A Quote by Ron Fournier
It's an appeal as old as America and its presidency: This is an extraordinary country populated by hard-working, big-dreaming, freedom-loving people graced by God when they're not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.
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President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another?
I think I know I've been working very hard for the family business, sometimes those days are long days and I think if I know I'm working hard and pulling my weight, both working and playing hard at the same time, I think everyone who I work with can see I am there pulling my weight.
None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
That's just like America. It's made up of lots of different people. We're all different colors, different ages, we do different jobs -- but it takes all of us black people, white people, brown people, men and women, young and old, working in the factories, working in the fields, working in offices, working in stores -- it takes a lot of different kinds of people to get the job done for America.
So we have a tremendous amount of water where the two greatest rivers in North America meet. And then all of the tributaries from the various areas come in there also. It's also highly populated. So we're working a number of water rescues. We're working extremely hard to keep people safe and make sure that we're keeping the rule of law and keep people warm. It's been pretty cold.
The American Dream is freedom, prosperity, peace-and liberty and justice for all. That's a big dream. It's not always easy to achieve, but that's the ideal. More than any country in history we've made gains toward a democracy that is enviable throughout the world. Dreams require perseverance if they are to be realized, and fortunately we're a hard-working country and people. We are the luckiest people in history, just by the fact that we are Americans.
We Americans understand freedom; we have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom's models in a searching world. We can be freedom's missionaries in a doubting world. The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.
I hate America. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the national anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word 'free' to a note so high nobody can reach it. That was deliberate. Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me. You come to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean. I live in America, that’s hard enough, I don’t have to love it. You do that. Everybody’s got to love something.
I think of America not so much as a single country but as a constellation of groups out there competing for air time, energetically expressing themselves and luxuriating in their right to govern themselves. Freedom is that great vaunted word that's always applied to our country - and rightly so.
Never forget, Americans, that yours is a spiritual country. Yes, I know you're a practical people. Like others, I've marveled at your factories, your skyscrapers, and your arsenals. But underlying everything else is the fact that America began as a God-loving, God-fearing, God-worshipping people.
I'm not from a political family and didn't grow up dreaming of being George Washington. I started working in 8th grade and have held every odd job possible - working in a gravel pit, weighing big wheelers, ticket sales, data base management - but I knew if I worked hard and got experience, I could apply that experience to my next endeavor.
The rich people are apparently leaving America. They're giving up their citizenship. These great lovers of America who made their money in this country-when you ask them to pay their fair share of taxes they run abroad. We have 19-year old kids who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan defending this country. They went abroad. Not to escape taxes. They're working class kids who died in wars and now billionaires want to run abroad to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. What patriotism! What love of country!
I travel up and down the country and I've been all around the middle of America for many years. Middle America is not one big mass of people with a proverbial beer in its hand, keeping the country down. That is not my experience of it and I don't labor under that misconception. And we have a long tradition of coming together through music in our country.
They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length.
If it's hard for Blue America to see Red America as anything other than a bunch of dumb, racist rednecks; it's hard for Red America to recognize that many minorities are legitimately worried about what a Trump presidency means for their family.
I think people are dreaming big because they have the tools to dream big. I hope that people are dreaming big because it makes them feel good about their lives.
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