More than anything, it is that sense - that despite great differences in wealth, we rise and fall together - that we can't afford to lose.

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.

Like any value, empathy must be acted upon.

That is the one thing that makes me a Democrat, I suppose - this 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.

Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends.