By Barack Obama
In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic nationwide conference with an tackle that spoke to american citizens around the political spectrum. One word specifically anchored itself in listeners’ minds, a reminder that for all of the discord and fight to be present in our historical past as a country, we've got continuously been guided through a dogged optimism sooner or later, or what Obama known as “the audacity of hope.”
The Audacity of Hope is Barack Obama’s demand a unique model of politics—a politics for these weary of sour partisanship and alienated through the “endless conflict of armies” we see in congress and at the crusade path; a politics rooted within the religion, inclusiveness, and the Aristocracy of spirit on the middle of “our unbelievable test in democracy.” He explores these forces—from the terror of wasting to the perpetual have to bring up funds to the ability of the media—that can stifle even the best-intentioned baby-kisser. He additionally writes, with incredible intimacy and self-deprecating humor, approximately settling in as a senator, trying to stability the calls for of public carrier and relatives existence, and his personal deepening spiritual commitment.
At the guts of this booklet is Barack Obama’s imaginative and prescient of the way we will be able to circulate past our divisions to take on concrete difficulties. He examines the becoming monetary lack of confidence of yankee households, the racial and spiritual tensions in the physique politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that assemble past our beaches. And he grapples with the function that religion performs in a democracy—where it is important and the place it mustn't ever interfere. Underlying his tales approximately kinfolk, buddies, and individuals of the Senate is a full of life look for connection: the basis for a significantly hopeful political consensus.
A public servant and a legal professional, a professor and a father, a Christian and a skeptic, and exceptionally a pupil of heritage and human nature, Barack Obama has written a booklet of remodeling strength. simply through returning to the rules that gave start to our structure, he says, can american citizens fix a political approach that's damaged, and fix to operating order a central authority that has fallen dangerously out of contact with hundreds of thousands of standard americans. these american citizens are available in the market, he writes—“waiting for Republicans and Democrats to meet up with them.”
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Additional resources for The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Example text
The President’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty. As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded 46 T h e AU DAC I T Y o f H O P E of the dangerous isolation that power can bring, and appreciated the Founders’ wisdom in designing a system to keep power in check. ” I looked up, shaken out of my memory, and saw one of the older black men who made up most of the White House waitstaff standing next to me.
There is the absolutism of the free market, an ideology of no taxes, no regulation, no safety net— indeed, no government beyond what’s required to protect private property and provide for the national defense. There’s the religious absolutism of the Christian right, a movement that gained traction on the undeniably difficult issue of abortion, but which soon flowered into something much broader; a movement that insists not only that Christianity is America’s 38 T h e AU DAC I T Y o f H O P E dominant faith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of Thomas Jefferson.
It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. This is not a problem for the right; a polarized electorate—or one that easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate—works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government. After all, a cynical electorate is a self-centered electorate. But for those of us who believe that government has a role to play in promoting opportunity and prosperity for all Americans, a polarized electorate isn’t good enough.