We're fighting for the human right to reinvent humanity. We're fighting for the right to set more and more people free. We're fighting for the right to dream of futures, then to make them be. We're fighting for the right of a woman in Afghanistan to talk to her grandchildren nightly by cellphone-grandchildren she may never have seen, grandchildren she would never have known.

We're fighting for the right of a peasant in the Punjab to fly to London to hug the brother who left for a better life 20 years ago. We're fighting for the right of a child in Zimbabwe to live through childbirth, to grow up healthy and well-fed, then to speak his mind on politics and found a business that enriches other Zimbabwean lives. We're fighting for the right of a Fulani cattle herder chasing the fragile growths of grasses on the edges of a desert to watch the nightly satellite weathercast on handheld tv and to know with certainty where the rains will come that bring the sprout of greenery.

We're fighting for the right of an untouchable in India to follow his curiosities, go to university, and major in physics or biology. We're fighting for the right of a North Korean woman to express her thoughts about her government and to move to a job the Party hasn't trapped her in. We're fighting for her right to feed her children just as well as her government feeds its military men. We're fighting for the right of a thinker in Cairo to pen new ideas, new solutions to his country's problems without being knifed to death for violating what an Imam says is God's eternal purity. We're fighting for the right of that author to publish new fantasies, new delights, without the fear of the religious knife.

We're fighting for the freedom of a woman in Saudi Arabia to drive a car and to meet her friends for an outing in the public park or to attend a meeting or a concert though its audience is packed with men. We're fighting for the human right to invent new freedoms constantly-the right to grow our powers with each new jump of science, culture, and technology. We're fighting for the right of humans everywhere to live their lives with dignity.

We're fighting for the right of every man and woman to eventually live her dreams. We're fighting for the right to work toward freedoms of a kind that none of us have ever seen. We're fighting for the right to constantly upgrade just what it means to be a human being.

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