Bush's speech recalls another one delivered in Gettysburg, Nov 19, 1863...

[farmbo]

...Edward Everett's two hour stem-winder, which was immediately forgotten and lost to history.

As for the other speech delivered in Gettysburg that day, President Lincoln seemed to achieve the word economy of all great poets and storytellers. In his unforgettable address he used the words "freedom" and "liberty" only once, in a manner that underscored the dignity of those holy concepts at that time in our history.

In Thursday's Inaugural address, Bush used the now-diluted words "freedom" and "liberty", twenty- seven and fifteen times, respectively; much in the manner that GM or Pepsi uses saturation advertising to sell second-rate products to distracted consumers.

And in doing so, he has cheapened and coarsened their meaning.

[norml]

1. Dubya's Inaugural Address should be called The 27 Freedoms Speech.

In the words of Peggy Noonan it was "assertively abstract".

[farmbo]

4. Tell a lie Big Enough and Often Enough...and people will start believing..

Bush's speech owes more to Goebells than to Lincoln. Goebells adopted the phrase: Tell a Lie That is Big Enough, and Repeat it Often Enough, and the Whole World Will Believe It. He assumed the world would not be gullible enough to believe "little lies," but the bigger the lie, the more likely it is that people would eventually accept it as true.

Eg: "Saddam has WMD" and "Social Security is bankrupt".

[tabasco]

2. But Everett was probably a better guy to have a beer with.

Americans would reject Lincoln nowadays. The republicans would smear him for being a flip-flopper on slavery.

We are a Naion of idiots with an idiot for President.

[robbedvoter]

3. Also the evildoer in a James Bond movie - Tomorrow Never Dies

I was flipping channels when I happened over this fairly recent Bond. Arch-enemy was a Murdoch type (played by Jonathan Price). He was about to open his worldwide statellite 9and program description said he was intent to start a world war). Sure enough the speech mixed "world domination" with "force for good", "vanquishing tyrants" "helping the oppressed"

[moggie12]

5. Great post

That's the difference between a true statesmen and leader and a manipulator who's trying to whip up fervor and jingoism.

[saltpoint]

6. I second that, moggie12.

[jdonaldball]

7. Lincoln's Second Inaugural address was also a classic