aintained. Prophets of
the downfall of American democracy have seen their dire predictions come
to naught.

Democracy is not dying.

We know it because we have seen it revive--and grow.

We know it cannot die--because it is built on the unhampered initiative
of individual men and women joined together in a common enterprise--an
enterprise undertaken and carried through by the free expression of a
free majority.

We know it because democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists
the full force of men's enlightened will.

We know it because democracy alone has constructed an unlimited
civilization capable of infinite progress in the improvement of human
life.

We know it because, if we look below the surface, we sense it still
spreading on every continent--for it is the most humane, the most
advanced, and in the end the most unconquerable of all forms of human
society.

A nation, like a person, has a body--a body that must be fed and clothed
and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the
objectives of our time.

A nation, like a person, has a mind--a mind that must be kept informed
and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the
needs of its neighbors--all the other nations that live within the
narrowing circle of the world.

And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more
permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that
something which matters most to its future--which calls forth the most
sacred guarding of its present.

It is a thing for which we find it difficult--even impossible--to hit
upon a single, simple word.

And yet we all understand what it is--the spirit--the faith of America.
It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those
who came from many lands--some of high degree, but mostly plain people,
who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It
is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It
blazed anew in the middle ages. It was written in Magna Charta.

In the Americas its impact has been irresistible. America has been the
New World in all tongues, to all peoples, not because this continent was
a new-found land, but because all those who came here believed they
could create upon this continent a new life--a life that should be new
in freedom.

Its vitality was written into