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| ******************** Obama just got sworn in and gave his inaugural speech. My first reaction is ... damn ... is he ever a good speaker! Since my conversion in the early 1990s from "Christian socialism", Obama is the first left-liberal that has been able to make my eyes water. Liberals on the radio say that Obama's speech was a dud, Rush Limbaugh says that, too -- but conservative callers really like the speech. One such caller talked about how the speech was centered around what it means to be American and how the anti-West terrorists should be scared now (because Obama means business). What I really liked about his speech was: -when he down-played greed as a cause of our economic woes, while placing most of the blame on our "collective failure to make hard choices" instead -when he said we won't apologize to the world for our earned lifestyles -and when he threatened all of the anti-West terrorists in the world: "Our spirit is stronger ... . We will defeat you." What I didn't like was when he said that: -the world has changed so much that things which were formally thought to be universally (objectively) valuable -- such as, for instance, freedom in a market -- are now old and stale; i.e., that the world has outgrown the old political ideologies and slogans (such as things Ronald Reagan may have said, for instance) -we're causing harm to the globe by warming it -- with our economic activity or whatever -we're "Team America World Police" (i.e., that we are the self-appointed ones on this earth who are in charge of enlarging the pockets of peace around the world) -we have got to get extra-concerned about the welfare of others, not just our neighbors Apparently, he wrote the speech himself (he spent two days alone to work on it). He sounded a lot like he is a closet conservative -- getting in to office on the sly, on the bad rap (bad legacy) that Bush II "achieved." This is grounded in the evidence that Obama supporters are more anti-Bush than pro-Obama, which was found at the inaugural celebration. Case in point: A stupid, post-modern, anti-reason poet read a line that said something about "White getting it right" (i.e., that white people -- and thoughts that come from white people -- are to blame for most or all of our big problems). I realized that whoever organized this thing for Obama must've had a preview of that poetic emotional ejaculation, and so probably doesn't know how to -- or, more likely, doesn't want to -- stand for anything, but would rather merely stand against things (like 3 year olds do). Folks who only stand against things without being for anything are cowards who don't want the responsibility to think for themselves. They'd rather absorb undigested slogans like stupid pot-heads from the 1960's at Woodstock, being carried away in ambulances driven by people more reasonable than they (folks who wouldn't have attempted to stay outside for a whole weekend without drinking water, etc). The reasonable end up cleaning up the mess that unreasonable folks make of themselves, their lives, and their politics. Let's hope Obama surprises us, turns his back on his socialist alliances, and administers this nation more conservatively than the previous "conservative" -- Bush II. It'd be real cool if he only spent half the money as Bush, for example. It'd be real cool if he lowered taxes lower than Bush -- by getting rid of all corporate and capital gains taxation in America (forever). He's that one-in-a-million guy who could actually pull-off something as moral as that. The problem, however, is that Democrats would get the credit for saving the nation. It's a price to pay but I think it'd be worth it. ******************** Ed | ||||
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