Skip to main content

Change

Submitted by Ken Watts on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 11:53

ALL OVER THE NATIONAL MALL, all over the country today, people carry Obama posters, wear Obama hats, sport Obama shirts.

It's exciting, inevitable, and hopeful—even appropriate.

He's the man who provided the campaign, the focus, the vehicle for Americans to reclaim their heritage.

But it's also important to heed Obama's own words. Time and again he has reminded us that he is not a messiah—not a king.

This, and the struggles to come, are not his, but ours.

Remember the mantra of the Bush administration: 9/11 changed everything?

It was rooted in the opposite idea: the idea that change comes from the top down. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld saw 9/11 as a tool for manipulating the country, as a source of shock and awe which would allow them to reshape the government.

They saw it as a license to invade an unrelated country, to undermine democracy, to dismantle freedom, to remove checks and balances, to make the president more like a king.

They've been bested, for the moment, but only if we remember not to simply transfer the crown.

We haven't voted for a new and better king, but for a return to our country's foundations, a return to democratic traditions.

January 20th, 2009 is a great day of celebration, but it's the celebration of an even greater day.

11/04/08 changed everything.