Last December, I got invited to one of those White House holiday soirees. My wife and I met the president and the first lady and had an altogether fine time. But there was one moment, while I was standing amid the splendor and the evergreens, when I thought to myself that my grandmother, a mere two generations of my family ago, had started out life as a shepherd on the gentle hills of north Kerry. And there I was, the shepherd's grandson, eating lamb chops in the president's living room. This, I concluded, is a helluva thing right here. That came back to mind last night, during the peroration to the president's address.

Scripture tells us, we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. We were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forbearers were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal, that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will. That's the country our parents and grandparents and generations before them built for us. That's the tradition we must uphold. That's the legacy we must leave for those who are yet to come.

There will be time in the coming days to talk about the politics, and the process, and about what is very likely to be a staggering overreaction by the president's political opponents. But, for now, when I saw the video of the people who were most directly affected by the president's actions, the people with a glimmer of hope in their eyes, the people waving the little flags a little more vigorously, I knew that the president had the moral and historical high ground on this issue. I saw my grandmother among them, come to America and a job folding sheets for the swells, first in Boston and then in Worcester. The heart of the experience is the same. The hope is the same. And the rest is all for later.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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