If you haven’t heard the speech that Barack Obama gave this month, it is time that you do so. Agree with Senator Obama or not, you’ll have a lot to think about, if you really listen.

Some people have tried to limit the scope of the speech, by saying that it is just about confronting racism. The speech is about a great deal more than that. It’s about what it means to be an American. It’s about how we can reconcile the promise of the American nation, and the reality of American failures, moving forward to form, not a perfect nation, but a more perfect union.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787…

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people.