名人演讲A Tale of Two Cities.docx

1、名人演讲A Tale of Two Cities名人演讲：A Tale of Two CitiesMario Cuomo: A Tale of Two CitiesOn behalf of the Empire State and the family of New York, I thank you for the great privilege of being able to address this convention. Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry and the temptation to deal in n

2、ice but vague rhetoric. Let me instead use this valuable opportunity to deal immediately with questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital to the American people.Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well

3、nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families and their futures. The president said that he didnt understand that fear. He said, Why, this country is a shining city on a hill. And the president is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.But the hard truth

4、is that not everyone is sharing in this citys splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But theres another city; theres another part to the shining the city; the part w

5、here some people cant pay their mortgages, and most young people cant afford one, where students cant afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, mor

6、e and more people who need help but cant find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesnt show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job

7、or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you dont see, in the places that you dont visit in your shining city.In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -. Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a Tale of Two

8、 Cities than it is just a Shining City on a Hill.Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places. Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds, maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Ma

9、ybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we co

10、uldnt afford to use.Maybe, maybe, Mr. President. But Im afraid not.Because, the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from very the beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Government cant do ev

11、erything, we were told. So it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer - and what falls from their table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle cl

12、ass.You know, the Republicans called it trickle-down when Hoover tried it. Now they call it supply side. But its the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded - for the people who are locked out - all they can

13、 do is to stare from a distance at that citys glimmering towers.Its an old story. Its as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some

14、of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us will inherit the land.We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact. And, we have more than once.

15、Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees - wagon train after wagon train - to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on t

16、he way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans - all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, so

17、me of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that.So, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the future for ourselves and for our children. Today our great Democratic Party, whic

18、h has saved this nation from depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do it again - this time to save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual fiscal disaster, and most of all from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.Thats not going to be easy.

19、 Mo Udall is exactly right, its not going to be easy. In order to succeed, we must answer our opponents polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and rationality.We must win this case on the merits. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond the showman

20、ship - to reality, to the hard substance of things. And we will do that not so much with speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound. Not so much with speeches that will bring people to their feet as with speeches that bring people to their senses. We must make the American peo

21、ple hear our Tale of Two Cities. We must convince them that we dont have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.Now we will have no chance to do that if what comes out of this convention is a babel of arguing voices. If thats whats heard throu

22、ghout the campaign - dissident voices from all sides - we will have no chance to tell our message. To succeed we will have to surrender small parts of our individual interests, to build a platform we can all stand on, at once, comfortably - proudly singing out the truth for the nation to hear, in ch

23、orus, its logic so clear and commanding that no slick commercial, no amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth. We Democrats must unite.We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite because surely the Republicans wont bring this country togethe

24、r. Their policies divide the nation - into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble. The Republicans are willing to treat that division as victory. They would cut this nation in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before, and they would call that divis

25、ion recovery.We should not, we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of unifying is difficult, even wrenching at times. Remember that, unlike any other party, we embrace men and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. In our family are

26、gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New York, to the enlightened affluent of the gold coasts at both ends of the nation. And in between is the heart of our constituency. The middle class - the people not rich enough to be worry-free, but not poor enough to be on welfare. The mi

27、ddle class, those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity. White collar and blue collar. Young professionals. Men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contr

28、acts that they need to prove their worth.We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics who want to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America. We speak, we speak for women who are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governm

29、ental commandments the simple rule thou shalt not sin against equality, a rule so simple - I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will, its a commandment so simple it can be spelled in three letters - E.R.A.!We speak for young people demanding an education and a future. We speak for senior

30、 citizens who are terrorized by the idea that their only security - their Social Security - is being threatened. We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our environment from greed and from stupidity. And we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to preserve our very exis

31、tence from a macho intransigence that refuses to make intelligent attempts to discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. They refuse. They refuse, because they believe we can pile missiles so high that they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten our enemies into

32、 submission.Now were proud of this diversity as Democrats. Were grateful for it. We dont have to manufacture it the way the Republicans will next month in Dallas, by propping up mannequin delegates on the convention floor. But while were proud of this diversity as Democrats, we pay a price for it. The different people that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes they compete and even debate, and even argue. Thats what our primaries were all about. But now the primaries are over and it is time when we pick