Jeune Street

A few more words on my comments yesterday about President Obama’s inaugural address, and why it was about America’s coming of age. First of all, I couldn’t help but notice resonances with observations made by Shoghi Effendi about America’s destiny more than half a century ago:

The world is moving on. Its events are unfolding ominously and with bewildering rapidity. The whirlwind of its passions is swift and alarmingly violent. The New World is insensibly drawn into its vortex….Dangers, undreamt of and unpredictable, threaten it both from within and from without. Its governments and peoples are being gradually enmeshed in the coils of the world’s recurrent crises and fierce controversies….The world is contracting into a neighborhood. America, willingly or unwillingly, must face and grapple with this new situation. For purposes of national security, let alone any humanitarian motive, she must assume the obligations imposed by this newly created neighborhood.

President Obama’s address could have assumed many different tones, and some may have been surprised by the fact that he quoted George Washington and not Abraham Lincoln. The historical anchor of the speech was the revolutionary war, not the civil rights movement. I think the reason Obama chose this narrative arc was to remind the American people of their collective heritage, and to knit those ideas to the challenges of the age.

Obama’s posture in the speech was fatherly, in the way that people are known to reminisce about Franklin D Roosevelt. Like a father, Obama spoke to the American people and reminded them of the dangers of disunity and complacency:

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics…

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.

It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.

Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

In this context, he referenced a passage from the Bible that calls for maturation (“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things”). He called upon Americans to transcend the fault lines of their history with a vision of what it is possible for America to accomplish with its foundational belief in human freedom. America was once young, but the nation must mature to meet the challenges of a new age.

The President outlined what is required of the American nation in our global era:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of 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.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

With these words, Obama called upon America to abandon its adolescent cynicism and self-centredness. Strident nationalism, economic protectionism, and political realism are the safety blankets for a vulnerable and frightened people. As a maturing nation, America has responsibilities to shoulder; as an article of citizenship, Americans are called upon to embrace a global vision of service and dedication to the common good:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

The inaugural address was not only a celebration of America, it was an assertion of what is demanded of the nation to arise to meet new challenges. Amidst all of the revelry, let us hope that this vision is not lost. It is not only the President that has a big job ahead of him. America does. We all do.