Selma is Now

I am not even going to attempt to summarize this speech, given with the Selma bridge behind him, on the 50th anniversary of that definitive march.  I believe it will be considered one of the best speeches in recent US history, perhaps in all our history.  Here is a transcript.

 And it is certainly about our history.  It is vintage Barack, plus some JFK and not a little of Lincoln.  Quoting Walt Whitman,  Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Robert Kennedy, the same passage of Isiah that President Kennedy once quoted.  A pointed section in which he defines what loving America means, what American exceptionalism is, in terms that destroy all the "feeble" criticism.  Notice how many times he uses the word "imagination," including moral imagination.  The speech is about equal rights but more.  It is about how Americans march for change.  Given recent posts here, I could not help think about the climate movement, and the need for expressing moral imagination in that.  The moral imperative of the future, of life on earth as we know it.

I also thought about voices who can express our history and identity to all of us.  The only other such voice in public life who can really talk about American history I could think of was Bill Clinton, and he couldn't do this.  Certainly no known presidential candidate.  This was a moment.