Posted on 01/22/2013 5:30:27 AM PST by shortstop
It was a speech liberals will love, conservatives will hate and history will forget.
It was 18 minutes of paying off the base and rewarding the coalition. It was a president who won 52 percent of the vote thumbing his nose at the other 48 percent.
There was pomp and circumstance, a torturous poem and some good singing. The family looked good, the crowd seemed large, the Capitol was stunning. As inaugurations go, it was a good, solid medium. It upheld tradition, it showcased the president, it followed tradition and law.
Sure, there was too much Schumer, and the crowd left the National Mall looking like a trash-strewn dump, but the oath got taken and the speech got made and another one is in the books.
It was not, however, a memorable one.
There is no lasting line, there was no national challenge, the pauses for applause were forced. And a president who calls for unity continued to polarize, to so firmly cling to one ideology that its opponent is unavoidably excluded.
There are two Americas, and one of them wasnt invited to the inauguration.
We are a nation awash in debt and imbalance, where the family is decaying and our position is weakening. And the president spoke of global warming and gay rights, of the interests of feminism and the cause of illegal immigrants. Gun control and entitlement, class warfare and redistribution. He described a world where takers are not takers and where the threat to freedom is not external, but innately American.
And that may have been defining.
In the presidents speech, at the root of it all, we werent the good guys, we were the bad guys. At least some of us were. Some of us were good guys and some of us were bad guys and the good guys were at the inauguration and the bad guys must have been home watching it on TV.
When the president spoke of pioneers of freedom, he didnt talk about those who bought and defended our freedom against foreign foes or on foreign shores, he talked about those whose battles were fought here, against the established order of their day.
It was Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall.
Those were the pioneers, those were the heroes, that was the closest thing to a memorable phrase.
Seneca Falls was the first major convention for womens rights, in a small upstate New York village in 1848. Selma was a pair of marches met by violent opposition in 1965, as people stood to claim black voting rights. Stonewall was a mafia-run gay bar in Greenwich Village in 1969, and the hub of nights of riots in which streets were mobbed and looted, and police were attacked.
These events are seen as milestones in the womens rights movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement.
Beyond the fact that those three communities were essential components in Barack Obamas re-election, the events described and the causes highlighted share something else.
They define us as the problem.
In earlier eras, we have seen America as the defender of freedom and outside forces as threats to freedom. We stood against the Central Powers, we pushed back against European meddling in the Americas. We fought Hitler and the Emperor. We stood unflinching in the face of Soviet and Chinese communism.
And now we stand toe to toe with an Islam that practices apartheid against women, denying them the barest vestiges of equality, and which seems in country after country intent on driving Christians and Jews out of sight and out of existence.
And yet, as the president of the United States began his second term, as he defined the paradigm of his worldview, the fight for freedom was not against the world, it was against an established but intolerant American order.
Seneca Falls was a fight against American intolerance. Selma was a fight against American intolerance. Stonewall was a fight against American intolerance.
In each of these narratives, Obama supporters were freedom fighters against an America that deprived and oppressed them.
The enemy was not an external them, it was an immoral us.
The implication of the speech was that that is still the case today. The implication of the speech was that the fight for freedom today is still internal to American society. The implication of the speech was that one part of America is in righteous conflict with another, and that the president is going to, with the power of his office, lead that conflict.
And thats too bad.
Because the name of the country is the United States of America, with the emphasis on the first word.
And the inaugural address was not from the mouth of the leader of a united nation, but from the heart of a leader of one part of that nation in open contempt of the other part of that nation.
The view unavoidably casts a taint on the nation's past, and upon portions of the nation's present. It divides people by philosophy or class or race or orientation. It doesn't unite, it divides, it sets one group of Americans angrily against another.
And thats too bad.
Because four years is a long time.
A very long time.
This has been the hallmark of Obama, Obama the ideologue. A president that speaks of revenge. A president that, deep down, hates - truly hates - those who do not share his support for homosexuality, abortion, unsustainable debt.
This president is about dividing. His campaign manager openly spoke about further dividing Republicans going into 2014. Equally sad is the fact that the propaganda MSM is in full and unwavering support of anything Obama does, even as it means the destruction of this country.
While 4 years is a long time, it is not forever. The day will come when Obama is gone and Democrats no longer control the White House. That day will come.
Speaking to Woodward last night, I almost fell out of my chair when BOR said this: O’REILLY: He doesn’t — he doesn’t like them. I mean, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t like them because he doesn’t feel — he feels that they are the purveyors of white privilege, Bob. And — and you know he’s never going to say that but that’s the theme that runs through his advisors. The white privileged has to be broken down.
WOW.
I was busy creating hostage posters.
People holding up IRS forms threatening to burn them unless Obama resigns.
I need to make it viral, show that millions of people are holding certain items or documents hostage threatening to destroy items of progressive mandates unless Obama resigns.
My navel has never been cleaner!
But we were there nonetheless, flying the US flag in distress mode and sporting the Gansden Flag:
Watched Brit Prime Suspect marathon serieswith Helen Mirren. WOW...Forgot all about the horrific goings on in DC.
Bump to process some interesting thoughts I’ve entered from reading this.
I just want to tell Obama that if he wants to do something for God and country, he should clean a toilet. It's something he's qualified to do.
Then he can go back to Columbia to smoke clove cigarettes with some commie professors.
I believe the hammer has hit the nail on the head with this one.
It’s what I feel in my gut, but can’t describe with my words.
I am seen now as the enemy. I never owned a slave, was born far past the time when any of this was going on, but due to color of my skin, I am regarded as part of some faction they believe is holding back their idea of progress. And this progress is not so that everyone can benefit ...only certain select groups are going to benefit under this.
MY group, however, will be scorned, fought against, denigrated, shamed, isolated ...here in America. In their minds, WE have to suffer so THEY can advance. I ask ...why can’t EVERYONE advance ...?
This is NOT America, in any way. No leader pits one faction of a society against another.
This president is not a leader. He’s a pathological criminal. And his followers are psychologically damaged.
My country has been taken away from me by the media, the RAT Party and those who suck at the government teat.
Ultimately “white guilt” especially in the non-slave-holding North allowed the nation to be dismantled.
I keep getting a vision of Holder and “That Guy” being lead out of the WH in Hand Cuffs.
In IL democrats have redistricted so that large swaths of people are going unrepresented. They assume nobody will leave the pale or if they do, it’s no threat to them. It’s all about power, not service.
It is sad what has happened politically to NH and VA, CO, FL, IA, for that matter. Too many liberals chasing away too few conservatives.
“”Its what I feel in my gut, but cant describe with my words.””
Your words are great and absolutely true!
Didn’t know Zero was giving his second immaculation speech yesterday. I was busy estimating some jobs, and Rush was off. Just another work day.
Did he promise his minions to send us racist-bigot-homophobe conservative patriots to the gulag?
Amen, Obadiah. That's a thought we should keep in the front of our minds for the next four years.
The countdown clock to his leaving has already ticked off one day.
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