For those blog readers outside the United States, the State Of The Union Address is a speech the American president customarily gives at the beginning of each year, usually in January but sometimes in February, to a joint session of congress and, via broadcast, to the USA population. It lays out what the president hopes to accomplish in the coming year, what the past year has meant in his or her estimation, what the state of the country (the Union) is. If I were the president’s speech writer, this is the speech I’d write for him.
Good evening Madam Speaker, Vice President Joseph Biden, Elected Members of Congress, privileged guests, and my not-so-privileged and long-suffering fellow citizens and residents of these United States of America:
Customarily, during a State of the Union Speech, the congressional attendees and privileged guests in these chambers interrupt this speech with many applause lines, cheers, and even a few ovations. I fear that tonight, my fellow Americans, those elected legislators and privileged guests will do precious little applauding and even less cheering.
At the beginning of my address tonight, I will give them credit, the credit they deserve. I will recognize that these legislators have worked very hard, represented quite effectively their constituents, the stakeholders present at the negotiating table that is Washington DC. They have supped at the table of American affluence. They spent many hours dealing with conflicting agendas of those who sought their ear, those who sought to influence them, those who brought them their views, their concerns.
However, they will not cheer the various points I make in this address. Their silence will be forthcoming because tonight I speak not in the service of those constituents for whom the legislators have labored so diligently, so conscientiously.
No! Instead, tonight’s speech is in service of people with a separate set of interests, the ordinary working people, the common people, those whom we understand by the term “American middle class.” That’s quite a different constituency, if you will, than those whom the mass media and the pundits have traditionally considered to be the stakeholders who matter.
Trusting God and Worshiping Mammon
Posted in News Sources and Commentary, Political, The Human Condition Links, tagged Conservatives, History, Law, Liberals, Politics, Religion, The Human Condition on March 20, 2010| 5 Comments »
On the Religious Tolerance website, I found the following:
The above witty quote illustrates a peculiarly American conundrum.
We US citizens have an officially nonreligious government enshrined in our founding document, the Constitution of the United States, yet one of the most religious populations for an advanced industrial nation. That dynamic opposition, historically speaking, has created an interesting political tension.
God As A Secular and Patriotic American
In the western part of United States, The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is the second highest court, ruling over 9 states and 2 territories. It sets legal precedents for all courts in the western United States, and lower courts are bound by its rulings. Only the United States Supreme Court can overrule it.
This court recently made the preposterous ruling that the phrase “under God” in the American Pledge of Allegiance is not inherently religious. Two of the 3 justices actually said that the phrase “under God” was merely a patriotic and ceremonial phrase, not a religious one.
Now American judges are supposed to be scholars of the law. Thus, for these judges to make such an obviously moronic assertion with a straight face is an insult to the intelligence of thinking Americans.
Surely those august scholars of the law can’t believe that to be true unless they have deliberately stupefied themselves.
I clearly remember when that phrase was added to our Pledge of Allegiance in the middle 1950s. Before then, it had not been a part of the American Pledge of Allegiance.
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