Well, as it happened, my father wanted to hear the speech, so we watched TV this morning and heard it all. It was a good speech, especially at the beginning - even Reaganesque in places. If he really believes in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all, then that should include the unborn. If he really means that the nation cannot survive half free and half slave, then surely it is wrong for only half of the people to support the other half or worse, for a politically defined class of people "the rich" to bear the burden of repaying the debts of the entire society. And he is wrong to say that everyone is entitled to equal love or that a child born in the bleakest poverty has an equal chance in life. It is the job of that child's parents to ensure he or she is NOT born into bleak poverty - because there are all kinds of poverty besides material poverty. Government is not very good at relieving material poverty and it is even worse at relieving poverty of knowledge or of the spirit. Obama said government cannot do it all, but then he contradicted himself by assigning responsibilities to we the people that are best borne by individuals. He said new times call for new ways of doing things, but then he excepted Medicare and Social Security as programs that seemingly do not have to change. It was a clever speech, but not a completely honest one.