“We built a country out of many lands and from people of a hundred different backgrounds and beliefs. [...] And today there are still frictions and difficulties between regions and faiths and colors. But the success we have had in building a free nation lies in our confidence in a society which contains many societies. Our strength lies in the richness of our differences. And thus we do not fear the liberating discords of a pluralistic world society.”
Our Quote of the Week recognizes that the United States finds its true strength in its people’s ability to co-exist and thrive amid differences in background and point of view, and exercises this strength by operating confidently and collaboratively in a pluralistic but interconnected world. We share this quote as the country seems to be drifting further and further away from this vision, to its own detriment.
In his early days as Peace Corps Director, Sargent Shriver gave this Speech to the New York Herald Tribune Youth Forum. In his remarks, he lays out details about the Peace Corps’ early success, both in terms of its ability to recruit Volunteers at home, and in the demand that it generated for skilled workers in developing countries:
"[W]e started by asking ourselves the fundamental, hard questions:
First, did foreign countries really want Peace Corps Volunteers?
To find out, I took a trip around the world. I visited some of the countries represented at this conference. Everywhere I was deluged with requests for thousands of Volunteers to teach in classrooms, to work in fields, to survey roads, to design bridges, to teach athletics, to do scores of jobs essential in a developing economy.
The second big question was this: Would enough Americans of high quality volunteer to serve? In the first year, 30,000 Americans volunteered for the Peace Corps. Last week alone, we received 859 applications. We are now getting four times as many as at the same period last summer and ten times as many general inquiries through the mails.”
This willingness by Americans to serve abroad, and the reciprocal openness of communities around the world to host them, shows a desire for connection and collaboration that confirms Shriver’s depiction of national strength and an embracing of the “pluralistic world society” to which he refers in the Quote of the Week.
In a moment when fear of difference dominates and brute force is being used to suppress our inclination towards inclusiveness, may we embrace difference openly and continue to assert our desire to participate in the “pluralistic world society” that Sargent Shriver embraced.
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