(no subject)

[geekchick]

Transcript of Barack Obama's keynote.

Wow.

If you missed it the first time around, try to watch him when CNN or CSPAN repeats the coverage later tonight.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

(APPLAUSE)

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I saw the speech. It would not surprise me at all if he ran for President in eight years or so.

[jasonhollister.livejournal.com]

Funny; that was my estimate too.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

This sort of blanket statement just annoys me. Does he really believe that there's no other country in the world where people can be born in poverty in an impoverished third world country and end up at the highest levels of government? Valerie Amos (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/warwickmagazine04/amos/) (born to a poor family in Guyana, emigrated to the UK at the age of nine, became a lawyer, then a politician, then Lord President of the Privy Council and Leader of the House of Lords) might disagree.

[mrph.livejournal.com]

True. There aren't enough countries where that's possible, but there's certainly more than one. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, probably large chunks of Western Europe...

Having said that, politicians like Obama are probably the best hope for keeping America's position as one of those countries. And it's nice to hear someone celebrate that. Especially when all I'm hearing in the UK right now is tabloid hysteria about asylum seekers and "scrounging" immigrants.

[geekchick]

I doubt he really believes that it would be impossible for such a thing to happen elsewhere; do some of the people he's addressing think so? Maybe, I don't know. It sounds to me like he might just be playing up the "American dream" thing, which is going to go over well at a convention. Given the rest of his speech, that little bit didn't actually even register with me; I was ready to vote for him for president by the end of it.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I liked this speech very much, on the grounds that it takes back "patriotic talk" as a province of people other than right-wing Republicans.

But my cynical side adds: I hope he means it.