Since before his inauguration I, like many Democrats, had been waiting for President Obama to make his mark on our Democratic psyche. John F Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt before him used their eloquence to help us understand who we are as a party and a people. They left us with words and phrases that became part of our Democratic identity and our national identity. After eight years of the aspirational desert of George Bush, that responsibility fell squarely and heavily on the shoulders of Barack Obama.
Perhaps feeling untested, and that the words might seem insincere, he passed on the opportunity during his inaugural address. But last night I heard the words that will endure. I heard the words that form a bulwark against the greedy and grasping brutality that Republicans envision for our future.
As Americans, we believe we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that no man or government can take away. We insist on personal responsibility, and we celebrate individual initiative. We’re not entitled to success. We have to earn it. We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world’s ever known.
But we also believe in something called citizenship — citizenship, a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. …
We, the people — recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.
As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together — through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That’s what we believe.