Here are a few observations about President Obama’s second
inaugural address and what we can expect to follow over the next
four years.
To begin with, it is not only Obama’s second inaugural of the
past four years, but his second inaugural in as many days. Obama,
of course, was formally sworn in on Sunday at the White House. But
his actual address and the pomp and circumstance associated with it
was reserved for the following day. In other words, Obama just had
to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day about him. But after all this
time could we really expect anything less from Obama?
The
second inaugural address itself was largely full of the sort of
platitudes that could have been uttered by the president of a high
school student council or perhaps the President of the Harvard Law
Review. But there were also segments that highlighted Obama’s
socialistic beliefs:
But we have always understood that when times change, so must
we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses
to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms
ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can
no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than
American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism
with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math
and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the
future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will
bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever,
we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.
In other words, you didn’t build that.
It had more than its share of straw man arguments such as when
Obama said “we reject the belief that America must choose between
caring for the generation that built this country and investing in
the generation that will build its future.” Who exactly
believes that? I suspect that if I were to pose this question to
Obama he would respond by saying “the few.” That’s socialist code
for the rich.
Not surprisingly, Obama spoke of “the few” a few times:
• The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a
king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.
• For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed
when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make
it.
• We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for
the lucky, or happiness for the few.
As you can plainly see, Obama has picked his target, frozen,
personalized and polarized it and isn’t about to let go. Of course,
if he did his political triumphs would probably be few and far
between. This is what makes Obama so dangerous.
It is also why Obama can with a straight face say, “We must make
the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of
our deficit.” He didn’t make any hard choices about either during
his first term. But aside from conservatives, who is going to call
Obama to account? The mainstream media? Let’s not kid ourselves. As
long as Obama is in office, their function is to take dictation
from him. So what makes anyone think it’s going to be any different
this time around?
So when Obama says we cannot “treat name-calling as reasoned
debate,” just remember that exactly one week before his second
inaugural address he
accused Republicans of holding the economy hostage. Obama
routinely used such language against Republicans throughout his
first term such as when
he referred to them as “hostage takers” in December 2010 during
the Bush tax cut compromise negotiations. In light of the fact that
three American hostages were murdered by al Qaeda linked
terrorists in Algeria, it makes Obama’s use of term look childish.
This is why I give about as much credence to Obama lecturing the
nation on civility as I do to Lance Armstrong’s apology for using
performance enhancing drugs.
Sadly, it does not surprise me that Obama would speak of
responding “to the threat of climate change” while saying nothing
about Islamic fundamentalist terrorism as three Americans will be
coming home in body bags thanks to terrorists acting in solidarity
with al Qaeda. From where Obama sits, bin Laden is dead so Algeria,
Benghazi, and Fort Hood don’t matter. Islamic fundamentalist
terrorism is just another “man caused disaster” that has been
allocated a lower priority than climate change. It’s both a sad and
dangerous state of affairs when the French take Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism more seriously than the White House
does.
Does anyone get the feeling that the next four years are going
to be longer than the last four years? If you do, then you are
feeling the second inaugural blues.
