“To lower our voices would be a simple thing. “In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words: from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. “We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. “For its part, government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways—to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words,
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