Dean: 'We need to make moral choices'

The DNC blog has excerpts of Howard Dean's speech to the Baptist National Convention in Miami on Wednesday, September 7:

Dean: 'We need to make moral choices'

This is a critical moment in our nation's history and we have a shared responsibility to move our country forward and learn from the mistakes made and be truthful with ourselves about how and why this happened and what we must do going forward to rebuild America.

Because we will ultimately be judged by how we react in times of trouble and how we care for the least among us.

I want to talk to you not as the Chairman of the Democratic Party, but as an American. Last week, we witnessed tremendous acts of courage and heroism, of people coming together, opening their hearts to one another trying to reach out and help one another. That was America at its best.

But that's not all we saw. We saw people desperately trying to survive in conditions we could not imagine in an American city.

As survivors are evacuated, order is restored, the water slowly begins to recede, and we sort through the rubble, we must also begin to come to terms with the ugly truth that skin color, age and economics played a deadly role in who survived and who did not.

And the question that emerged: how can this happen in America?

The truth is, what we saw on the television in New Orleans exists here in Miami, and in every part of our country, every day. Because people are poor throughout our country. They are old. They are young. They are black, white, and brown. They are not refugees. They are our fellow Americans.

The truth is that we have ignored the poor for far too long. And until it washed right up on our front doorsteps, we might have continued to ignore the reality that poverty has too many of our fellow Americans in its grip, and we have a shared moral responsibility not to ignore it anymore.

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