Thoughts on the Presidential Inauguration

            You know, of course, that the real swearing in occurred yesterday, which is in accordance with the timing laid out in the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution.  Today’s ceremony was more for show and for celebration. It was a beautiful and dignified ceremony.   Since 1937, the inauguration has been set for January 20, unless it comes on a Sunday, then, it is held on the Monday after.  The next Monday because of Sunday inauguration will be January 21, 2041.  I don’t know if I’ll be commenting on that one.

I caught a few moments of one of yesterday’s parties after the official swearing in where Joe Biden triumphantly shouts to the crowd that, “He’s just getting started!”  Great! 

            The President, during his speech, said that it is our generation’s task to make life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “real for every American.”  He goes on to say, “Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.  Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in out time.”   I’m sorry, but did he just say there that the authors of our Constitutional framework wrote the laws of our country in various shades of grey so they can fit into any situation that comes up, now or in the future?

            Hitting heavily on “conservative old farts” like me, Obama goes on to tell us that times change and we must change too.  “…America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.”  What did we do with the middle class we had?  Did we let them sink, to push up this new generation?  The “old” middle class might have gotten there by climbing up the rungs of life’s ladder.  Maybe they got there with a little help from their friends or family. They got there, put money in the bank to buy a house, put their kids through school, for their retirement, whatever.  Jobs started disappearing, banks got shaky.  The government comes in to “help.”  So goes the middle class.  Good luck to the new, rising middle class. Be careful what you ask for.  You might get it.

            Sunday afternoon, I enjoyed an excellent production of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs by the Jefferson Community Theatre.  This is the first part of his autobiographical trilogy taking place in 1937 Brooklyn, just before World War II breaks out.  It’s a comedy with some serious undertones.  Here you have a lower middle class family who has undertaken to support other family members in need.  The family is struggling to survive, but even in their most dire moments, they look forward to welcoming more family members who have escaped Europe, (by this time in history, the Buchenwald concentration camp is open for business), and moving them into their already bursting at the seams apartment. 

            I’m not saying everything the Federal government does is bad.  Let me think on that for a few moments.  Ronald Reagan once warned us though that “A government big enough to give everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.”

            “The world is very different now.  For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.  And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which out forbearers fought are still at issue around the globe – the beliefs that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”  John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address

Sharon