American patchwork

Drove into work this morning listening to Bush's second inaugural address. On NPR, they are saying the speech had a "spiritual tone." I guess so, if you equate spirituality with exclusivensss and conformity.

These two remarkable paragraphs jumped out at me. Each sentence seems to contradict the preceeding one, but to Bush, it spells "freedom":

In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools, and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.

In Americas ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So liberty means not only "dignity" but also "Homeland Security." A "stake in the future" means "schools with high standards" and "an ownership society." "Making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny" -- in other words, radical individualism -- means a society that is "more just and equal." "Tolerance toward others" is uttered in the same breath as "communities with standards."

More than anything else, this sounds not like a picture of a just and liberal society as a description of cable television programming. Something for everyone, and the whole is less than the sum of the parts.