William Jennings Bryan gave a fine speech in London in 1903 at the American Society's Thanksgiving dinner. I thought this except, reprinted in The Public, worth sharing:
That sentiment was not even of human origin. Our own great Lincoln declared it in the toast, "God Himself, who implanted in every human heart the love of liberty." When God created man, when He gave him life, He linked with life love of liberty. We have received great blessings from God and from all the world, and we cannot make adequate return to those from whom we have received those gifts. It is not in our power to repay the Father above the debt we owe Him, nor can we make return to those who have sacrificed so much in the past. We cannot make return to the generations past; we must endeavor to pay our debt to the generation living and that to come. We must discharge our debt not to the dead, but to the living.
How can we discharge this debt we owe? In but one way, and that is by giving the world something equal to what we have received from the world. What is the greatest gift man can bestow upon man? Food, clothing, wealth? No. It is an Ideal that shall be with him always, lifting him to a higher plane of life: giving him a better conception of his relations to his fellow-men.
I know of no greater service that my country can furnish the world than to give it the highest ideal the world has known. And that ideal must be so far above us that it will keep us looking up all our lives; and so far in advance of us that we shall never overtake it even to the hour of our death.
Our nation must make its contribution to the welfare of the world, and it is no reflection upon those who have gone before to say we might do better than they have done. We would not meet the responsibilities of today if we did not build still higher the social structure to which they devoted their lives. The world has made progress. No longer do ambition and avarice furnish sufficient excuse for war. Today you cannot justify bloodshed except in defense of right already ascertained, and then only when every possible means for peace has been exhausted. The world has made progress. We have reached a point where the greatest man today is the man who will die not in securing something he might desire, but in defense of his rights.
We recognize the moral courage of the man who is willing to die in defense of his rights, but there is a higher ground. Is he great who will die in defense of his rights? There is yet to come the greater man who will die rather than trespass upon the rights of another man. Hail to the nation, whatever its name may be, that leads the world toward a realization of this higher ideal!
Among my "take-aways" from this is the notion that we must recognize that 2009 is not the merely culmination of all that has come before and that therefore we need not take heed of the rights of future generations, but that 2010, and 2020, and 2030 and 2100 will come, and it is in our laps, and within our capability, to begin to move the world to a society which is sustainable, equitable, just, efficient. And if not us, who? If not now, when?
And we can start by recognizing what the structures we accept as normal do to our fellow human beings, and to us. They favor the few with privileges which most of us don't realize are at the root of our most serious social, economic and justice problems.
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