I'm totally baffled by today's speech.

There are some nice turns of phrase, but the themes seem confused and muddled. Right when they are about to take off and argue for a better world, she kills them. We're left with the frightening idea that the darkness is all we have.

I guess you can't win 'em all.

Well that's just wildly interesting. I had no idea I'd get a suffregette speech this morning. Nor that I'd learn how to make a woman a "nearly human thing".

I was amazed by how many of the platforms remain the same: Economic independence, reproductive choice, equal pay. And was amazed also about how far back the stereotype of men helpless in the house goes back. But I wonder how true it really was back then - I grew up all my life hearing stories of my Dad's Dad cooking, and he being the one to braid his daughter's hair. One of my Aunt's married a man who did all the cooking. Maybe they were above average, or maybe that stereotype wasn't true.

Reading this speech made me think of the Thin Man movie where Nick and Nora have a kid - there's a scene at the beginning where Nora (mind you one half of the detecting duo, and an equal partner) calls Nick and son into dinner, and there's a knowledge that while Nick can walk his son, bet on the races, drink like a fish and solve mysteries, Nora must do the same and order the house.

The raising feminist sons bit was really interesting, because I think that there's been a big movement to that. Now people worry about gender neutral toys and colors and clothes, a step or so past what this lady was talking about.

The movement I guess has at least been consistent, and I think also valuable at times. There's so much more choice for women today than even in my Mom's youth - when women mostly studied nursing or education at college. Today, all fields are open to us. Though I know many women who went to college for their Mrs. degrees, I know equally as many who went to get a great education and pursue their interests and passion.

I'm thinking right now of how shelter's for abused women came into being through grassroots efforts circa the 70s. Thinking of hearing how in the towns and cities, the women knew who among them was being hurt, and informal safe houses sprang up, regular homes of other women who would take the victims in - how the telephone chain would start up, and the women would reach into their resources to help their sister.

Which leads me to think that the women's liberation movement succeeds best when women act as women (a loaded concept, I know) rather than "militant", or "manly". Language provides this debate at it's reduced form in the b-word, which some women have tried to "reclaim" as a mark of equal acceptance with men. Shelter's happened not because women met in a boardroom, or formed a committee (though we're talented at both), but because they used their given sensitivity and nurturing nature to care for someone else. Men and women are different, and if we view the goals of the women's lib movement as being achieved when society can no longer tell the difference between men and women, then we are cheating ourselves and our daughters, not to mention our sons and brothers - terms for which there will be no use, if we are all the same.

Despite all of our choice, I think many women in my generation are confused about what to do with it. Some women want to be married and have babies and be a homemaker, but worry about being judged harshly by those women who chose their careers. Career women often feel judged by the homemakers for being somehow less of a woman. There's a lot of judgement on both sides. Unfortunately society's great answer to this was "you can have it all - career and family, and have to the exact extent you want it." In fact this was the theme of the commencement address at my college graduation. But no one can have it all. There are always choices, always sacrifices, something will be lost in the exchange - and that's okay, because the freedom to make the choice belongs to each of us. One woman's choice to be a homemaker doesn't take away from her identity as an intelligent woman, another's choice to work doesn't make her less of a woman.

The greater question here, and I think at the heart of much confusion for women my age is What does it mean to be a woman? I encountered the other day, a woman in a group of her mostly male colleagues who all worked in the field of researching military contracts. She swore profusely - equal to or exceeding her male co-workers, she was abrasive, and even the way she stood aped her male co-workers. The other women from that office had also adopted some of their counterparts traits, and from the coarse language to the coarse joking, they seemed not so much women, unique, interesting, beautiful and gifted, as people trying to fit in. It made me sad to feel they had given part of their identity up because of the idea that "we're just as good as the boys, in fact, we're one of the boys."

As for me, well I make a different choice. I like my pearls and my skirts, and I like my University Education, and I like my job. I don't get angry when the door is held open for me, but I'll make the choice about whether I walk through it or not. Perhaps too many women think that fighting for equality means being less of a woman, means sacrificing beauty and gentleness and other qualities, or that success in the fight means no longer being thought as a woman.

What does it mean to be a woman? It involves remembering that we weren't the afterthought of the creation story - the "Oh and by the way, here's Eve," we were the completion of it. There are women who are truly oppressed by patriarchal societies around the world, who are in fact dying because of them (consider the plight of a Muslim woman who lives at risk for breast cancer, but can't even talk about her breasts with a doctor). I am not oppressed, but I am bound as a human being, and a woman, to advocate for those who are.

Southern Gothic

I declare it. I declare this to be my favorite speech. Not because I like Huey P. Long though he embodies one of the last courthouse step politicians, nor because I agree with his economic policy which could be described as three sheets to the wind among other things, but because this speech is so deliciously Southern.

It's Faulkner and Flannery and Penn Warren all at once, it is their strangeness and lyricism. It's a speech that belongs to Boo Radley and to Atticus, though in a different way. And it is the utter madness of a people in a mouldering decay.

It's not hiding our demons, not hiding our crazy relatives in the attic, (no Dickinson, no Nathaniel Hawthorne). It's bringing them out on the front porch and saying "Take a look. Here they are - nutty, but bounden to us - and we to them."

Take note of the way Long forces those sacred economics, no more should the poor man say he shall get his reward in heaven, no it is his for the taking now, because (cue favorite Southern argument) God has ordained it, he has called us to the Barbecue.

Every man a king in two months! Hallelujah - the people must have thought it was the second coming. Why not to share wealth - t'aint fitting, just t'aint fitting.

Now each author has a slightly different take on the South. Seems there's hardly any grace in a Faulkner story, and it's difficult to find it in O'Connor despite her protestation that each of her grotesque characters come to a moment of it. But maybe part of that grace (in the liteary, everyday sense) is that we in the South are bound to recognize our triumphs and our successes, our heroes and our madmen. We deny neither for we know that in denying them, we deny ourselves.

Bad old Rockfeller. Bad old Morgan. Terrible FDR and Mr. Astor, didn't they know that the poor were only a part of them all, that denying them was denying their own selves. Why Gov. Long says it - under his plan everyone will be a millionaire, there'll be more than ever. In under two months.

How that must have sounded to a people close to the earth and poor. We'll remember it in ever widening ripples of our collective memory, though we're forgetting most of it. There's little South any more. The New South keeps Boo and Long locked away, but they're a part of us too - there's a little madness and maybe much greatness in each of us.

It’s been a blogging dry spell, travel plus visitors plus new roommates with a CAT! And work, have made blogging a little tough, but I’m back with thoughts re: Gerald Ford’s remarks on taking the oath of office.

We’ve heard Mr. Ford before, and here again I was surprised by his calmness and humble certitude.

It’s typically a joyous occasion – there are parades and glad waving, there a ball gowns and evening suits, and more parties than one can reasonable attend. There’s a sigh of relief, there’s pride in the race one.

But not this time, in language echoing Truman, Ford reminds us that this was not an office he sought, and moreover reminded that he was keenly aware that he was not elected by the people’s secret ballot. So he asks instead that the people “confirm him with their prayers.”

That entire paragraph is simply beautiful – a refreshing reminder that though he was not chosen by secret ballot, he’d neither gained the office through secret promises. That he owed nothing to any man, but much to his wife. Faithfulness, loyalty, sense of duty – all characteristics we desire in leaders.

Like Truman he pledges not to “shirk” the job.

In a speech that easily could have been made about the failings of his predecessors or his own belief in himself he chose to talk about the country, and that distinguishes him. “Our constitution works,” he says. Suddenly you realize that the scandal happed before we’d reached 200 years. Suddenly you realize what an extraordinary document and system we have. The republic is strong. It works.

And rather than ignore or denigrate Mr. Nixon, Ford asks prayers on his and his family’s behalf. It takes character of heart to call for prayers on someone who so violently breaks a trust.

Always pointing back to the document that works, and not to himself or his talents or how he can improve it, he pledges to serve the country the best he can and as he has pledged. That is perhaps what we should look for in our next president – not a man who is given to talking about his own talent and ability, nor one who is seeking change for the sake of change, just change (well what sort, and to what?), I’m not endorsing and not-endorsing here, just saying things must be weighed, but one who can say, “It works – this fragile system works, and I will uphold it.”

Not going lie, I was not prepared for this speech, rather I wasn't prepared to be a little humbled by this speech.
There I was yesterday, knowing it was by Cesar Chavez, and thinking "Not another organizing speech."
And so knowing I needed to listen yesterday, I got through my day, and then as though careening through the closing auditorium door, sat down to read the speech, ready to hurry through and onto the next thing.
Then I started to read. Sometimes you get to church just barely on time and thinking about 100 other things, and all the sudden it's like someone pours water over you and you have to be still, and you realize that you're hearing big Truths and that you've got to put your business aside.
So it was when I read this speech.
Especially when he started to speak of the church as a powerful institution - I don't think he meant powerful in our earthly terms of wealth and influence, I think he meant powerful in that it is the province of a king not of this earth.
He spoke of the protestants, and the corners of my heart turned up a little - I knew ones such as these he was talking about.
I love that he indicates that beyond the every-day-close-to-the-dirt needs of people, there's a spirtual need to be fed as well.
Daily bread, and daily word, both are neccessary.
And how gentle he is in admonishing the church to help the poor - he could be much harsher. Indeed, I have been much harsher. But he simply and eloquently says "We ask for Christ among us," which is precisely what the church should be.
I'm heartened that there is an increasing number of churches that I hear about who are embracing this exhortation, and are actively working in social justice areas. I attend a church whose love for the city, and committment to serving her are part of what drew me to make a home there.
Furthermore, I think that for me and others who grew up in an "evangelical" environ were exposed to the concept that the only "real" ministry was explicitly sharing the gospel complete with invitation, salvation and ushering into heaven.
Now there's nothing wrong with sharing that message, in fact it should be shared. But to confine the work of the gospel to that act alone, would create an awfully narrow field in which to work.
It's my belief from my time in Baltimore, from my work here, from reading about the work of Mother Theresa, from observing ministries like Church on the Lot in Dallas, and the Hinde Street Mission in London, that the gospel is much broader than words. That it begins with bread, and shelter, and continues in love to the rest of it.
It is absolutely about serving as "Christ with us," even unto the ones that society forgets about each day.

Good gracious, we've got a lot of ground to cover.

My goodness The Rebel Girl's speech was long, I found myself in the middle of it ready to acquit simply from fatigue of detail.

But here's the kicker - don't we all imagine, or maybe just the nerdy ones who think about things like "What was the Red Scare like?" that communists are people with sharp teeth and Nosferatu like features who are sliking rodent like along our baseboards spreading their subversive message.

Wait though, here's a bonafide American born Rebel Girl - she's traveled the country, she's seen and talked with people the workers, she's read, one assumes, both the constitution and the Bill of Rights (she wanted to be a constitutional lawyer). She's committed to the equality of all, and no stranger to oppression (recall No Irish need apply). And what's more she thinks she's a good American, undoubtedly she would feel that not working with the Communist Party would make her a bad American.

I quite frankly don't know enough about the American Communist Party to argue the merits of her opening statement. But she does kind of sound like a woman you could sit down with, on maybe a cold blustery day in a greasy spoon diner over a cup of coffee and talk with. Anyone who got read Marx as bedtime fare would be worth listening to for awhile just for the sake of interest and variety.

She's only been advocating for a peaceful, happy world. It lifts one really to read the following: Our country is a rich and beautiful country, fully capable of producing plenty for all, educating its youth and caring for its aged.

I've heard presidents and politicians say the same.

Malaise
This speech gives it to me. No wonder Reagan won in a landslide - his optimisim must have knocked all this doom and gloom to pieces.
I found this speech irrelavent, given the fact that we're now in another "energy crisis" and canidates are still talking about dependence on foreign oils.
Now, I can imagine this speech being given on a Sunday night service by a guest preacher in late, dusty summer at a Southern Baptist church - attendance is down, families on vacation, you just need someone to stand in the pulpit. And then perhaps the more redeeming ideas in this speech - that maybe freedom wasn't scrapping for some small advantage over others, would stand out more.
The speech reaches a good moment when he says that any act of energy conservation is an act of patriotism. Well, I don't know about that, but it is saving Bobby McGee and I money, and it is more earth friendly.
I'm trying to find a bright spot here.
But as it is, it's a speech given LIVE from the OVAL OFFICE, and I expect something more enobling then finger wagging there. When it comes time for a leader to seek change in those led, it is perhaps most helpful to call on their better natures, which of course must shame and over shadow their crueler selfs. To lead with, "You all a mess" just doesn't make me want to listen more, or follow a rather worrying school-marmish figure.
There are other examples of times when the leader has called upon the people to sacrifice, and I'm eager to hear the speeches of FDR who led in a crisis much greater than Carter's.
Had Henry the V made a speech (albeit to Shakespeare's imagining) that said, "I will do my best, but I will not do it alone," would anyone have bled on the fields of Agincourt? Not a chance. He would have been met with a chorus of "have at its." No, King Henry called upon those better angels,
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"
He says those not in the fight shall hold themselves accursed.
Those better angels charm the rough nature and fear of what lies before.
The best leaders don't have to pull the people with them, saying sulkily, "I will not do it alone."
Momma - I'm interested for your thoughts, mine have been pretty scattershot here. I do apologize that you've had to sit through this speech twice, as I am sure you probably watched it the first time around. Maybe you can tell me why it's a good speech?

"The evil men do lives after them. The good that men do is oft interred with their bones."
I don't know very much about Malcolm X, though I just read the wikipedia entry on him.
I looked for some analysis of this speech, to see why on earth it might have been included, but came up empty.
It is a speech filled with beliefs contrary to my own. It is a speech that promotes divisiveness and hate. It is a speech that attacks rather than builds up. It is a speech that stands in marked contrast to the one that heads this list, and a speech that explains a man's ideas, complains about a situation, but refrains from offering any real solution.
How interesting that it follows President Clinton's speech where he implores us to speak against hate, to speak against violence.
I appreciate the right to free speech, and would not trade it for a society in which speeches like this were prohibited. But an overlooked gift of free speech is that we can choose what speech to celebrate and remember, and what to close the book on.
An eye for an eye is perhaps the easiest thing to understand - even stephen, equal recompense. It is easiest to reach for violence - it is quick. But it takes true strength of character and real nobility to see a way beyond that - a way of forgiveness, or reaching out with an open hand, and yes, a turning of the other cheek.
There are many rabbit trails to chase in this speech, but chasing them would lend a validity to hateful words.
Suffice to say this, I am more than thankful that the speech that heads this list is one that encourages everyone to put aside what divides.
And also this...tonight as a repair man installed a new battery in my car at the side of the road (don't worry Mom and Dad, everything's fine). A car slowed alongside and the driver, who was a black man, said very gently, "It happens."
"I know," I said. "The battery died." I shrugged helplessly with my upturned hands.
And we paused, and he looked on me with compassion, and then the light changed and he nodded very slowly and said, "I wish you the very best."
And I know he meant it. That is what I will remember of this day - the kind speech of that man, rather than the divisive language of another.

BTW - Above is Bobby McGee.

I cheated. Just a little bit. After I listened to this speech, I listened to Reagan's speech after the Challenger - I wanted to know what differed, why the speeches were ranked in such different places.
A couple of things stood out, and I tried to remember the national tragedies that have fallen during my life time and what the response has been.
I remember the Challenger.
I remember much more clearly Oklahoma City.
Sept. 11.
The bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
The tone of Clinton's speech is like it's not a shared tragedy - that we grieve with you, but we recognize it as an Oklahoma tragedy, not a national one. I tried to remember if that was the sentiment at the time, but how much can a fifth grader know?
There were moving moments in the speech, and you can tell that it means much to the people there by the looks on their faces behind him and the response of the crowd. What particularly stands out is when he quotes Gov. Keating in "Come to Oklahoma."
On the whole, the speech seemed given to the platitude, and platitudes because they lack specificity are generally not moving.
Where the speech is strongest is where we are implored to "talk against it." And where he speaks of planting the tree in the memory of the children, but even here there's a drawn line between Olkahoman and American.
A eulogy might be the most difficult type of speech to write or give, and though the speech has weaknesses it does serveit's purpose.

Rousing could not apply to today's speech.
I was nonplussed by it. I'll allow the benefit of the doubt to say I would have been more moved by hearing it.
Though I haven't researched it, I think that many of the things in the ammendment have come to pass. I noted with interest that she calls for equality in no longer permitting schools to segregate by sex, when now there is a movement in the public schools to do just that.
I was surprised that after the horror of the draft in Vietnam, she would call to sign women up with the selective service.
Yes, I think equal pay for equal work is right - and I think that women still earn less then their male counterparts.
But listening to this speech I couldn't help, but think that we've just come through a primary campaign where a woman was one of leading figures, and one of the most powerful senators, or that we currently have a woman serving as speaker of the house. A woman Secretary of State, a woman Secretary of Education, women governors who are being considered for vice-president. All of which happened without the Equal Rights Ammendment.
Out of 100 speeches, you can't expect to like 'em all.

1987 - I was four, and I knew Ronald Reagan was President.
It's a shame that people my age weren't made to study great speeches in school, or made to study more the important events that happened in our own lives.
I do remember the Berlin Wall coming down, and young as I was, it was impossible not to see the fervor and passion of that moment.
And then suddenly there was no more U.S.S.R. No more communism, no more great enemy to oppose.
It would be different, I imagine, for someone who had grown up doing duck and cover drills. Today's speech must have been the long culmination of that yearning from freedom, of that desire to thwart communism, of the end of the fear of the bomb.
Think, think of the people in the crowd that day - who were they? There were children, yes. And I hope there were older people that would have been like my parent's friends Rosa and Jope - who had experienced the war in terrible ways. I hope there were others, vetrans of the Weimarcht, but of course they would have only fought on the Eastern front. Who were the people that day who waved American and German flags and roared loudly enough for Mr. Gorbachev to hear President Reagan's invitation. Is there today someone in Berlin who is looking at someone my age and saying, "You know, I was there that day - that day when he said, 'Open this gate, tear down this wall.' "
It's enobling - the great battles always are - no there's no glory in war, nor should it be romanticized - but there are things worth battling, and things for which it is right to battle. It lifts the spirit to fight for a cause that is greater and broader than oneself.
But what is my generations cause, to what are we called to? It is murky to me - there seems no unifying force, and no call to reach beyond ourselves. We were not a generation taught that sacrifice for others is good, we were the generation that was told we could be anything, do anything, have anything, have it all. There's little nobility in that - only grabbing for what you think you ought to have, and a blubbery sense of entitlement.
You can't create moments like today's speech out of whole cloth - it was right that Germany said no to Mr. Obama's idea to speak there. A request that came not out of a long, hard fight, but out of perhaps, a blubbery sense of entitlement.
What will be the great fight of my generation?
There are those in my circle of friends who don't get my passion for the Olympics - listen to this speech and then you will. The games are and should be about so much more than who breaks the tape. For President Reagan, it was about the ability of one moment to transcend that impenatrable iron curtain and unite briefly the whole world in common purpose. Higher, faster, stronger indeed.
And then we come to the end of his speech - where he speaks about the television tower, which I read got nicknamed the Pope's revenge, because of the shadow of the cross it made. Reagan invokes the image as a symbol of love that cannot be surpressed by the strongest of the strong arms.
It's love, Reagan says, that makes them stay in a city that's difficult to live in.
Isn't that what makes any of us stay, isn't love always what gives us the courage to go farther than we think we can. Isn't it love that refines our character, that polishes and shines to a gleam our roughest edges.
Of course it is.

Today's speech was different - the voice not of a leader, but of a witness to the unimaginable suffering of the concentration camp.

What his speech called to mind to me were the words of a minister I met in London who worked with the homeless at the Hinde Street Mission. He said that the homeless were stripped of their humanity - passersby did not look at them, or speak to them, or acknowledge in any way the commonality of humaness between them. And after years of that indifference, the homeless no longer knew human company.

I was struck by the very meanness of the act of averting one's eyes from a fellow, thereby ignoring him and as Wiesel puts it, making his life worthless.

I remember in particular, that day at the Hinde Street Mission, the way one lady's bright, blue eyes lit up when the the Minister came towards her with a kind word. She reached out her hands to him, he recognized her as a sister.

There are a thousand ways that we all practice indifference to our neighbor each day. It is complicated and messy to be in community with people, it is tiresome to share burdens and to give of ourselves. And yet, where would we be without the kindness someone has shown us along the way? And where will we be, when experiencing our own troubles, we look outside ourselves for help? So we lift up our eyes from where we averted them, we look up, and we choose to say, "Good Morning." We must choose not to ignore.

The lawyer makes his case
Although I was not there and can't imagine the time, I do recall that when I read "All the Presidents' Men" I was shocked and apalled. I kept asking my parents what it was like, if it really happened that way, was everyone outraged.

My most lasting impression of Ford is the image of him falling down the steps of Air Force One. I know he was a lawyer, from Michigan, and played football for the University. Maybe the balance of one's time in office can be measured in one brave act, and so perhaps Ford can rightly be remembered as a brave man, who sought to do right in a situation the country had never faced before.

He makes his case doesn't he? He doesn't just explain why he is pardoning Nixon, but he convinces you that you should go along too. There are many compelling lines, that procrastination would be weak and dangerous, that one should be troubled and feel compassion toward Nixon, that not as president, but as a man Ford would be judged without mercy should he fail to give it.

And of course the most compelling argument, that to proceed down a path of litigation would reignite ugly passions and weaken American credibility around the world. Keep in mind that after Vietnam this credibility may have already been tenuous.

Maybe there are times when God grants those in leadership a special clarity of vision and foresight, and extra measure to guide their decisions. Ford says that an American president who had resigned was in danger of being cruelly persecuted out of a sense of meted out justice. I think this a common urge in man - to desire excessive punishment for those who should have known better, and who betray our trust mightily. In punishing Nixon, could the nation have avoided it's own part in the tragedy, always knowing that he had been elected of the people? Surely that recriminating thought would not have been healthy for the country.

The legacy of Ford's pardon is that the Nixon I remember from the news and commentary, indeed the Nixon who is still invoked, is the one who removed us from Vietnam, the one who made diplomatic envoys to China -a action widely hailed as good diplomacy. Had the pardon not occured, we would never have been allowed by our own conscience to remember what might have been good in Nixon's administration.

Today there is a bent to extremism, one is good or bad, and if one is bad one must always be bad. What would Nancy Grace have made of Nixon? Or of Ford's pardon? How would Geraldo have covered it? There is no grace in our society, no mercy know for the fallen. How heartening to know that there was a time not long ago when a man reminded us that the two existed, and that the extension of it from one to another helped both the giver and the recipient. I remember well that my Dad told me once that he supposed there was good and bad in all of us, and I have remembered that those qualities co-exist and complicate matters. I have found that it is grace and mercy which allows one to move forward whichever end of the situation one is found.

And then there is the matter of God. Just as Ford speaks of his role as president, and his conscience as a man. I think he also speaks of two Gods - the Creator of inalienable rights found in the Declaration of Independence, the Deity popularly invoked during the philosophy of that time, but also the God that Ford meets at church, the God of mercy and of justice and of judgement.

I draw the distinction because in our time we are intensely concerned with the separation of church and state, and with the ferreting out of what the mention of God might mean about a person's belief. There is a mistaken tendency to believe that a mention of God is the equivalent of propagating a Christian theocracy, and proselytizing the masses. This tendency proves one to be ignorant of American history and rhetorical tradition. I do not think that every President who has uttered the word "God" has meant by that a faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of one's sins and the salvation of one's soul.

The Creator Deity invoked in our founding documents should neither embolden those zealots who would marry government and religion, nor frighten those citizens who choose a different faith and creed. Surely if the founders had meant the God to which Christianity is ascribed, they would have perceived that it would have endangered the religious freedom of the citizens, and the right to free speech, not to mention the fact that they probably would not have been as vague as Creator in His official description.

I do not know the thinking behind including the Creator in the documents. I suspect that it was to remind Americans that there is a purpose greater than our own self interest, I suspect it was to give a particular significance and weight to the documents of a mewling babe of a nation, to acknowledge the unique and spectacular embarcation of a nation such as the world had never known. And perhaps even at some level, even in the hearts of our most doubtful and uncertain founding Fathers, a desire to get off on the right foot with the Creator whoever he might be.

The documents do not, however, mention God's mercy, or His ability to be met in church, or the accountability which all men have to Him. When Ford says "we are a nation under God" - can you imagine the maelstorm that would be today, what would Christopher Hitchens write? - no thinking person would imagine by that he meant we were all to go to church and confess Christ. When Ford says that he is invoking rhetorical tradition, and imploring America to remember something greater than its immediate desires to yell for the tar and feathers.

But when he talks about himself as a man before God diligently searching out his conscience, when he mentions that he will be judged without mercy should he fail to grant it, any moderately literate person is able to recognize the Christian tradition and theology. How wise of Ford to so delicately separate the God of a President and the God of a man.

Before someone leaves an angry comment calling me a heretic, let me affirm that I do believe that some of the founding Fathers were Christ-professing men, Christian. I believe that this nation has had presidents who in their great hour of need called upon the God of mercy and justice, rather than the shadowy, absent and vague Creator of American rhetoric. But we are a society ignorant of sublties, for us it must always be one way or the other.

How good to be reminded by the speech today that things are more complicated than one way or the other. To be reminded that in our country citizens are free to practice their creed without fear of persecution. To be reminded by our rhetorical tradition that there is an end beyond ourselves, a greater call than our individual pursuit of happiness - the sustaining of our democracy and our freedoms therein.