Inauguration Day.

Here is the text of President Bush's Inaugural Address. This passage is worth some reflection:

At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.

We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

I like the phrase "shipwreck of communism" because we should never let the world forget that communism was a miscarriage of human of history.

More important is the note of idealism that the President is sounding. Consider this speech in the light of the "monumental essay" by Norman Podhoretz that Lane Core has published on his site. Podhoretz is clearly on to something in his thesis that after 9/11 Bush rejected the "realist's project" of "cuius regio eius religio." Apart from causing goose-bumps on the part of history buffs everywhere by using a phrase whose currency declined shortly after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Podhoretz makes the point that the philosophy of "realists" like Brent Scowcroft during the presidency of Bush 41 was that while America had a great deal of interest in "stability," it should have no concern about the internal politics of any other nation; the leaders of that country would determine the "political faith" of that country - cuius regio eius religio.

Podhoretz explains, and Bush's inaugural address confirms, that that formula no longer holds.


Here is the website for the 55th Inauguration.