So Newt--with his panties in a bunch because (surprise, surprise) Swift-boating doesn't just happen to bad guys like Democrats and liberals--has come out to attack Obama's call for "fundamental reform" in America. Here's the response I'd love to see from Obama...
My fellow Americans, my friends: Recently, the former speaker of the House, a candidate for this office, recalled a quote from me where I said that I sought "fundamental reform" in America. He took offense at these words, insisting that he stood for maintaining the values expressed by the founders of this great nation, and setting those values in opposition to what he said were my own.
In response, let me first say that Mr. Gingrich is absolutely correct in his desire to hold basic American values dear. But then let me say that if he were completely sincere in that desire, he would agree with me. I stand by my words. America, if we are to live up to our better ideals, is in need of deep transformation. This nation was begun with high ideals, ideals that we have often forgotten or abandoned, ideals that are now being used by people who in fact working to deny access to those ideals by others.
In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a famous address in Washington. It is often called the "I Have a Dream" speech because of the passion and vibrancy of the ideals King lifted up at the close of the speech. But you really need to listen to the whole address. Those ideals, that dream, did not come from nowhere.
Instead, King insisted, his dream was based on the ideals on which this nation was built. The most powerful part of the speech has been forgotten, the image of the bounced check:
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
The source of King's glorious vision was not some kind of so-called "socialism" or "radicalism." Nor did it arise solely from Christian ideals of justice, although justice was never far from King's heart. No, his dream was powerful with so many people from so many backgrounds precisely because he knew that its source could also be found in the founding ideals of our ancestors--all our ancestors. King insisted, and rightly so, that our founding ideals were not only sound but worthy of defense and preservation, and even worthy of extending them to those who previously had been left out of the promises those ideals make. Today we are a better nation wherever we have carried out that still unfinished task.
But even in 1963, the first responses were negative, even angry. There were many, speaking from positions of privilege, who simply said that King was asking for too much change. The reforms he sought, they said, were "too radical." Some still say so today. Even as they use King's words to justify their own privilege over others, even as they use the dream to deny the dream, they overlook the source of that dream and work to block its extension.
That, my friends, is the need for "fundamental reform" of which I spoke. I do not believe that we need to re-define America as something other than what it has been at its highest and best. I do not seek to tear America down and build something different in its place. But I do long for a time when we can offer freedom and equality with the abundance with which our founders offered it. And I will work for the cause of ensuring that our people--all of our people--share in the abundant bounty of liberty and equality.
Let's be clear. There are those who yet believe that our founders intended such rights to belong only to those with property. They believe that there is not enough freedom and equality to go around, that these are only for those privileged few who can afford them. They do believe that "there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation." If Mr. Gingrich wishes to believe that this is the case, it is his right to do so. But he should realize, as the historian he is, that his view of the founders is therefore narrow, pinched, and cramped. It is constrained by the inner contradiction, that he would maintain our founding principles by denying them.
I prefer to believe that our founding ideals are broader and deeper. Any financial debt we face does not mean that our promises for freedom and equality are in hock. The fundamental reform we need is, in fact, the need to take power out of the hands of those who have put our nation in debt for their own mean purposes and to put it back in the hands where it belongs: the people--all the people--who cherish life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.