ninme

Some random musings on the Inauguration:

I’m glad the flutes managed to stay in tune. Never easy, on a cold day. Nothing worse than an out-of-tune woodwind section.

The girls looked terrific, Laura, Barbara, and Jenna, and the Cheneys, Lynn, Mary and Liz. All very well coordinated.

I’m deeply scandalized by those women, both politicians and political wives, who wore white. If Laura Bush were Queen Elizabeth I, these women and a few family members would be thrown into the Tower of London for a few months, to reflect on their conceit. My point is, just because DC doesn’t have a Tower, doesn’t mean that women can upstage the First Lady, especially when they were given fair warning. It’s similar, here, to Mother-of-the-Bride etiquette.

As for the Alarum, from the President’s speech:

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

This could be construed as a call to arms against the UN:

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.

Perhaps this means he’ll close the border to Mexico, and open it to Poland and the Ukraine:

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

On Iraq and her neighbors:

From all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well – a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.

On the legacy of the Vietnam War, and the beating the armed forces took in the eyes of the then-young Americans:

A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause – in the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy … the idealistic work of helping raise up free governments … the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives – and we will always honor their names and their sacrifice.

All Americans have witnessed this idealism, and some for the first time. I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen duty and allegiance in the determined faces of our soldiers. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself – and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.

That could also be a little bit of a recruiting effort on behalf of the Armed Forces.

On abortion:

Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth.

He states his position on that endless argument in religious circles, the role of free will in deciding human fate, amongst other things people were a little nervous about (“He thinks he on a crusade! A crusaaaaaade!“):

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner “Freedom Now” – they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.

Strong words:

When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, “It rang as if it meant something.” In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength – tested, but not weary – we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.

It is an interesting discussion: what are the greatest achievements in the history of freedom? The ones to come to mind, just off the top of my head, are the Revolution (shot heard ’round the world) which led to many things around the world, to varying degrees of success (ahem, France). The Civil War I don’t think counts, unless the will of men to do horrible things to themselves for the greater good. But it wouldn’t have been really all that necessary if, in the case of slavery, the country had followed the British example in the West Indies. I guess WWI and WWII, slightly tainted because we entered so late, but wonderful nonetheless because of the level of sacrifice in response to comparatively small attacks on our own (We could have, that is, lobbed a few artillery shells into Germany in response to the sinking of the Lusitania, a la Clinton, but didn’t. Then there’s the taking down of the Soviet Union, and now this, assuming everything moves apace and no one gets greedy.

This is going to make the DU Pits of Despair types wonder:

Speaking of which, I think the Yahoo News Photo people got spanked, cuz before half the pictures were of protestors, which was just ridiculous. I mean, it looked like half the people there thought Bush is Satan, and it was SO annoying going through the pictures and having to deal with the moron hippies no one really cares about.