Unfinished Task
by Everett McKinley Dirksen
What strange doubts assail this timid generation of today as it beholds the challenges to
both liberty and equality. We seem beset with
fear not faith, with doubt not confidence,
with compromise not conviction, with dismay
not dedication. We are drenched with the literature of fear and doubt. Survival has become the main theme. The fall-out shelter
from which the stars of hope and courage
cannot be seen has become the symbol of our
fears and misgivings.
Are we to become fearful, unworthy legatees in a blessed, united land where the earth
is fertile to our every need, where the skills
and ingenuity of men are boundless, where
the burdens are bearable, where decent living
is within the reach of all, and where the genius to produce is unlimited?
Perhaps we have lost our sense of continuity? Perhaps we have forgotten that we
move in that same endless stream which
began with our forefathers and which will
flow on and on to embrace our children and
our children's children. If we have, there will
have gone with it that sense of individual responsibility which is the last best hope that a
nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to
equality can long endure.
Comes then the reminder from the man
from Illinois. Men died here and men are
sleeping here who fought under a July sun
that the nation might endure, united, free,
tolerant, and devoted to equality. The task
was unfinished. It is never quite finished.
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