Just over 20 years ago... I was in bootcamp. The only highlight of those long days was receiving letters from home in the mail. You see, I would get letters from family and friends from my small, supportive, no-stoplight town. Letters that expressed support for me, letters making sure that I knew people cared - not only about me, but they cared about what I was doing - and they were proud that I was serving my country, and that I was one of their native sons.
It was these letters and those people whom I thought about through tough times at bootcamp; it these letters and those people I thought about through tough times in Hell week in SEAL training; it was these letters and those people who I thought about through tough times overseas and at war. I still think about them today.
But, ladies and gentlemen, I tell you that because I know our community, I know our commonwealth, and I know our country… is filled with those kind of people. The kind of people who wrote those letters and the kind of people who received those letters.
The kind of people who run to the sound of the fight, who protect the less fortunate, comfort the sick, who will never surrender to fear or failure, for their fate is an American one, handed down by the sacrifices of their forefathers and their shared values of this nation.
We are all witnessing a failure in leadership, as a supine Congress fails to go back into session to help us with nothing but excuses, meanwhile, the grocery store stocker, the truckers, the nurses, the cooks, the first responders and so many more everywhere are up and working night and day on Sundays and Saturdays and weekdays to keep us going.
But this brings us back to our American reliance on individuals, on their ingenuity, their perseverance, and their indomitable spirit. Government certainly has its place and its promise of our social contract ... but the brilliance of America will always be the private side of things.
I know it is profoundly tough for many of you out there, and the punch from this virus a couple months ago has brought us to are knees, the material losses great, the deaths devastating for any family or friend to endure.
But this shall not continue: we must never be content to die on our knees, but strive to live on our feet. A strong economy underpins good healthcare. Indeed, the amount of unemployment in our country is a tragedy, but we must restore the dignity of work, the dignity of purpose with real and lasting employment. While we need government leadership ...we need reduction in non-essential spending and to update the failing systems so that they may better serve us.
We need American capital and American labor to come together in common cause of creating critical medical supplies here at home. Americans… funding, laboring, and building… for Americans. The fragilities of the current system have shown their leaks and must be plugged up.
We need leadership at all levels of government, at all levels of business, and all levels of our community to get back up, dust our knees off, learn our lessons, and press forward. We are never out of the fight and we must never let fear let our resilience falter.
