America 250: Reagan, Kennedy and the Values That Built a Nation

On the eve of America 250, The TechEd Podcast steps away from its usual format to reflect on the American Dream, the values that built the nation, and the ideals that continue to bind us together.

In this special episode, Matt Kirchner revisits two of the greatest presidential speeches ever delivered: Ronald Reagan’s 1984 address at Pointe du Hoc, honoring the courage and sacrifice of the U.S. Army Rangers on D-Day, and John F. Kennedy’s 1962 Rice University speech, challenging America to go to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

One speech looks back on the blood and sacrifice that defended freedom. The other looks forward to the science, ambition and conviction required to advance it. Together, they reveal a shared American creed rooted in courage, righteousness, sacrifice, honor and belief in a future worth building.

This episode is a reflection on the values that have carried America for 250 years, and the responsibility of this generation to remember them, renew them and carry them forward.

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The Reagan and Kennedy speeches featured in this episode are public domain recordings sourced directly from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:01

For securing the American dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. The American Dream, the core to the mission of this podcast. In this episode, and on the eve of America 250 we go deep on America and on the values that sew the fabric of our nation today and always. This is not a political episode. In fact, part of the message here is that, regardless of your political views, regardless of which, if any, political party your beliefs are most aligned to, that we, as Americans, are tied together by a shared history, and I pray a shared future of common values that make us more alike than we are different today, and for the last 250 years. This year we celebrate the 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, officially the semi-quintennial, but I admit that I like America 250 a lot better. I have distinct memories of the bicentennial, july 4 of 1976 which marked 200 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I was seven years old, and it seems like we celebrated that bicentennial for the entire year. We had a huge celebration at my grade school, Wauwatosis McKinley Grade School, that year, and I remember my first-grade teacher, mrs. Kozowski, and the rest of us, my entire class in the whole school, dressed in period clothing from 1776 for that huge celebration. The Fourth of July parade that year in my hometown of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, sitting where we sat every year in front of Ray's liquor store took on added significance that year. The fireworks in Glendale's Clutch Park that we attended every single year with my church friends lasted a little longer. The red, white, green, and blue embers shot a little higher, and the grand finale was even more grand than usual for me. This 250 years hits just a little bit different, maybe because it's only a 50 year increment instead of a full century, maybe because everything seemed bigger when you were little, one might say we're just more divided as an American people today than we were 50 years ago. Perhaps they weren't alive in 1976 or their memories are selective. In 76 the country was emerging from the controversies of the Vietnam War and of Watergate. The economy was fragile, inflation running nearly 6% It was a presidential election year, and the election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter was extremely close. Much like today, we were an electorate divided, but despite our divisions, our bicentennial celebration brought about reason and cause for unity and an understanding that divided as we were, we still shared something uniquely in common. We were Americans. The bicentennial reminded us that we were a people with a shared set of values, whose common ground ran deeper than our differences. Will America 250 do the same for this generation? We can hope so. This week on The TechEd Podcast, we contemplate those shared values that make us Americans: our courage and convictions, our faith and our freedom, our spirit and our sacrifice, our penchant for righteousness and our preference for peace, and we reflect on these through the lens of the two greatest speeches ever delivered, one in 1962 by Democrat President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and another in 1984 by Republican Ronald Wilson Reagan. We're going to play them both for you in this episode of the podcast and do so chronologically, not by the date of the speech, but by the era of American history, which they reference. Thus, we start with Reagan's speech, which looks back on D-Day, the code name for June 6, 1944 when the United States and allied forces executed the largest amphibious invasion in human history on the cliffs of Normandy France during World War Two, an unimaginable effort that marked the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany. To the day, 40 years after D-Day, President Ronald Reagan stood at the edge of the cliffs of Pointe de Hoc in Normandy, France, the location of the Allied D-Day invasion, where 225 US Army Rangers attempted the 100 foot cliffs. 50 of the 4414 Allied troops who lost. Their lives on D-Day did so at Pointe de Hoc, 50 of the 225 I hope to one day visit the memorial there, but in the meantime, the best I can do to put this location's history into perspective is to tell you that my dad, who was seven years old on D-Day, and who almost never tears up, once told me that when he visited this sacred location and looked out over the English Channel and dwelt on what happened there, all he could do was cry. It was here that Reagan delivered his speech, his back to the English Channel, the top of the cliffs, and the Pointe de Hoc monument behind him, and before him 62 surviving veterans of the Second Ranger Battalion, who had scaled the cliffs 40 years before. Reagan delivered a speech that every American needs to listen to at least once. I do at least once each year, it's about 13 minutes long, and we are going to play the whole speech for you, because well, that's the only way to truly appreciate it. As you listen, focus in on the words, phrases, and points that form the soul of our nation, a roll call of honor, young men who were champions, those who took the cliffs, knowing that what they were doing was right, that their country was worth dying for, that democracy is the most honorable form of government ever devised by man, and that that too is worth dying for, faith, belief, loyalty, and love filling the churches at 4am rebuilding Europe following the war, and that we are a nation that must always be prepared for peace. Listen for these words and phrases. Ronald Wilson Reagan, point to Hulk, June 6, 1984 the we're

Ronald Reagan: 7:04

here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen. Jews cried out in the camps. Millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy, the rescue began. Here the allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. We stand on a lonely wind-swept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn on the morning of the sixth of June, 1944 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion, to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance. The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades, and the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. 225 came here after two days of fighting. Only 90 could still bear arms. Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs, and before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Puente Hope. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent, and these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you, and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You were men who, in your quote lives, fought for life and lift left the vivid air signed. With your honor, I think I know what you may be thinking right now, thinking we were just part of a bigger effort. Everyone was brave that day. Well, everyone was. You remember the story of Bill Millen of the 50-First Highlanders. 40 years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millen with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him. Lord Lovat was with him, Lord Lovett of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, "Sorry, I'm a few minutes late, as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam. When, in truth, he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken. There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians, who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred, and once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back. All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's match box fleet, and you, the American Rangers. 40 summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs. Some of you were hardly more than boys with the deepest joys of life before you, yet you risked everything here. Why, why did you do it? Well, what impelled you to put aside the instinct for self preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here, we look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief, it was loyalty and love. The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beach head or on the next. It was the deep knowledge, and pray God we have not lost it. That there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause, and you were right not to doubt. You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you. The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know, in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4am In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell. Something else helped the men of D-Day, their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here, that God was an ally in this great cause, and so the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them, do not bow your heads, but look up, so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we are about to do. Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua, I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. These are the things that impelled them. These are the things that shaped the unity of the allies. When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all. There was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks, but the allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly, the United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic Alliance, a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace, in spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent today. As 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose, to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one, and graveyards where our heroes rest. We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here, ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with expansionist intent, but we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so together we can listen, lessen the risks of war now and forever. It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War Two. 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands, and I tell you we are ready to seize that beach head. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action. We will pray forever that someday that changing will come, but for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it. We're bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs, we're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then, we're with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny here in this place, where the West held together. Let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died. Thank you very much. And God bless you all. what

Matt Kirchner: 19:52

I love about the speech written by Peggy Noonan, another American for whom I have tremendous admiration, is that it doesn't just honor. Those who took the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, but does so in a way that is unapologetic and direct in its celebration and defense of the values that I hold dear as

an American: 20:10

courage, bravery, honor, a willingness to sacrifice the price of freedom, our foundation of faith, and forever striving to do what's right, avoiding the temptation to unpack the whole speech. I'll let Reagan's words and the observations that I just shared speak for themselves. On to Kennedy's speech. I've long been fascinated by the Kennedy family. When I was a kid, my parents had a book on the Kennedy assassination, and I was fascinated by that book, and used to sit on the couch and study its pages for hours and hours. I visited the graves at Arlington, been to Hyannis Port, stood near the grassy knoll in Dallas, the site of John F. Kennedy's assassination, visited the book depository from where the shots were fired that ended his life. Wealth, power, storybook romance, sailing, Wayfarer sunglasses, Adirondack chairs, intrigue, scandal, tragedy. These are what describe the Kennedy family, and specific to JFK, courage and leadership courage and leadership, which he displayed on september 12 1962 at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He stepped to the podium. Controversy swirled over the amount of money being put into the Apollo space program, our nation's effort to put a human on the moon and return them safely to earth. There were open questions as to whether the project should even continue. By Kennedy's own acknowledgement, the US was behind in the space race. The Soviet Union had just launched the first human into space, and with this as the backdrop, Kennedy stood before an audience of 40,000 people and delivered one of the two greatest speeches ever, as we listen, focus not just on the American values Kennedy celebrates, but on how closely they resemble those in the Reagan speech. Note, what is perhaps the greatest line delivered in any speech by any speaker ever, words that have become a life mantra for me. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. In this speech, Kennedy speaks of honorable actions, great difficulties, knowledge, progress, strength, a decade of hope and fear, a country built not by those who waited and rested, but by those who overcame with courage, before a banner of freedom and peace, new hopes for knowledge and peace, an act of faith and vision, paying the price that needs to be paid, and the conviction that it will be done, asking God's blessing. This is John F. Kennedy at Rice University on September 12, 1962

John F. Kennedy: 23:15

President Titzer, mr. Vice President, Governor, Congressman Thomas, Senator Wiley, and Congressman Miller, mr. Webb, mr. Bell, scientists, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate your President having made me an honorary visiting professor, and I will assure you that my first lecture will be very brief. I am delighted to be here, and I'm particularly delighted to be here on this occasion. We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a state noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension. No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come. Now, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half a century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them, advanced men had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then, about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago, man learned to write and use a cot with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50 year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month, electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus. We will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight. This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old new ignorance, new problems, new dangers, surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward. So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait, but this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who move forward, and so will space. William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time. And no nation, which expects to be the leader of other nations, can expect to stay behind in this race for space. Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it. We mean to lead it for the eyes of the world. Now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. Yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first, and therefore we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort to solve. These mysteries to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation. We set sail on this new sea, because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people, for space science, like nuclear science, and all technology has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence, can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war? I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours, there is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again, but why some say the moon. Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others too, it these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the presidency. In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn c1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas, which launched John Glamor, generating power equivalents to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerator on the floor. We have seen the site where five F1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral, as tall as a 48 story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field. Within these last 19 months, at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were made in the United States of America, and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union. The Mariner spacecraft the the Marinist spacecraft, now on its way to Venus, is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40 yard lines. Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tyrus satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs. We have had our. There he is, but so have others, even if they do not admit them, and they may be less public, to be sure, to be sure we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight, but we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead. The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, and the home, as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains. And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies and 10s and 1000s of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state and this region will share greatly in this growth, what was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston, with its manned spacecraft center will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community during the next five years. The National Aeronautic and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year to invest some$200 million in plan and laboratory facilities and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city to be sure all this costs us all a good deal of money, this year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961 and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400,000,000 a year, a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures, space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman, and child in the United States. For we have given this program a high national priority, even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us, but if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food, and survival on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that on the temperature of the sun, almost as hot as it is here today, and do all this, and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this dictator is out. Then we must be bold. I'm the one who's doing all the work, so we'll get Marston stay cool for a minute. However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job, and this will be done in the decade of the sixth. It may be done. While some of you are still here at school at this college and university, it will be done during the terms of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform, but it will be done, and it will be done before the end of this decade, and I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America. Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked, "Why did he want to climb it? He said, because it is there. Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Thank you.

Matt Kirchner: 41:10

Seven years later, on July 20, 1969 America's Neil Armstrong became the first human being to walk on the moon. The two greatest speeches ever delivered. To be sure, there are differences. One honors the sacrifice of the past, and another eyes the sacrifice of the future. One of science and exploration, and another of blood and honor. One looking inside our borders to science and scientists and technology and progress, one looking outside to geopolitical realities and threats. Kennedy's sword called the nation to action. Reagan's was somber and reflective, but despite their differences in time, in topic, in ticket or tenor, the similarities and the values on which they focus is striking. As to courage, Kennedy calls on our answerable courage, our future not built by those who waited and rested, but conquered by those who move forward. Reagan speaks of roll calls, bravery, and values worth dying for. That's courage, as to righteousness. Reagan speaks of soldiers who knew what they were doing was right, and of the post-war Marshall Plan that rebuilt a foreign continent when the soldiers' work was done. Kennedy notes that it is up to the will of humankind to determine whether technologies become forces for good or evil. This is righteousness. As for sacrifice, Kennedy insists that we must pay the price that needs to be paid, not because these things are easy, but because they are hard. And Reagan goes so far as to define what principles are worth dying for. Sacrifice, as for honor, Kennedy tells us that honorable actions come with great difficulties, and Reagan notes that the boys of Puente Hoke were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore. Honor, and as to conviction, Kennedy says that we shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away in a giant rocket, more than 300 feet tall, a human being, and then return them safely to earth. He says it will be done, and it will be done before the end of this decade. Reagan tells 62 veterans of Puente Hoke, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief, it was loyalty and love, and that is conviction, courage, righteousness, sacrifice, honor, and conviction. These values shine through the words of Kennedy and Reagan, these are the values that built our nation. These are the values that secured and defend our freedom. These are the values that hold the promise of our future, and these are the values that unite us as Americans. May we bear that in mind on this America 250

Unknown: 44:28

and.