The Terms of Our Duty

America belongs to the people who inhabit it, The source of the nation’s strength is the people’s freedom to be the source of the laws governing them. To uphold this truth, when Thomas Jefferson and James Madison brought the Democratic Party to birth 175 years ago, they bound it to serve the people and their government as a united whole.

Today, in our 175th anniversary year, the Democratic Party in national convention assembled, again renews the covenant of our birth. We affirm the binding force of our inherited duty to serve the people and their government. We here, therefore, account for what we have done in the Democratic years since 1961. We here state what we will do when our party is again called to lead the nation.

In America and in the world over, strong forces for change are on the move. Systems of thought have been jarred, ways of life have been uprooted, institutions are under siege. The governed challenge those who govern.

We are summoned, therefore, to a fateful task—to ensure that the turmoil of change will prove to be the turmoil of birth instead of decay. We cannot stand still until we are overtaken by events. We dare not entrust our lives to the blind play of accident and force. By reflection and choice, we must make the impulse for change the agent of orderly progress.

There is no alternative.

In the world around us, people have patiently lived with hopes long deferred, with grievances long endured. They are now impatient with patience. Their demands for change must not only be heard, they must be answered.

This is the reality the world as a whole faces. In America itself, now, and not later, is the right time to strengthen the fabric of our society by making justice and equity the cornerstones of order. Now, and not later, is the right time to uphold the rule of law by securing to all the people the natural rights that belong to them by virtue of their being human. Now, and not later, is the right time to unfurl again the flag of human patriotism and rededicate ourselves under it, to the cause of peace among nations. Now, and not later, is the right time to reclaim the strength spent in quarrels over the past and to apply that strength to America’s future. Now is the right time to proceed with the work of orderly progress that will make the future become what we want it to be.

It has always been the object of the Democratic Party to march at the head of events instead of waiting for them to happen. It is our resolve to do that in the years ahead—just as we did in the Democratic years since 1961 when the nation was led by two Democratic Presidents and four Democratic Congresses.