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We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter, we are bound one to another. That the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems. That the future of the child, that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future. That the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger. That the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might to avoid pain is our failure.

We democrats must unite so that the entire nation can unite because surely the Republicans won't bring this country together. Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left out, into the royalty and the rabble. The Republicans are willing to treat that division as victory. They would cut this nation in half into those temporarily better off and those worse off than before. And they would call that division recovery.

To succeed, we will have to surrender some small parts of our individual interests to build a platform that we can all stand on at once and comfortably, proudly singing out. We need. We need a platform we can all agree to so that we can sing out the truth for the nation to hear in chorus. It's logic so clear and commanding that no slick Madison Avenue commercial. No amount of geniality, no martial music will be able to muffle the sound of the truth.

We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write, what a proper government should be. The idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all. Feeling one another's pain. Sharing one another's blessings reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race or sex or geography or political affiliation. We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another.

For all of our macho individualism, we cannot make it as individuals alone. That no man is an island, no woman, no race, no neighborhood, no state either. And here is something that should resonate with lawyers like you and me in a special way, I think. For that sense of sharing and synergy, which we call community to work best. It should be an idea chosen by the American people freely because they see the need for it and the rightness of it. Indeed, our constitution is designed to protect individual liberty better than any other document ever even dared to. But it does not order us to love one another, or even to join together, or even to share intelligently. Our legislated, legislated laws in general have been an expanding universe of proscriptions and prohibitions, with little to suggest how much we really need each other, how much we owe each other. Is not the tort law of most states still built on the assumption that if the other guy in your boat falls overboard, you have no legal obligation to save him, nor even to try. Even if you are the best swimmer on earth. Now for myself, I do not believe we should encourage a society in which we can count on each other for so little civility and common sense that every ounce of our behavior requires a pound of new law with a constant stream of legislation and incessant litigation.