With those words, my heart swelled with hope, promise, and pride again. For the first time since 1963, I was again part of the country of my birth.
How long have we been simply "consumers" or even worse, "my fella 'muricans"? Today, once again, I heard the call to civic responsibility, to shared service and shared goals, and could once again believe in the America I knew in my early years. Let me tell you what it was like...
I first went to public school in 1952 in San Carlos, California - a "bedroom" community on the San Francisco peninsula. On our first day of school, we began to learn the Pledge of Allegiance - the original version sans the "under God" added during the McCarthy era as the first step toward a fascism of thought and belief and the manipulation that reached its apex with the Wah on Terra.
Throughout 13 years of public school, all but 3 of them in California schools, each successive year's course work included units on civics and US History that taught us the major documents of history, including the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Constitution. We committed much of the founding documents to memory, and each morning's home room included the recitation not only of the pledge, but another piece of history such as the Preamble to the Constitution.
We were taught the importance of participation. We learned exactly how our government was supposed to work, what the duty of a citizen was, how our system was based on an understanding that the common good took precedence over personal gain (though certainly gain was not by any means looked down upon in those halcyon 50s and early 60s.)
The Kennedy assassination, my junior year in high school, began the disillusionment for many of us; the Warren Commission Report made it clear that our government had no interest in the truth. The killings of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy solidified that clarity, and made us skeptics of the first order.
The fervor of rebellion in the 60s was, in part, the reaction of a generation that had been carefully inoculated with this premise - that our government was a righteous institution with only the highest goals and ideals, and that we had an active part to play in achieving those goals and ideal. That premise came into direct conflict with the war in Vietnam, when many of my generation were shipped off into oblivion for no reason.
In the ensuing 40 years, we have watched with disgust as we have lost a free press, an international reputation, a functioning government, an educational system that produced intelligent and committed members of society, a financial and regulatory system that did not reward the most pernicious and reprehensible behavior, and a business sector that understood that ever higher profits are unsustainable. We went from private doctors who treated you from birth to death and who knew you and your history intimately to mis-managed care that seeks profit over health at every junction.
But today, as President Obama (and how I have waited to type that title lo, these past years) opened his address, not by saluting the many "important" people on that stage, not by using some formulaic jingoistic construct that rings of deceit, by saying to each and every one of us, "MY FELLOW CITIZENS," the shift was palpable.
People stood straighter, took pride in hearing his challenges and in committing to moving them forward. Peoples' eyes glowed with hope, their lips parted in a smile, and they felt respected.
There were no finer first words to come from Obama's lips as he took office, no better way to make clear the tone of his presidency and the expectations he has of all of us, than to simply say, "my fellow citizens."
Sir, you have made me proud once again to be a citizen of this country, to know that my informed and considered opinion is valued, that my contribution - no matter its size - is of value to our country's well-being, and that I am represented on the world stage by a man whose intelligence, resolve, wisdom and determination come from a deeply-rooted respect and calm.
Tonight, for the first time in many years, I will sleep knowing that I am safe from my own government. The grownups are back in charge and my gratitude is boundless.