Fellow delegates, fellow Democrats, fellow Americans—
We are here in the midst of trying and difficult times—times which challenge our party, our country, and the future of democracy itself.
I am here today to second the nomination of the man who has spoken out most clearly and strongly about the challenge of 1968, the man who has spelled out for all Americans the changes we need to meet that challenge, the man who has begun already to lead us toward a new day in American politics—Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota.
If it were not for Senator McCarthy we would be meeting here under very different circumstances today.
We would not have an open convention—we would have merely an echo of 1964.
We would not be testing our own procedures—because the new forces of American politics, the people who are demanding full democracy in every aspect of American life, would not be here and they are here, tonight.
We would not be considering our national priorities—we would be rubberstamping the policies of the past four years.
And above all, we would not have had a national judgment on the war in Vietnam—an overwhelming rejection of a war the American people never chose and supported—a rejection of the way we have carried on that war, a rejection of the role of the military in our foreign policy, a rejection of empty slogans and misleading propaganda.
The American people are demanding a fundamental change—that, I think, is the great lesson of the campaign of 1968. They are demanding an end to the politics of unfulfilled promises and exaggeration, an end to the politics of manipulation and control.
They know they will not get that change from the Republican Party. The Miami convention made that very clear. The question now—the great question of 1968—is whether this party—the party which has always claimed to be the party of the people—can now respond to the will of the people. The question is whether we will give them the one man whose name is synonymous with a new politics of 1968 and a new hope for America.
All over the world, 1968 is a year in which people have been raising up and demanding freedom—from Biafra to Georgia, from Czechoslovakia to Chicago.
It is a year of people—students and teachers, black and white, workers and housewives. All over the world people want to be free to speak and to move about, free to protest and to be heard, free to live honorable lives, and most of all, free to participate in the politics which affect their lives.
That is the freedom we seek tonight through the Democratic Party in 1968.
When others held back, our McCarthy argued that there could be dialogue in America—that there could be talk between young and old, black and white, rich and poor. And there was talk, there was debate, there was full and free discussion in our land.
When others held back, our McCarthy argued that the American people could hear the truth—they were hungry for truth, starving for frankness and honesty, and hoping and praying for a candidate who would speak freely and openly.
When others held back, our McCarthy argued that the American people could pass a judgment. And we have seen that judgment passed.
We have seen all that is best in America demanding an end to the immoral war in Vietnam and a full commitment to all those who are ridiculed in our country, to all those who are injured and insulted, to all who go hungry and powerless in the midst of affluence and luxury.
Americans of good faith now realize there is one candidate who has never spoken on the side of repression and violence, one candidate who has never promised more than he could fulfill, one candidate who has spoken quietly and steadily of bringing together black people and white people to make a new start in their country, one candidate who has stood for generosity and humanity toward the smaller nations of the world.
And that candidate is Gene McCarthy.
Fellow delegates, the people of America are watching us now—and indeed the whole world is watching us. They are looking to the Democratic Party to honor their faith in democracy. They are waiting and watching for a new kind of honesty in American politics.
After all that has happened in 1968, after all we have done and all we have learned—can we afford to abandon Gene McCarthy? Can we deny the American people the chance to vote for the one man who has made a difference—in our party, in our politics, and in the direction of our country?
The choice we make will be long remembered. It is not too late to look once more within ourselves. It is not too late to give the best we have.
It is not too late to get ourselves together and to nominate a man who is already one of our greatest leaders—a man who will become in time one of our greatest presidents.
I am proud to second the nomination of Senator Eugene J. McCarthy.
The Warfare State
Bond was not a fiery orator. He was not inclined to raise his fist, and he refused to shut down his opponents. But his measured style of speaking did not mean he wasn’t delivering a strong, clear message—especially during the run-up to the 1968 presidential election.
In 1968 the United States finds itself moving toward destruction.
This nation has imposed 500,000 soldiers on a small faraway country. It has tried to impose American values and American ways on the people of that country, and has nearly destroyed them in the process. It has interfered with a legitimate, localized revolution in that nation, and is destroying that nation in the process.
At home, white and black young people battle policemen for control of the streets, for control of schools, for control of lives, for control of property.
Our Congress, which without difficulty raises more than 80 billions of dollars for war every year, providing guaranteed annual incomes for munitions merchants, cannot bring itself to consider guaranteed annual incomes for the poor.
We black people find ourselves in the curious position of being better off now than we were thirty years ago, but being worse off in every way—economically, educationally, politically—in comparison with white America than ever before.
Black people make less money in relation to white people than ever before; there are more black people out of work—in comparison to white people—than ever before—and there are more black people fighting and dying in America’s armed services in comparison with white people than ever before.
We are paying a heavy price for integration.
Our housing is probably more segregated now than ever before. The United States Commission on Civil Rights has said that if all Americans lived in conditions as crowded as do the black people in some sections of Harlem, then all 200 million Americans could live in three of the five boroughs of New York, leaving the other two and all of the rest of the United States totally unpopulated.
We see the leaders of our nation condemning the Russians for having done what we have done in Vietnam.
“The fact that a small nation lives within reach of a large nation does not mean that that large nation is entitled to move in