How ironic that Obama’s inaugural theme song is inspired by Abraham Lincoln and called “A New Birth of Freedom”. The title is taken from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, which he gave after decisively robbing the citizens of the Confederate states of their freedom during the Civil War.
A New Birth of Tyranny is more like it
Lincoln promised a “new birth of freedom” in this excerpt from his Gettysburg address in 1863:
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.
Lincoln + Freedom = Irony
While Lincoln is regularly named as one of the best presidents of the US, he holds the unique distinction of both precipitating a bloody war of unjustified aggression against his own constituents and trashing the constitution in the process. How ironic then that Mr Obama should invoke this tyrant and the word ‘freedom’ together so prominently at his inauguration. If we were talking about a novel, this would be foreshadowing.
Photo credit: infrogmation2. Photo license.
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{ 4 comments }
yeah! that is so ironic! Oh, but fuck the part about him freeing the slaves and bringing us one step closer to equal rights! we dont count that part when talking about the irony….
Mike, he didn’t free the slaves. And he said many times he was not interested in freeing the slaves. In fact, Lincoln was a white supremacist. He did not believe in equality before the law for blacks.
The Civil War was not fought about slavery but due to the conflict between the diverging commercial interests of the north and south.
Have you read the Emancipation Proclamation? It only applied to states where he did not have the power to effect it, and specifically did NOT apply to states where he DID have the power to effect it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_proclamation
Seriously, wake up. This isn’t grade school social studies class anymore.
Yea and they’ll probably come up with a way to make Bush look good eventually too. History is written by those those with the most powerful pens.
I think you’re right J. “He protected us from further attacks.” and all that. Who will be the next Howard Zinn? We need historians like him in order to counterbalance the officialistic ones.
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