January 21, 2009, 12:30 P.M.
...And How Far We Still Have To Go: I have now watched President Obama's inaugural speech twice and I am struck by the fact that, despite its lack of an individual catch phrase like "the only thing we have to fear" or "ask not what your country can do," the speech as a whole was moving, inspirational and forceful. I was impressed by the fact that this speech did not shrink from defining an entirely new direction for our country or from clearly and emphatically stating an end to the policies of the Bush administration.
The message that I took from this speech is one of real, fundamental and mind-altering change in the relationship between our nation and its people, and our nation and the world. I see the true promise of our country being realized in this presidency, and I see the words of the constitution as I never have before. The Declaration of Independence could only take life when its promise to all men could be recognized, and now it can. We can now, like no time in our past, go out in the world and say that we honestly and truly live out the lofty principles and ideals so eloquently expressed some 230 years ago.
By putting into practice, not just into words, our committment to reasserting our moral standing in the world, we are at once drastically weakening everyone standing against us. I see hope in the recognition that our diversity at home is not our weakness, but our greatest strength, especially when we see our neighbors as equals, as the language of our forefathers promised, and not as less than equal, as our history has shown.
The swearing-in of President Obama on January 20, 2009,the day after we celebrated the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., vividly highlights how far we have come in my lifetime. It should also remind us of how far we still have to go. There are still places in this country where its President is not welcome, and where his life would be in danger if he visited, simply because he is black. Oh, far we still have to go.
January 20, 2009, 8:00 P.M.
Oh, how far we've come: It was with a tremendous sense of pride that I watched Barack Hussein Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. I watched it live, sitting in a friend's office in Manchester, where I was mediating a dispute between a homeowner and a contractor. The internet feeds were so stressed that the best feed we could access was the BBC. How cool is that?!
President Obama took his oath with his hand on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he took his oath in 1861. It was not lost on me that it was also the same Bible used when then Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administered the oath. Taney, appointed by Andrew Jackson to replace John Marshall as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1836, was also the author of the infamous decision in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that no person of African descent, whether free or slave, could be a citizen of the United States because they were inferior.
Writing for the Supreme Court, Taney issued this historic assessment of black people:
"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.
They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."
Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).
This man took Lincoln's oath in 1861. Lincoln's hand was on the same Bible as Obama's was on today. Oh, how far we have come.
