SOLO-International Press Release: A Less Obaminable Obama? *January 20, 2009*

President Barack Obama's inaugural address offered some grounds for cautious reassurance, says SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo.

"The scary semi-Marxist and terrorist-appeaser of the campaign trail was barely to be glimpsed. A more mature Obama, clearly sobered by his daily reality-briefings and his reported reading of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, extolled 'the ideals of our forebears.' The candidate who had once said the Constitution should be overturned to allow for un-American 'positive rights' became the President who spoke of 'remaining true to our founding documents.'

"The candidate who said that 'spreading the wealth around' (meaning stealing from some to give to others) was good became the President who acknowledged that affluence must be earned and paid tribute to entrepreneurs: ' ... it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.' He allowed that the market is 'unmatched' in its capacity to generate prosperity and expand freedom, even as he mistakenly claimed the need for a 'watchful eye' to correct distortions and disasters caused, as it happens, by government intervention.

The candidate who said he'd sit down with totalitarians and terrorists without preconditions became the President who vowed: 'We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.' He paid tribute to those who had defeated fascism and communism, and those currently fighting Islamofascism in far-off deserts and distant mountains.

"He became perhaps the first President to acknowledge that freedom of religion also means freedom *from* religion for those who so choose, as he listed 'non-believers' among those who make up the diversity of belief systems in America.

"Of course, liberty-lovers can't sit back, relax and wait for President Obama, in his closing words, to deliver safely the gift of freedom to future generations, or preserve it for this one. Mr Obama remains in thrall to the myth of man-made Global Warming, and spoke of it again today - in sub-zero temperatures. Who knows what legislative horrors he may yet promote in the hysterical, scientifically illiterate campaign against CO2 - he who also said he wants to restore science to its rightful place?

"We must remember that he remains surrounded by hard-left kooks of his own appointment, who will be pushing him to raise taxes and regulate everything in sight. We must remember that he is already committed to boosting the Bailout Bolshevism begun by President Bush to staggering levels, with all that implies for government control of the economy. And though he disavowed Big Government for its own sake, his agenda for government still includes items such as health care that are none of government's business. Dick Morris frets that America under Obama will become France. A worse possibility is that it will become the USSA.

"Above all we must remember that he remains in thrall to the sacrifice of the individual to the collective, the very antithesis of the founding ideals of which he spoke so glowingly. Until America has a President who understands and upholds a person's right to live for his own sake, liberty-lovers can *never* sit back and relax.

"It is to be hoped that President Obama will continue his study of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith ... and even more crucially, that he will add Ayn Rand to his reading list," Perigo concludes.

ENDS

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