PrintDecember 12, 2010
President Obama's Speech Impediment
Our Dear Leader has a serious speech impediment. Now, I'm not thinking about the mechanics of his highly overrated style and presentation, (see "note") but rather his apparent inability to pronounce a particular word: Creator.
On three separate occasions, within the last few months, he has quoted that immortal phrase from the Declaration ("...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights..."), but omitting the word "Creator." Now, while this might set aside the suspicion in certain quarters that Obama is indeed a closet Muslim, it gives one pause to reflect on just what is going on here.
My assumption when contemplating the president is that he is extremely disciplined and controlled, and even more so when he speaks from a prepared text. Therefore, what he says and how he acts are extensions of his ideology...expressions of his core beliefs. So, what is he saying by not saying the word "Creator"?
Obama is making a philosophical point. Remember that the bedrock position of the progressive is Utopian. Perfection is within our grasp. It is an "if only" kind of worldview: if only we spent more on social programs. If only we were better educated. If only our governmental options were even larger. If only the process were correct. Then, when the conditions of our own creation are in place, then will you see real fundamental transformation and a New Age: New Jerusalem descending in glory!
And those "what ifs" are within our ability to set in place. It's just a matter of education or speaking truth to power or defeating one's political enemies or process...so close that the progressive can taste the new wine in new wineskins! No wonder the progressive is perennially unhappy, chasing his own tail of false premises around the landscape! No wonder they are in a constant state of upset. No wonder their sense of humor is so twisted around cruel satire and vituperative personal attacks. Because, you see, it's all up to them and their efforts. "We're the ones we've been waiting for." They constantly set themselves up for frustration when even the "what ifs" don't do the trick. Or, increasingly, their failure is projected outward towards cabals and "them" or, again, flawed process, but never flawed assumptions.
God the Creator and Redeemer, who extends the hand of salvation, has been removed from the equation. "Move on, move on! No transcendent here!" Yes we can!
Well, actually, no we can't, not even with a forbearing and forgiving God. The best of us are seriously flawed by our very nature.
That most quotable of British 20th-century wags, George Bernard Shaw, a progressive himself, once said this in a moment of candor: "Original Sin is the only empirically verifiable theological doctrine I know of." Just so: the ghost in the machine. The heart of darkness within and without. The wreckage of liberal state/social craft all around us. Arrogance multiplied by willful self-delusion and rejection of the truth and the concept of sinning against a just God.
God just doesn't fit into this ultimate of self-help schemes if we are the answer to our own problems. God simply cannot be the source of our unalienable rights if we believe that our narrow and suspect faculties of perception and action are adequate to see us through to a just society.
Poor Obama. He spent all of his life associating with liberals, radicals, communists, and progressives. He was never told that our ultimate destiny lies beyond our ability to secure it. He simply is incapable of God-talk because he was never taught the language of transcendent faith.
And that is the source of his speech impediment and our current woefully divided and profoundly frustrated society.
On the first day of his tenure as prime minister, with all hell breaking out around him, Churchill found a few minutes to be interviewed by The Times. The reporter attempted to bait Winston into saying something negative about his public school chum, Neville Chamberlain. Graciously, Churchill put it his way: "Neville's imagination in evil is wanting." Just so. And we know how that worked out!
Come. Let us reason together.
NOTE: The next time you are at a social affair and some dewy-eyed liberal know-nothing starts gushing about Obama's fantastic oratorical skills, try this one: "How can he be a great orator when he a) has a sibilant leak that makes him quite reptilian; b) drops gs as frequently as an NFL offensive end without his stickum (folksy but a sterile affectation nonetheless); c) constantly leading with his chin making him professorial and his audiences sophomoric; d) loses the ends of his sentences in the ether due to poor diaphragm support (no guts?); e) moves his head side to side, following his beloved teleprompters until the viewer feels as if he or she were center court at the U.S. Open...?" Have fun.
