This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.

Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we've already made.

In recent years, we've become enamored with our own past success. Lulled into complacency by the glitter of our own achievements. We've become accustomed to the title of Military Superpower, forgetting the qualities that got us there. We've become accustomed to our economic dominance in the world, forgetting that it wasn't reckless deals and get rich quick schemes that got us where we are, but hard work and smart ideas, quality products and wise investments.

Nobody is listening to your telephone calls.

Sometimes slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.

Now, as a nation, we don't promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That's an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

We can be civil to each other, and we can try to express ourselves acknowledging that we're all patriots, we're all Americans, and not assume the absolute worst in people's motives.