The most presidential lorem ipsum in history.
Today there are 12 million undocumented immigrants in America, most of them working in our communities, attending our churches, and contributing to our country. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children.
I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us. When I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed. Those are mutual interests.
We cannot ignore that we have a right and a duty to protect our borders. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans - the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies but not one penny of tax relief to more than one hundred million Americans? How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement? When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk.
It's the wisdom Moses imparted to those who would succeed him. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships. For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
But I've got news for them, too. And this restlessness - this search for meaning - is familiar to me. That's the promise we need to keep. And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.
Thank you very much everybody.