America the Beautiful

The demo­c­ra­tic process that we have embraced for over 2 cen­turies is an amaz­ing spec­ta­cle to wit­ness.  The will­ing trans­fer of power from one group of lead­ers to another as a reflec­tion of the will of the peo­ple is uniquely Amer­i­can.  Today, for the 44^th time in the his­tory of our coun­try, an indi­vid­ual cho­sen by the peo­ple of our great land took the oath of office as Pres­i­dent of The United States of Amer­ica.  For the first time, that per­son was of African decent — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.   I spent my lunch break watch­ing his­tory unfold before my eyes, which welled repeat­edly with tears of joy.  What a won­der­ful day to be alive!  What a won­der­ful time to be an Amercan!

Not only is Pres­i­dent Obama the first African-American to hold the office of Pres­i­dent, but he is also the first of my gen­er­a­tion elected to lead the free world.  It is sur­real to me.  I was over­whelmed by the enor­mity of today’s expe­ri­ence, one which I will trea­sure for the rest of my life.  Specif­i­cally, I was moved by the words of the Pres­i­dent in his inau­gural address.  It is not up to him or the gov­ern­ment to turn our coun­try around, but rather it is up to all of us.  Today is the first step in a long, hard jour­ney toward a bet­ter tomor­row.  Can we do it Amer­ica?  YES WE CAN!

Here is the text from his speech:

My fel­low citizens:

I stand here today hum­bled by the task before us, grate­ful for the trust you have bestowed, mind­ful of the sac­ri­fices borne by our ances­tors. I thank Pres­i­dent Bush for his ser­vice to our nation, as well as the gen­eros­ity and coop­er­a­tion he has shown through­out this transition.

Forty-four Amer­i­cans have now taken the pres­i­den­tial oath. The words have been spo­ken dur­ing ris­ing tides of pros­per­ity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gath­er­ing clouds and rag­ing storms. At these moments, Amer­ica has car­ried on not sim­ply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the Peo­ple have remained faith­ful to the ideals of our fore­bear­ers, and true to our found­ing documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this gen­er­a­tion of Americans.

That we are in the midst of cri­sis is now well under­stood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching net­work of vio­lence and hatred. Our econ­omy is badly weak­ened, a con­se­quence of greed and irre­spon­si­bil­ity on the part of some, but also our col­lec­tive fail­ure to make hard choices and pre­pare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; busi­nesses shut­tered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings fur­ther evi­dence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adver­saries and threaten our planet.

These are the indi­ca­tors of cri­sis, sub­ject to data and sta­tis­tics. Less mea­sur­able but no less pro­found is a sap­ping of con­fi­dence across our land — a nag­ging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next gen­er­a­tion must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the chal­lenges we face are real. They are seri­ous and they are many. They will not be met eas­ily or in a short span of time. But know this, Amer­ica: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have cho­sen hope over fear, unity of pur­pose over con­flict and discord.

On this day, we come to pro­claim an end to the petty griev­ances and false promises, the recrim­i­na­tions and worn-out dog­mas, that for far too long have stran­gled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scrip­ture, the time has come to set aside child­ish things. The time has come to reaf­firm our endur­ing spirit; to choose our bet­ter his­tory; to carry for­ward that pre­cious gift, that noble idea, passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pur­sue their full mea­sure of happiness.

In reaf­firm­ing the great­ness of our nation, we under­stand that great­ness is never a given. It must be earned. Our jour­ney has never been one of short­cuts or set­tling for less. It has not been the path for the faint­hearted — for those who pre­fer leisure over work, or seek only the plea­sures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the mak­ers of things — some cel­e­brated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have car­ried us up the long, rugged path toward pros­per­ity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly pos­ses­sions and trav­eled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweat­shops and set­tled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Con­cord and Get­tys­burg; Nor­mandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again, these men and women strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a bet­ter life. They saw Amer­ica as big­ger than the sum of our indi­vid­ual ambi­tions; greater than all the dif­fer­ences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the jour­ney we con­tinue today. We remain the most pros­per­ous, pow­er­ful nation on Earth. Our work­ers are no less pro­duc­tive than when this cri­sis began. Our minds are no less inven­tive, our goods and ser­vices no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capac­ity remains undi­min­ished. But our time of stand­ing pat, of pro­tect­ing nar­row inter­ests and putting off unpleas­ant deci­sions — that time has surely passed. Start­ing today, we must pick our­selves up, dust our­selves off, and begin again the work of remak­ing America.

For every­where we look, there is work to be done. The state of the econ­omy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to cre­ate new jobs, but to lay a new foun­da­tion for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the elec­tric grids and dig­i­tal lines that feed our com­merce and bind us together. We will restore sci­ence to its right­ful place, and wield technology’s won­ders to raise health care’s qual­ity and lower its cost. We will har­ness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our fac­to­ries. And we will trans­form our schools and col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who ques­tion the scale of our ambi­tions — who sug­gest that our sys­tem can­not tol­er­ate too many big plans. Their mem­o­ries are short. For they have for­got­ten what this coun­try has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imag­i­na­tion is joined to com­mon pur­pose, and neces­sity to courage.

What the cyn­ics fail to under­stand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale polit­i­cal argu­ments that have con­sumed us for so long no longer apply. The ques­tion we ask today is not whether our gov­ern­ment is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps fam­i­lies find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retire­ment that is dig­ni­fied. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move for­ward. Where the answer is no, pro­grams will end. And those of us who man­age the public’s dol­lars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our busi­ness in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a peo­ple and their government.

Nor is the ques­tion before us whether the mar­ket is a force for good or ill. Its power to gen­er­ate wealth and expand free­dom is unmatched, but this cri­sis has reminded us that with­out a watch­ful eye, the mar­ket can spin out of con­trol — and that a nation can­not pros­per long when it favors only the pros­per­ous. The suc­cess of our econ­omy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domes­tic prod­uct, but on the reach of our pros­per­ity; on our abil­ity to extend oppor­tu­nity to every will­ing heart — not out of char­ity, but because it is the surest route to our com­mon good.

As for our com­mon defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Found­ing Fathers, faced with per­ils we can scarcely imag­ine, drafted a char­ter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a char­ter expanded by the blood of gen­er­a­tions. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peo­ples and gov­ern­ments who are watch­ing today, from the grand­est cap­i­tals to the small vil­lage where my father was born: Know that Amer­ica is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dig­nity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that ear­lier gen­er­a­tions faced down fas­cism and com­mu­nism not just with mis­siles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and endur­ing con­vic­tions. They under­stood that our power alone can­not pro­tect us, nor does it enti­tle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its pru­dent use; our secu­rity emanates from the just­ness of our cause, the force of our exam­ple, the tem­per­ing qual­i­ties of humil­ity and restraint.

We are the keep­ers of this legacy. Guided by these prin­ci­ples once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort — even greater coop­er­a­tion and under­stand­ing between nations. We will begin to respon­si­bly leave Iraq to its peo­ple, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and for­mer foes, we will work tire­lessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warm­ing planet. We will not apol­o­gize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by induc­ing ter­ror and slaugh­ter­ing inno­cents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and can­not be bro­ken; you can­not out­last us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patch­work her­itage is a strength, not a weak­ness. We are a nation of Chris­tians and Mus­lims, Jews and Hin­dus — and non­be­liev­ers. We are shaped by every lan­guage and cul­ture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bit­ter swill of civil war and seg­re­ga­tion, and emerged from that dark chap­ter stronger and more united, we can­not help but believe that the old hatreds shall some­day pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dis­solve; that as the world grows smaller, our com­mon human­ity shall reveal itself; and that Amer­ica must play its role in ush­er­ing in a new era of peace.

To the Mus­lim world, we seek a new way for­ward, based on mutual inter­est and mutual respect. To those lead­ers around the globe who seek to sow con­flict, or blame their society’s ills on the West: Know that your peo­ple will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through cor­rup­tion and deceit and the silenc­ing of dis­sent, know that you are on the wrong side of his­tory; but that we will extend a hand if you are will­ing to unclench your fist.

To the peo­ple of poor nations, we pledge to work along­side you to make your farms flour­ish and let clean waters flow; to nour­ish starved bod­ies and feed hun­gry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy rel­a­tive plenty, we say we can no longer afford indif­fer­ence to suf­fer­ing out­side our bor­ders; nor can we con­sume the world’s resources with­out regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we con­sider the road that unfolds before us, we remem­ber with hum­ble grat­i­tude those brave Amer­i­cans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and dis­tant moun­tains. They have some­thing to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arling­ton whis­per through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our lib­erty, but because they embody the spirit of ser­vice; a will­ing­ness to find mean­ing in some­thing greater than them­selves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a gen­er­a­tion — it is pre­cisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as gov­ern­ment can do and must do, it is ulti­mately the faith and deter­mi­na­tion of the Amer­i­can peo­ple upon which this nation relies. It is the kind­ness to take in a stranger when the lev­ees break, the self­less­ness of work­ers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our dark­est hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stair­way filled with smoke, but also a parent’s will­ing­ness to nur­ture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our chal­lenges may be new. The instru­ments with which we meet them may be new. But those val­ues upon which our suc­cess depends — hard work and hon­esty, courage and fair play, tol­er­ance and curios­ity, loy­alty and patri­o­tism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress through­out our his­tory. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of respon­si­bil­ity — a recog­ni­tion, on the part of every Amer­i­can, that we have duties to our­selves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudg­ingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowl­edge that there is noth­ing so sat­is­fy­ing to the spirit, so defin­ing of our char­ac­ter, than giv­ing our all to a dif­fi­cult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our con­fi­dence — the knowl­edge that God calls on us to shape an uncer­tain destiny.

This is the mean­ing of our lib­erty and our creed — why men and women and chil­dren of every race and every faith can join in cel­e­bra­tion across this mag­nif­i­cent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restau­rant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remem­brance, of who we are and how far we have trav­eled. In the year of America’s birth, in the cold­est of months, a small band of patri­ots hud­dled by dying camp­fires on the shores of an icy river. The cap­i­tal was aban­doned. The enemy was advanc­ing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the out­come of our rev­o­lu­tion was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

Amer­ica. In the face of our com­mon dan­gers, in this win­ter of our hard­ship, let us remem­ber these time­less words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy cur­rents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s chil­dren that when we were tested, we refused to let this jour­ney end, that we did not turn back, nor did we fal­ter; and with eyes fixed on the hori­zon and God’s grace upon us, we car­ried forth that great gift of free­dom and deliv­ered it safely to future generations.

Obama’s inau­gural speech — CNN.com