League of Women Voters (Andover) - 8/23/2007

It's good to be back here in the chapel, where as a student I would come with the rest of my classmates for school-wide meetings in the morning, mostly to catch up on any lost sleep. You may know of another alum who slumbered through the rest of his career here, and slept-walked his way into the White House where he now resides. I believe Mr. Bush was the ass, excuse me, the class of 1964.
George's election is, of course, instructive. We truly cannot leave any child behind. God forbid, they may wind up leading this nation.

So my hope in this election is not simply to improve the image of Phillips Academy, but to stir the goodness of our people toward restoring the greatness of our country.

Competition is a fact of life on this planet: from something as small as a political campaign to the wider realm of international relations and wider still, to the very survival of all species. But it is often misunderstood, or "misunderestimated." There are those that believe our success must be gained through another's loss, that competition must mean seeking the defeat of one's competitors. Yet if we learned our etymological lessons, we would know that the word "competition" comes from the Latin "com-petere", to strive with, to strive together. In other words, competition is more about cooperation in order to bring out the best in each other--not mutual destruction, not simply survival of the fittest, but mutual survival through striving to become fitter, and by learning how we may all-all people and all species-again fit and live in this world together.

Two minutes is obviously not enough to explain how we may undertake such an effort, so I encourage you to visit my website, sendmurphytocongress.com, and then to actually send me, murphy, to congress.