Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom.  Men and women of the world move toward free markets through the door to prosperity.  The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only liberty allows.

We know what works:  Freedom works.  We know what’s right:  Freedom is right.  We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth:  through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

For the first time in this century, for the first time in perhaps all history, man does not have to invent a system by which to live.  We don’t have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better.  We don’t have to wrest justice from the kings.  We only have to summon it from within ourselves.  We must act on what we know.  I take as my guide the hope of a saint:  In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all things, generosity.

America today is a proud, free nation, decent and civil, a place we cannot help but love.  We know in our hearts, not loudly and proudly, but as a simple fact, that this country has meaning beyond what we see, and that our strength is a force for good.  But have we changed as a nation even in our time?  Are we enthralled with material things, less appreciative of the nobility of work and sacrifice?

My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions.  They are not the measure of our lives.  In our hearts we know what matters.  We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account.  We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it.  What do we want the men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there?  That we were more driven to succeed than anyone around us?  Or that we stopped to ask if a sick child had gotten better, and stayed a moment there to trade a word of friendship?

No President, no government, can teach us to remember what is best in what we are.  But if the man you have chosen to lead this government can help make a difference; if he can celebrate the quieter, deeper successes that are made not of gold and silk, but of better hearts and finer souls; if he can do these things, then he must.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle.  We as a people have such a purpose today.  It is to make kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world.  My friends, we have work to do.  There are the homeless, lost and roaming.  There are the children who have nothing, no love, no normalcy.  There are those who cannot free themselves of enslavement to whatever addiction—­drugs, welfare, the demoralization that rules the slums.  There is crime to be conquered, the rough crime of the streets.  There are young women to be helped who are about to become mothers of children they can’t care for and might not love.  They need our care, our guidance, and our education, though we bless them for choosing life.