YOUR COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

YOUR COMMUNIST MANIFESTO This is a really long one. It goes into what the Communists view as the history of society, and why they feel that they ultimately will control every country. To understand where our government is headed, you first have to understand the underlying philosophy of Communism, and Socialism by extension. I will attempt to clarify that philosophy in this article. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 says that all parties in opposition to the old political system(s) will themselves be labeled as Communistic. This is because Communism at that time was recognized as a world-wide force that is to be reckoned with. “Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact. I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.” – Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto. The Communists break into history at the point where humans are organized into societies. Specifically, they are referring to societies where there is an organized division of labor. “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” – Marx & Engels The Communists feel that this is not a good thing. According to the Communists, modern society rose out of the ashes of feudalism. Basically, the ruling class of the kings, lords and knights were replaced by the bankers, the merchants, and the military that enforces their will. “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” – Marx & Engels The ruling bourgeoisie rose out of the serfs who became merchants. This happened as towns grew into cities. The tradesmen became the masses of the proletariat as increasing industrialization made the skills of the individual craftsmen obsolete. Their lot degenerated into one of menial workers struggling with each other to obtain the mindless, low-skilled and low-paying jobs in the factories run by the bourgeoisie. The discovery of the New World, and the opening up of trade of raw materials for finished products worldwide, sped this process up. The discovery of steam power, the rise of the captains of industry, and the influence and control these richest of all men in the world had on the armies of their countries finished the process. “Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its time, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.” – Marx & Engels. The rise of the bourgeoisie was the result of revolutions in manufacturing, marketing, and banking. These were all centralized under the control of these former serfs. They rose in power and influence as the former powers such as the royal families and the Church declined. “Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the mediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany), there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France), afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” – Marx & Engels In case you have not noticed already, Communism is an elitist doctrine. The Communist Manifesto has already chosen to say that the rulers of the post-feudal world are nothing more than lowly serfs who have wrestled the power they hold from their rightful masters. “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom–Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” – Marx & Engels So the former serfs, using all of the trappings of the former order to their advantage, such as religion and chivalry, have enslaved all of the other classes who were formerly above them. The bourgeoisie themselves believe in nothing themselves except for money and power. All the other classes are now trapped as their slaves in their system of hourly wages. Even the family is now a relationship totally dependent upon the things that money can buy, and is dependent for its survival as a unit on the amount of money that is coming into the family as a result of their collective labors. The bourgeoisie show off their power with massive private and public works. The bourgeoisie cannot exist and maintain their control without constantly revolutionizing the processes of production. This also results in further standardization of the workers into mere drones in the factories. “Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” – Marx & Engels Constant market expansion as resulted in the bourgeoisie settling every corner of the globe. This has resulted in the imposition of the culture of the bourgeoisie on every culture the come into contact with and infiltrate for their mercantile ends. “All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.” – Marx & Engels The influence of cheap, mass produced goods it to draw the most reluctant nations and societies into the bourgeoisie world. They do so, or perish. The Manifesto refers to this world as “civilization”. All other nations end up being patterned on the bourgeoisie model. In the bourgeoisie world, the rural areas are now ruled by the cities. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, city life is far better that the “idiocy” of rural life. “The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.” – Marx and Engels In this “rescuing” of the “Idiot” rural populations via their migration to the cities, the bourgeoisie has managed to consolidate the ownership of all property and industry from the hands of the many into the hands of the few. “The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff. The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?” – Marx & Engels Marx and Engels contend that it was the methods of production and the way products were exchanged that gave rise to these now ruling serfs. The advances in production and exchange were so far head of the stagnant feudal, agrarian society, that they took over to create a new political system that was controlled by the increasingly influential and powerful bourgeoisie. “Into the[ ]…place [of feudal society] stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed.” – Marx & Engels Marx and Engels then say that there are crises of overproduction, which threaten the bourgeoisie themselves. There are natural limits to market expansion. To preserve their way of life, the bourgeoisie conquer new markets, wage wars of destruction wherein the replacement products will be required, and create new needs within existing markets by advertising and promoting new products and constantly upgraded models of existing products. The result of this is even greater expansion of bourgeoisie-controlled means of production, banking, and monetary availability to serve the bourgeoisie, which is unsustainable. Additional mineral extraction for the production of cheap goods with planned obsolescences is required. This results in increasingly severe crises within bourgeoisie society, which threatens that very society more and more each time. “The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons–the modern working class—the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed–a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” “Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of the machinery, etc.” “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.” – Marx and Engels Does this all sound familiar so far? Seem reasonable? Well, read on. “The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.” “No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.” “The lower strata of the middle class–the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants–all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.” —Marx & Engels Yes, that is how it is going here in the U.S.A. But wait, there’s more! Initially, as the fledging bourgeoisie rises to power, the infant proletariat class struggles against the bourgeoisie. They destroy individual products, the means of production. This is started on an individual basis. The Luddites comes to mind here. Eventually this catches on, and they start to organize. This is the Molly Maguire stage. This is still a struggle against individual bourgeoisie and their factories. At this stage, the bourgeoisie are still able to pit workers against themselves, like the Pinkertons against the Unions. “At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.” – Marx & Engels This is more a European condition that an American one, but we have our parallels here. The riots and resentment are directed against old royal lines and the shopkeepers, who can lose everything in the riots. But the industrialists who control the markets are not touched by this strife. “But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.” “Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarians, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.” – Marx & Engels For today, you can substitute the printed, televised and social media for the railways in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. “This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.” – Marx & Engels You can see this happening today, if you consider all of the people who do not control the banks and industry as the proletariat, whether they are “workers” or not. I am using this definition very loosely in describing modern American society. As little as 100 years ago, there was no Nanny State. The bourgeoisie is in constant conflict with the old aristocracy and with members of the bourgeoisie who are anti-progress and anti-industry. Also, foreign bourgeoisie try to influence what happens in other countries, as they want to control the means of production and property there. In order to maintain their control, the bourgeoisie require the cooperation of the people. They need to fill the positions in the police and the military. They have to buy into the idea of bourgeoisie society itself. They have to think that, with luck and hard work, they themselves may rise to be bourgeoisie. The American Dream is bourgeoisie. And it is antithetic to Communism. The bourgeoisie is thus forced to become directly involved in politics, as a matter of self-preservation. “The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.” “Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.” “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.” – Marx & Engels This says that some of the former slaves who were a part of the ruling class feel threatened by that ruling class, and will join with their former masters to revolt against their former compatriots. This can be outright revolution, or can be accomplished via the political arena. “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.” – Marx & Engels Marx & Engels say that the middle class who join with the Communists do so only to preserve their lives in the future. They are still “social scum” who are not to be trusted. It is implicit that the middle class is bourgeoisie, and must also be destroyed. They are the most dangerous class of all. “In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.” – Marx & Engels Since they have nothing of their own, and nothing to lose, the proletarians must destroy all reassurances that the private ownership of property will be honored. This includes all forms of property. The lowest stratum of any society must destroy all other strata of society if they are to get rid of the bourgeoisie rulers and take over all property and means of production for themselves. This concept assumes that the lowest stratum of any society is composed of workers. People who have jobs, because there is no Nanny State. “Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.” — Marx & Engels This says that the Communists seek to take over the world one country at a time. Their struggle for world dominion endures until the last non-Communist country left standing falls sway to their ideology. They work behind the scenes, gaining an inch here, a foot there, until the bourgeoisie and the middle class fight back. There is no telling where the Communist inroads within an individual society will end. They are patient. When the Communists determine that they are capable of making no further gains via a country’s established legal means, then they promise an open revolution against the Bourgeoisie and the middle class. “Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.” – Marx & Engels This says that a society where the worker has no hope of rising up out of his miserable state is one that is ripe for, nay, deserves, a Communist revolution. The very creation of a central banking and monetary system coupled with an hourly wage system results in the individual workers associating and seeing their common plight. This leads to solidarity and revolution. “The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” – Marx & Engels. So what is the difference between the Communists and the proletariat? “The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.” Here that are saying, “We Commies are tricky bastards, and will do whatever it takes to promote our agenda. No matter how long it takes. We want you to trust us, even though you would be crazy to do so.” “The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.” – Marx & Engels I will for the most part stop here. The history presented here via the eyes of Marx & Engels is only slightly different from the history of our society. I will throw in the caveat that it was said that England is the only country that is revolution-proof, as everyone there is bourgeoisie. Everyone there had someone they could look down their noses at. Everyone there thought that the possibility existed that, through thrift,. Hard work, and a little luck, you could move up in the social strata. They did not say that about the U.S.A. Mark and Engels were not of the proletariat. They made several untenable assumptions. The first is that there is no possibility of upward mobility. The second is that there will eventually be no middle class. Every country has its middle class, as it cannot function without at least a small middle class. The third is that you work or you starve. In their time, there was not much in the way of a social net. The fourth assumption is that the proletariat will eventually become homogeneous. They will all have the same ambitions, the same aspirations, the same desires. They will all work together for the betterment of their fellows. They will all be altruistic, with the betterment of their fellow downtrodden ones being their ultimate goal. All will be selfless. Even their leaders. Their leaders will work for them altruistically, taking nothing for themselves. They do not relish or desire power. If they did, they would not be true proletariat. They will be incorruptible, unlike the bourgeoisie . That will never happen. Marx & Engels assumed that all workers will be atheistic. They will have no allegiances to any country, political system, or society. They will not value the family. They will be totally broken. Without any sense of self-worth. Without a smidgen of personal dignity. They got that one wrong. So, how do you get the Communist revolution started in the U.S., where everyone is bourgeoisie, and wants to move up? Simple. You create an underclass. A class composed of ones with no hope, no religion, no morality. Ones who do not even try to better themselves. You foment divisiveness in the society. You promote policies that lead to conflict between groups. You promote policies that lead to financial uncertainty. You print more paper money, so that inflation eats at the living standards and savings of the people. You punish initiative with graduated taxes. You promote policies that erode wealth, the ability to acquire property, and to earn a living wage. You leave those at the top with sufficient tax deductions that they pay less taxes than the middle class. This breeds resentment against them. You fill all government offices with appointees who are also Communist at heart, if not by direct affiliation. You pass laws that erode the standing of all classes, trying to bring them down into one Untermenschen class. You promote laziness. You take over the schools, and teach “socialist” ideas there. You cheapen the value of all human life. You create policies that promote crime and violence. You try to erode the industries that provide decent wages. You try to obstruct industrial development on the home front. You engage in policies that guarantee the mobility of wealth out of your country. You enlist celebrities in promoting your agenda. You have a strong presence at the polling stations. You pass laws giving yourself the power to interfere in every aspect of the lives of the citizens. You denigrate nationalism, or any identity with any specific group that is not proletariat. You denigrate religion, or any type of belief structure. You deny the existence of any God, and try to prevent the very mention of the Word. You try to take away all hope. Only the hopeless, those with nothing to lose, will rise up. You promote an antagonism between the haves and the have nots’. You try to create a two party system, and align yourself with one of the parties. Using that party, you take over the country. You are now free to pass laws that victimize the opposing party. You use proposed legislation to try to get that party divided against itself. Divide and conquer. If it does not die of its own accord, you legislate it out of existence. You demonize all who oppose you. You try to oppress them in the press. You have their neighbors try to pressure them. If that does not work, their neighbors vilify them. And if that does not work, ultimately you imprison them, or you have them all killed. I found the closing statements to the State of the Union Address to be the most interesting of he address. “That’s just the way we’re made. We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us. But as Americans, we all share the same proud title — we are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story. Thank you. God bless you, and God bless these United States of America