Obama’s Second Inaugural. By Yuval Levin. National Review Online, January 22, 2013.
Levin:
This
speech was about as compact yet comprehensive an example of the contemporary
progressive vision as we’re likely to get from a politician. It had all the
usual elements. Its point of origin was a familiar distorted historical
narrative of the founding — half of Jefferson and none of Madison — setting us
off on a utopian “journey” in the course of which the founding vision is
transformed into its opposite in response to changing circumstances, with life
becoming choice, liberty becoming security, and the pursuit of happiness
transmuted into a collective effort to guarantee that everyone has choice and
security. The ideals of the Declaration of Independence are praised mostly for
their flexibility in the face of their own anachronism, as their early embodiment
in a political order (that is, the Constitution) proves inadequate to a
changing world and must be gradually but thoroughly replaced by an open-ended
commitment to meeting social objectives through state action.
