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Text of Remarks by the President to be Delivered to the University of Pennsylvania Commencement Exercises, Philadelphia Civic Center [Ford Speech or Statement]
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7339243
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Text of Remarks by the President to be Delivered to the University of Pennsylvania Commencement Exercises, Philadelphia Civic Center [Ford Speech or Statement]
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1975-05-17
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1975
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Digitized from Box 11 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UPON
MAY 17, 1975
DELIVERY, SUNDAY, MAY 18, 1975,
3:20 P.M. (EDT)
Office of the White House Press Secretary
THE WHITE HOUSE
TEXT OF REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO BE DELIVERED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES
PHILADELPHIA CIVIC CENTER
I am delighted to be here on this momentous occasion in the history of
the University of Pennsylvania.
Two hundred years ago, the members of the Second Continental Congress
adjourned their sessions and marched over in a body to participate in the
graduation ceremonies of your great institution. I congratulate you on
this unique bit of history. From my experience, it is not all that easy
to get a Congress to march together on anything.
I congratulate today's graduates. But if my congratulations are to have
real meaning, I must relate the past to the present, and our national
goals to your individual goals.
It is a special privilege to address a university whose growth has always
been oriented toward the future. Your medical school, your school of
business and other departments of the University of Pennsylvania testify
to a timely response to needs of the community by equipping individuals
to solve problems.
Your illustrious founder, Benjamin Franklin, conceived of the University
as a center where an individual can find fulfillment through the individual's
own efforts. Franklin did not see schools as the purveyors of all the
answers. He saw them constantly responding to the needs of the community
rather than conforming scholars to a rigid classic mold.
Franklin's own life was a continuous self-educational process. Practical
wisdom was his aim. We find nowhere in his writings the false concept
of "the completion of education. " He saw no limitations to what an in-
dividual could learn.
When eight bachelors and four masters received their degrees here 200
years ago, the Continental Congress was groping its way to a fateful
decision as to the direction this country should take in the future. But
there was also much talk of the past, for the delegates were determined
not to repeat its mistakes.
One of the young commencement speakers in 1775 held forth on "The Fall
of the Empires," which he attributed to excesses of Luxury, Venality
and Vice. He was not far wrong, and he wound up by looking far into the
future and expressing his hope for America-- that amidst the wide waste of
Empires, this one corner of the globe may at least remain the last asylum
of truth, righteousness and freedom.
Freedom was on everyone's lips that day in May, 1775, just as it is in
May, 1975.
(MORE)
- 2 -
The news of Lexington and Concord, though nearly a month had passed,
had just reached the Philadelphia newspapers. But there was by no
means unanimity for independence; indeed, if there had been public
opinion polls in those days, they probably would have showed a. great
majority of Americans considered themselves loyal Englishmen and
wanted no war.
As we read the records of 1775, we find a spirited debate was in progress
right here on this campus, as well as in the nearby deliberations of the
Continental Congress, between the proponents of individual liberty and in-
dependence and the defenders of discipline and order.
In the long perspective of two centuries, it is clear to us today that both
sides were right. The American revolution was not a single shot heard
round the world. It was, as John Adams warned, a long, obstinate and
bloody war that lasted six and a half years, followed by another period
of political experimentation in which the weak and divided infant nation
barely survived. But the most remarkable thing about the beginnings of
our nation is that the men of the revolution stuck to it until it was finished.
Their mutual pledges of their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor
were more than empty words. In breaking with their past they did not
neglect to build a better system for their posterity.
Today, we look back 200 years, not merely to take pride in our history,
although we do; not merely to mark the high priority which Americans
have always accorded to education and higher learning, although we do;
we look back during this Bicentennial to learn some practical lessons for
today and tomorrow.
As a nation, we have recently gone through some rough times. We
experienced military and diplomatic setbacks--but Washington and
Franklin survived experiences far worse. Inflation, high prices,
unemployment, recession--all these problems were more pressing in
1775 than they are in 1975, if one believes the rhetoric of the Continental
Congress and the lively reports of the colonial press.
But these are not the real lessons of the American Revolution. The real
lesson of our Revolution is that national goals can be achieved only through
a combination of national purpose and of national will.
The thirteen colonies in the beginning were weak militarily, dependent
economically, and divided politically. Gradually they found their goals
and articulated their purpose--in Thomas Jefferson's words: life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. But the national will that saw the struggle
through to its successful conclusion was better expressed by the patriot
farmer who said as he picked up his musket: 'We'll see who's going to
own this farm. I believe that spirit is very much alive in America today.
I am immensely proud of the Marines, the Airmen and the Seamen who
rescued their captured countrymen and our merchant ship last week in the
Gulf of Siam.
Their skill and courage, their dedication and sacrifice make us all
humbly grateful and glad that a greater danger was averted.
(MORE)
- 3 -
But we must not forget that the jubilant cheers that greeted the pealing
of the Liberty Bell were followed by the Trial and testing of Valley Forge.
National will comes from a consensus of national purpose, from the collective
agreement among thinking citizens as to the goals they seek as a nation.
A free people will never find unanimity--but a people must be united in
the pursuit of certain common goals in order to remain free.
The goals which were proclaimed here in Philadelphia after a dozen years
of war and wrestling with the problems of a new kind of self-governing
society are as valid today as they were in 1787:
--
To form a more perfect Union
--
establish justice
--
insure domestic tranquility
--
provide for the common defense
--
promote the general welfare
--
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity.
We need add to these original goals only the implicit one of striving to
preserve and to advance the cause of peace and harmony among all nations
and all peoples. We do not need nobler or newer goals. We do need a
renewed sense of national purpose and a strengthening of our national will
to pursue these goals.
In a sense, our American Revolution has never ended. We are a unique
people in that we are at the same time eminently practical and incurably
idealistic. Americans are always more interested in the future than the past.
We expect and indeed demand that tomorrow will be better than today.
While I have spoken of national goals, I know that each of you have in-
dividual goals, and that the celebration of this day is clouded by the
immediate problem of furthering those goals by finding meaningful em-
ployment.
Almost a million young Americans graduating from institutions of higher
learning this year are faced, through no fault of their own, with economic
difficulties greater than any since the period of my own commencement
with the Class of 1935.
As President, my first objective has been to overcome current economic
problems. Our national goal is jobs for all who want to work and economic
opportunity for all who want to achieve.
Government must follow policies that enable and encourage the private
economic system to create more jobs and more meaningful jobs in the
real world. Greater productivity is the only sure way to greater prosperity
and a better life for everybody.
We are coming out of this recession. We are on our way. And we are on
the right track. But we cannot be satisfied with simply getting back to
where we were, and we will not.
(MORE)
- 4 -
We must redefine our national purposes and pursue them with a renewal of
national will. On our 200th birthday shall we occupy ourselves questioning
our limitations--or exploring our possibilities?
Shall we conclude from two centuries of American experience that we can
do no more --or that we can do much, much more? The United States of
America that evolved from the uneasy disputations and heated debates
here in Philadelphia has now before it a chance to write a new declaration
of interdependence, among ourselves and with all peoples.
We must infuse our institutions with a new realism built on the old idealism--
and we will. We must develop a vast new energy industry that will spur
employment and ensure economic security--and we will. We must expand
the control of each individual over his or her own life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness--and we will.
We must increase the participation and influence of every citizen in the
processes of self-government and the shaping of national consensus--and
we will. We must lead humanity's everlasting effort to live harmoniously
with nature, employing technology to the enrichment of spirit as well as
body--and we will.
We must sustain and strengthen our alliances and partnerships with other
freedom-loving nations as we seek cooperation and rational relations with
all peoples--and we will.
We must maintain our vigilance and our defenses as a symbol of our
undiminished devotion to peace and a lawful world--and we will.
Finally, perhaps most importantly, we must declare again the brotherly
love in which this great Commonwealth was founded. We must learn to
trust one another and to help one another. We must plege anew to one
another our own lives, our own fortunes, and our own sacred honor. And
we will.
Benjamin Franklin told the Constitutional Convention in those early years
that "much of the strength and efficiency of any government, in procuring
and securing happiness to the people, depends on opinion--on the general
opinion of the goodness of that government as well as of the wisdom and
integrity of its governors."
As President, I value your good opinion and hope always to deserve it.
And I ask the graduates of 1975 to work with me on America's new agenda,
just as the class of 1775 joined in proclaiming a new era of liberty and
hope. They did well by us. We must do even better by Americans yet
unborn.
###