The Lessons of History

Editor's note from The Nation: The great historian John Hope Franklin passed away this morning at the
age of 94. The first African-American department chair at a white
institution and the first African-American president of the American
Historical Association, Franklin, the author of the seminal From Slavery
to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, was an integral part of the
team of scholars who assisted Thurgood Marshall to win Brown v. Board of
Education, the 1954 case that outlawed the "separate but equal" doctrine
in the nation's public schools. Here we repost a powerful speech by
Franklin we published originally at The Nation.com in 2006. It came on
the occasion of his receipt of the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award from
the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.

It is a signal honor to receive the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award
from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. Franklin D.
Roosevelt was my hero when I was in college, and I shall always
remember my unsuccessful effort to chase him down during my senior year
in the attempt to enlist his aid. As president of the student body, I
sought the aid of President Roosevelt as the students protested the
lynching of a young African American lad who had been seized from a
house near the campus, taken to an adjoining county, castrated, and
lynched for an alleged crime for which he had already been exonerated
in a court of law. I was unable to reach President Roosevelt at his
Warm Springs retreat. More accurately, the president of my college did
not fulfill his promise to put me in touch with President Roosevelt.

Historian John Hope Franklin delivered the Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr. Lecture at the New-York Historical Society on October 17. It is published here as part of The Nation's ongoing Moral Compass series, highlighting the spoken word.

The following year, 1935, I acquired a new
hero in the person of Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. in whose
seminar I was enrolled. At the very first meeting of the class,
Professor S., as we were to call him affectionately, invited his
seminar to his home. There I met his family, including Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr. who, by this year, 2006, has been my valued friend for
more than seventy years. My relationship with the family placed me in a
good position to observe and admire Arthur's meteoric rise in the
academy and subsequently in the world of public service. One can only
say that he has been as distinguished and diligent as a public servant
as he has been as an original and outstanding scholar in the academic
world.

I wish to talk, albeit briefly, about what appears to be happening
in the world and, especially, what seems to be happening in our country
as we face one of the most difficult periods in our history. Those in a
position to speak for the country and to outline its current mission
insist that we citizens are undertaking to share with the world the
blessings of a free and prosperous society and to spread democracy
throughout the world. Under the most favorable circumstances, this
would be a remarkable mission; and it is not too much to argue that
these are not the most ideal times for such an undertaking. Before we
enter upon such an ambitious mission it is well to remember that we
ourselves are still in the process of becoming democratic, and it has
taken us more than two hundred years to arrive at this stage. A
democracy is a government where power is vested in the people, all of
the people, and one in which the power is directly exercised by the
people all of whom enjoy social and political equality.

At the outset, we did not even claim to be democratic, and it was
not at all clear that such a state of political and social grace was
one to which we seriously aspired. Indeed, it became quite clear as
early as the meeting of the Constitutional Convention in l787 that a
real concern of a considerable number of the delegates, for example,
was that the direct election of the president, by popular vote was much
too democratic, and it would be much better, they thought, to have wise
electors who would know much better than the general population who
could best govern the fledgling republic. Consequently, the electoral
college was established, and for the past two hundred years, the
American electorate has not had the pleasure or the privilege of
choosing directly the president of the United States.

This indirect election of the president by an electoral college has
established the practice not only of adhering to the notion that the
populace cannot be trusted with the difficult and complicated task of
choosing the chief executive, but of regarding the undemocratic
electoral college as the most democratic method of electing the
president. Thus, we have placed ourselves in the peculiar position of
various Americans, at times a former president of the United States, of
monitoring elections in other parts of the world. These monitors want
to make certain that the people, all of the people, participate in
choosing their leaders directly, when we ourselves do not engage in the
same practice. In the last two presidential elections in the United
States, the contest has been fiercely fought; and the dispute over the
outcome reflects a lack of confidence in the entire electoral process.
We all recall, of course, the election of 2000 that was not settled, if
it ever was, by the United States Supreme Court that made a decision
regarding the validity of the ballots in the state of Florida, which
determined the outcome of the election. One can still hear
reverberations stemming from the decision that the Court handed down,
thus awarding the presidency to the candidate who, incidentally, did
not receive a clear majority of the popular vote. Thus, he would not
have become president if we had not had the electoral college because
he did not receive a clear majority of the popular vote. It is clear
that many among us would be upset and resentful, of course, if any
sovereign nation would dare suggest that presidential elections in the
United States are not fair or democratic and should be monitored to
make certain that even if they are not truly democratic, every citizen
should have the opportunity to cast a direct ballot for the nation's
chief executive. Turnabout is fair play, however, and we ourselves
should practice what we expect of others. Surely, if we undertake to
spread democracy throughout the world, we must make certain that our
own institutions, especially the presidency, are democratic.

We did not have a national army until the Civil War. Before that
time we had, as provided by the Constitution, a militia that, most of
the time, depended on enlistments through the states. In April, l86l,
President Lincoln, just after the firing on Fort Sumter, called for a
75,000-man militia, after which much of the military force of the
United States consisted of federal volunteers. When that proved
inadequate, the Congress passed a new Militia Act. It provided that the
militia should include all male citizens between the ages of eighteen
and forty-five, after which President Lincoln assigned quotas to the
states and ordered a draft through the states to fill any unfilled
quotas. These were preliminary steps to the more comprehensive
democratic conscription law in March, l863, that made eligible all male
citizens between the ages of twenty and forty-five, after which
president Lincoln assigned quotas to the states liable for military
service upon call by the president. On the basis of this, and in due
course, all males could be called up for military service. At long
last, the United States could boast that it had a citizen army to which
any and all male citizens could be drafted. This practice remained the
basis for a democratic military force from the time of the Civil War
until after the conflict in Vietnam.

This so-called citizen army was far from democratic,
however. In a country whose population consisted of Europeans,
Africans, Asians, Spaniards, and native Americans, the extent of the
democratic nature of the citizen army depended on attitudes on the part
of the powers that made socio- military policy and had little to do
with democracy. For example, black volunteers were rejected by George
Washington when they pleaded for an opportunity to serve in the army
during the War for Independence; and they were not admitted until the
grave military situation drove Washington to seek and accept warriors
wherever he could find them. During the Civil War, President Lincoln
thanked and sent home the early black volunteers who were anxious to
fight for freedom as well as for what they hoped would be their
country. Only after the president issued the Emancipation Proclamation
and recognized that the free blacks and former slaves could indeed be
an asset in the struggle against the Confederacy did he take steps to
democratize the army by accepting African Americans into the armed
forces.

In the twentieth century this country moved haltingly and
spasmodically toward assembling a democratic army; and as it did, the
military and civilian leaders gave ground grudgingly. During World War
I, the military accepted blacks, and despite their remarkable valor,
not one of them received the Medal of Honor, despite their proved
bravery under fire and under incredible circumstances. Perhaps that was
because the American forces wanted nothing to do with them and assigned
them to their French allies. The French, in turn, treated the African
American soldiers so well that white Americans, civilians as well as
the armed forces, did not welcome them on their return to the United
States after the armistice was signed in l9l8.

It was much the same during World War II. Early in l942 I
volunteered for the United States Navy following the attack on Pearl
Harbor after the United States issued desperate calls for volunteers.
After viewing my qualifications the recruiting officer indicated that I
had all of the necessary qualifications except color. One wonders what
people in other parts of the world - during the Spanish American War,
World War I, and World War II - thought of the nature of the democracy
that this country was espousing with a jim-crow, all-male military
force that was fighting to "save the world for democracy."

There is serious question of how democratic the armed services are
today. Its recruits are lured by powerful and persuasive appeals,
especially to the very young and the very poor. They are offered every
possible lure, ranging from candy and chewing gum to fancy enlistment
bonuses for those who require greater persuasion. Meanwhile, by holding
the minimum wage to just over five dollars per hour, the military
becomes more attractive than the workplace for impoverished and
untrained day laborers. It can be argued that the United States is
attempting to spread democracy throughout the world through the use of
a poor man's army taken from a class that has virtually no voice in
policy making in general and surely no voice in the making or execution
of military policy. As we all know and as we have witnessed during the
conflict in Vietnam, the families of privilege and the families of
means could maneuver to keep their sons out of the draft through their
connections. Today, as the war drones on in Iraq and Afghanistan, they
do not even have to make the attempt. They can sit on Wall Street or
connect themselves with the war-time suppliers of goods and services or
the oil magnates and make their fortunes while the poor recruits fight
to extend so-called democracy throughout the world.

As part of the rise of democracy in the United States, women have
fought vigorously and males in a position to yield have somewhat
begrudgingly granted them an improved place in the social order. To be
sure, women in the United States have been as American as the men and
as democratic, if not more so, as the men. Thus, it is not surprising
that they have had to fight for equality before the law, equality at
the ballot box, and equality in the workplace. Only in recent years
have there been women in high places in the government and only more
recently in the board rooms of the great American corporations. We
comment in the most condescending, if solicitous, manner about the
lowly place occupied by women in the Middle East and in certain parts
of Southeast Asia. We fail to see the steady rise in the status of
women even in those places, to say nothing of Europe and other parts of
Asia and the Americas. When we recall the instances in which women have
risen to the very top of their governments in Great Britain, Germany,
India, the Philippines, and Liberia, we should speak with the greatest
humility about spreading democracy throughout the world. After all, the
so-called weaker sex in the United States would be skeptical of an
American democracy that places ceilings on how high they can go in many
areas of American life.

At the end of World War I, many people in various parts of the
world, Americans among them, believed that the only hope for
establishing and maintaining peace in the world was through an
international organization with sufficient authority to enforce
international commitments. When some nations balked at the suggestion
that the only way to maintain international peace was through a League
of Nations in some form, President Woodrow Wilson warned them that if
they did not move toward that obvious need, they would make themselves
"the most conspicuous and deserved failures in the history of the
world." If he persuaded the great powers of the world regarding the
truth of his statement, he was unable to persuade his own colleagues
and fellow citizens in the United States. Democracy in the world, and
indeed, in the United States, might have come sooner had the United
States seen fit to join the League of Nations after World War I, but
the conservative, nationalist, isolationist element in the United
States steadfastly refused to have anything to do with an international
organization. A world organization without the United States not only
doomed this country to steadfast and stubborn isolation, but the rest
of the world to the kind of bickering and misunderstanding that would
lead to yet another world conflagration. In the nineteen twenties and
nineteen thirties, the United States was not only isolationist but
needlessly aloof from developments in other parts of the world.
Consequently, it had no voice of any consequence as the world drifted
toward yet another conflagration.

What is remarkable is that as the United States entered the war in
l9l7 to save the world for democracy, it moved significantly away from
democracy in several important ways. Not only did it reject large
numbers of volunteers solely on the basis of color, but it also
established policies of racial discrimination that kept the military
units significantly segregated and undemocratic while they fought to
preserve democracy elsewhere. In the postwar years, segregation
persisted almost everywhere, while the raids conducted by Attorney
General Palmer, presumably searching for communists and other
"traitors" who sought to strip Americans of their freedoms, in turn
stripped their victims of every semblance of civil liberty and other
rights that presumably they would enjoy in a so-called democracy. These
"official acts" by the United States government were insufficient to
distract the country from the shameful race riots that broke out, among
other places, in Washington, Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Elaine, Tulsa,
and Rosewood.

Meanwhile, in the decades following World War I, the
status of African Americans deteriorated to the point that it would be
difficult to describe the United States as approaching or even moving
clearly in the direction of an egalitarian existence. Lynching
abounded; and everywhere there was racial discrimination in employment,
housing, education, and political participation. Even as Hitler sought
to create an Aryan race in Germany, there were those in the United
States who competed with him in the search for racial purity. They did
so by seeking to define the blood composition of a Negro. Sixty years
after the end of slavery and thirty years into the twentieth century
the state of Virginia defined a Negro as any person in whom there is
ascertainable "any quantum whatever of Negro blood." In a country where
the interest in the blood content of human beings would serve as the
basis for privilege and equality its people could hardly have been
seriously interested in democracy.

By the end of the twentieth century the United States had made some
significant strides toward democracy. We were not yet there, but there
were clear indications that we were on our way. The position of women
had improved substantially. They had begun to hold high political
offices. They were governors of states, members of both houses of the
Congress, and mayors of important cities. They had become presidents of
major corporations and presidents of colleges and universities. African
Americans began to make their belated climb toward equality. The
struggle was sometimes bitter, even violent; but even the courts
endorsed their arguments that under the Constitution, they were
entitled to equality. Vast numbers of white Americans were bitterly
opposed to extending equality to the descendants of former slaves, and
when the United States Supreme Court ordered the end of segregation in
the public schools, a considerable number of members of the United
States Congress issued a manifesto bitterly denouncing the high court's
unanimous decision. This decision was followed by congressional
legislation issuing to African Americans the same political and civil
rights that other citizens enjoyed. Indeed, there was widespread
sentiment supporting the view that African Americans should enjoy the
affirmative action that white Americans had enjoyed for centuries. This
privilege was extended to African Americans slowly and begrudgingly,
and there were white citizens who felt that in such instances equality
had stepped beyond acceptable limits. This was because some African
American students were admitted to colleges and universities for no
better reason than those whites who were admitted because their parents
were alumni or were important contributors, or simply were white.

It is not too much to say, then, that we are moving toward
democracy, but we are not there yet. One way of knowing that we are not
there yet is that the sages of the land are modest about what we have
achieved. We need to have a credible program of political, economic,
and social goals that are clear, and we need to have an agenda for
reaching them. We need to remember that so many of our national
elections are characterized by uncertainty, disputes and turmoil. Do we
really want to commend our noisy, boisterous, and ludicrous arguments
to the rest of the world as worthy of emulation? Do we want to spread
practices around the world that have developed here, such as a full
blown institution of lobbying that is about as powerful as Congress
itself? These and other practices have developed here out of the
experience of those who are in or near the political arena. Some say
that they are a part of the political culture that flow naturally from
the practice of politics as we have experienced it over time. Many say
that the practices here, regardless of whether they are good or bad,
come from the experience of the people of the United States, and it is
as impossible to export them as it would be to export the Fourth of
July or Thanksgiving Day.

I am distressed, as many others are, about what we do export and its
impact of such exportations on the people in places where we do display
our wares, our culture, our hubris, if I may say so. A few examples
will suffice. Some years ago, I was having lunch with some friends in a
rather tony restaurant in Istanbul, Turkey. I was a bit startled to
hear a sharp, reprimanding, and loud unmistakably American male voice.
He shouted at an innocent looking Turkish waiter, "How dare you bring
me a can of warm coke and a glass of shaved ice, when I told you that I
drink my coke out of a can!" He then described in a crude, tasteless
manner how the warm coke tasted. The waiter respectfully apologized and
sought quickly to make amends for his error. I wondered what the waiter
and the other European and local Turkish patron thought of this
boisterous, bullying American who was imposing his will and his power
over a hapless subordinate.

On another occasion, when I was traveling in South Asia as chair of
our Fulbright Board, I visited Sri Lanka. I had known a junior cultural
officer there since she was a graduate student in one of our prized
southern institutions. She had come a long way since emerging from a
West Virginia high school and had graduated from college. When I
encountered her in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I congratulated her for having
made such great strides. She thanked me and then apologized for not
having been able to stage for me a really grand dinner with a dozen or
more guests. She said that she wished she could have done more than a
small luncheon, but she was down to her last two servants. When I
observed at the luncheon how she treated them, I wondered how or why
she had any servants left.

Another example is from a different part of the world. On one
occasion my wife and I were traveling in the Soviet Union, where I was
lecturing. In Tashkent, Uzbekistan, a person in the audience asked me
quite frankly how rich I was. I told him that I was not at all wealthy.
He then asked me how I had obtained an education in the United States
if I had no wealth. He understood, from information and observation,
that only wealthy Americans could obtain an education. That gave me an
opportunity to explain the system of scholarships and other benefits,
aside from public education, that were available in the United States.
It was clear to me that the distorted impression abroad was that in our
"class ridden" society, wealth and privilege were all-important in
moving from one level to another. While it was in the interest of the
Soviets to promulgate such false doctrines, we unfortunately
contributed to them by the way we acted and the manner in which we were
willing to "pull rank" at the slightest opportunity.

One final example of Americans exporting their
cultural baggage will suffice. One day in Athens we, along with a score
of others, largely American, were taking a tour of the Parthenon. As
the guide was explaining the history of the ancient structure, one
American woman who asked another person in her party if that was the
Athens Hilton Hotel that they could see from the Parthenon. When the
reply was in the affirmative, the woman said that she much preferred to
return to the hotel and would attempt to get one of her stories--read
soap operas--on television. I very much doubt that the Athens Hilton
carried American televised soap operas, and I am certain that the other
people on the tour had notions about the level of her interest in Greek
history and culture, since everyone on the tour who understood English
was made aware of her cultural preferences.

These incidents add up to a very distorted picture of the American
abroad, ugly or not. I have often wondered how many Turks--or, indeed,
how many people anywhere--harbored some hostility or animosity toward
the people of the United States on the basis of the boorishness,
crudity, or all too conspicuously rich Americans traveling abroad. As
some of the British observers described American soldiers during World
Wear II: "Overpaid, over sexed, and over here!" Perhaps these views of
Americans are distorted, exaggerated, even inaccurate. They,
nevertheless, contribute to the overall opinion of Americans that so
many elsewhere hold, and that inform and shape their positions and
policies where Americans are concerned.

These attitudes are reinforced by official policies that we pursue.
When I was a delegate to the Belgrade UNESCO conference in l980, I was
proud to see the United States as a normal participant in a world
policy-making body for nurturing and fostering cultural, educational,
and scientific policies and practices for the benefit of mankind in
general. Four years later the United States had withdrawn from UNESCO;
and for eighteen long years we had no palpable connection with the one
international body that had been created for the specific purpose of
promoting the common good, based on man's intelligence and his
commitment to improving his well-being at every level. After a long
hiatus we rejoined that world body and hopefully we will remain full
and active participants in this important international organization.
Only then can we effectively and constructively criticize and assist
countries whose health, educational, and cultural policies appear to us
to be out of line with what we think they should be.

This leads me to wonder if our imperiousness and our aloofness are
the most effective ways to move our own agenda forward, if indeed our
agenda is worthy of such consideration. Meanwhile, we have steadfastly
declined to participate jointly and constructively in the search for
solutions to problems that are very important, even critical to the
future of the world in which we hope to live. Just think of the several
critical areas in which we take no position or are opposed to any
action or ignore them altogether. For years the United States has
steadfastly refused to ratify the treaty that would control and
ultimately eliminate the use of land mines that result in the killing
and maiming of thousands of innocent human beings each year. For what
reason do we turn our backs on eliminating weapons that kill children
and other innocents? Could it be that United States manufacturers make
and sell more land mines than any other country? Moreover, we simply
ignore the signs that indicate that the entire globe is gradually
warming. If we do nothing to control the emission of deadly gases for
which we are more responsible than any other country on the planet, we
shall be engulfed in such a catastrophic destruction of our planet to
the point that it will no longer be inhabitable. Indeed, we shy away
from any movements or proposals that provide some semblance of
environmental protection or control over pollution of the places we
inhabit, presumably in the mistaken belief that our resources are
without limit. Consequently, we need not fear their exhaustion within
the lifetime of the planet, and therefore we do nothing about it!

Although the United States adheres to the general principle of
international courts of justice, this country has refused to agree to a
court that will try citizen soldiers of this country for violations of
the laws of the wars in which they participate and stand accused of
criminal acts. In other words it is quite all right to try military
personnel from other countries for violating the law, but citizens of
the United States must remain above the law and must remain immune from
prosecution for allegedly violating the law. It is most difficult to
see how the United States can function in an international environment
if it exempts itself from the laws that it expects other nations to
obey.

Then, there is the matter of our participation in the United Nations
as a full-fledged, dues-paying member. When the United Nations came
into being in l945, many of us hoped that it would be the peace-keeping
body of all times. And the prospects for its playing such a role were
bright indeed. We remembered our own isolationist role in the old
League of Nations, following World War I, and we seemed determined that
we would not be guilty of doing that again. There would be
difficulties, of course, since member-nations represented every
conceivable view and philosophy on the political spectrum. When the
senior United States senator from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, became
chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, the United Nations
was immediately targeted as an object of disdain. It was criticized for
its policies and activities. When the international body did not bend
to the wishes of Senator Helms, the United States began to withhold its
dues. Within a few years the United States was millions of dollars in
arrears in its dues at a time when we were becoming more critical and
more demanding of the United Nations. After several years of
isolationist obstruction, Senator Helms relented somewhat; and the
United States began to make some payments on its delinquent account.
Even so, this country remained in arrears for some years to the extent
of more than 800 million dollars, that was finally paid. Meanwhile,
this country remained active and relentlessly critical before and after
we paid our dues.

There is something incongruous about the richest
nation in the world ordering an international body such as the United
Nations to take action, such as inspecting the status of weaponry in,
say, Iraq, when that action would involve the expenditure of funds
coming from dues paying countries such as Chile, Timor, Rumania, and
Iceland but none from the United States. There is something quite
undemocratic about advocating "regime change" in various parts of the
world, in actions that bring no great credit to this country or its
traditions. Only in the current crisis have we openly declared as our
objective a "regime change" in Iraq in a process that is obviously
undemocratic and even revolutionary. I have an eery feeling even in
discussing a regime change as if it were a mere routing operation of
throwing out one leader for a so-called better one to be selected by
the powers that change the regime. This is a ghastly renunciation of
the very principles that we claim to espouse. A country that prides
itself in being democratic or even striving toward democracy should
take the utmost caution in even thinking about changing the government
of a country in another part of the world with a history and culture
profoundly different from its own.

And in any relations with others, even with our so-called enemies,
there are codes of conduct that so-called democratic countries cannot
ever violate. A so-called democratic country cannot, must not, engage
in practices repulsive to democratic policies and traditions. One of
them is called "extraordinary rendition," the seizing of a person by a
sovereign power, detaining him for as long as the power wishes to
detain him without notifying his government or his family, and charging
him with no violation of the law, and then sending him to a so-called
neutral country for interrogation. The rendition is not even to a
friendly power, and the interrogation is reportedly savage and brutal,
including beating, starving, and threatening the victim with death.
During the current crisis that practice has become all too common. One
of the classic cases is the young Canadian citizen who, while passing
through New York, en route to Canada from a vacation, was seized, sent
off to Syria, the land of his birth, and interrogated, beaten, and
tortured for more than a year, and finally returned to Canada after
having received no useful information with which to accuse him of some
unspeakable crime.

All of us are familiar with the notorious detention of hundreds of
prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba without indictments of any kind,
without an opportunity to communicate with relatives or even counsel,
or even learning anything about why they are detained. We are also
familiar with the current practice of detaining so-called enemy
combatants in several places and, in violation of international law,
keeping them without making any charges against them, and denying them
any rights under the Geneva Convention or any other form of
international protection. The United States has engaged in these
practices in connection with its objectives of spreading democracy
throughout the world. Although these practices have gained no support
throughout the world, this country clings to them, even in the face of
judicial challenges and, in some cases, judicial condemnation.

Far back in the past, around the year 200l, all of five years ago,
some Americans had hoped that the crisis could have been resolved
without an all-out war. That was not to be, especially since the United
States insisted without conclusive proof that Iraq had an arsenal of
weapons of mass destruction. We, of all countries in the world, know
what it is like to unleash weapons of mass destruction. As the only
nation in the world to have used such weapons not once but twice, not
on a lonely Pacific island to demonstrate what their use would be like,
but on two of the most densely populated cities on the face of the
earth, we know! We also know that it should not, must not happen
again!! If that is the way to spread democracy throughout the world,
perhaps we should resolve not to attempt it.

There is much good for all of us to do in the world. There are
hungry mouths to be fed. There are diseased bodies to be healed. There
are deranged minds to be delivered of their demons by corrective
treatment. There are oceans and rivers that can bring much to mankind
in terms of food and drink as well as avenues over which we can share
our resources or be brought together as one family. There are deserts
to which we can bring the life-giving waters for the benefit of all
mankind. There are forests to be brought into use for the protection
and shelter of mankind. There is mankind himself and herself, capable
of self-control and also capable of lending her and his wisdom and
strength in the cause of real freedom and genuine democracy.

We deserve the opportunity to pursue our goals in a peaceful manner
and not pursue some goals of which we have no need or cause to pursue.
If we would only pursue peace with the same vigor and enthusiasm that
we pursue war, perhaps we could stumble into a period of calm that
would be so constructive that we would be persuaded that we have a
prize--a prize of peace of which we could all be truly proud.

I hope that the United States, having already experienced or
witnessed numerous holocausts in the past century, can get through this
next century with a peace that surpasses all understanding and that it
can show the world that while there may be something great about
winning a war, there is something much, much greater about learning to
use the tools of peacemaking and peacekeeping for the building of a
better world--a democratic world, if you will--in which we can all live
in peace as one great human family.