Joe Biden: 'We Have Never Fully Lived Up to the Founding Principles of This Nation'

President Joe Biden told Americans on Tuesday that they had “never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation.”.

With Vice President Kamala Harris — the country’s first African and Asian American woman in that role — looking on, Biden said:.

We have never fully lived up to the founding principles of this nation, to state the obvious, that all people are created equal and have a right to be treated equally throughout their lives.

The idea that America has never lived up to its founding principles was a repeated theme throughout Biden’s presidential campaign.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.” We’ve never lived up to it, but we’ve never walked away from it before, and I just think we have to be more honest.

Of course, neither America nor any other nation has perfectly lived up to the universal truths of equality, liberty, justice, and government by consent.