"But as I look ahead and think about what may still be relevant in fashion years from now, I think back to eras in style that were defined by freedom."

"I am so happy I was young in the ‘70s and participated in the women’s movement and all it meant. My generation behaved as if it had invented freedom. That was a moment in time, between the discovery of the pill and the arrival of AIDS, when sex was carefree and fun. For design inspiration then, we looked 40 years back, to the 1930s. We loved its furniture and architecture, all minimalist, and the light style of the clothing."

Writes Diane von Furstenberg.

ADDED: Her penultimate paragraph is "Who saw this coming? An icon of the ‘70s: Andy Warhol," which was especially funny to me because as I was reading, I was planning to search for "Diane von Furstenberg" in my copy of "The Andy Warhol Diaries." She's all over the place in there. Sample:

Bianca [Jagger] was there. I thought she’d already left for Paris. She was saying out loud everything I was thinking— what two bitches Diane Von Furstenberg and Sue Mengers were— and she said, “At least Sue can be funny sometimes.” Sue was on her way to Europe to meet her husband, who only lets her see him once every couple of months, I think.

Another one:

And Diane Von Furstenberg was there and she lives in Eleanor Lambert’s building so she invited Bob and me down for dinner and to watch Holocaust. So we went down and Diane’s mother was there, and Marina Cicogna. Diane’s mother had been in Auschwitz, and when the concentration camps came on she was laughing— she said that they made it so much more glamorous than it was when she was there, that all the women had crewcuts and it was a lot more crowded, that where the movie had 20 people there were really 300,000. And it was weird to be seeing this with Marina Cicogna whose family was so involved with Mussolini. Before it was over, Diane was ready to go out, she was calling for a limousine.

And:

There was a mob scene around where Barry Diller and I were sitting because John Travolta sat down two inches away. His eyes are just like— dyed— blue-green. I mean, really deep blue. And he has the most beautiful smile. His teeth must be polished every day. And his skin is beautiful. And he’s so nice. And he says nice things to everyone. And he was talking the most to this girl he thought was with us, but she was a DVF groupie. And Diane is so desperate to be recognized that if one person says, “You’re Diane Von Furstenberg, I love you,” she says, “Come with me,” and she makes them follow her around for the rest of the night so that she can have a following, and then she gives them presents— she carries lipsticks and compacts with her to give out, and she autographs them.

And:

Sondra looked great in this beautiful bright yellow silk dress— the color I used on the Debbie Harry portrait— and it made her look so young, eight years old, and we asked her who made it because it was really pretty and she said, “You’ll fall over if I tell you.” So she told us and Bob and I did fall over— it was a Diane Von Furstenberg. Off the rack for $ 120. It really was pretty.

Also:

Diane Von Furstenberg was having a party for her boyfriend, Alain Elkann, who was married to the Agnelli daughter. He’s French. He’s written four books, and in France if you’re an intellectual, you don’t have to work, they just treat you like this big—“ intellectual.” Like Loulou de la Falaise’s husband who’s supposed to be a novelist but I don’t think he’s ever finished anything. So Diane’s going the Marilyn Monroe route of marrying one person for the name, and now she’s going with this guy who’ll write books about her.

50 years ago today, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died.

One might imagine them encountering John F. Kennedy in the antechamber of the afterlife.

I've been planning for a while to write this as the first post today, but I'm pleased to see that there are many news stories this morning honoring the 3 men who shared a death date. You may have noticed who entered the world on the same day as you. (Perhaps I had a conversation with Rush Limbaugh in the antechamber to life.) But will you know who passes through the departure gate alongside you?

ADDED: In The Guardian: , the author Laura Miller writes:

Apart from the Narnia books, the work of Lewis's I most cherish, "An Experiment in Criticism," makes the almost postmodern – and at the very least radically humble – proposition that we might best judge the literary merit of a book not by how it is written, but by how it is read. If "we found even one reader to whom the cheap little book with its double columns and the lurid daub on its cover had been a lifelong delight, who had read and reread it, who would notice, and object, if a single word were changed, then, however little we could see in it ourselves and however it was despised by our friends and colleagues, we should not dare to put it beyond the pale." That is a faith I am happy to share.

And Nicholas Murray writes:

The FBI kept a fat file on [Aldous Huxley] but failed utterly to find anything damning (as his biographer I was sorely disappointed when it slid out of the jiffy bag). He was nevertheless refused US citizenship...

He has survived his detractors and remains an eloquent critical voice, warning against our tendency to "love our slavery" – Brave New World's dystopian idea of manipulation and conformity and our tendency to submit to soft power, so clearly vindicated by the extraordinary complacency with which the public seems to have greeted the Snowden revelations of illegitimate surveillance. A free democrat to the core of his being, at war through words with "the great impersonal forces now menacing freedom," he shows that heroism can exist away from the noisy battlefield.

AND: "Yes, 'Everybody’s happy nowadays.' We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn’t you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way." Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World (Kindle Locations 1167-1169).

ALSO: Kindle Locations 2729-2737:

“But do you like being slaves?” the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. “Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,” he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. “Yes, puking!” he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty—all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. “Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are?” Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. “Don’t you?” he repeated, but got no answer to his question. “Very well then,” he went on grimly. “I’ll teach you; I’ll make you be free whether you want to or not.” And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in hand-fills out into the area.

How is your carapace of thick stupidity today? Mine is chafing. I'm struggling not to concoct a joke out "little pill-boxes of soma tablets," Jackie's iconic pink hat, and my favorite Bob Dylan song. I need some rage to make me fluent.

"A height of some fifty feet above the roofs of Rome gives me all the advantages that I could get from fifty miles of distance."

"The air so exhilarates my spirits, that sometimes I feel half inclined to attempt a flight from the top of my tower, in the faith that I should float upward," said Hilda.

"O, pray don’t try it!" said Miriam laughing. "If it should turn out that you are less than an angel, you would find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard; and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never come down among us again.” 

This young American girl was an example of the freedom of life which it is possible for a female artist to enjoy at Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to descend into the corrupted atmosphere of the city beneath, as one of her companion doves to fly downward into the street;— all alone, perfectly independent, under her own sole guardianship, unless watched over by the Virgin, whose shrine she tended; doing what she liked without a suspicion or a shadow upon the snowy whiteness of her fame. The customs of artist life bestow such liberty upon the sex, which is elsewhere restricted within so much narrower limits; and it is perhaps an indication that, whenever we admit women to a wider scope of pursuits and professions, we must also remove the shackles of our present conventional rules, which would then become an insufferable restraint on either maid or wife.

From Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Marble Faun."

"Young men in Great Britain, Australia, and Canada have also fallen behind."

"But in stark contrast to the United States, these countries are energetically, even desperately, looking for ways to help boys improve," writes Christina Hoff Sommers in The Atlantic.

Using evidence and not ideology as their guide, officials in these countries don’t hesitate to recommend sex-specific solutions. The British Parliamentary Boys' Reading Commission urges, “Every teacher should have an up-to-date knowledge of reading material that will appeal to disengaged boys.” A Canadian report on improving boys’ literacy recommends active classrooms “that capitalize on the boys’ spirit of competition”— games, contests, debates. An Australian study found that adolescent males, across racial and socioeconomic lines, shared a common complaint, “School doesn’t offer the courses that most boys want to do, mainly courses and course work that prepare them for employment.”

This tracks the "Gendertopia" hypothetical I use in my Constitutional Law II class when I teach about Equal Protection and classification by sex. And it ties to the topic, raised in the previous post, about schools using nonfiction books to teach reading, an issue I tied to the boys-falling-behind problem here.

Hoff Sommers stresses recognizing the differences between boys and girls and taking steps to help boys (which of course lights a fire under those who've argued that girls have been held back and if anyone's going to get special help, it should be girls). I recommend avoiding all that drama and ideological struggle by embracing what are, after all, the best American values. We don't need to follow Britain and Canada. We should forefront individuality, autonomy, and freedom.

How? Have a variety of schools, built on different learning models that are built on preferences that  relate to things that could be portrayed as stereotypically male and stereotypically female, but don't talk about how the learning styles are male or female, and don't bias the individual children and their parents to match the boys to the boy style and girls to the girl style. Give them choice and freedom. If your son or daughter wants to learn how to read with science books, to experience a teaching method built on games, contests, and debates, and to figure out how things work by taking them apart and putting them back together, he or she could pick the school that works like that. And there's an equivalent school — perhaps with the cooperative projects and long periods of quiet reading — that can be chosen by boys and girls who flourish in that environment.

I realize that I'm being stereotypically feminine in wanting to move forward in a way that makes everyone happy and avoids discord, but I'm sure that the schoolchild version of me would pick the school built on the stereotypically male learning model. Don't dissuade girls like the young me from going to that school by calling attention to it as a solution for the problems of boys. And don't propagate the idea that boys are a problem, that masculinity is a disease! That's all so unnecessary, and it's offensive to the core American values of individuality and freedom.

I know Christina Hoff Sommers is trying to stir us up and we need to rouse ourselves, but once roused, people will fight, so let's have some impressive harmony-enhancing solutions at hand.

Rush Limbaugh cites facts that raise the "the obvious question: How do elections happen the way they do?"

The facts:

CNN is down, the networks are down, while conservative books sell through the wazoo and end up number one on the New York Times list.

The most listened to radio talk shows are conservative.  The most watched cable news network is conservative. ... We own books; we own talk radio; we own cable news. 

His answer is:

We're nowhere in the pop culture.  We are nowhere in movies.  We're nowhere in television shows.  We are nowhere in music.  Nowhere!

On the fiction side of books, we're nowhere, in terms of what conservatism is, being cool and plot lines and that kind of thing.  We're not in the classroom, we're not in academia, we're not the professors and the presidents of universities.  We are not school superintendents.  Those are very crucial because they get people when they're young, young skulls full of mush. They get to make and form those brains and basically propagandize them and indoctrinate them however they wish.

It wasn't liberals who originated the idea that has most famously been phrased: "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man." That was the methodology of traditional religion. Liberals — of both the right and left — should value the autonomy of the young. They should revere it. They should perform their sacred duty to develop and guide young mind. Yet they fight for the power to indoctrinate. Shame on all of them.

The central characters in good pop culture stories tend to be free and independent, so Rush's frustration that conservatives can't get hold of the "fiction side" of things is reason for hope. Left-wingers of the big government variety should have the same problem appropriating pop culture. Even if the various stars mouth left-wing propaganda, they can't imprint that agenda in the stories, which require strongly autonomous heroes and heroines.

"No 11-year-old child should have to see his parent treated like a criminal for no reason whatsoever."

"And no Englishman enjoying a ramble with his son should face examination by police at the roadside on suspicion of being a sexual predator. Astonishingly – and I find it difficult, some days after the event, to comprehend that I am writing this now – this is what has just  happened to my son and me."

Writes the well-known author Will Self.

"We predicted a moment like this. If the information were attacked it would immediately spread."

"The unintended consequence is it’s become incredibly demanded information — it’s everywhere."

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said, “It’s something that obviously is a concern.”

To Wilson, they merely prove his point: The “great thinkers in nanny state-ism” will do anything to maintain power.

He also bristles when gun victims — like the families of the Sandy Hook school victims — lobby government.

“I’m unhappy they were able to leverage their victimhood for the reduction of liberties of their fellow citizens,” Wilson said.

“They’re playing small ball,” added Wilson. “We’re playing a much bigger game.”

He’s such a passionate believer in his plastic gun that he laughs at the notion of someone killing him with it.

“That would be so ironic,” he said. “Even in death, it would be hilarious.”

Laughing at death, laughing at the government, it's 3D-printed-gun designer Cody Wilson — who's also a law student (at the University of Texas).

Wilson has not merely designed a 3D-printable gun, he's 3D-printed himself as a character on the national scene. Nice creative work, Wilson!

Now, will he become a lawyer?

Another law student in the news is John Cochran, who just won $1 million on "Survivor." He too designed himself as a fabulous character:

The first time, I went into [the game] so anxious that people are going to perceive me as a nerd, a socially awkward freak. And I'm formally still the same socially awkward, freaky, nerd guy. But the difference is that instead of those eccentricities and quirks being a source of embarrassment or anxiety for me, I've just accepted it as a reality of my existence... And that's immensely liberating because I got to focus on the game this time instead of how I'm perceived, which ruined my game the first time. Being able to focus on the game I've loved for half my life was a dream come true.

Nice creative work, Cochran! Cochran was asked — by Jeff Probst — whether he was going to go on to be a lawyer, and he said he didn't think so. He said he'd like to be a writer. He said he wrote a paper on the "Survivor" jury system when he was at Harvard, so I expect some cool books analyzing "Survivor."

"Reaching heights of 1,776 feet, One World Trade has surpassed the Empire State Building to become the tallest building in New York City."

"Previously dubbed the Freedom Tower, the building proudly stands tall in Lower Manhattan as a reminder of the resilience of New York City after a grave act of terror."

Great.

Why was "Freedom" dropped? Corny? Bush-y? Disagreement over whether they hate us because of our freedom?

Americans are asking "Why do they hate us?"

They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

I hope it was because "One World Trade" is dignified and traditional.

"I believe death is the ultimate freedom."

"So I’d rather have my freedom as soon as I can get it."

ADDED: Meadhouse dialogue:

MEADE (on reading this post): So when she killed the guy, she was setting him free.

ALTHOUSE: Liberating his soul from his body. What's that line in a movie — "Go ahead and shoot, you'll be doing me a favor"? Casablanca!

MEADE: I hope you never murder me.

ALTHOUSE: I won't.

MEADE: Just for the record, I don't consider death the ultimate freedom.

"Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe..."

"... but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston."

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

"About 500 locks on cell doors simultaneously opened inside Montgomery County’s main jail early Saturday morning..."

"No inmates tried to escape...."

"Let me get this straight: The police department’s job is now dictating when I should have a party, and that’s OK?"

"This is what gets at the heart of the issue. It isn’t 'Mifflin concerns us,' it’s 'you guys shouldn’t party that weekend," writes University of Wisconsin student John Waters, denouncing the Madison Police Department's "condescending letter." ("Mifflin" is an annual Madison block party that dates back to 1969.)

For students only, and on this weekend only, the city thinks it is OK to turn downtown into a police state, where they will seek and destroy any attempt at having unsanctioned fun. Ridiculous.

Next: “If you look under 21 and have alcohol, you will be asked to provide proof of age.” It’s official, the Constitution is being thrown out that weekend. I’m 23, but people say I have a baby face, so go ahead, demand my ID — the Fourth Amendment is really more of a guideline anyway. Ridiculous.

The super-liberal Madison authorities go in for this show-your-papers business to thwart the freedom of individuals to associate with each other over music and beer, but let the GOP at the state level require IDs for voting and they'll say we've descended into a police state. I can just hear these "progressives" righteously lecturing about how requiring IDs for voting is really underhandedly a way to discriminate. But the police department's policy is openly discriminatory against the young (and — if you want to talk about what's really going on — I'd suggest that that it's underhandedly discriminatory against males).

I defend Mifflin more than any event we have, not out of some misplaced adolescent desire to get hammered, but because it represents everything about this school that makes me proud to wake up a Badger. Yes, our academics are awesome, but it is the social life here that sets UW apart for me. Mifflin happens to be the pinnacle of that life, and is, as it has always been, meant to be a celebration of everything it means to be a Badger.

Simply put, it’s just fun to get up early and party with your whole school after a winter of cold and two semesters of hard work at a top-notch university. To the powers that drove us to this point, I would ask that you pay attention to the entire reputation of this school, not just your idea of what that reputation should be.

The U.S. government sent a man to our door to pay $90 if one of us would answer a few questions and spit in a tube.

Me, I don't answer the doorbell unless I already know who is there, but Meade went to the door to find a man with a clipboard and a National Health and Alcohol Study badge. If somehow I'd gone to the door, I'd have seen through the window that it was a man with a clipboard and given my no-none-of-that-here hand gesture and never opened the door. And if somehow I'd started talking to the guy and he'd said the first thing — that he was doing a government health survey — I'd have abruptly refused. No way! And if he'd reached the part about giving a saliva sample, I'd have laughed in his face.

But Meade — a Hoosier, much friendlier than I am — talked to the man for what was, to me, a puzzling length of time. Of course, Meade refused to do the survey or part with the saliva, but he did receive these papers:



"Questions like age and education, drinking, medicine and drug use, mood, anxiety, behavior and medical conditions and personality." No way! Yet over 100,000 people have participated. $90 is an impressive amount of money, perhaps especially to people with alcohol problems. As Meade said later, you could buy a lot of gin for $90. I'm irked as a taxpayer. Is this a federal jobs program to tide over erstwhile census workers?

Above, you see the little brochure, and Meade was also given this copy of a letter that was previously sent in the mail to soften us up for government interrogation. I vaguely remember tossing it right in the trash recycling bin:



Interestingly, the softening-up letter doesn't mention the part where the government's independent contractor makes you spit in a tube. It also refers only to alcohol and alcohol-related mental issues. Unlike the brochure, it doesn't mention drug use. It does, however, boldface the $90. You get $45 to sit for the interview, but $45 is withheld until you get to "the end."

But "It's okay to skip questions you don't want to answer for any reason." So, you're answering questions and then there's one you don't want to answer? Speaking of anxiety! And then they want the saliva sample. By the way, one of the mood/behavior issues around drug and alcohol use is lying. Presumably, they will detect that.

But don't worry, this is for "research purposes only." We're assured our personal information will be stripped away. What? Are you paranoid? How does that paranoia relate to your drug/alcohol use?

The government simply wants to "decide how best to use money and staff to solve national health problems." How about not handing out hundreds of thousands of pairs of $45 checks to collect data from the kind of people who don't know how to say no to a government that manipulates them into surrendering their freedom for a handout?

ADDED: Meade tells me the man said the saliva was for DNA, something about checking one's ancestry for alcohol (and drug?) related problems.

Obama: "I am constrained... by a system that our Founders put in place."

Context:

“You hear some of these quotes: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government.’ ‘We can’t do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away,’ Obama said. “Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.”

As a lawprof, I read that to mean that he is not constrained. He's juggling a few ideas, but what he's getting at is: The Founders put into place a system that would be populated by elected officials, who are to act for the sake of the people and as the people want. If what the people want our government to do is control guns, then it is within the power of government to do it.

That's the constitutional argument he has in mind. It's an idea of constitutional government as a political system, within which rights are only another manifestation of what the people want. And, in the ultimate scary twist on the idea of rights: Government is not to be regarded as in need of limits, because the government is us. Anything we — the government — want to do is never tyranny, but freedom.

"If he's good enough to marry, he'll still be around when you're ready to make that leap."

Amanda Marcotte, quoted by James Taranto, who says:

Let's translate that from feminist-speak to English: If the romance fails, his inadequacy as a man is entirely to blame; you have no responsibility for making it work.

If you follow that advice, you're likely to end up alone. Marcotte seems to imagine it will be a consolation that you'll be resentful too.

Let me translate that back into feminism (this will be like "recursive translation"): You're free to absorb the risk that the right man at the wrong time will be in the wrong place when it's the right time.

ADDED: My translation reminds me of the analog of pregnancy and abortion as seen by feminism: You're free to end a healthy pregnancy that comes at the wrong time, but you take the risk that there will be no healthy pregnancy when it's the right time.

You're entitled to your freedom, but freedom can only be exercised in the real world with all its limitations — including nature and, in a free society, the freedom of other people.

"Boys have historically been trained to think that they needn’t obey rules or work hard because..."

"... men used to be able to drop out of high school and still earn wages comparable to better-educated women, thanks to jobs in fields like manufacturing, construction and travel. That’s not the case anymore."

Time for everyone to recognize the great gift of the women's movement:  Everyone needs to buckle down, work hard, and follow rules. 

No wonder they had to drop the word "liberation" from "women's liberation movement." Who could have imagined, circa 1970, that what we'd end up with was grim drudgery for all?

Except the guys won't play along, will they? Consider the strategies. An obvious one is to scale down, never marry, never have children, and live a circumscribed life with a not-too-challenging job, and enjoy however much sex you want via online dating services. Meanwhile, the women can work for their entire lives as hard as they worked in school, just keep going and going, shoehorn in a couple children, work harder and harder to pay for everything they need, including childcare. Work work work.

Grim!

If I were a young woman, I'd be tempted into exactly what I was tempted into when I was a young woman: a life that values beauty, love, and freedom over work. I'm thinking of the hippie movement and — a book I read in the 1970s — "Your Money Or Your Life" (which I see is "Revised and Updated for the 21st Century" — not sure what that means).

The notion that the National Anthem is too hard to sing, so it's better to lip-sync.

Argument replete with sympathy for Beyonce and video of bad singing by "seasoned professionals."

I completely disagree with this argument. It's the difficulty that makes the performance thrilling. It's the risk of failure that makes it daring. And by the way, it's a song about fighting a war, which is not a risk-free enterprise. No safety net there. It's not like these seasoned professionals are drafted to sing the old song. The fact that it's also an old drinking song — mentioned in the linked article — counts on the side of throwing caution to the wind and overcoming inhibitions and leaving the consequences — the shame — for the morrow.... in the land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....

"When the British evacuated New York City in 1783, they took many Loyalist refugees to Nova Scotia..."

"... while other Loyalists went to southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists arrived on the shores of the St. John River that a separate colony — New Brunswick — was created in 1784..."

... followed in 1791 by the division of Quebec into the largely French-speaking Lower Canada (French Canada) along the St. Lawrence River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled by 1796 in York, in present-day Toronto. After 1790 most of the new settlers were American farmers searching for new lands; although generally favorable to republicanism, they were relatively non-political and stayed neutral in the War of 1812....

"[English Canada] inherited, not the benefits, but the bitterness of the Revolution. It got no shining scriptures out of it. It got little release of energy and no new horizons of the spirit were opened up. It had been a calamity, pure and simple. And to take the place of the internal fire that was urging Americans westward across the continent there was only melancholy contemplation of things as they might have been and dingy reflection of that ineffably glorious world across the stormy Atlantic. English Canada started its life with as powerful a nostalgic shove backward into the past as the Conquest had given to French Canada: two little peoples officially devoted to counter-revolution, to lost causes, to the tawdry ideals of a society of men and masters, not to the self-reliant freedom alongside of them."

Today's "History of" country is Canada.

"Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of [the words of the Declaration of Independence] with the realities of our time."

The words President Obama had just quoted, in his Inaugural Address, were: "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 are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

More from the text of the speech:

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.  

God! God is well-represented in this speech. In addition to that "gift from God" (and "their Creator"), there's:

We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own....

We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise.  That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks.  That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God....

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction – and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service....

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

God is the source of our rights, God makes us stewards of the environment, public servants swear oaths to God, and the blessings of God are requested.

Obama also dealt with the question of federalism, the role of federal power. There are the things we do "together," he said, listing matters that call for uniform national policy: providing for "railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce," "schools and colleges to train our workers, regulation of the "free market... to ensure competition and fair play," "care for the vulnerable," and "protect[ion] ... from life’s worst hazards and misfortune."

But then he gives attention to some conservative ideas, "skepticism of central authority," rejection of "the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone," "celebration of initiative and enterprise," and "insistence on hard work and personal responsibility."

Turning back to the left, he asserts that "preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action." Collective action is needed "Now, more than ever," he says: "My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together." Made for this moment? That's an odd phrase, echoed later with "That is what this moment requires," which comes after vague references to "outworn programs, and the need to "harness new ideas and technology," to fix: 1. "our government," 2. "our tax code," and 3. "our schools." Nothing particularly "this moment" about any of that, so this "moment" theme fizzled. Maybe it was an incorporation by reference to his huge "This is the moment" speech from June 2008.

There's more to the speech — attention to the environment, national security, "our gay brothers and sisters," and so forth, and it finally comes back to the Declaration of Independence material. We need to "lift" our "voices... in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals" and "embrace... our lasting birthright... of freedom."

"I think that any (laws) there are in Constitution or in life, are already made."

Hey, come on. That's kind of a great answer. Now, it gets a bit odd after that:

I think that we should have a straight way to go in our similar, or ... in our lives. For example, I am a surfer and I think that the best wave that I can take is the wave that I wait for it.

But still... I see the sense in it: Libertarian!