Word Watching ~  "Hope"

"[Few] on the partisan landscape can discuss the word 'hope' in a political context and be regarded as the least bit sincere.  Obama is such a man, and he proves it by employing a fresh and buoyant vocabulary to scrub away some of the toxins from contemporary political debate.  Those polling categories that presume to define the vast chasm between us do not, Obama reminds us, add up to the sum of our concerns or hint at where our hearts otherwise intersect."

~ John Balzar, Los Angeles Times, Review The Audacity of Hope, 2006.

In The AUDACITY of HOPE,  Obama writes:
"And in that place [Lincoln Memorial], I think about America and those who built it.  This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent.  And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union.  And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.
"It is that process I wish to be a part of.
"My heart is filled with love for this country."

Today, January 21, Barack Obama will place his hand not only on President Lincoln's bible but also on freedom-rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bible to be sworn in at his official inauguration ceremony.

~Barack Obama (b. August 4, 1961) author of two New York Times Bestsellers: Dreams from My Father, 1995 and The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006, Random House.

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