HILL: An eloquent speech for an inchoate president

Joseph Biden in London 1988 — Senator Joseph Biden D-Del., arrives at the House of Commons in London, Jan. 12, 1988, for a courtesy call on Britain's Labour Party and opposition leader Neil Kinnock. Biden insisted he had not plagiarized the British politician's words, using the theme of one of Kinnock's speeches as his own. (AP Photo/John Redman)

Would it be so difficult for President Joe Biden to deliver a speech which would give us confidence during these troubled times?

He doesn’t have to write it. All he would have to do is read it from the teleprompter. His staff could simply cut-and-paste from great speeches of the past as shown below and push him out onto the stage.

Given his predilection for admitted plagiarism during his entire life, he wouldn’t even have to give attribution to the great orators who did write these stirring phrases.

But we would all feel better about our future, that is for sure.

“My fellow Americans: These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.” 1

“Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them… For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. Such is the country for whose sake these men nobly fought and died; they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them; and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf.” 2

“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 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 to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” 3

“I have, myself, full confidence that … we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny…we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our homeland, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” 4

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 5

“You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, ‘There is a price we will not pay’, ‘There is a point beyond which they must not advance’. ‘There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.’

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” 6