by, and often
even created by, this question that involves all humankind.

This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to
inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all
ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the
plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce.
Disease diminishes and life lengthens.

Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has
made it possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create--and
turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science
seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase
human life from this planet.

At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith.
This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the
deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws.

This faith defines our full view of life. It establishes, beyond debate,
those gifts of the Creator that are man's inalienable rights, and that
make all men equal in His sight.

In the light of this equality, we know that the virtues most cherished
by free people--love of truth, pride of work, devotion to country--all
are treasures equally precious in the lives of the most humble and of
the most exalted. The men who mine coal and fire furnaces and balance
ledgers and turn lathes and pick cotton and heal the sick and plant
corn--all serve as proudly, and as profitably, for America as the
statesmen who draft treaties and the legislators who enact laws.

This faith rules our whole way of life. It decrees that we, the people,
elect leaders not to rule but to serve. It asserts that we have the
right to choice of our own work and to the reward of our own toil. It
inspires the initiative that makes our productivity the wonder of the
world. And it warns that any man who seeks to deny equality among all
his brothers betrays the spirit of the free and invites the mockery of
the tyrant.

It is because we, all of us, hold to these principles that the political
changes accomplished this day do not imply turbulence, upheaval or
disorder. Rather this change expresses a purpose of strengthening our
dedication and devotion to the precepts of our founding documents, a
conscious renewal of faith in our country and in the watchfulness of a
Divine Providence.

The enemies of this faith know no god but force, no devotion but its
use