Read about it here... Nightmare On Facebook by Kathleen Parker.
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.
It stands in stark contrast to George W. Bush's first inaugural, with the confidence that our country has a special place in the world, and that there are, paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, 'angels in the whirlwind still directing this storm'.
I believe that one of the big reasons the Republicans lost this time was the fact that they didn't stress enough the facts that it was the Democrats who sowed the seed of this crisis, so the MSM led everyone to believe that all our financial woes were caused by the "eight years of Bush and Cheney". The only folks I know who voted for Obama, did so because they thought the Republicans had messed up the economy, and that the Democrats would do a better job. They're Democrats anyway, but I was appalled that they, lifelong Catholics would vote for a man who is SO anti-life. Maybe they just didn't know, since the MSM never mentioned THAT part of his philosophy, as far as I know. These folks sat in church and listened to the letter from the Bishop, and the excellent sermon by our Associate Pastor, on the subject of abortion, but I guess they either didn't think that applied to Obama, or they were so angry about the economy, that they just didn't care. Very sad.
Brit Hume commented that he exuded more 'self-confidence' than any incoming President he'd ever seen, and he's seen all of them, since Dwight Eisenhower.
Frankly that doesn't give me any confidence, because he thinks so highly of himself, and his ideas, he'll never listen to what others have to say, if it disagrees with what he already thinks. After all, he was elected, even though he's supremely unqualified, so I'm sure he thinks he can do anything.
For an excellent expose of the stupidity of white elitists and their fascination with the Black Panthers, read Tom Wolfe's essay, "Radical Chic". Some young whites seem to have taken up that banner.
I do so hope you're right, but I pray that we are not left vulnerable to attack in the meantime.
Interesting drawing. I told SirKit the other day, that whenever I see ‘That One’ speak, and he lifts his head, looking down his nose like that, it brings to mind pictures I’ve seen of Vladimir Lenin, doing the same thing.
We can only pray that you are right and that the country is able to see this for themselves. We already know that the MSM will do everything it can to prop him up.
Tom Wolfe knew whereof he spoke. Actually, Ayers and Dorhn are from that first “radical chic” generation that Wolfe was writing about, when wealthy young and middle aged whites idolized violent black (and white, too) thugs. What they did was somehow get this to go mainstream, and even people who don’t think of themselves as radicals now seem for some reason willing to accept these theories.
Actually, “African American” as it has generally been used in the US means the descendant of Africans brought here as slaves. African Americans are from families that have been here for more than 200 years in most cases.
They’re not the children of wandering white hippies and foreign born African graduate students, as Bambi was. So in my mind, he doesn’t qualify as a real “African American.”
That’s one of his problems, btw. He’s a sociopath looking for an identity, and he latched onto the “African American” thing because it was convenient, brought him built in acceptance, and gave him a lot of power. What more could a sociopath want?
Until we get some kind of decent leadership on the right, and I don’t mean elected leadership, we are going down the lefty tubes faster than any of us realize.
Who is going to step up? I wish I saw someone in the distance, but as of now, no one is showing up.
Obama is a Kenyan-American, but since Kenya is in Africa, he can be called an African-American. Just like Germany is in Europe so German-Americans can be considered European-Americans (although only politically correct types use that expression), and Armenia is in the Caucasus, so Armenian-Americans can be considered Caucasian-Americans (or just Caucasians).
Read about it here... Nightmare On Facebook by Kathleen Parker.
Thanks. Maybe that picture paired with the not so stellar reviews of Obama’s speech, will earn him a pink slip?
Gifted rhetorician my foot
Not at all.
I don’t know if you listened to Rick Warren yesterday day, but he said in his speech yesterday before inauguration that 0bama was the son of an African immigrant. The 0’s father never immigrated here. All he did was go to College here in the States and then went back to his country Kenya
Sorry but republicans including McCain tried that argument but it was not believable. Sure, democrats worked against the economy, because it was in their interests . But republicans had a big interest in the economy not tanking prior to the election, the bailouts just gave them away. The election results were based on one thing, disgust for republicans and GWB. It is their failure to consistently stand for anything that the majority of the public is interested in. They even lost the tax cut issue.
Now why does GWB get the blame for the economy even though republicans point to democrats actions?
GWB administration took credit for the resulting housing boom ,increasing home ownership ,and stock market boom, which ALL turned out to be phony paper value Ponzi bubbles based on personal and national debt. All the so called increase in tax revenue was based on consumer and national debt based on temporily inflated paper values. That is why he gets blamed, for taking credit before the same things goes bad. (A similar thing happened with ethanol and gasoline prices. And 'Mission Accomplished' used over and over by rats) Democrats had an interest in screwing up the economy, because they knew Bush would get credit for it. More at comment 119 : In 2000, Fannie Mae launched American Dream Commitment, ...,later raised to $700 billion in response to President Bush’s Minority Homeownership Initiative.
Why doesnt Bush get credit for winning in Iraq? Try comment #48
"merely “calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.”
The uncertainty and confusion is in Obama's mind. Because he does not identify
with America's Christian culture he cannot see a national purpose the way Reagan did.
I noticed that during the inaugural opening prayer, Obama kept his head bowed until the word humility was uttered and he chose that moment to stick his nose in the air. Really creeped me out. The arrogance of that man is astounding.
Word to the wise - NEVER leave your helmet and flack jacket behind when you go out.
Don't forget your towel, either. ;o)
Sorry, couldn't resist that "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" reference.
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