Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election.

I admire that about the Republicans: The evidence does not faze them. They are not bothered at all by the facts.

If you believe in a security strategy - a strategy of more friends and fewer enemies, a strategy of greater cooperation and a strategy of keeping America better at home as we grow more diverse - we have to build the minds and hearts to build this kind of world.

If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign.