Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 8:02AM | in Governance America's coming of age
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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 8:02AM | in Governance 
Reader Comments (2)
Shoghi Effendi's comments are wonderfully insightful - he needs a wider readership! Obama is quoting Thomas Paine who fought with Washington and said those words in 1776 at the time of the American Revolution; Washington asked them to be read to the troops:
"Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it."
http://www.freebowen.bravepages.com/paine/AmericanCrisis.html
Washington himself also said a lot of great things:
"I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery."
"I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man."
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_washington.html
What I like about the President's approach is his homage to the founding impulse of America, at once acknowledging the spiritual nature of human beings, the moral character than needs be manifested, and the global theatre upon whose stage we are today called upon to play.