Don't despair; this change is irreversable

Nothing is impossible if we put our souls and bodies to it. This in turn owes to a sense of personal obligation.

The equation is not: Our future is our collective responsibility, so let others do it. It is: The future is our collective responsibility, so I must do it. That is not recklessness or intemperance. That is being responsible in the extreme, seeing the task at hand not as somebody else's business but one's own. That is not looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. That is looking at the world with clarity of vision, seeing the world not just for what it is but for what it can be.

It takes idealism of colossal proportions, the kind we all have in this campaign, to not despair in the face of all these adversity.

The awe-inspiring characteristic of our idealism is its unfettered optimism, its sense that life will turn out for the better. But that optimism does not merely come from the blind belief that things will turn out well by themselves, it comes the belief that people can work together to make things better. It does not owe to resignation, but owes to glimpsing the possibilities of the human potential, with grace from the Lord, to recognizing that there is nothing we cannot do if we put our minds, and hearts, to it.

So, don’t despair; hang on to your idealism. That is the one thing I would beg you to cling to with the passion of a lover, or the desperation of a drowning man. God willing, we will march to victory despite the cynics.