Speech Fit for a President
Dear Mr. Obama or any future president or presidentess to follow him;
Feel free to use this speech, which I have laboured to write for hours, free of charge provided that it is delivered in the white house addressing the American people.
Dear fellow American citizens;
Today is an important day in our history, for it is a day that will be marked in the future as the day of the genuine change. I am addressing you hoping that each one of you will help me starting a new page, for I can’t do it on my own; I need each one of you to think creatively on how to achieve our objectives as a nation.
I am honoured to be talking to you from the beautiful city of Washington, our proud capital and to be living in the white house as your elected president/presidentess. The white house, for 200 years has stood as a symbol of the American presidency and the aspirations of American people. I am grateful for the rare opportunity to enjoy the hospitality of the house provided by the nation. As your representative I have travelled all over the world, I am proud to carry with me the good will of diverse nations who are saying: Hola, Ahoy, Ni hao, Marhaba, Salut, Ciào, Yia sou, Shalom, Namaste, Ohayoou gozaimasu, Aawubona and many others which I have forgotten.
We meet at a time of tension between the U.S. and the other nations of the world. — tensions rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between the west and the east includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many nations, and a Cold War in which the citizens of many countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many people to view the West as hostile to their old traditions.
We are a truly a great nation. We have excelled in science, placing the first man on the moon; our universities are centers of research and learning. From physics to history; our scientists and researchers have placed us on the forefront of excellence. More importantly, within our borders we have established a system that reflects the will of its people. In this wide and beautiful land lives millions of people, each and every one of them is able to speak his or her mind, worship god as they please and enjoy the freedom to live as they choose. Our system of government is based the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people. This is a truly amazing accomplishment, one which many nations strive for; yet for us it is reality on the ground that we take for granted. To our shores arrive every year, thousands of immigrants from the four corners of the earth. Seeking opportunities not available in their native lands. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one." The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, and its promise exists for all who come to our shores — that includes nearly the millions emigrants in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that sometimes are higher than average. Emigrants to our country have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. Our history is not without blemishes. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. The civil rights movement in the U.S, championed by Martin Luther King is a proud example to the whole world of how an oppressed minority can win its equal rights without using violence. We American citizens have plenty to be proud of.
However with regards to how we treated the rest of the world, our conduct has been less than stellar. In our quest to win the Cold War in the past we frequently supported oppressive regimes against the will of the people who live in those countries. Our leaders (democrats and republicans) have travelled the world preaching democracy and human rights, but their conduct has endorsed the complete opposite to serve our interest. Our government, in our name and towards our benefit, has placed brutal dictators in power, crushed democratic movements in third world countries and substantially undermined human rights. Afghanistan, is a case in point, of how we interfered in a country much to the detriment of its citizens. In our eagerness to defeat communism we endorsed and trained a most radical faction of Islam. While citizens of Afghanistan suffered the consequences of our actions, we celebrated winning our war against the Soviet Union. While the menacing threat of the monster we created was affecting only the lives of people in other countries we did not care. We rightfully felt outraged at the death of thousands in the 9/11 events, but we did not acknowledge that we had inflicted many equivalent catastrophes on other nations beforehand. We told ourselves “They hate us because of our democracy”, when in reality “They hated us because we denied them democracy while enjoying its fruit ourselves”. We condemned violence against us, but felt entitled to unleash it freely on anybody that stood in our self interest. We placed organizations and countries on the terrorist list for engaging in murdering children and the elderly, yet we engaged in acts of equal horror without any retribution. In Palestine we spent billions of dollars every year to arm the fourth’s strongest military power in the world to oppress a mostly hungry and unarmed population seeking the most minimum of human rights. We used the issue of woman rights to justify our interference in other countries that hurt both the men and woman in those places, yet in our own country women continue to earn 70% on a man’s salary and our culture continues to promote the idea of women as a cheap sex object. It's a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on their way to the market. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered. It is time for a change. It is time for us to act in accordance to what we preach.
Today, we are the only super power. This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared. That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. Our days of finger pointing at others is over, we will lead by example.Today we change our foreign policy and put an end to all our unwanted and uninvited interferences with the rest of the world. We will display our commitment to democracy and human rights not with words but with concrete actions.
On that day, all the nations of the world from Chile to Korea will stand up and applaud.
Feel free to use this speech, which I have laboured to write for hours, free of charge provided that it is delivered in the white house addressing the American people.
Dear fellow American citizens;
Today is an important day in our history, for it is a day that will be marked in the future as the day of the genuine change. I am addressing you hoping that each one of you will help me starting a new page, for I can’t do it on my own; I need each one of you to think creatively on how to achieve our objectives as a nation.
I am honoured to be talking to you from the beautiful city of Washington, our proud capital and to be living in the white house as your elected president/presidentess. The white house, for 200 years has stood as a symbol of the American presidency and the aspirations of American people. I am grateful for the rare opportunity to enjoy the hospitality of the house provided by the nation. As your representative I have travelled all over the world, I am proud to carry with me the good will of diverse nations who are saying: Hola, Ahoy, Ni hao, Marhaba, Salut, Ciào, Yia sou, Shalom, Namaste, Ohayoou gozaimasu, Aawubona and many others which I have forgotten.
We meet at a time of tension between the U.S. and the other nations of the world. — tensions rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between the west and the east includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many nations, and a Cold War in which the citizens of many countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many people to view the West as hostile to their old traditions.
We are a truly a great nation. We have excelled in science, placing the first man on the moon; our universities are centers of research and learning. From physics to history; our scientists and researchers have placed us on the forefront of excellence. More importantly, within our borders we have established a system that reflects the will of its people. In this wide and beautiful land lives millions of people, each and every one of them is able to speak his or her mind, worship god as they please and enjoy the freedom to live as they choose. Our system of government is based the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people. This is a truly amazing accomplishment, one which many nations strive for; yet for us it is reality on the ground that we take for granted. To our shores arrive every year, thousands of immigrants from the four corners of the earth. Seeking opportunities not available in their native lands. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words — within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one." The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, and its promise exists for all who come to our shores — that includes nearly the millions emigrants in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that sometimes are higher than average. Emigrants to our country have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. Our history is not without blemishes. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. The civil rights movement in the U.S, championed by Martin Luther King is a proud example to the whole world of how an oppressed minority can win its equal rights without using violence. We American citizens have plenty to be proud of.
However with regards to how we treated the rest of the world, our conduct has been less than stellar. In our quest to win the Cold War in the past we frequently supported oppressive regimes against the will of the people who live in those countries. Our leaders (democrats and republicans) have travelled the world preaching democracy and human rights, but their conduct has endorsed the complete opposite to serve our interest. Our government, in our name and towards our benefit, has placed brutal dictators in power, crushed democratic movements in third world countries and substantially undermined human rights. Afghanistan, is a case in point, of how we interfered in a country much to the detriment of its citizens. In our eagerness to defeat communism we endorsed and trained a most radical faction of Islam. While citizens of Afghanistan suffered the consequences of our actions, we celebrated winning our war against the Soviet Union. While the menacing threat of the monster we created was affecting only the lives of people in other countries we did not care. We rightfully felt outraged at the death of thousands in the 9/11 events, but we did not acknowledge that we had inflicted many equivalent catastrophes on other nations beforehand. We told ourselves “They hate us because of our democracy”, when in reality “They hated us because we denied them democracy while enjoying its fruit ourselves”. We condemned violence against us, but felt entitled to unleash it freely on anybody that stood in our self interest. We placed organizations and countries on the terrorist list for engaging in murdering children and the elderly, yet we engaged in acts of equal horror without any retribution. In Palestine we spent billions of dollars every year to arm the fourth’s strongest military power in the world to oppress a mostly hungry and unarmed population seeking the most minimum of human rights. We used the issue of woman rights to justify our interference in other countries that hurt both the men and woman in those places, yet in our own country women continue to earn 70% on a man’s salary and our culture continues to promote the idea of women as a cheap sex object. It's a story with a simple truth: violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on their way to the market. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered. It is time for a change. It is time for us to act in accordance to what we preach.
Today, we are the only super power. This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared. That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. Our days of finger pointing at others is over, we will lead by example.Today we change our foreign policy and put an end to all our unwanted and uninvited interferences with the rest of the world. We will display our commitment to democracy and human rights not with words but with concrete actions.
On that day, all the nations of the world from Chile to Korea will stand up and applaud.
There is a way between voice and presence where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes. .... Rumi
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