Obama unchained?

Text of Obama's Second Inaugural Address

Going straight to the Declaration, he sounded more like a progressive than he has at any time since the campaign of 2008.

Good stuff, domestically, on the whole, aside from immigration.

Something for all the liberal constituencies, including a commitment to the safety net and to earned benefits that was given billing reassuringly close to the top.

Lesser evil, but only just, in foreign affairs.

This turn did not go unnoticed.

Obama's Inaugural: A New Foreign Policy?

Elsewhere he asserted a need to deal effectively with global warming and a moral imperative to care for the planet for those who will come after us.

But this is the crucial passage in O’s speech committing him and us, unmistakably, to the tradition of presidential liberal global interventionism.

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.

We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom.

And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice—not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

A mix typical of progressive presidents since TR. And Wilson, FDR, and LBJ, for that matter.

And the American Vice President lately so much publicly venerated, Henry Wallace.

About which writes Robert Dreyfus at The Nation in that strain of global welfarism that is becoming more influential in contemporary liberalism, or seems to be.

That, to me, ought to be the absolute core of a new US foreign policy.

Not finding small and medium-size enemies, whether impoverished nations such as Iran or mini-threats such as the Algeria-Mali Islamists, and by attacking them creating big ones; not by riling up gigantic rivals such as China by “pivoting” toward Asia and the Pacific with our air force and navy.

Instead, by organizing the world’s attention on urgent needs, such as clean drinking water, vaccination, healthcare clinics, sustainable economic growth, and other achievable goals that, according to countless analysts, could be bought and paid for worldwide at just a fraction of what we now spend on what we euphemistically call “defense.”

There was lots of God in the inauguration, by the way.

Not least in the lyrics of America, sung by a pop star in pop star style.

Well, talk of God was always characteristic of Lincoln, too, one of our president's heroes.

Oh, what is it with the cheesy divas at these affairs, anyway?

I like the national anthem better the way they do it at ball parks.