha, Muhammad, Maimonides—all spoke the truth when they said the way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness.