my mother heard a Lincolnesque cadence at the end of Obama's speech.

[hedgehog]

She's right; this is a tribute to the Gettysburg Address:

"These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.



People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again."



Just before it came this tip of the hat to FDR's Four Freedoms:

"that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please. "


We'll be hearing about the reference to Reagen's "Tear down this wall" until election day, but I wonder if we'll hear about the references to Lincoln and Roosevelt.

[VADem11]

1. I loved the FDR reference

I was a history major so I love when Obama does this.

[hedgehog]

2. I missed it on first hearing but spotted it when reading the text.

I'm surprised my mother didn't catch it; she worships FDR.

[CTyankee]

4. I loved the reference, and the significance, of recalling the Berlin airlift.

I was too young to actually remember it but it was famous. There was a movie, I think it was called simply "Airlift". I always thought that was thrilling, what we did, and how the Soviet Union just gave up. Was it Willy Brandt who was mayor of Berlin that Obama referenced?

[elocs]

3. I think that even for those who really, really like the speech

comparisons to the Gettysburg Address are a little over the top.

[CTyankee]

5. You know, sometimes it is the context in which the speech is given that gives it

greatness. In one of my Humanities classes in college we all read Pericles funeral oration on the war dead. While the speech is excellent, some of the class read it with a "ho hum" attitude. But it was so significant that it is being assigned in college courses 2500 years later!

[hedgehog]

6. I don't think so. Compare these excerpts:

The Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

From Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.


From Obama today:

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.



People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.



People today forget that in his time, Lincoln was "just a politician, too.

[Benhurst]

7. "It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation

– must make our mark on the world."

The baby boomer generation?

More of the old Kennedy "a torch being passed;" but when Kennedy was elected a new generation really was taking over.

The only way the torch will be passed to a different generation this election is if it is passed back to McCain.

Well, when you're running against McCain, I guess being a baby boomer might make one feel part of a "new" generation, contrary to the fact.

Obama's election will give the baby boomers one more chance to get it right.

[hedgehog]

10. I've always thought that the Baby Boomers were really two generations.

Those born in the second half grew up in a different world from those born in the first half. Would anyone really consider Obama to be of the same generation as John Kerry and the Clintons?

[Benhurst]

11. The U.S. Census Bureau would.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/006105.html

All generations contain subgroups and individuals within any group vary greatly.

But the cult of youth has always been a hallmark of the baby boomers. What could be more quintessentially babyboomerish than to claim to be part of a younger generation than that into which you were born?

[undeterred]

13. There is a big difference between experiencing the 60s as an adult

and experiencing it as a child. I am old enough to remember the assassinations and the vietnam war but it does not have the same formative effect on me that it would have had if I were just 10 years older.

[hedgehog]

14. Exactly.

For the first wave, their parents' war was the big one, WWII. For the second wave, their parents' war was a police action, Korea. WWII was Obama's grandfather's war, not his father's war.

[elocs]

12. I watched it and listened to it myself

and I didn't hear any connection to the Gettysburg address. I thought it was a good speech, not a great speech, and I didn't hear it as something Lincolnesque. It is ok for Obama not to give the greatest speech known in the history of the Republic. It is.

[hedgehog]

19. I didn't hear it myself, but when I checked the speech I could see

what caught my mother's ear. I suspect that the older folks spent much more time in school memorizing speeches and poetry than the younger folk, so they might recognize the similarity where we wouldn't. (Mom is 82, so I get to refer to myself as being on of the younger folk when I refer to her!)

[Cassandra]

21. This was what had me think Lincoln...

"Now the world will watch and remember what we do here"

which sounds a bit like this:
"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."

[Manifestor_of_Light]

22. Yes!!

I noticed that too! And I never memorized the Gettysburg Address. :D

[Misskittycat]

8. I don't think so. Not just the U.S., but the entire world, are facing immediate

challenges that may decide the future of humanity and the planet. We may already be beyond the tipping point on global warming; one lunatic pressing a nuclear button can kill millions. This is a transformational election. This was a transformational speech. It was brilliant.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Here's how...and it has nothing to do with content

"These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again."

BOLD = anaphora
UNDERLINE = Balanced antithesis
ITALICS = Ascending tricolon with homoioteleuton in the first two clauses (-y, -y), and polysyndeton throughout (and...and...and); the homoioteleuton sets up the cadence break of the last colon by building an expectation for similarity that is subsequently broken, both in accent and in number: history (3), destiny(3), world once again(4).

Try it: clap three times, then three times, then four times. Now try this: Write a sentence that ends in three parallel clauses. For the first two, end with a three syllable word with the accent on the first syllable. For the last, end with either a four syllable word or for words in the same grammatical position as the last word in the first two. Make the sentence about anything, even something mundane. It will have the same cadence as Obama's rousing closing, regardless of content.

The great thing about rhetorical techne is that anyone can be taught how to use them. Whether anyone can learn them is another question, however. :-)

[hedgehog]

15. Does he get extra points for content and cadence?

:)

[alcibiades_mystery]

17. Eh

Maybe...

[brokenheartmia]

16. has the sky opened yet

[blonndee]

18. good riddance

sad, brokenhearted little pumeister.

[hedgehog]

20. Well, we have had a lot of thunderstorms passing through today......

Oh wait, you're referring to something else, aren't you? How cute!