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This speech will lead you to where you are right now, to assess where you have been since 2009. In 2009, in America, President Barack Obama gave his inauguration speech. Let’s get into that speech, then we’re going to see how it affects you.
On the 20th of January, 2009, Obama said:
“My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his services to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition. Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. Their words have been
spoken during rising tides of prosperity and still waters of peace. Yet every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on, not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers and true to our founding documents. So it has been, so it must be with this generation of Americans. That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failures to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shattered. Our health care is too costly, our schools have failed too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthens our adversaries and threatens our planet. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land, and nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and the next generation must lower its sights. Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious, and there are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America, they will be measured on this day we gather, because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that too far and too long strangeld our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history, to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on for generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a
given, it must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path of the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things. Some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in the labor who have hired us up along rugged path towards prosperity and freedom. For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West and endured the lash of the whip, and powered the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places like Concord and Gettysburg and Normandy. Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw, so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction. This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began, our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished, but our time of standing pacts of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions, that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and begin again. The work of remaking America. For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act not only to create new
jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and use technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its costs. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. We will
transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do, and all this we will do. Now there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, is that the state political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage. Can they can afford a retirement that is dignified? Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, problems will end and those of us who manage the public will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between our people and their government. Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force of good or evil. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without the watchful eye, the market can spin out of control, and that a nation cannot prosper when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended on not just the size of the gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity, on the ability to extend opportunity to every winning act, not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good. As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers faced the perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. These ideas still light the world and we will not give them up for experiences sake.”
That was from Obama’s inaugural speech in 2009, one year after the 2008world recession that came overnight. Years later in 2017, Trump came into power and he was a Republican. Obama, a Democratic leader whose roots came from Africa amongst other places, mentioned in his inaugural speech the Torah’s of men from other lands. He mentioned that this economy is healing, we need to create jobs. He mentioned that technology was needed to change. All of this was inherited a few years later by yet another Republican in Donald Trump. It was from George W. Bush that Obama had taken over, so from one Republican to another. A lot of what Obama said in that great speech was to do with war, and things happening by older generations.
There were many holes in that speech. He even admitted that critics said that his administration probably would not be able to withstand the amount of ambitious things they needed to do, and he was correct. It turned out the problems were inherited by the next presidency.
Great speeches such as this that can make people’s hair stand on end simply because they’re delivered by these experts like Obama. These things can not be seen as unbelievably bulletproof, because things change. But you too can speak. You too can create a fantastic speech. You too can make it so that your speech last the fullness of time. In order to change your life, you need to learn that speech, in order to change that speech into your speech. You too can change your life. Your life is what you make it. Speak it. Do it. It’s that simple.