米歇尔奥巴马演讲“机遇之门”视频及全文
半夏时光376226转发:米歇尔奥巴马机遇之门演讲全文
美国第一夫人米歇尔?奥巴马在9月4日民主党全国代
大会上发表演讲,以下是演讲稿的英文全文。First Lady Michelle Obama:Thank you so much, Elaine…we are so grateful for your family’s service and sacrifice…and we will always have your back.Over the past few years as First Lady, I have had the extraordinary privilege of traveling all across this country.And everywhere I’ve gone, in the people I’ve met, and the stories
I’ve heard, I have seen the very best of the American spirit.I have seen it in the incredible kindness and warmth that people have shown me and my family, especially our girls.I’ve seen it in teachers in a near-bankrupt school district who vowed to keep teaching without pay.I’ve seen it in people who become heroes at a moment’s notice, diving
into harm’s way to save others…flying across the country to put out a
fire…driving for hours to bail out a flooded town.And I’ve seen it in our men and women in uniform and our proud military families…in wounded warriors who tell me they’re not jus t
going to walk
again, they’re going to run, and they’re going to run marathons…in the
young man blinded by a bomb in Afghanistan who said, simply, “…I’d give
my eyes 100 times again to have the chance to do what I have done and
what I can still do.”Every day, the people I meet inspire me…every day, they make me
proud…every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the
greatest nation on earth.Serving as your First Lady is an honor and a privilege…but back when we
first came together four years ago, I still had some concerns about this
journey we’d begun.While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country…and I
was certain he would make an extraordinary President…like any mother, I
was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance.How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?How would they feel being uprooted from
their school, their friends, and the only home they’d ever known?Our life before moving to Washington was filled with simple
jo ys…Saturdays at soccer games, Sundays at grandma’s house…and a date
night for Barack and me was either dinner or a movie, because as an
exhausted mom, I couldn’t stay awake for both.And the truth is, I loved the life we had built for our girls…I deeply
lov ed the man I had built that life with…and I didn’t want that to
change if he became President.I loved Barack just the way he was.You see, even though back then Barack was Senator and a presidential
candidate…to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up f or our dates
in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going
by through a hole in the passenger side door…he was the guy whose
proudest possession was a coffee table he’d found in a dumpster, and
whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.But when Barack started telling me about his family that’s when I knew I
had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so
much like mine.You see, Barack and I were both raised by families who didn’t have much
in the way of money or material possessions but who had given us
something far more valuable their unconditional love, their unflinching
sacrifice, and the chance to go places they had never imagined for
themselves.My father was a pump operator at the city water plant, and he was
diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when my brother and I were young.And even as a kid, I knew there were plenty of days when he was in
pain…I knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him
to simply get out of bed.But every morning, I watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his
walker, prop himself up against the bathroom sink, and slowly shave and
button his uniform.And when he returned home after a long day’s work, my brother and I
would stand at the top of the stairs to our little apartment, patiently
waiting to greet him…watching as he reached down to lift one leg, and
then the other, to slowly climb his way into our arms.But despite these challenges, my dad hardly ever missed a day of work…he and my mom were determined to give me and my brother the kind of
education they could only dream of.And when my brother and I finally made it to college, nearly all of our tuition came from student loans and grants.But my dad still had to pay a tiny portion of that tuition himself.And every semester, he was determined to pay that bill right on time, even taking out loans when he fell short.He was so proud to be sending his kids to college…and he made sure we
never missed a registration deadline because his check was late.You see, for my dad, that’s what it meant to be a man.Like so many of us, that was the measure of his success in life being