President Barack Obama's Oval Office speech Sunday night had all the warmth of a paternalistic "Because-I-said-so" lecture.
The speech, given supposedly to calm a jittery country after last week's killing of 13 in San Bernadino by an apparently Islamic State-inspired couple, instead was part a scolding on gun control and "discrimination" against Muslims, part explanation he had "no evidence" the couple was "directed" by any country but only by a "perverted interpretation of Islam," and part a recitation of how he is trying to keep the country safe with some "stepped up" measures.
It had all the pep of cold Cream of Wheat.
Americans are particularly tired of the president's chiding us about how we need to conduct ourselves as it relates to people of the Muslim faith. We know now, and we knew instinctively following 9/11, that the majority of people of Muslim faith in the United States are no different from any other Americans and deserve to do nothing more than to live their lives. We also know the majority of people carrying out radical acts of terrorism in the Middle East and in some recent notable cases in the United States are Muslim.
The fact we know that does not make us want to carry out acts of vengeance against our Muslim neighbors. But we remain confused why Obama omits descriptive words about such terrorists, changes the words or attempts to humiliate those leaders who would call the terrorists what they are.
We're also weary of the gun control argument, the preaching to the choir of Americans who don't own guns, own guns but use them safely, or own guns and never plan to use them. We see and hear what he sees and hears - how the guns used in many recent killings were obtained legally. We also know what he knows - that the majority of guns used in ordinary street crime are not obtained legally.
We long for a better solution to the use of guns but not the same, tired rhetoric.
The American people, while war weary, also know that whatever the Obama administration has been doing about the Islamic State abroad - a policy of containment, the president has said before - is not working. We don't believe it's been contained in Syria and Iraq, where its influence was first felt, and we fear it hasn't been contained in the U.S., where its fingers seem menacingly to creep.
We long for a comprehensive strategy that not only works with our allies to eliminate the Islamic State threat in the Middle East but spares no effort to make certain the homeland is safe.
In the end, we want to feel assured, not shamed.