Реферат: Jospeh Freeman

socialism is. We live in a new complex world. I’d like to study this world, to understand

it, to come to conclusions about it and about the future of man. But not on the basis of

nineteenth century theories. No, on the basis of what we can learn today about the

world today.

One thing, however, is clear. The immemorial evils are with us still!

The world is still full of poverty, tyranny, ignorance, hatred, violence and bloodshed.

There are still in every country in the world — and I make no exceptions whatsoever!

– the overprivileged few and the underprivileged many.

There is inequality of the most ghastly kind today and nowhere more so than in those

countries which call themselves "socialist" and in those which have thrown off

"the yoke of imperialism" and whose leaders strut around in fancy uniforms and

rush around in fancy Cadillacs and live it up in their fancy palaces amidst the starving

millions in the rice paddies around them and who do so with the same arrogance and

callousness as the colonial administrators they chased out a few years ago at gunpoint.

And over all this hangs the threat of the most terrible, the most destructive, the most

catastrophic war in all history, the first global thermonuclear war, a war that may

annihilate mankind, as we are reminded every day.

We are all concerned about this. But each of us is concerned in a different way and

that is good. Difference of opinion not only makes for horse racing, as Mark

Twain said; it also makes for a genuine exchange of facts and opinion and thus for a

better chance to correct error and arrive at truth.

Where I stand today, gentlemen, begins with this freedom to study, to analyze, to think

and — be they right or wrong — to utter my thoughts freely, without fear of punishment,

or of reproach for anything except sloppy thinking.

For without this freedom, no true civilization, no true progress is possible. Without

it you will get a world of Sputniks without men, and where there are no men, the people

persih.

So let’s call it a day, gentlemen! Let’s forgive each other. You forgive me all

the intolerance and fanaticism and persecution I practiced on my side of the fence and