…from President Obama’s commencement address at Rutgers on Sunday:

Facts, evidence, reason, logic, an understanding of science — these are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens. That might seem obvious….We traditionally have valued those things. But if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from. So, Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be. In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about. And yet, we’ve become confused about this.

Look, our nation’s Founders — Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson — they were born of the Enlightenment. They sought to escape superstition, and sectarianism, and tribalism, and no-nothingness. They believed in rational thought and experimentation, and the capacity of informed citizens to master our own fates. That is embedded in our constitutional design. That spirit informed our inventors and our explorers, the Edisons and the Wright Brothers, and the George Washington Carvers and the Grace Hoppers, and the Norman Borlaugs and the Steve Jobses. That’s what built this country.

Here’s the full text. It’s a good read, certainly better than the forgotten person who spoke at my commencement…whose identity seems lost to cursory internet searches….of course, I graduated in December, so it probably doesn’t even count (I’ll forgive the President for not giving Theodore Parker proper credit for that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” thing, which Dr. King paraphrased to great effect).

He may not have been a perfect President (and who would be), but it’s words like this that we’re going to miss when he terms out. Also, he got more right than wrong, and history’s going to remember him well, probably better than we do.