An Ambitious President Advances His Idealism

[papau]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24961-2005Jan20?language=printer



washingtonpost.com
An Ambitious President Advances His Idealism

By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 21, 2005; Page A01


By now, four years into a presidency that has reshaped American politics and shaken the world, perhaps no one should be surprised by George W. Bush's ambition. Even so, the 21-minute address he delivered at the Capitol yesterday was startling in its reach.

His pledges to promote liberty and aid the oppressed, along with predictions of the United States leading the world to the ultimate triumph of democracy over tyranny in every land, were issued with some of the most expansive and lyrical language Bush has summoned. Several times he invoked God, and he regularly borrowed ideas, imagery and phrases from such looming predecessors as Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

The immediate question, presidential scholars and foreign policy experts say, is the same in Washington as it is in other capitals around the world: What to make of such idealistic and uncompromising language from an incumbent president?

If taken at face value, Bush's words would imply nearly limitless obligations to confront all manner of autocrats around the planet, even in cases in which anti-democratic governments in the Middle East and elsewhere support U.S. interests. He made scant acknowledgment of the trade-offs he has regularly made, such as supporting repressive regimes in Asia as payback for their support in Afghanistan.<snip>

[tom_paine]

1. An Ambitious Fuhrer Advances His Idealism

Tiberisu Bunnypants* it seems, like Hitler and Stalin before him, doesn;t like OTHER autocrats and OTHER Tyrants.

They all share(d) the same dream, to be the sole Tyrant.

[JDPriestly]

2. Bush talks about freedom, liberty, abolishing tyranny

but he never says what those words mean. We Democrats should define them. Roosevelt talked about the Four Freedoms.


The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere
in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his
own way-- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world
terms, means economic understandings which will secure to
every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
--everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into
world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a
point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation
will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the wold.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite
basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and
generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception --the
moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of
world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history we have been
engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a
revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself
to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the
quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is
the cooperation of free countries, working together in a
friendly, civilized society.


http://www.libertynet.org/~edcivic/fdr.html

I wonder if Bush was trying to outdo Roosevelt's speech, but just didn't have the smarts (or his speechwriter didn't have the smarts) to do it? If so, he did a shoddy job of it.

[JDPriestly]

3. Sorry, left out the best part

Freedom means the
supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to
those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our
strength is our unity of purpose.

I need to reread Bush's speech, but I think he left out this part. Significant -- Roosevelt's speech was a plea for support for his plan to increase weapons production and pay for it with borrowed money. Sound familiar?