Obama References Founding Fathers in Inaugural Speech
In his inaugural speech today, Barack Obama called on Americans to embrace “a new era of responsibility” and to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work.”
The former constitutional law professor worked in a reference to the founding fathers and their draft of “a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man.” The document, of course, allowed the perpetuation of slavery, a fact Obama seemed to acknowledge with an apparent reference to the Civil War.
“We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said in the speech. “Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expediency’s sake.”
The Los Angeles Times had the rule of law quote and other speech highlights.
