 With our technology and our skills pushed dramatically at the boundaries of our knowledge, there is the sense of renewed energy in the land, the spirit of America on the move. History has selected us for a decisive role in the drama which will determine whether freedom itself will endure. The threat to freedom comes from a philosophy which treats freedom with contempt, a philosophy backed up by military might. It has expressed its determination to see the entire world enslaved under the banner of communism. Thus, a position of leadership is forced on us, for we are the strongest and most productive nation on earth. If we do not stand up against the ambitions of the communist powers, then no other nation or coalition of nations will be strong enough to withstand them. For almost a full generation, Americans have lived in the shadow of an historic challenge. Primarily, this challenge has been and is military in nature, to maintain a position of strength formidable enough to deter aggressive communism from attempting to expand its empire by force of arms. This challenge continues and will so long as the threat remains. But with the success of this deterrence, a challenge of another kind arises. The challenge of blocking the forces of communism as it endeavors to expand in the arena of peaceful competition, just as we are prepared to defeat them on the field of battle. We recognize the challenge and we have indicated our response to it. The United States has nothing to fear from peaceful competition. We welcome it and we will win it. It is our system which flourishes and grows stronger in a world free from the threat of war. This is our response to the challenge of competing in peaceful ways with the forces of communism. But however openly we face the challenge, we do not do so blindly. But we know that the background against which this competition must be waged and won is a flame with danger. Our third of the world is communism. Another third is united with us in opposition to communist aggressive designs. And the remaining third, lands of Africa and Asia and Latin America, are stirring as a giant might stir from an ancient sleep, shaking off old forms, creating new governments, new nations. Along with the urge to independence which dominates these countries the age-old desire to throw off the poverty which has bound them for so long. With friendly sympathy and with hope, we watch them struggle to burn as we ourselves once struggled. But sometimes, to our along, we see a new government's willingness to surrender its hard-won freedom to a totalitarian idea. Because of the mistaken belief that under communism, the 20th century colonialism, it can develop at a faster pace, ignoring the fact that the communists have achieved their degree of industrialization only at the high cost of personal liberty. And thus is the challenge presented squarely to us, of persuading people everywhere in whatever peaceful ways we can that only with liberty can man truly prosper. These are the obligations of leadership which the conditions of the world have forced upon us. And the stakes are high. Who are we who say we welcome and can win the contest which history poses for us now? What kind of a nation are we? Physically, there are several Americas. There is the America of the Plains, the kind of nation Jefferson envisioned of small towns and villages in which values endure from generation to generation. There is the America Jefferson could never have foreseen of choked and towering cities. And there is the New America, the community of suburbs which have grown around the expanding cities. America is a land of exploding statistics. A clock in the Department of Commerce signals the birth approximately every seven and a half seconds of a new citizen into a country which has more than doubled in size in half a century. Ours is the land in which science and technology have found the climate for their most rapid development. We have more wealth per capita than any nation has ever had. And our wealth has given us time for leisure undreamed of at the beginning of this century. These things are all true. And yet, and yet, they do not begin to tell the full story of our nation any more than do the unfavorable things that can be said about it. We all know that dark spots in our society still exist for we are not yet a perfect society. And these imperfections reveal that we have problems remaining with us which we are working to overcome. These are paradoxical truths, but we are a nation of paradoxes. We can say of ourselves as others have, for instance, that we are a mobile people, restless on the move to the stable principles of private ownership. A deep religious impulse runs through our national life even though we are fiercely proud of the doctrine of separation of church and state. We are divided by political passions, but in times of national agony our passions fade and we are united as Americans only. And perhaps the greatest paradox of all is our sense of history. We are less than two centuries old, but no nation has ever been more strongly stirred by the knowledge of its own story. We are the product of many strains and many visions and yet we see that story as essentially one heroic adventure which has shaped us into the many faceted phenomenon we have become and which we have attempted to catch and preserve in music and art and the passion of words by their creator with certain unalienable rights. And was ours before we were the land to the new world. We debush upon a newer mightier world, varied world, fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, pioneers, old pioneers, dual savage and incredibly lonely world, an America so limitless and free and so haunted by dark time and magic, so aching in its joy with all the bitter briefness of our days, so young, so old, so everlasting and so triumphantly the place of man's good earth. Come and show me another city with lifted head, singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning to the flesh out of the minds and hearts of thousand upon thousand common men, cranks, mortars, starry-eyed enthusiasts, slow-spoken neighbors hard to push around, women whose hands were gentle with their kids and men with a cold passion for mere justice. We made this thing, this dream. This, as much as anything can be, is what America essentially is. A dream we have always pursued and are still pursuing, or it is one that does not end. A dream we will continue to pursue so long as we exist as a nation. It was this dream which brought men first to this land. For the first century and a half of our growth, our national mission remained clearly defined and unchanged to create an open society which would function and endure as the instrument of free men. We grew, we expanded, we prospered. We converted from an agrarian republic to an industrial democracy, all ways with this very purpose to guide us. It was this dream which gave farmers and blacksmiths the courage to lay down their tools and pick up arms against the tyranny which denied their free-born rights. And then, with independence, to make the boldest proposition ever dared in the governments of men on earth. And above all, and through it all, it was the dream which continued to populate our land, which gave it its real strength, its people. The men of all countries who lifted themselves out of the grinding helplessness of the old world and set their faces to the promise that America offered. It is the continuing pursuit of this dream which animates us today, a nation of over 192 million, of all races and many beliefs, of origins that reflect every impulse of the human adventure, divided in many things, our eyes on different goals, and yet, essentially together, one people, one people, daring to believe they can continue the common endeavor to eliminate imperfections and build the good life. And what is more, daring to believe that even now, in this time of danger and challenge, they can speak to mankind. And with the evidence of what they have made and what they are, offer an example which will give hope to other people in the world. Such is the boldness of which the American dream is made. And what is the dream? First, it is the burning idea of liberty, of free men governing themselves. And second, it is the promise that in such a climate of freedom, men can build a more productive society, one which will bring the greatest benefit to the greatest number. As they have been practiced and developed within our boundaries, both of these propositions have changed the story of man on earth. The adventure in freedom and the challenge to his productivity which the climate of freedom offers, the challenge under which new industrial and technological trails have been blazed for the world to follow. It was in this climate that America developed the assembly line, the technique of mass production. And in the doing, it shaped what became literally the industrial marvel of the world. Goods, all kinds of goods, the comforts of life and the necessities and the luxuries were turned out in greater quantities than anyone had ever before imagined. And they became available to everyone, not just the rich, but the working man too. The immigrant laborer, whose life in the old country had been measured by his ability to eat enough to work and to work enough to be able to eat. He became a consumer, a user of materials and when he did, the economic history of man changed forever. And the cause of our revolution was immeasurably advanced. The cause of our revolution, of course. For our revolution did not end when we secured our independence as a nation. This is the real secret of the American dream. The revolution which lit the skies 200 years ago with its vision of the good life of free men was a permanent revolution which grows constantly, searching and finding new and better ways of bringing life's benefits to more and more people. This is the message we have for the world, particularly for that part of the world which strains toward its new day. We too are the children of revolution, the inheritors of revolution and the practitioners. The kind of revolution which links us in brotherhood to those who wage their struggle for freedom with a belief in the dignity of man. For ours is the revolution, the continuing revolution which seeks to ennoble man and improve his life. This is our message and with it, literally, we can command the course of history. But first we must speak it. And more than speak it, we must demonstrate. For this is the challenge that is squarely upon us to assure that the citizenry of the world, all people everywhere, see and share the fruits of our great effort. It is thus, by making known in a living and meaningful way the progress that men can make in a climate of freedom that we will win the contest we dare to welcome. Never once have we failed to respond as a nation to whatever challenge the times have presented. In every historic crisis the trumpet call to duty has always touched the determination which runs like iron fiber through our national soul. And we have done what we must. Now, our historic purpose as a nation has not changed. But in our day, it has broadened and destiny has presented us with a challenge as great as any we have faced before. History will record the course of human events will reflect. The life or decay of freedom will show how we will meet.