I grew up in a small town north of New
York City I had the benefit of an
all-american childhood I was a boy scout
I played in the Little League I proudly
marched in the town parades every fourth
of July and along with all my other
classmates every day in grade school I
swore the pledge of allegiance to the
flag of the United States something you
did in the 1950s and it was an
extraordinary experience one day on the
school playground a group of kids
taunted me your father is a communist I
went home and asked my father why they
would say this he was after all a Marine
veteran and a Republican lawyer and I
knew he was no communist so he sat me
down on the arm of his chair and he told
me a story that I’ll never forget
a Democratic candidate for school board
in our town had been viciously smeared
in the town paper for being you guessed
it a communist this is the heyday of
Senator Joe McCarthy and political
smears like this were being made all
across America it was a difficult time
but my father decided to do something
extraordinary he told me that he didn’t
know the candidate and he didn’t agree
with many of her positions he was a
Republican and she was a Democrat but he
wrote a letter to the editor of the
paper which was widely circulated
defending her and criticizing the
McCarthy smear tactics that were being
used against her and saying these were
polluting and poisoning the political
atmosphere all across the country
in the war my father said we fought for
liberty and justice but now it’s time to
stand up for them here at home fast
forward we have a president today who
acts and sounds like Joe McCarthy
smearing minorities and immigrants
pushing prejudice and turning people
against each other by stirring up fear
and insecurity we have a political
climate in which those who stand up
against racism are attacked and we have
a president who blames the victims and
accuses the media of spreading what he
calls fake news now watching my father
stand up against Joe McCarthy inspired
me to become a human rights lawyer and a
diplomat
and I did and over time I worked as he
did to defend liberty and justice today
we have an even more dangerous version
of McCarthyism and it’s even more urgent
to stand up against it now over the
years I’ve seen many kinds of injustice
all of us have and I’ve learned
sometimes the hard way how to respond as
a teenager I saw the brutality the
brutal reality of racial segregation as
a young lawyer
I saw anti-war leaders and civil rights
leaders attacked for being unpatriotic
enemies of the people and when I was a
diplomat I saw the slaughter of Rwandan
Tutsis and Bosnian Muslims by the writ
by the racist leaders of their own
countries now when we are confronted by
extreme injustice like this it’s very
hard to know what to do life gets in the
way we
think that we’re too busy we don’t think
that we can really make a difference and
we worry about the impact this getting
involved might have on our careers or
our families or we might get attacked by
extremists or like my father we may be
smeared in our own hometowns but
standing up is important sometimes in
fact often we can have the support of
others when we stand up when I defended
the anti-war leaders who were attacked
by the Nixon administration I had the
support of the ACLU and when later in a
court case I took the deposition of
President Nixon I had the backing of a
federal judge who had reached the
conclusion that President Nixon had
violated the constitutional rights of
American citizens by wiretapping his
political enemies so we can often get
support for standing up but standing up
is complicated we need to understand
those with whom we disagree in order to
be effective in defending the principles
for which we stand now later in my
career just recently I was the president
of an International University in
Hungary and I faced a hostile government
and in order to defend the academic
freedom of the University I had to
engage in a long and difficult dialogue
with this government constantly
searching for some small areas of common
ground when I knew we disagreed about
almost everything else today we need to
enter into a similar kind of dialogue
with our political opponents in order to
discuss the differences we have over
such fundamental issues as liberty and
justice now over the years I learned the
hard way
that standing up means never giving up
even when you fail at first when I was
in the government I worked with others
to try to get the u.s. to intervene to
stop the killing in Bosnia and Rwanda
that I talked about earlier as the
highest US Human Rights official I
traveled to the killing fields and
described what I had witnessed as a
genocide I was criticized back in
Washington and I was told that I had
gone beyond the US policy at the time
and I was sidelined from further policy
discussions but I didn’t give up I knew
I was right and by persisting I was able
to help establish an International
Criminal Tribunal that brought some of
the people involved in the genocide to
justice and I became the first US
official to reach some of the survivors
of the genocide in a town called Streb
Anissa and their horrific tales of what
had happened to them which they told to
me ultimately helped change the policy
that I was seeking to change all along
now I know and I’ve learned that small
actions all of us think about what small
actions we can take small actions can
make a huge difference Robert Kennedy
once gave a famous speech about
confronting injustice he said each time
a person stands up for an ideal they
send forth a tiny ripple of hope and
crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring
these ripples create a mighty current
that can sweep down the highest walls of
oppression now each of us has the
capacity to send forth a ripple of hope
and these ripples will define who we are
and what we can do together by standing
up BOTS left hobble the famous Czech
dissident who was later the president of
this country was once asked how it was
that he and other dissidents were able
to confront all powerful regimes when
they had no power his answer was very
simple he said we did what we could and
when we did what we could we found that
we could do a little more so we did a
little more now today that promise of
liberty and justice that we so loyally
recited every day in grade school in the
pledge of allegiance to the flag is
under attack from all quarters it’s time
to stand and defend it standing up means
voting voting this year next year
voting in all elections it means getting
others to vote it means persisting it
means protesting it means never giving
up and it means above all what Havel
said which is doing what we can and then
doing a little more because that’s how
we will change the world thank you
[Applause]
you
York City I had the benefit of an
all-american childhood I was a boy scout
I played in the Little League I proudly
marched in the town parades every fourth
of July and along with all my other
classmates every day in grade school I
swore the pledge of allegiance to the
flag of the United States something you
did in the 1950s and it was an
extraordinary experience one day on the
school playground a group of kids
taunted me your father is a communist I
went home and asked my father why they
would say this he was after all a Marine
veteran and a Republican lawyer and I
knew he was no communist so he sat me
down on the arm of his chair and he told
me a story that I’ll never forget
a Democratic candidate for school board
in our town had been viciously smeared
in the town paper for being you guessed
it a communist this is the heyday of
Senator Joe McCarthy and political
smears like this were being made all
across America it was a difficult time
but my father decided to do something
extraordinary he told me that he didn’t
know the candidate and he didn’t agree
with many of her positions he was a
Republican and she was a Democrat but he
wrote a letter to the editor of the
paper which was widely circulated
defending her and criticizing the
McCarthy smear tactics that were being
used against her and saying these were
polluting and poisoning the political
atmosphere all across the country
in the war my father said we fought for
liberty and justice but now it’s time to
stand up for them here at home fast
forward we have a president today who
acts and sounds like Joe McCarthy
smearing minorities and immigrants
pushing prejudice and turning people
against each other by stirring up fear
and insecurity we have a political
climate in which those who stand up
against racism are attacked and we have
a president who blames the victims and
accuses the media of spreading what he
calls fake news now watching my father
stand up against Joe McCarthy inspired
me to become a human rights lawyer and a
diplomat
and I did and over time I worked as he
did to defend liberty and justice today
we have an even more dangerous version
of McCarthyism and it’s even more urgent
to stand up against it now over the
years I’ve seen many kinds of injustice
all of us have and I’ve learned
sometimes the hard way how to respond as
a teenager I saw the brutality the
brutal reality of racial segregation as
a young lawyer
I saw anti-war leaders and civil rights
leaders attacked for being unpatriotic
enemies of the people and when I was a
diplomat I saw the slaughter of Rwandan
Tutsis and Bosnian Muslims by the writ
by the racist leaders of their own
countries now when we are confronted by
extreme injustice like this it’s very
hard to know what to do life gets in the
way we
think that we’re too busy we don’t think
that we can really make a difference and
we worry about the impact this getting
involved might have on our careers or
our families or we might get attacked by
extremists or like my father we may be
smeared in our own hometowns but
standing up is important sometimes in
fact often we can have the support of
others when we stand up when I defended
the anti-war leaders who were attacked
by the Nixon administration I had the
support of the ACLU and when later in a
court case I took the deposition of
President Nixon I had the backing of a
federal judge who had reached the
conclusion that President Nixon had
violated the constitutional rights of
American citizens by wiretapping his
political enemies so we can often get
support for standing up but standing up
is complicated we need to understand
those with whom we disagree in order to
be effective in defending the principles
for which we stand now later in my
career just recently I was the president
of an International University in
Hungary and I faced a hostile government
and in order to defend the academic
freedom of the University I had to
engage in a long and difficult dialogue
with this government constantly
searching for some small areas of common
ground when I knew we disagreed about
almost everything else today we need to
enter into a similar kind of dialogue
with our political opponents in order to
discuss the differences we have over
such fundamental issues as liberty and
justice now over the years I learned the
hard way
that standing up means never giving up
even when you fail at first when I was
in the government I worked with others
to try to get the u.s. to intervene to
stop the killing in Bosnia and Rwanda
that I talked about earlier as the
highest US Human Rights official I
traveled to the killing fields and
described what I had witnessed as a
genocide I was criticized back in
Washington and I was told that I had
gone beyond the US policy at the time
and I was sidelined from further policy
discussions but I didn’t give up I knew
I was right and by persisting I was able
to help establish an International
Criminal Tribunal that brought some of
the people involved in the genocide to
justice and I became the first US
official to reach some of the survivors
of the genocide in a town called Streb
Anissa and their horrific tales of what
had happened to them which they told to
me ultimately helped change the policy
that I was seeking to change all along
now I know and I’ve learned that small
actions all of us think about what small
actions we can take small actions can
make a huge difference Robert Kennedy
once gave a famous speech about
confronting injustice he said each time
a person stands up for an ideal they
send forth a tiny ripple of hope and
crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring
these ripples create a mighty current
that can sweep down the highest walls of
oppression now each of us has the
capacity to send forth a ripple of hope
and these ripples will define who we are
and what we can do together by standing
up BOTS left hobble the famous Czech
dissident who was later the president of
this country was once asked how it was
that he and other dissidents were able
to confront all powerful regimes when
they had no power his answer was very
simple he said we did what we could and
when we did what we could we found that
we could do a little more so we did a
little more now today that promise of
liberty and justice that we so loyally
recited every day in grade school in the
pledge of allegiance to the flag is
under attack from all quarters it’s time
to stand and defend it standing up means
voting voting this year next year
voting in all elections it means getting
others to vote it means persisting it
means protesting it means never giving
up and it means above all what Havel
said which is doing what we can and then
doing a little more because that’s how
we will change the world thank you
[Applause]
you
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