POTUS again omits “Creator” from Declaration citation

From Creative Minority Report with my emphases and comments:

Well, for all those who said it was just a slip of the tongue last time or that his speechwriters were to blame, Obama just made sure you knew that he meant it the first time. Yup. President Obama just omitted God again from the Declaration of Independence.

As Weasel Zippers said, “No denying it now.”

But while I take notice of what he doesn’t say, what he does say irks me a bit too. Check it out.

CNS reports:

Just seven days after he sparked controversy by omitting the word “Creator” when he closely paraphrased the passage from the Declaration of Independence that says all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” [Perhaps the one quote people really know well.] President Barack Obama again omitted the Creator when speaking about the “inalienable rights” that “everybody is endowed with.”

This time the president was speaking at a Sept. 22 fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and his reference to “inalienable rights” was not as close a paraphrasing of the Declaration as it had been the week before.

“And what was sustaining us was that sense that, that North Star, that sense that, you know what, if we stay true to our values, if we believe that all people are created equal and everybody is endowed with certain inalienable rights and we’re going to make those words live, [But they are dead if they exclude God.  They are dead because they rely only on ourselves, on finite humans who, by themselves, cannot create or endow anything. ] and we’re going to give everybody opportunity, everybody a ladder into the middle class, every child able to go as far as their dreams will take them–if we stay true to that, then we’re going to be able to maintain the energy and the focus, the fight, the gumption to get stuff done,” Obama said at the DCCC/DSCC event, according to the transcript posted by the White House.Kinda’ weird for a practicing Christian like him to make such an error twice, huh? One would almost start thinking he was doing it on purpose.

Once you omit the Creator from a discussion about rights the rights are immediately quite alienable. They become merely common beliefs which can change over time.

But for Obama to say that the Declaration of Independence is there to give everyone “a ladder” into the middle class. That’s a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of rights if you ask me. And from a President that’s pretty scary.

Not a surprise, however.

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57 Comments

  1. PostCatholic says:

    I doubt very much the President is a Christian. I know he grew up attending First Unitarian in Honolulu. He was a member of the UCC in Chicago, which a Disciples of Christ minister friend jokes stands for “Unitarians Considering Christ.” (United Church of Christ). I may be wrong about his beliefs, but if he really is not a believer in God or a divine Jesus, I do wish he’d be more courageous and admit that. But you know, being attacked for a non-believing President is something he has in common with the author of those words.

    The thing is, the person who wrote that phrase (Thomas Jefferson) was only nominally a Christian, too. (Jefferson wrote I think you’d be fairly horrified by the way he redacted the Christian Gospels. Language such as “Nature’s God”, “Creator” etc. reflect the narrow enlightenment understanding of an active but non-controlling god of reason while making room for the active and personal God the Father of Christianity. The Monticello foundation has prepared a well-written and concise explanation of Jefferson’s religious views which can be read at http://www.monticello.org/reports/interests/religion.html.

    Aside from that, the President’s point in his argument is not about source of the rights but the rights themselves. If one believes in a Creator, name that the source of human rights; if one does not, society will still require assent to those human rights in order for us to have a civilizations. I disagree we need a supernatural divine endowment in order to recognize inherent worth and dignity in the lives of all human beings, or the notion that humans cannot create anything–as did the founders. They said they were creating a government that derives its powers from the consent of the govern rather than from the will of a god.

  2. Random Friar says:

    It is a short, short slope to slide toward the notion that rights are merely convenient legal and political agreements, and not something from an authority we cannot challenge.

    He had previously argued that he could not say when a human being becomes a person because it was above his paygrade. This is putting the whole gov’t far, infinitely far above the sum of their paygrades.

  3. PostCatholic says:

    Now that there’s a preview function I really have no excuse for my typos, do I? Strike “Jefferson wrote” and supply a close parenthesis.

  4. PostCatholic says:

    There are quite a few stops on that slope, though, before you get to “merely convenient,” wouldn’t you say?

  5. Geoffrey says:

    That’s too bad. And then comes this article that he carries a picture of Mary, Help of Christians in his wallet:

    http://www.infoans.org/1.asp?sez=1&sotSez=&doc=5424&Lingua=2

  6. joshua.n says:

    You state that “if one does not [believe in a Creator], society will require assent to those human rights in order for us to have a civilizations.”

    But if your rights require society’s assent, they are not inalienable – you and your “rights” could be alienated by society withdrawing its assent. Accordingly, those “rights” requiring society’s assent would be mere privileges.

  7. Random Friar says:

    I would say there were, but the War on Terror and the growing tend toward a loose sort of socialism have accelerated the slide. I am not going to lay this all on President Obama. Some of the things began with earlier administrations, even before the previous President Bush, but grew with his attempt to deal with terrorism. Even presuming the good for both, power has grown in the government, even to the suspension of rights and the broadening of government intrusion.

    But it seems now that what might’ve (rightfully) been questioned by the media and common citizens is now glossed over. It gives me little comfort that the government would not feel accountable to a higher authority, even in a vague, moral sense, but more to the “vox populi” as they see it.

  8. brassplayer says:

    Tempest in a teapot. The same CNS article also notes:

    On other occasions, Obama has correctly cited the famous passage from the Declaration without removing the Creator. For example, as Limbaugh also pointed out on his Sept. 20 program, Obama did quote the Declaration accurately in his book The Audacity of Hope.

  9. TJerome says:

    There are a lot of fake Catholics who voted for Obama, including my left-wing loon pastor, who printed in the Sunday Bulletin after Obama was elected “Thank God for President Obama.” I wouldn’t have cared if he had said “God bless President Obama and bring him guidance” or something like that. My pastor also is a devotee of the global warming religion. He’s also opposed to the new Mass translations and even printed Father McBrien’s rant about them. I guess my pastor isn’t really Catholic but more of a glorified social worker.

  10. AnAmericanMother says:

    The absence of a Creator means that there are no God-given rights, only those rights which other men decide we may have. And those may be withdrawn at any time. That which is granted by man may be taken away by man.

    That is why the Founders spoke of guaranteeing not granting rights.

    Take away the Creator and the whole edifice falls of its own weight.

    It is short-sighted, I think, to judge Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs entirely from his writings. He (like Rowan the Arch-Druid of Canterbury) was an intelligent and thoughtful man educated far beyond his common sense. Like Williams, he said and wrote a lot of things that in his heart he probably knew were foolish, but his love of intellectual speculation (and, probably, making a bit of a stir) led him to say things for effect.

  11. AnAmericanMother says:

    As for the president, he’s a bit of a chameleon. He was raised by communists (they didn’t call his maternal grandparents’ church “The Little Red Church on the Hill” for no reason) and Muslims, mentored by a communist and radical terrorists, and attended for 20 years a church which is nominally UCC but preaches Cone’s Black Liberation Theology and has close ties with Farrakhan’s NOI. And in those interviews in which he has touched on his beliefs, they come across as vaguely New Age and completely relativistic.

    It’s not clear exactly what he believes in other than himself, but he’s certainly not a conventional Christian and perhaps not even a Deist.

  12. DisturbedMary says:

    Nothing is “self-evident” anymore. TOTUS prefers: We hold these ideas to be relative….

  13. annieoakley says:

    PostCatholic,

    “I disagree we need a supernatural divine endowment in order to recognize inherent worth and dignity . . .”.

    Which “we” are you talking about? This “we” thinks that I and a group of my chosen few are endowed with inherent dignity and that your “we” are not.

  14. Dennis Martin says:

    Is this in fact a second time? This “second time” meme is making the rounds and in some instances, the speech linked to is from Sept. 22, which I think was the “first time.” Perhaps there was a second time–I am, at this point, unclear about it.

    Moreover, in that Sept. 22 speech, he did refer to “all people are created equal” before he went on to say “endowed with inalienable rights.” So he did refer to createdness. If he did indeed omit “by their Creator” twice, it might be significant. But if this is not a repetition, given the reference to “created equal,” I’d say that people should cut him some slack on this one.

  15. MikeM says:

    No, quite frankly, I wouldn’t. How many Godless societies maintain an authentic sense of natural rights?

  16. Abigail Burke says:

    Of course upsetting. But, it upsets almost as much that the President of the United States cannot make his pronouns agree: “Every child should be able to follow their dreams will take them.” Rage.

  17. Peggy R says:

    Every thing this man “understands” about America (and much of world history, from what I’ve seen of him) amounts to quite a huge mis-understanding on his part. [One example: In an immigration speech this year he talked of Americans raising money to build the Statue of Liberty. Hello? Really? Are his speech writers as ill informed as well?] This man possesses the most wrong-headed sense of history and humanity I have ever heard, and it’s pronounced by the man in the highest office in the land. What were people thinking when they voted for him? God save us from this suffering.

  18. Charles E Flynn says:

    I hope we will have only nine more seasons of this form of presidential omission.

  19. Peggy R says:

    I don’t believe Michelle. What background does O have that would lead him to have some attachment to that devotion? Marxism? Black Liberation theology? Islamic influence?

  20. Peggy R says:

    No correct citation more recent than his book? Long time ago What about since O’s been Pres?

  21. momravet says:

    The longer President Obama is in office the more he resembles the cukoo’s child. Even tho’ many of the people who developed the US Constitution were not specifically religious, altho’ they believed in God in the amorphous sense, they all believed in people having free will. This belief that we all have a choice in what we do, whether good or evil, is at the heart of the Constitution. With freeedom comes responsibility and without responsibility there is no freedom. Pres. Obama’s problem is that he is woefully ignorant of US history and because he is a godless progressive (read communist) he will never understand what makes the US great and can never lead us towards greatness.

  22. robtbrown says:

    1. I don’t think Jefferson was even a nominal Christian. Like other Deists he considered Christ only a teacher of ethics and exemplar. I don’t think Jefferson believed in any kind of life after death.

    2. I have no idea what Obama believes. I do know, however, that both Liberal Protestantism and Liberation theology are so concerned with “building a better world” that the core question of the Incarnation tends to become a peripheral issue.

    3. Whether or not inalienable rights depend on a Creator is not the issue. The point is that the Declaration of Independence says those rights are not merely granted by a govt or society but rather the Creator has endowed man with them. That is why it says they are inalienable. Thus, it makes no sense for Obama to refer to the text of the Declaration on rights yet excise the reference to a Creator.

  23. robtbrown says:

    “Inalienable” should read “unalienable”.

  24. PostCatholic says:

    “We” is the society at large, of which Catholics are a (very larger and powerful) subset.

    I’m sure you’ll find the source of my “inherent worth and dignity” statement illuminating. My beliefs aren’t quite so exclusionary.

  25. PostCatholic says:

    Seems to me the more theistic a society is, the less likely it is to affirm natural rights. Have a peek at the human rights record of the Arabian nations, for instance.

  26. PostCatholic says:

    It makes sense to excise the source of those rights, divine or not, if you’re not concerning yourself with the source but the rights. I don’t need to tell people at my dinner party that it’s Julia Child’s recipe for Beef Bourguignon I’m serving in order to convey that a bay leaf makes all the difference to the sauce.

  27. PostCatholic says:

    I dunno, AnAmericanMother. Thomas Jefferson left a very deliberate and relatively consistent record of his religious thought. He was a prolific writer with numerous correspondents and he over and over affirms what we’d now call a Deist belief in a present but non-personal “author of life” as primary cause of an ordered universe, and he often expressed his admiration for the moral teaching of the man Jesus, and that’s about where it stops. Several times and as an old man, he wrote that he did not expect an afterlife, which is kind of a fundamental tenet of Christianity. I think we have a pretty good insight into what he thought of God; or at least what he thought of god in the 1800’s. It’s possible in 1776 his beliefs included the Christian “Father.”

    As for your statement “take away the Creator and the whole edifice falls of its own weight,” pretty thought, but it can’t be proven. Liberal democracy thrives in a lot of places in Europe, for instance, where those who have a belief in a god compose a slight minority. And of course there’s the fact that the authors of our democracy were not believers in the God of Catholic teaching. As I’ve already said, the founders identified the source of government as “the consent of the governed.” This is a thought highly influenced by Rousseau’s “Du Contrat Social” and is a very deliberate and radical departure from the prevailing wisdom on the source of authority at the time, the Divine Right of Kings. Elsewhere the Declaration closely paraphrases Hobbes and Locke.

    Not sure how Rowan Williams informs the argument.

  28. PostCatholic says:

    The “Little Red Church on the Hill” is an epithet being employed for First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, which actually I don’t remember being on a hill but more in a low spot on the highway… But anyway, having been there for worship, I have to say that I don’t think the description fits today. Maybe it was more more politically active, communistic?, in the late 60’s and early 70’s? I don’t know.

    We have had many more Unitarian presidents than Catholic, though. Wonder how communist William Howard Taft was.

  29. Warren says:

    If President Obama’s words are weighed by whether or not he’s contributing to the problem (marginalization of religion) or the solution (free exercise of religion), then he’s part of the problem.

    When the orator Obama is scripted he is not arbitrary in his choice of words. Can, then, a conspicuous absence of the word “Creator” be anything less than an intentional act on his part? If he is the meticulous wordsmith that he and his lackeys claim him to be, then perhaps we should credit to him the obvious: he means what he says. If that is the case, then his omissions are intentional too.

  30. He was only reading the TOTUS. You and I both know he can’t make a coherent thought on his own. I’m a mathematician and his horrible grammar annoys me.

  31. Joan M says:

    “Every child should be able to follow their dreams will take them.”

    This is pure PC grammar – instead of writing his/her and him/her. Not surprising, but certainly ire provoking!

  32. pattif says:

    I dunno, but from that paragraph about the North Star and us staying true to our values and what we’re going to do, it sounds to me as if what we have here is a practising Pelagian.

  33. Kerry says:

    I think many commenters are missing the purpose of President Noisome Pestilence’s (supposed) omissions. These little actions are on purpose, and have been going on for so long the pattern has blended into the noise, when it should be seen as the signal. Whatever one may name them , they are deliberate, intentional, and meant to roil the political waters and keep them roiled and muddy. He might as well be shouting every other day, “The Kulaks!”, or “The Jews”. In war one controls the initiative. In debased politics, one controls the ‘narrative’. This Pres. does it with deliberately outrageous proclamations, over, and over , and over. Fortunately his contrast with the principles of the Constitution show the latter in high relief, and the preference for them is growing.

  34. Kerry says:

    Oh..also, one might say that PNP doesn’t believe in anything except his own power. Tolkien, the always handy, “‘Indeed he is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream….”

  35. S. Murphy says:

    Admiration for Cdl Bernadin?

    The Islamic influence might lead to great respect for her. Obviously, he’s not devoted to Mary in a Catholic sense. Maybe he liked the picture. Maybe somebody he thought well of gave it to him, and it went into an eclectic mental file of Nice Religious Ideas, like organizing your neighborhood.
    Pray to our Lady for his conversion. Maybe that’s what she’s there for, regardless of what he thinks.

  36. robtbrown says:

    Fine, but, as I said, that’s not the issue here. The question is not whether someone can affirm the existence of natural rights even while not acknowledging God’s existence. That’s a legitimate position, but it’s not the one found in the Declaration, where natural rights are considered the consequence of the work of the Creator.

    Obama didn’t speak of rights in general but rather made specific reference to the Declaration. By omitting mention of the Creator, he has reduced his own argument to zip.

    And your analogy would work if if were: You invite people to a dinner party, saying that Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon would be served. But then you serve a dish that lacks beef or red wine. That’s’ what Obama has twice done.

  37. “Little Red Church on the Hill” is a joke reference to some old song. “Little White Church on the Hill”, maybe?

  38. robtbrown says:

    Moses would have disagreed. The Commandments universalize moral precepts by uniting moral precepts with monotheism. They are not just applied to certain tribes.

  39. The reasoning may be PC, but the grammar goes all the way back to Old and Middle English. (And I think it’s a probable Proto-Germanic thing, but I never really did that much Germanic linguistics study.)

    I’m all in favor of the president using the style of Standard English that was our common educated dialect in the US for the last hundred years or so. But a dialect or a style is not the same thing as English itself.

    Language Log has extensively covered the “singular they” issue over the years. One of the more entertaining entries is the one on all the KJV and other Bible translations that use it, inspiring the slogan, “Singular they: God said it, I believe it, that settles it”. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen it in the old Douay (and older partial translations), and there are suggestions that certain features of Hebrew tend to reinforce the Germanic love of singular they.

  40. Nah, he’s been listening to “Eileen Aroon”.

    “Castles must fall in war,
    Chieftains be scattered far.
    Truth is a fixe’d star,
    Eileen Aroon!”

  41. AnAmericanMother says:

    Nope, not Honolulu. The notorious East Shore Unitarian on Mercer Island near Seattle. The president of the congregation was a loud and proud Communist Party member.

    As for Taft, he was an enthusiastic Unitarian but a Congregationalist one (i.e. a Christian). And of course there are UU congregations and then there are UU congregations. My parents’ next door neighbors (for 60 years) were members at Atlanta UU. Bit wishy-washy and too political for my taste, but by no means radical and certainly not frankly CPUSA. At least not then – I attended occasionally with their kids, who were my age, growing up.

  42. AnAmericanMother says:

    Kerry, I think you are right and that the ‘narrative’ is quite deliberate. The most alarming statement I have heard from the president so far is his change from “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship”. He’s said this several times, and I think SoS Clinton has as well.

    In other words, keep it in church and zip your lip when you clear the door.

  43. Supertradmum says:

    Those like POTUS in our society believe that religion has no place in the public sphere. This is part of the long list of Modernist Heresies condemned by our beloved Popes. But also, this is the creed of the Post-Modernists, the entire group of POTUS advisors and himself, who believe that religion is only for the private life, that progress is not real, that ethics, morals, and all religions, as well as personal decisions are based on relativism. Post-Modernism denies the spiritual aspect of humanity entirely, as well as logic and scientific rational discourse, emphasizing rather Michel Foucault’s ideas of the personal and the fact that the subjective forms a character, as well as public life. There is no common heritage, such as Western Civilization or Americanism, and no hearkening back to a past, including religion, which was used pre-Enlightenment by less than creative people. In fact, “creative experimentation of thought” is a highlight and important aspect of Post-Modernism. I call it “utilitarianism in disguise”.

    As far as the public life is concerned, I suggest reading Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, a book which I would imagine, along with Derrida and crew, is on POTUS ‘s library shelves. It is a book which challenges Marxism, stating that money and finances are not the most important aspects of the public life of government, but purely relativistic and subjective thought would take the place of any group efforts in any field.

    Derrida, of course, is the great god of this group of thinkers and ultimately, not only is there no Creator, but no such thing as an autonomous State, natural law, or any objective, historical creation which is worth keeping from generation to generation. Everything is self-referenced. Jürgen Habermas in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity criticizes some of these ideas, but now, as we know, these ideas are in the mainstream of politics, art, law, morality, etc.

    We cannot put POTUS and his group into the older forms of religious belief, such as the Unitarians, as he, wife, and advisers are products of Post-Modernism. This is why they are not “Americans” in the true sense of the word, an older concept involving group identity and the concept of the independent state.

  44. Bornacatholic says:

    Obama may be the bestest ever Kenyan-Born POTUS but that does not give him permission to trash our history and traditions and Jefferson, for Lord’s sake, was not writing his personal Creed when he was drafting the Declaration of Independence.

  45. robtbrown says:

    I would also say that even though Moslems are monotheists, their attitude often is as if Allah is a tribal God.

  46. Jordanes says:

    As for your statement “take away the Creator and the whole edifice falls of its own weight,” pretty thought, but it can’t be proven.

    Sure it can. Why else has the edifice of natural law collapsed everywhere the Creator has been removed as its basis?

    Liberal democracy thrives in a lot of places in Europe, for instance, where those who have a belief in a god compose a slight minority.

    It doesn’t seem to be thriving anywhere, least of all in Europe, where many if most nations now permit the murder of unborn children, contraception, euthanasia, circulation of pornography, prostitution, and legal recognition of sodomitic unions. None of those nations base their laws and their societies on the natural moral law any longer.

    And of course there’s the fact that the authors of our democracy were not believers in the God of Catholic teaching.

    True, but irrelevant — they still had a basic understanding and acceptance of the natural law, the foundation and source of unalienable human rights.

    As I’ve already said, the founders identified the source of government as “the consent of the governed.” This is a thought highly influenced by Rousseau’s “Du Contrat Social” and is a very deliberate and radical departure from the prevailing wisdom on the source of authority at the time, the Divine Right of Kings.

    Influenced by Rousseau or not, it’s also a fundamental principle of Catholic social doctrine, as witnessed by the writings of Aquinas and Bellarmine. Divine Right of Kings, however, is not a necessary part of Catholic doctrine.

  47. maynardus says:

    I’d agree that the president’s “understanding” of America is flawed in almost every way, and that if he’s a “Christian” as the word is commonly understood he’s done a remarkably good job of hiding it. However we need to make sure we don’t make fools of ourselves by overreaching in an effort to make him look more ridiculous than he’s already doing for himself; I didn’t see or hear the speech in which he referenced the Statue of Liberty, but perhaps you’re unaware that American people did indeed foot the bill for the stone base on which the statue stands. My recollection is that the funding became mired in politics and one of the newspaper publishers – I think it was Pulitzer – started a campaign which resulted in most of the money being raised through an enormous number of small donations from ordinary citizens including schoolchildren. I remember learning it in grade school and it was an inspiring story, I’m reasonably certain that was what our chief magistrate was referring to…

  48. snoozie says:

    Father Z, I think it all becomes a lot clearer when we consider the other BIG “mistake” he keeps making (that is being widely ignored) in his multiple speeches regarding this topic….the word in the Declaration is UNalienable; he keeps saying INalienable. The difference is subtle but stark….

    (from gemworld.com with modifications…)
    “UNALIENABLE: incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred.” Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page 1523:
    You CANNOT surrender, sell or transfer unalienable rights, they are a gift from the creator to the individual and can not under any circumstances be surrendered or taken. All individual’s have unalienable rights. The natural rights of life and liberty are UNALIENABLE. Bouviers Law Dictionary 1856 Edition

    INALIENABLE rights: Rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred without the consent of the one possessing such rights. Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101.
    You can surrender, sell or transfer inalienable rights if you consent either actually or constructively. Inalienable rights are not inherent in man and can be alienated by government.

    Think about what he’s actually saying when he makes these ‘alterations’ on the fabric of our foundation….pretty scary, no?

  49. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Excuse me if this has been discussed extensively before (if so, I missed it), but it struck me that almost the last thing Her Majesty was ‘given’ to say in her speech at Holyroodhouse was, “We hold that freedom to worship is at the core of our tolerant and democratic society.” I do not know who writes her speeches or how much ‘wiggle room’ she has, but I would be surprised if this is her choice and not that of (e.g.) some (so-called) Conservative statist hack.

    My sense is that the old Soviet Constitution was more generous in its phrasing (though the practice was not), but I haven’t checked that, yet…

  50. Peggy R says:

    Maynardus.

    I heard the speech live. He did not say anything about the statue itself being a gift from the French. He referred to building the statue and needing funds to do it here. I know he should have meant the pedestal, but he did not say that. It’s an error a POTUS should not make. At a minimum, it was a very sloppy mis-statement on his part.

  51. AnAmericanMother says:

    Peggy R, Maynardus,

    From my experience working behind the scenes, any decent politician has some well-educated types in the office who spend their time doing the research and fact-checking his speeches (when they’re not answering the phone or running out for pizza). Nothing should get out that hasn’t been looked at by several sets of eyes — including a historian who double-checks any and all historical references in the speech. I assume that the President has the wherewithal to hire more and better fact-checkers than a part-time state representative or senator, who makes do with a couple of staffers and college student interns.

    That leaves us with several alternatives, none of which are very attractive:

    1. The President’s speechwriters are incompetents, unable or unwilling to do the necessary fact-checking.

    2. The President’s speechwriters simply don’t care because they don’t care about American history or traditions.

    3. The President was ad-libbing, and he himself is ignorant or simply doesn’t care.

    I tend to think it’s a combination of all three, but mostly that the President does not understand and does not care about such things. He is strangely unfamiliar with America in many aspects — not only its history but its traditions and people. And people take their cues from the boss.

  52. Supertradmum says:

    AnAmericanMother,
    It seems to me that you, who have a great legal and logical mind, have also pointed to something which I missed. That is that POTUS has no regard for his audience. This is because he is coming out of the liberal academic world, where the attitude is one of arrogance for the “common people”, who are seen as “red-necks” or “illiterates”.

    You also stated that he “is strangely unfamiliar with America in many aspects.” No, see my comments-his philosophy is beyond nation-state, religion-reason axies.

    I do think my commentsabove on the Post-Modernist philosophy and political ideas of such people need to be understood as the clarion call that POTUS and group do not think like Americans and do not want America to remain the same as it has been since the Constitution was written. The man is very intelligent, as are his advisers, and they know exactly what they are doing and saying.

    It is not what most American’s, except the the young, many of whom are Post-Moderns, and the intelligentsia, want to hear. However, academia has seeped into the main-stream, and the ideas are beyond socialism. Nothing said is a mistake, but a comment from a different perspective than what many of us here on this commentary line have-a sense of the importance of religion and statehood.

  53. Supertradmum says:

    PS When I was as Notre Dame, from 1979 to 1984, I heard this type of nonsense constantly from the Philosophy, Theology, and Literature departments. Post-Modernism has just taken this long to get on CNN and into the White House.

  54. AnAmericanMother says:

    Supertradmum,

    You are too kind! :-D I must have just missed the whole post-modern thing, as I graduated from Princeton in 1977 and it hadn’t infected either the History or the Classics department at that time. I can’t really speak for the English Lit. department although I took a few courses there. Law school, of course, has no time for such nonsense.

    I though wonder if it’s just disdain for specifically American traditions – such blunders as the “57 states” comment seem to have nothing to do with post-national thinking, unless that includes complete ignorance of basic facts.

    I have this ongoing suspicion that the administration is not nearly as intelligent as it believes itself to be.

  55. AnAmericanMother says:

    “Though I wonder” — sheesh, talk about blunders. I don’t just need a preview, I need a proofreader!

  56. catholicmidwest says:

    See, people were right. He really is the anti-Christ.

    Just kidding.

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