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Larry Arnn: We have with us today an Associate Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States. You may read his biography in your program.
You will see in it that he was born in Pin Point, Georgia, south of Savannah, in a shanty
without a bathroom or electricity except light in the kitchen. You will see that he is a
proximate descendant of slaves. He was raised by his grandparents, Myers and Christine Anderson,
his mother being unable to manage it financially.
You must read his book, 'My Grandfather's Son' which is an inspiration. You will read
that the Justice attended Pius X High School in Savannah, Georgia from 1962 to '64 ninth
and tenth grades. I will tell you now that Hillsdale College is proud of its 13th charter
schools, and that one of those in Savannah, Georgia operates in that building where Justice
Thomas went for two years. The eighth grade of that school is here with us today, along
with their grade headmaster, Ben Payne and several members of their staff. One of them,
Hillsdale graduate, Kayla Fletcher, formerly Cash.
Mr. Payne has forbidden me to ask these students to stand for reasons that may be good, but
it turns out it's necessary for me to ask them to stand because yesterday, almost all
of them committed to attend to Hillsdale College, and I want the admissions office to see who
they are. Stand up, Savannah Classical wherever you are. (Applause) Justice Thomas was a brilliant
student, but these guys might be better. I've been privileged to know the Justice since
1987. I formed to view early that he is the greatest public servant I know. When I became
president of the college, Chairman Brodbeck asked me who I'd like to speak at my inauguration
ceremonies, and I replied that I of course hoped it would be this greatest man, and he
did that for me, and I'm grateful to him, honored beyond any telling, honored beyond
any telling his being here today.
There are two reasons I believe of him as I do. The first is the quality of his work.
I took to redeem to his opinions after he got on the court. I had been reading everything
he wrote before that. One finds in them a great act of recovering.
He reads the constitution both originally and profoundly. He sees in it the structure
that provides the form in which the American people can pursue their purposes. He understands
that it is their document that they passed it, and that is the only law that they have
ever passed. He sees that it must remain constant if it is to remain their own. He says that
if you read it intelligently, you must, you have the duty to get the rights and the justice
of each case right according to the details, but also you must understand its large purposes
which culminate I will say according to the people who wrote it in the purposes I named
as the purposes of this college, that is, that each one of us may govern himself and his
country so as to live a fully human life.
There is in these opinions a beautiful history of American law and a treasure of civilization
and freedom. These are large claims that I do not have time to prove them, but if you
write me a letter, I will send you the opinions that do prove them. The second is his character.
He is a man deeply moved by his loves, and they are the right loves. He loves freedom
and equality.
He finds in them what the best Americans have found, the challenge to live well, to face
one's fears, to build one's character, to develop one's mind. I have seen him demonstrate
this on so many occasions I cannot count, and I stand in awe of them. He is I think
the kind of man as the greatest visitor to our college in the 19th century. I mean, the
runaway slave, Frederick Douglass. That man like our speaker today was mistreated and
abused because of the color of his skin. Of course, Douglass more severely than Thomas,
but not more severely than Thomas' ancestors.
The reaction of Douglass to this abuse was to love the principles and institutions of
our country which condemn the abuse that he received, because they proclaimed the wrong
of that abuse and because they offer the hope that no one may suffer that abuse. The response
of Justice Thomas to harm is to preach good, good for all, good for all the same. It is
the attitude of the great-souled man of the magnanimous man, and it shows itself all the
time. Seeking to honor this man which we all come here to do today, of course, it is rather
we who are honored. Please welcome, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas.
(Applause)
Clarence Thomas: Thank you, Dr. Arnn. Thank you all. Thank
you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all.
Dr. Arnn, Chairman Brodbeck, members of the board, members of the faculty, family, friends,
most of all, graduates, I'm honored to be here. I'm particularly honored because my
bride is with me. We spent quite a bit of time together, and we like I think to have
memories together, and this is indeed is a memory. Again, I'd like to thank Dr. Arnn
for inviting me. Again, I express my deep honor and gratitude to participate in these
commencement exercises.
It's been quite some years since Virginia and I have been here together. We've been
here on separate occasions but rarely together. Of course, we have known Dr. Larry and Mrs.
Arnn, Penny Arnn for many, many years as Dr. Arnn has indicated, and we have been quite
close to Hillsdale throughout its tenure. We both admire the work that is being done
here to educate young men and young women. I was fortunate to have had David Morrell,
a Hillsdale graduate, clerk for me a few years back.
He was an outstanding law clerk and a wonderful, brilliant, young man. He's also one of my
daily mass companions. I also had a chance last evening as Dr. Arnn mentioned to visit
with the young students who attend Savannah Classical Academy in my hometown, Savannah,
Georgia. What a wonderful idea. As Dr. Arnn indicated, this is the very same school that
I attended high school in in the 1960's.
This has been a most difficult term at the court. This difficulty is underscored by the
sudden and tragic passing of my colleague and friend, Justice Antonin Scalia. I think
it is fitting to say a few words about him, particularly here. Many will focus on his
intellect and his legal prowess. I do not demure in either case, but there is so much
more to the man than that.
When I think of Justice Scalia, I think of the good man whom I could instinctively trust
during my first days on the court, and those were challenging days. He was in the tradition
of the south of my youth, a man of his word, a man of character. Over the almost 25 years
that we were together, I think we made the court a better place for each other. (Applause)
I certainly know that he made it a better place for me. He was kind to me when it mattered
most in those early days. He is and will be sorely missed.
As the year since I attended college etched toward a half century, I feel a bit out of
place talking with college students or recent graduates. Much has changed since I left college
in 1971. Things that were once considered firm have long since lost their vitality,
and much that seemed inconceivable is now firmly or universally established. Hallmarks
of my youth such as patriotism and religion seem more like outliers, if not afterthoughts.
In a sense, I feel willfully out of place doing this or any commencement. My words will
perhaps be more of a vintage nature than current in content.
Words actually matter, not a current newspeak. I admit to be unapologetically Catholic, unapologetically
patriotic, and unapologetically a constitutionalist. (Applause) In my youth, we had a small farm.
I am convinced that the time I spent there had much to do with my firm resolve to never
farm again. Work seemed to spring eternal like the weeds that consumed so much of our
time in our lives and our efforts.
One of the constantly conveyed messages was our obligation to take care of the land and
to use it to produce food for ourselves and for others. If there was to be independence,
self-sufficiency or freedom, then we had to first understand, accept, and then discharge
our responsibilities. The latter were the necessary but not always sufficient antecedents
or precursors of the former. The only guarantee was that if you did not discharge your responsibilities,
there could be no independence, no self-sufficiency, no freedom, no crops. In a broader context,
we were obligated in our neighborhood to be good neighbors so that the neighborhood would
thrive.
Whether there was to be a clean, thriving neighborhood was directly connected to our
efforts and to our conduct, so there was always to our way of thinking a connection and a
relationship between the things we valued most and our personal obligations or efforts.
There could be no freedom without each of us discharging our responsibilities. That
was first and foremost. In that context, when we heard the words, 'Duty', 'Honor', 'County',
no more needed to be said, but that is a bygone era. Today, we rarely hear of our personal
responsibilities in discussions of broad notions such as freedom or liberty.
It is as though freedom and liberty exist, wholly independent of anything we do. Seemingly,
it is our version of predestination or as my grandfather often warned us or told us
"Money didn't grow on trees". Perhaps, we think liberty grows on trees. Their existence
ab initium and continuing is independent of our conduct. In fact, this
era is one in which any difference or different treatment is inherently suspect.
Apparently, we all deserve the same reward, the same status, not withstanding the differences
in our efforts or our abilities. It is no wonder then that we hear so often what is
deserved or to what one is entitled. I guess by this reasoning, the students who took full
advantage of all the spring break bacchanalia is apparently entitled to the same success
as the conscientious disciplined classmate who worked and studied while he played. Perhaps
we should redistribute the conscientious student's grades to make the frolicking classmate his
or her equal. I'm sure the top ten students would love that.
This leads me to wonder if the same sense of entitlement applies to that which makes
it possible for us to live in a free country. After the constitutional convention in Philadelphia,
Benjamin Franklin remarked when asked what they had done that they had given us a republic
if we can keep it. Nearly a century later, in his two-minute speech at Gettysburg, President
Lincoln again spoke of what was required of us after the battle of Gettysburg. He said,
"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that
from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." Many who
have gone before us have done precisely that.
They have been dedicated to preserving and enhancing our nation and the liberties upon
which it is built in war and in peace. They have made sure that those who gave the last
full measure did not do so in vain. Because you all are graduates of Hillsdale College,
it is quite appropriate and quite convenient to reflect briefly on their understanding
of what was to be preserved, what to be earned. The founders in many success of generations
believed in natural rights, and that as the declaration of independence makes clear, to
establish a government by consent, they gave up only those rights necessary to create a
limited government. They then structured that government so that it could not jeopardize
the liberty that float from these inherent or natural rights.
Of course, these limitations have roots that goes far back as the original Magna Carta
over 800 years ago. Even though this liberty is inherent, it is neither guaranteed, nor
short. The very founding documents of our country for example are an assertion of this
liberty against arguably the most powerful man in the world, and it was secured at the
risk of the lives, fortunes, and sacred honor of those who dare to assert that liberty.
Over the lifespan of our great country, occasions have arisen that require this liberty, as
well as the form of government that ensures it the defended if it was to survive. At the
risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty and our form of government,
I think more and more that it depends on good citizens discharging their daily duties and
their daily obligations.
I resist what seems to be somewhat formulaic or standard fare at commencement exercises,
some broad complaint about societal injustice and at least one exhortation to the young
graduates to go out and solve the stated problem or otherwise to change the world. Having been
where you all are, I think it is hard enough to first solve your own problems, not to mention
those problems that often seem to defy solution. In addressing your own obligations and responsibilities
in the right way, you actually help to ensure our liberties and our form of government.
Throughout my youth, even as the contradictions of segregation persisted, we revered the ideals
of our great nation. Of course we knew that our country was like all human institutions
a flawed nation, but we also knew that in the ideal of liberty lay our last best hope.
I watched with anguish as so many of the older people in my life groped and stumbled through
the darkness of illiteracy or bare literacy. Yet, they desperately wanted to know to learn.
They implicitly knew how important it was to enjoy the fullness of citizenship of this
great country. They had spent an aggregation of lifetimes standing on the edge of that
dual citizenship that is at the heart of the 14th Amendment of our constitution. Even during
the last World War, they were willing to fight for the right to die on foreign soil to defend
their country even as their patriotic affections went unreciprocated or unrequited.
They returned from that horrific war with dignity to face the indignity of discrimination
at home, yet, the desire to push our nation to live up to its stated ideals persisted.
I often wondered why my grandparents remained such model citizens even when our country's
failures were so obvious. In the arrogance of my early adult life, I challenged my grandfather
and doubted the ideals of our nation. He bluntly asked, "So, where else would you live?" Though
not a lettered man, he knew that though not nearly perfect, our constitutional ideals
were perfectable if we worked to protect them rather than to undermine them.
As he said, "Son, don't throw the baby out with the bath water." That is don't discard
that which is precious along with that which is tainted. Sadly, today, when it seems that
grievances rather than personal conduct are the means of elevation, this may sound odd
or at least discordant, but those around us back then seemed to have resolved to conduct
themselves consistent with the duties that the ideals of our country demanded. They were
law-abiding, hard-working, disciplined. They discharged their responsibilities to their
families and neighbors as best they could.
We were taught that despite unfair treatment, we were to be good citizens and good people.
If we were to have a functioning neighborhood, then we had to first be good neighbors. If
we were to have a good city, state, and country, we had to first be good citizens. The same
went for our school and our church. The corporal works of mercy, the greatest commandment,
"Love thy neighbor as thyself". Just because someone else wronged us did not justify reciprocal
conduct on our part. Right was right, and two wrongs did not make a right.
As my grandfather often said, "We were duty-bound to do the right thing to do unto others as
we would have them do unto us". In a sense, they were teaching us that what we wanted
to do did not define what was right, nor I might add, did our capacious litany of wants
define liberty, rather, what was right defined what we were required to do and what we were
permitted to do. It defined our duties and our responsibilities. Whether those duties
meant cutting our neighbor's lawn, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, or in rare cases,
going off to war as my brother did, we were to honorably discharge them. Shortly before
his death in 1983, I sought my grandfather's advice about how to whether the first wave
of criticism directly toward me.
I admit to having been somewhat unnerved back then by the torrent of negativity. His immediate
response was simple. "Son, you have to stand up for what you believe in." To him, that
was my obligation and my duty. Perhaps, it is at times like that when you lack both strength
and courage that the clarity of our obligation supplies both. Duty, honor, country. The clarity
of obligation.
As I admitted at the outset, I am of a different time. I knew no one for example who was surprised
when President John F. Kennedy famously said at his inauguration in 1961, "Ask not what
your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." That sentiment was
as common as saying The Pledge of Allegiance and singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and
as pervasive as shopping at Army Navy Surplus stores. Today of course, there is much more
focus on our rights as citizens and what we are owed. It is not often that one hears of
our obligations or our duties as citizens, unless of course there's talk about duty to
submit to yet another new policy being suggested or proposed.
My grandfather often said that "If we didn't work, we didn't eat, or if we didn't plant,
we didn't harvest". There was to always be a relationship as I said earlier between our
responsibilities and our benefits. In agrarian societies, that is more obvious. As society
becomes more complex and specialized, this is more difficult to discern. Let's look at
this a different way.
If you continue to run up charges on your credit card and never make a payment, at some
point, you reach your credit limit. If you continue to make withdrawals from your savings
account and make no deposits, eventually, you deplete your funds. Why is it not the
case then that if we continue to consume the benefits of a free society without replenishing
or nourishing it, we will eventually deplete it? If we are not making deposits to deplenish
our liberties, then who is? Are we content to let others do the work, to let a few give
the last full measure for liberty while we consume the benefits? If so, perhaps one day,
we will run out of other people's sacrifice and courage, and perhaps we will run out of
courageous people wiling to make the sacrifice, but this is Hillsdale College, and you are
special, that shining city on a hill.
Hillsdale is a trusty of the heritage that finds us clear expression in the American
experiment of self-government under law. The very existence of Hillsdale connotes independence.
It understands that liberty is an antecedent of government, not a benefit from government.
I offer you, graduates a few brief suggestions to make your contributions to liberty, your
deposits to the account of liberty. Today is just the end of the beginning of your young
lives, and it is the beginning, the commencement of the rest of your lives, and hopefully their
long, fruitful lives and a free country.
There is much more to come, and it will not be with the guiding hands of your parents.
Perhaps your hand will be required to guide them. Indeed, some of you won't most assuredly
be called upon to do the very hard things to preserve liberty, perhaps even given the
last full measure, but all of you will be called upon to provide that firm foundation
of citizenship by carrying out your obligations in much the way that those around you did
and so many did during my youth. You are to be the example to others that they were to
you. The greatest lecture or sermon you will give is your example.
What you do will matter far more than what you say. As the years have swiftly moved by,
I have often reflected on the important citizenship lessons of my life. For the most part, it
was the unplanned array of small things. There was the kind gesture from the neighbor. It
was my grandmother dividing our dinner because another person showed up unannounced. It was
the strangers stopping to help us get our crops out of the field before a big storm.
There were the Irish nuns who believed in us and lived in our neighborhood. There was
the librarian who brought books to mass so that I would not be without reading materials
on the farm. Small lessons such as these became big lessons for how to live our lives. We
watched and learned what it means to be a good person, a good neighbor, or a good citizen.
Who will be watching you, and what will you be teaching them? After this commencement,
I implore you to take a few minutes to thank those who made it possible for you to come
this far, your parents, your teachers, your pastor, your coaches. You know who helped
you.
Take a few minutes to show your gratitude. These are the people who have shown you how
to sacrifice for those whom they love even when that sacrifice is not always appreciated.
As you go through life, try to be that person whose actions teach others how to be better
people and better citizens. Reach out to that shy person whose not so popular. Stand up
for others when they're being treated unfairly and small things and large. Take the time
to listen to that friend who's having a difficult time.
Do not hide your faith and your beliefs under a bushel basket especially in this world that
seems to have gone mad with political correctness. Treat others the way you would like to be
treated if you stood in their shoes. These small lessons become the unplanned syllabus
for becoming a good citizen, and your efforts to live them will help to form the fabric
of a civil society and a free and prosperous nation where inherent equality and liberty
are inviolable. You are men and women of Hillsdale College, a school that has stood fast on its
principles and its traditions at great sacrifice and great cost. You are men and women of Hillsdale's
steeped in the best traditions and principles of our great nation.
If you don't lead by example, who will? I have ever faith that you will be the beacon
of light for others to follow, that city on a hill that cannot be hidden. May God bless
each of you now and throughout your lives and may God bless America. Thank you. (Applause)