Remarks at a Luncheon
for Recipients of the Medal of Freedom
Good
afternoon. We award the Medal of Freedom, this nation's highest civilian honor,
for the purpose of celebrating those whose lives have been dedicated to the
cause of freedom -- nurturing it where it's young, defending it where it's
grown frayed or troubled, and battling for it where it's denied. Over the past
8 years, we've honored 83 of you, and of you it can be said: They lived well
because they fought for freedom.
Now,
that's why it is such an honor to have you all here today,
and why we yet mourn those of your fellows who've gone to a better place. The
world is made smaller and more insignificant by their absence. All of you, with
us or elsewhere, have justly earned the gratitude of all Americans of good will
for being champions and defenders of the cause of freedom.
But
you know, if you give that phrase some thought, it makes little sense.
Defending freedom, you might ask? Why on Earth would that be necessary? As
Americans, we know that freedom is as much a part of us as our blood. It's not
a commodity. It can't be bought, can't be sold, and it can't be bartered away.
No, my friends, despite the millions upon millions of words expended to
describe its meaning, the truth is that the word ``freedom'' is deceptively
simple. It's a word that describes the God-given condition of the human soul.
For what we know is this: God created us free, just as he created us man and
woman. Indeed, since Adam ate of the Tree of Knowledge, there's nothing that
defines us human beings so much as the fact that we're free.
Sometimes
you'll hear people ask, ``What's freedom for?'' Well,
you might as well ask what breathing is for. Just watch a baby. Infants, all
infants, will make their tastes and preferences known very clearly to their
parents as soon as they're able to turn their heads. That's the act of a free
soul. When they reach the age of 3, they'll begin to drive their parents mad by
continually asking the question, ``Why?'' Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass
green? That curiosity, that engagement in the world around them, is the voice
of freedom. When they reach adulthood, young men and women will find themselves
gazing into the eyes of another and knowing with the force of revelation that
they've met their destiny in those eyes. And that's the gaze of freedom.
Some
people say Americans take our freedom for granted. I think that may be the most
glorious gift of all. The Constitution we have makes it possible for all
Americans to assume that political freedom is their birthright from the moment
they open their eyes. What you've all done, what you've all made clear to us,
is that we cannot be content with our own freedom. No, we must bring it to
others, must make it their birthright as well.
There
are people who try to will freedom away. They try to legislate it away. Worse
yet, they even go so far as to deny the validity of certain segments of our
freedom -- as, for example, those people who believe human beings are free
until they step into the marketplace, at which point they should be subject to
full or partial state control. We call this idea socialism. Socialists believe
humankind would be better off without economic freedom, and so they seek to
replace it with rules and regulations. And if there's one tragic lesson the
20th century has taught us, it is that the social engineers cannot tailor the
human soul to fit the fashions of the present day, no matter how they try. For
the truth is, men cannot design humankind.
The
world has come to acknowledge that socialism is a failed ideology. But there
are worse. From the dawn of time, but especially from the dawn of a dark day in
November 1917, there have also been those who have tried to throttle freedom.
And that's what tyranny is. Some have argued that tyrants tyrannized their
people for good reason, because the need for food outweighed the need for
freedom. But that's a fundamental misunderstanding of tyranny. Tyrants
tyrannize because that's what they do for a living. No one has described it
half so well as Shakespeare when portraying Macbeth's
dominion over
But
the ungodly force called tyranny still cannot rid the human soul of its
freedom, no matter how hard it may try. Tyrants can defy the benefits -- or
deny the benefits, I should say -- of freedom to their peoples, can kill
freedom by killing free people. But freedom itself they cannot have. For one
thing, people like you won't allow it. Nor will that Higher Being allow it.
Our
greatest freedom, the freedom to choose right from wrong, cannot be willed away
by the tyrants. For God has given all humankind the gift of knowing right from
wrong and the responsibility to choose between them. And how will we know which
way to choose? Well, Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler says
it best in a prayer. ``For that is the truth of it: that we all know, God, that
we know, that we know, we know, we know.'' And this, my friends, is the essence
of freedom -- that we follow the biblical admonition: ``I have set before you
life and death. Therefore choose life.''
Like
the Nation itself that has nurtured us and made us all whole, you have chosen
life, and you've given others the courage to choose life as well. In a society
like ours, where all men are created equal, the best a human being can hope to
achieve is to make himself or herself an example to
clear a path to righteousness that others may follow. This you've done. And
because of you, oppressed peoples now breathe free. Because of you, the
hopeless now have hope. And it's because of people like you and the Nation we
live in that, I believe, with all my heart, as I told an audience at
So,
it's my privilege in these, the concluding days of my Presidency, to invite you
to this fine White House as representative of the Nation that has bequeathed
its bounties to all of us, to look about and say, along with Shakespeare,
``What a piece of work is a man.'' And Shakespeare may have goofed, but I'm not
going to, because I'm going to add `` and a woman.'' [Laughter]
Thank
you, and God bless you all.
Note: The President
spoke at