It is with a heavy heart, yet one filled with abiding hope, that I take up my pen to address you—not as your President, but as your brother in the great struggle that binds all mankind. I speak to you who have known the weight of the musket, the ache of the plow, the callus of honest labor. To the mothers who have sent their boys to war, to the fathers who have buried their dreams in furrows of corn, to all who have kept faith when faith seemed folly.

There is a sickness upon our times, my friends—not of the body, but of the spirit. It creeps like fog through the valleys of our souls, and it whispers that we are small, that we are powerless, that the lot of common folk is merely to endure what greater men decree.

This is a lie most foul.

We tell our little ones stories of angels and demons, of kings and paupers, yet we forget to tell them the greatest story of all—that within each child lies the spark of something divine. Not because they are born to wealth or station, but because they are born to reason, to choose between right and wrong, to grow in wisdom as the oak grows in strength.

We fill their young minds with tales that make them small—that their worth is measured by the color of their skin, the accent of their speech, or the weight of their purse. We teach them to bow their heads when they should lift their eyes to the horizon. We train them to follow when they were born to lead their own lives toward righteousness.

I have seen men cross oceans and deserts, seeking freedom for their souls. Yet in our own blessed land, too many turn their backs upon these pilgrims and speak of them with contempt. When a man speaks ill of another for the accident of his birth, he reveals not the weakness of the stranger, but the poverty of his own heart.

Too many who seek high office hunger only for the power to command, not the burden to serve. They would wear the robes of authority while casting off the mantle of duty. But true leadership—the kind that builds nations and lifts souls—belongs not to those born in marble halls, but to those grown strong in character. It belongs to the man whose conscience is his compass, whose mind is sharpened by honest thought, whose life is spent in lifting up his fellow man.

The great soul—call him philosopher, call him prophet, call him what you will—he is no creature of myth. He is the child who was not beaten down by cruelty, the boy whose mind was nourished with truth instead of starved with superstition. She is the girl who was taught to speak her mind with reason, to see the world not as it is, but as it might be.

Let us stop telling our children to be content with littleness. Let us speak to them instead of the greatness that lies within their grasp—the greatness of conquest over their own baser nature. The greatness of duty faithfully discharged.

Our Republic was never meant to be the final word in human progress. It was meant to be the first word of a greater conversation—a conversation that would join East to West, North to South, not by force of arms but by the bonds of common humanity and shared purpose.

In such a world, no child need go hungry, for we shall owe our debt not to any man's greed, but to the promise of tomorrow. In such a world, evil shall find no purchase, for every child shall be raised to reach toward the light, and to grow in that reaching.

I call upon you, mothers and fathers of this earth—look into the faces of your young ones and speak to them no more in riddles and fairy tales. Give them the tools to think clearly, the courage to stand firmly, and the wisdom to choose rightly. Teach them to worship not gods who demand their blood, but to become the kind of people who make the very angels weep with wonder.

Look into their eyes, and bid them rise.