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L.B.J. Speech -
Inaugural address
My Countrymen:
My fellow countrymen, on this occasion, the oath I have taken before you
and before God is not mine alone, but ours together. We are one nation and
one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon
one citizen, but upon all citizens.
This is the majesty and the meaning of this moment.
For every generation, there is a destiny. For some, history decides. For
this generation, the choice must be our own.
Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will
not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of
years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from
our own, because ours is a time of change--rapid and fantastic change
bearing the secrets of nature, multiplying the nations, placing in
uncertain hands new weapons for mastery and destruction, shaking old
values, and uprooting old ways.
Our destiny in the midst of change will rest on the unchanged character of
our people, and on their faith.
THE AMERICAN COVENANT
They came here--the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened--to find
a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this
land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was
meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still.
If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.
JUSTICE AND CHANGE
First, justice was the promise that all who made the journey would share
in the fruits of the land.
In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In
a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of
healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great
land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and
write.
For the more than 30 years that I have served this Nation, I have believed
that this injustice to our people, this waste of our resources, was our
real enemy. For 30 years or more, with the resources I have had, I have
vigilantly fought against it. I have learned, and I know, that it will not
surrender easily.
But change has given us new weapons. Before this generation of Americans
is finished, this enemy will not only retreat--it will be conquered.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow,
saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and
different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears
created this Nation.
LIBERTY AND CHANGE
Liberty was the second article of our covenant. It was self-government. It
was our Bill of Rights. But it was more. America would be a place where
each man could be proud to be himself: stretching his talents, rejoicing
in his work, important in the life of his neighbors and his nation.
This has become more difficult in a world where change and growth seem to
tower beyond the control and even the judgment of men. We must work to
provide the knowledge and the surroundings which can enlarge the
possibilities of every citizen.
The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation
of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much
outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.
Change has brought new meaning to that old mission. We can never again
stand aside, prideful in isolation. Terrific dangers and troubles that we
once called "foreign" now constantly live among us. If American lives must
end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that
is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring
covenant.
Think of our world as it looks from the rocket that is heading toward
Mars. It is like a child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck
to its side like colored maps. We are all fellow passengers on a dot of
earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has really only a moment among
our companions.
How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and
destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will
abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world
enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.
Our Nation's course is abundantly clear. We aspire to nothing that belongs
to others. We seek no dominion over our fellow man, but man's dominion
over tyranny and misery.
But more is required. Men want to be a part of a common enterprise--a
cause greater than themselves. Each of us must find a way to advance the
purpose of the Nation, thus finding new purpose for ourselves. Without
this, we shall become a nation of strangers.
UNION AND CHANGE
The third article was union. To those who were small and few against the
wilderness, the success of liberty demanded the strength of union. Two
centuries of change have made this true again.
No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and
countryside, struggle to divide our bounty. By working shoulder to
shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all. We have discovered
that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick body
that is made whole--like a candle added to an altar--brightens the hope of
all the faithful.
So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to
rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation.
Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our
unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and
the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change
without hatred--not without difference of opinion, but without the deep
and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations.
THE AMERICAN BELIEF
Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a
nation--prosperous, great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But
we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure. We have been
allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the
strength of our spirit.
I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and
sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming--always
becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again--but always
trying and always gaining.
In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage
again.
If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in
hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it
gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most
favored.
If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be
because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of
what we believe.
For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and
the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty
and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be
free. And we believe in ourselves.
Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime--in
depression and in war--they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the
secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not
see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it
will again.
For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the
unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest
sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is
a new world coming? We welcome it--and we will bend it to the hopes of
man.
To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends
of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the
people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on
that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I
can."
But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the
old dream. They will lead you best of all.
For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: "Give me now
wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people:
for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?"
Lyndon Johnson
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