Good evening, my Fellow Americans and Hopefuls.
I need to ask a favor of you. I need you to set aside, for just a few minutes, the team you root for. The red jersey, the blue jersey. I need you to set aside the noise, the anger, and the fear that has become the daily soundtrack of our lives.
I need you to do that because I want to talk to you not as a Republican, or a Democrat, or an Independent. I want to talk to you as a fellow citizen. As a fellow human being who loves this country and is deeply worried about its soul.
We are a nation adrift. We feel it in our bones. A sense of disconnection, of suspicion. We’re told to fear our neighbors, to see them not as people, but as problems.
That is the great lie of our time. It is the oldest and most effective tool of those who seek to divide us for their own gain.
We’re told that our differences are more important than our shared humanity. So many reasons to find something in one another to fuel the manufactured rage over skin color, disability, color of one’s eyes.
It is no longer about taking in the gifts of knowledge and experience in other perspectives of life that you have yet to celebrate.
We all seek to find that thing that makes us, well, us. We are blinded by our biases that we have learned from others and in an attempt to fit in, we ignore those affected while we strive for our own well being.
Claiming to care about others while showing a lack of empathy to those who need it.
We are told that by believing what social media influencers tell us, we will be righteous in our fight; a war that should not exist in the first place.
So, that is the discussion. And, now for the why.
So, here we ask, why has this happened? It has happened because we have forgotten the promise that is the very foundation of this nation. The promise is not that we will all think alike, or pray alike, or look alike. The promise is that we can be profoundly different, and still be profoundly united in a shared commitment to a set of core principles: liberty, justice, and a basic, decent respect for one another.
We have allowed our focus to drift from the promise to the problems. We have been conditioned by a machine of outrage—on our screens, in our politics—to see only the worst in each other.
But I am here tonight to tell you that I still believe in that promise. I believe in it with the conviction of a man who has worn the uniform of this country for thirty years, who has seen the absolute worst that human beings can do to each other, and has also seen the absolute best.
The path forward is not to ignore our problems. It is to have the courage to confront them with a new set of tools. Not with the tired dogmas of the past, but with a renewed commitment to a simple, powerful idea: The Human Covenant.
It is a promise we make to each other.
It is a promise to have the integrity to hold our own leaders to the same high standard we demand of our opponents.
It is a promise to have the empathy to see the scared child behind the angry man’s outburst, and the legitimate pain that is fueling the misguided dogma.
And it is a promise to have the humility to admit that we do not have all the answers, but that we are willing to do the hard work of finding them together.
This is not a soft or a simple path. It is the hardest work there is. It requires us to be the calm, resilient leaders of our own hearts, so that we can be the lighthouses for our communities.
The work of healing this nation does not begin in the halls of Congress. It begins in our own homes. It begins in our own minds. It begins with the simple, courageous choice to see the humanity in someone you’ve been taught to hate.
That is the war of humanization. And it is a war we can only win together.
Thank you.