I missed this when reading Obama’s inaugural speech (still haven’t listened to it).
I just heard Jonah Goldberg make reference to it on Special Report with Bret Baier.
Via Tom Ricks at Foreign Policy Blog, Obama’s 2nd inaugural address: ‘Peace in our time’? Really, Mr. President?
The WTF moment for me in Obama’s second inaugural address, delivered Monday at noon, was his use of the phrase “peace in our time.” This came during his discussion of foreign policy, and in such circles, that phrase is a synonym for appeasement, especially of Hitler by Neville Chamberlain in September 1938. What signal does his using it send to Iran? I hope he was just using it to jerk Netanyahu’s chain.
Here’s the full sentence:
And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice – not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.
Obamaphiles can’t have it both ways.
Either, as they say, he’s the most brilliant speech writer ever who carefully crafts his texts to bring forward historical analogies — in which case he used the phrase deliberately which is frightening — or he’s way overblown and did it without realizing the significance.
Some choice.
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I can just see the prompts from the nervous teleprompter:
“Neville, is that you?”
“Dude, do you really want to say this?”
Obama’s speech writer still has acne.
My bet is that Obama did not realize the significance of the phrase. As he has demonstrated on numerous occasions, Obama is not particularly well educated. (To borrow a phrase from Glen Reynolds, Obama is well credentialed, not well educated).
There were a number of other howlers in Obama’s inauguration speech, but I particularly liked this one:
“The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
LOL. Medicaid and Medicare were passed in the 1960’s, and Social Security started paying benefits around 1940. So apparently America wasn’t great, and no Americans were taking risks, prior to 1940.
Gee, how could the colonists have risked declaring independence from Britain and fighting the Revolutionary War without knowing that they could count on their Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security checks? And how could the Founders have had the courage or intellect to get together and create the U.S. Constitution without Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security? How did Americans invent the steam engine, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the telephone, the lightbulb, etc., without Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security? How did the Wright Brothers fly the first plane, or Henry Ford set up the first automobile assembly line, without Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security? How did the U.S. win World Wars I and II, and then help to rebuild Europe and Japan, without Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security? And all those waves of poor immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries — how were they able to survive, let alone thrive and prosper as so many did, without Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security?
This country was great long before any of our modern entitlement programs were so much as a gleam in a “progressive’s” eye. This country became great because generations of hard-working, God-fearing, self-reliant, freedom-loving people worked and fought and sacrificed to make it great — and not because millions of illegal aliens and gay cowboy poets sat around on their couches waiting for their government checks to arrive every month.
Pretend I clicked ‘Like’ 16 Trillion times 🙂
I think you may have exaggerated American inventions & victories.
Steam engine ? So The Industrial Revolution started in America? You won both wars is like Rosie Ruiz winning the Boston Marathon. Tickets at he theatre are always cheaper after half time.
You can’t have it both ways – to say that Neville Chamberlain was a coward ,yet you guys were absent until attacked. Britain had not yet been attacked either in 38.
I will give you the cotton gin & the slavery that it needed. Things were very poor but at least the mill workers in Manchester spinning that cotton could save up & get on a boat outta there.
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what the hell are you rambling on about?
He is “rambling on” about the facts that the steam engine was not invented in America, the Industrial Revolution was not an American phenomenon, America arrived in both world wars years late, after those who had first taken up the cause had exhausted themselves, and that the invention of the cotton gin (which is American) is inextricably linked to slavery.
Yes, and the boat that those Manchester mill workers boarded to escape their miserable lives was heading . . . to America!
Or Australia, Canada, South Africa, or even London. The point is they could go, while those whose “employment” was created by the cotton gin could not.
Slavery was a product of the US being a British colony. You guys started it for us. It just took us longer to get rid of it because it takes a while for a new government to take hold. Unfortunate that we had too many slavery loving former Brits here.
As to the other stuff, the US has been rather successful, judging by such things as inventions, wealth, and Nobel Prizes. Wonder how Britain would have done without US aid in WW2. Or the Soviet Union for that matter.
Um, no. Slavery had nothing to do with Britain. Slavery was abolished in the UK itself before US independence, and in the colonies before the 1812 war (in which the USA shamefully cozied up to the first totalitarian regime in history, that of Napoleon, and gave him aid and comfort in his war on the free world). Americans established and built slavery into an industry.
[…] no one that is actually intelligent uses the phrase “peace in our time” as a reference to actual peace. Peace in our time stands for WWII, the Holocaust, and the general […]
Remember when Obama famously said about his abilities, “I’m LeBron, baby!”
Now I understand.
He is like LeBron when it comes to speechwriting.
It was a speech aimed at idiots, and cultists — made by an idiot.
Obama’s presidency has become a cartoon strip. And an ugly one at that.
Speaking of ugly: his gluttonous, classless wife’s silly new wig is more akin to a new military helmet than a hairdo. But then, that’s fitting for a cartoon character.
The big difference is that today , nobody takes any notice of speeches. Beyonce’s miming is getting more attention.
Put me down as favoring the latter category (he did it without knowing its significance). After all, this is the “my uncle was at Auschwitz”/”Navy corpsemen” president, so how could it be that he’d actually know who Neville Chamberlain was and what Chamberlain’s statement meant, especially in a world where Iran is about to get the nuclear bomb?
There are people in all 57 states who might disagree with you, including some on the Asian island of Hawaii. I would also wager that some Austrians might disagree, but since I don’t speak Austrian I can’t ask them.
I didn’t hear the speech, because I was too busy airing up the tires in my car, so I could get like, a thousand miles to the gallon. In fact, I have so much air in my tires, my car actually produces gasoline.
Hands down, the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
You’re a good man, Trooper.
I’ll listen to the speech on Cinco de Cuatro, after I’ve taken the intercontinental railroad to Texas, which has always been a pretty Republican state.
its not the pressure in the tires causing gas here….. its the cauliflower I ate 🙂
The phrase did not originate with Chamberlain. It occurs in the Morning Prayer service in the Book of Common Prayer, and would have been familiar to most Britons in 1938: Give peace in our time, O Lord /Because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only Thou, O God.
Neither BO nor his speech writer read prayers.
Not off topic but associated by the sheer irony.-
A NY Jewish lady is writing in The Guardian ( so I am told ). COMPLAINING about Heicopter gunner Prince Harry killing Taliban.& other bad guys.
FFS
I hear this in my Monty Python lady voice:
Your Right ‘onorable Editor Sir:
I would like to make a complaint about that cheeky lit’le Prince ‘arry makin’ ‘oles in them poor lit’le Talibans. I think it’s a tragedy that a young man like that wit’ all kinds of advantages unavailable to us common folks, act like a ‘ooligan an’ shoots ‘oles in them poor Talibans.
I just want to know, where them Talibans is located, so’s I can go ‘ear them play on me next ‘oliday.
Yours ever so truly,
Mrs. Gweldolyn Haversmyth
East Wankershire
SW5E
Hehe .Then there was the lady who rang Nth Britain Police emergency on Christmas Day to say that her son had insulted the Queen
I like that. loyalty to the Queen over her oafish offspring.
This dolt is named Hadley . like naming your baby daughter Stanley. Stanley no doubt wrote letters to the Jakarta Times & The Bangladeshi Bugler.
The phrase should also be familiar to Americans; it appears in Evening Prayer in the 1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which is still in use by traditional parishes around the USA.
Perhaps Obama meant what he said: he is actively disengaging the US military around the world, has made it clear (with his cabinet picks, etc.) that he will greatly downsize the US militiary. The biggest owner of US debt is China, the country working hardest to build a massive military is China, and the one country actively threatening its neighbors is China. And the one country that could stand up to China is leaving the scene.
I personally do expect war – I don’t know with whom, or exactly where, but when there’s a bunch of resources at stake, and the bank guard just walked off the job…
I don’t believe China will attempt war with us because they have too much invested here.
The war will be in Africa where Obama has encouraged and abetted Islamists to overthrow regimes in countries that contain, not just oil, but other valuable resources that are necessary for China and all technologically advanced nations.
[…] “Obamaphiles can’t have it both ways,” William Jacobson writes about Obama’s maximum Kinsley-esque gaffe at Legal Insurrection. […]
Gosh! That quotation from Cicero pretty well sums up what Shrill O’Reilly had to say tonight in his Talking Points Memo; he blamed “the folks” too.
I think we’d be lucky at this point to have Caesar — instead of Nero.
I’m thinking more and more that he, or his cadre, are very deliberate in their choice of words, in that they are designed to achieve an effect or to capture the narrative. I’m not sure what “peace in our time” means, but I think it’s his codeword to the middle east.
One item in his speech floored me, specifically, his drawing an equivalence between Selma and the Stonewall riots. Had Reagan said such a thing, he would have been drummed out of office as a KKK sympathizer. But Bronco threw “his own” under the bus with that. Why? It’s Alinsky. He’s going full bore pushing the inversion of society, knowing that “his own” are fully enslaved to him already. This regime is becoming more and more despicable.
I’ve warned people about this since before Obango was elected. He will prove to be another Adolf Hitler, in both thought and deed.
At least Hitler could paint.
The really interesting thing is that it took so long for anyone to notice.
I recall receiving much info about Obama’s background — black liberation theology / Alinsky / radical associations (Ayers, etc.) / Cloward + Piven plan etc. — prior to the 2008 election.
Prominent broadcasters included Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. There were many reports on the internet, too.
Never picked up by the MSM.
There are two options.
1) he uses lines that he doesn’t completely understand because they sound good and are memorable. Things like “I am my brother’s keeper” and “to each according to his need.”
2) he uses the lines and thinks “this time it’s going to be different.”
I’m not sure which is worse.
The end of a decade of war? He may stop fighting those we can consider our enemies, but those enemies won’t stop fighting us. Is he allying with them? Are they agents to bring America down to the levels of other nations?
Obamaphiles can’t have it both ways.
Never underestimate a liberal’s capacity for doublethink.
You’re all wrong.
The expression originated with Michelle Obama’s incessant demanding of “pizza on time,” and was transmuted into the current phrase.
Sometimes Peace can be a Pyrric and costly victory as much if not more than war when the valuable treasure of truth and freedom are lost to compromise.
Some things should not be decided by popular vote or changed and corrupted by compromise for the sake of peace.
We have learned this in the church and in the state. Doing so only leads to more death (56 million unborn children, AIDS and STDs).
Loss of businesses, banks, devaluing currency…child porn and Playboy channel etc. – all for the sake of compromise and perceived justice.
Obama Inaugural speech: Not only was Beyonce lip-synching but Obama was too. He was mouthing the words of the American President (see Joel’s post below). The speech itself was more cut and paste Progressive gobbledygook – all about financial demands to be yoked on the neck of the American people forever. No supply side was offered. Basically, the speech was meant to take our eyes off of the national debt and off of Obama’s desire to disarm the American people. Smoke and mirrors and tele-prompters.
Obama used two Bibles to swear his oath of office. He was using them as insulators against lighting strikes. He could have used the air gap between Elizabeth Warren’s fake lineage and the truth.
Isn’t Obama creating the Great Impoverished Society?
The Materialist President wants a “piece in our time.”
i keep saying that he won the neville, not nobel, prize.
You have to consider the chief goal of progressivism/liberalism: centralized government control attained via citizen dependency on government entitlements paid for by redistribution of existing wealth coupled with taxes ticking always and ever higher.
Defense cuts are a progressive goal, required to reallocate those funds to entitlements. This requires the increased US isolationism, evidenced by Obama’s ongoing denigrations of historical American allies.
Federal debt is a progressive goal, not the result of poor governance alone (whenever tax money changes hands, politicians and their cronies benefit, and so progressives often find willing hands across the aisle). The progressives will kick the debt/deficit can down the road until the impending crisis may only be resolved by raiding the only department with sufficient funds to do it by that time – the defense budget.
High unemployment is a progressive goal because it allows allocation of funds for coverage periods growing ever longer, which habituates citizens to existence via government money. When it runs out, the unemployed will move to urban areas, either to seek work or to seek the greater entitlements made available by typically progressive-run urban governments. This diminishes and marginalizes the individualist bitter clingers out in the sticks while increasing the urban area tax base. It is also payback for the ‘white flight’ from cities from the 1960s on. Once government-dependent, it is hoped these emigrants vote to support their new dependence on government, that is, vote Democrat Party which has been overtaken by hard left liberal progressives.
For progressivism to ‘work’, individualism must be eliminated, hence the ongoing Obaman denigration of American exceptionalism as personalized by the independent, self-sufficient American. These folks must go, must be broken, and made more dependent on the State.
Progressivism cannot stand on its merits and requires a propaganda wing to convince US citizens that the palpably untrue is true, i.e., this is why education teaches students what to think rather than how to think. The progressive/liberal infiltration and takeover of our public schools and universities, plus the media, constitute the needed propaganda wing.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new would-be overlords, and will do whatever necessary to protect our constitutional rights.
“I, for one, do NOT welcome our new would-be overlords, and will do whatever necessary to protect our constitutional rights.”
So are you stumping for a Drug Prohibition Amendment? Or an end to Prohibition?
What are you on about? Let me guess… Paulian libertarian?
I support any law against drug use/possession/sales, as long as it is enacted by state or federal congress and it has not been ruled unconstitutional by the appropriate court. Whether I like the law is irrelevant, ala “while I may disagree with what you say…”
Anticipating a claim that drug prohibitions are unconstitutional going in, I’ll ask why the SC has not so declared?
I see. For the Federal Government to Prohibit alcohol they needed to amend the constitution. But since drugs are spelled differently than alcohol with no letters in common an amendment is not required.
And the only judge of Constitutionality is the Supreme Court? And they never get it wrong. You must be ecstatic over the Obamacare decision.
You are a prime example of why the Constitution is just a piece of paper.
Some history for you. The Republicans of 1914 opposed the Harrison Narcotics act because they believed the Federal Government did not have that power. But times have changed. And now we have “conservatives” in full support of a Progressive measure. Excellent.
We have a one party state. The only thing the parties differ on is which of our liberties should be attacked first.
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I personally believe in a limited Federal government. I see no authority in the Federal Constitution for prohibiting drugs. Evidently those who passed the Alcohol Prohibition Amendment didn’t either. So they did he right thing and amended the Constitution.
I submit that the Alcohol Prohibition Amendment is prima facie evidence that the Federal Government does not have the power of Prohibition under any guise. The current one being the regulation of medical practice. Say. Wasn’t that supposed to be left to the States?
And no – I’m no Paul fan. But I can read.
Our common creed here inthe USA are E Pluribus Unum
which is from many, one.
and In God We Trust and
Liberty