The speech writer, Jon Favreau, is the one on the left.
Posted on 01/21/2009 5:21:23 AM PST by Kaslin
President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech was supposed to be one of the great inaugural addresses of all time. It was supposed to encourage us, to inspire us. Instead, it deflated us.
Obama’s inaugural address deflated us because it perfectly crystallized the quandary America now finds itself in: we wanted our faith renewed through a “transformational moment” -- but now we’ve got a faithless man for president. Obama has no faith in God’s stake in the American destiny; instead, God merely “calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.” Despite his protestations to the contrary, Obama has no faith in Americans; instead, he wishes to change our hearts of stone for hearts of flesh: “we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.”
Obama has only one deep and abiding faith: faith in himself. He mentioned humility three times during his inaugural address. The gentleman doth protest too much. This inauguration, in Obama’s view, was about his personal elevation; his accession to the White House was “a moment that will define a generation,” a moment when the nation “set aside childish things.” Most evocatively, Obama cited his inauguration as a moment when all cynics were thrust aside because “the ground has shifted beneath them.” The imagery of Moses (Obama) facing down Korah (Rush Limbaugh and the political right) and the ground swallowing up Korah is unmistakable.
Obama’s faith in himself -- and by extension, faith in the government he leads -- is unshakeable. In his inaugural address, Obama dismissed the question of “whether our government is too big or too small.” Instead, he suggested, we should focus on “whether it works.” Yet there is apparently no situation in which Obama believes the government, led by Barack Obama, doesn’t work. The free market requires “a watchful eye”; “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” The government must build us “new roads and bridges,” “restore science to its rightful place,” “transform our schools and colleges and universities.” The government must bring about global equality via international redistribution: “poor nations … we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” In Obama’s mind, the government he runs solves all problems and rights all wrongs.
What will happen when government fails?
Obama’s hubris -- the belief that he can do no wrong, that he can miraculously lead America to “harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories” -- will lead him to shift blame for his inevitable failures onto the shoulders of the American people.
Already, it has begun. If Obama’s policies fail, he will blame his partisan critics, the benighted Americans who refuse to acknowledge, “that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.” If our economy continues to shrink, as it certainly will under Obama’s “new New Deal,” Obama will blame our continued “collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”
In his fatal distrust of the American people, Obama echoes President Jimmy Carter. In his address, Obama noted a “profound … sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.” Here he echoes Carter, who famously declared an American “crisis of confidence … a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.”
This is dangerous stuff. Pessimism is a natural outgrowth of tough economic times, to be sure, but the American people do not believe that America’s decline is inevitable. In fact, the only commentators who have posited the inevitability of American decline are Obama and his supporters. As Obama puts it, “the world has changed, and we must change with it.”
But if Obama’s plans to “remake America” in the European image fail -- and, God willing, they will -- his grandiose self-involvement and blustering pomposity will lead him to condemn the very Americans who elected him. The meaning of Obama’s “transformational moment” will become naked in the light of day; it will become obvious that Obama’s election was Americans’ superfluous attempt to move beyond race, not a broad mandate to remold the country.
And Obama will learn the hard way that while Americans will never fail, presidents can.
We the People will actually get our country back?
Sounds good to me.
Much sound and fury, a speech given by a hollow man, signifying nothing.
B Hussein Obama has got the people/government thing reversed.
Pretty obvious see Peter Schiff video:: ”Barack is going to come in and repeat all the mistakes of Roosevelt, and make the situation worse and he’s going to be able to blame the fact that it’s so bad it is on how bad it was under Bush, the deregulation of the greedy era”
but now we’ve got a faithless man for president. Obama has no faith in God’s stake in the American destiny; instead, God merely “calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.” Despite his protestations to the contrary, Obama has no faith in Americans;
DUH...
Obama is a SOCIALIST.
They do not belive in God or in the ability of the people. Socialist only belive in the ability of them in Government being able to do anything
Is it accurate to describe Obama as an African American? It seems to me that he uniquely qualifies to be called an American African. His father did not share the experiences of American blacks. In fact my brother said yesterday that he had more in common with Obama than most blacks. Asked what he had in common he said a white mother.
The speech writer, Jon Favreau, is the one on the left.
There is no such thing as an African-American. Either you are American or African. Having dual citizenship would have ruled him out for the presidency.
Anything good in the next 4 years will be credited to 0bama. Anything bad in the next 4 years will be blamed on GWB
Gives this poster the Nobel Prize for “The One Undeniable Fact Statement”
***Much sound and fury, a speech given by a hollow man, signifying nothing.***
I’m afraid that the 0’s speech does signify something. For example, the House has written a bill already to pass government heealth insurance. This MUST be stopped. PLease remember that all congresscritters get free health care for themselves and families for the rest of their lives. What do they care about the masses of us dying from lack of good medical care?
Insightful essay. Tells why Carter and Obama are the same spirit. They deeply distrust “We, the People”. Their faith in G-d — I’m using faith here in the “emunah” sense, meaning the sum of the personal relationships with the Divine that arise from upbringing, training, experiences, heritage and mindset — seems to that of a parallel deep distrust in G-d. A detached scoffer’s faith.
I hope that a “European Image” is the limit of his vision.
All his life Obama has been surrounded by open Marxists whose vision for America is far more radical.
bttt
Actually, he's going to shift the blame onto the shoulders of white Americans only. He is setting up a racial divide in this country that is going to be unlike anything we have ever seen before. It was the "prayer" by Lowery, where he hoped that whites would see the light or some such thing (despite the fact that a lot of whites must have voted for Obama), that indicated to me exactly how he plans to control things here.
Obama believes that blacks will be his enforcers, something that was always the dream of the white radical left (of which Obama is more a member than he is of anything "African American"). During their most violent phase, the Black Panthers were viewed by the radical left as the shock troops of the "revolution," and white radicals like Ayers and Dorhn drooled over the "revolutionary violence" of the various violent black criminal groups.
IMO, Obama’s path will begin to take a sharp turn downward very quickly. With his American Idol persona, he will undoubtedly get his 100 day honeymoon with the Congress for him and 9% Nancy to get as much of their radical agenda passed as they can.
However, I believe that by July/August, people are going to start waking up and smelling the coffee and realize that obi wa nobama doesn’t and never could walk on water. They will begin to realize that all those things he promised to do (new entitlement programs for those who believe life is a free ride) are things he simply can’t accomplish.
Once the tide of public opinion turns against him (he has over-promised and can only under-deliver) and the DBM begins sniping at him (as they invariably will, being the cowards they are), pretty much the rest of Obama’s first and only term in office will make him “The Cloistered President”. He will rarely leave the WH and the crowds he addresses will be VERY selectively hand-picked.
It won’t be pretty. Bu, he will have earned every minute of the disdain he will gain.
Yesterday was not 'momentous', it was disgraceful. The highlight of the swearing-in ceremony was that senile, old racist, Lowery stammering out his nonsensical, idiotic screed. Obama's supporters mocked outgoing president Bush in a display of mental acumen that proved 'only in America' can an experienced, glib, Chicago thug ascend to the presidency if he can corner the 'cretin vote', (along with the opposing Party's nominee not being the most prime candidate).
Obama, with a fawning media at his feet, will attempt to pull his socialist wool over the eyes of Americans. He will do his utmost to enact legislation that usurps the will of the people. At least those people who believe in what our Founders envisioned for this nation.
The Left, and some on the Right, believe voices such as Rush Limbaugh's and Ann Coulter's are 'over the top' or 'too harsh'. Thank God for that, or we'd see President Scatterbrain operate unscathed in carrying out his pernicious agenda.
s/b "inexperienced, glib,..."
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