Beyond Peace (35 page)

Americans do not know how to be second, or even first among equals. They only know how to be the best. After World War II the United States became the leader of the free world by acclamation. No other option was even conceivable. We should be just as resistant to playing a secondary role now. But if the United States is to continue to lead in the world, it will have to resolve to do so and then take those steps necessary to turn resolution into execution.

Above all, America must rediscover its commitment to the pursuit of excellence for its own sake. In the land of liberty, we have sometimes risked making an obsession out of individual freedom without requiring a concomitant sense of individual responsibility.
More devastating, the absence of a national challenge has reduced our sense of common purpose. In modern America too many forces—ethnic and cultural diversity, gaps between rich and poor, distrust between old and young—pull Americans in different directions, too few impel them to pull together. Cynics who say we need another war forget how shortlived the euphoria was after the Persian Gulf War. What we need is a war on cynicism, on negativity, on purveyors of gloom about America's prospects and our role in the world.

The greatest challenge America faces in the era beyond peace is to learn the art of national unity in the absence of war or some other explicit external threat. If we fail to meet that challenge, our diversity, long a source of strength, will become a destructive force. Our individuality, long our most distinctive characteristic, will be the seed of our collapse. Our freedom, long our most cherished possession, will exist only in the history books.

In all that we confront domestically, we must remember that ours is and must remain essentially a free society. In cracking down on crime, we are not limiting freedom. We are expanding freedom from fear. In breaking down barriers between the races, in guaranteeing respect for individual rights, we also expand freedom—if we do it in ways that respect the rights of all, not just those of the currently fashionable designated minorities.

Despite our economic and social problems, there is no reason why the United States cannot do everything that is needed. This nation of immigrants from all over the world is still united in its love of freedom. Our economy is still the most powerful in the world, with the capacity to overcome its serious problems. Our universities still lead the world in science and technology, which will largely determine progress in the next century. In the past, the United States has overcome problems vastly more difficult than the ones we now face. Although only 5 percent of the world's people live in the United States, we have the resources and the vision to make the world a better place.

The United States has the resources to lead. The world needs the United States to lead. Our ideals and self-interest dictate that we should lead. But this is not enough. We should remind ourselves of Sir Robert Thompson's maxim: “National power equals applied resources plus manpower times will.” When asked to meet a challenge, some people say “I can.” Others say “I can't.” Both may be right. It all boils down to a question of will. Does the United States have the will to lead? In the 1992 elections, 62 percent of the voters cast their ballots for presidential candidates—Bill Clinton and Ross Perot—whose campaign theme was that the country was in the throes of crisis and decline. Clinton and Perot were wrong. We are in the ascendant. We demonstrated what we can do during World War II and the Cold War. Now that we have peace, our challenge is to demonstrate that we have the will to lead beyond peace, where our enemy is not some nation abroad but is essentially within ourselves.

Our great goal should be to rekindle faith in freedom, not only abroad but at home. In the coming century, preserving freedom will require far more than “eternal vigilance,” though that will be needed. A free society needs a muscular determination to make its institutions work. It requires that free people take on the responsibilities that go along with freedom. As Goethe observed, “Only he deserves his life and his freedom who conquers them anew every day.” If we backslide on our responsibilities, we invite the alternatives to freedom.

Freedom has worked in America because ours was a nation founded on the idea of freedom, by people whose faith in freedom was coupled inextricably with their acceptance of the burdens of freedom. Founding a new country in a new world, each knew that he had to pull his own weight and make his own way. This idea was passed down from generation to generation, and the immigrants who came in such waves came expecting the burdens as well as the advantages of freedom. So America grew and prospered and now has set an example for the world. We nurtured
and developed the free institutions that are now spreading around the world.

But we have also nurtured a cancer in our own community. The breakdown of civil order, the retreat from responsibility, the slack-jawed acceptance of the attitude that “the world owes me a living”—all are eroding and corroding the idea of liberty itself.

With the Cold War over, our first order of business here at home, more fundamental by far than jobs or health care or the fiscal deficit, is the spiritual and cultural deficit. This is at the root of what ails America.

As we prepare for the twenty-first century, eliminating that deficit, restoring our spirit, and renewing our adherence to the principles of a humane civilization that America represents are our mission.

We must never forget why America has a special meaning in the world. We are respected because we are the strongest and richest nation in the world. But even when it was weak and poor two hundred years ago, America represented a great idea, more important than military might or economic wealth—the idea of freedom in all its aspects. Millions came to our shores because America stood for free nations, free people, free markets, free elections, freedom of expression, freedom of religion. Never has it been more important for us to demonstrate to the rest of the world the power of this idea.

Sometimes profound concepts are best expressed in simple terms. Every American has automatically recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag thousands of times. We sometimes forget the one simple phrase that best describes America: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The world particularly needs to be reminded of the American example today. Extreme nationalism, racism, and religious fanaticism are running rampant in the world. There were only 51 nations in the U.N. when it was founded at the beginning of the Cold War. Today there are 184 nations speaking over four
thousand languages. If we do not find a way to keep nations together, they will fractionalize and the Cold War will be followed by scores of bloody, smaller wars. America has the responsibility and the opportunity to provide the example of how a nation with many races, religions, and nationalities can be held together by a great idea that transcends them all. We must reject the counsel of those who demagogically argue that one answer to our problems of welfare, crime, and urban decay is to close our doors to those who want to come to America and enjoy the freedom with which we are blessed. Some limitations on immigration are necessary, but the principle of America as a free nation, welcoming those who seek freedom, must never be compromised.

We must never forget how much immigrants over the past two hundred years have enriched our economy, our culture, our lives. In 1956 there was a debate in the United States as to whether we could accept the new influx of Hungarian refugees fleeing from the Soviet massacre of freedom fighters in Budapest. Before going to the Hungarian border to welcome some of the refugees, I consulted with former President Herbert Hoover. He had had more experience than anyone else in the world working with refugees during and after both World War I and World War II. Some would have expected that because of his reputation as a conservative, he would join those who opposed taking in more refugees. On the contrary, he said that his experience had been that throughout American history there was always an initial reaction against refugees, but that every group that had come in had enriched the United States politically, economically, and culturally. This was true of the Irish, the Germans, the East Europeans, the Asians, the Persians, the Latin Americans, the Africans, and the Arabs. He predicted that the same would be true of the Hungarian refugees. He proved to be right.

We should adopt a generous immigration policy and a policy of equal opportunity for all who come to America, not only
because it is right to help the people involved but because they will enrich America and enable it to continue to be an example of a nation where a great idea—the idea of freedom—creates one people and overrides racial, religious, and national differences that have torn lesser countries apart.

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In six years the world will celebrate an event that occurs only once every thousand years: the beginning of a new year, a new century, and a new millennium.

In one way we will remember the twentieth century as the worst in history because of the destruction of World War I and World War II. More people—71 million—have been killed in those wars than in all previous wars in the history of civilization.

At the same time, more progress has been made in the last hundred years than in all previous centuries. Economically, the world's standard of living has climbed dramatically. Global per capita income is ten times higher as we approach the end of the twentieth century than it was at the end of the nineteenth century.

As a result of new developments in agriculture and manufacturing, we now have the capability to feed, clothe, and house people at a level undreamed-of at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a result of new discoveries in medicine, we have virtually eliminated diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis, which have ravaged entire countries, and we have found the resources to eradicate other diseases that threaten to do so in the future.

Technologically, there has been more progress in this century than in any earlier one. The automobile and the airplane have revolutionized transportation. The telephone, radio, and television have revolutionized communications. Personal computers and faxes have revolutionized the information age. The twentieth century will be remembered as a time when man invented the microchip and sent space shuttles to explore the universe.

Politically, the world has taken a U-turn in this century. Only 10 percent of the world's nations were democracies at the beginning of the century. Today over half of the world's peoples live in nations with democratic governments. The communications revolution has doomed dictatorship wherever it exists in the world. Communist and all other forms of dictatorship can survive only in closed societies. Television may have corrupted our values, but it has opened the eyes of people ruled by dictators to the free world around them.

As they consider our difficult problems at home and abroad, some young people complain about how hard it is to grow up in America today. They could not be more mistaken. There has never been a better time to be alive or a better country in which to live than America as we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century. We are most fortunate to live in these times and to have as our inspiration the building of something new in peace rather than destroying something old in war. Unlike the goals of previous superpowers or empires, America's goal is not to conquer the world by our arms or our wealth, but to lead by our example.

The Soviet communists lost the Cold War because they failed to make good on their promises. To complete the victory, we must demonstrate that freedom can produce what dictatorship promised but failed to produce. Only if our success goes beyond material progress will we prevail in the long run. Dictatorship in the short run can bring about economic progress. In the long run, people rebel against it because they need more than economic progress. Being against communism and dictatorship is not enough. Being for freedom alone is not enough. People must have enough material goods so that they can enjoy the nonmaterial qualities that distinguish free societies.

The door is now open for the victory of freedom in its broadest sense. But that door will close if those who walk through it are disappointed by what they find. People rejected communism because they knew it was politically, economically,
and morally bankrupt. They were for freedom because they were convinced it would produce a better life, based on what the communications revolution told them.

Our challenge today is a positive one—a challenge to build, not to destroy, a challenge to be for, not just against, a challenge to be driven not by our fears but by our hopes.

The pessimists have been proved wrong. Winston Churchill often quoted his favorite American politician, Bourke Cochrane: “There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother. She will provide in great abundance for all her people if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.” When he said that a hundred years ago, his statement was considered too optimistic. Not today. Unlike those who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century, we now have the capability to make the coming century a century of peace, unprecedented prosperity, and freedom.

As we look back over the two hundred years of our history as a nation, no people on earth have more reason to be thankful than the American people. We should always have a true appreciation of all that has allowed us to achieve so great a measure of prosperity, security, and well-being. We are the heirs of the traditional values that have been the bedrock of America's goodness and its greatness. We should preserve and renew them, and make them once again our guides to national and individual conduct. The success we have enjoyed in the past and the success we believe we can achieve in the future should bring not a sense of lulling contentment but rather a deep and enduring realization of all that life has offered us, a full acknowledgment of our responsibilities, and an unwavering determination to show that under a free government, a great people can thrive best, materially and spiritually.