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I thought you would be interested in Madeleine Albright's moving speech,
delivered in Prague on November 10.

With best regards,

Ken


Kenneth Wollack
President
National Democratic Institute
455 Massachusetts Ave., NW, 8th Floor
Washington, DC 20001
202-728-5500 (Tel)
888-875-2887 (Fax)
email: ken@ndi.org
website: www.ndi.org


Madeleine Albright Speech at an Aspen Institute Conference in Prague

November 10, 2016


Like so many Americans — including Mr. Trump’s own supporters — I was
shocked by what happened on Tuesday. And as a strong supporter of Hillary
Clinton, I was profoundly disappointed.


I had been traveling across the country on her behalf, and I thought we had
run a good campaign. But we fell short. And as has happened dozens of
times in the history of our democracy, there will be a peaceful transfer of
power from one party to another come January 20th. Donald Trump will need
to be the president of all Americans, including those who supported him and
those who did not.


While that is a reassuring thought to those who believe in democracy, it
still leaves all of us to grapple with questions about what a Trump
presidency means for the United States, Europe, and the world.

I don’t think there is anyone, perhaps including Mr. Trump himself, who can
give clear answers right now. I myself am still coming to terms with
happened and what it all means. But I thought I would share a few
observations and then begin a discussion.


First, Trump’s campaign used the same playbook that has helped populists
upend politics in the United Kingdom and on the continent.


He played off of the same fears about immigration, globalization, and
economic dislocation.

So whatever you call it — populism, nationalism, or illiberal democracy —
we have to think about this challenge as a global phenomenon. And those who
believe in liberal democracy and pluralism need to fashion a global
response.


Second, there is a tremendous gulf between elites and everyday people. It
has too grown far too wide and may have reached a breaking point.


In Washington, we did not pay enough attention to the frustration felt by
Americans about trade, about Wall Street, and about the rapid pace of
change in the world.


Similar frustrations are obvious in Europe, and it’s pretty clear that
Brussels has not paid attention either.


My third, and related, observation is that there is a loss of faith in
institutions, driven by the fact that technology has not kept pace with
social policy.


What may ultimately be needed is a new social contract that addresses the
unavoidable questions of the twenty-first century — questions about
personal identity and work in an age of globalization, information overload
and high-technology; about how people will be able to preserve their ethnic
pride and value their national citizenship; and about how nations will
protect their sovereignty while cooperating regionally and globally with
others.


While there are no easy answers, I still believe the only way to address
these challenges is by reinforcing the values upon which democracy depends
— the values of opportunity, responsibility, community, and respect for
human dignity.


Donald Trump may have different ideas, but I can only hope that in the next
four years we have an open and honest debate about the best path forward,
as well as a genuine dialogue and reconciliation between supporters of Mr.
Trump and Secretary Clinton.


I know that people across the world are looking at America right now and
wondering if it will ever be the same. My response is that we have been
through tough times before, and that we have always emerged stronger for it.


Democracy is a messy business that requires patience, hard work,
flexibility, and the acceptance of its inherent imperfections.


It also asks us to live peacefully as neighbors with people who are
different from us and whom we may not even like.


What most of us discover, and what I hope we will discover once again, is
that we share more in common than we think, and that we are stronger as a
people if we overcome our superficial differences and unite around our
shared interests and ideals.


But to do that, democratic values must be steeped into our daily lives.


As we saw in the United States this year, no country is free of purveyors
of hate and fear.


But the measure of a country’s dedication to the values of opportunity,
responsibility, community and human dignity is how it resists the forces of
darkness and intolerance.


We in the United States will have to show our true strength over the next
four years.

And that strength comes from the fact that we are a country composed of
people who trace their heritage to almost every other country – but who are
bound together by the values of liberty and, yes, by an unyielding optimism
about the future.


Sixty-eight years ago tomorrow, on Armistice Day, I arrived in New York
Harbor as a refugee from Czechoslovakia, which months earlier had been
taken over by communists.


Ever since, I have considered myself a grateful American. And that remains
who I am today.

For the truth is that while the dark strains of nationalism and populism
are coursing through our political systems today, they are not the values
on which American or our transatlantic alliance stands.

Instead, our alliance is grounded in a fundamental optimism about the
ability of human beings to make progress in freedom.


It is based on a firm belief in the worth of every individual.


And it is embodied in liberal democracy, the only road we can all walk down
together.


Nearly 100 years ago, Tomas Masaryk crossed the Atlantic in search of
friends for his country’s cause.

He did not appeal to America’s geopolitical self-interest. He did not
offer to sell the United States oil, or offer us access to some vast new
market. He did not promise a secret alliance against other major powers.


Tomas Masaryk had a deeper understanding of national interests than that.


He appealed to the United States on the basis of a profound connection
between Czechoslovak and American ideals.


He believed that a nation's success depends on its purpose and that America’s
purpose and that of the Czech and Slovak peoples are the same, and that our
shared purpose is freedom.


No one knows better than those in this room that freedom has and will
always have enemies. Evil may be found behind many masks, from Nazis to
Communists to the followers of *Daesh*, from the practitioners of ethnic
cleansing to the apostles of fear and hate. Over time, the labels and
battlegrounds change.


What must never change is our determination to stand together, to defend
liberty and seek truth, and to persevere in our effort to build a better
and freer life in our own countries and for all people.


No one in modern public life understood this as well as Vaclav Havel, and I
will close by quoting words of his that Hillary Clinton herself invoked at
the end of a speech she gave in Prague twenty years ago.


The quote reads as follows: “we are not accountable solely to our party,
our voters, our lobbies and our states, but in fact to the entire human
race, including those who come after us, and that the decision on the worth
of our deeds will ultimately be made beyond the realm of the mortals around
us. In the language of today's world, this means nothing more than to
harken, in our various dilemmas, to the voice that speaks to us from the
depths of our conscience."


That voice is still free to speak. And we should let it speak to the
values and ideals that brought us to this point and that should guide us
now to the future that awaits