Liberty or Bread? Herbert Hoover's Ode to Freedom during the Great Depression

Herbert Hoover

“Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon Liberty.” [italics added]

So said former President Herbert Hoover in Denver Colorado, on October 20, 1936 on behalf of Republican candidate Alf Landon’s presidential campaign. Hoover used the god term “freedom” to override the practical economic failures of the Republican Party’s attempts to overcome the Great Depression.

The God Term

Widely considered to have been one of the United States of America’s worst presidents, Hoover asserted a stark disconnection between conservatives and liberals. Ardently pounding on the god term “freedom,” Hoover ignored the disastrous consequences of the conservative economic policies, tight money and protective tariffs, which aggravated the Great Depression’s horrors. Instead, he reframed the debate with the word “freedom.” While Democrats cast the debate in terms of Hoover’s failed policies versus Roosevelt’s New Deal, Hoover debated on national values. The great conservative rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver explains god terms in, The Ethics of Rhetoric: “By “god term” we mean that expression about which all other expressions are ranked as subordinate and serving dominations and powers.”

As he began this speech, Hoover warned against the growth of federal government power, which he called “illegal invasions of the Constitution.” Ignoring the economy’s wholesale decline, the 16.9% unemployment rate, and the banking industry’s collapse, Hoover instead focused on the god term:

“I gave the warning against this philosophy of government four years ago from a heart heavy with anxiety for the future of our country. It was born from many years’ experience of the forces moving in the world which would weaken the vitality of American freedom. It grew in four years of battle as President to uphold the banner of free men.” [italics added]

Hoover then railed, albeit in abstract terms, against President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. Again, ignoring his own policies’ abject failure, Hoover attacked “economic planning,” “attempts to centralize relief in Washington,” and “attempts at currency inflation and repudiation of government obligation.” He histrionically called the latter policy “robbery of insurance-policy holders, savings-banks depositors and wage earners.” Hoover omitted that people who held financial instruments like insurance policies and savings accounts ranked among society’s more successful members.

Donald Trump's Tariff Speech: "Liberation" as a God Term

Continuing, Hoover used inexact terms about policies while deriding Roosevelt’s supposed assault against freedom. Thus, when Hoover criticized “Marxists,” “Brain Trusters,” and “American radicals,” he may have felt that the god term overrode point by point details. Instead, consistent with conservatives’ habitual opposition to government spending, 

Hoover boasted that:

“I vetoed the idea of recovery through stupendous spending to prime the pump. That was born of a British professor.”

One presumes that the British professor was Lord John Maynard Keynes, the economist who founded the modern science of macroeconomics. Interestingly, Hoover never said what was wrong with priming the pump. By this point, the influence of the god term rendered details needless. Going further, Hoover literally condemned macroeconomic stimulus in biblical terms:

“The New Deal repudiation of Democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.” [italics added]

The Ark of the Covenant is found in the Hebrew scriptures (e.g., Deut. 31:9) Hoover thundered that the New Deal, with its vastly increased governmental power, would destroy national freedom and spread suffering:

“Let me say to you that any measure which breaks our dykes of freedom will flood the land with misery.” [italics added]

Indeed, continuing to slight the practical pros and cons of economics, Hoover instead emphasized the god term of freedom:

“I am proud to have carried the banner of free men to the last hour of the term my countrymen entrusted it to me.” [italics added]

Mystical Power Overrides Economic Details

Soup Kitchen Feeding the Hungry, 1936

Since Hoover was using “freedom” as a god term, a term that had by now achieved almost mystical power, he implied that freedom overrode mere economic considerations. Nearing his conclusion, Hoover marked a line between economic welfare (which he said he supported!) and moral principles. He did not, however, rank economics and moral principles equally: instead, his first and foremost principle was freedom. Without freedom, he asked, what good could material success do for us? Why, he wondered, would we sacrifice our freedom at the cost of moral collapse? Offering another biblical allusion, Hoover said:

“There are things far more important to a nation than material welfare. It is possible to have a prosperous country under a dictatorship. It is not possible to have a free country. No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men. What is the nation profited if it shall gain the whole world and lose its own soul?” [italics added]

That last question recalls Mark 8:36 from the Christian Bible: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

The reader will have noted by now that Hoover discussed freedom in an entirely negative sense. That is, freedom meant the absence of government restraint. Hoover never mentioned restraints that business conglomerates and trusts might impose upon their workers or customers, nor did he consider the kind of freedom that means nothing more than the freedom to do without. In contrast, a few years later, Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech would include Freedom from Want. Freedom from Want placed freedom in a more positive sense – not merely the absence of restraint, but the positive freedom to live a fruitful life. Thus, Hoover repudiated not just Roosevelt’s policies, but also the value structure that Roosevelt was still developing.

Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” Speech, a Lesson in Positive Justice

Eleanor Roosevelt's Speech about the Struggle for Freedom

Conclusion

Hoover asked an important question, and we should not underestimate it. His lofty reification of the moral issue of freedom deserves our respect. At the same time, his casual dismissal of the economy’s nearly total collapse, like his stubborn review of his own failed policies, gives us pause. His attempt to equate the New Deal with Marxism and dictatorship was hyperbolic enough to weaken his credibility. For him to equate the free enterprise system with biblical values seemed to me like quite a stretch. Still, when lofty moral goals conflict with a harsh economic disaster, we need to wonder what kind of freedom Hoover was talking about. People enjoy liberty, yes, but no one wants to starve free while other people thrive.

Yet, to economic historians, it is entirely unclear that Roosevelt’s economic policies were actually much better than Hoover’s. Nevertheless, what made the rhetorical difference is that Roosevelt gave people hope by speaking as if he cared about the people, while Hoover only seemed to care about abstract values that somehow only seemed to support individuals who were already thriving. Perhaps that difference in attitude is what propelled Roosevelt to one landslide election victory after another.

The same harsh rhetorical contrast between liberty and prosperity marks our political discourse today. Both sides have a point. For example, Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, told the Faith and Freedom Conference that:

“The danger that we have right now is the energy, the excitement, the grassroots operation, the money is on the side of the insurgent left and they are openly running as Marxists, communists, for Congress!”

Governments can, indeed, oppress our freedom. Yet, wise government can sometimes alleviate our suffering. As a god term, “freedom” carries great rhetorical power. Can the god term, however, fill an empty dinner table?

by William D. Harpine   

______________

Personal note: My parents both grew up during the Great Depression. My paternal grandfather left his family’s rocky farm in the Shenandoah Valley and made a good living as a wholesale grocery salesman. As a result, my father grew up in a large house that was decorated with glorious woodwork and equipped with modern appliances, and his childhood never knew poverty. My father later joked that his father’s business sense never passed down to his descendants, and, to my regret, he had a point. In contrast, my mother, the child of eastern European immigrants, grew up desperately poor. Her father was a carpenter in a steel mill but handled his money poorly, while her mother raised chickens and sold eggs. They still raised 12 successful children through the Great Depression.

Here Is My Family's Immigration Story

Research Note: The rhetorical theorist and literary critic Kenneth Burke wrote about “god terms” in his 1945 book, The Grammar of Motives. Richard M. Weaver later made god terms central to his theory of rhetoric in The Ethics of Rhetoric. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Herbert Hoover, Executive Office of the President, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of soup kitchen line, US government, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Crystal Eastman and the Right to Vote: "Now We Can Begin"

Crystal Eastman

“Freedom is a large word,” said Crystal Eastman, feminist lawyer and social reformer, in her groundbreaking speech, “Now We Can Begin.”

She published a text of her speech in December 1920 after ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave women the equal right to vote. 

Her views, considered radical at the time, polarized her audience in sometimes bitter language. Stating seemingly radical values with stark word choice and isocolonic sentence structure, that is, using a balance and contrast formula like “there is this, and there is that.” Eastman accentuated two opposing viewpoints. Never one to be satisfied with mere victory, she said this ratification per se was no accomplishment at all, but merely a time to begin the real work.

She immediately polarized the response between presumably conservative men and enthusiastic women:

“Men are saying perhaps, ‘Thank God, this everlasting woman’s fight is over!’ But women, if I know them, are saying, ‘Now at last we can begin.’ Most women will agree that August 23, the day when the Tennessee legislature finally enacted the Federal suffrage amendment, is a day to begin with, not a day to end with.”

The balance-and-contrast language presented two opposing poles: “Men are saying...but women ... are saying.” She offered no middle ground, supported no status quo!

So, instead of seeking moderation, Eastman reminded women that getting the vote meant nothing more than the chance to vote for their own independence, opportunity, and freedom. She polarized the issues into opposing concepts. Freedom versus subservience. Men versus women. Freedom versus an oppressive economic system. Tradition versus progress.

The idea behind polarization is not to gain majority support for one’s opinions, but rather to force people into opposing attitudes, thus motivating one’s supporters. Radical speakers don’t expect to get a majority, nor do they look to gain milquetoast support from milquetoast supporters. Instead, they seek dedicated workers who commit themselves to the cause. A polarizing speaker does not mind offending people. She does, however, mind very much if an apathetic crowd stumbles out of the lecture hall, bored to a stupor.

Steve Bannon's Polarizing Value Voters Summit Speech

 
Turning to policy, Eastman equated women’s rights with the liberation of poverty-stricken countries:

“What they [women] are after, in common with all the rest of the struggling world, is freedom.” [italics added]

Eastman’s dramatic phrase “struggling world” sharply identified American women with the world’s oppressed people. “Struggling world” implied that American women were not living in the more advanced world that American men inhabited. Then, as it would now, to equate American women with the suffering poor of impoverished nations must have shocked people.

Yet, paradoxically, Eastman did not totally assume that American men were thriving. Consistent with her era’s version of socialism, she decried wage labor as tantamount to slavery:

“The vast majority of women as well as men are without property, and are of necessity bread and butter slaves.” [italics added]

“Slaves’ was obvious hyperbole, further encouraging polarization.

Next, pounding on issues that only voting might cure, Eastman decried laws and social customs that

1920 Poster

suppressed women and blocked their self-advancement. She attacked social norms that barred women from seeking success. Emphasizing that the vote, and only the vote, could achieve her goals, Eastman proposed particular solutions:

“How shall we approach this next feminist objective? First, by breaking down all remaining barriers, actual as well as legal, which make it difficult for women to enter or succeed in the various professions, to go into and get on in business, to learn trades and practice them, to join trades unions.” [italics added]

By this point, Eastman was speaking for social reform, not just legal changes: “actual as well as legal.”

We must recall that United States was industrializing rapidly in the early 20th century. The country was transforming from a farming society into an industrial nation. As factories sprang up, young people often sought the economic security that farm life no longer offered. In that changing economy, Eastman insisted that women could participate in the changing world only when traditional barriers were removed. In that light, her pro-women goals included legalizing birth control, equalizing education, and removing artificial barriers that blocked women’s progress:

“With all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed,… with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing.” [italics added]

“All special barriers” emphasized that women suffered, not because they were inferior, but because men had passed laws and adopted social customs that prevented women from advancing. The term “special” highlighted the division, the polarization, between men’s rights of men and women’s rights.

Industrial development had, inevitably, left many people behind. Old legal structures blocked women from entering the new economy. That is why Eastman insisted that only the right to vote could accomplish that goal.

Susan B. Anthony's Famous Speech about the Right to Vote

Sojourner Truth's Speech on Women's Rights

Eastman’s policies were shockingly liberal by her era’s standards. Yes, women had by 1920 advanced past the horrors of an Anne Brontë novel, but there was still much progress to make, and Eastman never hesitated to display her bitterness toward injustices. She knew that her opponents often derided women as inherently inferior. Indeed, only this year did Virgina fully legalize birth control. Abortion is often still forbidden, even when medically required. In my youth in the 1950s, the word spread around my school in conservative Virginia that the only professions available to women were nursing, teaching, and secretarial work. Furthermore, as late as the 1970s, women still sometimes had trouble getting credit from banks, buying a house in their own names, or even opening checking accounts.

For such considerations, Eastman used the two-pronged tactic of polarization. She identified problems, proposed solutions, and expressed outrage. Yes, a speech like hers would surely offend middle of the road people. So what? She was not talking to middle-of-the-road people. Instead, she energized people who would contend, work, and struggle for massive social and legal changes. Eastman’s forcefulness, sarcasm, and, let us be frank, bitterness coalesced to create her persuasive strategy.

Throughout this speech, Eastman ignored slanders against women, seeking their economic and moral advancement instead of giving moral reproach, until, seemingly out of nowhere, she reached her speech’s sudden, startlingly caustic, final words about women:

“It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”

by William D. Harpine 

_________

Historical Note: Eastman published her speech in The Liberator, a left-wing political magazine that she and her brother co-founded. Eastman also co-authored an early version of the Equal Rights [for women] Amendment that the United States has often debated but never ratified. Does that mean that Eastman’s rhetoric ranged too far, in too radical a direction? Or does it mean that her work is, a century later, still incomplete? Worse, does it mean that we are still too polarized to act?

Eastman co-founded the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which evolved into the American Civil Liberties Union.

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Crystal Eastman, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Image of voting poster, public domain, via Wikimedia Common

Abraham Lincoln's Cincinnati Speech Endorsed Immigration

Abraham Lincoln

On February 12, 1861, Abraham Lincoln told a group of German immigrants in Cincinnati that:

“While man [sic] exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.”

My simple thesis today is that Lincoln, the Republican Party’s first president, not only supported immigration, but regarded immigrants with goodwill, equality, and compassion.

Lincoln supported immigration in this brief speech in Cincinnati, Ohio. He stated that immigrants equaled everyone else in merit. That Lincoln’s welcoming position aroused controversy in 1861, just as it does today, should surprise no one. In the wry, chatty style at which he excelled, Lincoln assured the crowd that they, as immigrants, equaled everyone else:

“In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. [Laughter and cheers.] They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. [Cheers.]” 

Lincoln continued that the United States had plenty of room to accommodate immigrants:

“And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed. [Cheers.]”

Lincoln’s simple compassion, welcoming the immigrants to “better their condition by leaving their old homes,” represented the Republican Party’s sympathetic attitude.

We must clearly recall that immigrants in 1861 faced discrimination and prejudice just as they do today. As historian Laura Leddy Turner notes, “The German, Irish and Italian immigrants who arrived in America during the 1800s often faced prejudice and mistrust.” The same was true two generations later, when my Ukrainian grandparents and their offspring, including my mother, overcame discrimination in western Pennsylvania. Sadly, the same obstacles afflict Latina/Latino and Haitian immigrants today. Lincoln’s statement of equality did not merely represent political or economic wisdom; it demonstrated the compassion for which he and his political movement were becoming famous.

Trump and Vance Spread Lies about the Haitian Immigrants. But Here Is My Family's Story.

 
Yes, times have changed, but why should our values change? Lincoln had begun his speech, not with policy, but by stating a value: that we all share a duty to “assist in ameliorating” the suffering of others. Can today’s Republican Party emulate the wise attitudes and policies that its first great champion conveyed? As the Hebrew Scriptures assure us, there is nothing new under the sun, and prudent men and women can always learn from the past. When honorable people speak, judicious people listen!

Abraham Lincoln Raised the Flag: A Speech of Principle. A Speech for the Ages

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: “The Better Angels of Our Nature” 

I do hope that all my fellow Americans celebrated a wonderful Independence Day yesterday. God bless the United States of America. May we always be free, and may our freedom always be tempered by justice.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Abraham Lincoln, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ronald Reagan Called for Unity on the Fourth of July

Ronald and Nancy Reagan, 1986

The United States of America stands for liberty, justice and equality for all. That is a values statement: a simple statement, radical in 1776, still radical today. On Independence Day, July 4, 1986, 40 years ago today, standing before the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, President Ronald Reagan praised America’s values. Recalling the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he remarked on “On the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.” He reminded the audience that the Declaration of Independence affirmed that everyone is “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those values, he insisted, must guide our nation. 

Thus, Reagan’s stirring speech reminded the United States that we all stand equal, in our diversity, and that immigrants from far and wide came past Liberty’s torch to seek the United States of America, the homeland of liberty:

“Last night, when we rededicated Ms. Liberty and lit her torch, we reflected on all the millions who came here in search of a dream of freedom, inaugurated in Independence Hall. We reflected, too, on their courage and coming great distances and settling in a foreign land, and then passing onto their children and their children's children. The hope symbolized in this statue here just behind us, the hope that is America.”

This led Reagan, brimming with hope, to affirm that neither religion, nor race, nor political affiliation could ever divide us:

“And so tonight we are for reaffirm, that Jew and Gentile, we are one nation under God. That black and white, we are one nation indivisible. That Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans.”

Ceremonial (or epideictic) speeches like this one are about praise and blame. Reagan excelled in ceremonies Praising America, he cited historical values for us to live by, values that can guide our great nation's policies. It is no accident that Reagan spoke with the Statue of Liberty his backdrop. That great statue had welcomed millions of immigrants. The torch signaled the safe harbor of liberty. The setting became part of the message. Reagan expressed a simple theme, a theme that hearkens back to the nation’s origins, to that great day when we proclaimed our independence and dedicated ourselves to values of freedom, equality, and justice. Those values were even more radical in 1776 than they are today. Holding to the vision, Reagan remembered that our nation was built on a foundation of great ideas. Reagan’s wise words should remind us of who we are, while inspiring us to support our American virtues. For, after all, those virtues are eternal. To forsake those values is to forsake our sacred flag.

Happy 250th birthday, United States of America! Let freedom ring!

by William D. Harpine

 
Mark Twain's 1886 Fourth of July Speech

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech

Ronald Reagan Spoke about Freedom, Friendship, and Hope at Moscow State University

_________

S.S. Pretoria, which took my grandfather to Ellis Island

Personal Note: More than a century ago, my maternal grandparents sailed past that same Statue of Liberty and landed at nearby Ellis Island (in an era when the United States welcomed immigrants with open arms), settled in the United States, found work, and raised a family of patriots. My grandmother was only 16 years old, traveling alone, desperately hoping to escape famine and conflict in her native land. They raised an extended family of engineers, nurses, physicians, lawyers, homemakers, professors, and war heroes. My grandmother became a Gold Star mother. Please, America, let us not smash the good things our forebears built. To be a patriot means to honor our values, our heritage, and our honor. May it ever be so. 

Trump and Vance Spread Lies about Immigrants. But Here Is My Family's Story.

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, US government, public domain,

via Wikimedia Commons

Image of SS Pretoria, Detroit Publishing Company, public domain,

via Wikimedia Commons

Justice Samuel Alito's Confirmation Speech and the USA's Forgotten Values

Samuel Alito

One must be careful what one says. Oh, wait, never mind, for public officials are rarely held to account. That is because much of American government, the protection of our liberties, depends as much on our cultural values as on the Constitution’s written text. 

In his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 9, 2006, Judge Samuel Alito reiterated a basic legal principle every school child in the United States of America has heard:

“No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law, and no person in—in this country is beneath the law.”

Judge Alito obviously needed to say that; otherwise, no one would have voted to confirm him to the Supreme Court. Sadly, that principle appears nowhere in the Constitution of the United States; its power depends entirely on whether we, as a people, believe it. 

Eighteen years later, securely in power, holder of a lifetime appointment, Alito who voted for the majority opinion in Trump v. United States. In that case, President Donald Trump protested that he should be immune from criminal charges. As they resolved that case, the six conservative judges all voted to provide the president of the United States with absolute immunity when conducting his or her constitutional powers, a degree of immunity (“presumptive immunity”) for other official acts, and no immunity for private actions.

The more conservative judges disagreed a bit about the extent of the presidential immunity that they invented, while the more liberal Justice Sotomayor argued that the court’s decision created a “law-free zone around the President.” That “law-free zone” places one person – the President of the United States – above the law – at least some of the time.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Reminded Us That the United States Is an Experiment

No doubt, many people believe that the president does require legal protection against harassing criminal charges.  Criminal charges might, they think, distract the president from his duties.  Nevertheless, we have the principle that I learned in high school, and which Judge Alito affirmed during his confirmation speech: “No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.” Regardless of the decision’s debatable merits, the decision to offer any kind of presidential immunity crushes that great moral principle to dust.

Judge Alito’s 2006 speech presaged the danger of living in a nation’s whose cultural norms slowly crumble, step-by-step, as an apathetic nation worries about the price of gasoline or the supply of eggs in the grocery store’s dairy section. It is one thing for public figures to pledge to follow our ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality. Those ideals mean nothing unless government officials are, at the least, held open to massive public shame when they destroy our most precious values. Unfortunately, the nation seems to have forgotten what Judge Alito affirmed so many years ago, and never held either him, or his colleagues, to account.

To understand the present, we must remember the past.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image: United States Supreme Court, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

George W. Bush's Speech at VMI: Peace through Wisdom

George W. Bush at VMI

“After 1945, said United States President George W. Bush, “the United States of America was the only nation in the world strong enough to help rebuild a Europe and a Japan that had been decimated by World War II. Today, our former enemies are our friends.” 

Can we once again make our enemies into our friends?

Bush, the United States’ architect of the War on Terror, reminded the cadets at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) on April 17, 2002, that military force alone never brings security. No, security requires justice, compassion, and forgiveness. Commemorative speeches like this rarely lay out exact policies; instead, rising to a higher level, the speaker declares the values from which wise policies must arise. Bush’s theme was not peace through strength, but peace through strength working hand-in-hand with wisdom. Have we, today, forgotten that lesson?

Bush warned that terrorists are terrifying enemies. His speech reviewed the horrors of “massacres committed by the Taliban last year, victims who lie in mass graves.” He told the cadets that “we are called to defend freedom against ruthless enemies.” Bush also discussed the ongoing efforts to free Yemen from terrorists and to protect the Philippines’ elected government from militant terrorists. Those were ambitious goals. Furthermore, unlike the United States’ current leaders, Bush cautioned that the War on Terror could never be short, that victory would never be simple:

“Yet, it's important for Americans to know this war will not be quick and this war will not be easy.”

VMI's Barracks

Nevertheless, Bush’s key argument addressed questions of value, not nuts and bolts policy. He explained that wise policies could not arise from military force alone, but only if guided by justice, dignity, individual rights, and tolerance:

“The way to a peaceful future can be found in the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. Dignity requires the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, equal justice, religious tolerance. No nation owns these principles. No nation is exempt from them.”

Is it not remarkable that Bush insisted on universal values: “No nation owns … No nation is exempt?”

Perhaps this remarkable speech bridged the gap between policy (deliberative) and ceremonial (epideictic) speaking. Bush laid out the threat that international terrorism poses to the world, thus engaging in Step One of a problem-solution policy speech. Instead, however, of laying out specific policies, he turned the cadets’ attention toward moral values. Maybe he was implying that moral values are the problem’s only solution.

George W. Bush's 9/11 Oval Office Speech: Values versus Reality?

George W. Bush on 9/11: A Message of Unity

Although his VMI speech detailed few specific anti-terrorist policies, the particular policies that Bush did pursue were controversial at the time and remain disputed today. I for one, was never a fan, and, here in 2026, justice in western Asia remains inconsistent and elusive. One must, however, admire Bush’s forthright stand that only strong moral values create security, and that all nations, the United States and its enemies alike, need to follow them. 

Let us hope and pray that humanity’s common bonds can restore themselves. Let us hope that the United States can, as we did after World War II, make our enemies into our friends. Can we resist terrorism with force, but also participate in justice and reconciliation with our enemies? Bush argued that only when we reaffirm our values, only when we are moved by justice, rather than fear, can we move toward specific actions. A strong foreign policy does not need to degenerate into mindless vengeance. The more we seek universal, uplifting values, the more we seek wisdom, the more we, as human beings, can contribute to peace on our troubled globe. 

George W. Bush and the American Vision

by William D. Harpine

___________________

Personal Note: I have often visited both VMI’s stark campus and its neighbor, Washington and Lee University. Indeed, in my youth, I considered applying to Washington and Lee before choosing a different school. Lexington, Virginia stands among the nation’s most charming towns. Both schools uphold high standards, produce outstanding leaders, and contribute to the state’s culture. During my long-ago career as a College of William and Mary debater, our team often vied with superb debaters from both schools. 

For more of my posts about ceremonial or epideictic speaking, click this link. 

My continuing thanks to AmericanRhetoric.com, founded by my late classmate and editor Martin Medhurst. That invaluable website has preserved countless speech texts and, often, videos. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of George W. Bush speaking at the Virginia Military Institute, 
official White House photo by Tina Hager, public domain

Image of Virginia Military Institute’s barracks,
Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service, 
via Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

Sting's Speech about Music's Spiritual Power

Sting in Concert

“Music is probably the oldest religious rite.”

Quite a shocking statement, until one listens to how and why English musician Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as Sting, believes that music and religion share a connection. While giving the 1994 commencement address at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Sting’ metaphor showed music’s power by equating music and religion. 

Ceremonial speeches like Sting’s express values, and Sting’s intention that day was to reveal music’s most basic value. Musical success comes, he emphasized, not from fame, but from one’s soul. That is, he explained, religion and music find common ground. All good ceremonial speeches either praise or blame their subject, and Sting elevated his audience by praising music and, in doing so, he explained music’s link to the human soul.

After mentioning his youthful failures studying the piano, Sting described his sudden inspiration when he first picked up a guitar: 

“Where the piano had seemed incomprehensible, I was able to make music on the guitar almost instantaneously.” 

Once Sting discovered the guitar, his practicing became a celebration rather than work. As he explained:

“I spent hour after hour, day after day, month after month, just playing, rejoicing in the miracle and probably driving my parents 'round the bend.”

A “miracle.” Sting had discovered something central about himself and it reminded him of a religious experience. Indeed, no words, no logic could explain where his music came from. He continued his religious theme:

“If somebody asks me how I write songs, I have to say, ‘I don't really know.’ I don't really know where they come from. A melody is always a gift from somewhere else. You just have to learn to be grateful and pray that you will be blessed again some other time.”

“Pray,” he said, and “blessed.” More religious themes! As he continued, was he mocking religion or praising music? No, not mocking, but showing how religion and music were linked:

“What I'm trying to say here is that if ever I'm asked if I'm religious I always reply, ‘Yes, I'm a devout musician.’ Music puts me in touch with something beyond the intellect, something otherworldly, something sacred.”

The “devout,” the “sacred” are, I think we should remember, deep parts of human experience. We miss part of life if we dwell only on what is rational. That may be why Sting insisted that music teaches wisdom that goes beyond language:

“It's very hard to talk about music in words. Words are superfluous to the abstract power of music. We can fashion words into poetry so that they are understood the way music is understood, but they only aspire to the condition where music already exists.”

Concluding his speech, Sting told the graduating musicians that their success as a musician was not central. No, music’s central point is to understand and heal one’s soul:

“So what I'm getting round to saying is that as musicians, whether we're successful, playing to thousands of people every night, or not so successful, playing in bars or small clubs, or not successful at all, just playing alone in your apartment to the cat, we are doing something that can heal souls, that can mend us when our spirits are broken. Whether you make a million dollars or not one cent, music and silence are priceless gifts, may you always possess them. May they always possess you.”

“Heal souls?” “Priceless gifts?” Uplifting goals indeed!

Lady Gaga Spoke and Sang for National Unity

Singer Dolly Parton's Commencement Speech

People, Sting showed, need to engage with music (or, no doubt, although he didn’t say so, with other arts). We all need to engage emotions which we cannot talk about but that the arts develop and express. For my part, although I am just a retired speech teacher, I always supported education in music, theater, dance, film, and visual arts. They matter every bit as much as reading, writing, and arithmetic. That is because, as Sting demonstrated, artistic expression is basic to our souls. As talk radio, cable news, and social media take over our world with their arguments, half-truths, and wishful thinking, we must never forget the concepts that only art can provide. Not being conventionally religious himself, Sting didn’t think to mention how religion and music often join in hymns, chants, and meditative ceremonial music. I, for one, do not think that music is religion in any literal sense, but Sting is right that music and religion both reach deeply into our souls. Therein lies the metaphor. 

We do not all need to think about the music-religion link in the same way.  Maybe we could say that Sting's mind rejected religion while his musical spirit accepted it, or we could say that music and religion guide us to truth over different routes. Maybe we could say that music and religion work together to heal us.  Perhaps best, we might say that Sting’s shocking metaphor made his audience think. 

Me, practicing

Guitarist Frank Zappa Delivered Shock Rock to a Senate Committee 

While Sting's musical art gained him fame and fortune, I myself rarely perform in public, and, to me, music means plunking away on a guitar or piano for my always-appreciative wife. Despite my long training as a logical, linear-thinking, Aristotelian-style debater, my life, like any life, requires expression. Sting did not merely speak to the young people who had just graduated from a superb music school. He spoke to humanity. Let us hear. Let us hear the sounds, see the images, or sense the actions that shape our ideas and our thoughts. This was a speech for art’s spiritual power. 

by William D. Harpine

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Theoretical Note: 

Many rhetorical theorists have studied the rhetoric of metaphors. I. A. Richards' book The Philosophy of Rhetoric has probably been the most influential work on the subject. 

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Sting: QueenbdayRAH210418-34, Creative Commons License, via Wikimedia Commons 

Image of William Harpine, by Elaine Clanton Harpine, copyright ©2026, used by permission