"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
God On Our Side
Posted 12:56 a.m., Jan. 21, 2004
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It's fairly striking how tepid the coverage and reaction in the American media has been to the president's inauguration speech Thursday.
One of the better stateside reports, Todd Purdum's analysis in the New York Times, called the address a speech of "loftiness and missionary zeal," referring to it as the president's "chance to hit the reset button." National Public Radio counted the number of times the president used the word "freedom" in his speech (27 times; the accompanying word "liberty" was used 15), and chided the president for delivering his words ineffectually.
The CBS Evening News, meanwhile, spent more time discussing the heavy security surrounding the inauguration event and the presence of the ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist than it did dealing with the substance of the Bush address.
Perhaps it's the case that Americans, therefore American reporters, aren't accustomed to taking much away from presidential inaugurals, even less from a president's second pass at it, so maybe the press didn't give it a clear listen. Thus it may be that they are missing the real importance of the moment.
But here's my bet. The second inaugural address delivered yesterday by President George W. Bush, while vague in its specifics, will likely be remembered by historians--particularly if the phrases later are converted to events--as a Wilsonian moment of evangelical foreign policy near-radicalism.
The president quite boldly employed evangelistic language, though omitting the details of life on the temporal plane in the Second Bush Era. He avoided direct reference to 9/11, but mentioned it obliquely as a "day of fire." He never mentioned the words Iraq or Afghanistan, preferring to say only that the nation has been led "by events and common sense" to understand that the survival of liberty depends on exporting freedom to other nations.
"The best hope for peace in our world," the president said, "is the expansion of freedom in all the world." But that is only half of Bush's goal as outlined. The other half is to support democracy everywhere with the purpose of eliminating tyranny in the world.
There is truly nothing like aiming high.
Bush also made it clear he believes his hand is being guided to create global freedom, "which is eternally right," by a force greater than himself. And I don't mean the Congress. "History has an ebb and flow of justice," the president chimed, "but history also has a visible direction set by liberty and the author of liberty."
The American media may be holding its fire in reaction to this speech, which could well be read to presage more American military adventurism in despotic corners of the world such as Iran, North Korea, perhaps even hitherto American ally Saudi Arabia. But the international press feels no compulsion to meekness about the tenor of the address.
"With this radical address, Mr. Bush nailed his colors once and for all to the neoconservative mast, committing himself to an activist foreign policy. He went out of his way to reject the more traditional 'realist' Republican philosophy associated with his father, which argues that democracy cannot be exported to regions like the Middle East and that US foreign policy should be guided by narrowly defined national self-interest."
-- "Smiles for the Family,
a Fiery Warning for the World,"
The (U.K.) Guardian,
Jan. 21, 2005
There is allure in the president's exhortations. It is inviting, this sun-drenched, idealistic, neo-Wilsonian fervor about the goodness of America, the rightness of America's cause. It is intoxicating, this idea that God has tapped this nation to wield both the sword of his justice and the salve of his love. I love my country, too, and worship God in my own way. I do understand why such a message has such potency, particularly in an America only slowly recovering from its daze after 9/11 and the two wars that followed.
The problem is, where history has provided us with characters who have seen themselves and the peoples they lead as holy instruments, the results have been a little less than inspiring, and they have had a disturbing tendency to themselves lean toward the despotic. Napoleon is one example. Osama bin Laden is another.
The president was not so arch as all that, perhaps. He took pains to point out that the United States has no intention of imposing its "style" of government "on the unwilling." And he pointed out that the task is not one of arms alone.
But he left little room for doubt where he stands, invoking Lincoln to say: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it." A just God, we are left to surmise, will thus deploy the U.S. to see to that.
It is good to see a Republican president invoking Lincoln, whose adamant federalism--not to mention his vexing support of black civil rights--had made him a bit of a black sheep among GOP standard bearers, at least since the Reagan era.
But I prefer another Lincoln line, from the only second inaugural presidential address that up to now has ever left a lingering impression. I wish this current president would go back to the National Archives and give it one final glance, with an eye toward learning how its message--which also invokes the Almighty--might better apply to the conflicts at hand.
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
-- Second Inaugural Address
Abraham Lincoln
March 4, 1865
-- Kevin Featherly
