Wise Peggy Noonan has some words of caution after yesterday's presidential inauguration, especially President Bush's speech.
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.
There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."
This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.
One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.
Just soaring rhetoric or looming reality? Time will tell, but Noonan's take is mandatory food for thought. She has other observations about Inauguration Day, so read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Donald Sensing sees the President drawing long-overdue ideological battle lines in a war declared on us by militant Islam.
Liberty as we conceive it is at the heart of the conflict. For Islamists, the most desirable state of human society is not one that is free, in the Western sense, but one that is submissive to Allah, according to the dictates of Quran. This state of society is dar al Islam, the world of peace. Anything else is the dar al harb, the "world of war." Societies, peoples or nations are either at war with Allah or at peace (through submission) to Allah.This concept of submission is the matter of ultimate concern to Islam generally and is enormously amplified by radicalized Islamists. In their view, no sacrifice is too great to achieve their ends, and no violence is unjustified. I don't think we have reached the point yet of widespread American understanding that the war is one of ultimates for us as well.
The real issue is whether the Western Civilization shall prevail against the last vestige of medievalism; whether the rule of men who behead their prisoners, enslave their women and deny the rights of self-determination to their own people, shall kill us and displace us, to whom the individual and individual rights are sacred and whose laws require respect for freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and whose traditions preserve freedom from fear and cruelty. In the long history of civilization, this task is to be done now.
Naysayers asked for "nuance" from George W. Bush, and now they may be getting it: the hard-nosed requirements of national security achieved through the relentless pursuit of God-given ideals of freedom and democracy at home and abroad, through all means necessary, including political philosophy, theology, diplomacy, military action, and more. Pretty complex. Hubris? We'll see.
Posted by Alan at January 21, 2005 06:15 AM