The Campaign Speech I'd Like to Hear

John Cory
Truthout
2/4/08

-SNIP-

So let us begin to reclaim the dream and the daring vision that is America.

Let us have the daring vision to enact universal healthcare for every citizen and child in America. Do not let the naysayer persuade us that it is impossible. We have been to the moon on a promise and a dream. Surely we have the means to ensure preventative healthcare for our children and each other. The infrastructure is there with our VA and Medicare health systems already in place but poorly managed. The tools are readily available and conversion is within our grasp.

Let us dare to care for our veterans. Suicide and PTSD are not acceptable collateral damage in a fight for freedom. We have the means to establish local community centers for the treatment of veterans and the dedication to create veteran mentoring programs that could enable both volunteers and professionals to mentor and partner with the ever-increasing number of veterans who need counseling and support for themselves and their families. We have the ability to eliminate obstructive bureaucracies and means-testing to provide for "him who has borne the battle," as Abraham Lincoln said.

A nation that cannot care for its veterans or its children cannot face the world in good conscience. For as we stand and send them off to battle, so must we stand and face their flag-draped return. They have served: Duty, Honor, Country - and not in the dead of night or in secret darkness, and neither shall we. With honor and respect and empathy, we must stand beside our grieving families and pay the respects of a grateful nation.

We must hold fast to our Founders' vision of democracy. We must and will refuse to surrender our civil liberties and privacy to the fear-mongers who seek to line their pockets with our lives. A nation that spies on and fears its own citizens is not America; it is a totalitarian regime.

We must reclaim the vision of affordable education for our children. Surely we can see an imbalance just from the 2007 budget figures: $481 billion for defense, $100 billion supplemental spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and $56 billion for education. Has our vision become so frightened and distorted that we choose to put more money into war and the destruction of the world than into educating our children?

Continued...