What was most telling about President Barack Obama’s inaugural speech was not
what he said but what he failed to say. He supported gay marriage but said
nothing of shoring up the crumbling institution of heterosexual marriage. He
spoke of the need to address gun violence but said nothing of gang youth in
America who are raised mostly without fathers and perpetrate a large part of
that violence. He spoke of women earning equal pay but declined to address the
rot of values that reduces women in media offerings and advertising to little
more than playthings, with women’s bodies being used to sell cars and
beer.
Over four years a man who was raised without his father has been
reluctant to address the out-of-wedlock birthrate that is 70 percent in the
African-American community, 60% among Latinos and 40% among whites. This leaves
so many women with the burden of raising their children alone. President Obama,
a loving and devoted husband, has never once, to my knowledge, spoken of the 50%
divorce rate that has ravaged American marital commitment. And a man who
celebrates his Christianity has yet to call on all his fellow citizens to
rediscover the spiritual bond that unites all of God’s children and to heed the
call of service that is the obligation of every American.
My point is not
to be critical. President Obama has a right to his agenda and there are many
aspects of that agenda that I support. But what America needs more than anything
else is a values renaissance that will shore up the rotting parts of our culture
and in this regard President Obama, a man of considerable eloquence, has mostly
been silent.
Having run as a Republican for Congress, it is unlikely that
I will be invited to serve as a presidential speechwriter. But that shouldn’t
stop me from suggesting the speech the president ought to give, and here it is:
My fellow Americans, on our streets kids who should be in junior high are mowing
each other down with high-powered assault weapons. And I think we can all agree
that they shouldn’t have access to guns and I therefore will propose strict new
gun measures.
But even I understand that this is treating the symptom
rather than the underlying cause.
In my book, Dreams of My Father, I
speak of the pain of not having my dad around when I grew up. It’s something
I’ve tried to correct by always being there, amid a hectic schedule, for my
daughters, Sasha and Malia. But a father is not a luxury that should be the
blessing of only certain families.
Men in families are not
superfluous.
They are an absolute necessity.
When dads are not at
home it’s often the police who have to raise these kids on the streets. And an
absent dad puts an unfair strain on single moms – who are already heroes in our
communities – to support and raise these kids by themselves, all while nursing
the pain of loneliness.
Then you have all the marriages where a mom and
dad pledged undying love to one another, had children, but then saw their
relationship fragment and end in divorce, which today accounts for one in two
marriages.
I know what that’s like. I was raised by a single mom after my
own parents’ marriage ended in divorce. And I did not get the opportunity to
grow up around my dad.
So I’m calling on all men in our society to
shoulder the responsibility of raising their children. You are not a hero to the
world unless you’re a hero first and foremost to your own children. And you are
not a man of significance unless you make your children feel that they have
infinite worth.
I believe in marriage equality for same-sex couples. But
I also believe in the continuity of opposite-sex couples. And here in America,
men and women in relationships are not faring all that well. I plan, therefore,
to introduce stronger legislation that offers further financial incentives for
couples to marry and stay married, and stiffer penalties to deadbeat dads who
abandon their kids.
And speaking of kids, I am the proud father of two
daughters. I want my girls to be raised in a country that values their minds
more than their appearance, their productive capacity as much as their
reproductive role. I therefore want women to be paid equally to men. But I also
want to my daughters to grow up in a culture where they are respected and valued
by men.
I am therefore calling on American corporations and media
organizations to be sensitive to their depiction of women. When you highlight
stick-thin women to our teenage girls, or supermodels to our women at home,
you’re sending the message that a woman’s body is much more important than her
intelligence.
Men are also affected by that depiction, and it gives us
the kinds of problems I referred to above: men who are drawn to women for what
they can provide sensually but not emotionally.
Which leads me to my
finale. Unlike other nations, that were born of geography, America was born of
an idea. As president Abraham Lincoln said, our country is based on the
proposition that all men are created equal. We have fought long and hard to see
the full realization of that proposition. Men and women have marched, fought and
died so that they can be treated as equals in America. But the highest
realization of that American ideal of equality is not found in material but in
spiritual terms.
By equality we don’t mean that all people are the same
height, the same color, or possessed of the same gifts. Rather, we mean that
they are possessed of the same spark of the divine. That’s why Lincoln said that
we were “created equal.” I call today for a new dawn of American soulfulness.
Let’s together create a society where the gay man and the black woman, the
Jewish boy and the Muslim girl, the stay-at-home mom and the professional woman,
all find relevance in a nation that values their contribution and cannot prosper
without their gifts.
I am calling today, therefore, for a mandatory year
of national service, to commence upon graduation from high school, for every
American man and woman, to both reverse the growing culture of narcissism and to
teach us that America is a nation of givers and not takers.
The Author
has just published his newest best-seller, The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging
God in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. He is the founder of This World: The
Values Network, which promotes universal values. Follow him on Twitter
@RabbiShmuley.
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