Obama's Speech and Various Other Ramblings

Unless you're living in a cave (or are a habitué of the Fox News Channel), you have probably at least heard people talking about the speech Barack Obama gave on race relations the other day. It was a very fine speech, and reaffirmed my belief that we very well may be witnessing the rise of a truly great American president.

It has been compared to JFK's speech on Catholicism, and even has been mentioned as one of the very best speeches on any topic delivered in the past 50 years. Given the dearth of rhetorical prowess from our recent leaders, I decided to peruse the Internets for other great American speeches so I could better view Obama's in perspective.

I found a page, entitled "Top 100 American speeches of the 20th Century." I listened to bits and pieces of several of them, including JFK's and FDR's first inaugural addresses, both of Barbara Jordan's speeches and the RFK speech after the MLK assassination. A couple observations:

1. Barbara Jordan was one hell of a good speaker.
2. It's impressive how often JFK made his way onto this list, given his relatively short tenure in the spotlight.
3. It's really too bad that we don't have any recordings (or at least this site doesn't) of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

I also listened to FDR's famous "Four Freedoms" speech which delivered for the 1941 State of the Union address. In the speech, Roosevelt discusses the very real possibility that the Germans would eventually try to invade the U.S.:

The first phase of the invasion of this hemisphere would not be the landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be occupied by secret agents and by their dupes -- and great numbers of them are already here and in Latin America. As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive they, not we, will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.

And that is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious danger. That is why this annual message to the Congress is unique in our history. That is why every member of the executive branch of the government and every member of the Congress face great responsibility, great accountability. The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily -- almost exclusively -- to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.

In every State of the Union speech I've ever seen, the President will proclaim, "I am pleased to announce that the State of the Union is strong!" . Any other admission would be dangerous politically, and politicians just don't subject themselves to unnecessary risk. But, in 1941, Roosevelt delivered this line:

Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information of the state of the union," I find it unhappily necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.

And, shorty later, this:

In times like these it is immature -- and, incidentally, untrue -- for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.

Can you imagine George W. Bush admitting that we weren't all powerful? Or, for that matter, delivering the most famous part of that speech:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

While George W. Bush seeks to create fear in the American people in order to strum up political support, FDR looked the Nazis -- a threat of a far greater magnitude than al Qaeda -- in the eye and promised to deliver a new vision for the world, free from fear, and that it would happen "in our own time and generation."

I hope Barack Obama can return us to the true ideals upon which this nation was founded and show the world that we reject the un-American policies of George W. Bush.