(Community Matters) I too thought the President’s inauguration address was an inspiring, bold and a defining speech. When the other side is being held hostage by extremist views which aren’t even rational, you don’t compromise and negotiate to the middle – too bad, moderate & conservative perspectives are important.
“Obama . . . . announcing his progressive intentions for a second term: to defend the aims of the entitlement state, to take on climate-change deniers, to promote gay rights and equal pay for women, to extract the country from ‘perpetual war’ and instead refashion America’s reputation at home and overseas as a ‘source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice.” – JOHN F. HARRIS and JONATHAN MARTIN
David Remnick describes the speech well too . . .
DAVID REMNICK, editor of The New Yorker : “Obama’s speech was infinitely better, more self-assured, more politically precise than his first. This was Barack Obama without apology — a liberal emboldened by political victory and a desire to enter the history books with a progressive agenda. … Gone is the primacy of compromise, which marked Obama’s days as president of the Harvard Law Review and even his first years in office. He no longer seems determined to transcend ideology or partisanship; experience has led him toward an engagement with politics in a tougher, clearer way. … There were countless touchstones of this clear liberal agenda: the association of the 1969 Stonewall demonstrations with the 1965 black-freedom march in Selma and the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York …
“The speech was no match for the two greatest moments of oratory ever heard in Washington — Lincoln’s second Inaugural and Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s address, nearly a century later, at the Lincoln Memorial — but, if it is followed by action, it will be counted among the most important American political addresses of the modern era . In 1933, F.D.R. came into office with an Inaugural Speech calling for fearlessness in the face of horrific adversity; four years later, with greater confidence, he outlined the framework of a liberal state … That seemed to be what Barack Obama was after Monday, an echo of F.D.R. in March, 1937-a reassertion of government, of commonality.” http://nyr.kr/Sugij8
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