For a while, on the long and torturous campaign trail, Obama seemed to focus excessively on the easier side of communitarianism: that we are all one; the hope and joy of togetherness. However, during his recent Wesleyan speech he revived the other half of his message: the call for service for the common good, a much more demanding subject.

For a time, we heard a lot of "we are not from red states, not from blue states, but from the United States." We were invited to join the feel-good politics sprinkled liberally with the holy water of hope which has no cost.

In The Audacity of Hope, written before Obama declared his bid for the presidency, he was more mindful of the other half of the communitarian message, that we should "ground our politics in the notion of a common good." He wrote, "We value the imperatives of family and the cross-generational obligations that family implies...We value patriotism and the obligations of citizenship, a sense of duty and sacrifice on behalf of our nation."

On the campaign trail many of these profound insights faded. We heard painless declarations, such as "Our prosperity can and must be the tide that lifts every boat...we rise or fall as one nation," and such undemanding observations as "...too often, we lose our sense of common destiny; [the] understanding that we are all tied together."

The nation is upon hard times. Its coffers are empty; creditors are at the gate; the military is exhausted and depleted; the regard in which America is held overseas is at an all time low; and major economic and security challenges pile up like so many storm clouds. The nation demands a prolonged period of restoration, one in which merely replenishing all that was squandered will entail raising taxes and keeping new expenditures on a tight leash. In plain English-- restoration means sacrifices and a commitment to serve, to give rather than just to take.

At Wesleyan, Obama re-embraced this theme. He told the graduating class--and the rest of us-- about the days in which he first served as a community organizer in Chicago: "...I had worked for weeks on this project. We waited and waited for people to show up, and finally, a group of older people walked into the hall. And they sat down. And a little old lady raised her hand and asked, 'Is this where the bingo game is?'"

He continued, "It wasn't easy, but eventually, we made progress. Day by day, block by block, we brought the community together, and registered new voters, and we set up after school programs, and fought for new jobs, and helped people live lives with some measure of dignity."

Better yet, he introduced a new note, one of great import: "I also began to realize that I wasn't just helping other people. Through service, I found a community that embraced me; citizenship that was meaningful; the direction that I'd been seeking. Through service, I discovered how my own improbable story fit in to the larger story of America."

If you want to read more, go here, but the main point is clear: unless we all put our shoulders to the wheel, America with be stuck in the rut that it is in now. Right on, Obama.

Amitai Etzioni is the author of The Spirit of Community and a sociology professor at The George Washington University. He can be reached at coment@gwu.edu. www.securityfirstbook.com