What we are creating together is an ethos of responsibility, caring and initiative that allows people to participate fully in the civic life of their communities and their countries. We in America are also discovering that we have much to learn from you. We also can offer, though, some lessons from our own experiences. The first is that democracy is a messy business that requires patience, hard work, flexibility and the acceptance of its inherent imperfections. For more than two centuries we Americans have been striving to perfect democracy and we will continue to do so but without any assurance we will ever fully succeed.
Human nature guarantees that democracy requires constant nurturing and vigilance.
But we can never waver from the struggle because nothing is more precious to us than the freedoms our ancestors struggled to preserve. The second hard lesson is that democracy asks us to live peacefully as neighbors with people who are different from us and whom we may not even like. What most of us discover is that we share more in common than we think, and that we are stronger as a people if we overcome our superficial differences and unite around our shared interests and ideals. And the third lesson is that democratic values must be steeped into our daily lives. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite actions.