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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Obama In Portland. A first take. (OBAMA REPEATS HE WILL CLOSE GITMO, RESTORE HABEAS, AND OBEY THE CONSTITUTION) Obama In Portland. A first take. I saw Barak Obama in Portland on Sunday. I do not normally get caught up in shouting and crowd dynamics. And this event was no exception. But I was moved. Deeply. Quietly. I found myself about 30 yards off the main stage watching, watching closely. And listening closely to what was being said. While Obama spoke the obligatory crowd pleasing lines it was notable to me that he did not seem to be trying to whip up the crowd into emotional frenzy. In fact it seemed the opposite. A couple times the crowd wanted to get into the “Yes we Can” chant. Obama seemed to let it run its course and then proceed w/ his remarks. Not that I have anything against the emotion that people are feeling. I tend to want what is underlying the emotional outbursts. I want there to be substance to support it. In this case I felt it was there. Clinton, and others, have tried to cast Obama as having “just words” “he has only given a good speech”. I now understand better why they need to try and detract from the power of Obama’s oratory. It is not like so much political speech, full of vacuous thought, full of promises and non sequitur thoughts designed to appeal to a predetermined crowd. Obama actually talks in full paragraphs, with thoughts that hold together across the entire speech. It is not simply a collection of applause lines or attack lines. He actually engages the issues we are facing in a way that evinces an understanding of this simple maxim : You cannot solve a problem at the level at which the problem was created. My first take on the speech follows. Basic takeaway : His stump speech is smarter, more intelligent, logically cohesive, as well as inspirational and meaningfully hopeful than the best, thought out positions of the others candidates. Or any politician I am aware of for that matter. Reagan is held out as a “great communicator”. I never have understood this, never really feeling that much of what Reagan communicated was worth hearing. As a communicator I would posit Obama is orders of magnitude better than Reagan. And… he has the added benefit of actually communicating something that calls to our “better selves” while not eviscerating what it means to be an American. It seems that Obama has the power to hold this position of transformation. I have never heard a political candidate make the case that what he is offering is not pre-molded answers but a process by which we may affect change for the better. Now it will be up to the country to decide if we have drunk a full cup of the bitters and ready for such a change. Or if it will take another quaff, and another round of drunken stupor, for the citizenry to get it that the course America has followed for so long, (insert lots of detail here), and that has been especially manifest in the horror that has been this BushCo Administration, is fundamentally flawed and in need of deep systemic change. We have to begin to think again as citizens bound together in some essential way that is deeper than our epicurean pursuits and our silly infatuations with flawed beliefs like “we are number one” or/and “they hate us for our freedoms”. I am hopeful, but cynical. I live a contradiction. I am aware of the basic goodness and desires of people, the American people. I am also aware of the powers and forces and individuals who lie in wait to destroy what would destroy them. And they have their hands on the levers of power, money, communications. It is amazing to me however, that even though that is so, there is still the possibility for hope, and for change - change at a deep structural level. It lets me know that as formidable as the masters of the status quo are there is something that they do not own, that is not fully under control. It is from this, whatever that is, that something deeper, more integral, more essential will, if it will, if it can, emerge. My favorite line in the speech: In these two lines Obama has made the essential case: The constitution is the essense of what makes America America. Without it we become only another failed republic tending toward a new tyranny…. as we are now. And that it will take a change in our mindset in order to affect change. He does not promise it will happen. Only, and this is key, that if we, the citizens of America will embrace the notion of citizen once again, that promise that has been America may once again emerge. Maybe even in a more transcendant incarnation. Maybe we can retreat from empire and become less militaristic and more holistic in our foreign affairs? Maybe we can transcend the essential racism that has been in our deep psyche from the beginning, and has been a profound hinderance to our ability to function at the level of our principles. Maybe we can begin the process of being ruled by something more positive, more true, more substantial than fears. Fears stoked by demogauges who know better, and use the knowledge for their own purposes. Maybe we can recover from this financial precipice we find ourselves perched on. But it will take a systemic transformation akin, though different, to the social contracts that came out of the Great Depression. Maybe we can do it before we immerse ourselves in another , more horrible global Great Depression? Or maybe not. But these are the propositions that are before us now. What is certain is that to continue the path currently charted will be to proceed, pell mell, to a certain destruction. It is long past the time for vacuous promises that hardly last longer than the reverberation of the sounds of the words with which they are spoken. It is time for a commitment to a thinking that is different. A thinking that is motivated for a real comprehension of what it is we face, and propelled by a profound and essential desire to live true to “the angles of our better nature.” I know this post needs a good editing, and I will do that in subsequent posts. For now this is meant only as first thoughts on a moment that, to me, was seminal, and which seems to presage what seems to me to be a major choice point that we, as citizens of this country, have now come to. What has happened, even over the last 8 years, has happened. Now what? There is a choice that must be made. And will be made one way or another. Even trying, again, to not choose, or make a default choice of the known; even trying to hold fast to the well worn creeds of the past - our racism, our unsubstantiated beliefs, our formidible ignorance, our memories of world dominance, our lust for war as opposed to transformation, our lazy desire to have someone else figure it all out - just dont mess w/ my football game, or whatever drug of choice used to dull us to the consequences of our national choices; still a choice will be made. I hope we choose well. And for better reasons than we have in the past. Excerpts from Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Portland. As a final note: When have you ever heard a politician in recent times appeal to the constitution in such a profound way. And more, to recognize its authority. And to rever it as something to be upheld in the present tense, not as some historical but anachronistic idea. Not since Lincoln have I heard such language from a presidential contender. “We are now gathered to see if that nation, or any nation so constituted can long endure….”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 24.
#2. To: aristeides (#0)
His votes in the Senate prove he is a liar. But then he is a politician so that is not unexpected. What is unbelievable is that so many people have been taken in by this jug-eared clown.
Does Obama's Constitution contain the 2nd Amendment? I think it is important to establish whether the Constitution he is reading is the same one we are reading.
"I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation" like background checks, he said during a news conference. Obama Supports Individual Gun Rights . You may quarrel with the extent to which he would permit regulation, but he obviously believes the Second Amendment is in the Constitution.
Recognize this, counselor? Do you think your hero, Obummer, would know who said it and when? As in our intercourse with our fellow-men certain principles of morality are assumed to exist, without which society would be impossible, so certain inherent rights lie at the foundation of all action, and upon a recognition of them alone can free institutions be maintained. These inherent rights have never been more happily expressed than in the declaration of independence, that new evangel of liberty to the people: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident'-that is, so plain that their truth is recognized upon their mere statement-'that all men are [111 U.S. 746, 757] endowed'-not by edicts of emperors, or decrees of parliament, or acts of congress, but 'by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.'-that is, rights which cannot be bartered away, or given away, or taken away, except in punishment of crime-'and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and to secure these'-not grant them, but secure them- 'governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.' Among these inalienable rights, as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. The common business and callings of life, the ordinary trades and pursuits, which are innocuous in themselves, and have been followed in all communities from time immemorial, must therefore be free in this country to all alike upon the same conditions. The right to pursue them, without let or hinderance, except that which is applied to all persons of the same age, sex, and condition, is a distinguishing privilege of citizens of the United States, and an essential element of that freedom which they claim as their birthright. It has been well said that 'the property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of the poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his own hands, and to hinder his employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workman and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think proper.' Smith, Wealth Nat. bk. 1, c. 10. BUTCHERS' UNION CO. v. CRESCENT CITY CO., 111 U.S. 746 (1884)
#34. To: James Deffenbach (#24)
Justice Field's concurrence in that case, apparently giving the force of law to the Declaration of Independence, is contrary to the prevailing view of the courts on that point (i.e., whether the Declaration of Independence has the force of law.) As a concurrence, it of course does not itself have the force of law. On what the Supreme Court has held on this issue, see the article on "Declaration of Independence" in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States (2nd edition 2005), pp. 255-56.
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