The Psychological Toll of Rude

E-mails
Research reveals the subtle ways that impolite electronic communication
at work brings you down
By Zhenyu Yuan, YoungAh Park

Imagine waking up on Monday morning to an e-mail in your inbox that was written
entirely in capital letters—an e-mail that jolts you awake far quicker than the cup of
coffee in your hand: “IS THIS A JOKE??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” With the caps
lock key and the stroke of an exclamation point, your co-worker has just done the
equivalent of shouting at you across the office. Yet these days this kind of encounter is
almost commonplace. Whether they come in all caps, exclamation marks, silence or
snark, rude e-mails are on the rise.

For a civilized society, we’re not always so civil. In fact, rudeness is a pervasive problem.
In a 2002 report on a study conducted with a large representative sample of 2,013
adults, 88 percent of the general public indicated they had come across rude and
disrespectful people on a daily basis. And the workplace is no escape. As the sheer
volume of electronic communications has skyrocketed, the problem of “nasty e-mail” is
becoming nonnegligible. In fact, more than 90 percent of professionals surveyed in a
2009 study said that they had experienced disrespectful e-mail exchanges at work.

Electronic communication is efficient, but it’s also distant and detached. In face-to-face
interactions, people are usually aware of their mutual expectations regarding civility
and decency. Sitting in front of a computer screen, however, the need for decency
disappears. No one would think to ignore a question or respond rudely in person. Yet
with e-mail, individuals are given free rein to avoid requests or to reply in an insensitive
tone.

And being on the receiving end of such impoliteness can have a lasting effect. Studies
have shown that dealing with rude e-mails at work can create lingering stress and take a
toll on the recipient’s well-being. In a simulated work experiment, participants who
received such a message from their boss experienced more negative emotions, found it
harder to stay engaged in work tasks and answered fewer questions correctly than the
control group. The stress associated with e-mail rudeness can creep into family life as
well. A diary study that surveyed employees twice a day over five workdays found that
when employees received impolite messages during a workday, they were likely to
report more stress symptoms both in the evening and the following morning.

And like a common cold picked up at the office, this effect spreads quickly to those
closest to us. In fact, workers’ loved ones may bear the brunt of stress caused by e-mail
rudeness: A study surveying dual-earner couples suggested that employees passed on
such stress to their partner during the weekend. As a result, these partners—the
unwitting victims of e-mail incivility—reported increased disengagement from their
own work in the following week. One poorly constructed message can have a chain
reaction, sending stress signals from one recipient to the next.

But it’s not just derogatory or condescending remarks that create stress. Another culprit
is a subtler form of aggression: avoidance. Unlike active e-mail rudeness, in which the
content contains the insult, passive e-mail rudeness happens when a person does not
reply to a request, essentially giving others the “silent treatment.”

In a study conducted on the nature of e-mail rudeness, we surveyed 233 people in the
U.S. about their experiences with such messages at work. The collected data supported
the idea of two distinct forms of impolite e-mails: active rudeness was empirically
distinguishable from passive rudeness. As part of the study, we asked participants to
either upload or describe a rude e-mail encounter they had experienced recently and to
report their reactions to it. Based on the content/description of the exchange, we
classified it as demonstrating either active or passive incivility. Interestingly,
participants regarded active rudeness as emotionally charged, while they reported a
great deal of ambiguity and uncertainty about passive rudeness. Derogatory remarks—
that is, active rudeness—may get someone worked up because of their offensive nature.
In contrast, the “silent treatment”—that is, passive rudeness—leaves people hanging
and struggling with uncertainty.

With remote work on the rise, e-mail rudeness warrants even more attention.
The burden of smiling into the camera for live videoconferencing can be overwhelming,
but resorting to e-mail will not save us from stress. The use of electronic
communication has already opened the floodgates, allowing incivility to thrive in the
workplace and our inbox. That rude message from your boss is securely stored away,
should you wish to revisit it. Your request to a colleague for information may continue
to go unanswered, no matter how many times you check your e-mail.
To mitigate this stress, managers need to set clear and reasonable expectations
regarding e-mail communications. Whenever possible, organizations should create
meaningful opportunities for employees to build effective work relationships. This way,
when people draft an e-mail, they will see its recipients as approachable instead of
abstract addresses that they can demean or even choose to ignore.

For employees, one effective way to cope is through psychological detachment. The best
option is to unplug from work after-hours. Enjoy your family dinner or time with
friends instead of perseverating over a work e-mail during your time off. For those
working from home, this mental separation becomes even more important.

And no matter your level of stress, remember the rules of netiquette. How do you do
that? Spend some time crafting your e-mail. Acknowledge when you have received a
request. Reread your message for potentially inconsiderate expressions. If you are too
busy, let your co-workers know you will get back to them within a reasonable time
frame. Simply put, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and perhaps
keep caps lock off.
 The Log
by Guy de Maupassant
The drawing-room was small, full of heavy draperies and discreetly fragrant. A large fire
burned in the grate and a solitary lamp at one end of the mantelpiece threw a soft light
on the two persons who were talking.

She, the mistress of the house, was an old lady with white hair, but one of those old
ladies whose unwrinkled skin is as smooth as the finest paper, and scented,
impregnated with perfume, with the delicate essences which she had used in her bath
for so many years.

He was a very old friend, who had never married, a constant friend, a companion in the
journey of life, but nothing more.

They had not spoken for about a minute, and were both looking at the fire, dreaming of
no matter what, in one of those moments of friendly silence between people who have
no need to be constantly talking in order to be happy together, when suddenly a large
log, a stump covered with burning roots, fell out. It fell over the firedogs into the
drawing-room and rolled on to the carpet, scattering great sparks around it. The old
lady, with a little scream, sprang to her feet to run away, while he kicked the log back
on to the hearth and stamped out all the burning sparks with his boots.

When the disaster was remedied, there was a strong smell of burning, and, sitting down
opposite to his friend, the man looked at her with a smile and said, as he pointed to the
log:

"That is the reason why I never married."

She looked at him in astonishment, with the inquisitive gaze of women who wish to
know everything, that eye which women have who are no longer very young,--in which
a complex, and often roguish, curiosity is reflected, and she asked:

"How so?"

"Oh, it is a long story," he replied; "a rather sad and unpleasant story.
"My old friends were often surprised at the coldness which suddenly sprang up
between one of my best friends whose Christian name was Julien, and myself. They
could not understand how two such intimate and inseparable friends, as we had been,
could suddenly become almost strangers to one another, and I will tell you the reason
of it.

"He and I used to live together at one time. We were never apart, and the friendship
that united us seemed so strong that nothing could break it.

"One evening when he came home, he told me that he was going to get married, and it
gave me a shock as if he had robbed me or betrayed me. When a man's friend marries,
it is all over between them. The jealous affection of a woman, that suspicious, uneasy
and carnal affection, will not tolerate the sturdy and frank attachment, that attachment
of the mind, of the heart, and that mutual confidence which exists between two men.

"You see, however great the love may be that unites them a man and a woman are
always strangers in mind and intellect; they remain belligerents, they belong to different
races. There must always be a conqueror and a conquered, a master and a slave; now
the one, now the other--they are never two equals. They press each other's hands,
those hands trembling with amorous passion; but they never press them with a long,
strong, loyal pressure, with that pressure which seems to open hearts and to lay them
bare in a burst of sincere, strong, manly affection. Philosophers of old, instead of
marrying, and procreating as a consolation for their old age children, who would
abandon them, sought for a good, reliable friend, and grew old with him in that
communion of thought which can only exist between men.

"Well, my friend Julien married. His wife was pretty, charming, a little, curly-haired
blonde, plump and lively, who seemed to worship him. At first I went but rarely to their
house, feeling myself de trop. But, somehow, they attracted me to their home; they
were constantly inviting me, and seemed very fond of me. Consequently, by degrees, I
allowed myself to be allured by the charm of their life. I often dined with them, and
frequently, when I returned home at night, thought that I would do as he had done, and
get married, as my empty house now seemed very dull.

"They appeared to be very much in love, and were never apart.

"Well, one evening Julien wrote and asked me to go to dinner, and I naturally went.
"'My dear fellow,' he said, 'I must go out directly afterward on business, and I shall not
be back until eleven o'clock; but I shall be back at eleven precisely, and I reckon on you
to keep Bertha company.'

"The young woman smiled.

"'It was my idea,' she said, 'to send for you.'

"I held out my hand to her.

"'You are as nice as ever, I said, and I felt a long, friendly pressure of my fingers, but I
paid no attention to it; so we sat down to dinner, and at eight o'clock Julien went out.

"As soon as he had gone, a kind of strange embarrassment immediately seemed to

arise between his wife and me. We had never been alone together yet, and in spite of
our daily increasing intimacy, this tete -a-tete placed us in a new position. At first I
spoke vaguely of those indifferent matters with which one fills up an embarrassing
silence, but she did not reply, and remained opposite to me with her head down in an
undecided manner, as if she were thinking over some difficult subject, and as I was at a
loss for small talk, I held my tongue. It is surprising how hard it is at times to find
anything to say.

"And then also I felt something in the air, something I could not express, one of those
mysterious premonitions that warn one of another person's secret intentions in regard
to yourself, whether they be good or evil.

"That painful silence lasted some time, and then Bertha said to me:

"'Will you kindly put a log on the fire for it is going out.'

"So I opened the box where the wood was kept, which was placed just where yours is,
took out the largest log and put it on top of the others, which were three parts burned,
and then silence again reigned in the room.

"In a few minutes the log was burning so brightly that it scorched our faces, and the
young woman raised her eyes to mine--eyes that had a strange look to me.

"'It is too hot now,' she said; 'let us go and sit on the sofa over there.'
"So we went and sat on the sofa, and then she said suddenly, looking me full in the
face:

"'What would you do if a woman were to tell you that she was in love with you?'

"'Upon my word,' I replied, very much at a loss for an answer, 'I cannot foresee such a
case; but it would depend very much upon the woman.'

"She gave a hard, nervous, vibrating laugh; one of those false laughs which seem as if
they must break thin glass, and then she added: 'Men are never either venturesome or
spiteful.' And, after a moment's silence, she continued: 'Have you ever been in love,
Monsieur Paul?' I was obliged to acknowledge that I certainly had, and she asked me
to tell her all about it. Whereupon I made up some story or other. She listened to me
attentively, with frequent signs of disapproval and contempt, and then suddenly she
said:

"'No, you understand nothing about the subject. It seems to me that real love must
unsettle the mind, upset the nerves and distract the head; that it must--how shall I
express it?--be dangerous, even terrible, almost criminal and sacrilegious; that it must
be a kind of treason; I mean to say that it is bound to break laws, fraternal bonds,
sacred obligations; when love is tranquil, easy, lawful and without dangers, is it really
love?'

"I did not know what answer to give her, and I made this philosophical reflection to
myself: 'Oh! female brain, here; indeed, you show yourself!'

"While speaking, she had assumed a demure saintly air; and, resting on the cushions,
she stretched herself out at full length, with her head on my shoulder, and her dress
pulled up a little so as to show her red stockings, which the firelight made look still
brighter. In a minute or two she continued:

"'I suppose I have frightened you?' I protested against such a notion, and she leaned
against my breast altogether, and without looking at me, she said: 'If I were to tell you
that I love you, what would you do?'

"And before I could think of an answer, she had thrown her arms around my neck, had
quickly drawn my head down, and put her lips to mine.
"Oh! My dear friend, I can tell you that I did not feel at all happy! What! deceive Julien?
become the lover of this little, silly, wrong- headed, deceitful woman, who was, no
doubt, terribly sensual, and whom her husband no longer satisfied.

To betray him continually, to deceive him, to play at being in love merely because I was
attracted by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the friendship betrayed! No, that
did not suit me, but what was I to do? To imitate Joseph would be acting a very stupid
and, moreover, difficult part, for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed by
audacity, palpitating and excited. Let the man who has never felt on his lips the warm
kiss of a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw the first stone at me.

"Well, a minute more--you understand what I mean? A minute more, and--I should have
been--no, she would have been!--I beg your pardon, he would have been--when a loud
noise made us both jump up. The log had fallen into the room, knocking over the fire
irons and the fender, and on to the carpet, which it had scorched, and had rolled under
an armchair, which it would certainly set alight.

"I jumped up like a madman, and, as I was replacing on the fire that log which had
saved me, the door opened hastily, and Julien came in.

"'I am free,' he said, with evident pleasure. 'The business was over two hours sooner
than I expected!'

"Yes, my dear friend, without that log, I should have been caught in the very act, and
you know what the consequences would have been!

"You may be sure that I took good care never to be found in a similar situation again,
never, never. Soon afterward I saw that Julien was giving me the 'cold shoulder,' as
they say. His wife was evidently undermining our friendship. By degrees he got rid of
me, and we have altogether ceased to meet.

"I never married, which ought not to surprise you, I think."

 Burned Habitats Benefit
Bats
Bats proliferate in forests thinned by fire

Bats are nature’s pest patrol. Every night the winged mammals venture forth from their
caves and roosts to chow down on millions of insects, including some that plague
farmers. But habitat loss and climate change, as well as infectious diseases such as
white-nose syndrome, are hampering bats’ ability to do their job. A new study adds
another item to the list: wildfires. But not too many—too few.

In California’s Sierra Nevada ecosystem, bats have adapted to occasional blazes. But a
century of fire-suppression policies has kept some areas unburned for unusually long
periods, resulting in denser forests with thicker undergrowth. “We wanted to see how
these shifts in how fires are burning might be influencing bat biodiversity,” says
University of California, Berkeley, ecologist Zack Steel, who conducted the research
while a graduate student at the University of California, Davis.

Steel and his colleagues deployed an array of microphones to count bats by recording
their distinctive echolocation chirps and squeaks over four years at six sites in the Sierra
Nevada. Three of the areas had recently endured fires, and three remained unburned.

Seventeen bat species call these forests home. The study revealed that eight of them
tended to frequent the unburned patches, whereas 11 used the burned areas (some
species visited both). “We expected to see one group of species benefiting from fire—the
more open-habitat-adapted species—and another group, the more clutter-adapted
species, being negatively affected by fire, preferring the unburned areas,” Steel says.
“But even some of those species were occurring more often in burned areas.”
What is ideal, the researchers write, is a combination of unburned areas and ones
burned at different levels of severity—which they refer to as pyrodiversity. The results
were published last December in the journal Scientific Reports.

“When there’s lots of variation in habitat after a fire, many species benefit in different
ways,” says University of Connecticut biologist Andrew Stillman, who was not involved
in the study. “On the whole, the community becomes more diverse, and that’s a good
thing for the landscape.”

Extinguishing wildfires early leads to some species losing out on food and resources.
“Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, and many animals require the disturbance from
fire to create the types of habitat that they need,” Stillman adds. “It demonstrates
another negative consequence of keeping wildfire away from fire-adapted forests in
California.”
 Mario Matthew Cuomo
1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address
delivered 16 July 1984, San Francisco, CA

Thank you very much.

On behalf of the great Empire State and the whole family of New York, let me thank you for the great
privilege of being able to address this convention. Please allow me to skip the stories and the poetry
and the temptation to deal in nice but vague rhetoric. Let me instead use this valuable opportunity to
deal immediately with the questions that should determine this election and that we all know are vital
to the American people.

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be
doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families, and their
futures. The President said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining
city on a hill." And the President is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is
perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where
everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city;
the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one; where
students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold
for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people
who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of
the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter
doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give
their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't
see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation -- Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a
"Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places; maybe if you went to Appalachia where
some people still live in sheds; maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed
steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe -- Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped
in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a
woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed
the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Maybe -- Maybe, Mr. President. But I'm afraid not. Because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that
this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he
believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. "Government can't do everything," we
were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity
will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class
and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.
You know, the Republicans called it "trickle-down" when Hoover tried it. Now they call it "supply side."
But it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good
neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do
is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers.

It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has
always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans -- The Republicans believe that the
wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the
weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "The strong" -- "The strong," they tell us, "will inherit the
land."

We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with
the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from
his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of
education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge
that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every
ethnic group, and native Americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small
share of America. For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and
dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this
nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that.

So, here we are at this convention to remind ourselves where we come from and to claim the future for
ourselves and for our children. Today our great Democratic Party, which has saved this nation from
depression, from fascism, from racism, from corruption, is called upon to do it again -- this time to
save the nation from confusion and division, from the threat of eventual fiscal disaster, and most of all
from the fear of a nuclear holocaust.

That's not going to be easy. Mo Udall is exactly right -- it won't be easy. And in order to succeed, we
must answer our opponent's polished and appealing rhetoric with a more telling reasonableness and
rationality.

We must win this case on the merits. We must get the American public to look past the glitter, beyond
the showmanship to the reality, the hard substance of things. And we'll do it not so much with
speeches that sound good as with speeches that are good and sound; not so much with speeches that
will bring people to their feet as with speeches that will bring people to their senses. We must make --
We must make the American people hear our "Tale of Two Cities." We must convince them that we
don't have to settle for two cities, that we can have one city, indivisible, shining for all of its people.

Now, we will have no chance to do that if what comes out of this convention is a babel of arguing
voices. If that's what's heard throughout the campaign, dissident sounds from all sides, we will have
no chance to tell our message. To succeed we will have to surrender some small parts of our individual
interests, to build a platform that we can all stand on, at once, and comfortably -- proudly singing out.
We need -- We need a platform we can all agree to so that we can sing out the truth for the nation to
hear, in chorus, its logic so clear and commanding that no slick Madison Avenue commercial, no
amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth.

And we Democrats must unite. We Democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite, because
surely the Republicans won't bring this country together. Their policies divide the nation into the lucky
and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble. The Republicans are willing to treat that division as
victory. They would cut this nation in half, into those temporarily better off and those worse off than
before, and they would call that division recovery.

Now, we should not -- we should not be embarrassed or dismayed or chagrined if the process of
unifying is difficult, even wrenching at times. Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men
and women of every color, every creed, every orientation, every economic class. In our family are
gathered everyone from the abject poor of Essex County in New York, to the enlightened affluent of
the gold coasts at both ends of the nation. And in between is the heart of our constituency -- the
middle class, the people not rich enough to be worry-free, but not poor enough to be on welfare; the
middle class -- those people who work for a living because they have to, not because some psychiatrist
told them it was a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity. White collar and blue
collar. Young professionals. Men and women in small business desperate for the capital and contracts
that they need to prove their worth.

We speak for the minorities who have not yet entered the mainstream. We speak for ethnics who want
to add their culture to the magnificent mosaic that is America. We speak -- We speak for women who
are indignant that this nation refuses to etch into its governmental commandments the simple rule
"thou shalt not sin against equality," a rule so simple --

I was going to say, and I perhaps dare not but I will. It's a commandment so simple it can be spelled
in three letters: E.R.A.

We speak -- We speak for young people demanding an education and a future. We speak for senior
citizens. We speak for senior citizens who are terrorized by the idea that their only security, their
Social Security, is being threatened. We speak for millions of reasoning people fighting to preserve our
environment from greed and from stupidity. And we speak for reasonable people who are fighting to
preserve our very existence from a macho intransigence that refuses to make intelligent attempts to
discuss the possibility of nuclear holocaust with our enemy. They refuse. They refuse, because they
believe we can pile missiles so high that they will pierce the clouds and the sight of them will frighten
our enemies into submission.

Now we're proud of this diversity as Democrats. We're grateful for it. We don't have to manufacture it
the way the Republicans will next month in Dallas, by propping up mannequin delegates on the
convention floor. But we, while we're proud of this diversity, we pay a price for it. The different people
that we represent have different points of view. And sometimes they compete and even debate, and
even argue. That's what our primaries were all about. But now the primaries are over and it is time,
when we pick our candidates and our platform here, to lock arms and move into this campaign
together.

If you need any more inspiration to put some small part of your own difference aside to create this
consensus, then all you need to do is to reflect on what the Republican policy of divide and cajole has
done to this land since 1980. Now the President has asked the American people to judge him on
whether or not he's fulfilled the promises he made four years ago. I believe, as Democrats, we ought
to accept that challenge. And just for a moment let us consider what he has said and what he's done.

Inflation -- Inflation is down since 1980, but not because of the supply-side miracle promised to us by
the President. Inflation was reduced the old-fashioned way: with a recession, the worst since 1932.
Now how did we -- We could have brought inflation down that way. How did he do it? 55,000
bankruptcies; two years of massive unemployment; 200,000 farmers and ranchers forced off the land;
more homeless -- more homeless than at any time since the Great Depression in 1932; more hungry,
in this world of enormous affluence, the United States of America, more hungry; more poor, most of
them women. And -- And he paid one other thing, a nearly 200 billion dollar deficit threatening our
future.

Now, we must make the American people understand this deficit because they don't. The President's
deficit is a direct and dramatic repudiation of his promise in 1980 to balance the budget by 1983. How
large is it? The deficit is the largest in the history of the universe. It -- President Carter's last budget
had a deficit less than one-third of this deficit. It is a deficit that, according to the President's own fiscal
adviser, may grow to as much 300 billion dollars a year for "as far as the eye can see." And, ladies and
gentlemen, it is a debt so large -- that is almost one-half of the money we collect from the personal
income tax each year goes just to pay the interest. It is a mortgage on our children's future that can
be paid only in pain and that could bring this nation to its knees.

Now don't take my word for it -- I'm a Democrat. Ask the Republican investment bankers on Wall
Street what they think the chances of this recovery being permanent are. You see, if they're not too
embarrassed to tell you the truth, they'll say that they're appalled and frightened by the President's
deficit. Ask them what they think of our economy, now that it's been driven by the distorted value of
the dollar back to its colonial condition. Now we're exporting agricultural products and importing
manufactured ones. Ask those Republican investment bankers what they expect the rate of interest to
be a year from now. And ask them -- if they dare tell you the truth -- you'll learn from them, what they
predict for the inflation rate a year from now, because of the deficit.

Now, how important is this question of the deficit. Think about it practically: What chance would the
Republican candidate have had in 1980 if he had told the American people that he intended to pay for
his so-called economic recovery with bankruptcies, unemployment, more homeless, more hungry, and
the largest government debt known to humankind? If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would
American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an
election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the
kind of recovery we have now as well.

But what about foreign policy? They said that they would make us and the whole world safer. They say
they have. By creating the largest defense budget in history, one that even they now admit is
excessive -- by escalating to a frenzy the nuclear arms race; by incendiary rhetoric; by refusing to
discuss peace with our enemies; by the loss of 279 young Americans in Lebanon in pursuit of a plan
and a policy that no one can find or describe.

We give money to Latin American governments that murder nuns, and then we lie about it. We have
been less than zealous in support of our only real friend -- it seems to me, in the Middle East -- the
one democracy there, our flesh and blood ally, the state of Israel. Our -- Our policy -- Our foreign
policy drifts with no real direction, other than an hysterical commitment to an arms race that leads
nowhere -- if we're lucky. And if we're not, it could lead us into bankruptcy or war.

Of course we must have a strong defense! Of course Democrats are for a strong defense. Of course
Democrats believe that there are times that we must stand and fight. And we have. Thousands of us
have paid for freedom with our lives. But always -- when this country has been at its best -- our
purposes were clear. Now they're not. Now our allies are as confused as our enemies. Now we have no
real commitment to our friends or to our ideals -- not to human rights, not to the refuseniks, not
to Sakharov, not to Bishop Tutu and the others struggling for freedom in South Africa.
We -- We have in the last few years spent more than we can afford. We have pounded our chests and
made bold speeches. But we lost 279 young Americans in Lebanon and we live behind sand bags in
Washington. How can anyone say that we are safer, stronger, or better?

That -- That is the Republican record. That its disastrous quality is not more fully understood by the
American people I can only attribute to the President's amiability and the failure by some to separate
the salesman from the product.

And, now -- now -- now it's up to us. Now it's up to you and to me to make the case to America. And
to remind Americans that if they are not happy with all that the President has done so far, they should
consider how much worse it will be if he is left to his radical proclivities for another four years
unrestrained. Unrestrained.

Now, if -- if July -- if July brings back Ann Gorsuch Burford -- what can we expect of December? Where
would -- Where would another four years take us? Where would four years more take us? How much
larger will the deficit be? How much deeper the cuts in programs for the struggling middle class and
the poor to limit that deficit? How high will the interest rates be? How much more acid rain killing our
forests and fouling our lakes?

And, ladies and gentlemen, please think of this -- the nation must think of this: What kind of Supreme
Court will we have?

Please. [beckons audience to settle down]

We -- We must ask ourselves what kind of court and country will be fashioned by the man who
believes in having government mandate people's religion and morality; the man who believes that
trees pollute the environment; the man that believes that -- that the laws against discrimination
against people go too far; a man who threatens Social Security and Medicaid and help for the disabled.
How high will we pile the missiles? How much deeper will the gulf be between us and our enemies?
And, ladies and gentlemen, will four years more make meaner the spirit of the American people? This
election will measure the record of the past four years. But more than that, it will answer the question
of what kind of people we want to be.

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation's future. And this is our answer to the
question. This is our credo:

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness

that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart
enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good
working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a
higher order.

We -- Our -- Our government -- Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the
gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws
written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis
of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe -- We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy
in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to
help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the
table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we
proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear
freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

We believe in firm -- We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in a -- We believe -- We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.

We believe in a single -- We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most
textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family,
mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing
one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography,
or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound
one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the
future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled
man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is
our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our
failure.

Now for 50 years -- for 50 years we Democrats created a better future for our children, using
traditional Democratic principles as a fixed beacon, giving us direction and purpose, but constantly
innovating, adapting to new realities: Roosevelt's alphabet programs; Truman's NATO and the GI Bill of
Rights; Kennedy's intelligent tax incentives and the Alliance for Progress; Johnson's civil rights;
Carter's human rights and the nearly miraculous Camp David Peace Accord.

Democrats did it -- Democrats did it and Democrats can do it again. We can build a future that deals
with our deficit. Remember this, that 50 years of progress under our principles never cost us what the
last four years of stagnation have. And we can deal with the deficit intelligently, by shared sacrifice,
with all parts of the nation's family contributing, building partnerships with the private sector, providing
a sound defense without depriving ourselves of what we need to feed our children and care for our
people. We can have a future that provides for all the young of the present, by marrying common
sense and compassion.

We know we can, because we did it for nearly 50 years before 1980. And we can do it again, if we do
not forget -- if we do not forget that this entire nation has profited by these progressive principles; that
they helped lift up generations to the middle class and higher; that they gave us a chance to work, to
go to college, to raise a family, to own a house, to be secure in our old age and, before that, to reach
heights that our own parents would not have dared dream of.
That struggle to live with dignity is the real story of the shining city. And it's a story, ladies and
gentlemen, that I didn't read in a book, or learn in a classroom. I saw it and lived it, like many of you.
I watched a small man with thick calluses on both his hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him
once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to
speak the language, who taught me all I needed to know about faith and hard work by the simple
eloquence of his example. I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about
our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and
to make the world better for their children, and they -- they asked to be protected in those moments
when they would not be able to protect themselves. This nation and this nation's government did that
for them.

And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from
behind their little grocery store in South Jamaica on the other side of the tracks where he was born, to
occupy the highest seat, in the greatest State, in the greatest nation, in the only world we would know,
is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process.

And -- And ladies and gentlemen, on January 20, 1985, it will happen again -- only on a much, much
grander scale. We will have a new President of the United States, a Democrat born not to the blood of
kings but to the blood of pioneers and immigrants. And we will have America's first woman Vice
President, the child of immigrants, and she -- she -- she will open with one magnificent stroke, a whole
new frontier for the United States.

Now, it will happen. It will happen if we make it happen; if you and I make it happen. And I ask you
now, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, for the good of all of us, for the love of this great
nation, for the family of America, for the love of God: Please, make this nation remember how futures
are built.

Thank you and God bless you.