Obama Ipsum

So one Sunday, I put on one of the few clean jackets I had, and went over to Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street on the South Side of Chicago. Wright deliver a sermon called "The Audacity of Hope." And during the course of that sermon, he introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. King delivered his prayer for our country. And we cannot ignore the very real concerns of Americans who are not worried about illegal immigration because they are racist or xenophobic, but because they fear it will result in lower wages when they're already struggling to raise their families. But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union. Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism. The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

And when the Civil War was fought and our country dedicated itself to a new birth of freedom, they took on the problems of an industrializing nation - fighting the crimes against society and the sins against God that they felt were being committed in our factories and in our slums. The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.

If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. John Edwards calls on us to hope. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years. Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. In the Republicans who never thought they'd pick up a Democratic ballot, but did.

My father, who I didn't know, returned to Kenya when I was just two. I have a plan that would have already begun redeploying our troops with the goal of bringing all our combat brigades home by March 31st of next year. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.

Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.