Tag: Cultural Marxism

An Egalitarian Advocate vs. A Covenantal Ordering Advocate Conversation

Egalitarian wrote,

I’ve heard a lot of these arguments from patriarchalists, and I’ve still concluded that egalitarianism is the way to go. A sharp eye to culture and language is key to understanding Paul, and Jesus’ treatment of women was always inclusive and equalizing.

Response

Really?

Is that why Jesus chose 12 male disciples?

Secondly, Are we to believe that for the last 500 years the Reformed Church has failed at having a sharp eye for language and culture and only now are we being brought into the promised land of the Egalitarian hermeneutic?

Thirdly, the 5th commandment forbids all egalitarian readings of Scripture. The Scriptures at every turn are opposed to egalitarianism.

For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith clearly eschews egalitarianism as seen it is treatment of the 5th commandment with all its languages about inferiors and superiors.

Question 126: What is the general scope of the fifth commandment?

Answer: The general scope of the fifth commandment is, the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations, as inferiors, superiors, or equals.

Question 127: What is the honor that inferiors owe to their superiors.?

Answer: The honor which inferiors owe to their superiors is, all due reverence in heart, word, and behavior; prayer and thanksgiving for them; imitation of their virtues and graces; willing obedience to their lawful commands and counsels; due submission to their corrections; fidelity to, defense and maintenance of their persons and authority, according to their several ranks, and the nature of their places; bearing with their infirmities, and covering them in love, that so they may be an honor to them and to their government.

Question 128: What are the sins of inferiors against their superiors?

Answer: The sins of inferiors against their superiors are, all neglect of the duties required toward them; envying at, contempt of, and rebellion against, their persons and places, in their lawful counsels, commands, and corrections; cursing, mocking, and all such refractory and scandalous carriage, as proves a shame and dishonor to them and their government.

Note — What else could we conclude but that the Westminster Divines would have seen feminism as a sin since feminists, like the one we are dealing with here, rebel against the person and places of their Covenant Head husbands?

Question 129: What is required of superiors towards their inferiors?

Answer: It is required of superiors, according to that power they receive from God, and that relation wherein they stand, to love, pray for, and bless their inferiors; to instruct, counsel, and admonish them; countenancing, commending, and rewarding such as do well; and discountenancing, reproving, and chastising such as do ill; protecting, and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body: and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage, to procure glory to God, honor to themselves, and so to preserve that authority which God has put upon them.

Question 130: What are the sins of superiors?

Answer: The sins of superiors are, besides the neglect of the duties required of them, an inordinate seeking of themselves, their own glory, ease, profit, or pleasure; commanding things unlawful, or not in the power of inferiors to perform; counseling, encouraging, or favoring them in that which is evil; dissuading, discouraging, or discountenancing them in that which is good; correcting them unduly; careless exposing, or leaving them to wrong, temptation, and danger; provoking them to wrath; or any way dishonoring themselves, or lessening their authority, by an unjust, indiscreet, rigorous, or remiss behavior.

Question 131: What are the duties of equals?

Answer: The duties of equals are, to regard the dignity and worth of each other, in giving honor to go one before another; and to rejoice in each other’s gifts and advancement, as their own.

Question 132: What are the sins of equals?

Answer: The sins of equals are, besides the neglect of the duties required, the undervaluing of the worth, envying the gifts, grieving at the advancement of prosperity one of another; and usurping preeminence one over another.

Clearly, the Scriptures are diametrically opposed to the strictures of egalitarianism.

Egalitarian wrote,

He also appeared to women first in a culture in which they were not considered court-worthy witnesses. Paul also mentions many women he refers to as partners with him in his work, including Priscilla, who took a man aside and taught him to be a better teacher.

Response,

No … actually it was both Priscilla and Aquila who took Apollos aside. You failed to mention Priscilla’s male covenant head. Second the fact that Jesus and Paul have women as supporters (though clearly not leaders) in the ministry only reveals that Christianity is not, unlike feminism, misogynist.

Secondly, if one follows the narrative of the Bible one is not surprised that Jesus appears first to women after the resurrection just as the angels appeared first to Shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. In both cases those who were first engaged were not court-worthy witnesses. So, in light of the fact that the Shepherds and women have in common this low ranking on the scale of the social order we must conclude that the purpose of this is not tied to sexuality (after all the Shepherds were male) but rather it is tied to a theme that we find throughout Scripture and that is God uses the weak to confound the wise. However, that God uses the weak (shepherds and women) to confound the wise in the Scripture cannot be used as a proof that women should be leadership roles. Also we need to keep in mind that the descriptive accounts in historical narrative are not necessarily prescriptive. It is a strange way to argue that because Jesus appeared to women after the resurrection, as presented in a historical narrative, that therefore proves we should have women Pastors and Elders. The explicit texts I cite later in this response reveals that the clear didactic teaching of the Scripture is clearly opposed to what you are advocating.

Egalitarian writes,

As many women and men can attest, gifts are self-evidently not gendered, and I don’t think there’s anything in the passages about gifts to suggest such a thing.

Response,

Self evident to who? Not to me. Not to many Reformed people I know. Allow me to suggest that they are only self evident to egalitarians because you begin with egalitarian presuppositions — presuppositions that I believe can not be supported by the weight of Scripture.

In terms of the passages about gifts… well, those have to be read in conjunction with the passages on leadership and those passages expressly and self-evidently prohibit women serving as leaders.

Egalitarian,

Much of the “usurp authority” language is used in the context of a culture in which goddess-worship was prominent (Ephesus) and many egalitarians think the specific problem here was false teachers in a city in which women were already more involved religious work than men, and so were possibly causing problems in the Church with pagan teachings. It is necessary to remember these are letters.

Response,

This is a fine theory but it really doesn’t hold water. In other passages, such as Jude and Timothy, the Apostles go out of their way to warn against heretical men. If it were a problem in the Churches where both men and women were the problem then the Apostles would have given a warning that was more generic in terms of gender silencing all false teaching as opposed to just silencing women. However, as the problem is clearly women usurping authority (as Eve did in the Garden when she usurped Adam’s authority and ate the fruit) so the Apostle forbids women from usurping proper covenantal authority.

And to be precise … they are inspired letters. This is God speaking in these letters.

Egalitarian,

As to patriarchy being instituted in the Garden of Eden, Tessa is saying, I believe correctly, that that verse IS a part of the curses of sin. It comes right after pains in childbirth–it’s a result of the fall.

Response,

The curse of sin is found in Eve desiring the position of her husband. The promise that God will not let the curse overwhelm is found in God’s statement …”But he shall rule over you.” This promise is reinforced in the NT where wives are clearly and explicitly told to “obey their husbands.”

Egalitarian,

In the poetic form of Chapter 1, the liturgical piece that begins the book, it talks about the creation of man and then of woman, but the recap in the following chapter just says God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. Again, it’s a matter of literary style.

Response,

First … Genesis 1-11 is not Poetic genre. It is Historical genre.

Hebrew narrative always starts with a QAL (past tense) verb, and from then on, all the main verbs are VA-YIQTOL (future tense converted to past tense by the vav-conversive). That’s exactly how Genesis 1 is structured.

In the beginning, God created (QAL) the heavens and the earth. (Verse 2 is made up of 3 disjuctive clauses…i.e. they begin with a vav on a noun, not a verb…so they aren’t part of the main verbal chain)

Then:

Verse 3 – And God said (VA-YIQTOL)
Verse 4 – And God saw….and God separated…both VA-YIQTOL
Verse 5 – And God called…and there was…both VA-YIQTOL

etc. throughout the passage.

That’s just factually and objectively how narrative is constructed in Hebrew. Pick any OT Bible story that’s taken as history, and it’s structured exactly the same way. Poetry is never structured this way.

Second, the flow of the narrative makes it clear that woman was made for Adam to be his help-meet. The rest of Scripture confirms this as I cite below.

Third, the fact that the serpent went to Eve for the temptation reveals that even the Serpent understood he was bypassing God’s covenantal ordering. Instead of going to the covenant head, the serpent bypasses Adam’s headship and overturns Adam by overturning Adam’s helpmeet. (There also may be a hint in the Genesis record that Adam failed in His covenant responsibilities by not protecting and serving his wife by keeping the serpent out of the garden.)

Egalitarian,

As for Ephesians 5, there’s an arbitrarily added subject heading that says ‘wives and husbands’, but the verse immediately preceding this says “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” The following verses are dependent clauses–wives and husbands submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, here’s why (marriage is a big deal). We’re partnering to show something.

Response,

This is an inaccurate understanding. What is going on in Ephesians is that Paul gives a general command (“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ”) and then he follows that with particular examples of what that submission to one another out of reverence for Christ looks like. What “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ,” looks like is, “wives submitting to husbands, servants submitting to Masters, and children submitting to parents. Any attempt to universalize the submitting so that husbands submit to wives and masters to servants and parents to children does severe violence to the text and to God’s original intent.

Egalitarian

I don’t think the Bible ever suggests “women should submit to men”. Even if you don’t agree with my reading of Ephesians, I think you can only take it as far as wives and husbands. As far as Galatians 3:18 goes, “there is no Jew or Greek” obviously doesn’t mean ethnicity doesn’t exist or shouldn’t be celebrated, but it DOES mean those with different ethnicities are absolutely equal in the family of God.

Response,

No … Galatians 3:28 does not mean that different ethnicities are absolutely equal (i.e. — the same) in the family of God. Galatians 3:28 isn’t teaching that. Gal. 3:28 is teaching that when it comes to access to a right standing with God through Jesus Christ none of the very real social order differences that exist in Church and culture bar anyone from having that access. Both genders, all ethnicities and both servants and masters can come to Christ. Your reading of this text has origins that are very recent.

Some texts that deal with the issue at hand.

1 Cor 14:34-35,37 — Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

1 Cor 11:3-10 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but every wife who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. …

Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

The Need To Be Sensitive To Transgenderism?

http://www.campusreform.org/blog/?ID=4646

http://thinkchristian.net/lana-wachowski-transgender-and-stories-we-need-to-hear2

These two links should be read back to back. The first one doesn’t pretend to be Christian and offers,

Event director Giuliana Berry ’14 told Campus Reform in an interview on Monday that the workshop was brought to campus to teach students not to automatically judge people who may have engaged in these sorts of activities, but rather to respond with “understanding” and “compassion.”

“People do engage in some of these activities that we believe only for example perverts engage in,” she said. “What the goal is is to increase compassion for people who may engage in activities that are not what you would personally consider normal.”

The second link is written by an ordained Christian minister with whom I am an acquaintance. He writes,

“Here in the absence of words to defend myself, without examples, without models, I began to believe voices in my head – that I was a freak, that I am broken, that there is something wrong with me, that I will never be lovable.”

Hearing those words from anyone ought to give us pause.

The deep-seated pain and hours of tormented anxiety that lead one to devalue one’s own life and to consider oneself unlovable ought to cause our heart to break. It ought to move us to do what we can to protect the vulnerability of one who has felt ostracized from society.

Put these words into the mouth of a transgender individual, however, and all too often our response is less Christ-like.

But what if we were to put these words into the mouth of a pederast or of a necrophiliac or of someone who likes bedding farm animals? Should we then be moved to do what we can to protect the vulnerability of the pederast, necrophiliac or beastie who has felt ostracized from society or should we thank God that they are ostracized from society? Certainly our hearts should break but should they not break because of the affects of sin on image bearers and not because somehow those who God considers perverts are ostracized from civilized society? Sure, we must have compassion on Transgender people but compassion comes in the form of pleading with them to repent of their sin and not in normalizing their sin.

And all of this is said with a full understanding of a condition called Klinefelter syndrome, where the phenotypically male patients have an extra X chromosome, making them XXY, and they are known to exhibit strange behavior. This chromosomal aberration related to gender has serious complications, and it is no surprise that those who insist in wanting the other gender as their own sexual identity will have their own mental and emotional problems too.

Still, having acknowledged that some of these medical abnormalities arise this is hardly reason to want to normalize for society what is clearly aberrant non Klinefelter behavior. Our Christ-like response has to not only consider the feelings of Transgenders but also the mind of God who has made His mind known regarding male and female roles.

My pastoral acquaintance writes,

Many Christians are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with transgender. When the city of Gainesville, Fla., proposed and later passed an ordinance in 2008 guaranteeing freedom from discrimination for transgender individuals, the response of the Christian community was to run a sensationalized media campaign about the dangers of lecherous men using the women’s restroom.

“What if, instead of responding out of our fear or anxiety, we learned to listen to the heart of those who make us uncomfortable?”

Why would one assume that being concerned for the safety of other people was a response driven by fear and anxiety and not one driven by love and compassion for people who are not Transgender? Consider that though gay and transgender youth represent just 5 percent to 7 percent of the nation’s overall youth population, they compose 13 percent to 15 percent of those currently in the juvenile justice system. Apparently there are reasons for the community at large to be concerned about mainstreaming transgendered people.

Secondly, I hope my acquaintance will see that in responding to his article I am listening to the heart of one who makes me uncomfortable. I’m sure I make him uncomfortable in this response. Will he listen to my heart?

My acquaintance writes,

When we refuse to give space for those who struggle with gender identity, when we draw clearly demarcated lines of male and female and demand that everyone fit within those boxes, when we try to ignore the very real questions of so many young people, we force people like Lana to live in invisibility, in a world where death can seem preferable to life, where being loved by another is an unattainable ideal.

Bret responds,

Understand that the Lana in question was born a man and is now transgendered. She is in a relationship with another man. The Church used to call that sin. Now we are being asked to “give space,” and to not “draw clearly demarcated lines of male and female and demand that everyone fit within those boxes.” How is it love or loving to allow someone created in the image of God to go on attacking the image of God place upon him by not pleading with compassion that such a person repent?

What of the lack of compassion towards other little boys and girls in society who will grow up seeing Transgenderism in our culture as normal and as one option that they may now choose from? How is it loving to those little boys and girls to allow them to think that there is something healthy and normal about Transgenderism? Are we not at that point causing the little ones to stumble?

And finally, if Transgenderism is mainstreamed is it not I and other Biblical Christians who will be now forced to live lives of invisibility as our convictions about the abnormality of Transgenderism is squelched so that we dare not come out of the closet? As what heretofore was considered sexual perversion comes out of the closet and is mainstreamed what was once mainstreamed (Biblical Christianity) is that which is now the oddity and must be shoved into the closet.

My acquaintance writes,

What does it look like for the church to have a theology of gender that leaves room for those who struggle with gender expectations? What does it look like for the church to have a doctrine of humanity that incorporates not only “standard” XX and XY chromosomal men and women but also those whom we regularly deem anomalies? What does it look like for the church to be a place that welcomes the discussion over gender identity? Are our churches a place where a man or a woman can share their struggles to fit in to cultural expectations of gender norms? What would it look like for the church to stand up to the gender stereotypes in marketing and advertising that help to perpetuate gender roles and cause inner turmoil for those who don’t somehow fit in?

I suspect that if we’re going to get there, we first need to learn to listen. We need to hear what Lana and others like her are saying.

Bret responds,

My acquaintance asks all questions in the blockquote immediately above. I wish he had answered his own questions so that we would know what he thinks the answers to those questions are, thus giving us a better idea of both his Theology and anthropology.

Question #1 – Certainly the Church should allow sinners to continue to learn to put off the old man and put on the new man. The early Church had these kinds of people in their churches.

I Corinthians 6:9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

However, clearly note that St. Paul notes that this is what they once were but now that they are in Christ they are no longer that. Former Transgenders may be in the Church and may still struggle with the besetting sin of Transgenderism and the Church may have need to be patient with that and loving through that, but the expectation is that the old man of Transgenderism will be put off and the new man of heterosexuality will be put on.

Question #2 — Here we come up against the doctrine of anthropology and by extension human sexuality. The premise of my acquaintance’s question seems to be the Church is responsible to incorporate what our Fathers called “perversion.” Also, except for the medical oddity that will arise in a very low percentage of cases, God made all people either as XX or XY. It is a very postmodern mindset that thinks that we can create categories that are other then male or female. I see nowhere in the Scripture where such a postmodern move is considered normative. Clearly in the Corinthians 6 passage above the Holy Spirit’s expectation is that Transgenders in order to be incorporated into the Church must repent of their Transgenderism and be washed, justified and sanctified in the Lord Christ.

Question #3 — What kind of discussion does my acquaintance want to have about gender identity. Does he want a discussion where the conclusion could be that God was wrong about these matters and the Church must give up their centuries long objection to such behavior, or does he want a discussion where the Church welcomes those confused about gender identity and holds out the Gospel of Jesus Christ which can deliver them from their alienation from God, self, and others as expressed in Transgenderism?

Question #4 — I would hope our churches are safe places where repenting sinners can share their struggles with their besetting sins. The Church is a hospital where recovering sinners can look for the tonic of grace to help them in their recovery.

Question #5 — It would help to know just exactly what gender roles my acquaintance is protesting against in our marketing and advertising. Is he protesting women being displayed as sex objects? If so, who couldn’t agree with such a protest? Or is he protesting men and women being displayed as men and women? It is hard to address this question until one knows the exact gender misrepresenting that is going on in advertising and marketing.

Still, all in all it sounds as if my acquaintance has been caught up in the postmodern gender bending craze that insists that gender is merely a social construct. If that is the case then I can only offer that it is my conviction that the whole idea of nearly everything being a social construct is itself a social construct.

In closing, I can’t believe it has come to the point where an apologetic has to be provided for this kind of thing inside the Church.

Connecting the Dots Between Malthus, Sanger, R2K, and Agenda 21

“All children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons…. Therefore … we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use.

Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlement in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and restrain those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they are doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders.”

Thomas Malthus
An Essay on the Principle of Population

1.) Keep in mind that R2K teaches that it would be morally wrong for a Minister to speak against this kind of agenda from the Pulpit because a Malthusian worldview is a matter for the common realm and not the Church realm.

2.) If you go to youtube and look for “Agenda 21” you will see that this kind of ideology is being pursued by the United Nations in terms of their official policy. They have written position papers that echo this Malthusian approach.

3.) Clearly the whole Planned Parenthood enterprise, beginning with Margaret Sanger, and right up until today has more than a whiff of this Malthusian worldview. It is a not much discussed fact that Sanger began her campaign with the goal of keeping Blacks and Jews from breeding successfully.

In the April 1933 issue of the Birth Control Review, Sanger said that “[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds … a deadweight of human waste … [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to the race. … Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock.”

Sanger advocated a program that would;

“… hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

When liberal clergy support Abortion they are supporting the same racial population control that Margaret Sanger supported.

4.) Of course this is part of the anti-Christ worldview where evil is called good, and good is called evil. For Malthus, charity and philanthropy would be to help reduce the surplus population of the earth by doing the good works of insuring that people die. The solution for the “problem” of too high of birth rates would be to abort the babies and sterilize (and maybe even kill) the Mothers.

Wherein The Pro-Death Crowd Takes The Mask Off

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/23/so_what_if_abortion_ends_life/

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

1.) Don’t you just love Cultural Marxists? You bang and bang on them to try to get them to see that all life is not equal, in the sense that all life is the same, (boys are different than girls, ballerinas are different then Weight-lifters, Japanese are different then Nigerians) and then when they bring themselves to admit that all life is not equal they say “all life is not equal” in the sense that all life isn’t worthy of life, and then they apply the idea of life that is not worthy of life to those who are judicially innocent.

2.) In point of fact, the person who admits that “All life is not equal,” in the sense of “All judicially innocent life is not worthy of life,” is indeed someone who can legitimately submit, with high hopes for acceptance, their resume to the “death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm trooper” society.

3.) Yes … Yes, I acknowledge that Storm Troopers can be inconsistent. One day they are being consistent with their maxim that “All judicially innocent life is not worthy of life,” and the next day they are playing “cootchie cootchie coo” with their neighbors newborn they are babysitting. Thank God many Storm Troopers are characterized by felicitous inconsistency.

4.) Notice how the “entity” mentioned (the entity that is a judicially innocent life that is not worthy of life) is referred to with the abstract term “entity” and not the concrete term “life.”

5.) According to our Storm Trooper journalist, the rights of the more powerful (“The Boss”) trump the rights of the less powerful. Friedrich Nietzsche you have a phone message from Ms. Ubermensch.

6.) By the way … I’m sure Stalin viewed the Christian Ukrainians as “non autonomous entities,” and I’d bet that Hitler viewed the Gypsies and the Jews as “non autonomous entities.” When you’re “the boss” autonomy becomes a very convenient matter to define.

Obama … Lincoln Redux

Years ago, H. L. Mencken exposed the fact that Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, used poetry as opposed to logic to reinvent these united States of America into a National Union from a Confederated Union. Lincoln, by the poetry as expressed in the Gettysburg hijacked these united States vision of itself and largely reinvented the country with that speech. As stated earlier, H.L. Mencken pointed this out in his own illimitable way,

“The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”

The reason I bring this up is I believe that Barack Obama was trying to do much the same thing in his 2013 Inauguration speech.

First, Obama has always tried to channel Lincoln. In point of fact Obama used Lincoln’s Bible (along with MLK’s) to take his oath of office. Could this be a indicator that Obama understands what Lincoln accomplished in changing America via his Gettysburg Address, and so aspired to do the same with his Inaugural address?

Second in his Inauguration Obama made more then one reference to the ability of America to reinvent itself. Early on in the Inaugural address Obama said,

“America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: …. an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention.”

Even earlier in his address Obama even refers how the Nation re-made itself in the context of the Lincoln Regime,

“Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.”

Elsewhere we find,

“But we have always understood that when times change, so must we;”

When you combine these quotes it is clear that Obama’s intent is to remake America and my premise is that this Inauguration Address was to Obama what the Gettysberg was to Lincoln in the sense that both speeches, by way of poetry, glommed on to some honored American idea, only to twist it by poetry in a direction that contradicted the original intent of the Founders. For Lincoln, his appeal was to the the American time honored notion of self-determination in order to justify denying the South the opportunity of self-determination. Lincoln, by poetry, was able to justify his crushing of the South in the name of self-determination. Lincoln’s poetry, coloring his brutal use of the sword and the canon, remade the Nation and set it on a different trajectory from which it would never recover.

What Obama is appealing to, by way of poetry, is a twisted idea of equality in order to overturn liberty. In his Inaugural speech Obama returned to the theme of equality over and over again.

… ” what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,

“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, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher …”

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well….”

Obama’s constant appeal to the traditional American virtue of equality is being used to set the nation on a new trajectory that will overturn the original understanding of equality. It is obvious that the Founders did not believe in the kind of Jacobin equality for which Obama champions. Just the fact that the Founders allowed the individual states to determine who would have the franchise proves that they were not interested in the kind of Marxist equality for which Obama is advocating. The fact that the Founders crafted a document of negative rights where the Federal Government was restricted to very specific enumerated and delegated powers — powers that did not include forcing equality on the population and did allow the people to maintain their cherished liberty — suggest that the Founders “equality” is not the “equality” to which Obama constantly returned.

In Obama’s America, the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that mentions that “all men are created equal, is being used as a talisman in order to reinterpret America. The problem is that the US War for American Independence was not posited on the same premises of the French Revolution where equality as Egalitarianism was the leitmotif. America did not have the watch word of “Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity.” America did not mention “Equality” in her primary document (Constitution), or her Bill of Rights. America was not hung up about addressing everyone as “Citoyen,” (Citizen) in order to reveal a mad allegiance to equality as we find in the French Revolution was. America did not come up with a “Declaration of the Rights of Men,” and enshrine “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights” in its first point. America’s concern was Liberty not equality.

In the twentieth century, scholars like Hayek and Friedman maintain that equality is in conflict with and incompatible with liberty. They maintained that speaking of social justice in a society where individuals are free, any attempt to establish social justice or equality will deprive the people of their freedom because such an attempt requires government intervention to the end of denying liberty in pursuit of equality. A true notion of liberty understands that it includes the liberty to be different, and so unequal, due to the pursuit of individual interests. Obama’s version of “Equality” stands in contradiction to any vision of “Liberty” that isn’t Jacobin at its core. Obama’s equality is a demand for equality of outcome that always achieves a dull, ugly, drab sameness and the only way that can be achieved is by Obama taking away the liberty of American People.

Obama, in his Inauguration Speech is trying to deceptively change America much like Lincoln did at Gettysburg. If Obama is able to foist his vision of equality on America, by sentimentally appealing to the historic American notion of equality, he will succeed in changing the USA into the USSA.