It Is Not Enough To Stare Up

Because The Regime Is Captive To Its Own Lies, It Must Falsify Everything. It Falsifies The Past. It Falsifies The Present, And It Falsifies The Future. It Falsifies Statistics. It Pretends Not To Possess An Omnipotent And Unprincipled Police Apparatus. It Pretends To Respect Human Rights. It Pretends To Prosecute No One. It Pretends To Fear Nothing. It Pretends To Pretend Nothing.

The Dissident Does Not Operate In The Realm Of Genuine Power At All. He Is Not Seeking Power. He Has No Desire For Office And Does Not Gather Votes. He Does Not Attempt To Charm The Public, He Offers Nothing And Promises Nothing. He Can Offer, If Anything, Only His Own Skin - And He Offers It Solely Because He Has No Other Way Of Affirming The Truth He Stands For. His Actions Simply Articulate His Dignity As A Citizen, Regardless Of The Cost.

We Must Come To Understand The Deep Mutual Connection Or Kinship Between The Various Forms Of Our Spirituality. We Must Recollect Our Original Spiritual And Moral Substance, Which Grew Out Of The Same Essential Experience Of Humanity. I Believe That This Is The Only Way To Achieve A Genuine Renewal Of Our Sense Of Responsibility For Ourselves And For The World. And At The Same Time, It Is The Only Way To Achieve A Deeper Understanding Among Cultures That Will Enable Them To Work Together In A Truly Ecumenical Way To Create A New Order For The World.

The Idea Of Human Rights And Freedoms Must Be An Integral Part Of Any Meaningful World Order. Yet, I Think It Must Be Anchored In A Different Place, And In A Different Way, Than Has Been The Case So Far. If It Is To Be More Than Just A Slogan Mocked By Half The World, It Cannot Be Expressed In The Language Of A Departing Era, And It Must Not Be Mere Froth Floating On The Subsiding Waters Of Faith In A Purely Scientific Relationship To The World.

My Dear Fellow Citizens: For Forty Years You Have Heard From My Predecessors On This Day Different Variations Of The Same Theme: How Our Country Flourished, How Many Millions Of Tons Of Steel We Produced, How Happy We All Were, How We Trusted Our Government, And What Bright Perspectives Were Unfolding In Front Of Us. I Assume You Did Not Propose Me For This Office So That I, Too, Would Lie To You.