The coordinate branches of the
Government continue freely to function. 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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