Living in a monarchy, one naturally compares the inauguration of a US President to our Coronation. It compares unfavourably. It lacks beauty, mystery, good order, and, although it is full of history, it lacks the fascinating complications and accretions of a country like ours, which has no theory, only its history. I could not help being disappointed by the way the speakers were announced on the Capitol on Tuesday as if they were performing in some awards ceremony, or by the incompetence and lack of ceremony with which the Chief Justice administered the oath to Barack Obama. Even the music was pretty useless, because it had to embody current compromises about ethnicity and culture rather than lifting everything to heaven. But this, broadly speaking, is how it should be. The United States is a republic, and one of the genuine republican virtues is a lack of grandeur and ornateness. When Americans refused to pay British taxes, they also refused to buy the rest of the monarchical act. In the Coronation, of course, there is no speech by the monarch, because the office is too sacred and inexpressible. In the inauguration, the speech — apart from the oath — is the only thing that really matters. Like many people, I found Mr Obama’s speech more boring than I had expected. But he had carefully — and correctly — worked out that, if you are in Valley Forge, fine words can be annoying.
The Atheist Bus Campaign poster says: ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ Is this the best that the power of ratiocination in which people like Richard Dawkins put such faith (yes, faith) can manage? ‘Probably’ is a weak word, for a start, though I do see that the atheists would find it difficult to assert that there is ‘certainly’ no God.
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