Barack Obama & the Search for Unification.
"It is that fundamental belief--It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family."
"There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."
"We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
"..and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come."
All quotes from Barack Obama's keynote address at the Democratic Convention of 2004.
It is not true that America achieved integration in the years following Brown and Brown II.
We are more divided than ever now, and not only by race and class, but by geography and ideology, the news sources we choose to get our information from, the parties we give our money to.
I believe in my heart that Barack Obama is the last great civil rights candidate, striving to achieve integration/unification for all of us against almost insuperable historic odds. His candidacy based on inclusion and moderation, on community and dialogue is an attempt to heal the wounds, to bind us back together in amity and quiet conversation. It is an end to partisanship, an end to polarization, an end to the segregation that divides our country into two mutually antagonistic camps.
This effort can be described as noble. Obama's vision can be described as in the greatest tradition of American political thought.
We have, all of us, stood on the brazen ramparts of partisanship so long now, clutching the arrows of rhetoric and invective, that it seems almost impossible to lay down those barbs, descend from the walls, and walk out onto the plain with open hands to meet our fellow Americans.
We need to say "I hear you" a lot more. We need, as the bumper sticker has it, to "wag more and bark less"
We need to get this great leader into the White House.
"There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."
"We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
"..and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come."
All quotes from Barack Obama's keynote address at the Democratic Convention of 2004.
It is not true that America achieved integration in the years following Brown and Brown II.
We are more divided than ever now, and not only by race and class, but by geography and ideology, the news sources we choose to get our information from, the parties we give our money to.
I believe in my heart that Barack Obama is the last great civil rights candidate, striving to achieve integration/unification for all of us against almost insuperable historic odds. His candidacy based on inclusion and moderation, on community and dialogue is an attempt to heal the wounds, to bind us back together in amity and quiet conversation. It is an end to partisanship, an end to polarization, an end to the segregation that divides our country into two mutually antagonistic camps.
This effort can be described as noble. Obama's vision can be described as in the greatest tradition of American political thought.
We have, all of us, stood on the brazen ramparts of partisanship so long now, clutching the arrows of rhetoric and invective, that it seems almost impossible to lay down those barbs, descend from the walls, and walk out onto the plain with open hands to meet our fellow Americans.
We need to say "I hear you" a lot more. We need, as the bumper sticker has it, to "wag more and bark less"
We need to get this great leader into the White House.
