Learn English John McCain We live in a land of ideals not blood and soil with BIG subtitles
Thank You total my dear friend for those
mostly undeserved kind words
Vice President Biden and I have known
each other for a lot of years now more
than 40 if you’re counting we knew each
other back when we were young and
handsome and smarter than everyone else
but we were too much to say Schism Joe
was already a senator and I was the
Navy’s liaison officer to the Senate my
duties included as he mentioned earlier
escorting Senate delegations on the
overseas trips and in that capacity I
supervised the delegations luggage which
could require now and again when no one
of lower rank was available for the job
that I carry someone else once or twice
that turned out to be the young senator
from Delaware I presented it ever since
Joe has heard me joke about that before
I hope he is heard to my profession of
gratitude for his friendship and love
these many years it’s meant a lot to me
we we served in the Senate together for
over 20 years during some eventful times
as we passed from young men to the
fossils who appear before you this
evening
we didn’t always agree on the issues we
often argued sometimes passionately but
we believed in each other’s patriotism
and the sincerity of each other’s
convictions we believed in the
institution we were privileged to serve
in we believed in our mutual
responsibility to help make the place
work and to cooperate in finding
solutions to our country’s problems we
believed in our country and in our
country’s indispensability to
international peace and stability and
the progress of humanity
and through it all whether we argued or
green Joe was good company you all know
he is good with the company so thank you
old friend for your company and your
service to America thank you to to the
National Constitution Center and
everyone associated with it for this
award thank you for that video and for
all the too generous complements paid to
me this evening I’m aware of the
prestigious company the Liberty mental
places gene I’m humbled by and I’ll try
my best not to prove too unworthy of it
some years ago I was present at an event
where an earlier Liberty medal recipient
spoke about America’s values and the
sacrifices made for them it was 1991 and
I was attending a ceremony commemorating
the 50th anniversary of the attack on
Pearl Harbor the World War two veteran
message the wool patriot and goodly man
President George Herbert Walker Bush
gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona
Memorial I remember it very well
his voice is consistent with emotion as
he neared the end of his redis I imagine
he was thinking not only of the brave
Americans who lost their lives on
December 7th 1941 but of the friends he
had served with in lost in the Pacific
where he where he had been the named
least youngest aviator look at the water
here clear and quiet he directed one day
what now seems another lifetime it wraps
in Gravatar
around the finest sons any new she could
ever have and it and carry him to a
better world he could barely get out the
lash line they God bless them and may
God bless america the most one person on
earth
the most wondrous land on earth Andy
I’ve had the good fortune of 60 years of
service to this wondrous land it’s not
perfect service to be sure and there
were probably times when the country
might have benefited a little less my
help but I tried to deserve the
privilege as best I can and I’ve been
repaid a thousand times over with
adventures with good company with the
satisfaction of serving something they
were important than myself a being a
player in the extraordinary story of
America and I am so grateful what a
privilege it is to serve this was a
boisterous brawling and temperance
driving a daring beautiful doubtful
brave magazine magnificent country with
all our flaws all our mistakes with all
the frail limbs of human nature as much
on display as our virtues with all the
rancor and anger of our politics we are
blessed we are living in the land of the
free the land where anything is possible
the land and the immigrants dream the
land of the story past forgotten in the
rest of the imagined future the land of
repairs can reinvent itself the land
where a person can escape the
consequences of a self-centered youth
and know the satisfaction of sacrificing
for an ideal the land where you can go
from English will baying
to a noble cause and from the bottom of
your class to your party’s nomination
for
president
[Applause]
we are blessed and we’ve been a blessing
to humanity in turn the International
Quarter we helped build from the ashes
of World War and that we listened to
this day has liberated more people from
tyranny and poverty than ever before in
history this is wondrous land
this wondrous land has shared its
treasures and ideals and shed the blood
of its finest Patriots to help another
to help make another better world and as
we did so we made our own civilization
more just freer more accomplished and
prosperous than the America that existed
when I watched my father go off to war
on December 7th 1941 to fear the world
we have organized and led to
three-quarters of a century to abandon
the ideals we have advanced around the
globe to refuse the obligations of
international leadership and our duty to
remain the last best hope of Earth for
the sake of some half-baked spurious
nationalism cooked up by people who
would rather find escapes and solve
problems
this is he says unpatriotic is an
attachment to any other tire dogma of
the past that Americans consigned to the
Hg the ash heap of history we live in a
land made of ideals not blood and soil
we are the custodians of those ideals at
home and their champion abroad we’ve
done great good in the world that
leadership has had its costs but we have
become incomparably powerful and wealthy
as we did it we have a moral obligation
to continue in our just cause and we
would bring wouldn’t shame on ourselves
if we dump
we will not thrive in a world where our
leadership and ideals are absent
we wouldn’t deserve to I’m the luckiest
guy on earth I have served America’s
caused the cause of our security and the
security of our friends the cause of
freedom and equal justice all my adult
life I haven’t always served it well I
haven’t even always appreciated what I
was serving but among a few
compensations of old age is the acuity
of hindsight I see now that I was part
of something important that drew me
along in its wake even when I was
diverted by other interests I was
knowingly or not along for the ride as
America made the future better than the
past and I’ve enjoyed every single day
of it the good ones and the not so good
ones I’ve been inspired by the service
of better Patriots of me I’ve seen
Americans from exact rifice ‘as for our
country and their causes and for people
who were strangers to them but for our
common humanity sacrifices that were
much harder than the service ever has to
me and I’ve seen what they’ve done the
lights they free from tyranny and
injustice the whole encouraged the
dreams they’ve made achievable may God
bless them may God bless america and
give us the strength and the wisdom and
the generosity and compassion to do our
duty for this wondrous land and for the
world that counts on us with all its
suffering endanger the world still looks
to the example and leadership of America
to become another better place what a
greater cause could anyone ever serve
thank you again for this honor
I’ll treasure
[Applause]