Inaugural Thoughts
In his inaugural address, the President essentially held out three basic premises that reflect his view of our nation going into the 21st Century. There are differences between these ideas and the manner in which the nation was first created and governed for much of its history. Yet they are not foreign to the original intent of our founding. The three are liberty, character and fate.
Selecting his words and understanding the audience, both in the U.S. and abroad, the President referred to our freedom and the freedom of others as being intertwined in a manner unlike any before him in such an address. For many, this was a welcome statement of the realities of our ever shrinking world and acknowledged his awareness of the threats to our freedom from abroad do not stem from merely the existence, or lack thereof, of one or more types of weapons, but from the animosity and vitriol kindled in the oppressed and enslaved. There will be some who see in his words a threat to peace, for them one can only invite them to reflect on the value of international peace in a world filled with unjust leaders vanquishing the finest spirit of men and rendering a faith as an agent of bigotry and violence.
Of our character, and the character of all men, the President chose to view, as did our founders, all men as equal, and with unalienable rights that come not from the authority of their land but from their Creator, and in doing so he called for continued and increased resistance to the oppressive hand of tyrants and moreover, to the sins of our time. Here the President extolled the virtue of our faiths and the role they play in our moral foundation, in guiding us toward family and good living as it was, is and shall forever be. That faith and character are, in his mind, inseparable is easily understood, for his character was forever altered upon becoming a man of service to God, and only afterwards, of service to his fellow citizens.
Fate it seems is the most challenging component to both explain and to see in the remarks of the President. But it is there. In his reminding us of our founding ideals, of our resolute defense of those ideals in generations past, and in his appeal to this generation to once again answer the call of freedom. President Bush clearly believes that it is our nation that is most capable to lead others to the cherished values of a free people, and that when by arms, or by words, we do so, we are answering our highest calling. It is in this way that he harkens us back to the words of Lincoln, or of our founders. It is here that we understand that we are not superior to others; we are simply blessed to be participants in a system that more than any other, brings about the best of us, generation upon generation. And by this blessing, we are chosen to advance the character of our world.
This fragile and yet so powerful an ideal requires not that we assuage our hope, but that we do as the President has done. We must set goals that may seem unachievable and in the face of naysayers and purveyors of lesser ideals, press on for just and noble ideals are not achieved by their existence but by the long and arduous drive to make this world more than earthly but heavenly.
The text of the address is available online here. Paulie points to a great essay by Bill at INDC Journal on the implications of a portion of the inaugural address. Outside the Beltway has an excellent roundup of the responses to the inaugural address, and we've joined the list via TB.
