Barack Obama Inaugurated as 44th President

Posted January 20, 2009, 12:14 p.m.

Barack H. Obama (D) has been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Per Constitutional provision, the peaceful transfer of executive power from outgoing President George W. Bush (R) to Obama occurred at noon today. The transition was recognized with the new president taking of the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building.

Obama’s ascension to the presidency is an historic event in-and-of itself, made even more poignant by his being the first non-white person to hold the highest elected office in the United States. Obama is the biracial son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother, though he is erroneously identified in many media outlets as simply ‘African-American’. Obama was sworn in as president less than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended discrimination on the basis of race. When Obama was born, his parents’ relationship would have been illegal in many states (including my home state of Virginia) under anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriage.

The inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC, brought record crowds into the city. Preliminary estimates indicate that the gathered crowd numbered in the millions, possibly setting new records.

Despite my many political differences with President Obama, I sincerely wish him a safe and successful presidency.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

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Charles Spurgeon

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G. K. Chesterton

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Alexis de Tocqueville

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Maya Angelou

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William O. Douglas

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Will Rogers

A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason.

Dave Barry

Our inner consciences scream with neuroses and psychoses, too, when we do not freely tend to the supreme goal for which we are made, namely, the life and truth and love that are God.

Fulton Sheen

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Scott Bradford

Of all the symptoms of decay in our decadent civilization, subjectivism is the most disastrous of all. A mistake can possibly be discovered and amended if and only if truth exists and can be known and is loved and searched for.

Peter Kreeft

We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

When they hear the words of God on our lips, unbelievers are amazed at their beauty and power, but when they see that those words have no effect in our lives, their admiration turns to scorn, and they dismiss such words as myths and fairy tales.

Clement of Rome

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

John Henry Newman

The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

James Monroe

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Milton Friedman

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Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one. . . .

Thomas Paine

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Will Rogers

Men talk most about health when they are unhealthy. So too they talk most about freedom when they are in danger of losing it or when they are enslaved.

Fulton Sheen