Category: Random Thoughts

Ronald Reagan came into office with a national debt of less than $1 trillion. Mostly by cutting taxes on the rich, he grew that debt to $2.6 trillion. George H.W. Bush broke his “no new taxes” pledge, but it wasn’t enough to keep the debt from ballooning another 50 percent, to $4.2 trillion.

Bill Clinton’s aggressive budget balancing slowed the growth rate a bit: eight years later, he left office with a debt of $5.7 trillion—and a tight budget in place that, if followed, would have paid whole thing off by 2006. Unfortunately, George W. Bush had no intention of following through with Clinton’s plan: on his watch, the debt nearly doubled, from $5.7 to $10.6 trillion. So, nearly 80 percent of the current debt—about which conservatives now complain—was acquired on the watch of the three most recent conservative Presidents.

Via [OurFuture.org]

Via [DanMeth.com]

“In the long history of humankind (& animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate & improvise most effectively have prevailed” -Darwin

At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution

Two hundred years after Darwin’s birth, the theory of evolution is still evolving — and finding relevance in realms far outside the biological.

Evolution is being scaled up to the level of populations, even whole ecosystems. Moreover, scientists say evolution is intertwined with other dynamics in ways science is just starting to understand.

“The process of evolution is fundamental to the universe,” said Carl Woese, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign microbiologist and one of the first proponents of this newly revised evolutionary framework. “Biology is the most obvious manifestation of it.”

Darwin described how changes in an organism are passed from generation to generation depending on their contribution to survival. Biologists later combined this with genetics, which hadn’t been discovered in Darwin’s time.

The fusion — called neo-Darwinian evolution — describes evolution as we know it today: Genetic mutations produce changes that can become part of a species’ heritage and, when enough changes accumulate, produce new species.

It’s one of the most powerful descriptions of the world dreamed up by humans, central to understanding the natural world and applicable to engineering, economics and even software design.

2282474463_4d56f78c8f But to Woese and other scientists, neo-Darwinism isn’t so simple. Change and selection need to be studied at other levels — and there are lots of big, unanswered questions.

Bacteria, for example, engage in what’s known as horizontal gene transfer: Genes drift from one microbe to another without any need for reproduction. What this means for microbiology isn’t yet clear, let alone biological history — how did multicellular organisms evolve, anyway? But it’s hugely important to figure out.

Another mystery is the tendency of some genes to mutate at unusually high rates. The driver appears to be a process called biased gene conversion, which goes against the notion that evolution is driven by random mutations. Natural selection still operates on its outcome, but is not driving the process itself.

Scientists are also studying evolution at levels beyond the single organism. Some insect colonies — ants and honeybees being the best-known examples — can be collectively regarded as individuals, known as superorganisms.

Superorganism dynamics are still a mystery — how, for example, does a colony evolve different traffic rules? — but they may apply to other ecological collectives, including human societies.

When taking this macro-scale approach, some of the trickiest non-Darwinian evolutionary phenomena become apparent. Properties emerge at critical points — known as saltations — in complexity, but again can’t be explained by mutation and selection in a sub-unit of the whole.

Superorganisms, for example, are sometimes the only way to make sense of phenomena like eusociality, in which individual insects care for offspring unrelated to them.

Another example of this may be the jump from unicellular to multicellular life; another may be the fantastic forms taken by human societies in a networked age, with millions of once-isolated people linked by data networks whose visual representations are uncannily similar to the neural connections of a brain.

Evolution has moved not only beyond the individual, but beyond the biological. It is being used to understand the transition of a few primitive compounds to the chemical building blocks of life. Somewhat more pertinently, language seems to evolve towards efficient, easily propagated linguistic constructs.

Applying an evolutionary framework to language may seem strange, but at least it’s relatively simple. Cultural evolution, on the other hand, may be just as complicated as biological evolution.

Selection and mutation — and whatever other biological analogues apply — may act simultaneously at the levels of the meme, of traits like boat design or tool use, and of entire bodies of thought.

What, exactly, is a cultural organism — and how does its evolution affect the development of, say, individual humans and their community, which itself might be an organism?

Maybe by the time Darwin turns 300, we’ll have some answers.

Via [WIRED]

To be honest, the restoration of science was the least of it, but when Barack Obama proclaimed during his Inaugural Address that he would “restore science to its rightful place,” you could feel a dark cloud lifting like a sigh from the shoulders of the scientific community in this country.

When the new president went on vowing to harness the sun, the wind and the soil, and to “wield technology’s wonders,” I felt the glow of a spring sunrise washing my cheeks, and I could almost imagine I heard the music of swords being hammered into plowshares.

Wow. My first reaction was to worry that scientists were now in the awkward position of being expected to save the world. As they say, be careful what you wish for.

My second reaction was to wonder what the “rightful place” of science in our society really is.

The answer, I would argue, is On a Pedestal — but not for the reasons you might think.

Forget about penicillin, digital computers and even the Big Bang, passing fads all of them.

The knock on science from its cultural and religious critics is that it is arrogant and materialistic. It tells us wondrous things about nature and how to manipulate it, but not what we should do with this knowledge and power. The Big Bang doesn’t tell us how to live, or whether God loves us, or whether there is any God at all. It provides scant counsel on same-sex marriage or eating meat. It is silent on the desirability of mutual assured destruction as a strategy for deterring nuclear war.

Einstein seemed to echo this thought when he said, “I have never obtained any ethical values from my scientific work.” Science teaches facts, not values, the story goes.

Worse, not only does it not provide any values of its own, say its detractors, it also undermines the ones we already have, devaluing anything it can’t measure, reducing sunsets to wavelengths and romance to jiggly hormones. It destroys myths and robs the universe of its magic and mystery.

So the story goes.

But this is balderdash. Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.

That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world.

Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked.

It requires no metaphysical commitment to a God or any conception of human origin or nature to join in this game, just the hypothesis that nature can be interrogated and that nature is the final arbiter. Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists and Hindus have all been working side by side building the Large Hadron Collider and its detectors these last few years.

And indeed there is no leader, no grand plan, for this hive. It is in many ways utopian anarchy, a virtual community that lives as much on the Internet and in airport coffee shops as in any one place or time. Or at least it is as utopian as any community largely dependent on government and corporate financing can be.

Arguably science is the most successful human activity of all time. Which is not to say that life within it is always utopian, as several of my colleagues have pointed out in articles about pharmaceutical industry payments to medical researchers.

But nobody was ever sent to prison for espousing the wrong value for the Hubble constant. There is always room for more data to argue over.

So if you’re going to get gooey about something, that’s not so bad.

It is no coincidence that these are the same qualities that make for democracy and that they arose as a collective behavior about the same time that parliamentary democracies were appearing. If there is anything democracy requires and thrives on, it is the willingness to embrace debate and respect one another and the freedom to shun received wisdom. Science and democracy have always been twins.

Today that dynamic is most clearly and perhaps crucially tested in China. As I pondered Mr. Obama’s words, I thought of Xu Liangying, an elderly Chinese physicist and Einstein scholar I met a couple of years ago, who has spent most of his life under house arrest for upholding Einstein’s maxim that there is no science without freedom of speech.

The converse might also be true. The habit of questioning that you learn in physics is invaluable in the rest of society. As Fang Lizhi, Dr. Xu’s fellow dissident whose writings helped spark the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and who now teaches at the University of Arizona, said in 1985, “Physics is more than a basis for technology; it is a cornerstone of modern thought.”

If we are not practicing good science, we probably aren’t practicing good democracy. And vice versa.

Science and democracy have been the watchwords of Chinese political aspirations for more than a century. When the Communist Party took power it sought to appropriate at least the scientific side of the equation. Here, for example, is what Hu Yaobang, the party’s general secretary, said in 1980. “Science is what it is simply because it can break down fetishes and superstitions and is bold in explorations and because it opposes following the beaten path and dares to destroy outmoded conventions and bad customs.”

Brave words that have yet to be allowed to come true in China. Mr. Hu was purged, and in fact it was to mourn his death that students first began assembling in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Dr. Fang got in trouble initially because he favored the Big Bang, but that was against Marxist orthodoxy that the universe was infinitely unfolding. Marxism, it might be remembered, was once promoted as a scientific theory, but some subjects were off-limits.

But once you can’t talk about one subject, the origin of the universe, for example, sooner or later other subjects are going to be off-limits, like global warming, birth control and abortion, or evolution, the subject of yet another dustup in Texas last week.

There is no democracy in China, and some would argue that despite that nation’s vast resources and potential, there will not be vigorous science there either until the Chinese leaders take seriously what Mao proclaimed back in 1955 and then cynically withdrew: Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

In the meantime I look forward to Mr. Obama’s cultivation of our own wild and beautiful garden.

via [New York Times]

Interesting Facts about Evansville

• What year did Evansville become a city? 1847
• Name five Indian tribes that lived in Evansville area. Shawnees, Miamis, Pottawattomies, Delawares, and Kickapoos.
• What was the depth of the floodwater at the corner of Washington and Kentucky Avenues on Jan 31, 1937? 7 Feet
• What product kept Sterling brewery profitable during prohibition? Malt Extract
• What was Willard Carpenter’s dream to build on Reitz Hill? A College
• What does Josef Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, have in common with Evansville? Her former husband was from Evansville
• Evansville is thought to have been the first city in the country to have what in its schools? Telephones
• During World War II what other police force could be found on Evansville’s street? Military Police
• What did truck drivers driving through Evansville call ‘The Chicken Coop’? The Weigh Station
• Why was Evansville’s red light district called ‘ Gear Town ‘? It was located in 1st, 2nd and High Streets
• Why was it necessary to change the wheels on every train coming north from Kentucky or going south to Nashville? The railroad tracks were different sizes
• What new technology became available in Evansville in 1882? The electric light
• What did Willis Copeland build in 1903? The Zentmobile
• What did F.J. Scholz manufacture in one of the most extensive businesses of its kind in the Midwest? A Cemetery Monument company
• What civil war hotel was located at 3rd and Main? The Washington Hotel
• What happened in 1938 to help bring Evansville out of the Depression? The Discovery of Oil
• Who invented and secured a patent for the common bottle cap? Alfred Bernardin
• How many men from Vanderburgh County fought in the Federal Army during the Civil War? 3,761
• Who is best known for beginning his career in the Blue Bar? Boots Randolph
• What engineering feat did L&N Railroad accomplish in 1885? Completion of Railroad Bridge across Ohio River into Henderson.
• Who was the first mayor of Evansville? James G. Jones
• What Evansville Newspaper ceased publication with the issue giving the account of Lincoln’s death? The Evansville Dispatch
• How many time was Arad McCutchan name ICC ‘Coach of the Year?’ 12
• In 1910 what covered 30 acres west of Pigeon Creek on Maryland Street and was the world largest of its kind. Globe-Bosse-World Furniture Company
• Who was the editor of ‘The Evansville Courier’ who promoted improved schools and parks? Howard Roosa
• In what year did Drive-In theaters appear in Evansville? 1946
• Where was Slaughter’s Avenue? The Lloyd Expressway
• In what year did Evansvillians begin playing golf? 1898
• In 1955, what store on the walkway was ‘The Wife Saver’ store? Evansville Electric Service Inc.
• What local figure was the Minster to China? Co. Charles Denby
• How did Evansville lose its Wharf? It was destroyed by an ice jam.
• What high school did fashion designer Halston attend? Benjamin Bosse
• What does Mater Dei mean? Mother of God
• Who was Evansville most famous woman? Albion Fellows Bacon
• In what year did the first student graduate from a high school in Evansville? 1862
• What uncompleted building burned on Christmas Eve 1855? The Courthouse
• In what park were animals first displayed in Evansville? Oak Summit Park
• What was Riverside drive formerly called? Water Street
• What was the Belmont Disaster? A shipwreck that killed 14 people
• What local killer’s trial led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling balancing free-press and fair-trial rights? Leslie ‘Mad Dog’ Irvin
• What was distinctive about Vine St., Clark, Governor and Douglas high schools? They were for black students
• What west side city was annexed by Evansville? Lamasco
• What local sports figure became the announcer of the Kentucky Derby? Chick Anderson
• How many growing days does Evansville have? 185 Days
• How many years did the Wabash Erie Canal operate? 12 Years
• What was unusual about the children’s barber chair in Strouses? The barber chair was a carousel horse
• What vaudeville comedian never failed to mention his old home town Evansville in his act and movies? Joe Cooke
• What was ‘The Pitts?’ A threshing machine
• What is the oldest road in the Evansville city limits? Red Bank Road
• What Evansville golfer won the 1944 PGA? Bob Hamilton
• What was destroyed in a roaring inferno on Jan 31st, 1946? Globe-Bosse-World Furniture Company
• What was the name of the amusement park located on East Morgan Avenue? Yabroudy Park
• What chocolate animals was a Christmas tradition at Hermann’s Candy Store? Chocolate Mice
• What Evansville citizen was the first to attend Indiana State University? James Shanklin
• What was the first brick building in Evansville? The Courthouse
• What local person was the national leader of the Klu Klux Klan? D.C. Stephenson
• When did the first electric generating plant start in Evansville? 1882
• Who was the first woman editor of the Evansville Sunday Courier and Press? Judith Clabes
• What was the first high school west of Alleghenys? Evansville High School near 7th and Main
• What were ‘The Simplicty and the ‘Traveler? Automobiles manufactured in Evansville
• Who was the first school teacher in Evansville? Thomas Truman
• What area was known as ‘The English Settlement? McCutchanville
• Who was Evansville¢s College first All-American basketball player? Gus Doerner
• What television station first broadcast the news in color? WFIE
• What happened to the LST Shipyard? Destroyed in a fire
• Where did Theodore Roosevelt speak in Evansville? 5th and Locust Streets
• Why did gypsies make an annual pilgrimage to Evansville? The Queen is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery
• How many square blocks were under flooded in the 1937 flood? 500
• What was WEHT’s channel prior to 25? 50
• In the 1930’s what did Weinbach Avenue and Barker Avenue have in common? They were the city limits
• What did soap manufacturer Adolph Melzer Jr. leave to the city of Evansville? A thousand dollar gift to collect interest for 200 years
• Who was ISUE’s first basketball coach? John L. Deem
• What did ‘Free the Eagle’ refer to? University of Southern Indiana independence
• Where was Evansville’s only public roller coaster? Yabroudy Amusement Park
• What was Welborn Hospitals first name? Evansville Sanitarium
• When was St. Boniface church on Wabash Avenue built? 1881
• In what decade was ‘Good Times Ahead for Evansville’ made popular? 1930’s
• What year was the Evansville Race Riot? 1903
• Who was Anchor Industries World’s largest flag dedicated to? The Iranian Hostages
• Before Oak Hill cemetery, where was Evansville’s burial ground? 5th and Mulberry
• What pro sport did Central H. S. grad Dr. Ralph Wilson participate in 1930? Professional Wrestling
• What pioneer village to the east, now a ghost town, was an early rival of Evansville? Darlington
• What crime did Hugh McGary’s father commit? He murdered an unarmed Indian.
• How did Jack McLean end his sport show? Good night to all good sports
• What large institution west of Evansville provided treatment for patients with tuberculosis? Boehne Camp
• What Rex Mundi football player went on to national fame? Bob Griese
• What Civil War encampment was located on the old fairground on the riverfront? Camp Wallace
• What man from Evansville was one of the first three Americans killed in WWI and where is he buried? James Bethel Gresham
• Which hotel had ‘The Rose Room? The McCurdy
• What railroad baron was from Evansville? David Mackey
• Evansville is located just north of what famous ‘line’? Mason-Dixon Line
• What was Evansville’s first private hospital? St. Mary’s on the waterfront
• Hoosier Cardinal was a pioneer in the manufacture of what industry? Plastics
• When was a fire department established? 1888
• Who was the first black doctor in Evansville? George Washington Buckner
• What company made the first farm tractors in the United States? Hercules Buggy Company
• Where was the first jail located? 3rd and Main Streets
• How long is the Ohio River? 981 Miles
• What pair of rare animals (the only two in captivity) was at Mesker Zoo? Blue glacier bears
• When was Evansville first museum established? 1904
• What was the name of the hospital for blacks? Welborn Walker Annex
• What year did the Evansville Philharmonic established? 1934
• Why did Evansville schools have recesses? To move the horses to the shade
• What year was the first commercial flight from Evansville to Chicago? 1928
• Where was the Sunshine Coal Mine located? West Maryland Street
• Why was there a riot in 1865? Opposition to increasing black settlement
• What year was the L&N Railroad station built? 1901

As January comes to a close, take a look back at your New Year’s Resolutions, then read this quote from the great Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

“Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.”

~Mark Twain

Via [Boston.com]

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 service 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. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the 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 failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten 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–a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today, I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America–they will be met.

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 for far too long have strangled 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 from 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 for 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 their labor, who have carried us up the long, 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; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

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 pat, 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 wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. 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–that the stale 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, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars 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 a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control–and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart–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 with 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. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort–even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus–and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West–know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment–a moment that will define a generation–it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends–honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism–these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility–a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence–the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed–why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to [the] future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive … that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet” it.

America: In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.