From Barak Obama's book
Dreams From My Father, as quoted in Mary Mitchell's Sun Time column today:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/mitchell/cst-nws-mitch17.html
"We hold these truths to be self evident. ... In those words I hear the spirit of Douglas and Delany, as well as Jefferson and Lincoln; the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring these words to life. I hear the voices of Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains of shattered lives. I hear the voices of the people in Altgeld Gardens, and the voices of those who stand outside this country's borders, the weary, hungry bands crossing the Rio Grande. I hear all of these voices clamoring for recognition, all of them asking the very same questions that have come to shape my life, the same questions that I sometimes, late at night, find myself asking the Old Man. What is our community, and how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love?
"The answers I find in law books don't always satisfy me -- for every Brown vs. Board of Education, I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed. And yet, in the conversation itself, in the joining of voices. I find myself modestly encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might somehow, ultimately, prevail."
Although, I'll put this in second (from Mark Brown)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/brown/cst-nws-brown17.html
Some of those voters may have been thinking what I'm thinking: that Obama has the potential to be the most significant political figure Illinois has sent to Washington since Abraham Lincoln.
Obama's book is available at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail-/081292343X/qid=1079548539/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl
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