Abu Wabu

Jonah Goldberg sifts through the Messiah's Immaculation speech (!!!He wrote it Himself you know!!!) and finds the sort of sloppiness and muddled figuring that betrays a "believer" rather than a thinker:

There were some awfully clunky clichés in there. For example, here’s the second paragraph:

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

Gathering clouds and raging storms? Really? How did that survive the first draft? Oh, and shouldn’t that be forebears not forbearers? A forbearer is someone who refrains from something.

Also, if you’re going to use clichéd language you should at least make it track logically. According to this imagery, times of peace and times of prosperity have not coincided, unless of course rising tides can be still at the same time.

But the line that grated on me most came from the bit about service and sacrifice. He said:

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

No, “they” didn’t. Slaves certainly didn’t endure the lash of the whip out of a sense of service and sacrifice for us. That is one of the reasons slavery is so evil; it isn't voluntary. Suffice it to say that if that line had come out of a different man’s mouth it would not be nearly so well-received. Nor did those immigrants make their sacrifices for “us.” They made them for themselves, for their own pursuit of happiness, for their families.

This is not to say we do not benefit from the sweat of their brows and the shedding of their blood, but Obama’s rhetorical ambition seems broader than that insight. He wants to forge a new sense of collective identity. There are aspects of that effort that are admirable or defensible, to be sure. Don't we conservatives lament a lost sense of citizenship and the erosion of a common culture? But too often he comes across as wanting to take that collective vision and drape it over individualism and enterprise like a wet blanket. The pursuit of individual prosperity is not selfish and the effort to defend it is neither a tired dogma nor a childish thing. I often get the sense that President Obama doesn't see it that way, never more so than today.

I'll add this: I've said here before that I had the strong sense early on that the Messiah's language (and certainly that of his wife) often contains "tells" that he is speaking more to blacks, at least those who self-identify as victims, than to anyone else. His line about enduring "the lash of the whip" certainly directly goes there.

There's no doubt that is what Rev. Lowry was up to.