The Vision Thing
It’s 9:40, and D is just going to bed. It was a gorgeous evening, so we picnicked by the fountain. When we got home, he still needed to take his "jet medicine" (our name for the nebulizer treatments). And then heaven forbid we should skip the bedtime story (Mrs. Armitage on Wheels, thanks to Jody). So no original post today.
Instead, I offer this excerpt from Barak Obama’s Knox College graduation speech:
And then America happened.
A place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped and remade by people who had the gall, the temerity to believe that, against all odds, they could form “a more perfect union” on this new frontier.
And as people around the world began to hear the tale of the lowly colonists who overthrew an empire for the sake of an idea, they started to come. Across oceans and the ages, they settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream. This collective dream moved forward imperfectly—it was scarred by our treatment of native peoples, betrayed by slavery, clouded by the subjugation of women, shaken by war and depression. And yet, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, people kept dreaming, and building, and working, and marching, and petitioning their government, until they made America a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us. It’s answered by us.
Have we failed at times? Absolutely. Will you occasionally fail when you embark on your own American journey? You surely will. But the test is not perfection.
Read the whole thing; it’s just lovely. I particularly like how he brought his theme home to Knox college in particular:
And here in Galesburg, freedom found a home.
Here in Galesburg, the main depot for the Underground Railroad in Illinois, escaped slaves could roam freely on the streets and take shelter in people’s homes. And when their masters or the police would come for them, the people of this town would help them escape north, some literally carrying them in their arms to freedom.
Tim Russert, are you listening?
