I want him to remind us what it means to be Americans, and what the blessing of citizenship demands of us.
In an electrifying speech to honor the Athenian war dead during the grueling Peloponnesian War against Sparta, the Athenian leader Pericles said, “Our form of government is called a democracy because its administration is in the hands, not of a few, but of the whole people. In the settling of private disputes, everyone is equal before the law. Election to public office is made on the basis of ability, not on the basis of membership to a particular class. No man is kept out of public office by the obscurity of his social standing because of his poverty, as long as he wishes to be of service to the state. And not only in our public life are we free and open, but a sense of freedom regulates our day-to-day life with each other.”
I hope he can also communicate the mounting stakes, how the fate of this country, and this world, hangs in the balance.
In the immortal words of Pericles, “The strongest are those who understand with perfect clarity what is terrible in life and what is sweet, and then go out undeterred to confront danger.”
Today, we are all Athenians.
