The most presidential lorem ipsum in history.
Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural without its reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's "I Have a Dream" speech without its reference to "all of God's children." Or President Kennedy's Inaugural without the words, "here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own." At each of these junctures, by summoning a higher truth and embracing a universal faith, our leaders inspired ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work. And fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.
It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.
This bond is unbreakable. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.
We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States. 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. "People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.
People are coming together around a simple truth - that we are all connected, that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. Those are mutual interests.
Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.