The History Place - Great Speeches Collection: Harold Ickes Speech. I want to ask a few simple questions. And then I shall answer them. Why have some of us been. Where is the million- throated, democratic. America? For years it has been dinned into us that we are a weak nation; that. For years we have. Some amongst us have fallen for this carefully pickled tripe. ![]() The President spoke on Saturday in Selma, Ala. President Obama spoke before thousands on Saturday during a commemorative ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try;. Many of the faithful claim that prayer has cured them of blindness, deafness and metasta. The "World of Cardboard" Speech trope as used in popular culture. A fundamental part of telling a story is conflict: you want the hero to have their problems. The Power Of Prayer: For America's Future is a Special Report prepared by The Washington Times Advocacy Department. This is where we should be headed and prayer is the power that gets us there. Watch Madonna's Powerful Speech About Paris Attacks at Stockholm Concert "They want to shut us up. They want to silence us. And we won't let them," singer tells. The Power of Friendship trope as used in popular culture. A major theme in all media. The villain or Ineffectual Loner mocks the idea of relying on others. Stormie Omartianis the bestselling author of The Power of a Praying series with over 13 million copies in print. In high demand as an international. ![]() Some. amongst us have fallen for this calculated poison. Some amongst us have. They shout- -from public platforms in printed pages, through the microphones- -that. They exclaim that there is no room. America- -the America of Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln. Walt Whitman- -they say, is waiting for the undertaker and all the hopes. America are dead too. I say that it is time for the great American people to raise its. American. And why. Americans, with the aid of our brave allies- -yes, let's. I mean a future, not of concentration camps, not of. Caesars- -I mean a future when free men will live free lives in dignity. This tide of the future, the democratic future, is ours. It is ours. if we show ourselves worthy of our culture and of our heritage. But make no mistake about it; the tide of the democratic future is. Nothing in. human affairs is mechanical or inevitable. Nor are Americans mechanical. What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not. the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his. trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes. An American is one who will fight for his freedom. An American is one who will sacrifice property. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal. Declaration of Independence. Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in. We Americans know that freedom, like peace, is indivisible. We cannot. retain our liberty if three- fourths of the world is enslaved. Brutality. injustice and slavery, if practiced as dictators would have them, universally. If we are to retain our own freedom, we must do everything within. Britain. We must also do everything to restore to the. This means the Germans too. Such a program, if you stop to think, is selfishness on our part. It is the sort of enlightened selfishness that wins victories. Because we cannot live in the world alone, without. If Britain should be defeated, then the totalitarian. Perhaps you have heard. I tell you that this is a cold blooded lie. We would be alone in the world, facing an unscrupulous military- economic. Europe, all of Africa, most of Asia, and. Russia and South America. Even to do that, we would have to. We would have to live perpetually as an armed camp. Perhaps such is the America . Perhaps such is the America that a certain Senator. Perhaps such is the America that a certain mail order executive. But a perpetually militarized, isolated and impoverished America. America that our fathers came here to build. It is not the America that has been the dream and the hope of countless. It is not the America that one hundred and thirty million of us would. The continued security of our country demands that we aid the enslaved. Europe- -yes, even of Germany- -to win back their liberty and. I am convinced that if we do not embark upon such a program. We should be clear on this point. What is convulsing the world today. It is a counter revolution against. Communism, fascism. They have one common enemy, democracy. This is why this war is not an ordinary war. It is not a conflict. It is a desperate struggle for the possession. This is why the British are not fighting for themselves alone. They. are fighting to preserve freedom for mankind. For the moment, the battleground. British Isles. But they are fighting our war; they are the first. In this world war of ideas and of loyalties we believers in democracy. We must unite our forces to form one great democratic. We must offer a clear program to freedom- loving peoples. Freedom- loving men and women in every land must organize and tighten. The masses everywhere must be helped to fight their oppressors. We, free, democratic Americans are in a position to help. We know. that the spirit of freedom never dies. We know that men have fought and. We realize that the liberty- loving. German people are only temporarily enslaved. We do not doubt that the Italian. Garibaldi. We know. Poles have for centuries maintained a heroic resistance against. We remember the brave struggle of the Hungarians under Kossuth. We recall the heroic figure of Masaryk and the gallant. Czech people. The story of the Yugoslavs', especially. Serbs' blows for liberty and independence is a saga of extraordinary. The Greeks will stand again at Thermopylae, as they have in the. The annals of our American sister- republics, too, are glorious with. The noble figure of Simon Bolivar, the great. South American liberator, has naturally been compared with that of George. Washington. No, liberty never dies. The Genghis Khans come and go. The Attilas. come and go. The Hitlers flash and sputter out. Destroy a whole generation of those who have known how to walk with. God's free air, and the next generation will rise against. Today in Europe, the Nazi Attila may. In small farmhouses. Central Europe, in the shops of Germany and Italy, on the docks. Holland and Belgium, freedom still lives in the hearts of men. It will. endure like a hardy tree gone into the wintertime, awaiting the spring. And men with democratic hearts will experience. These men and women, hundreds of millions of them, now in bondage. They are only. waiting for our leadership and our encouragement, for the spark that we. These hundreds of millions, of liberty- loving people, now oppressed. They have the will to. Nazi gangsters. We have always helped in struggles for human freedom. And we will. help again. But our hundreds of millions of liberty- loving allies would. The quicker we help. We cannot, we must. The fight for Britain is in its crucial stages. We must give the. British everything we have. And by everything, I mean everything needed. The second step must be to aid and encourage our friends and allies. And by everywhere I mean Europe and Asia and Africa and America. We must dispel the fog of uncertainty and vacillation. We affirm it triumphantly so that all. Here in America we have something so worth living for that it is. We have not heaved from our necks the tyrant's. Not. only will we fight for democracy, we will make it more worth fighting for. In the words of Winston Churchill, ! But someone is downhearted! Witness the terrified flight. Hess, Hitler's Number Three Man. And listen to this- -listen carefully. Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. And do you. know who took down that dictation? We will help to make Hitler's prophecy come true. We will help brave. England drive back the hordes from Hell who besiege her and then we will. We must know our will and make it felt. Harold Ickes - May 1. My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your heads: Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the Executive branch of Government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere. Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race or calling. May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory. My fellow citizens: The world and we have passed the midway point of a century of continuing challenge. We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. This fact defines the meaning of this day. We are summoned by this honored and historic ceremony to witness more than the act of one citizen swearing his oath of service, in the presence of God. We are called as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the future shall belong to the free. Since this century's beginning, a time of tempest has seemed to come upon the continents of the earth. Masses of Asia have awakened to strike off shackles of the past. Great nations of Europe have fought their bloodiest wars. Thrones have toppled and their vast empires have disappeared. New nations have been born. For our own country, it has been a time of recurring trial. We have grown in power and in responsibility. We have passed through the anxieties of depression and of war to a summit unmatched in man's history. Seeking to secure peace in the world, we have had to fight through the forests of the Argonne to the shores of Iwo Jima, and to the cold mountains of Korea. In the swift rush of great events, we find ourselves groping to know the full sense and meaning of these times in which we live. In our quest of understanding, we beseech God's guidance. We summon all our knowledge of the past and we scan all signs of the future. We bring all our wit and all our will to meet the question: How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward the light? Are we nearing the light- -a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us? Great as are the preoccupations absorbing us at home, concerned as we are with matters that deeply affect our livelihood today and our vision of the future, each of these domestic problems is dwarfed by, and often even created by, this question that involves all humankind. This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease diminishes and life lengthens. Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible. Labor sweats to create- -and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet. At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws. This faith defines our full view of life. It establishes, beyond debate, those gifts of the Creator that are man's inalienable rights, and that make all men equal in His sight. In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished by free people- -love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country- -all are treasures equally precious in the lives of the most humble and of the most exalted. The men who mine coal and fire furnaces, and balance ledgers, and turn lathes, and pick cotton, and heal the sick and plant corn- -all serve as proudly and as profitably for America as the statesmen who draft treaties and the legislators who enact laws. This faith rules our whole way of life. It decrees that we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve. It asserts that we have the right to choice of our own work and to the reward of our own toil. It inspires the initiative that makes our productivity the wonder of the world. And it warns that any man who seeks to deny equality among all his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites the mockery of the tyrant. It is because we, all of us, hold to these principles that the political changes accomplished this day do not imply turbulence, upheaval or disorder. Rather this change expresses a purpose of strengthening our dedication and devotion to the precepts of our founding documents, a conscious renewal of faith in our country and in the watchfulness of a Divine Providence. The enemies of this faith know no god but force, no devotion but its use. They tutor men in treason. They feed upon the hunger of others. Whatever defies them, they torture, especially the truth. Here, then, is joined no argument between slightly differing philosophies. This conflict strikes directly at the faith of our fathers and the lives of our sons. No principle or treasure that we hold, from the spiritual knowledge of our free schools and churches to the creative magic of free labor and capital, nothing lies safely beyond the reach of this struggle. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark The faith we hold belongs not to us alone but to the free of all the world. This common bond binds the grower of rice in Burma and the planter of wheat in Iowa, the shepherd in southern Italy and the mountaineer in the Andes. It confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo- China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea. We know, beyond this, that we are linked to all free peoples not merely by a noble idea but by a simple need. No free people can for long cling to any privilege or enjoy any safety in economic solitude. For all our own material might, even we need markets in the world for the surpluses of our farms and our factories. Equally, we need for these same farms and factories vital materials and products of distant lands. This basic law of interdependence, so manifest in the commerce of peace, applies with thousand- fold intensity in the event of war. So we are persuaded by necessity and by belief that the strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord. To produce this unity, to meet the challenge of our time, destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world's leadership. So it is proper that we assure our friends once again that, in the discharge of this responsibility, we Americans know and we observe the difference between world leadership and imperialism; between firmness and truculence; between a thoughtfully calculated goal and spasmodic reaction to the stimulus of emergencies. We wish our friends the world over to know this above all: we face the threat- -not with dread and confusion- -but with confidence and conviction. We feel this moral strength because we know that we are not helpless prisoners of history. We shall remain free, never to be proven guilty of the one capital offense against freedom, a lack of stanch faith. In pleading our just cause before the bar of history and in pressing our labor for world peace, we shall be guided by certain fixed principles. These principles are: 1. Abhorring war as a chosen way to balk the purposes of those who threaten us, we hold it to be the first task of statesmanship to develop the strength that will deter the forces of aggression and promote the conditions of peace. For, as it must be the supreme purpose of all free men, so it must be the dedication of their leaders, to save humanity from preying upon itself. In the light of this principle, we stand ready to engage with any and all others in joint effort to remove the causes of mutual fear and distrust among nations, so as to make possible drastic reduction of armaments. The sole requisites for undertaking such effort are that- -in their purpose- -they be aimed logically and honestly toward secure peace for all; and that- -in their result- -they provide methods by which every participating nation will prove good faith in carrying out its pledge. Realizing that common sense and common decency alike dictate the futility of appeasement, we shall never try to placate an aggressor by the false and wicked bargain of trading honor for security. Americans, indeed, all free men, remember that in the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains. Knowing that only a United States that is strong and immensely productive can help defend freedom in our world, we view our Nation's strength and security as a trust upon which rests the hope of free men everywhere. It is the firm duty of each of our free citizens and of every free citizen everywhere to place the cause of his country before the comfort, the convenience of himself. Honoring the identity and the special heritage of each nation in the world, we shall never use our strength to try to impress upon another people our own cherished political and economic institutions. Assessing realistically the needs and capacities of proven friends of freedom, we shall strive to help them to achieve their own security and well- being. Likewise, we shall count upon them to assume, within the limits of their resources, their full and just burdens in the common defense of freedom.
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