Ross Mackenzie: The Idea Is Liberty - Bush Brings Home His Notion of Pre-Emption

he Richmond [VA] Times-Dispatch ^ | January 23, 2005 | Ross Mackenzie

[quidnunc]

In the hands of a world-class rhetorician — Lincoln, FDR, Reagan — George Bush's soaring Second Inaugural would be vividly understood as the world-class dissertation that it was. Subsequent readings (for the speech reads far better than his delivery of it) verify that rarely has a President — has anyone — expatiated with profounder eloquence on the ennobling cause of liberty.

The President termed liberty "the honorable achievement of our Fathers" and now "the calling of our time." He postulated that "no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave." And so: It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

He spent much of his address discussing the extension of liberty abroad — and rightly so. For as he has told The Wall Street Journal, the foreign-policy debate is "the philosophical argument of the age." The Balkans, with various traditions of freedom, are rediscovering democratic institutions seemingly at light-speed. In the Middle East, where democracy obtains only in Turkey and Israel, Bush insisted the United States will till the land for liberty to grow — first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, then throughout the region. -snip-

[kenavi]

The address was sublime, on the level of Lincoln's 2nd, also forged from a willingness to undertake the struggle.

[newzjunkey]

The speech was a bust. It got a few talking heads chirping but otherwise it was a lead balloon.

W is far out of his rhetorical league. It won't be remembered except by the wonks, academics.

[Soul Seeker]

Agreed.