If we don't aim high we have no chance of hitting the target, and no hope of mobilizing that enthusiasm and determination.
The situation we're in now demands such mobilization. Wealth and income are more concentrated at the top than in over a century. And that wealth has translated into political power.
The result is an economy rigged in favor of those at the top -- which further compounds wealth and power at the top, in a vicious cycle that will only get worse unless reversed.
Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of any other advanced nation, for example. We also pay more for Internet service. And far more for health care.
We pay high prices for airline tickets even though fuel costs have tumbled. And high prices for food even though crop prices have declined.
That's because giant companies have accumulated vast market power. Yet the nation's antitrust laws are barely enforced.
Meanwhile, the biggest Wall Street banks have more of the nation's banking assets than they did in 2008, when they were judged too big to fail.
Hedge-fund partners get tax loopholes, oil companies get tax subsidies, and big agriculture gets paid off.
Bankruptcy laws protect the fortunes of billionaires like Donald Trump but not the homes of underwater homeowners or the savings of graduates burdened with student loans.
A low minimum wage enhances the profits of big-box retailers like Walmart, but requires the rest of us provide its employees and their families with food stamps and Medicaid in order to avoid poverty -- an indirect subsidy of Walmart.
Trade treaties protect the assets and intellectual property of big corporations but not the jobs and wages of ordinary workers.
At the same time, countervailing power is disappearing. Labor union membership has plummeted from a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to fewer than 7 percent today. Small banks have been absorbed into global financial behemoths. Small retailers don't stand a chance against Walmart and Amazon.
And the pay of top corporate executives continues to skyrocket, even as most peoples' real wages drop and their job security vanishes.
This system is not sustainable.
We must get big money out of our democracy, end crony capitalism, and make our economy and democracy work for the many, not just the few.
But change on this scale requires political mobilization.
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