McCain Update, New Video

McCain has a new video out--http://www.johnmccain.com/service/day3_webvideo.htm

And he did two talks today. Here is the text.

U.S. Senator John McCain will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery during the third stop of his "Service to America" tour today at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland at 9:15 a.m. EST:

Thank you. I am very happy to be here. Annapolis holds a special place in my life, and in the years that have passed since my father drove me to the gates of the Naval Academy to begin my plebe year, memories of my experiences here are often bathed in the welcome haze of nostalgia for the time when I was brave and true and better looking than I am at present. But witnesses to my behavior here, a few of whom are present today, as well as a nagging conscience, have a tendency to interrupt my reverie for a misspent youth, and urge a more honest appraisal of my record and character here. In truth, my four years at the Naval Academy were not notable for exemplary virtue or academic achievement but, rather, for the impressive catalogue of demerits I managed to accumulate. By my reckoning, at the end of my second class year, I had marched enough extra duty to take me to Baltimore and back seventeen times -- which, if not a record, certainly ranks somewhere very near the top.

Never in my wildest flights of youthful fancy did I imagine I would one day be honored to give the commencement address at the Academy as I was some years ago. And, certainly, no matter how inflated was my self-regard as a midshipman, it could never have admitted the prospect that I would someday return to the banks of the Severn as a candidate for President of the United States. My old company officer, who for four years devoted himself to tracking my nocturnal sojourns outside the walls of the Academy and my other petty acts of insubordination, would have certainly shared my skepticism. But in the intervening years and experiences, I have learned what a young man seldom appreciates: that life is rich with irony and unexpected twists of fate, and is all the more fascinating for them. And I learned this, too: that my accomplishments are more a testament to my country, the land of opportunity, than they are to me. In America , everything is possible.

I had a difficult time my plebe year adjusting to the discipline imposed on me, which included, of course, deference to officers and instructors, but to other midshipmen, whose only accomplishment entitling them to my obedience, I thought at the time, was to have been born a year or more before me. I was something of a discipline problem to begin with. The problem being, I didn't like discipline. And that childish impulse that seemed then so important to my self-respect; to protecting the individualism I had been at pains to assert throughout my itinerant childhood, encouraged my irreverence to some of the customs of this place.

It's funny, now, how less self-assured I feel later in life than I did when I lived in the perpetual springtime of youth. Some of my critics allege that age hasn't entirely cost me my earlier conceits. All I can say to them is they should have known me then. But as the great poet, Yeats, wrote, "All that's beautiful drifts away, like the waters." I've lost some of the attributes that were the object of a young man's vanity. But there have been compensations, which I have come to hold dear.

If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy, I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country's trust.

Appearances to the contrary, it was never my intention to mock a revered culture that expected better of me. Like any other midshipman, I wanted to prove my mettle to my contemporaries and to the institution that figured so prominently in my family history. My idiosyncratic methods amounted to little more than the continued expressions of the truculence I had used at other schools to fend off what I had wrongly identified as attacks on my dignity.

The Naval Academy was not interested in degrading my dignity. On the contrary, it had a more expansive conception of human dignity than I possessed when I arrived at its gates. The most important lesson I learned here was that to sustain my self-respect for a lifetime it would be necessary for me to have the honor of serving something greater than my self-interest.

When I left the Academy, I was not even aware I had learned that lesson. In a later crisis, I would suffer a genuine attack on my dignity, an attack, unlike the affronts I had exaggerated as a boy, that left me desperate and uncertain. It was then I would recall, awakened by the example of men who shared my circumstances, the lesson that the Academy in its venerable and enduring way had labored to impress upon me. It changed my life forever. I had found my cause: citizenship in the greatest nation on earth.

Like most people, when I reflect back on the adventures and joys of youth, I feel a longing for what is lost and cannot be restored. But though such happy pursuits prove ephemeral, something better can endure, and endure until our last moment on earth. And that is the honor you earn and the love you give when you sacrifice with others for a cause greater than yourself.

Our civilization's progress is accelerated by the information-technology revolution that ranks with the industrial revolution as a great pivot point in history. All around the world, the dynamics of the new economy: the internet, the communications revolution and globalization are transforming the way we work and create value; the way we govern ourselves -- or others presume to govern us; the way we live.

But even as we stand today, at the threshold of an age in which the genius of America will, I am confident, again be proven -- the genius that historian Frederick Turner called "that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism ... that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom" -- many Americans are indifferent to or cynical about the virtues that our country claims. In part, it is attributable to the dislocations economic change causes; to the experience of Americans who have, through no fault of their own, been left behind as others profit as they never have before. In part, it is in reaction to government's mistakes and incompetence, and to the selfishness of some public figures who seek to shine the luster of their public reputations at the expense of the public good. But for others, cynicism about our country, government, social and religious institutions seems not a reaction to occasions when they hav e been let down by these institutions, but because the ease which wealth and opportunity have given their lives led them to the mistaken conclusion that America, and the liberties its system of government is intended to protect, just aren't important to the quality of their lives.

I'm a conservative, and I believe it is a very healthy thing for Americans to be skeptical about the purposes and practices of public officials. We shouldn't expect too much from government -- nor should it expect too much from us. Self-reliance -- not foisting our responsibilities off on others -- is the ethic that made America great.

But when healthy skepticism sours into corrosive cynicism our expectations of our government become reduced to the delivery of services. And to some people the expectations of liberty are reduced to the right to choose among competing brands of designer coffee.

What is lost is, in a word, citizenship. For too many Americans, the idea of good citizenship does not extend beyond walking into a voting booth every two or four years and pulling a lever. And too few Americans demand of themselves even that first obligation of self-government.

But citizenship properly understood is what Ronald Reagan was talking about when he said that Americans "are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around." Citizenship is not just the imposition of the mundane duties of democracy. Nor is it the unqualified entitlement to the protections and services of the state.

Citizenship thrives in the communal spaces where government is absent. Anywhere Americans come together to govern their lives and their communities -- in families, churches, synagogues, museums, symphonies, the Little League, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army or the VFW -- they are exercising their citizenship.

Citizenship is defined by countless acts of love, kindness and courage that have no witness or heraldry and are especially commendable because they are unrecorded.

Although it exists apart from government, citizenship is the habits and institutions that preserve democracy. It is the ways, small and large, we come together to govern ourselves. Citizenship is the responsible exercise of freedom, and is indispensable to the proper functioning of a democracy.

The English writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote that America is a "nation with the soul of a church." What he meant is that America is not a race or a people but an idea -- a place where the only requirement for membership is a belief in the principles of liberty, opportunity and equality under the law on which this nation was founded.

Citizenship is our acceptance of -- and our protection of -- these principles. It is the duties, the loyalties, the inspirations and the habits of mind that bind us together as Americans.

We are the heirs and caretakers of freedom; a blessing preserved with the blood of heroes down through the ages. One cannot go to Arlington Cemetery and see name upon name, grave upon grave, row upon row, without being deeply moved by the sacrifice made by those young men and women.

And those of us who live in this time, who are the beneficiaries of their sacrifice, dare not forget what they did and why they did it, lest we lose our own love of liberty.

Love of country, my friends, is another way of saying love of your fellow countrymen -- a truth I learned a long time ago in a country very different from ours.

That is the good cause that summons every American to service. If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. I hope more Americans would consider enlisting in our Armed Forces. I hope more would consider running for public office or working in federal, state and local governments. But there are many public causes where your service can make our country a stronger, better one than we inherited. Wherever there is a hungry child, a great cause exists. Where there is an illiterate adult, a great cause exists. Wherever there are people who are denied the basic rights of Man, a great cause exists. Wherever there is suffering, a great cause exists.

The good citizen and wise person pursues happiness that is greater than comfort, more sublime than pleasure. The cynical and indifferent know not what they miss. For their mistake is an impediment not only to our progress as a civilization but to their happiness as individuals.

As blessed as we are, no nation complacent in its greatness can long sustain it. We, too, must prove, as those who came before us proved, that a people free to act in their own interests, will perceive those interests in an enlightened way, will live as one nation, in a kinship of ideals, and make of our power and wealth a civilization for the ages, a civilization in which all people share in the promise and responsibilities of freedom.

Should we claim our rights and leave to others the duty to the ideals that protect them, whatever we gain for ourselves will be of little lasting value. It will build no monuments to virtue, claim no honored place in the memory of posterity, offer no worthy summons to the world. Success, wealth and celebrity gained and kept for private interest is a small thing. It makes us comfortable, eases the material hardships our children will bear, purchases a fleeting regard for our lives, yet not the self-respect that, in the end, matters most. But sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause, your self-respect assured.

All lives are a struggle against selfishness. All my life I've stood a little apart from institutions that I had willingly joined. It just felt natural to me. But if my life had shared no common purpose, it would not have amounted to much more than eccentric. There is no honor or happiness in just being strong enough to be left alone. As one of my potential opponents often observes, I've spent fifty years in the service of this country and its ideals. I have made many mistakes, and I have my share of regrets. But I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I wasn't grateful for the privilege. That's the benefit of service to a country that is an idea and a cause, a righteous idea and cause. America and her ideals helped spare me the worst consequences of the deficiencies in my character. And I cannot forget it.

When I was a young man, I thought glory was the highest attainment, and all glory was self-glory. My parents had tried to teach me otherwise, as did the Naval Academy. But I didn't understand the lesson until later in life, when I confronted challenges I never expected to face.

In that confrontation, I discovered that I was dependent on others to a greater extent than I had ever realized, but neither they nor the cause we served made any claims on my identity. On the contrary, they gave me a larger sense of myself than I had ever had before. And I am a better man for it. I discovered that nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the differences in the world.

Thank you.

ARLINGTON, VA -- U.S. Senator John McCain will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery during the fourth stop of his "Service to America" tour today at the Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, Florida at 4:00 p.m. EST:

Thank you. On the day I graduated from the Naval Academy and received my commission, I listened to President Eisenhower deliver the commencement address. I admired President Eisenhower very much. But I must admit I remember little of his remarks, impatient as I was to enjoy the other celebrations of the day and mindful that given my undistinguished class standing I would not have the privilege of shaking the President's hand. I do recall, vaguely, that he encouraged his audience of Navy ensigns and Marine lieutenants to become "crusaders for peace."

I came to Pensacola to become an aviator, and, eventually, an instrument of war for my country. I have very happy memories of my time here. It is hard to imagine how I could not have happy memories of this place. I was a very young man entering a very exciting profession with few priorities greater than my own amusement. Of course, my interests then were focused more on cultivating the image of a naval aviator that strongly appealed to my vanity than on becoming proficient in my chosen profession and understanding the purposes and full meaning of the duty to my country that came with my commission. I wanted to live the life of a daring, brash, fun-loving flyer, indifferent to the hazards of his profession, calm and stoic when the adrenalin flowed, fatalistic about life and death situations, and determined to live every non dangerous moment of his life to the fullest.

I thought that image, which I doubt I ever quite perfected, would prove irresistible to everyone I knew, and especially so to girls whose attention I sought. There are compensations to growing older, my friends, but the late discovery that you were probably not quite the charming, irresistible young man you once believed you were, but rather callow, conceited and often stupid is not among them. In truth, the image I aspired to was, in the end, only irresistible to one person -- me, and it was a very childish attraction. It was little different than playing soldiers when I was a boy, except the government provided me an attractive uniform, a small salary, and a real and expensive airplane, which they eventually let me fly, catapulting me from the deck of a pitching aircraft carrier and expecting me, and more importantly my airplane, to return safely to the same place. I know better now what I was really being prepared to bec ome. But that sign of maturity, like so many others, had to wait for the self-awareness that comes from having a place in a real, not an imaginary world; a world that made short work of childhood dreams of glamour. That is not to say, however, that my time in Pensacola wasn't as fun as I thought it was at the time. My memories of this place are happy ones for a reason. I enjoyed every single moment of my life here, from learning to fly to blowing my pay at Trader Johns. But I was sent here for more serious purposes than that, and it would take me a while to understand that.

It will surprise no one that I think service in the United States Armed Forces to be among the highest expressions of patriotism and the most personally rewarding experiences. For many years the United States Navy was the only world I knew, and, all these years later, it is still the world I know best and love most. After I earned my wings, I served in squadrons in the Atlantic Fleet, on board the Intrepid and Enterprise. Mediterranean cruises and their ports of call in Europe were pleasant duty for young, single aviators, and I made the most of it. And much of my affection for the Navy, and my love of flying off carriers was still a reflection of childhood daydreams, stimulated by long afternoons in my grandmother's house reading about the exploits of heroes, fictional and real, and craving the kinds of adventures they had. I had wanted a life of adventure, and while visiting the Isle of Capri or the casinos of Monte Carlo seemed fairly adventurous at the time, I knew my ultimate adventure would have to be in more challenging circumstances than those I had thus far experienced. My idea of war, which was not derived from personal experience, hadn't advanced much further than the way I had conceived it as a boy: the biggest adventure of all. That romantic conception would also have to wait for later experiences to teach me just how foolish an idea it was.

Although, I still possessed immature notions about military service, I had started to feel the need to move on, a natural impulse for me. I was, at least beginning to desire a more serious reputation. Like my father and grandfather, I came to love life at sea. I volunteered for bridge watches and qualified as an "officer on the deck underway," capable of commanding a carrier at sea. My reputation did not improve all that much, as much of it still rested on my more self-indulgent behavior. I once knocked down power lines in southern Spain, flying too low for no good reason, and temporarily cut the electricity to a great many Spanish homes. But I began to give my superiors some reason to think I might eventually prove myself, if not as gifted an officer as my father and grandfather had been, perhaps competent enough not to squander entirely my legacy.

In October of 1962, I had just returned from a Mediterranean cruise aboard the Enterprise. My squadron had flown off the carrier for Oceana Naval Station, where we would train out of land bases until our next deployment.

A few days after our return, we unexpectedly received orders to fly our planes back to the Enterprise. Our superiors told us that a hurricane was coming, and the carrier needed to put out to sea to avoid damage. That aroused our curiosity since none of us had heard any forecast of an approaching hurricane. In addition to the A-1s we flew, the Enterprise carried long-range attack planes, which typically had a hard time managing carrier take-offs and landings. We embarked on our mysterious deployment without them.

As the Enterprise passed Cherry Point, Virginia, a Marine squadron of A-4s approached and attempted to land. I watched the scene from the air tower. Several of the pilots had considerable difficulty trying to land. Our air boss turned to a Marine officer and told him we didn't have time to wait for all their planes to land; some of them would have to return to base. The Marine replied that the planes didn't have enough fuel left to return to base and would have to land on the carrier.

I was puzzled by the apparent urgency of our mission. We had been hustled back to the carrier, leaving some of our planes behind; and deploying the Marine squadron with only enough fuel to land or ditch. Clearly, something big was underway. The mystery was solved a short while later when we all assembled in the ready room to listen to a broadcast of President Kennedy informing the nation that the Soviets were basing nuclear missiles in Cuba.

The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first carrier to reach the waters off Cuba. For about five days, we believed we were going into action. We had never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first combat mission. Flyers and crewmen alike adopted a cool-headed, business-as-usual attitude toward our mission, but inwardly we were as excited as we could be.

After five days the tension eased, as it became apparent the crisis would be resolved peacefully. We weren't disappointed to be denied our first experience of war, but our appetites were whetted and our imaginations fueled. We all looked forward to the occasion when we would finally have the chance to do what we had been trained to do, and discover, at last, if we were brave enough for the job.

But I had also begun to recognize that military service and war were more than an adventure for boys with vivid imaginations and a measure of audacity. They offered admission into history, possibly a big part of history, a much more daunting enterprise than proving one's mettle and with much greater things at stake than personal reputation or even the life and death of soldiers. The Cuban Missile Crisis could have caused a nuclear war, and we had been part of our country's response to the threat, but used in such a way to help forestall a chain of events from running to that terrible conclusion.

I cannot say I had completely lost my self-centered conception of my duty. For that I had to have a more expansive view of my country. I loved my country then and now. And I was reasonably well-read in history, and certainly grasped the uniqueness of America, a country not rooted in land and blood, but in an idea, an inspiring and noble idea. But, as Americans often do, my appreciation of the country was more focused on the many advantages and opportunities of American life. Yet that early experience I had with a genuinely historic crisis gave me a greater perspective on what I had truly committed myself to, even as a very junior officer. The defense of my country was important not only to the security of my countrymen and the blessings of life in America. It was important to the world: to the peace and stability of the world and to advancing in a hostile world those ideals we believe are universal. I was part of that great cause, a small and unessential part, but a part nonetheless. And to serve it as well as it deserves I would have to learn to subordinate personal ambitions and conceits, even parts of your nature that you pride yourself on, to a much more important good. Of course, I didn't grasp the full import of this revelation until some years later, when my time at war finally arrived.

I have long argued that the United States must significantly increase the size of our Army and Marine Corps. I think the security challenges we face today absolutely require it. The former Secretary of Defense disagreed, and we waited too long to begin that build-up. Had we begun to do it right after 9/11, as we realized that we were now in a global struggle against a malicious enemy, or as we embarked on two wars, or even when it became clear to many of us that our flawed strategy and inadequate troop levels in Iraq were going to result in that conflict lasting far longer than anticipated, we would not be in the situation we are in now. The strain our involvement in Iraq has placed on the readiness of our military would not be so acute. But that is the past, and while we can argue about it indefinitely, it won't solve the problem we now confront. We must increase the size of our military, and much more so than we have done to date. It is an urgent priority.

Obviously, that is going to require greater numbers of Americans to serve than have recently showed a willingness to do. We can issue appeals to Americans to accept their responsibilities to the country as previous generations have. We could institute a draft, but that is neither necessary nor desirable. We could and should call on universities to allow ROTC a presence on their campuses. That they are frequently denied that privilege is disgraceful. The United States military defends the freedom of all of us, including students and professors at leading institutes of higher learning. For some of those same institutions to refuse to allow future officers, who will one day risk their lives to protect us, to train for their responsibilities on their campuses is unfair, ungrateful and very poor citizenship.

I want every American to know that, despite its attendant risks and sacrifices, military service even for one or two enlistments or for a career is one of the most rewarding experiences you could ever have. Make no mistake, those risks and sacrifices are great and daunting even in peacetime. But few other occupations so completely invest your life with personal and even historic importance.

What we have achieved in this country is very much worth defending; worth even the most terrible sacrifices. The thought that any American wouldn't believe that saddens me. We are so invested in the world. Our prosperity, our safety, cannot be protected by retiring from a troublesome world, and building imagined walls to the progress of history. It was our founding belief that America and the world would be far better places were the natural and inalienable rights of life and liberty, the principles of free people and free markets, possessed by all humanity. And we have sacrificed greatly to secure those rights for people we never knew in places we had never heard of before. We have done so in defense of our interests as well as our ideals, but we have done so. Very few other nations can make that claim.

We are blessed to be Americans, not just in times of peace and prosperity. We are part of something providential: a great experiment to prove to the world that democracy is not only the most effective form of government, but the only moral government. And through the years, generation after generation of Americans have held fast to the belief that we were meant to transform history. What greater cause than that could we ever find? The global advance of our ideals is not the first responsibility of our military. Our military is not always the best instrument of that cause, though it has certainly served it of necessity and at great sacrifice. But the defense of our possession of them is their responsibility. And no other profession has done that so admirably, so selflessly as the United States Armed Forces. I wish all Americans the experience of such sublime service to a greater good that I was very lucky to have once had, a nd which began in practice, here, in Pensacola. Thank you.