The most presidential lorem ipsum in history.
The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me.
And yet, I know that, on this night, they look down on me with great pride. I just think he doesn't know.
Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don't want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. We can affirm our faith without endangering the separation of church and state, as long as we understand that when we're in the public square, we have to speak in universal terms that everyone can understand. It is where our union grows stronger. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."
And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us. These challenges are not all of government's making.
John Kerry knows this. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them. On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries.
God bless you.