It is the language of values that people use to map their world. It is what can inspire them to take action and move them beyond their isolation.

[T]he essential idea behind the Declaration — that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can't be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make of our lives what we will — is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day.

The legitimacy of our government and our economy depend on the degree to which these values are rewarded, which is why the values of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination complement rather than impinge on our liberty.

In every society (and in every individual), these twin strands — the individualistic and the communal, autonomy and solidarity — are in tension, and it has been one of the blessings of America that the circumstances of our nation's birth allowed us to negotiate these tensions better than most.

[W]e depend on the strength of countervailing values to temper our judgment and hold such excesses in check.

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

That is one of the things that makes me a Democrat, I suppose — the idea that our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility, and social solidarity, should express themselves not just in the church or the mosque or the synagogue; not just on the blocks where we live, in the places where we work, or within our own families; but also through our government. Like many conservatives, I believe in the power of culture to determine both individual success and social cohesion, and I believe we ignore cultural factors at our peril. But I also believe that our government can play a role in shaping that culture for the better — or the worse.

That's what empathy does — it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision.