In the months of campaigning that unfolded after Mitt Romney was skewered for saying that “47 percent” of the country “believe that they are victims… believe the government has a responsibility to care for them,” President Obama was relatively silent about the remarks. But today, during his second inaugural speech, Obama got the last word in on the issue. He took the opportunity to push back on the idea that there are “takers” in America, and to stand up for the social safety net:

We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security – these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

The argument over the role of the social safety net is far from over, even without the accompanying campaign. In March, Congress will hit a deadline over the new fiscal cliff — a set of automatic spending cuts to both defense and social programs. During that fight, Congressional Republicans will once again attempt to push all spending cuts onto social programs — particularly in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Obama’s argument that these programs “do not make us a nation of takers” lays the groundwork for him to clash with Republicans over the sequester, which will otherwise decimate those programs.

The second inauguration of President Obama today opened with an invocation by Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963. Mrs. Evers-Williams was the first layperson and first woman to deliver a prayer at an inauguration, and she used the unique opportunity to carry her own civil rights message — a reminder that true equality requires fair voting.

On the steps of the capitol, Evers-Williams reminded members of Congress and the President that civil rights have come a long way “fifty years after the march on Washington”:

We celebrate the spirit of our ancestors which has allowed us to move from a nation of unborn hopes and a history of disenfranchised votes to today’s expression of a more perfect union. We ask too, almighty, that where our path seems blanketed by thorns of oppression and rippled by pains of despair, we ask for your guidance toward the light of deliverance and that the vision of those who came before us and dreamed of this day, that we recognise that their visions still inspire us. They are a great cloud of witnesses, unseen by the naked eye but all around us, thankful that their living was not in vain.

President Obama received the message, and made similar comments during his speech, saying, “Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.”

Voting rights is certainly a civil rights issue rooted in race; laws like voter identification disproportionately effect black and Latino voters, threatening to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible voters.

Today is the official ceremony for President Obama’s second inauguration and the national celebration of Martin Luther King Day. The holiday, which was not officially observed in all 50 states until 2000, honors the civil rights leader and nonviolent activist who led the struggle for African American equality, and against militarism, materialism, and poverty. And while conservatives (and even gun advocates) have seized on King’s legacy to promote their own political agendas, King explicitly espoused, pursued, and defended progressive values:

• King Died Supporting A Public Sector Union’s Strike: In King’s final sermon, he called upon the people of Memphis to join together in support of the Memphis sanitation worker’s AFSCME-led strike. “Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness,” King preached. “when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school — be there.”
• King Compared Poverty To “Cannibalism” And Called For Its “Direct And Immediate Abolition”: King believed that poverty “is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization.” He called for America to abolish poverty by guaranteeing “white and Negro alike” a minimum income.
• King Called War Funding A “Demonic Sucking Tube” Undermining Poverty Programs: King opposed the Vietnam war in no small part because it diverted precious resources away from anti-poverty programs. “A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. . . . Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”
• King Said Poverty Made Him “Question The Capitalistic Economy”: King called for a radical restructuring of America’s economic system. “And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. . . . You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?’”

Obama will use two Bibles when he takes the oath of office, one owned by Abraham Lincoln, and another by King. “It’s almost like fate and history coming together,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who worked alongside King in the fight for civil rights struggle. “If it hadn’t been for Martin Luther King Jr., there would be no Barack Obama as president.”

The only other time a presidential inauguration coincided with the King holiday was in 1997. In his speech, President Bill Clinton invoked the civil rights icon, saying, “Thirty-four years ago, the man whose life we celebrate today spoke to us down there at the other end of this Mall in words that moved the conscience of a nation.” “Martin Luther King’s dream was the American Dream. His quest is our quest: the ceaseless striving to live out our true creed. Our history has been built on such dreams and labors.”