Barack Obama Speech Transformed for ECCIE!
Today I say to you that the challenges we face here are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, ECCIE - they will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen to share information over fear of punishment, and unity over conflict.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances, that for far too long have strangled other sites.
Men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked so that we might have a better site to call home. They saw ECCIE as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions.
This is the journey we continue today. That we become the most prosperous, powerful site on the web. Our minds are no less inventive, our services no less needed than they were last week or last month or when we first started. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. We will build the relationships and friendships, that feed our site and bind us together with others. All this we can do. And all this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this site has already accomplished; what men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.
What some fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale arguments have consumed some for so long, no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether ECCIE is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps providers to post ads and gentleman to find ladies who are legit, expose rip off/con artists, and keep everyone safe. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those who manage the site will be held to account - because only then can we gain the vital trust of members.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those who, at this very hour, are working to make ECCIE a better place for us all. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define our hobby - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as ECCIE can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the fellow hobbyist upon which this site relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when a newbie ask questions. The selflessness of people who would rather volunteer help than see a friend suffer during hard times. This will see us through and make us the site we want to become. It is hobbyist who will finally decide our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance, curiosity, and loyalty - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every member, that we have duties to ourselves and this site, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving a helping hand to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of membership.
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