Obama's Big Speech: Some American Values from the New President

Whether or not you voted for Barack Obama (and, sadly, most Tulsans did not), the new president made a stirring speech today. Here got some things right.

Here's a particularly cogent section of the Obama speech that seemed to strike a chord with many Americans (and, we suspect, many Oklahomans). It's hard to argue with these American values:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, 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.