August 4, 2003 - You and I are part of a family, an American family that works together; that plays together; that comes together to celebrate our family’s triumphs; and embraces each other to ease our common grief. We are brothers and sisters and cousins. We are children and parents and grandparents. We are neighbors and friends. We are parts of a whole, bound together and dedicated as a nation with a common purpose. There are no stronger bonds than those that make us The American family.

Yet there are those who would divide us one from another. There are those who measure the success of the family by the achievements of the strongest and most favorably situated of the American kinship and deprecate the contributions of the less strong and less favored of our number. Those who extol the virtues of wealth instead of the value of a shared commonwealth of sweat and justify themselves with an appeal to social Darwinism sow weeds in the American garden. It is a barren crop that provides no sustenance for the family table. America is a family, not a social experiment in which only the fittest can be permitted to thrive. As a family we share the responsibility to care for each other; to see that the ravages of sickness are kept at bay; to see that each of us is decently clothed and housed. None of us are entitled, by reason of achievement or inheritance, to avoid sharing in that common responsibility.

As a family we each have the responsibility to see that each of our children, our own and our cousins’ and our cousin’s cousin’s children, are provided with the opportunity to learn and to thrive so to take their unique place as a member of our national family. It is our shared obligation to assist them to realize their own part of our shared destiny; our shared responsibility.

As each of us is part of a united family we have the obligation not to divide ourselves by artificial demarcation of worthiness; not by categories of color; not by rankings of religions; nor may we permit ourselves to be segmented according to the part of the world from which our ancestor’s emigrated to this fair land. We are all, each of us, a part of the mosaic of the American family, a family in which there is only one majority – the American people – and we welcome all who may come to our common table.

It is to that American sense of shared family values that we must be rededicated; to that sense of community; with compassion for the afflicted coupled with a renewed determination that their afflictions will be soothed. When one of us stumbles there must he a forest of hands outstretched to raise the fallen up. When one of us hungers there must be a new place set at the family table so that the hungry may be filled.

That is the genius of America, the simple truth that we are all in this situation together as equals; with a common purpose, a common destination and a common destiny.