January 3, 1936. Here to kill your joy.
The past few weeks have been a time of revelry for many of you, and I suppose that is excusable. We are, after all, bidding farewell to a difficult year, a year which has seen untold suffering, starvation, and misery. This is the end of a year which has seen tens of thousands perish by earthquake. Hundreds more by hurricane. Thousands more were killed in the invasion of Ethiopia - many in those first incipient days alone. Even as new wars begin, old ones continue unabated. Japan continues its aggression. Thousands more have died in China. And thousands more have died in the Soviet Union, they say, and yet there there is no war; there, rumors go, the very government has turned against its people.
This past year, the Governor of Louisiana was felled by an assassin's bullet. No matter his political affiliation, none could argue that this was justified. This past month, the editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Minnesota was murdered in front of his family for no crime worse than being willing to fight organized crime. Hundreds more in this very city now lay interred for no reason at all save greed or ambition or madness - and more continue to fall, more on these past few days of the new year.
It is easy to look forward to the new year with optimism and hope. It is easy for each of us to tell ourselves that things will be different, that we may turn towards 1936 with a sunny smile and goodwill and a decision that things will be better. Such self-assurance accomplishes nothing. Such complacency merely leads us into further destruction. The mere fact of a new year will not put an end to war, murder, or violence, for time and atrocity are continuous, not discrete. The new year will not put an end to misery. It will not, by mere fact of its existence, solve our problems.
No: That falls to us. We cannot become complacent. There is much work before every one of us. It falls to us to make improvements, to ensure that the world improves, for it will not do so on its own. We must do so ourselves.
[Slight pause]
Also, this may sound like an odd question, but did someone leave toys about my office?
This past year, the Governor of Louisiana was felled by an assassin's bullet. No matter his political affiliation, none could argue that this was justified. This past month, the editor-in-chief of a newspaper in Minnesota was murdered in front of his family for no crime worse than being willing to fight organized crime. Hundreds more in this very city now lay interred for no reason at all save greed or ambition or madness - and more continue to fall, more on these past few days of the new year.
It is easy to look forward to the new year with optimism and hope. It is easy for each of us to tell ourselves that things will be different, that we may turn towards 1936 with a sunny smile and goodwill and a decision that things will be better. Such self-assurance accomplishes nothing. Such complacency merely leads us into further destruction. The mere fact of a new year will not put an end to war, murder, or violence, for time and atrocity are continuous, not discrete. The new year will not put an end to misery. It will not, by mere fact of its existence, solve our problems.
No: That falls to us. We cannot become complacent. There is much work before every one of us. It falls to us to make improvements, to ensure that the world improves, for it will not do so on its own. We must do so ourselves.
[Slight pause]
Also, this may sound like an odd question, but did someone leave toys about my office?