Every day it seems I hear some moron on TV talking about how our nations’ security depends on oil. I understand the relics in the oil industries’ security is tied to oil but not this country’s. To even sell that idea to the American public is a betrayal of the public Trust.

Trust, now that’s a word, isn’t it? What’s happening to all that Trust now? The Trust we misplaced in others?

I think we could use a reminder of exactly Who we ARE.

We’re A M E R I C A N S!!!!!!!!!!!!

What follows is a speech given on July 4, 1946…

“I propose today to discuss certain elements of the American character, which have made this nation great. It is well for us to recall them today, for this is a day of recollection and a day of hope.

A nation’s character, like that of an individual, is elusive. It is produced partly by things we have done and partly by what has been done to us. It is the result of physical factors, intellectual factors, and spiritual factors. It is well for us to consider our American character, for in peace, as in war, we will survive or fail according to its measure.

Our government was founded on the essential spiritual idea of integrity of the individual. It was this spiritual sense which inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Inspired by a deeply spiritual sense, this country, which has ever been devoted to the dignity of man, which has ever fostered the growth of the human spirit, has always met and hurled back the challenge of those deathly philosophies of hate and despair. We have defeated them in the past; we will always defeat them.

Another element in the American character that I would bring to your attention this morning is the idealism of our people. This idealism, this fixed regard for principle, has been an element of the American character from the birth of this nation to the present day.

In recent years, the existence of this element in the American character has been challenged by those who seek to give an economic interpretation to American history. They seek to destroy our faith in our past so that they may guide our future. These cynics are wrong.

In Revolutionary times, the cry “No taxation without representation” was not an economic complaint. Rather, it was directly traceable to the eminently fair and just principle that no sovereign power has the right to govern without the consent of the governed. Anything short of that was tyranny. It was against this tyranny that the colonists “fired the shot heard ’round the world.”

Woodrow Wilson’s idealism was the traditional idealism of America. To such a degree was this true that he was able to say, “Some people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.”

The idealism with which we had entered the battle made the subsequent disillusionment all the more bitter and revealed a dangerous facet to this element of the American character, for this bitterness, a direct result of our inflated hopes, brought a radical change in our foreign policy

We failed to make the adjustment between what we had hoped to win and what we actually could win. Our idealism was too strong. We would not compromise. It is now in the postwar world that this idealism–this devotion to principle–this belief in the natural law– will meet its greatest trial. But, if we remain faithful to the American tradition, our idealism will be a steadfast thing, a constant flame, a torch held aloft for the guidance of other nations.

It will take great faith.

Our idealism, the second element of the American character, is being severely tested. Now, only time will tell whether this element of the American character will be true to its historic tradition.

The third element of the American character that I would bring to your attention this morning is the great patriotic instinct of our people. This American patriotism has always had as its core a strange and almost mystical love of the land.

Early in our history we acquired, as James Truslow Adams has pointed out, “a sense of unlimited energy face to face with unlimited resources.”

The American character has been not only spiritual, idealistic, and patriotic, but because of these it has been essentially individual. The right of the individual against the State has ever been one of our most cherished political principles.

The American Constitution has set down for all men to see the essentially Spiritual and American principle that there are certain rights held by every man which no government and no majority, however powerful, can deny.

Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by ethics, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free.

He is free in thought.

He is free in expression.

He is free in worship.

To us, who have been reared in the American tradition, these rights have become part of our very being. They have become so much a part of our being that most of us are prone to feel that they are rights universally recognized and universally exercised. But the sad fact is that this is not true. They were dearly won for us only a few short centuries ago and they were dearly preserved for us in the days just past. And there are large sections of the world today where these rights are denied as a matter of philosophy and as a matter of government.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price.

The characteristics of the American people have ever been a deep sense of Spirit, a deep sense of idealism, a deep sense of patriotism, and a deep sense of individualism.

Let us not blink the fact that the days which lie ahead of us are bitter ones.

May God grant that, at some distant date, on this day, and on this platform, the orator may be able to say that these are still the great qualities of the American character and that they have prevailed.”

John F. Kennedy

For further reference and comments see:

http://www.hera-kles.com/Blog/2008/10/06/trust-issues/