{"id":5113,"date":"2011-12-06T23:34:36","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T04:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2011-12-06T23:34:36","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T04:34:36","slug":"one-day-two-good-speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2011\/12\/06\/one-day-two-good-speeches\/","title":{"rendered":"One day, two good speeches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This was a very good speech.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kan., Dec. 6, 2011<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what\u2019s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.\u00a0Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that\u2019s happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.<\/p>\n

I am here to say they are wrong. I\u2019m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we\u2019re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. \u2026<\/p>\n

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let\u2019s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. \u201cThe market will take care of everything,\u201d they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes \u2013 especially for the wealthy \u2013 our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn\u2019t trickle down, well, that\u2019s the price of liberty.<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it\u2019s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That\u2019s in America\u2019s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here\u2019s the problem: It doesn\u2019t work. It has never worked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this was a very good speech.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Geneva, Dec. 6, 2011<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren\u2019t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.<\/p>\n

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.<\/p>\n

It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a very good speech. President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kan., Dec. 6, 2011 This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what\u2019s at stake is whether this will be a country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,27,36],"class_list":["post-5113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-equality","tag-politics","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nOne day, two good speeches<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This was a very good speech. President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kan., Dec. 6, 2011 This is the defining issue of our time. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"One day, two good speeches","description":"This was a very good speech. President Barack Obama, Osawatomie, Kan., Dec. 6, 2011 This is the defining issue of our time. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. 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