So let my final words to you, as
your Commander-in-Chief, be a reminder of what it is that you are fighting for,
what it is that we are fighting for. The United States of America is not a
country that imposes religious tests as a price for freedom. We’re a country
that was founded so that people could practice their faiths as they choose. The
United States of America is not a place where some citizens have to withstand
greater scrutiny, or carry a special I.D. Card, or prove that they are not an
enemy from within. We are a country that has bled and struggled and sacrificed
against that kind of discrimination and arbitrary rule, here in our own country
and around the world.
We’re a nation that believes freedom can never be taken for
granted, and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it. The universal
right to speak your mind and to protest against authority. To live in a society
that’s open and free. That can criticize our president without retribution. A
country where you’re judged by the content of your character, rather than what
you look like, or how you worship, or what your last name is, or where your
family came from. That’s what separates us from tyrants and terrorists.
We are a nation that stands for the rule of law, and
strengthened the laws of war. When the Nazis were defeated, we put them on
trial. Some couldn’t understand that. It had never happened before. But as one
of the American lawyers who was at Nuremberg said, “I was trying to prove that
the rule of law should govern human behavior,” and by doing so, we broadened
the scope and reach of justice around the world. Held ourselves out as a beacon
and an example for others.
We are a nation that won world
wars without grabbing the resources of those we defeated. We helped them
rebuild. We didn’t hold on to territory, other than the cemeteries where we
buried our dead. Our greatest generation fought and bled and died to build an
international order of laws and institutions that could preserve the peace, and
extend prosperity and promote cooperation among nations. And for all of its
imperfections, we depend on that international order to protect our own
freedom.
In other words, we are a nation that, at our best, has been
defined by hope and not fear. A country that went through the crucible of a
civil war to offer a new birth of freedom, that stormed the beaches of
Normandy, climbed the hills of Iwo Jima, that saw normal people mobilize to
extend the freedom of civil rights. That’s what makes us who we are. It makes
us stronger than any act of terror.
Remember that history. Remember what that flag stands for. For
we depend on you. The heirs to that legacy. Our men and women in uniform, and
the citizens who support you, to carry forward what is best in us, that
commitment to a common creed, the confidence that right makes might, not the
other way around.
