Thoughts on Bush’s inauguration speech

I watched the speech and then read it, so here’s my initial reaction. I didn’t think Bush delivered the speech with as much passion as he has at other times. Perhaps he was trying to be more “statesman-like” or something. At least he didn’t stumble over any words.

The words freedom and liberty seemed over-used to me. Bush said the word “free” “freedom” or “liberty” 49 times out of his total 2083 words. It starts to lose its meaning when it’s thrown around like salt on bad food.

I like the idea of the ownership society, so I was happy to see it mentioned. And, yes, happy to see that he linked it to responsibility and a free society.

It was interesting to see how he slipped in a quick reference to abortion in this sentence:

“Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth.”

But then attempted to distract by quickly following with this:

“And our country must abandon all the habits of racism, because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.”

Ah, the magic tricks of politics…

Then there was the whole fire thing. In the beginning of the speech, fire was a bad thing. It was the literal disaster that started off the war on terror. But then later on, fire became a good thing, and a metaphorical thing, as in:

“…we have lit a fire as well – a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”

Fire normally evokes the concept of hell, so it’s weird that this was the imagry that chosen for freedom, but I suppose they were trying to convey the idea that we will “fight fire with fire.”