M10:01
我现在要说一件事，这个，这个，呃，先别换这张幻灯片，不过，呃，我现在要说的话，你们当中有些人可能会忍不住想跟我争。但我的看法是，我们在很多很多很多方面都并不完美。不过我要说——如果你把下一张幻灯片放出来的话——我们现在这个国家，已经比一七八九年的时候更好了，而且也富裕得多，多得惊人。我们离自己应该成为的样子、将来会成为的样子，还差得非常非常远，但我们的确已经大步朝着正确的方向前进了。呃，很有意思，一七七六年我们说过，我们认为这些真理是不言自明的：人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们某些不可剥夺的权利，其中包括生命、自由和追求幸福的权利。可十四年后，也就是一七八九年，在我们真正正式开始建立这个国家、通过宪法的一年之后，我们发现这个国家里超过百分之十五的人是奴隶。我们一直在和这个问题搏斗。但当你说一个东西是“不言自明”的时候，听起来就像是在说，任何该死的傻瓜都应该看得出来。你当然可以说，关于生命和追求幸福，也许还可以稍微争论一下，但我实在想不明白，到底怎么可能把“自由”跟百分之十五的人口被奴役这件事调和起来。我们花了很长很长时间，才至少部分纠正了这种不公。这中间打了一场 Civil War。我们付出的代价，是失去了那一群十八岁到六十岁男性中的百分之六。这个——但是我们确实朝着正确的方向走了。我们还有很长的路要走，但到现在为止，我们确实是在往正确的方向前进。另外，再回到一七七六年那句“人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们权利”之类的话，我觉得，对占人口百分之五十的那一部分人来说，在这个国家超过一半的历史里，似乎大家都觉得她们拿到的是公平待遇。我们国家二百三十一年的历史里，花了一百三十一年，整整一百三十一年，女性才终于被保障拥有投票选举国家领导人的权利。更值得注意的是，一九二零年我们通过了第十九修正案之后，又过了六十一年，才终于有一位女性被允许加入 Supreme Court 里那八位男性。我从小一直以为 Supreme Court，大概就是——好像规定了必须是九个男人一样。但是，呃，又过了六十一年，所以从建国算起，整整一百九十二年之后，Sandra Day O'Connor 才被任命进入法院。现在你当然可以说，这里面有个 pipeline problem。你知道，一九二零年的时候，人口里有一半是女性，但律师里肯定不是一半女性，可能连百分之十都不到。所以你可以理解，呃，会有一些延迟；但六十一年还是太久了，而且中间连续挑了三十三位男性。如果那完全只是偶然的话，那这个概率——如果你是在抛硬币——大概是八十亿比一。现在，就像我刚才说的，确实存在 pipeline problem。
I'm now about to say something that, that, uh, and don't change the slide yet, but, uh, I'm now about to say something that some of you will be tempted to argue with me about, but I would make the case that we are imperfect in a great, great, great many ways. But I would say, and if you'll put up the next slide, that we are now a better country, as well as an incredibly more wealthy country than we were in 1789. We're far, far, far from what we should be, will be, but we have gone dramatically in the right direction. Uh, it's interesting, we said in 1776, we said, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their— are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. And yet, 14 years later, a year after we, we really officially began the country in 1789, adopted a Constitution, uh, we found that more than 15% of the people in the country were slaves. And we wrestled with that. But when you say the word self-evident, that sort of sounds like you're saying any damn fool can recognize that. And you certainly say, uh, you can argue maybe a little bit about life and the pursuit of happiness, but I don't see how in the world anybody can reconcile liberty with the idea that, that 15% of the population was enslaved. And it took us a long time to at least partially correct that inequity. It took a Civil War. It took losing 6% of those people, that, uh, males that were between 18 and 60 years of age. The— But we've moved in the right direction. We've got a long ways to go, but we've moved in the right direction now. In addition, going back again to that 1776 statement that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator, etc., uh, I think it was self-evident to the 50% of the population that they were getting a fair deal for over half the lifetime of the country. It took 131 years of our country's 231 years. It took 131 years. That's right. Until women were guaranteed the right to vote for our country's leaders. And then what's even more remarkable is that after we adopted the 19th Amendment in 1920, it took 61 more years until a woman was allowed to join those 8 males on the Supreme Court. I grew up thinking that the Supreme Court, you know, must have been— said it had to be 9 men. But it, it, uh, at 61 years, so it took 192 years before Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to the court. And now you can say that, that there was a pipeline problem. You know, half the population may have been women in 1920, but they weren't half the lawyers, or they weren't 10% of the lawyers, probably. So you can understand, uh, some delay, but 61 years is a long time to go and to pick 33 males in between. If that was entirely by chance, then the odds against that— if you were flipping coins— is about 8 billion to 1. Now, like I said, there was a pipeline problem.