The fissure that divides our political planet is deep and wide.
We live, moreover, in a sea of semantic disorder in which old labels no longer faithfully describe.
Police states are called "people's democracies."
Armed conquest of free people is called "liberation."
Such slippery slogans make more difficult the problem of communicating true faith, facts and beliefs.
We must make clear our peaceful intentions, our aspirations for a better world. So doing, we must use language to enlighten the mind, not as the instrument of the studied innuendo and distorter of truth.
And we must live by what we say.
On my recent visit to distant lands I found one statesman after another eager to tell me of the elements of their government that had been borrowed from our American Constitution, and from the indestructible ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence.
As a nation we take pride that our own constitutional system, and the ideals which sustain it, have been long viewed as a fountainhead of freedom.
By our every action we must strive to make ourselves worthy of this trust, ever mindful that an accumulation of seemingly minor encroachments upon freedom gradually could break down the entire fabric of a free society.