I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the streets of New York the sons of Sunni Muslims and the sons of Shia Muslims will be able to sit down together in their own community center without being accused of terrorizing sensitivities.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Arizona, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of frustration and political opportunism, will be transformed into an oasis of rational and civil immigration reform.
I have a dream that the president’s two children will one day live in a nation where their father will not be relentlessly and baselessly smeared by outright lies about his birth and his religion.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alaska, whose ex-governor's lips are presently dripping with words of demagoguery and sheer stupidity, will be transformed into a situation where little grizzly boys and pit bull girls will be able to join hands with little wolf-killing boys and moose-dressing girls and be encouraged to behave more like civilized people and less like primitive yahoos.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every Fox viewer will know how they’re being conned, Hannity and Beck shall be made low by their conniving, the No-Spin Zone will be made plain as utter marketing hokum, and the nonstop fear mongering will be laid to rest, and the unfair, unbalanced donations to Republicans shall be revealed, and the benighted millions will see that the Arab billionaire that Fox demonizes--but doesn’t name--as the secret moneyman behind the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is actually the second biggest shareholder in Fox News Corporation.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return home to sweet New England next week. With this faith we will be able to hew out of this mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to turn off Rush Limbaugh together, to stand up for reason and sanity together, knowing that we will be free of this plague of ignorance one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children—and atheists, too--will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom continue to ring from the Lincoln Memorial no matter how much the clowns, the frauds, and the shysters who gather there this weekend in 2010 conspire to desecrate it.
"Free at last! Free at last! Thank Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers, we’ll be free at last!"