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Oppenheimer
Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 1166 Location: SantaFe, New Mexico
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Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 2:13 am Post subject: Rice and Straw/ remarks on Democracy (a good read) |
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Remarks With United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the Blackburn
Institute's Frank A. Nix Lecture
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
October 21, 2005
(12:00 p.m. EDT)
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you very much, Creshema, for that wonderful introduction.
That was so gracious and so beautiful. Thank you. And I understand you'll
graduate pretty soon and I know great things await you.
And let me just say it's great to be back home in Alabama. I'm especially glad
to be here home in Alabama with some of my friends.
Ambassador and Lady Manning of the United Kingdom, I am pleased that both of
you could venture out of Washington for a little while in order to visit this
great part of the country with me.
And of course, Foreign Secretary Straw and his wife, Mrs. Alice Perkins, who's
sitting right here. I think I speak for all the American people when I say that
the citizens of Alabama and the people of America are honored that you traveled
with us here, across the Atlantic, to be with us in Birmingham -- and in
Tuscaloosa. (Laughter.)
America owes the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and you, Mr.
Secretary -- an enormous debt of gratitude. Servicemen and women from our two
nations are literally working shoulder to shoulder in Iraq and Afghanistan on
the front lines of freedom. And I know that America's military families
especially appreciate Britain's courage and determination in this difficult
fight. We have no better friend than Great Britain in this pursuit of freedom
and liberty for the world and through that, for peace and security.
(Applause.)
I'm honored to join all of you here today at the University of Alabama to
deliver the Blackburn Institute's Frank Nix Lecture. I want to thank the Board
of Trustees, President Witt, Chancellor Portera, all of the Nix family, and
especially Dr. John Blackburn and his family, Mrs. Gloria Blackburn and my
friend from childhood, Holly Blackburn. They're one of the oldest and dearest
friends of my family. I want to thank you for giving me this very special
opportunity to return home to Alabama. I just have to say one more word about
Dr. Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn was not just a family friend. He was in many my
father's mentor. You've done a great deal to my family over the years, Dr.
Blackburn, and I'm honored to be back here with you.
(Applause.)
Now, I'm delighted to give this lecture but I'm also looking forward to
tomorrow afternoon. (Laughter. Applause.) Because I just know that the Tide is
going to roll, roll, roll right over the Tennessee Volunteers.
(Applause.)
I want to thank a number of members of my family who are here with me. My
cousin, Yvonne German, and her husband, Roy, are here. My aunt, Genoa
McPhatter, who has traveled with me from Norfolk,Virginia. And my aunt and
uncle, Connie and Alto Ray, thanks for being here.
(Applause.)
Now, some of you may not know this, but it was actually here in Tuscaloosa at
Stillman College, that my grandfather became the first member of my family to
earn a college education. Granddaddy Rice was a poor sharecropper's son in
Ewtah, that's E-W-T-A-H, Alabama -- (laughter) -- and when he was somehow in
his late teens, early 20s, he decided that he wanted to get book learning. And
so he would ask people who came through how a colored man, which was the
parlance of the day, might get to college. And he was told about this little
college called Stillman College in a place called Tuscaloosa, not far from
where he lived. So he saved up his cotton and he went off to Tuscaloosa and he
went through one year of college. But then, when the second year came along and
he had run out of cotton, they said, "Well, you'll have to leave because you
can't pay for your education." My grandfather said, "Well, how are those boys
going to school?" And they said, "Well, you see, they have what's called a
scholarship and if you wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, then you could
have a scholarship, too." And my grandfather said, "Well, that's exactly what I
had in mind." (Laughter.) And my family has been Presbyterian and
college-educated ever since."
(Laughter. Applause.)
I lived in Tuscaloosa, of course, when my father was the Dean of Students at
Stillman College. But my hometown is just up Route 20 in Birmingham. And it's a
place that I remember very fondly. It's a place of childhood toys and parties
and really, in many ways, a secured childhood because I lived in a nice
neighborhood where teachers and parents cared a great deal for the children and
where we were all taught that we had every opportunity before us and that even
if Birmingham had limited horizons for black kids, our parents didn't have
limited horizons for us.
And so we went to Jack and Jill and Tots and Teens and we took flute lessons
and piano lessons and ballet lessons and swimming lessons and on Saturdays,
French lessons. And our parents gave us a world that despite the world around
us was one that was loving and caring and secure.
But despite of my fond memories of Birmingham as a place where I was, as a
child, secure. I also remember a place called "Bombingham" -- where I witnessed
the denial of democracy in America for so many yearss. It was, after all, the
city of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, where blacks were haunted by rebel
yells and terrorized by nightriders and accused of burning their own homes.
And, of course, it was the city where my friend Denise McNair, and three other
little girls, were blown up one Sunday morning while they were going to Sunday
school at the 16th Street Baptist Church. And it was a town where my father and
his friends had to bear rifles at the top of the cul-de-sac in the community to
keep nightriders out.
Throughout the South, when I was growing up, the organized cruelty of
segregation was embodied in custom, encompassed in law, and enforced through
brutality. Nevertheless, our Founding Fathers had dug the well of democracy
deep in America. They believed that no act of God or fact of nature condemned
one man to be the instrument of another. Our Founders knew that human beings
are imperfect so they enshrined certain natural rights in our democratic
institutions.
The only problem, of course, that was that when the Founding Fathers said, "We
the people," they didn't mean me.
Nonetheless, the ideal of justice at the heart of this regime was the mirror
that black Americans held in the face of their oppressors. This reflected a
stark choice for our entire country: Either the principles of our nation's
Creed were true for everyone -- or they were true for no one.
If these truths were indeed self-evident -- if all men really were created
equal -- then it was America that had to change, not America's democratic
ideals.
To be sure, blacks needed partners in government to help remove the unjust
obstacles in our path to freedom. And the judges, and the lawmakers, and the
bureaucrats in Washington eventually did their part, as did President Lyndon
Johnson.
They set new judicial precedents and passed new legislation and enforced our
just demands, even at the point of a bayonet in places like Little Rock and Ole
Miss, along the bus routes of the Deep South, and at a schoolhouse door here at
the University of Alabama.
But make no mistake: Citizenship was not a gift that was given to black
Americans. It was a right that was won through the courage and sacrifice of
many impatient patriots, weary of hypocrisy, whose demand was "freedom now."
These impatient patriots were iconic leaders like my father's great friend,
Fred Shuttlesworth and Bob Moses and, of course, Martin Luther King. There were
people like Rosa Parks. There were people, white and black, who just saw that
America had to end its own hypocrisy. And they were ordinary citizens who
boycotted segregated buses and demanded equality at lunch counters and marched
for their civil rights. They knew, too, that the fight against segregation had
to be not just in one's heart but in one's own mind. And so the black citizens
of America are free today because there are also individuals, like my father
and my mother who were teachers, I would call them educational evangelists, who
didn't just care for their children and educated them, but taught them that if
they worked hard and learned, they could be liberated also by their minds.
Across the empire of Jim Crow, from upper Dixie to the lower Delta, the
descendants of slaves shamed our nation with the power of righteousness and
redeemed America at last from its original sin of slavery.
By resolving the contradiction at the heart of our democracy, America finally
found its voice as a true champion of democracy beyond its shores.
And today, we face the same choice in the world that we once confronted in our
country: Either the desire for liberty and democratic rights is true for all
human beings or we are to believe that certain peoples actually prefer
subjugation.
President Bush has chosen. He believes, as do I, that all people deserve
freedom and democracy -- (applause) -- and as he had said, "The liberty we
prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity."
Now, there are cynics who have always doubted the universal appeal of
democratic rights. They were once -- people who once believed that blacks were
unfit for democracy, somehow too childlike or too unready or too incapable of
self-governing. And there have been cynics that thought that democracy would
not take hold in other places in the world.
Cynics claimed that "Asian values" would inhibit democracy in East Asia; that
Latin culture would impede democracy in South America; that tribal society
would negate democracy in Africa; and that despotic traditions would obstruct
democracy in the former Soviet Union. These predictions have not come true. To
the contrary, in the last fifty years, our world has experienced the most
dramatic expansion of democracy in all of human history.
During America's struggle for civil rights, the world's democracies were like
scattered islands in a hostile sea. But over the past five decades, whenever
the tides of oppression have receded, free peoples have emerged to seize their
democratic rights.
This enlargement of the democratic world is increasing international security,
too. And there is a reason for this: States need more power to ensure stability
and safety within their borders. But they also need legitimacy and democracy is
the way to create legitimacy.
There was a time when America did not always follow this logic. For 60 years,
we often thought that we could achieve security in the Middle East without
democracy. And, ultimately, we got neither. And now, we must recognize, as we
do in every other region of the world, that democracy is the only path to
lasting security.
It is the case that America and the world have been secure when democracy is on
the march; and vulnerable when democracy is in retreat. Now, of course, we hear
the same cynical voices again that argued about Latin America and about Asia,
about the former Soviet Union and, indeed, about minorities in our own country.
They argue that the people of the Middle East, perhaps because of their color
or their creed or their culture or even perhaps because of their religion, are
somehow incapable of democracy.
They falsely characterize the support of democracy as "exporting" democracy, as
if democracy were a product that only America manufactures. These cynics say
that we are arrogantly imposing our democratic principles on unwilling peoples.
But it is the very height of arrogance to believe that political liberty, and
rights for women, and freedom of speech, and the rule of law belong only to us.
All people deserve these rights and they choose them freely. It is tyranny, not
democracy that has to be forced upon people at gunpoint.
So today, impatient patriots are raising their voices for justice across the
Middle East. And whenever they gain opportunities to make truly free choices,
they are choosing liberty, not oppression. They are choosing the natural desire
for life, not the constant fear of death. They are choosing to be ruled by the
consent of the governed, not by the coercion of the state. And in some
countries, they are beginning to shrine these basic liberties in democratic
institutions. At this important time, America is helping every nation in the
broader Middle East that embraces the challenges of democracy.
We are supporting the impatient patriots of Afghanistan. Twice now, millions of
ordinary Afghans have forded streams and walked miles and waited hours along
dusty roads to vote in their country's free elections. Afghanistan's progress
is amazing the world. But it is far from over. The Afghan people, though, are
building their democracy with urgency and they're taking nothing for granted.
They expect no less of us, their partners, and we are not going to let them
down.
We are also supporting the impatient patriots of Lebanon. Earlier this year,
hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens gathered in Beirut after the brutal
murder of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and demanded the withdrawal of Syrian
forces.
The United States and France, leading a broad international coalition with a
Security Council mandate, helped the people of Lebanon to achieve their goal.
And since then, the country has held its first free elections. Everyday it
continues to liberate itself, but it must never again be subject to the fear
and tyranny of an outside power that seeks to circumscribe its sovereignty.
We are supporting the impatient patriots of the Palestinian territory. For
years, Yasser Arafat prevented the Palestinian people from undertaking the
democratic reforms that they justly deserved. But since his death, with strong
American and international support, the Palestinian people have elected a
leader who calls for peace with Israel and recognizes the need to fight
terrorism. Now, if both Palestinians and Israelis meet their obligations, there
is a true opportunity for peace.
And finally, of course, we are standing together with the impatient patriots of
Iraq. When Baghdad was first designed, nearly 1,200 years ago, it was conceived
of as the "Round City" where no person would be closer to the center of justice
than any other. Today, Iraqis are again reaching for the ideals of the Round
City. Over 8 million citizens risked their lives to vote in free elections last
January. And even greater numbers of Iraqis turned out courageously last week
to vote in their constitutional referendum.
To be sure, Iraqis still face a long, hard path to the democratic future they
seek. Historical changes of scope and magnitude of this one are bound to be
difficult. Iraq, of course, rests on the major fault lines of religion and
ethnicity in the Middle East. The country was held together for most of its
history through coercion and repression. Now, despite having known little but
tyranny, the Iraqi people are trying to govern themselves through politics, not
violence; through compromise, not conflict.
The citizens of Iraq do not want a civil war in their country. It is the
terrorists in their midst who seek to make Iraq the spark that ignites a
full-scale conflict among Muslims in the Middle East. Iraq's security forces
are fighting this enemy vigorously. Their ranks are growing more capable and
America's men and women in uniform, along with our British and Coalition
partners, are performing historically and heroically to help Iraq in this
difficult fight.
Now, the key to success is the development of democratic institutions that
functions transparently and protects minority rights and serves the interests
of all. The daily work of self-governance creates habits of cooperation that
enable multiethnic societies to live and to thrive together in peace.
Otherwise, someone or some group always gets repressed.
It will take the citizens of Iraq many years to translate the universal ideals
of democracy into their own institutions of democracy. But we should note that
unlike in our Constitutional Convention, the Iraqis have not made a compromise
as bad as the one that made my ancestors 3/5th of a man.
Of all people, then, we in America know that democratization is a long and
difficult process, not a singular event. We have no cause for false pride and
every reason for humility as we help others along their journey to democracy.
But we also know that it is crucial for citizens to lay firm foundations of
freedom in the early years of democratic change.
A successful founding enables future generations of impatient patriots to
transform their country over time -- not by looking for solutions beyond those
institutions, but by appealing to the democratic principles at their very
heart. These early years of democratic change in the Middle East, early years
still, are vitally important. Now is not the time to falter or fade. We must
remain confident, as one American abolitionist was, that "the arc of the moral
universe is long but it bends toward justice."
Just four years ago, the democrats of the Middle East were hiding in silence,
or languishing in prison, or fearing for their very lives. Now, from Ramallah
to Beirut to Baghdad, impatient patriots are finding new spaces of freedom to
demand their rights and defend their freedom and strengthen their democracies.
They are leading their countries to a future of hope and opportunity and
dignity for all people.
At one point, not that long ago, the promise of democracy seemed distant here
in Alabama, here in Tuscaloosa, here on this campus, and throughout America.
But when impatient patriots in this country finally demanded their freedom and
their rights, what once seemed impossible suddenly seemed inevitable.
So it was in America. And so it has been in much of the world. And so it shall
be in the Middle East.
Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Taylor, thank you very much for that introduction and
thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, and to the University for this
invitation, for Alice and me and for David and Catherine Manning to come and
join you here in Tuscaloosa in Alabama.
First and profound thanks to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for deciding
that she needed to show me some real America. (Laughter. Applause.) So here we
are in real America and -- (laughter) -- and tomorrow, Alice and I and David
and Catherine Manning are going to this football game. (Laughter.) We've had
our instructions. Our luggage has been searched for anything orange. (Laughter.
Applause.) And I'm just hoping against hope that we're not invited next to see
real America called Tennessee. (Laughter.) Just think about it because people
might photograph me cheering the Alabama team. Anyway. (Laughter.)
Just as supporting Blackburn Rovers is a basic human duty, so I understand my
duty tomorrow, Secretary of State. And we shall go there and I'm looking
forward to Alabama winning and avenging the last occasion when Alabama met
Tennessee -- and we won't talk about that. (Laughter.)
Could I also say how delighted I am to be here at the Blackburn Institute, in
the presence of Dr. Blackburn and his family. I knew that Dr. Blackburn was a
great man the moment that I saw his surname because as you've heard, Dr.
Blackburn is or has to be named after the greatest town on earth, some even say
the center of the universe, Blackburn, England, my parliamentary district.
(Laughter.) My district or constituency, as we say in the United Kingdom, was
once one of the world centers for cotton textiles. And cotton from right here
in the Deep South of the United States was shipped over to England. It was
spun, woven and finished in towns like Blackburn and many others across
Lancashire and then exported throughout the world.
During the Civil War, yours, by the way, not ours, which was -- (laughter) --
well, we had one, too, but it was a little earlier -- (laughter) -- anyway,
during your Civil War, the northern blockade on Confederate shipping led to the
closure of many of the textile mills in my town and across Lancashire and put
thousands of citizens out of work, all in short time. But commendably, cotton
workers in the vein pledged their support, not for the Confederates but for the
fight against slavery and they did so most notably at a meeting in the Free
Trade Hall, the center, the capital of Lancashire, Manchester, England, in
December 1962.
So the town and the area has long thought about the race issue, even though in
those days the community was entirely white. Over the last 40 years, and again,
interestingly, because of the cotton connection, Blackburn has become the home
to two of the largest Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, hailing from
India and from Pakistan. Together today they represent a quarter of the total
population. Our home in Blackburn is in a mixed area. From my bedroom, I can,
depending on the wind, hear the bells of Blackburn Cathedral competing with the
call to prayer from a nearby mosque, opposite across the street is a -- what we
would call a Sunday School, a religious school -- after school madrassas.
Now, the achievement of full social and economic equality for the Asian and the
black communities in the United Kingdom still has some way to go. But we are
proud, above all, of one thing -- immediate civil rights for all -- no argument
and no delay. From the moment that the first immigrants settled in the United
Kingdom, they got the vote. This was a benign legacy -- and not all of our
legacies were benign -- of empire. For this right did not and still does not
depend on British citizenship but simply on membership of the Commonwealth.
So while we've had our share of problems, I take it for granted civil rights
for all and that's not something, as we heard so eloquently from Secretary
Rice, which any African American, above all from the South, could or would ever
do. And although I, of course, was familiar with the history here, it was the
difference in experiences, which made me unprepared for a moment I shall never,
ever forget.
It was at a press conference in London, which I shared with Secretary Rice, in
February of this year. And was, I believe, the first overseas tour by the
Secretary since her confirmation by the Senate as Secretary of State. I have
great admiration, by the way, for your constitutional arrangements but as I
said to the Secretary, I think the time that it's taken her to confirm senior
appointments through the Senate is one that would certainly drive our Prime
Minister completely nuts -- (laughter) -- great man, he is -- and, of course,
cause total atrophy in our system because in your system, I think, it can take
ten weeks and in our system, it takes all of ten seconds to become Secretary of
State. It's one of the values of a monarchy, but I won't go into that.
(Laughter.)
Anyway, there we were and the Secretary was making her first overseas tour
since becoming Secretary of State, the press conference was taking place in
very fine room in the very ornate building that's the British Foreign Office.
But for all its importance and the grand surroundings, occasions like that can
sometimes be something of a ritual. The Secretary and I are both professionals
so we know how to deal with the unexpected from the journalists present at the
press conference. But this time, the surprise for me came from the Secretary
herself. We've both been asked about democracy in Iraq and the Secretary was,
towards the end of an instructive answer about the time it has always taken to
build democracy in any society, when there was a brief pause, a quick intake of
breath, a change of tone and register and then a phrase that you've just heard
in her speech, too, when she said, "When the Founding Fathers said, 'We the
people', they didn't mean, me."
And that may sound very familiar here. It was quite a surprise in those
different surroundings in London. It's not usual, in any event, for we
politicians, especially on the diplomatic beat, to express our real feelings.
But there it was, a dozen words with three separate volumes of meaning.
First volume: Even for the United States, it took time to build democracy for
all. Second volume: There's some experiences so searing and being black in
Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s was one such that even if you hold one of the
highest offices in the world, those experiences still break through. Third
volume: The deep beliefs on which the Secretary's approach and especially her
foreign policy is founded, everyone has the right to freedom and democracy, has
a great human yearning for progress and that's one of the most powerful forces
in the world.
And yes, as I've seen, of this Secretary. Her abiding desire, driving force, is
to see that sense and that practice of democracy translated across the world.
The Secretary in the speech skated over the kind of compromises, which we in
the United Kingdom and the United States and across the so-called developed
world, used to make particularly at the time of the Cold War. Some may say
those compromises were necessary -- well, that's the future historians. But the
compromises were that provided people and leaders were on the side, we didn't
inquire too much about the nature of the regimes that they were running.
That world is gone -- or is going. But one of the reasons it's going much
faster than I ever thought possible is because of the determination of the
Secretary, of President Bush, if I may say, to of my Prime Minister, Prime
Minister Blair, so thank you, Secretary.
(Applause.)
And you know, on a slightly lighter note, the Secretary's words so impressed me
that I wrote about them in the world's most important newspaper, The Lancashire
Evening Telegraph -- (laughter) -- which, as you may have guessed, is based in
the heart of my district in Blackburn.
Well, the Secretary and I originally got to know each other when she was acting
as the National Security Advisor and in the aftermath of the 11th of September.
Two wars have occurred since then in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In both, the
United States and the United Kingdom have stood side-by-side and we in the
United Kingdom have been very proud to do so. One war, Afghanistan, there was a
broad international consensus behind it; the other, Iraq, still causes much
controversy.
But both will be judged by historians and decades to come by whether these
awful tyrannies -- both Afghanistan and Iraq -- have been transformed and are
transformed into stable democracies. The people of Afghanistan and of Iraq
deserve their freedom and democracy, just as much as the people of Blackburn
and as much as the people here in Tuscaloosa and in Birmingham, Alabama. We
cannot build democracy abroad without nurturing and sustaining democracy at
home.
At the struggle for civil rights in this town, in Birmingham and in many like
it, have a powerful effect on me and on my generation. I was only upper sixth
at school, what you would call high school senior year. Martin Luther King was
a great hero to us. The American Civil Rights Movement showed that ordinary
people could act extraordinarily. For example, the Freedom Riders, James
Meredith, insisting on his right to be the first African American to attend the
University of Mississippi and all those who took part in sittings and boycotts,
who showed that individual actions can change the world for the better.
When Martin Luther King said that, "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of
inevitability" and when he spoke of the "fierce urgency of now," he inspired us
to put our effort into building a fairer and a better future. And the courage
of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in profound changes but not, absolutely
not, because change at that time, was inevitable. No, the change happened
because many individuals inspired by great leadership made choices about their
own lives, refusing to accept that the world had inevitably to stay the same.
As now, more than 40 years since Dr. King led the brave marches through the
streets of Birmingham, the world has changed much. This generation -- that by
the one just a little younger than I am -- is, I'm told, apathetic, bored by
politics, not interested in trying to change the world. And the evidence cited
includes relatively low participation rates in U.S. Presidential elections and
British general and local elections. Declared membership of political parties
across Europe has, it's true, halved over 20 years. And this apparent and
growing apathy seems to be spread to a degree amongst all age groups, but is
worst amongst younger adults. The United Kingdom's Electoral Commission, this
week, published research evidence showing that younger people are much less
likely to see voting as a civic duty than older age groups. Worse still, our
Electoral Commission said that there's evidence suggesting that those opt out
of elections now, they continue to do so as they get older.
In my judgment and my experience, the problem is not apathy. I remain
optimistic enough to believe that younger people care as much as my generation
did, share common values and want to play a part in striving for a better
world. And I don't believe for a second that younger people have given up on
human progress. As much evidence reflects that in many ways, but let's include
the rising membership of campaigning organizations, Greenpeace has seen a
six-fold rise in numbers in two decades, and the United Kingdom Amnesty
International has half a million members, nearly as much as the membership of
Britain's three main political parties put together.
This summer, young people from all around the world put pressure on G-8 leaders
to make poverty history. Millions of individuals connected by live worldwide
television simultaneously clicked their fingers rhythmically to symbolize the
death every three seconds of a child in poverty. This was not just a powerfully
simple gesture, it was politics. So we have a puzzle. The evidence in voting
patterns and political activities points to apathy. But there's plenty of
evidence the other way that the desire for change and betterment is still
strong. Indeed, that idealism remains alive and well in the age of
globalization.
But for many, globalization in its political manifestation, including 24-7
saturation news coverage, looks distant and detached from people's lives,
reinforcing a sense of alienation from conventional politics, diminishing
people's sense of worth and dignity. But here's a paradox: Globalization is
primarily an economic force and people aren't frightened, fearful, nor
diminished by many of the main products of such forces, mainly ubiquitous
worldwide consumer brands.
Indeed, the iPod, the can of Coke, recognized designer clothes are all chosen
by individuals as a means of expressing their individuality not of undermining
it. So how does one explain this paradox of the embrace of the consequences of
economic globalization and the rejection of political globalization?
Well, here's my point. Branded consumer products may be global and their idea
in the abstract certainly sometimes controversial. But they all have to be
tried and consumed and enjoyed personally, locally. And through such experience
come to be trusted.
So I believe that we in politics have to understand that it's precisely because
of globalization that we have to make political experiences more local, more
immediate, more face-to-face. And this need to go local is reinforced by
something else rather paradoxical. For the six decades -- six and a half
decades from the Russian Revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
worldwide clash of ideologies -- of Marxism, Leninism, on the one hand; of
capitalism on the other -- provided a ready-made narrative, an explanation,
however tendentious for the problems which people were facing at a local level.
But while its history did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, ideology
has since then become much less significant, a good thing, in many ways. It's
been fundamental, that a great growth of democracy that we heard from the
Secretary to the astonishing rise of the Asian economies in India and China.
But it's also had the effect of making politics, whether national or
international, seem more distant, more technocratic and disconnected. So we
politicians, whether from left, right or center, have a big job ahead. And in
the international sphere, what we have to do is to harness the idealism, which
in many ways, has grown since ideology became less defined and important. And
that, in turn, depends on trust, which has to be earned by politicians, whether
on an international and national or other stage, but again, which can best be
demonstrated locally to show that the actions which we take in the world affect
daily lives in our own communities for the better.
And the policies, therefore, which we pursue for peace and stability against
terrorism and the drugs trade, for good governance and against corruption, for
democracy and against tyranny all, in their way, make contributions to the
qualities of life in Tuscaloosa, in Birmingham, and in Blackburn, Lancashire.
I came here after a short visit to Jamaica to look at the work, which the
United Kingdom is doing to help the government of that country tackle the drugs
trade, whose products finish up on our streets, on your streets. This is an
active foreign policy, working on behalf of our local communities.
It was a great American politician who said that all politics is local and so
that today, I suggest increasingly, is foreign politics, foreign policy. In
my town, as I have explained, there are at least 30,000 people of Pakistani and
of Indian heritage. So, the terrible earthquake in South Asia just two weeks
ago was a local tragedy to my constituents. And when, with Secretary Powell, I
went to New Delhi and to Islamabad, that was a thought in 2002 to try to help
prevent a nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India. That diplomacy had a
real impressing urgency for people back home. And the work we do locally to
bind our race and faiths together is part of an international effort to thwart
those who would divide us.
Politics, I believe, is only made relevant to people by its locality, the
improving school or the safest street. So, we have to demonstrate more
consistently, constantly, visibly, how an active foreign policy benefits
individuals in Tuscaloosa, in Blackburn, in Birmingham, or in Baghdad. And I'm
painfully aware that foreign policy must seem sometimes to be conducted in a
parallel universe where we haggle over the fine details of footnotes to draft
communiqués and line up for family photographs at international summits.
But we can and we do make a difference to real people. In February 2002,
shortly after the fall of the Taliban, I visited Afghanistan. I remember going
to a school, a girls' school, talking to some of the pupils and to parents and
their teachers. As I was about to leave, one of the teachers, who was a young
woman of about 30, insisted on showing me a piece of paper, a piece of
photocopied paper that size. I then translated it in front of her and it read
that this was a summons to this woman to appear in one of the Taliban's police
courts.
The crime that she had alleged to have committed, for which she admitted she
was guilty, was a crime of educating her girls, because educating women was a
crime in Afghanistan and the Taliban. I had always been aware of the horror of
the Taliban in the abstract, but it was only then that I fully understood how
the military action which we have had to take against the Taliban would change
not just the individual lives of women like this teacher, but the lives of an
entire generation and of generations to come of women in that country.
So yes, though even Afghanistan was controversial, you can come and talk to the
women in those schools, you know immediately that we did the right thing and
never the wrong thing.
And I've seen what can happen when, too, we lack the courage of our
convictions. Four months ago, my first dismal duty during the United Kingdom's
Presidency of the European Union was to go to Srebrenica in Bosnia to mark the
10th anniversary of the massacre there, the worst in Europe since the end of
the Second World War. More than 8,000 people, mainly Muslim, were taken away
and killed as Europe simply had stood to one side and so did the rest of the
world.
Here was an example of where the international community had not stayed true to
its ideals, where we did not have a strong enough belief in our ability to
change the course of events. A terrible price was paid and all I could do, as I
witnessed a field laid out with 700 coffins, 10 years after that massacre
only 10 years later were some of those families being allowed to bury their
loved ones. All I could do was mourn those deaths and say, on behalf of the
European Union and the United Kingdom, "Sorry." I don't ever want to be in that
situation again.
Our foreign policy, I suggest, has then to be one in which governments work to
deliver specific benefits in pursuit of a distinctive vision. And it's a reason
why the European Union, for example, has agreed to double aid to Africa. It's
why the European Union and the United States, as part of this so-called
Quartet, are working hard to find a solution to the conflict between Israel and
the Palestinians. It's why the European Union began membership negotiations
with Turkey earlier this month, a powerful symbol that differing countries and
religions can work together for the common good.
It's also why the United Nations Security Council has to take extremely
seriously the report before it from Prosecutor Mehlis about the circumstances
leading to the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the -- who it is likely has
been implicated in that murder. And it's why there are some very important and
instructive lessons for Syria and the need for Syria to respect a country the
rest of us regard as independent, Lebanon, which, in all its existence, it's
always refused to do so.
And in the Balkans, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, in the Europe of
values, which we're building step by step -- and yes, in Iraq, despite all the
bitter controversy, we're working for a better world and in my judgment, making
real progress. This week, as we've heard from the Secretary, we've seen
millions defying the terrorists by going out to vote in the Iraqi Referendum,
in which they've had the right to say no if they want to. And we've seen the
opening of a fair trial in which Saddam Hussein has the right to say, "Not
guilty," if he wishes, a right which he never accorded to any of his victims.
I fully respect people's rights to dispute our decision to go to war with Iraq.
In our democracies, we have the right to argue angrily with one another. But I
strongly believe that however frustrating, slow, and daunting the process may
be, we are doing something genuinely worthwhile. We're opening up choice and
freedom to people who would otherwise be written off as not deserving the
rights, which we enjoy and that is fundamental to my foreign policy vision.
Our two countries, United States and United Kingdom, have a shared faith in
human progress and a common belief in the power of individuals to make their
lives better through their own free choices in everyday life. But that faith
and that belief are not and cannot be peculiar to Western democracies. The
powerful desire for a better life is shared by youngsters in the Palestinian
street who want to live in their own state, by Israelis who want to go about
their business free of the threat of suicide bombs, by Zimbabweans who want to
make the most of their country, but under responsible democratic leadership,
and by women in Darfur who want food, shelter, and protection from rape.
So we all share the world more intimately than ever, through television and the
internet, and just as we consume global products, so we share the suffering of
others hundreds of miles away and their hopes for a better life too. Those
Iraqis holding up their marked blue thumbs as they left the polling booths have
as much right to shape their own lives through the ballot box as did a young
Condoleezza Rice and the girls that she grew up with here in Alabama.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me thank you all for this invitation. Let me thank
you, particularly, to the Nix family for allowing me to honor your father's
memory and let me thank you all for the privilege accorded to Alice and me to
come to this great university.
Thank you very much, indeed.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: (In progress.) by the podium and make your way toward the
microphone. And also keep in mind this is a time for brief questions and not
speeches from the audience. Any questions?
You've got a question.
SECRETARY RICE: (Off-mike.)
MODERATOR: Point to whomever you would like.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: That can't be a journalist. (Laughter.)
MODERATOR: There's one over there.
SECRETARY RICE: There's one over there. Yes.
QUESTION: Thank you for taking my question. Madame Secretary, Mr. Secretary, I
have one for you and then you, Mr. Straw.
First for Madame Secretary, what do you think the future of a Security Council
will be or do you think the future is damaged for the credibility after the
Oil-for-Food scandal?
And for Mr. Straw, you spoke of the huge Muslim population in your hometown,
with Europe trending towards Muslim demographic, how serious is the problem of
assimilation toward the European culture? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you for two very excellent questions. On the
Security Council, I do believe that the Security Council -- that first of all,
the United Nations needs reform and we've pressed very hard for reform,
particularly of the Secretariat and the Management practices of the United
Nations. And by the way, this is something that Kofi Annan himself has called
for because much of the problem with the oil-for-food scandal was that nobody
seemed to believe that they had responsibility. The Security Council didn't do
its job, the Secretariat didn't do its job, the UN Management didn't do its
job.
And frankly, it is a terrible scandal because what it meant was that these
very, very strict sanctions, which were imposed upon Saddam Hussein's regime
because he was a threat to peace and international security, were having
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asher
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Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 305 Location: Portland, Oregon
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Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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Incredibly inspiring. Thanks for posting this, Oppi. |
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Oppenheimer
Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 1166 Location: SantaFe, New Mexico
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Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:52 pm Post subject: |
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Dear Asher,
You're welcome. Figured some of Staw's comments about the colonial history may give pause for thought...
Gives a real inside "homegirl" slant on Secretary Rice's thinking on Democracy in general.
OOOPS! MY BAD!....didn't realize the post was so long it got cut off in mid sentence....
(Continued...)
QUESTION: Thank you for taking my question. Madame Secretary, Mr. Secretary, I
have one for you and then you, Mr. Straw.
First for Madame Secretary, what do you think the future of a Security Council
will be or do you think the future is damaged for the credibility after the
Oil-for-Food scandal?
And for Mr. Straw, you spoke of the huge Muslim population in your hometown,
with Europe trending towards Muslim demographic, how serious is the problem of
assimilation toward the European culture? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you for two very excellent questions. On the
Security Council, I do believe that the Security Council -- that first of all,
the United Nations needs reform and we've pressed very hard for reform,
particularly of the Secretariat and the Management practices of the United
Nations. And by the way, this is something that Kofi Annan himself has called
for because much of the problem with the oil-for-food scandal was that nobody
seemed to believe that they had responsibility. The Security Council didn't do
its job, the Secretariat didn't do its job, the UN Management didn't do its
job.
And frankly, it is a terrible scandal because what it meant was that these
very, very strict sanctions, which were imposed upon Saddam Hussein's regime
because he was a threat to peace and international security, were having
actually minimal effect on the regime and great effect on the people, which was
just the opposite of what had been intended. So the real scandal is not just
that there were apparently bribes taken and all kinds of problems with
corruption, but also the effect was that these sanctions, therefore, really
hurt -- to the degree that they had an effect -- it was more on the Iraqi
people than on the regime, which was gaming the system.
I do think that after that and also after the failure to act for 12 years with
Saddam Hussein that the UN Security Council faced some questions of its
credibility. Now, we are also big believers that it needs to be reformed. It
will eventually need to be expanded to look more like 2005, not like 1945. But
the first key is what Jack Straw mentioned -- the Security Council has to act.
It cannot, when there are major events in the world, when there are major
threats to international security, it cannot fail to act. I think that we will
see that the Security Council will need very much to be active about the Mehlis
report and about Resolution 1559, but it also goes to the fact that it took us
far too long to act on the Darfur, because the Security Council was tied up and
held up by members of the Security Council who had other interests in Sudan and
did not want to put those aside to deal with the very dire security situation
there. So to the degree that the Security Council is going to remain relevant,
it has to demonstrate that it can act and that it can act quickly.
QUESTION: Thank you.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: I think your question, sir, refers to Europe, rather
than just to the United Kingdom. I know most about the UK and there's -- one of
the differences, which I spelled out about the UK, is that from the moment that
both the African-Caribbean community came to the UK and the Indian and
Pakistani-Bangladesh communities by reason of a sort of quirk of our imperial
history. Once they settled they got the vote. They didn't have to become
citizens. So that has meant that, to use your phrase of assimilation, all these
communities have been very involved in our politics. There's actually a higher
turnout in my constituency amongst the Muslim communities than there is amongst
the white community. And about half the membership of my party, the Labor Party
in my town, is of the Asian communities and the other half if of the white, so
that's the sort of upside.
The other side, however, is that this great growth of the Muslim communities
coincided with a growth in Muslim fundamentalism in one sense, the best sense
of the word, the communities became more devout. And also, coincided with a big
slump in the traditional industries in which they were employed. For example,
the cotton industry was still employing many thousands in my constituency when
I was elected 26 years ago. It doesn't employ -- there's one mill left now.
Those folk who got disproportionately knocked out of work in the early '80s
were Asian men and that tended to turn the communities in on themselves. And it
meant that the pattern of settlement where people live, residential patterns,
which was becoming quite mixed, suddenly changed and there's now fewer mixed
areas than there were 25 years ago, talking from of my area. That means you end
with some, say, with Anglican schools, which are Holy Muslim in terms of the
peoples in the schools.
Aside from the political parties, which are multiracial, some members of the
white communities and the Asian communities do live rather parallel lives, by
no means all, but some do, and that's something we're having to deal with. The
bombings that we suffered on the 7th of July and the attempted bombings on the
21st of July were terrible. But one of the things that has happened is that it
was a shock for all communities, and I think it's going to help to bring the
communities together. So it's not a bad story but there's a long way to go.
One last point is, I refer to your phrase of assimilation. It's a word I tend
not to use because it applies with this that what we need to do with the Muslim
community is, bluntly, to turn them into honorary Christian whites. What we
need to do actually is to ensure that there is mutual respect and full
understanding and a sharing of values but from a (inaudible) recognition that
there are some people in our communities who are muslim faith, others of Hindu,
others of (inaudible) and others of very many denominations of the Christian
faith as well as the Judaic faith. Thank you.
MODERATOR: In order to allow as many people as possible to ask questions,
please limit your question to either Dr. Rice or Foreign Secretary Straw.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: We'll be shorter, that's probably the answer.
(Laughter.) We'll be shorter.
MODERATOR: Thank you. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: Madame Secretary Rice, my name is Elizabeth Hendricks, a Blackburn
Institute from Northport, Alabama. In a recent interview with The Time Magazine
Editorial Board, you said that Iraq's new constitution, "Protects the rights of
women, of minorities, of religious freedom", that in fact, that it's tried to
balance the interests of various groups that have not had to balance those
interests in a political process.
Since you are from Alabama, could you tell us your thoughts and comments
regarding Alabama's constitution, written in 1901 with the expressed intent of
taking power away from African Americans and poor whites and denying education
as a right with Amendment 111 Section 256.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: This one's for you.
(Laughter. Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. (Laughter.) Well, I'm sorry to say that I have to
tell I'm not intimately familiar any longer with the Alabama constitution. I
once did take civics here -- (laughter) -- and probably at some point was.
The important thing is that state constitutions, of course, and state laws have
since been superseded by national laws that ensure rights for all Americans and
it is a very big change from the time that I lived my early years in this
state. But the insurance of rights is not enough to ensure that people will be
able to fully exercise those rights and particularly that they will be able to
fully gain opportunity. And it is really, therefore, a question not just of the
exercise or the granting of rights but it is a question of how people,
particularly in a society like ours which emphasizes opportunity for the
individual, how that opportunity comes.
Now, I can't comment on the specific clause that you are speaking to but let me
speak for a moment about education because in the United States I don't think
there is anything more important than access to a good education to make
certain that you're going to be able to fully exercise your rights as an
individual in the United States.
Not only did segregation produce unequal schools and quite unequal schools but
it, of course, therefore produced unequal access to opportunity. I will say
that some of that gap was made up by the community itself, by exceptional
teachers, by exceptional community leaders who were determined not to let the
children be denied those opportunities. I really do mean people who tutored in
their homes and bought school textbooks and so forth.
I sensed that some of that energy about communities drawing together to make
certain that educational opportunities, -- there needs to be reinvigorated and
revitalized in the United States. And for, by all means, we have to make
certain that the public school systems, which are still the means for most of
our children to be educated, are educating our children equally. I've said this
before and I'll say it again, one of the things that attracted me very early to
President Bush was actually not on the foreign policy side, it was when he
talked about the soft bigotry of low expectations in education because when
there are poor schools in poor neighborhoods, they're going to
disproportionately minority and those children are going to be hurt more than
any others by the tendency to just move kids along. It is a scandal if a child
in third grade can't read at third grade level.
And so I have been, myself, very attracted to the President's educational
programs, No Child Left Behind, and so forth because there is no more important
element for us as Americans than education. I talked about my grandfather and
his access to education and my family after that was well set on its way.
So it's not just a question of rights; it's also a question of access to
opportunity in order to be able to fully exercise those rights.
QUESTION: This is for Secretary Rice. Carol Henderson, graduating class of
2005, UWA. What I wanted to ask you was how has the recent hurricanes in
Mississippi, Louisiana and your beloved Alabama affected you? Thank you.
SECRETARY RICE: Well, why don't I say a word and maybe you would like to also
-- first let me thank the international community and our good friends, Great
Britain, one of the first phone calls I received was from David Manning, the
Ambassador, to say that Great Britain wanted to help.
First of all, these were terrible natural disasters and terrible tragedies for
the people affected by them. And the first reaction, of course, has to be the
terrible tragedy for the people affected. But, of course, it did for our
country call us to look, once again, at some pockets of America, some pockets
of the South where poverty had gone unaddressed for many years and where race
and poverty came together in a particularly bad way.
We all have known that they were there and I am hopeful that when these places
are rebuilt, that they will be rebuilt in a way that encourages opportunity for
people who have been left behind. Now, you cannot assure outcome but you can
start to assure access to opportunity. And clearly, when you have a tragedy of
that magnitude and when the pictures are the pictures that we saw, it does
cause a kind of soul searching and it perhaps, in particular, causes a kind of
soul searching for Black Americans like myself who were fortunate enough to
have a grandparent who got us out.
MODERATOR: We have time for one more question.
SECRETARY RICE: Jack Straw's is going to say a word, sorry.
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: All I was going to say was that for our point at that
part, we were, obviously, pleased to offer what help we could. But just over
awed by the scale of this disaster, I explained to the British House of Commons
this was a disaster, which covered a larger area of land than the whole of the
United Kingdom. And when one understands that, one understands the magnitude of
the task and whatever the background any government would have faced huge
challenges in dealing with it.
QUESTION: Thank you, Madame Secretary and Foreign Secretary Straw. My name is
Megan Stringer. I currently serve as the Student Fellow in the Blackburn
Institute and also the Chairwoman of the College Republicans here on campus.
You spoke of involvement in local politics and the Frank Nix Lecture, as well
as the Blackburn Institute, serve as the focus on ethical leadership in our
communities. And you're speaking to a room full of young people who are going
to be leaders -- are leaders now but will be leaders in local politics, state
politics and national politics.
Do you have any advice for those of us about ethical leadership and the best
way to, I guess, conduct ourselves in our careers?
(Laughter.)
SECRETARY RICE: He's actually run for office. I haven't so. (Laughter.)
(Applause.)
FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW: Yeah, I spent my life running for office. (Laughter.)
Because I was -- I think all of about eight years of my working life, I've been
paid by -- from the elected office I've secured rather than earning an honest
day's pay. (Laughter.) It sounds a bit trite. The advice I'd give you is this:
first of all, be true to yourself. Don't try and do something slick that some
PR guy tells you you've got to do. I'm serious about this. I mean, of course,
you take professional advice about your appearance, about your speech and so
on, but be true to yourself. Bear in mind that the most important thing in
politics, as in life, is trust. It takes some time to gain and it's very easy
to lose and it is absolutely fundamental to the democratic process.
So, when you're on the stump, if you don't know the answer, don't make it up.
Say you don't know the answer. People don't mind that. They're not expecting
politicians to be a walking encyclopedia. They do expect you, however, to be
informed about the thing you're talking about.
(Laughter.)
So the Secretary and I said we didn't know the answer -- I know to -- all sorts
of issues that have been going on in the United Nations. We look at it lay, but
if you don't know the answer, you don't know the answer. Think clearly about
what you're trying to do and bear in mind that politics is both about vision
and about its application, in equal measure. If you have a vision without the
application, you can actually do nothing; and if you have application without
the vision, you don't know where you're going.
So you manage both and I look forward -- when I'm Dr. Blackburn's age in a
couple years time -- to coming and seeing you in high office. Thank you very
much.
(Applause.)
SECRETARY RICE: The only thing that I would add, and certainly not from the
point of view of someone who is from the point of view of someone who has
served in public service a lot is -- I think it's very important that
government officials or elected politicians always recognize that the people
that they represent want the same things that they want. And they wouldn't do
anything that they wouldn't ask someone else to do something that they
themselves wouldn't do. I've watched the debate coming back to the debate about
democracy and I sometimes just don't understand the arguments that are made
that a people or a group of people or a country just somehow isn't ready.
And I think to myself, particularly for officials who have the ability to do
something about it, what if someone were to say that about you? How would you
feel about it? And so, I think always remembering that human beings have the
same aspirations and the same goals, that mothers in the Palestinian
territories want their children to go off to university, not to be suicide
bombers, is a very important foundation for trying to make a difference.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: Boy, I thought my question and answers were hard.
(Laughter.)
Dr. Rice, Mr. Secretary, on behalf of our great university, the University of
Alabama, we would like to present you with these souvenir footballs.
(Laughter.) I know one thing, they would be worth a lot more if Brody Croyle's
signature was on them.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: Dr. Rice, I know you're an avid football fan. We're excited about
your participation in our coin toss tomorrow. Mr. Secretary, I understand
you're an avid fan of British football. Hopefully after this weekend, you'll be
an avid fan of Alabama football.
(Applause.)
MODERATOR: And we understand both of you travel to many, many places and
there's a lot of memories for each and every place you travel. With this trip,
there's just two words we'd like you to remember us by and that's "Roll Tide."
SECRETARY RICE: Roll Tide.
(Laughter. Applause.)
MODERATOR: Madame Secretary, Foreign Secretary Straw, thank you both so much.
We are grateful to you for sharing your time and your experience with us. The
Blackburn Institute uses a tree as its symbol. Its roots run deep, providing a
strong foundation for growth and its branches extend broadly, reaching across
generations. I'm reminded of the Greek proverb which states that society grows
great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.
Dr. Blackburn, would you please stand? Our university, our students and future
generations will forever be grateful to you for establishing the vision of the
Blackburn Institute. (Applause.) Thank you all for sharing this truly
remarkable day with us and for coming to the Frank A. Nix Lecture.
Thank you. (Applause.)
2005/T16-2
Released on October 21, 2005
************************************************************
See http://www.state.gov/secretary/ for all remarks by the Secretary of State.
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Liberty Now !
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Joined: 04 Apr 2004 Posts: 521
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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 1:12 am Post subject: |
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SO WHO ARE THESE CYNICS OF HISTORY & MODERN TIME?
ANYONE CARES TO EXPLORE THIS FURTHER?
OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE MANY "CYNICS" WHO BELIEVE IRANIANS DON'T DESERVE TO BE FREE, AND THEY BETTER JUST SHUT UP, PUT UP, AND SHIP THE OIL TO EU/UK!
I WONDER WHO THEY MIGHT BE! HMMM...
WHOMEVER & WHEREVER THEY MAY BE!
THEY SHOULD ONCE AND FOR ALL LEARN THIS LESSON:
DON'T DO TO OTHERS, WHAT YOU DON'T WANT DONE TO YOU!
IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR COUNTRY DIVIDED, THEN DON'T GO DIVIDE UP OTHER COUNTRIES!
IT MAY GIVE OTHERS IDEAS ABOUT YOURS.
(WHICH IT CERTAINLY HAS. AND WE'RE CERTAINLY PUSHING FOR IT AND IT WILL BE DONE WITHIN MY LIFETIME. AND YOU WILL ONLY HAVE YOURSELVES, THE "CYNICS" OF ALL TIMES, TO BLAME FOR WHATEVER MAY COME YOUR WAY ! ) _________________ Paayande Iran |
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cyrus Site Admin
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Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 4993
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Posted: Mon Oct 24, 2005 10:08 pm Post subject: Dr. Rice Speech |
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The only problem, of course, that was that when the Founding Fathers said, "We
the people," they didn't mean me.
But make no mistake: Citizenship was not a gift that was given to black
Americans. It was a right that was won through the courage and sacrifice of
many impatient patriots, weary of hypocrisy, whose demand was "freedom now."
These impatient patriots were iconic leaders like my father's great friend,
Fred Shuttlesworth and Bob Moses and, of course, Martin Luther King. There were
people like Rosa Parks. There were people, white and black, who just saw that
America had to end its own hypocrisy. And they were ordinary citizens who
boycotted segregated buses and demanded equality at lunch counters and marched
for their civil rights. They knew, too, that the fight against segregation had
to be not just in one's heart but in one's own mind. And so the black citizens
of America are free today because there are also individuals, like my father
and my mother who were teachers, I would call them educational evangelists, who
didn't just care for their children and educated them, but taught them that if
they worked hard and learned, they could be liberated also by their minds.
Across the empire of Jim Crow, from upper Dixie to the lower Delta, the
descendants of slaves shamed our nation with the power of righteousness and
redeemed America at last from its original sin of slavery.
By resolving the contradiction at the heart of our democracy, America finally
found its voice as a true champion of democracy beyond its shores.
And today, we face the same choice in the world that we once confronted in our
country: Either the desire for liberty and democratic rights is true for all
human beings or we are to believe that certain peoples actually prefer
subjugation.
President Bush has chosen. He believes, as do I, that all people deserve
freedom and democracy -- (applause) -- and as he had said, "The liberty we
prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity."
Now, there are cynics who have always doubted the universal appeal of
democratic rights. They were once -- people who once believed that blacks were
unfit for democracy, somehow too childlike or too unready or too incapable of
self-governing. And there have been cynics that thought that democracy would
not take hold in other places in the world.
Cynics claimed that "Asian values" would inhibit democracy in East Asia; that
Latin culture would impede democracy in South America; that tribal society
would negate democracy in Africa; and that despotic traditions would obstruct
democracy in the former Soviet Union. These predictions have not come true. To
the contrary, in the last fifty years, our world has experienced the most
dramatic expansion of democracy in all of human history.
During America's struggle for civil rights, the world's democracies were like
scattered islands in a hostile sea. But over the past five decades, whenever
the tides of oppression have receded, free peoples have emerged to seize their
democratic rights.
This enlargement of the democratic world is increasing international security,
too. And there is a reason for this: States need more power to ensure stability
and safety within their borders. But they also need legitimacy and democracy is
the way to create legitimacy.
There was a time when America did not always follow this logic. For 60 years,
we often thought that we could achieve security in the Middle East without
democracy. And, ultimately, we got neither. And now, we must recognize, as we
do in every other region of the world, that democracy is the only path to
lasting security.
It is the case that America and the world have been secure when democracy is on
the march; and vulnerable when democracy is in retreat. Now, of course, we hear
the same cynical voices again that argued about Latin America and about Asia,
about the former Soviet Union and, indeed, about minorities in our own country.
They argue that the people of the Middle East, perhaps because of their color
or their creed or their culture or even perhaps because of their religion, are
somehow incapable of democracy.
They falsely characterize the support of democracy as "exporting" democracy, as
if democracy were a product that only America manufactures. These cynics say
that we are arrogantly imposing our democratic principles on unwilling peoples.
But it is the very height of arrogance to believe that political liberty, and
rights for women, and freedom of speech, and the rule of law belong only to us.
All people deserve these rights and they choose them freely. It is tyranny, not
democracy that has to be forced upon people at gunpoint.
So today, impatient patriots are raising their voices for justice across the
Middle East. And whenever they gain opportunities to make truly free choices,
they are choosing liberty, not oppression. They are choosing the natural desire
for life, not the constant fear of death. They are choosing to be ruled by the
consent of the governed, not by the coercion of the state. And in some
countries, they are beginning to shrine these basic liberties in democratic
institutions. At this important time, America is helping every nation in the
broader Middle East that embraces the challenges of democracy. |
Without any questions, Dr. Rice has a brilliant mind. Great statements and I agree with every words of the above quote only.
The test case for these words is whether we will see the Regime Change policy for Iran or not ? and how Dr. Rice is going to execute the regime change policy in Iran? We will use the spirit of this speech to monitor Dr. Rice to see if she ever deviates from these great statements . We are after results after 5 years. We hope that Dr. Rice will deliver.
I am sure Jack Straw does not like any of these words and he will try his best to fight it and will play all kind of games as he has played many dirty games before.
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Oppenheimer
Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 1166 Location: SantaFe, New Mexico
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Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2005 2:58 am Post subject: |
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One of the notable comments by Straw (below), and I think if one were to pay close attention to his remarks in general, you'll find that there are no tricks up his sleeve, he stands in full concurrence with Sec. Rice's words.
And US policy regarding democracy....what I'm getting at here is that the UK iself is going through a paradime shift in its own foreign policy...and has been since Feb. 2005...moving more rapidly toward a complete reversal of mindset toward the IRI in the process.
A hardening stance, and a realization of the dysfunctional policies of the past that were thought to have been able to bring some kind of reform to the IRI, have utterly failed to do so. I'll post more evidence of this as I have time...
"And yes, as I've seen, of this Secretary. Her abiding desire, driving force, is
to see that sense and that practice of democracy translated across the world.
The Secretary in the speech skated over the kind of compromises, which we in
the United Kingdom and the United States and across the so-called developed
world, used to make particularly at the time of the Cold War. Some may say
those compromises were necessary -- well, that's the future historians. But the
compromises were that provided people and leaders were on the side, we didn't
inquire too much about the nature of the regimes that they were running.
That world is gone -- or is going. But one of the reasons it's going much
faster than I ever thought possible is because of the determination of the
Secretary, of President Bush, if I may say, to of my Prime Minister, Prime
Minister Blair, so thank you, Secretary." |
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