(Available* only on VDARE!)

I thought of preaching on a text, but I shall not. I shall only give you the text and I shall not preach on it. I think I can afford to give you the text because it so happens, through no fault of my own, that I am descended from a number of people who came over on the Mayflower. More than that every one of my ancestors on both sides—and when you go back four generation or five generations it means thirty-two or sixty-four of them—every single one of them, without exception, was in this land in 1776. And there was only one Tory among them.

The text is this: Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.

I am particularly glad to know that today you are making this fine appeal to the youth of America. To this rising generation, to our sons and grandsons and great grandson, we cannot over estimate the importance what we are doing in this year, in our own generation, to keep alive the spirit of American democracy. The spirit of opportunity is the kind of spirit that has led us as a nation—not as a small group but as a nation—to meet the very great problems of the past.

We look for a younger generation that is going to be more American that we are. We are doing the best that we can and yet we can do better than that, we can do more than that, by inculcating in the boys and girls of this country to day some of the underlying fundamentals, the reasons that brought our immigrant ancestors to this country, the reasons that impelled our Revolutionary ancestors to throw off a fascist [VDARE comment: odd choice of word – George III was a constitutional monarch] yoke.

March 21, 2001