The most presidential lorem ipsum in history.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. Universities and states, including Illinois, are taking part in a divestment campaign to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the killings. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum. Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of another's.
We need to heed the biblical call to care for "the least of these" and lift the poor out of despair. But what the people heard instead - people of every creed and color, from every walk of life - is that in America, our destiny is inextricably linked.
And it's a testament to what we can achieve when good people with strong convictions stand up for their beliefs. I can assure you it is not. Around the world, we can turn dialogue into Interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action - whether it is combating malaria in Africa, or providing relief after a natural disaster.
Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach our kids to learn - they know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man. Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. But what we know - what we have seen - is that America can change. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins. What is that promise?
John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they've defined his life. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things.
Thank you very much everybody.