Transcript of Elizabeth Dole's Convention Speech
Aug. 1 -- When Elizabeth Dole addressed the Republican National Committee in 1996, she did it as the nominee’s wife. Tonight, she came as a vanquished challenger to the nomination herself. Read the full transcript of her remarks here.
Eliazabeth Dole:
Thank you very much.
You have heard Condoleeza Rice speak eloquently of America’s place in the world.
I, too, wish to address our nation’s security tonight.
I speak not of military weapons, but of moral ones, of the defense of values as well as territory.
Long before there was an American dream, there was a dream of America as liberty’s home and refuge.
It was for this, that a million heroes fought and bled and died.
Not alone to protect land on a map, much as they might cherish their home and hearth; nor to encroach on other lands or menace other peoples, or impose our way of life on anyone — but merely, heroically, to ensure freedom’s survival in a hostile world.
Let us be clear: the success of freedom can never be measured in material terms alone.
For one day, each of us will be held to account not for the money we made, but for the difference we made.
Not for the worldly status we may have enjoyed, but for the stewardship we provided.
Freedom empowers the heart.
It levels walls and shatters ceilings — including glass ceilings.
Ladies and gentlemen, in my eight years as President of the American Red Cross, I saw things that will haunt me the rest of my life — the evil that humans can inflict on one another — saw it in the dim eyes of starving children in Somalia and in the paralyzing grief of parents in Oklahoma City.
But I have also been uplifted by the extraordinary power of the American heart — by those armies of compassion, who are willing to cross town or cross the globe to minister to those they’ve never met and will never see again.
People who go where government cannot, and others will not, who carry our values of peace and democracy around the world, putting service before self. Such kindness and generosity are not legislated by any Congress.
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