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Sunday, January 23, 2005So, Peter Robinson, Bill Buckley and Peggy Noonan found Bush's speech a bit trying. And Robinson wants to know how it bodes for Bush if supporters found it grating.Mr. Robinson needs to look, on the flipside, at those who found it enthralling, or soaring or otherwise a damn fine piece of rhetoric. As someone who agrees with Austin Bay - The President’s inaugural speech said in spades what I wish he would say every day.I wonder what it is that makes this speech grate on some conservatives while others like it. Robinson says it's an overreach, but Jonah's right. This was for Islamism like Reagan's addresses vis-à-vis Communism. Bush has set some great guideposts for us that remind us of three important things: 1) Rights do not come from governments but from God; good governments secure them, bad ones erode them, but in principle they are always there. 2) Given the existence of inalienable rights, it is the right and proper - and inevitable - to see governments that secure rights succeed and those that erode them tumble. 3) When all is said and done, there should be no question as to which side the United States was on in this. As I said a day or two ago, Bush has set the stage for this to be something even better than a second American century: The Freedom Century. This is especially important, and especially called for, because it was Bush's first shot after being formally reaffirmed as our leader, to reply to the ultimate in rhetorical bombast, the bombing of the WTC. When Bush became president, there was massive skepticism. When he took the war on terror in directions not uniformly agreed upon, our enemies saw a chance to turn the United States against the idea even of a right to defend itself. Reaffirmed, Bush was finally in a position to announce that neither he nor the United States would deviate from a course consistent with our history and values as he understood them. This he did and it was a welcome blast, signaling clearly that our nation had not only the troops but also the ideals to challenge both the viciousness of Islamism and the defeatist indifference of the American left to the oppressed of the world. 
posted by gbarto at 1:03 AM |
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