Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom–symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning — signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge — and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do — for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom — and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required–not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge — to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support — to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective — to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak — and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course — both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.

So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms — and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce. Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah — to “undo the heavy burdens … and to let the oppressed go free.”

And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again — not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”– a struggle against the common enemies of man: Tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own. Ω

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This stirring speech, although 63 years old and delivered when a different world calamity (between the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union) loomed over our heads, is chillingly current. It starkly demonstrates that no matter how much the world seems to change, things remain basically the same. One another note, it shares a spoken-word technique with Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech – a regularly repeated, rhythmic phrase. In the King example, it is “I have a dream.” In this example, it is “Let both sides . . .” While not as emotionally powerful as the King example, it serves to set up a group of individual phrases into a unified whole. This technique might not be effective for a piece that was to be read silently, but in a speech – especially delivered by a great orator – it is powerful and can be inspiring.

By John Taylor Gatto (1935-2018)

My wife doesn’t allow a television in our home, so when I’m traveling alone, as I often must, temptation sometimes overwhelms me and I find myself indiscriminately channel-surfing for hours, searching for what — I don’t know, perhaps a football game even in March or April, May, June, July, August.

It was on such a fruitless mission in April that I paused on the A&E; channel long enough to hear that a documentary about cults was in the offing. If I watched the thing, I was promised I would learn the six secret principles of cults, how to enslave the human mind beyond its power to escape, how to imprison the spirit, bending it to the discipline of the cult. Hey, my wife wasn’t around, sounded “educational” to me.

In a dreamlike state in the Howard Johnson’s motel in Norwich, New York I heard that the first way to recognize a cult was that it “keeps its victims unaware.” ‘Why, that’s just what institutional schools do,’ I said to myself; I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life traveling a million and a half miles to bear witness to that universal crime of forced schooling I had been a party to over a 30-year public school teaching career.

And, the television intoned in order, a cult controls its victims’ time and environment (by this time I was sitting up with pen and pad taking notes), creates fear and dependency, suppresses old customs, instills new beliefs, and allows no criticism. “But, but,” I heard my conscience sputtering, “that’s the perfect formula for a government school.” School was structured to be an expression of cult discipline! School was a cult, not unlike the murder cult Princess Grace ended her days on earth a member of, or the legendary Thuggee in British India which worshipped Kali, the Destroyer!

Prison, as we have evolved it following British and Hindu models, seeks to impose the same discipline on its serious recruits, breaking them to an understanding of their own profound worthlessness. It should be no secret to anyone reading this that in America, the land of the free, more people are imprisoned, by far, than in any nation past or present, including Communist China or Stalin’s Soviet Union. Prison in America is a booming business, incarcerating about five times the percentage of our population who were jailed in the middle of the Great Depression. Some fiendish spirit is loose in our land whose bleak heart can only be plumbed by seeing the correspondences among cults, prisons, and schools.

The most obvious relationship between government schooling and our penal system is that they both involve prisons of measured time: Movements, thoughts, associations in both are controlled by total strangers whose biographies remain a sealed book to inmates and their families. Any attempt to uncover those biographies in order to consider the fitness of employees would be met by howls of outrage and refusal, or punished severely if the research were pressed.

The structures in which students are confined along with their certified handlers long ago exceeded any human scale, they are megalithic constructions designed to emphasize the insignificance of the indwelling population, and the stark power of their invisible masters. Yet both the anonymity of the operatives and the inhumanity of the architecture have a subtler side, too, a side which can only be appreciated when you realize that its purpose is to make us childish.

Almost all Americans have had an intense school experience which occupied their entire youth, an experience during which they were drilled thoroughly in the culture and economy of the well-schooled greater society, in which individuals have been rendered helpless to do much of anything except watch television or punch buttons on a keypad.

Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn’t any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we’ve been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage. Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They’re like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don’t have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won’t surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent — or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.

From a managerial standpoint, people addicted to defining their lives by the stuff they buy, or by pats on the head, comprise a managerial utopia. In prison, or school, the way to this condition, this safe condition, is prepared by a drill in the extension of small privileges and honors, or the withholding of same, by punishments and rewards externally imposed until the inner ability of the human spirit to punish or reward itself –and hence by free of tutelage — is destroyed or suppressed. The animal trainers in service to the rich and powerful through history — not B.F. Skinner or the behaviorists — created this form of training.

Some kids become too wordlessly angry at this deal to conform to the patterns laid down in 12 years of forced training; for these a graduate school or schools are created; for most it is the school of poverty and marginalization; for some, the school called jail. Jail is a place where the bare bones of forced schooling become exposed and highlighted:

In prison you stay in your classroom 24 hours a day.
In prison the teachers wear guns and carry clubs.
In prison all associations are strictly controlled.

Both school and prison are high security institutions, cut off from the general society. The possibilities of learning in either place are so strictly limited that only a few survive this training intact. Both make us helpless to direct our own lives. Prison is only a more stringent refresher course for angry and confused souls who retain some notion of personal independence, however warped or grotesque the natural impulse has become.

About 6.3 million Americans have the experience of prison added to the experience of forced schooling, but such a number is only the tip of an iceberg. Thanks to lurid newspaper stories, endless television, movies, books, songs, and other public utterances under the control of corporate managers, all of us are steeped in a vision where prison seems the only protection of physical safety in a dangerous world. We are taught our fellow beings are violently untrustworthy; that only through the protection of authorities can we be safe. Both school and prison destroy trust, the glue of real community. It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy, and it works.

Corporate culture has become a resonator of low-level fearfulness to such an extent that we gladly throw huge numbers of our fellow human beings in jail, just as we abandon our children to penal institutionalization in schools; the constant presentation of prison as our salvation, or school as the essential trainer of children, makes us all prisoners. It corrupts our inner life, it divides us from one another so that relationships lifelong are thin and shallow. School teaches us to divorce one another, to put aside loyalty for advantage, to quell our inner voices, subordinating them to management.

School and prison do the work that Rome’s first emperor, Julius Cesear, said was necessary to manage a conquered population. In order to keep the conquered conquered, you have to keep them divided. School classrooms do that job more gently than prison cells, but they do it more effectively.

The people who inflict these things on the rest of us are insane, however normal their words and countenances appear. Hard as that is to believe, you must remember that this nation became rich, powerful, and the free-est place in civilized human history without any forced schooling-or prisons-to speak of. In spite of their neat suits, white shirts, and calm ways of speaking, the folks who build and maintain forced institutional schooling-as well as professionalized institutional mass incorporation-are insane, sick people cut off from human understanding, cut off from the hopes and dreams of ordinary humanity.

You may prefer, however, to see them as crazy as foxes. Both school and prison — by cutting us off from raw experience with people, projects, and ideas — have trained us to stay in harmony with a mass-production economy whose principle product is junk which must be consumed if it is to survive. The survival of this economy depends upon people becoming addicted to consumption, addicted to owning (and discarding) stuff. As my own addiction to mindlessness re-emerges when I travel alone, and is testified to by aimless channel-surfing on television, hour upon hour, so too, for almost all, in one fashion or another; what begins as a nearly universal human weakness — but only a minor part of healthy life, well within control – becomes, through forced training from birth in our culture, mightily enhanced by schooling and television, the common destiny of the commons.

School also trains us to accept a gigantic government with multiple police forces whose need is to control all significant decisions, even in private lives. The monstrous government with its comprehensive surveillance, its theft of your money, its ability to confine those who resist indoctrination, is the perfect mirror imitation of a command economy where “work” is mostly defined in corporate boardrooms, where the wishes and plans of a few CEOs and their families are imposed on the lives of all. These are the new nobility, bidding fair over the past several decades to extend their rule over the entire planet. Welcome to the American empire which has replaced both Republican and Democratic forbears.

School is the processing center for its mercenaries, who, of necessity must needs be made incomplete. This could not have happened without first rendering our people frightened of personal sovereignty, by making them childish and dependent. But is it now too strong to be overthrown?

I don’t think so, but the road away from it will be long and difficult. There is no mechanism in existence through which its antithesis can be mobilized except the individual family, the particular family, the unique family. Associations of families which waste their time in wholesale opposition to the thing are doomed, I believe, to disappointment. We will not see this power rolled back in our lifetimes.

Yet saying this is a far cry from throwing up one’s hands in despair. Rust doesn’t organize to bring down a powerful building nor do termites organize to collapse a house. Each set of molecules, less of any contradiction to the integrity of the larger structure.

The miracle we’re after at large is available to each on of us in small right now. First you have to break the invisible chains that schooling has laid on your own mind; you need to stop defining yourself by what you buy or who approves of you. Stop being fearful of new experiences or at least press on regardless of your fear.

By all means homeschool your kids for a while and if you can’t do that, teach them to be quiet little saboteurs of the school order. Teach them that very little of value will happen to them as a gift inside school walls, but that if they “want” an education they will have to take it, nobody is ever given an education. Teach them that.

Teach them to challenge the world around them, to take risks. Teach them the junk they put in their minds through television, indeed through all forms of commercial entertainment, is propaganda of one sort of another.

You might even unplug your television today. Or go to see an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. In the next election, vote for a third-party candidate; whatever he or she stands for is irrelevant. Once you begin breaking out of the jail your schooling built around you you’ll think of many things to do for yourself and your kids. You don’t need any gurus, not even me. And when you finally break out of your private jail you’ll discover how wonderful and necessary a gift of God that liberty really is. Hey, get started! Ω