Obama’s “Second Coming” – An Analysis of His Second Inaugural Address

President Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address was nothing if not a disguised Orwellian version of FDR’s infamous “Second Bill of Rights” speech. The speech is a concise statement of President Obama's collectivist Neo-Progressive vision of the United States. The President begins by invoking the Declaration of Independence.

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.

The re-elected Commander-in-Chief then speaks of these natural rights upon which the Republic was built after a difficult and bloody revolution fought against the oppressive English Crown.

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

While on the surface, President Obama’s words appear patriotic, the intentions behind them are far darker. Aptly on Martin Luther King Day, the President speaks of how the institution of slavery was incompatible with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and was justly abolished. 

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Through rhetorical sleight of hand, President Obama then proceeds to not so subtly compare the hypocritical and oppressive institution of slavery with other important principles of liberty upon which the Republic was founded. For example, a limited government which does not create public works and institutions (that the private sector can more adequately provide) is as evil as the institution of slavery and was rightly abolished just like that barbaric practice.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

President Obama also compares the free market to slavery and rejoices that the free market has been all but obliterated in the United States.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

According to the President, a free market devoid of corporatist regulations was as anachronistic and vicious as slavery, and was rightfully abolished. However, the “rules” of which the President speaks do not “ensure competition and fair play” except in perhaps a cynical Orwellian sense. The regulation of the once free market just creates opportunities by which large corporations and other powerful entities may lobby for rules that grant them a favored status in what has become anything but an even playing field.

Obama continues by comparing the period of time prior to the creation of the welfare Nanny State with slavery.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life's worst hazards and misfortune.

Creating the machinery of the New Deal and later the Great Society resulted not in emancipation but in enslavement. Not only has this transformation trapped countless Americans in poverty and made them dependent upon the state, but it has also enslaved future generations of Americans by chaining them to a mounting national debt that will eventually destroy what is left of the economy.

President Obama continues by giving lip service to the private sector.

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.

Nobody is less skeptical of central authority than the nation’s latest and most Imperial President. No President has shown less regard for the Tenth Amendment or for the private sector.

President Obama then reveals the truth of what he means by unveiling the overarching theme of his address. The United States and the American people need to be collectivized even more than they already have been.

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.

He believes that the only way to preserve individual liberty and natural rights is by turning to collectivism and violating the cherished principles of the Constitution that he had just taken an oath to defend. Like the Progressives of the early twentieth century, President Obama clearly believes that the Constitution is anachronistic and needs to “evolve” in a Darwinist fashion. If he were proposing Constitutional amendments, that would at least be consistent with his oath to uphold the Constitution, but like his Progressive forefathers, he does not have Constitutional remedies in mind to bring about his collectivist transformation of the United States.

No single person can train all the math and science teachers we'll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

The private sector and the individuals who fuel it cannot create anything great in the eyes of the Neo-Progressive President Obama. Likewise, the private sector and individuals will be inadequate for creating the institutions that will be needed to allow the United States to remain a great nation.

Even more subtly, President Obama finds a way to attack the Second Amendment without making his intentions manifest.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today's world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.

Just as a powerful collectivist central government is required to fuel the economy, a powerful collectivist central government is required to defend liberty. The “militia” with their arms cannot possibly protect the American people from tyranny, therefore the Second Amendment is likely a dead letter just like much of the rest of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

From there, President Obama begins to sound even more like Orwell’s Big Brother.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America's possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it - so long as we seize it together.

War is peace. While President Obama ratchets up his unconstitutional and endless drone warfare campaign and plans to keep a large American military presence in the Middle East even if and when the “War” in Afghanistan ends, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate calls this peace. Imminent economic collapse is economic recovery. While the numbers of unemployed Americans and Americans on government assistance remain high and the debt continues to grow astronomically, the Harvard educated Constitutional scholar speaks of economic recovery. Slavery is freedom. The possibilities for the United States are “limitless” only if the nation is further collectivized and all are made slaves of the state.

President Obama invokes the necessity of a strong middle class for American prosperity while at the same time the economic policies of his first four years in office have continued the erosion of the middle class and have created further obstacles to upward mobility.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America's prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.

Giving lip service to the American middle class is to be expected in any political speech, but such platitudes are even more heinous when delivered by a President who has stocked his administration with former Goldman Sachs employees and attacked small business at every turn with “Obamacare” and dozens of other weapons of mass economic destruction.

President Obama again speaks of “change” and makes it even more clear what this “change” actually entails. As if his actions in the last four years did not make it obvious enough.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American.

The “outworn programs” clearly includes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What will replace the foundations of liberty are new and higher taxes, more authoritarian public schools even more controlled by the federal government rather than by local communities, and even more centralized economic planning.

Just like FDR before him, President Obama then sings the praises of a “Second Bill of Rights” right after lamenting the archaic nature of the true Bill of Rights.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other - through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security - these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

For President Obama, true freedom and true dignity do not emanate from the inalienable natural rights that predate the state but instead emanate from the Nanny State. True freedom is dependency upon the state. The destruction of the free market and the private sector at the hands of the federal government creates a situation where the Nanny State appears to be the only safe harbor for Americans. While perhaps it is laudable that President Obama does not blame the victims – “the takers” – it is the federal government that made “the takers” what they are. 

From there, President Obama creates a new bogus “right” of which even FDR did not conceive – freedom from “climate change.”

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries - we must claim its promise.  

The science on “climate change” is anything but settled, but this does not stop the President. What “obligations” to posterity do entail is bringing the debt under control, but instead, President Obama claims that true “obligations” to posterity entail a new "path" that likely includes schemes such as more stifling environmental regulations, a carbon tax, and more corrupt corporatist “green jobs” programs such as the next Solyndra. Al Gore and other “climate fear” opportunists will benefit while the United States will likely suffer ill economic effects from a “green economy” as Spain did.  What a “green economy” means is more “green” in the pockets of the “banksters” who will benefit from a carbon tax scheme.  What is also means are more needless draconian EPA regulations that will harm small businesses.

President Obama then turns his attention from domestic policy issues to foreign policy, and the effect of his words is no less Orwellian.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

If peace does not require perpetual war, then why did President Obama undertake his unconstitutional “military kinetic action” in Libya? Why did he risk the inevitable blowback which tragically occurred in Benghazi? Why does he continue to wage a limitless drone warfare campaign without regard to checks and balances or due process? Why does he want to keep American troops in Afghanistan even after the “war” ends? Why does he seek affiliation with the radical Islamic resistance in Syria?    

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully - not because we are naive about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.

In other words, the United States will continue to ignore the warnings of the dangers of “entangling alliances” – the very sort of alliances that set the state for World War I and nearly engulfed the globe in nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. The United States will continue to be a warfare state that polices the world and makes that world “safe for democracy.” Or at least safe for corporatism.

President Obama concludes by labeling any who disagree with him or oppose his collectivist policies as being irrational.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today's victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

Senator Barry Goldwater famously said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Defending an absolute is not irrational if that absolute is important enough. The natural rights embodied in the Constitution are such absolutes. If the natural rights to life, liberty, and property are not justifiable absolutes, then no freedoms can be secure in the Age of Obama.