We Americans want to trust and respect our leaders. We prefer looking up to them. It is difficult to do so, even impossible, when they take us for fools.
If you pay attention and think for yourself, and if you read the inaugural speech delivered Monday, not knowing who delivered it, you might be surprised to learn these words were delivered by Barack Obama, with his full expectation you’ll swallow them without question.
On a day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican patriot, and in a year we remember Lincoln and the 150th anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, it is beyond startling listening to Obama’s words and comparing them to his actions these past four years.
His first sentence contains the first of many outright deceptions. He speaks of the “enduring strength of our Constitution.”
Here is a man who disregards, violates or works around the Constitution whenever it conflicts with his agenda. He has systematically weakened the very document he swears to protect and defend, thus injuring the country he proposes to save.
Here is a partial rundown of how this man has trampled the very heart of our Republic, over and over: How Obama Is Trashing the Constitution, by Robert Knight.
In the next paragraph of his speech, Obama quotes the Declaration:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Notice in days gone by when Mr. Obama has quoted this sentence he has deleted “by their Creator” many times. No accident. He has made it clear God has no place in our public policy deliberations, as if you can determine morality by ignoring the One who defines morality, or secure rights man grants himself. He disbelieves the sentence he quotes, hoping you will believe he embraces what he clearly rejects.
He says these words define us as exceptional, that they are the essence of Americanism, and he is right to say it, but he does not believe it. When asked early in his term if he believes in American exceptionalism, he replied: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
Not exactly a ringing endorsement of American exceptionalism as articulated in the Declaration, an America unique in all history in the assertion the Creator endows rights, unalienable by that very endowment.
He went on to provide himself cover by citing American achievements, including post-WWII reconstruction of Europe and so on, but the proverbial cat was out of the literal wind bag. Pointing to great achievements does not demonstrate exceptionalism. The exclusive idea of America he pretends to celebrate is what makes us exceptional. As he rejects the idea, so he rejects exceptionalism.
In this context it is legitimate to note Obama’s closest political allies and influencers — his parents, his grandparents, his wife, his pastor, Saul Alinsky, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Bill Ayers, George Soros, and Franklin Marshall Davis — all deny American exceptionalism, all deny the Declaration’s assertions of self-evident truth, and all deny rights are endowed by our Creator.
They also deny “the pursuit of Happiness” was understood from the beginning to include the right to private property. They deny this because as communists they hate private property and work to destroy it. They all agree with Obama in all these things, including the argument that America is the main problem in the world.
Obama’s persistent support of unlimited, state-funded abortion on demand contradicts his claim to support the right to Life. And his serial assaults on liberty, including religious liberty, belie a deep antagonism toward the God who endows rights. Here is a record of his many assaults on the civil liberties of Christians in particular.
“The most Biblically Hostile President of All Time”
Yet Obama wants us to believe he embraces the Declaration, the Constitution, and American exceptionalism. If that is true, why has he consistently called for the fundamental transformation of America. If the fundamentals are sound, as he claimed Monday, why must they be transformed?
Further, Obama proclaims: “Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.”
Does he actually think we will believe he stands opposed to the concentration of power in the central authority of the federal government? Does he take us for fools, thinking we will believe him when he seemingly rejects the notion government is our salvation?
No president has ever worked harder or achieved greater results increasing federal power to the detriment of the states and the individual. To prove the point, one word: ObamaCare. Another proof source: Dodd/Frank. Further proof: legions of Czars commanding a growing, fascistic bureaucracy, unaccountable to anyone, least wise The People whose consent Obama ignores. He has affected federal takeovers of the financial and health systems, stomped on states’ rights, and blended corporate and state power like no other in history. And this is the “skepticism of central authority” we share with him?
No. Our skepticism is directed squarely at Obama and his comrades. It has become more than mere skepticism however. It has become outright loathing by at least half the population directed at the entire federal structure.
Obama’s bold-faced deceptions and intentional double-talk in this speech eventually meandered away from his attempts to be like Lincoln after swearing on Abe’s Bible. It drifted off into incoherence. Read the following and ponder: “But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
Translation: changing times insist we interpret the Constitution as a document that does not rest on Truth, but it must instead submit to the subjective judgments of those who hold the reins of power. The self-evident Truths proclaimed in the Declaration become relative guidelines, the original definitions of words changed to accommodate changing tastes and values. Only in Obama’s America can there coexist notions of “individual responsibility” and expansion of the nanny state. Only in ObamaWorld can one celebrate government confiscation of private property to ‘invest’ in never ending poverty and demoralization.
We have not always understood the world as you do, Mr. Obama. We have not always agreed that Truth is negotiable, as you insist. We understand that fidelity means faithfulness, and that liberty is the opposite of collectivism. Our challenge in these changing times is restoring the bedrock of Truth and faithfully adhering to founding principles you work to replace with relativism, collectivism and me-ism.
Our other challenge is clearing the way for this good work by ridding ourselves of snakes with forked tongues. “Hope and change” has clearly switched to “get in line and shut up.”
We will not shut up. We will not submit. There is a third option: telling you to hit the road, and employing every legal means to thwart you and end your long “chain of abuses.” As it states further in the Declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Image: Source: White House; author: White House/Sonya Hebert; public domain
