I Love America

     I love America because America is not  just a country,It's an idea. You see my country, Ireland , is a country, but it is not an idea. America is an idea, but it's an idea that brings with it some baggage, like power brings responsibility.
    It's an idea that brings with it equality, but equality even though it is the highest calling, it's the highest to reach. The idea that anything is possible.that's one of the reasons why I am a fan of America.It's like hey,look there's the moon,let's take a walk on it, bring back a piece of it.That's the kind of America that I'm a fan of.
     In 1771 one of your founders, Mr. Franklin, spent three months in Ireland and Scotland to look at the relationship they had with England to see if this could be a model for America,whether America should follow there example and remain a part of the British Empire. Franklin was deeply ,deeply distressed by what he saw.In Ireland he saw how England had put a stranglehold on Irish trade,how absentee English landlords exploited Irish tenant farmers and how those farmers,in Franklin's words  "lived in wretched hovels of mud and straw ,were clothed in rags and subsided chiefly on potatoes" Not exactly the American dream. So instead of Ireland becoming a model for America, America became a model for Ireland....

Bono, Lead singer for U2 ... in his commencement address to the 2004 University of Pennsylvania graduating class on May 17, 2004