David Horowitz on 0 Inaugural
Former leftist a.k.a. neocon David Horowitz at Powerline on the inauguration of 0:
If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it. If Americans now have accepted an African American to lead their country in war and peace that is in part because an hysterically maligned Republican made two African Americans his secretaries of state. And if, after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts, race has continued to be a divisive factor in our politics over the last 40 years that is because the generation of Sharpton and Jackson and their liberal supporters have made it so. What conservatives need to recognize in getting past these feelings (and therefore to celebrate) is that because of this political reality, it is only they themselves who could end it.
[A]s conservatives who embrace the institutions our founders created we need to separate the two roles of the presidency — symbolic and political. Today the symbolic role takes precedence and we need to appreciate the specific aspects of that symbolism in the new presidency of Barack Obama, and put aside our anticipations of the policies he may later put in place. There will be time enough for that.