Thursday, January 13, 2011

Sometimes a speech is just a speech

"At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized--at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do--it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds," —president Barry Hussein Soetoro
In the scriptures Jesus asks a question, a man had two sons he asks them both to work for him one said, “I will not” but later changed his mind and did work for his father. The other son said yes I will work but did not. Jesus asked this question which of the sons did what the father asked?

No sitting president in the history of this once great country has polarized America with his words more than Barry Hussein Soetoro. Yet in Tucson to eulogize the victims of last weekend's tragic shooting did the president take ownership for the divisiveness that his own blaming “the previous administration” has caused.

Did he admit to his polarizing personal attacks against Fox News? Did president Soetoro recognized and admit to his own culpability in his use of words against his “enemies” who some of us call more appropriately, Republicans.

This would have been an excellence time for the president in establish a little hope and change in his own life by acknowledging that he too had participated in the exact same behavior that he is now asking the nation to end.

Instead, as always the president looked down from on high behind his lectern and condescended to the American people.

Yes he said the appropriate things—things that are expected for a president to say at a time of national tragedy. And yes, he did look presidential. Both things I am sure he and his handlers were primarily attempting to accomplish.

However, the important thing, the hope and change of moving the national dialog away from the poisonous partisan political rhetoric that this country desperately needs relief from was not addressed in a true sense.

Words that wound are a staple of the president and his Party. The Left used and are using this tragedy to finger point at the Right and blame the Right, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Conservative Talk Radio. Not to acknowledge this fact directly as he lectures the nation on our use of words only suggests that even though the speechwriters wrote a moving speech for president Soetoro sometimes a speech is only a speech.

And sometimes, as Jesus demonstrated in his parable, words do not match actions.