美国总统在民权峰会上的主旨英语演讲稿.doc

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1、此资料由网络收集而来，如有侵权请告知上传者立即删除。资料共分享，我们负责传递知识。美国总统在民权峰会上的主旨英语演讲稿Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you so much. Please,please, have aseat. Thank you.What a singular honor it is forme to be here today. I want to thank,first and foremost, theJohnson family for giving us this opportunity and

2、thegraciousness with which Michelle and Ihave been received.We came down a little bit latebecause we were upstairs looking at some of the exhibits andsome of theprivate offices that were used by President Johnson and Mrs. Johnson. And Michellewas in particular interested to- of a recording in which

3、Lady Bird is critiquing PresidentJohnsonsperformance. (Laughter.) And she said, come, come, you need to listento this. (Laughter.) And she pressed the button and nodded herhead. Some things do not change -(laughter) - even 50 years later.To all the members of Congress,the warriors for justice, the e

4、lected officials andcommunity leaders who arehere today - I want to thank you.Four days into his suddenpresidency - and the night before he would address a jointsession of theCongress in which he once served - Lyndon Johnson sat around a table withhisclosest advisors, preparing his remarks to a shat

5、tered and grieving nation.He wanted to call on senators andrepresentatives to pass a civil rights bill - the mostsweeping sinceReconstruction. And most of his staffcounseled him against it. They said itwashopeless; that it would anger powerful Southern Democrats and committeechairmen; that itrisked

6、derailing the rest of his domestic agenda. And one particularly bold aide said he didnotbelieve a President should spend his time and power on lost causes, howeverworthy they mightbe. To which, it issaid, President Johnson replied, “Well, what the hells the presidencyfor?” (Laughter and applause.) W

7、hat the hells the presidency for if not tofight for causes youbelieve in?Today, as we commemorate the 50thanniversary of the Civil Rights Act, we honor the menand women who made itpossible. Some of them are heretoday. We celebrate giants like JohnLewisand Andrew Young and Julian Bond. Werecall the c

8、ountless unheralded Americans, blackand white, students andscholars, preachers and housekeepers - whose names are etched notonmonuments, but in the hearts of their loved ones, and in the fabric of thecountry theyhelped to change.But we also gather here, deep inthe heart of the state that shaped him,

9、 to recall one giantmans remarkableefforts to make real the promise of our founding: “We hold these truths to beself-evident,that all men are created equal.”Those of us who have had thesingular privilege to hold the office of the Presidency knowwell that progressin this country can be hard and it ca

10、n be slow, frustrating andsometimesyoure stymied. The office humblesyou. Youre reminded daily that in thisgreatdemocracy, you are but a relay swimmer in the currents of history, boundby decisions madeby those who came before, reliant on the efforts of those whowill follow to fully vindicate yourvisi

11、on.But the presidency also affords aunique opportunity to bend those currents - by shapingour laws and by shapingour debates; by working within the confines of the world as it is, butalso byreimagining the world as it should be.This was President Johnsonsgenius. As a master of politics and thelegisl

12、ative process, hegrasped like few others the power of government tobring about change.LBJ was nothing if not arealist. He was well aware that the lawalone isnt enough to changehearts and minds. A full century after Lincolns time, he said, “Until justice is blind tocolor, untileducation is unaware of

13、 race, until opportunity is unconcernedwith the color of mens skins,emancipation will be a proclamation but not afact.”He understood laws couldntaccomplish everything. But he also knewthat only the law couldanchor change, and set hearts and minds on a differentcourse. And a lot of Americansneededthe

14、 laws most basic protections at that time. As Dr. King said at the time, “It may betrue that the law cant make a manlove me but it can keep him from lynching me, and I thinkthats pretty important.” (Applause.)And passing laws was what LBJknew how to do. No one knew politics andno one lovedlegislatin

15、g more than President Johnson. He was charming when he needed to be,ruthlesswhen required. (Laughter.) He could wear you down with logic andargument. He could horsetrade, and hecould flatter. “You come with me on thisbill,” he would reportedly tell a keyRepublican leader from my home stateduring the

16、 fight for the Civil Rights Bill, “and 200 yearsfrom now,schoolchildren will know only two names: Abraham Lincoln and Everett Dirksen!” (Laughter.) And he knew thatsenators would believe things like that. (Laughter and applause.)President Johnson likedpower. He liked the feel of it, thewielding of i

17、t. But that hunger washarnessedand redeemed by a deeper understanding of the human condition; by a sympathyforthe underdog, for the downtrodden, for the outcast. And it was a sympathy rooted in hisownexperience.As a young boy growing up in theTexas Hill Country, Johnson knew what being poor feltlike

18、. “Poverty was so common,” he would later say,“we didnt even know it had a name.” (Laughter.) The family homedidnt have electricity or indoor plumbing. Everybody workedhard, including the children. President Johnson had known the metallictaste of hunger; the feelof a mothers calloused hands, rubbed

19、raw fromwashing and cleaning and holding a householdtogether. His cousin Ava remembered sweltering daysspent on her hands and knees in thecotton fields, with Lyndon whisperingbeside her, “Boy, theres got to be a better way to make aliving thanthis. Theres got to be a better way.”It wasnt until years

20、 later whenhe was teaching at a so-called Mexican school in a tiny townin Texas that hecame to understand how much worse the persistent pain of poverty could beforother races in a Jim Crow South. Oftentimes his students would show up to class hungry.And when hed visit their homes, hed meetfathers wh

21、o were paid slave wages by the farmersthey worked for. Those children were taught, he would latersay, “that the end of life is in a beetrow, a spinach field, or a cottonpatch.”Deprivation and discrimination -these were not abstractions to Lyndon Baines Johnson.He knew that poverty and injustice are

22、asinseparable as opportunity and justice are joined.So that was in him from an early age.Now, like any of us, he was not aperfect man. His experiences in ruralTexas may havestretched his moral imagination, but he was ambitious, veryambitious, a young man in a hurryto plot his own escape from poverty

23、 and tochart his own political career. And inthe Jim CrowSouth, that meant not challenging convention. During his first 20 years in Congress,heopposed every civil rights bill that came up for a vote, once calling the pushfor federallegislation “a farce and a sham.” He was chosen as a vice presidenti

24、al nominee in part becauseof hisaffinity with, and ability to deliver, that Southern white vote. And at the beginning of theKennedy administration,he shared with President Kennedy a caution towards racialcontroversy.But marchers kept marching. Four little girls were killed in achurch. Bloody Sundayh

25、appened. The winds of change blew. And when the time came, when LBJ stood in theOvalOffice - I picture him standing there, taking up the entire doorframe,looking out over theSouth Lawn in a quiet moment - and asked himself what thetrue purpose of his office was for,what was the endpoint of his ambit

26、ions, hewould reach back in his own memory and hedremember his own experience withwant.And he knew that he had a uniquecapacity, as the most powerful white politician from theSouth, to not merelychallenge the convention that had crushed the dreams of so many, buttoultimately dismantle for good the s

27、tructures of legal segregation. Hes the only guy whocould do it - and heknew there would be a cost, famously saying the Democratic Party may“have lostthe South for a generation.”Thats what his presidency wasfor. Thats where he meets hismoment. And possessed withan iron will,possessed with those skil

28、ls that he had honed so many years in Congress,pushedand supported by a movement of those willing to sacrifice everything for theirownliberation, President Johnson fought for and argued and horse traded andbullied and persuadeduntil ultimately he signed the Civil Rights Act into law.And he didnt sto

29、p there - eventhough his advisors again told him to wait, again told himlet the dust settle,let the country absorb this momentous decision. He shook them off. “Themeat inthe coconut,” as President Johnson would put it, was the Voting Rights Act, sohe foughtfor and passed that as well. Immigration re

30、form came shortly after. And then, a Fair HousingAct. Andthen, a health care law that opponents described as “socialized medicine” thatwouldcurtail Americas freedom, but ultimately freed millions of seniors fromthe fear that illnesscould rob them of dignity and security in their goldenyears, which w

31、e now know today asMedicare. (Applause.)What President Johnson understoodwas that equality required more than the absence ofoppression. It required the presence of economicopportunity. He wouldnt be as eloquentasDr. King would be in describing that linkage, as Dr. King moved intomobilizing sanitatio

32、nworkers and a poor peoples movement, but he understoodthat connection because he hadlived it. A decent job, decent wages, health care - those, too, were civil rightsworth fightingfor. An economy wherehard work is rewarded and success is shared, that was his goal. And heknew, as someone who had seen

33、 the NewDeal transform the landscape of his Texas childhood,who had seen thedifference electricity had made because of the Tennessee Valley Authority,thetransformation concretely day in and day out in the life of his own family, heunderstood thatgovernment had a role to play in broadening prosperity

34、 to allthose who would strive for it.“We want to open the gates toopportunity,” President Johnson said, “But we are also goingto give all ourpeople, black and white, the help they need to walk through those gates.”Now, if some of this soundsfamiliar, its because today we remain locked in this same g

35、reatdebate aboutequality and opportunity, and the role of government in ensuring each. As wastrue 50 years ago, there are those whodismiss the Great Society as a failed experiment and anencroachment onliberty; who argue that government has become the true source of all thatailsus, and that poverty i

36、s due to the moral failings of those who suffer fromit. There are alsothose who argue,John, that nothing has changed; that racism is so embedded in our DNAthatthere is no use trying politics - the game is rigged.But such theories ignore history. Yes, its true that, despite laws like theCivil Rights

37、Act,and the Voting Rights Act and Medicare, our society is stillracked with division and poverty.Yes,race still colors our political debates, and there have been governmentprograms that havefallen short. In atime when cynicism is too often passed off as wisdom, its perhaps easytoconclude that there

38、are limits to change; that we are trapped by our ownhistory; and politicsis a fools errand, and wed be better off if we rollback big chunks of LBJs legacy, or at least ifwe dont put too much of ourhope, invest too much of our hope in our government.I reject such thinking. (Applause.) Not just becaus

39、e Medicare and Medicaid have liftedmillions fromsuffering; not just because the poverty rate in this nation would be farworsewithout food stamps and Head Start and all the Great Society programs thatsurvive tothis day. I reject suchcynicism because I have lived out the promise of LBJs efforts. Becau

40、seMichelle has lived out the legacy ofthose efforts. Because my daughters havelived out thelegacy of those efforts. Because I and millions of my generation were in a position to takethebaton that he handed to us. (Applause.)Because of the Civil Rightsmovement, because of the laws President Johnson s

41、igned, newdoors ofopportunity and education swung open for everybody - not all at once, but theyswungopen. Not just blacks and whites,but also women and Latinos; and Asians and NativeAmericans; and gay Americansand Americans with a disability. Theyswung open for you, andthey swung open for me. And t

42、hats why Im standing here today - because of thoseefforts,because of that legacy. (Applause.)And that means weve got a debtto pay. That means we cant afford to becynical. Half acentury later, the lawsLBJ passed are now as fundamental to our conception of ourselves andourdemocracy as the Constitution

43、 and the Bill of Rights. They are foundational; an essentialpiece ofthe American character.But we are here today because weknow we cannot be complacent. Forhistory travels notonly forwards; history can travel backwards, history cantravel sideways. And securing thegainsthis country has made requires

44、the vigilance of its citizens. Our rights, our freedoms -they are notgiven. They must be won. They must be nurtured through struggle anddiscipline,and persistence and faith.And one concern I have sometimesduring these moments, the celebration of the signing ofthe Civil Rights Act,the March on Washin

45、gton - from a distance, sometimes thesecommemorations seeminevitable, they seem easy. All the painand difficulty and struggle anddoubt - all that is rubbed away. And we look at ourselves and we say, oh,things are just toodifferent now; wecouldnt possibly do what was done then - these giants, whatthe

46、yaccomplished. And yet, they were men andwomen, too. It wasnt easy then. It wasntcertain then.Still, the story of America is astory of progress. However slow, howeverincomplete, howeverharshly challenged at each point on our journey, howeverflawed our leaders, however manytimes we have to take a qua

47、rter of a loaf orhalf a loaf - the story of America is a story ofprogress. And thats true because of men like PresidentLyndon Baines Johnson. (Applause.In so many ways, he embodiedAmerica, with all our gifts and all our flaws, in all ourrestlessness and allour big dreams. This man - born intopoverty

48、, weaned in a world full ofracial hatred - somehow found within himselfthe ability to connect his experience with thebrown child in a small Texastown; the white child in Appalachia; the black child in Watts. Aspowerful as he became in that Oval Office,he understood them. He understood whatit meant t

49、obe on the outside. And hebelieved that their plight was his plight too; that his freedomultimately waswrapped up in theirs; and that making their lives better was what the hellthepresidency was for. (Applause.)And those children were on hismind when he strode to the podium that night in the HouseChamber, when hecalled for the vote on the Civil Rights law. “It never occurred to me,” h