We have real enemies in the world. Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. And it’s around this time that some pastors I was working with came up to me and asked if I was a member of a church. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America. And despite the costs involved, America’s commitment will not weaken.

There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich. And meeting them won’t be easy. And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. I’ve seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day than see their friends lose their jobs, in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb, in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11.

Hope in the face of uncertainty. Let us be our sister’s keeper. To Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin; and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation; For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. And while America in the past has focused on oil and gas in this part of the world, we now seek a broader engagement.

It’s not enough, but it’s helping. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity.

Hall in East Moline, Ill.. But we also know our conscience cannot rest so long as the war goes on in Iraq. He does not say health care or the economy. That together, our dreams can be one. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq’s democratically-elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012.

God bless you.