President Barack Obama, in his Second Inaugural Address, could not have placed greater emphasis on the importance of America’s founding principles. He began by alluding to the “enduring strength of our Constitution” and proceeded to affirm the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
He then cited the “patriots of 1776” who gave America “a government of, and by, and for the people.” He began four paragraphs, three consecutively, with, “We, the people,” the opening words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution. He brought the Constitution and Declaration of Independence into harmony by saying, “We, the people, declare today that the evident truths—that all of us we created equal—is the star that guides us . . .”
President Obama cast himself in good company by including the thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Rev. Martin Luther King. He employed the word “together” at least seven times, repeated similar phrases such as “You and I” and stressed “common purpose” and “common effort.” Clearly, he intended to impart the message that America has a common purpose defined by her founding documents, and that her greatness will be furthered by dint of a common effort on the part of the American people.
The larger question, however, is this: Is the Address pure rhetoric, flawlessly politically correct or does it faithfully capture the reality of the times? Is everything now in place so that America can confidently march forward in unison? Or are there cracks in the Address that the President is loath to acknowledge?
A conflict between the principles of the United States Constitution and those of the Declaration of Independence came into focus with the Dred Scott decision of 1858. As a direct consequence of this decision, the black slave and the free man were no longer recognized as being “created equal.” A four-year civil war and a constitutional amendment brought these two founding documents, thanks in great part to the astuteness of President Lincoln, back into harmony with each other.
Lincoln held the Declaration of Independence and the Spirit of the 1776 Revolution in higher regard than what was left of the Constitution after Dred Scott. He truly believed that “all men are created equal.” John Patrick Diggins, Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, makes the following comment in his book, On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundation of American History:
It was Lincoln’s deepest conviction that the ideological significance of the American Revolution expressed itself in the Declaration and that of the Spirit of ’76 endowed America with its meaning and purpose in human history.
Lincoln importuned “every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity . . .to swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country . . . and, in short, let it [the spirit of the Revolution and the Declaration] become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.”
Does President Obama, as did Lincoln, believe in the equality of all?
Since 1973, following the Supreme Court decisions in both Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, the current interpretation of the Constitution separates the unborn from the born. The born and the unborn humans are no longer “created equal.” It is constitutionally permissible to kill the unwanted unborn.
The Constitution, as it was in 1858, is now at variance with both the Spirit of ’76 and the Declaration. This is the crack that Obama does not want to acknowledge. And this is precisely why his Second Inaugural Address is a cover-up, a pretense, a hollow piece of rhetoric that avoids the salient fact that his regime refuses to recognize the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” of unborn human beings. The President’s vision of America is a fabrication, radically inconsistent, despite his protestations to the contrary, with how the founding Fathers envisioned America.
The President’s repeated use of the word “together” is fraudulent, for it does not include the unborn or, for that matter, orthodox Catholics, pro-life advocates, and defenders of traditional marriage. He is not inviting us to “answer the call of history,” but to subvert it. He bids a society he has helped to divide, having uprooted it from its foundations, to go forward, not in unity, but as a fragment. The Culture War will continue unabated despite the President’s refusal to admit its existence.
Dr. Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of Human Life International. Doctor DeMarco is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and he is Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary in Cromwell, CT.
He is the author of 22 books, including; Architects of the Culture of Death, The Many Faces of Virtue, The Heart of Virtue, and New Perspectives on Contraception. He has authored several hundred articles in scholarly journals and in anthologies, and articles and essays appearing in other journals and magazines and in newspapers; and innumerable book reviews in a variety of publications.
His education includes: B.S. Stonehill College, North Easton, MA 1959 (General Science); A.B. Stonehill College, 1961 (Philosophy); Gregorian University, Rome, Italy, 1961-2 (Theology); M.A. St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY, 1965 (Philosophy); and Ph.D. At. John’s Univ., 1969 (Philosophy). His Master’s dissertation was “The Basic Concept in Hegel’s Dialectical Method” and his Doctor’s dissertation was “The Nature of the Relationship between the Mathematical and the Beautiful in Music”.
He is married to Mary Arendt DeMarco and they have five children.
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