Al Gore's Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

Fellow Americans, and Fellow Citizens of Our Shared Earth -

More than two hundred years ago, the shores upon which we stand were blessed to provide home to an unusual outcropping of men and women who contained within themselves remarkable quantities of wisdom, energy and courage. These are qualities that are alone rare in anyone, and spectacular when combined.

They did the impossible - not once or even twice - but at least three times in their lives. They imagined a better way to live - free and equal - in ways we take for granted today but were altogether foreign in their time. A mere cognitive act, one might say of this first heroic turn, but given their context in the middle of the eighteenth century a nevertheless powerful and brave thing that we can only begin to appreciate, and one which was a predicate for all to follow.

They did the impossible again, when they assembled a rag-tag scrabble of an army under an inexperienced commanding general and proceeded to defeat the world's greatest military power of the time in a long and arduous struggle against guns, weather, poverty and demoralization, for the prize of freedom and the opportunity to start anew.

And still they were not finished for, having won the war, they also won the peace by concocting a remarkable piece of governmental engineering that remains to this day our society's foundational contract, the Constitution of the United States.

.....

Our Founders did their best to leave us something very much better than what they themselves had inherited, and their success in doing so was dramatic. They left behind what they actually described as an experiment, so unsure were they that this radical set of new ideas could work. And they called upon succeeding generations not to perform miracles - let alone three miracles at a time - but rather just that each live up to its potential, that each fulfill its obligations and promise, and that each preserve the gift the Founders had left to us.

My fellow Americans - my fellow stewards of the Founders' gift - it is time for us to engage in an honesty of discourse which in this country has become sadly all too rare in our public sphere, to the point of near extinction. And that honest, frank dialogue must begin with an overt declaration that this generation - born into freedom, security and prosperity, truly the most fortunate humans ever to walk the planet - this generation has failed in its responsibility to honor and preserve the gift given us by America's Founders, and by the succeeding generations who kept that gift alive, nourished it and improved it.

We, instead, have lived off the achievement of those forebears. We have not only failed to contribute to its improvement, but we have depleted the investment principal handed to us. We are eating the seed corn.

And worse - for if we're to be truly honest with each other we'd admit that we have debased the precious gifts of freedom, democracy, prosperity and reason which it was our great fortune to inherit. Lulled to sleep by a combination of our own greed and indolence and the importunings of the worst amongst us who have encouraged ever more of such abrogation of responsibility - while often stooping to dressing their debasements in the ill-fitting suit of patriotism - we are the first generation of Americans to leave our children less enriched in any respect.

.....

.....

We have enormous potential as a country to produce stunning achievements in education, in the arts, in science and engineering, in medicine and humanitarian relief, in human rights and in global political leadership for mutual peace and prosperity. We have enormous capacities unrivaled across the globe, and until recently, we had a wisdom and humility that often matched those, such that many people of good will in this world were not resentful or jealous of our capabilities, but rather happy and grateful to see us lead.

And so we did, but of late we have lost our confidence and we have lost our bearings. We have become lazy - there is no other word for it, and we will not renew ourselves if we cannot be honest about our malady - and at every turn have allowed ourselves to be seduced by the cheap and the easy alternative, which of course in the end is never any real alternative at all, anymore than the last players in a pyramid scheme can expect to see a return on their investment

.....

And when I call upon Americans to dramatically increase their investment in their country, I do not mean volunteering at soup kitchens or Teach for America or the Peace Corps, as wonderful and as necessary as all those programs are. I'm talking about politics, pure and simple. I'm talking about taking the time and investing the effort to raise our understanding about the great issues of our time, well above the bumper-sticker level that too many of us today find sufficient. For the truth is that the forces of darkness which have vastly multiplied in power over recent years are dependent on our mutual ignorance for their success. People who are informed and educated and invested in the issues that shape our national destiny would never swallow the blatant lies that too many of us have because we have allowed ourselves to become ill-informed, uneducated and uninvested in these great questions of our time. Those who would expect disengaged and uninformed Americans to prevail in shaping their government to make decisions serving their genuine interests might as well expect an army lacking bullets and guns to prevail in battle. They would be wrong on both counts, of course, with equally disastrous results.

.....

Many of you hearing these words today may not be interested in government, but be assured that government is interested in you. It has the power to do wonderful things for your benefit, like protect you from foreign and domestic threats to your security, like educating your children, like building infrastructure to facilitate your prosperity, like preserving your liberties and your equality from those who would diminish them, and like making sure that you have access to quality healthcare and live in a sustainable environment. But government also has the power to do enormous damage if it is placed in the wrong hands, by taking away our resources, our liberties, our dignity and sometimes even our lives. The difference between which of these governments we get is simply the difference between an engaged versus a indolent body politic. No concerned owners of a property would ever let weeds grow wild on it, just as no properly tended government is likely to run badly awry.

.....

.....

I am honored and flattered to have been chosen by you to lead this great country, and lead is what I intend to do. I will bring Americans home from a tragic war in Iraq and repair, to the best of our ability, the damage done there. I will fulfill the promises made to a forgotten Afghanistan, where real and completely neglected American national security concerns really are at stake. I will demand that Congress give all Americans the national healthcare guarantees they deserve, just as are found in every other industrialized democracy in the world, and not a few developing countries infinitely poorer than us as well. I will return fiscal sanity to our national ledger, restoring a fair tax structure of equitably shared burden and ending corrupt process of corporate welfare that has taken us to the edge of insolvency. I will bring the powers of government to bear on finally rescuing New Orleans, and I will deliver FEMA and every other agency across the American government out from the hands of political hacks and back into the control of competent professionals.

I will apologize to our neighbors on this planet, and not only for the arrogance of our foreign policy which, far too often, has been as egregious as it has been unwarranted. I know many Americans believe this country should never apologize for any of its behaviors. But that is as indecorous and boorish a trait of nations as it is of individuals. A grown-up and mature America can be proud of its achievements and contributions while also admitting its failings. Indeed, our best chance for a future filled with more of the former and less of the latter is the ability to distinguish between the two and the courage to admit those distinctions.

.....

Right now, America has no national enemy in the entire world. Not China, not Russia, not even North Korea. And yet the amount that we spend on the military in this country vastly exceeds that which is spent by every other country in the world - nearly 200 of them in total - combined. Surely, that is too much. Surely, what was once mere paranoia now flirts with outright insanity when it can be said of any country that it has no national enemies, that it spends more on security than all of the rest of the entire world combined, and yet that it simultaneously denies healthcare to its children because it claims such extravagances cannot be afforded. Dwight David Eisenhower, a five-star general, liberator of Western Europe, supreme commander of NATO, conservative Republican and former president - a man who therefore knew about as much as anybody ever will about the military, about national security, about war and about international relations - left us a warning about this very danger. Even at the height of the Cold War, Eisenhower saw looming large the internal threat of a military-industrial complex - a nexus of profits and politics and war - that would have a mind of its own, that would take control of our government, that could plunge us into unnecessary wars, and that at the very least would remove food from the mouths of our children, books from our schools, and medicines from our bedsides. Fifty years have come and gone since Eisenhower's farewell address to the nation. It is five decades past the time that we should have heeded his wise advice, but it is not too late to start, and I pledge that this new administration will do so now.

.....

Government is not the answer to all problems any more than the market or any other mechanism is. But government can do incredible things. And government is the product of our choices and our collective will. I call upon all Americans, beginning today, to invest the time and energy necessary to make our government the best we can make it. As John Kennedy once reminded us, each of us needs to ask what we can do for our country, and we can begin that process by spending a few hours every week turning off our televisions and educating ourselves about our public issues, so that never again can those with sinister intentions prey upon a nation weak with indolence and vulnerable in its ignorance.

There is much greatness in our country and in our history and in our bones. There are tremendous challenges that demand from us the creativity and courage and determination we've generated in the past to leap equally daunting hurdles.

I ask of you today your participation in the task assigned to our generation, so that we may be worthy of the generations who've given us so much.

Lead me in this effort. Follow me. Walk beside me.

But join me somehow in working every day to live up to our potential and our responsibility, and in leaving a stronger, healthier and better country to our children, so that they might do the same in their time.