The following is President Obama’s inaugural speech, edited to remove references to religion, the celebration of militarism, delusions of national power, the phantasmatic projection of enemies, the glorification of the struggles of the poor, the puritanical elevation of suffering, the erasure of difference, etc. ***** My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by...

From the start of the credit crisis, panic has been caused by what we didn’t know. What happens if a Lehman Brothers is allowed to fail? What happens if toxic mortgage-backed securities are bought through a government bailout? Then, what happens if the U.S. treasury decides not to bail the banks out of these bad debts? So it should have been reassuring that one of the most nerve-racking of the unknowns turned out to be benign. We now know that we should not have feared...