The Inaugural ceremony yesterday harkened to the American Revolution and to the true principles inherent in the founding of this country in more than just the obvious references.
The American revolutionaries were profoundly anti-decadent, anti-corrupt, anti-imperial. They believed in hard work, simplicity, honesty, integrity, frugality and the freedom that comes from accepting adulthood by accepting the need for accountability, self-reliance and self control.
Even before Obama's inaugural began, the reference to these revolutionary values (and yes, they remain revolutionary, the values of a Republic, the values eroded by Empire) was obvious. In his interview this Sunday, Rahm Emmanual spoke of bringing back these values to the country, to the economy, to the government. In his Inaugural address, Obama exhorted Americans and indeed persons across the globe to embody the ideals of the revolution--not only in putting the Constitution and the rights of all people first, but in once again upholding the values and the virtues of our founding fathers. This is evident from many passages of his speech:
....we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame....
Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint....
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true....
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly....
The speech was preceded by a joyful rendering of a hymn written by a Shaker, a religious group founded upon simplicity and integrity, a religious group that itself rose from the ashes of the Revolution. The words of the hymn, though not spoken yesterday, resonate with all else that has been said:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.