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To Say That We Are Closer To Victory Today Is To Believe In The Face Of The Evidence, The Optimists Who Have Been Wrong In The Past. To Say That We Are Mired In Stalemate Seems The Only Realistic, Yet Unsatisfactory, Conclusion. It Is Increasingly Clear To This Reporter That The Only Rational Way Out Then Will Be To Negotiate, Not As Victors, But As An Honorable People Who Lived Up To Their Pledge To Defend Democracy, And Did The Best They Could.

-Walter Cronkite

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To Say That We

Walter Cronkite

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To Say That We Are Closer To Victory Today Is To Believe In The Face Of The Evidence, The Optimists Who Have Been Wrong In The Past. To Say That We Are Mired In Stalemate Seems The Only Realistic, Yet Unsatisfactory, Conclusion. It Is Increasingly Clear To This Reporter That The Only Rational Way Out Then Will Be To Negotiate, Not As Victors, But As An Honorable People Who Lived Up To Their Pledge To Defend Democracy, And Did The Best They Could.

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We Must Strengthen The United Nations As A First Step Toward A World Government, Patterned After Our Own Government With A Legislature, Executive And Judiciary, And Police To Enforce Its International Laws And Keep The Peace.

World Government

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Everybody Knows That There's A Liberal, That There's A Heavy Liberal Persuasion Among Correspondents.

I Am Dumbfounded That There Hasn't Been A Crackdown With The Libel And Slander Laws On Some Of These Would-be Writers And Reporters On The Internet.

To Say That We Are Closer To Victory Today Is To Believe, In The Face Of The Evidence, The Optimists Who Have Been Wrong In The Past.

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So Now The Question Is, Basically, Right Now, How Will The Osama Bin Laden Tape Affect The Election? And I Have A Feeling That It Could Tilt The Election A Bit. In Fact, I'm A Little Inclined To Think That Karl Rove, The Political Manager At The White House, Who Is A Very Clever Man, That He Probably Set Up Bin Laden To This Thing.

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We Know That No One Should Tell A Woman She Has To Bear An Unwanted Child. We Know That Religious Beliefs Cannot Define Patriotism.

We've Always Known You Can Gain Circulation Or Viewers By Cheapening The Product, And Now You're Finding The Bad Driving Out The Good.

America's Health Care System Is Neither Healthy, Caring, Nor A System.

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Probably The Most Important Single Element That I Found In My Own Marriage Was A Sense Of Humor. My Wife Had A Delicious Sense Of Humor, And I Think I Have An Adequate One.

I'm A Romanticist In Many Ways. I Never Get Behind The Wheel Of My Boat And Dropping The Anchor Without Saying To Myself, Secretly Giving My Orders To The Crew "all Right, Lift The Anchor, We're On Our Way To South Hampton. We're Gonna Beat Them There With This Load Of Tea!"

We Are The Lucky Generation. We First Broke Our Earthly Bonds And Ventured Into Space. From Our Descendants- Perches On Other Planets Or Distant Space Cities, They Will Look Back At Our Achievement With Wonder At Our Courage And Audacity And With Appreciation At Our Accomplishments, Which Assured The Future In Which They Live.

We're An Ignorant Nation Right Now. We're Not Really Capable, I Do Not Think, The Majority Of Our People, Of Making The Decisions That Have To Be Made At Election Time And Particularly In The Selection Of Their Legislatures And Their Congress And The Presidency, Of Course. I Don't Think We're Bright Enough To Do The Job That Would Preserve Our Democracy, Our Republic. I Think We're In Serious Danger.

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Leaving San Francisco Is Like Saying Goodbye To An Old Sweetheart. You Want To Linger As Long As Possible.

I Asked [my Doctors] If I'd Be Able To Play Singles Tennis And They Said I Could. That Made Me Very Happy Since I Haven't Played In Five Years.

Whatever The Cost Of Our Libraries, The Price Is Cheap Compared To That Of An Ignorant Nation.

A Handful Of Us Determine What Will Be On The Evening News Broadcasts, Or, For That Matter, In The New York Times Or Washington Post Or Wall Street Journal. Indeed It Is A Handful Of Us With This Awesome Power.and Those [news Stories] Available To Us Already Have Been Culled And Re-culled By Persons Far Outside Our Control.

I Sort Of Think In A Way That Many Of Us Young Reporters Who Had The Opportunity To Go Overseas For Our Organizations Were Kind Of, In A Sense, War Profiteers. We Were Enhancing Our Careers While Covering That Terrible Conflict.

The Fact That You Are Here Tonight Gathered Together With Us Testifies To The Fact You Understand The Need For This Organization And The Need For Redoubling Our Efforts In This Organization To Try To Assure That Democracy As Represented By The United States Must Depend Upon A Total Freedom Of Religion, Which Is Written Into Our Constitution, Of Course, And The Mere Suggestion That Anyone Could Maintain That One's Patriotism, One's Devotion To One's Country Can Be Judged By One's Religion Is So Vile, So Vile That We Have To Take To The Streets Indeed And To Put It Aside.

Putting It As Strongly As I Can, The Failure To Give Free Airtime For Our Political Campaigns Endangers Our Democracy.

Ethics Must Be Reintroduced To Public Service To Restore People's Faith In Government. Without Such Faith, Democracy Cannot Flourish. Your Ambitious Agenda Is Filling A Desperate Need.

Television [is] A High-impact Medium. It Does Some Things No Other Force Can Do-transmitting Electronic Pictures Through The Air. Still, As An Explored, Comprehensive Medium, It Is Not A Substitute For Print.

I Don't Think People Ought To Believe Only One News Medium. They Ought To Read And They Ought To Go To Opinion Journals And All The Rest Of It. I Think It's Terribly Important That This Be Taught In The Public Schools, Because Otherwise, We're Gonna Get To A Situation Because Of Economic Pressures And Other Things Where Television's All You've Got Left. And That Would Be Disastrous. We Can't Cover The News In A Half-hour Event Evening. That's Ridiculous.

The Daily Coverage Of The Vietnamese Battlefield Helped Convince The American Public That The Carnage Was Not Worth The Candle.

Freedom Of The Press Is Not Just Important To Democracy, It Is Democracy.

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World Government

And That's The Way It Is.

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World Government

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If We Are To Avoid That Catastrophe [a Nuclear World War Iii], A System Of World Order — Preferably A System Of World Government — Is Mandatory. The Proud Nations Someday Will See The Light And, For The Common Good And Their Own Survival, Yield Up Their Precious Sovereignty, Just As America's Thirteen Colonies Did Two Centuries Ago. When We Finally Come To Our Senses And Establish A World Executive And Parliament Of Nations, Thanks To The Nuremburg Precedent We Will Already Have In Place The Fundamentals For The Third Branch Of Government, The Judiciary.

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A System Of World Order-preferably A System Of World Government -is Mandatory... The Proud Nations Someday Will See The Light And, For The Common Good And Their Own Survival, Yield Up Their Precious Sovereignty.

World Government

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