At this podium, knowing who has been here over the years, which included, for example, the presidents, Mayor Giuliani, who was then not yet mayor, and you know of all the others. And the sort of pith and eloquence that the occasion demands, I am reminded of Booker T. Washington, on whom I have done some work this summer. He went to Harvard to get an honorary degree, ironically a master’s degree. He was a former slave. He stood up in front of these pencil neck easterners and said he felt like a huckleberry in a bowl of milk. And that is exactly how I feel. Still, here we are, and when Mr. Krinsky asked me to do this, he thought it was appropriate, I contemplated it for a few minutes, and I had no argument with which to refute his request. It seems to me that it is appropriate, not because I am going to say something that you have not heard, not because I am a grand name, but because this is a serious occasion commemorating an extraordinary event and The Ashbrook Center and Ashland University, and the city of Ashland, we are here among friends.

So, I would like to say a few things. I have a central point in mind, which I hope I will be able to deliver as clearly as possible, because, obviously, I think it is important. Then I invite you to, not only ask questions of me, but to say whatever you would like to say about anything I may have said or not said. Obviously, I cannot say everything that I would like, given the occasion. What, we have until four-thirty? This is not a three-hour seminar, I understand that. But please do not hesitate, and this includes the high school students, you are welcome to be here, not only as observers, but as participants, as always, perhaps most especially today. So, I invite you to ask questions and to argue with me.

As Matt George said when he introduced me, I was teaching a class on the presidency, which began at, nine-thirty perhaps, in the morning, nine fifteen. Anyway, that is how we heard, and all of us went up and started watching what was unfolding, not knowing anything at the time. We were stricken; we were admittedly in tears. And if I can hold them back for the next hour, I will pat myself on the back. All of us there in the room with the students, as everyone else in the country and, indeed, I must say, all well-wishers of liberty around the world were stricken with this attack. A couple days ago a CNN reporter, everybody’s been doing the reports on these things of course. And I can’t watch much of it, I should tell you. I don’t know how you are with that, I can do four or five minutes at a time and then I have to go and do something less moving, because my soul can only take so much. But one comment of the reporter, interviewing a father who had watched these events unfold, as we all did, on that morning. The father said he was watching the event, not yet knowing that it was an attack, but rather an accident, on the news with his six-year-old son. And he, the father, said that it struck him what was happening because of what his son said, after the second plane hit. The boy turned to his father and said, "Daddy, look. They’re doing it on purpose." And that’s the point. They were doing it on purpose. This was an attack. This was not Pearl Harbor, where a couple thousand military people died. This was a place where, conceivably fifty thousand people could have perished, and thank God only three thousand did. Civilians. Civilians.

I went to New York in November, trying to raise money for The Ashbrook Center. It was not a fully successful trip, I should tell you. However, I went by Ground Zero and I know New Yorkers and you know New Yorkers and their reputations; these are tough guys, loud, boisterous and rude. Pushy. Never liked them. Until now. And I went to the site. And I can tell you that it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I walked to it from many blocks away. I could smell it from six or seven blocks away. And the odor became ever more oppressive the closer I got. Everyone became more quiet the closer I got to the site, and there was a kind of awe of almost a kind of religious sensibility about everyone who was around the site, doing what I was doing, visiting, looking. It was an extraordinarily moving moment for me.

Now, the thing that I want to say, I want to remind you that my talk is entitled "Defending Freedom’s Home", which I took from a speech of the President’s. And it may, I hope it will not utterly surprise you, that I want to talk about defending freedom’s home, not in the military sense, but in another way, which I will, as I go on…

The thing that we must do, briefly today, and I’ll try to be brief, honestly try to be brief and give you time to have a conversation over this, is we must not allow this horror, this act of war, this murder, to shut down our thinking about what it means, what we are, and what we ought to do. That is what I mean by defending freedom’s home. We have to think about this, we have to, even as we contemplate, teary-eyed, or look at images again of planes crashing into buildings, and buildings falling, and people jumping from those buildings from the hundredth floor. We have to keep in mind that what they would have us do we will not do. We will stay Americans, and we will contemplate and reflect on what we are, what we wish to be, what we may have been in the past.

Although this was a victory, of sorts, for these terrorists, where thousands of innocents died, I can tell you that, in my opinion, it was a victory that lasted about an hour, hour and a half. The counter attack began on two fronts. The counter attack began with fellow citizens, including of course police and firefighters, but fellow citizens taking care of one another, on the spot, as the necessity arose. Acts of kindness a million times over. It was an extraordinary thing. The second counter attack, of course, came on Flight 93 to Pennsylvania. This is a massive fact. That when Todd Beamer and the other Americans on board, decided to roll, the terrorists were proven wrong, in fact, in practice. We already know they were wrong in theory. They were wrong to think that Americans would not do such a thing; that Americans would not show such courage. Their victory lasted about an hour and a half.

The ordinary effect of this attack, of course, is clear to us all, and I am not going to belabor it at all, just touch upon it and move on and we can talk about it later if you like. We have taken calm and deliberate action on all fronts. Almost all with which, by the way, I am satisfied. This is not only, of course, in Afghanistan, but all around the world, including within the United States, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Yemen, and indeed, the West Bank. These are actions that are taken, not in the heat of passion or out of hate. They are taken as American do these things at their best, deliberately, with certain purposes in mind and hopefully with the right means to achieve those right ends. One of those has already been achieved, the regime change in Afghanistan, wherein the tyrants that once ruled and oppressed their own people are no longer there.

Now, I am aware of questions from both the hard left and the hard right on these matters, from the very beginning of 9/11, and some continuing, especially from the hard left. I ignore those. I don’t think they are worth contemplation. I think one of the things that 9/11 has done is opened up that vast moderate middle in American politics toward a serious articulation, with which I will deal with in a moment. I ignore Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, and people like that on the left who claim that this attack happened because the United States is the root of all evil and, in some way or other, we deserved it because we are the most ethnocentric society on the face of the earth, or something ridiculous like that. It is, of course exactly the opposite; we are the least ethno-centric society, not only in principle but in practice. I ignore Jerry Falwell, if I may say so, and others who may have thought, as Falwell did, immediately, and I put him on the right for these purposes, that we deserved this attack, in some way, because, after all, we are a corrupt and materialistic people, who are rolling around in the filth of our immorality. I have never thought that. I do not think that now. And I think people who make that argument are wrong, so I ignore them for these purposes.

Now, who are these people that attacked us? Briefly. This is not Nietzsche, but let me just emphasize one thing: They attacked us, not because of some policy that they disagreed with, that we have been committed to. They attacked us because they did not like who we are. Now this is a massive fact, that I hope, both in my short talk and in conversation, we can more fully reveal.

These people are nihilists. They are attacking man, mankind, persons, literally and by their own understanding. Of course, bin Laden talks of humiliation and disgrace, and he wants to overcome that. He puts, if you recollect, I mean he has said many things on these tapes that have been revealed, as well as previous to that, that the Muslims have been humiliated and disgraced, as he puts it, and I quote, "for more that eighty years." Of course, one has to contemplate what that eighty years means. Well, it means, of course, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, is what it means. Which was the last Sultanate that the Muslims have had, and since then they have been cut up into, from their point of view, sort of unnatural nation states and territories. The sultanate, of course, began with the death of Muhammed, in 632 A.D.

To them, these attackers, and of course they are, on the one hand, Muslim, they claim to be, on the other hand they are radical Muslim, we don’t even know what to call them and you well understand that. So, my comments on their Islamism or their radicalness have to do with that and not on their religion itself. I think the President, by the way, has both nobly and honorably and with honest compassion, made this perfectly clear. And those Muslims who happen to be here and are Americans, understand this and they are not participants in this bin Laden nihilistic ideology.

The same ideology that blew up those magnificent statues of Buddha in Afghanistan is the same ideology that attacked us on our shores. To them, the history, to such Muslims and such radicals, the history that they participate in and know is vivid and is always resonant in their own lives. We have seen this is not new though. I just want to say this clearly without going into details, the terrorist acts all of bin Laden and al Qaeda and other associated groups, who are now coalescing into one, they used to be many, began, really, in 1979 of course, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his business in Iran. That’s really the beginning of the long history, including, of course, the previous bombing of the World Trade Center in 1992, a car bomb, as well as innumerable other things, the U.S.S. Cole bombing and so forth, the barracks in Saudi Arabia and so on. It’s possible to trace the history of this, and I will not do it for you, for two reasons; one, it’s too hard, and the second is because I don’t know it well enough, but I will point you to an author who does this well, better than anybody.

It is possible to trace the history of this sort of radicalism and nihilism back, back, many centuries back to something called the hashshashins, or the assassins or the fedayin that goes back to those who were ready to sacrifice themselves for the cause, there was always such a group of Muslims that they used to murder particular leaders of their own with whom they disagreed, always by knife. Never committed suicide, but were pleased to be killed by the defenders of the person they were attacking. We call them assassins, we always have. As an association they call themselves fedayin, we call them assassins which is one of the few, by the way, Muslim words that has come down through the English language. It’s related to hashish, hashshashin; it has to do with a certain kind of attackers who would take hashish and attack their opponents in this manner. Bernard Lewis is the person I’m referring to, he’s a scholar out of Princeton, he’s written many scholarly books which I’m not going to send you to. You can find them on your own, but just because of the circumstances I point you to the current New Yorker magazine, which I think is dated September 9, and he has an extraordinarily long article, virtually the whole issue, that is very readable on this issue.

Now, a spokesman, his name was Suleiman Abu Gheith of al Qaeda, recently made this perfectly clear, and I quote him, "America is the head of heresy in our modern world. It leads an infidel democratic regime, that is based on a separation of religion and state and on ruling the people by the people via legislating laws that contradict the laws of Allah and permit what Allah has prohibited," and I think that’s very clear, very clear. They hate us for what we are.

Now, my major point here, which the title ought to reveal, "Defending Freedom’s Home," is that wars are won not only on a battle field, they’re won not only by guns, they’re won by argument and words. And a people, such as we, have to remember that. The guns will follow as necessary, but first we have to remember what we are and what we stand for. And this is the crux of the matter, how to best defend freedom’s home therefore, first and above all demands from us, as Americans, an understanding of what it is we are defending. This brings us immediately, as our enemies know, back to the beginning of the nation, and to a full understanding of what we are, why we are one people, and what our purposes are. This, then, will lead us to understand what the character of our people is because our character, it seems to me, is directly related to our purpose. There is no dispute here, I think. This is not a political issue as we normally understand that among parties, partisans, Republicans, Democrats, or others.

What I am about to assert is not really disputable fundamentally, we can talk about it because it needs clarification, but in itself these ends that I lay out are not disputable, the means toward those ends, I think might be, and that is, of course, the way it should be. The American Republic was, as James Madison said, "This republic is a system without precedent, ancient or modern." This was a new political order. Flip over you dollar bill and take a look at the Great Seal of the United States on the other side and among other things it says, "Novus ordo seclorum," "A new order of the ages." This is the official seal of the United States of America. It also says, "annous copu," which means, "Hope God is with us."

We established this new order founded on a massive self-evident truth, a political axiom from which all things emanate in America, all men, all human beings, not just Americans, all human beings are born naturally free and equal. And they have rights that precede the establishment of government by virtue of the fact that they’re human beings. Indeed, as the Declaration of Independence makes perfectly clear, governments are instituted among men to secure those rights that are natural to men. We call them natural rights or human rights, rights that they have by virtue of being human beings, not because they’re Afghans or Americans. Because all men are free and equal, no man has the right to rule another man without that other man’s consent. Therefore, all forms of oppression and tyranny are in principle wrong, which of course includes American chattel slavery. The original sin of this nation, of course, was not in its founding and its principles, but its inability to put an end to that practice that so contradicted, the practice according to all of them, contradicted the theory including the slave owners. Therefore, rule by the people in this regime of equality and liberty, through the consent of the people is the only form of legitimate rule. America is based on universal principles applicable to all men everywhere at all times. This is why my father was able to say, still in Hungary on his way here when I asked him why we were going to America, he said, "Because we were born Americans but in the wrong place." Smart, my old man, very smart.

America is based on universal principles applicable to all men everywhere and these were revolutionary principles. We were condemned for saying so at that time, and it was not only George III that laughed. Our burden is to show to the world, and this has been the burden from the beginning, that free men, ordinary human beings, not just Teddy Roosevelt or Peter Schramm, but Todd Beamer, can govern themselves. Our founders really did think that the 4th of July was the birthday of a new world and that that world had the power to begin the world again. "And our cause," and I am still quoting Madison, "was to become in great measure the cause of all mankind." Of course I could be quoting Paine or Jefferson, it doesn’t matter because they all said the same thing in regard to this.

But of course as we know, this new political order was not going to be simply democratic even though it smells like it: equality, liberty, consent, majority rule inevitably. But it’s not simply democratic and that I think is an interesting miracle. They did not make it into a simple democracy because all previous forms of democratic government had turned into tyrannies. This was a historical fact. This was ineradicable. They knew why, because the majority, of course, were prepared at different times, depending on their interests and passions, to act tyrannically and to subvert the rights of the minority. These past democracies never considered the defects of human nature that allowed them to do that. Our founders did.

This new form of government, although taking all its power ultimately from the people, would be a constitutional government. The people as a whole would be reformed as a constitutional people. Reformed, literally reformed, reshaped, into a constitutional people. Federal officers, including the president would swear allegiance not to the people, which is an interesting and massive fact, but to the Constitution of the United States of America. Although the government would ultimately be based on the power of the people, the Constitution actually divides the power of the people in order to make certain, as much as is humanly possible, what the will of the people would be through deliberation, as rational as possible. The power of the people is divided most obviously, what we call the separation of powers, the executive, legislative and judicial realms, and through, of course, the concept of federalism, wherein the people organize into constitutional units called states and exert their power therein within certain realms. In short, the Constitution inclines, cajoles and even forces the people to rational decision making. The scheme of constitutional government encourages the people to control their passions. And then the deliberative reason of the public can control and regulate the government. And this process, "these inventions of prudence," as Madison called them, act as both a reinforcement and an inspiration to virtue of a certain kind.

Now, I would like to have enough eloquence in my large breast to emphasize the importance of this to you. A people makes an assertion and then fights for that assertion that we are free and equal and that we have a right to govern ourselves accordingly. We have the power to do what we want to do, they say. What is the first thing that they’ll do? You American people. What is the first thing that you do? The first thing that you did after you asserted correctly that according to nature and nature’s God, you have a right to rule yourself. The first thing you did was to limit your own rule. God bless you. What an extraordinary thing. It’s never been seen before! And I am not sure that it has been seen, well, since. That is an extraordinary thing. That is a superhuman effort. Whatever happens to you as a nation, looking back at the United States of America thousands of years from now, that’s what you’ll be remembered for, that arrogance and that humility.

The difficulty with all this is that this is very, very hard to do. And our history is witness to that difficulty. It’s easy to be a slave. It’s easy to be a subject of a king. It is easy to pray at night and hope that the king is moderate and that he is not irritated by this or that, that he will not take away what little freedom that you have. No, in this regime you are continually tested to live up to your principles. You are continually tested to act like free men. You continually have to prove to yourselves, to your children and to their children and to the rest of the world that you have the right to be a self-governing people. Now, you know, what is a great reflection of this in a way.

Roger Beckett recently, I don’t know why, his office is always so clean, he was cleaning out his office and decided to do a couple of things new and he just wanted two, two things up on his wall. I love Roger for many reasons, the least of which is not this. He wanted two pictures up on his wall. One was Trumbull’s print of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the other was Howard Chandler Christy’s print of the scenic signing of the Constitution of the United States. Why is that significant? Because you see this is what the founding of the United States is. You have men sitting around, admittedly they were funny looking, they had wigs on and pantaloons and that sort of stuff—that’s a customary thing—have men sitting around having conversations. Not just philosophical conversations, having conversations about something that needed doing. And they do it. They do it peacefully. They are yelling at each other occasionally, they persuade one another frequently, whether it’s on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, they do it. And these are the people that you Americans find estimable. And this is a very good thing. This is not a single founder drenched in blood that you refer to in a crisis. Whether it’s a Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun or, let’s name them all Perseus or Lycurgus or so forth, but these are, these people in their collective activity are your law-givers. And that’s what we honor them for and only parenthetically do we remember George Washington on a horseback fighting bad guys. See? That’s not what other nations remember about their founding. And no matter how badly we are capable of screwing things up from time to time there will always be some young man in the back of the room like this to remind us of those men reflected in that Trumbull and that Christy painting, and what they said and what they did and something about them that is both estimable and good and something that we can refer to in a crisis.

It seems to me that this date provides us, as Americans, with a renewed sense of purpose in our ancient faith, as Lincoln called it—equal rights, freedom and a constitutional government. And this horrific and barbaric act has done just that. It has allowed us to partake in as it were, a perhaps even necessary rebirth of freedom, a deeper appreciation of freedom and of the sacrifices that might be made from time to time on its behalf. Sacrifices that we call on the altar of liberty, have to be appreciated.

There is only one document that I would like to quote from today. And this is a surprising one, I know, at ground zero people are reading the Gettysburg Address and so forth and rightly so. This is not a bay for eloquence, George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew congregation, Newport 1790. Out of curiosity excluding my own students, has anyone read this? Seriously, has anyone heard this? Wow. This is good. I am going to read it to you. It’s not long. George Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island, and visited the Jews. Why is this significant? Because of the separation of church and state as we understand it, not as the contemporary court understands it, but as the founders understood it in the beginning. Freedom of religion. This is the first political order in the history of the human race that, in principle and in practice, welcomed the Jews. It’s a wonderful thing, and I think fully reflects practically what we are for and should remind our attackers that they are right about us.

"Gentlemen: While I received with much satisfaction your address replete with expressions of esteem, I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you that I shall always retain grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced on my visit to Newport from all classes of citizens.

"The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.

"If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.

"The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

"It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.

"May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy."

Signed George Washington, August 1790.

May God bless us all.