![]() ![]() (Applause.) We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. (Applause.)įor we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it - so long as we seize it together. (Applause.) America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive diversity and openness an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. (Applause.) An economic recovery has begun. This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.īut we have always understood that when times change, so must we that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune. Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together. Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.Īnd for more than two hundred years, we have. (Applause.) The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What makes us exceptional - what makes us American - is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. ![]()
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