I am an American. I love this country.

Breastroke is an athletic event, butterfly is a political statement.

That sense of sacredness, that thinking in generations, must begin with reverence for this earth.

A commencement is a time of joy. It is also a time of melancholy. But then again, so is life.

You are Americans. You love this country. Together we are entrusted with the principles that represent mankind's greatest political and social achievement.

Seven and half years ago I began my own journey. For me and my family it was a time of adversity. But during that adversity I derived a deeper faith. And born out of that adversity was a commitment to devote myself to those people and to those issues that truly matter to me.

It was a myth that's often perpetuated at commencement that holds that only hope and promise lie beyond the halls of academe. Don't worry, be happy. Everything is fine.