The Nobel Prize is a challenge to Obama to raise his game, match action to rhetoric, and meet this great challenge facing the United States in the world. It will require ending the war in Afghanistan and taking leadership at Copenhagen on climate change. It will require eliminating nuclear weapons rather than just talking about how nice it would be to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama can't do this by himself. Jefferson didn't write that "I hold these truths to be self-evident." Lincoln did not write the "better angels of my nature." The Nobel Prize is the collective achievement of the American people for repudiating the Bush years and making the words of the Declaration of Independence come that much closer to reality.

writes John Feffer in World Beat Tuesday, October 13, 2009. He contiunes:

Now, let's all prove that we deserve it.

All? Yes, all!