Excerpts from Howard Dean's Yearly Kos speech

Over in the Midday Open Thread at Daily Kos, georgia10 posted this link to video highlights from Howard Dean's keynote address at Yearly Kos. I've transcribed it so that, even those without video-viewing capabililty can benefit from a much needed dose of Howard-empowerment. But let's not let the existence of a new thread distract us from the important work of helping Charlie.
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This is a movement that is not so different from the movement in the 60s--to take back America to a better place, or bring America to a better place than where it was. In the 60s, what we fought for was individual rights, equal rights under the law for every single American, and we're still fighting for those things today. But we have lost our way starting in 1980 when the "me" party took over from the "we" party.

So now, this is the generation that takes the country back to the high ideals, laid before us by Franklin Roosevelt and Jack Kennedy, but it is a different generation, and you know more about the world than we do. You are a generation, this generation of bloggers, that understands that we are all citizens of the world. What we understood is that we were citizens of a whole country, and my father's generation understood that they were part of a larger world, but you are the first generation, I think, that's citizens of the whole world, because of the net. Because you're able to contact and talk with people all over the world, and have discovered the universal truth that people are people, everywhere.
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This is a tough fight, and you don't win just because you're right! You win because you outwork the other guys, you're tougher than the other guys, but you also win because you appeal to the higher instincts of people instead of to people's worst instincts. Those guys win elections by scapegoating people, "Those people"--from Ronald Reagan's "welfare queen" to George Bush's gay and lesbian Americans and immigrants--scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat is the way they win elections. WE WILL NOT DO THAT because it's bad for America, and the one big difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party is that they will put the interests of the Republican party ahead of the interests of the United States of America, and we will not do that! (Applause and cheers)
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If a generation wants to make it's mark on politics, you've got to actually participate in politics. Voting is not enough. Voting is the bare minimum--if you don't vote, then you've signed out, really, on any right you have to complain. But voting is not enough. And even giving money is not enough. That's important too, because we can't get our message out, and you know the arguments. We need people to become active--involved in somebody's campaign or running themselves.
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That in the end, what we owe is the American people, not ourselves, not our party, not our movement--we owe the American people to restore American greatness. And that means in the middle of our fighting, we've got to put aside whatever it is we disagree with and keep together, because block by block, vote by vote, precinct by precinct and year by year, we will take America back for the people who built it. Thank you very much.

Followed, of course, by much applause and cheering.

Update: Just found out via another post by georgia10 that there is a longer version here. It has some things that were clearly missing from the excerpted version I linked to above. (Like opportunities to see Howard laughing and doing that eyebrow-flash thing.)



One more thing, Oscar has the comics thread in draft, and I'll make sure that gets posted here before the end of the day, but if you can't wait, you can check them out over at Underground Railroad, and enjoy the spiffy new site redesign Oscar has done over yonder.

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