Barack Obama exhorted Americans Saturday to unite in a “new declaration of independence” from bigotry, small thinking and ideology, as he set off to Washington to take power.
The president-elect told his country to take strength in the face of multiple crises from the small band of patriots who forged US independence in 1776 in Philadelphia, before he boarded a train to the US capital.
“The trials we face are very different now, but severe in their own right,” Obama said.
“Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast.
“An economy that is faltering. Two wars, one that needs to be ended responsibly, one that needs to be waged wisely, a planet that is warming from our unsustainable dependence on oil.”
“And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not.
“What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels,” Obama said in the flag-draped waiting room of Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station.
“What is required,” he added, “is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed.”
Obama was set to spend all day trekking the 140 miles (225 kilometers) to Washington, picking up his vice-president-to-be Joseph Biden, in his home state of Delaware, along the way.
The train journey, recalling the trip taken to Washington by Obama’s hero Abraham Lincoln, kicks off four days of celebrations ahead of the former Illinois senator’s inauguration Tuesday as the 44th US president and the country’s first African-American chief executive.
AFP
