The Bill of Rights remains
inviolate. The freedom of elections is wholly maintained. Prophets
of the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire
predictions come to naught.
Democracy is not dying.
We know it because we have seen it revive--and grow.
We know it cannot die--because it is built on the unhampered
initiative of individual men and women joined together in a common
enterprise--an enterprise undertaken and carried through by the
free expression of a free majority.
We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government,
enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited
civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of
human life.
We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it
still spreading on every continent--for it is the most humane, the
most advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms
of human society.
A nation, like a person, has a body--a body that must be fed and
clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that
measures up to the objectives of our time.
A nation, like a person, has a mind--a mind that must be kept
informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the
hopes and the needs of its neighbors--all the other nations that
live within the narrowing circle of the world.
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