Alex Wong/Getty Images
- Joe Biden, now the 46th president of the US, delivered a solemn inaugural address on Wednesday.
- Biden made a plea for unity and to “end this uncivil war” from the same stage overtaken by rioters two weeks ago.
- “To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words,” he said. “It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity.”
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Speaking from the same stage that was overrun by violent insurrectionists just two weeks ago, President Joe Biden called for unity and perseverance in his inauguration speech on Wednesday.
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: unity,” Biden said.
Building upon the foundational theme of his campaign, Biden urged Americans to come together and bring down the temperature in national politics.
“We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature,” the president said. “For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos.
He added: “This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. And we must meet this moment as the United States of America.”
Biden also underscored immense challenges facing the country amid 402,000-plus COVID-19 deaths, surging unemployment, and an attempted coup that left the nation’s capital under a military occupation so that the new president could be inaugurated without incident.
“So now, on this hallowed ground, where just a few days ago, violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundation, we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power, as we have for over two centuries,” Biden said. “At this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.”
Biden’s journey to the inauguration stage was an emotional one. Before leaving his home state of Delaware for the nation’s capital on Tuesday, Biden broke down in tears when reflecting upon his late son, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015.
Beau’s death came amid speculation that Biden would run for president in 2016. He did not, but ultimately decided to run for the third time in 2020 because of what he saw in Charlottesville back in the summer of 2017.
His central campaign platform became “restoring the soul of the nation,” with Biden presenting himself in a crowded Democratic field as a unifier who could appeal to the disaffected working-class white voters who abandoned the party in 2016 and tipped the scales for Trump against Hillary Clinton.
Biden acknowledged in his address that “I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days.”
Asking the American people to bear with him, the new president laid out their common anxieties and how to overcome them.
“Look, I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation,” Biden said. “I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand that, like my dad, they lay awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling wondering ‘Can I keep my health care? Can I pay my mortgage?’ Thinking about their families, about what comes next.
“I promise, I get it,” he continued. “But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don’t look like you, or worship the way you do, or don’t get the news from the same sources you do.”
Biden then described the nation’s predicament as that of an “uncivil war” in his final rallying cry for unity.
“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural vs. urban, conservative vs. liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts, if we showed a little tolerance and humility, if we stand in the other person’s shoes – as my mom used to say – just for a moment.”
Powered by WPeMatico
