“For us, they fought and died”: Obama’s Inaugural Speech

Political ritual and religious ritual have heaps in common. A psalm like Psalm 2, of course, is both. Psalms that recount battles are not uncommon: 68, 76, and 78. The text of Obama’s inaugural speech is here. Obama lists four places in which “for us, they fought and died”: Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy, and Khe Sanh.

Here are some dandy excerpts from a speech that will be remembered as a quintessential example of American civil religion:

     This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

      Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey  end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

For Americans and non-Americans, I might as well point out the following.

The battle of Concord (1775) evokes by metalepsis Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord Hymn (1836), in particular, the following stanza:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

It is the last stanza that I recall with greatest fondness and trepidation:

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) evokes by metalepsis Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863). The speech is justly considered part of American Scripture:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

D-Day, the Normandy Landings (1946), evokes by metalepsis, for my generation, Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998). Here are the first seven minutes of that cinematic narrative.

How about the Battle of Khe Sanh (1968)? That brings to mind Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984), the bitter words, “I had a brother at Khe Sanh/ Fightin' off all the Viet Cong / They’re still there, he's all gone.” Not to mention the Aussie hit (1978) by Cold Chisel. Still, President Obama is right: “For us, they fought and died.”

Comments

[Mike Heiser]

All you need to do is read FDR inaugural address (1933) and Woodrow Wilson's (both of them) and then compare that with what Obama has been saying over the last two years in terms of policy and ideology. That will tell you where he's at.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/inaug.asp

[JohnFH]

Mike,

Thanks for the excellent link.

Personally, I have a hard time guessing, if given excerpts of inaugural speeches, much about the policy the one who gave it would become famous/infamous for.

I find it easier to note how often the same tropes occur in the speeches of presidents who are not at all on the same page from the point of view of policy and ideology.

It seems to me that sociologists are right to speak of an American civil religion the tropes of which are found in the speeches of politicians across a very wide swath of the political spectrum.