"And yet, if we are honest with ourselves..."

Martin Luther King Day is always a day for remarkable speeches by leading politicians (Al Gore gave a great one in 2006 on wiretapping and the Constitution), and with an election coming up, this year is no different.

Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Georgia, where Dr. King had been a pastor. He speaks of the "moral deficit(s)" the country has, and of the "barriers to justice and equality" we must remove. The full speech can be read here (video- here), but this is the part that stood out to me most powerfully-

..."It’s not easy to stand in somebody else’s shoes. It’s not easy to see past our differences. We’ve all encountered this in our own lives. But what makes it even more difficult is that we have a politics in this country that seeks to drive us apart – that puts up walls between us.

We are told that those who differ from us on a few things are different from us on all things; that our problems are the fault of those who don’t think like us or look like us or come from where we do. The welfare queen is taking our tax money. The immigrant is taking our jobs. The believer condemns the non-believer as immoral, and the non-believer chides the believer as intolerant.

For most of this country’s history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man’s inhumanity to man...

...And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity...."

At the risk of sounding biased (again), I very much would like to have this man as our President. Yes, the 'change' stuff has become a punchline at this point, but the fact is that this country is in dire need of a strong progressive leader. I see Sen. Clinton as a competent executive, but not the agent of change she is marketing herself as. But marketing is what (sadly) matters in America, and she is winning that war. There are only a few weeks left to turn things around in primary season, and I will try to hold out hope that the Clintons' scorched-earth campaigning hasn't erased what people in Iowa saw nearly a month ago.