President George W. Bush encouraged Americans to remember what brings them together and focus on common ideals rather than individual or group differences during his remarks at the memorial service for the five slain Dallas police officers Tuesday afternoon.
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions,” Bush said.
“At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together,” he said. “Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates too quickly into dehumanization. Sometimes we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”
Americans “have a great advantage,” said Bush, who now lives in the Dallas area. “To renew our unity we need only to remember our values. We have never been held together by blood or background; we are bound by things of the spirit, by shared commitments to common ideals.”
“At best we practice empathy, imagining ourselves in the lives and circumstances of others,” he continued. “This is the bridge across our nation’s deepest divisions.”
He said it’s not merely a matter of tolerance, but of understanding that we all are “sharing this brief moment on Earth” and can learn from each other and find our better selves.
Speaking of the five fallen officers that, “with their deaths, we have lost so much, we are grief stricken, heartbroken and forever grateful.”
“[B]ut none of us were prepared, or could be prepared for an ambush by hatred and malice,” he said of Thursday’s attack by a racially motivated sniper. “The shock of this evil still has not faded.”
He said Americans should find ways to come together for things other than funerals.
“We do not want the unity of grief,” he said. “We do not want the unity of fear. We want the unity of hope.”
He called the five officers “heroes” who “were the best among us.” Bush said well-trained police officers help the nation improve.
“We know that the kind of just, humane country we want to build that we have seen in our best dreams is made possible when men and women in uniform stand guard, at their best,” he said. “When they’re trained and trusted and accountable, they free us from fear.”
Bush closed by speaking to the officers’ families.
“Today, all of us feel a sense of loss; but not equally,” he said. “I’d like to conclude with the word of the families, the spouses, and especially the children of the fallen: your loved one’s time with you was too short. They did not get a chance to properly say goodbye. But they went where duty called. They defended us, even to the end. They finished well. We will not forget what they did for us,” he said.
