We, The Never-Ending People

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Crackie
By Crackie
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I have just read Obama's Second Inaugural Address. Some random thoughts:
 
He mentioned God seven times, the last reference being "He." God must be humbled to be so honored.
 
This is the first inaugural address to mention Stonewall, but surely not the last. As Maynard G. Krebbs was wont to say: What an age we live in!
 
Oh yes, and America's path since the Declaration of Independence was labeled "a never-ending journey". What a relief: I thought we would be flat broke by the end of the decade, but I guess it is all going to be fine, just fine. From here to eternity, with no maturity date.
 
The speech rehabilitates the phrase "peace in our time" and even succinctly explains how to achieve it: "tolerance and opportunity." (Not to be confused with motive and opportunity.)
 
The original Declaration of Independence had 56 signers. The US Constitution, including its famous "We the people" preamble, had 40 signers, The key Stonewall passage begins "We, the people, declare today..." As regards the required number of signers, I think that this more efficient path to America's Declarations in the name of the people is evidence of what our president elsewhere in this address noted as our nation's qualities: "an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention."
 
I can only hope that our Red Chinese creditors and other bondholders become more American-like, most especially that "endless capacity for risk" thing.
 
And as we climb ever-greater mountains of debt, let us remember who we need to be absolutely sure to bring along on "Our journey...all our children."

53 American million children missed Obama's Second Inaugural Address. Historic.


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Comments

[George Pal]

Our cosseted minstrel demonstrates ingenuity with the cloven verse and chorus. I recall chills and goosebumps when I'd heard him say:

"From slavery to the suffrage movement to civil rights, faith - and the moral obligations that derive from our faith - have always helped us to navigate some of our greatest moral challenges with a recognition that there's something bigger than ourselves: we have obligations that extend beyond our own self-interest."

I wondered and thought and thought and wondered - "hadn't someone addressed this very thing, this very inclination of his"? Mirabile dictu... I remembered it.

"When he lies, he speaks his native language" John 8:44 (NIV)