The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

by Barack Obama

Of course, manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest—of Native American tribes forcibly removed from their lands and of the Mexican army defending its territory. It was a conquest that, like slavery, contradicted America’s founding principles and tended to be justified in explicitly racist terms, a conquest that American mythology has always had difficulty fully absorbing but that other countries recognized for what it was—an exercise in raw power.

To begin with, we should understand that any return to isolationism—or a foreign policy approach that denies the occasional need to deploy U.S. troops—will not work.

Like it or not, if we want to make America more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure.

It was a relic of the Afghan war, we were told: instructions on how to hide explosives in toys, to be left in villages and carried home by unsuspecting children. A testament, I thought, to the madness of men. A record of how empires destroy themselves.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

But when we seek to impose democracy with the barrel of a gun, funnel money to parties whose economic policies are deemed friendlier to Washington, or fall under the sway of exiles like Chalabi whose ambitions aren’t matched by any discernible local support, we aren’t just setting ourselves up for failure. We are helping oppressive regimes paint democratic activists as tools of foreign powers and retarding the possibility that genuine, homegrown democracy will ever emerge.

FDR was certainly right when he said, “As a nation we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.”

Disorder breeds disorder; callousness toward others tends to spread among ourselves.

“You know I think the world of you, Barack, but your wife…wow!” I nod, knowing that if I ever had to run against her for public office, she would beat me without much difficulty.

Fortunately for me, Michelle would never go into politics. “I don’t have the patience,” she says to people who ask. As is always the case, she is telling the truth.

I asked if I could kiss her. It tasted of chocolate.

Like most Americans, I consider decisions about sex, marriage, divorce, and childbearing to be highly personal—at the very core of our system of individual liberty.

I have no interest in seeing the president, Congress, or a government bureaucracy regulating what goes on in America’s bedrooms.

But for the average American woman, the decision to work isn’t simply a matter of changing attitudes. It’s a matter of making ends meet.

“You only think about yourself,” she would tell me. “I never thought I’d have to raise a family alone.”

“It’s hard,” Michelle had said. Then, according to the reporter, she had added with a sly smile, “And that’s why Barack is such a grateful man.” As usual, my wife is right.