MS JOLIE PITT: Secretary of State, ladies and gentlemen, scouts, good evening.
It is such a pleasure to be with all of you, with people of different backgrounds, faiths,
and beliefs all pulling in the same direction and sharing a common outlook of respect and
tolerance.
It reminds me how lucky we are to be living in a country that enables civil society to
flourish, that provides for a rich tapestry of viewpoints and efforts.
Civil society is one of the guardrails of democracy, and so I thank you for all the
work that so many of you do on behalf of refugees in this country and around the world.
The principles we live by in a democracy are not new.
They are not open to being reinterpreted or watered down, or even set aside because of
new circumstances.
As citizens, we do not only want freedom and human rights for every single person in our
society, we want that for every person in the world – upholding the ideal that all
people are born equal and deserve equal rights and dignity – and that is the essence of
what it is to be a citizen of a democracy.
It is how we treat the weakest or the most vulnerable among us that says the most about
our commitment to human rights and equality and justice for all people.
And when we are most clearly seen to truly stand for those things in the world, that
is when we are safest as a nation.
That is when we are the most respected and admired.
That is when our word counts most internationally, and that is how we inspire others to work
with us.
We don’t redefine ourselves as different people because we face new and daunting problems.
We raise a fight within us to face down those challenges and we remain true to ourselves.
Speaking as an American, the fact is there is not a country in the world that we are
not connected to as a result of our unique history.
We represent a global world.
And when we are at our strongest it is when we draw on our diversity as a people to find
unity based on our common values and our larger identity.
We are not strong despite our diversity; we are strong because of it.
So it is time to reclaim for ourselves the idea of what strength is in democratic societies.
I firmly believe that strength lies in the decency and common sense of regular citizens
such as the people who turned out in the thousands after the tragedy in Orlando, supported by
millions of likeminded people around the world from every race and religion.
Strength lies in identifying how to address the very particular challenge from a small
minority of people who choose the path of violent extremism or who abuse a religion
without stigmatizing and isolating millions of people who share in that beautiful religion.
There is nothing strong about denigrating anyone on the basis of their religion, nationality,
sexual orientation, gender, or on the basis of any characteristic or difference, real
or imagined.
When we discriminate, when we imply with our actions that some lives are worth more than
others, or when we denigrate the faith, traditions, and cultures of any group of people, we weaken
our strength in democratic societies.
(Applause.)
What would it say about us as a country and an international community if we reach the
point where we decided we were not prepared to stand up for our principles?
The answer to addressing the global refugee crisis surely lies behind common courtesy
and drawing strength from each other like we all feel in this room, in staying true
to who we are, in showing that we have the fight in us to confront our generation’s
test and emerge stronger for it.
That is my hope, and I believe I share it with all of you and millions of people beyond
this room.
I thank you so much for all that you do, for allowing me to be here with you.
Thank you so much.