Ethics

Thoughts on the Inauguration

By Ed Brayton

I wept. No matter how you feel politically, I can't imagine how anyone could fail to be moved by what we just witnessed. I am a cynic, but I wept. The common misconception is that cynics are merely cold and negative, people who always find the worst rather than the good, but the truth is that every cynic is a frustrated idealist. Only someone who holds an ideal in mind can be bothered when they see that ideal undermined and ignored.

I wept because Obama spoke so eloquently about the importance of those principles and ideals that animate this nation. The only form of patriotism that has ever mattered is allegiance to those powerful ideas expressed with equal eloquence by Thomas Jefferson 233 years ago in the Declaration of Independence, however imperfectly he and the other founders may have applied them.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 20, 2009 (boomark / email).