[Bolding and paragrahs are editors; listen for exact phraseology and nuances.]

Since the times of Benjamin Franklin the library has served as a symbol and a center of community ... they are laboratory of freedom … the management of the libraries, it is just not another job. The lending of books and the transmission of ideas are in the heart of the concept dear to all our hearts, which is human liberty. We know from our nation’s own past that words have power. Consider Thomas Jefferson’s theses that all men are created equal, and Abraham Lincoln’s vow that government of the people by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth, or Franklin Roosevelt warning that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, and Martin Luther King’s declaration that I have dream too.

Words and the ideas that shaped them and the books that contain them can transform history, and that’s why the free expression is so celebrated and also why it is feared.

As it was mentioned, when I was a little girl my family had to flee its home twice in Czechoslovakia. First because of the Nazis and then because of the Soviet Union. We knew that every dictatorship, whether fascist or communist, strives to command total control of information and to limit what can be printed or thought, and that’s why my family cherish so deeply the liberty we found here in America

 … meanwhile, my father wrote books marveling at the ability of Americans to criticize their own government and arguing the need for vigilance in defending democracy. This experience thought me to believe that freedom should never be taken for granted. As Secretary of State, I helped organize the community of democracies consisting of over one hundred countries with elected governments. Our first meeting was held in Poland, whose Solidarity movement sparked the revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall. Follow up session were convened in South Korea and Chile, where dictators had earlier used anticommunism to justify the oppression. Although democracy has gained much ground in recent decades, there remain many countries where fundamental freedoms are denied including China and North Korea, Burma and Belarus, Syria and Zimbabwe, and closer to our own shores Cuba.

A century ago, Cuban patriot Jose Marti surveyed that the fundamental freedom and the basis for all others is freedom of the mind. You may be proud that in the past the ALA has urged Cuba’s government to eliminate obstacles to access to information. Three years ago, the association expressed deep concerns about the arrests, trials, and long prison sentences given to Cuban political dissidents. You have also argued for the end to travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba and the lifting of the economic embargo against that island nation. I agree that after forty-five years of that embargo is time we thought about something new.

Our policy towards Cuba should be based on the twenty first century approach that places people above the ideology and stresses openness over isolation. We should look beyond the embargo to a new era of travel and commerce, true scholarship and free exchange of information. We should promote freedom of expression and justice, democracy and respect for universal norms. We should make clear our solidarity with our Cuban neighbors, who have been imprisoned, harassed or prevented from traveling because of the peaceful expression of political views of possessing and lending politically incorrect magazines and books. We should denounce in Cuba and whenever else such abuses occur. The thesis that to open an independent library is to commit a crime or that to advocate for the human rights is somehow subversive.

And what we preach abroad we should also practice at home … whether at home or overseas, we should not to hesitate and speak out and we should be persistent and continue our protest as long as the need exists. As Jose Marti declared it is not enough to come to defense of freedom with intermittent efforts, every moment is critical in defense of freedom …

No single principle is right every time. No apparent truth is undiluted by doubt. But this does mean that we must navigate with no stars in the sky. Decades ago when George Kennan was arguing that we must deal in straight power concept, another expert on communism wrote that human dignity and respect for individual must be the focus of everything. The focus of everything is a pretty big statement but it seems right to me, just as it did to this statement author, a professor and former diplomat who came to this country from Czechoslovakia and who also was my father. Respect for the dignity of human being is the place for religious faith and fateful employment of the political liberty for their closest connection.