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National NewsConservative News
Give Freedom a Voice
By Gary Palmer
Posted on: January 29, 2005
Words can be a powerful force to motivate, to challenge, to inspire friends and allies to achieve great things and endure great hardships. Words can be a powerful force to antagonize and dishearten foes as well.
Apparently, the words of the Second Inaugural Address of President George W. Bush accomplished both.
Many supporters of President Bush are comparing his Second Inaugural speech to some of the great orations of former presidents and world leaders. As I listened to it, I confess I was initially concerned about the breadth of his vision for America's role in taking freedom to the whole world. While not an isolationist, I do not believe that America should be the world's police force.
After reading the speech and hearing some of the explanations by various spokespersons, I do not believe Bush thinks that America should recklessly spend our manpower and material in a worldwide effort to bring down every rogue regime. He indicated as much in the speech saying that our role "…is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary ... America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling ... Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."
Bush did send an important message to those who threaten our security that we will no longer wait for them to attack us. Instead, we are resolved to take the fight to them. He also sent a message to encourage the leaders of resistance groups working against totalitarian regimes to keep up their efforts. In giving freedom a voice, he is standing on the same ground as President Ronald Reagan.
President Reagan also understood the power of words to inspire courage and perseverance. And he used them to set the policies that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the release of Eastern Europe from the shackles of communism. Angry and dispirited liberals savagely criticized President Reagan, calling him "stupid," "dishonest" and "the worst president ever." At least in that regard, President Bush stands in good company.
There were two speeches by President Reagan in particular that infuriated liberals in the United States and Europe. The first was his speech to the British Parliament in 1982. In that speech Reagan presented a vision for confronting totalitarian oppression based on strength, resolve and a long-term commitment. "What I am describing now," he said, "is a plan and a hope for the long term - the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people…"
Liberals condemned the speech as war-mongering, an insult to the Russian people, and the beginning of a dangerous escalation in tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Falling in line, the media reported that sophisticated Europeans were dismayed and alarmed.
Then, in March 1983, Reagan upped the ante. In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Fla., President Reagan said this about Soviet communism, "…let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in their totalitarian darkness - pray that they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world."
Once again, with his "Evil Empire" speech, Reagan left liberals in the U.S. and Europe shaking their heads in disbelief and dismay. Yet six and a half years later, the Evil Empire began to crumble and today almost a billion people are no longer imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet communism.
Even a more limited interpretation of his speech there those that President Bush's commitment to freedom is an unwise provocation, that he is pursuing an unattainable goal. But the same thing was said about President Reagan's vision. Most politicians believed that Soviet communism was a permanent fixture in the future of the world and that Reagan's vision to bring freedom to those under Soviet domination was at best unrealistic, and at worst, delusional.
President Bush, like President Reagan, sees the world with more hopeful eyes than most others in Washington. I believe that he operates with the view that the higher we set our goals, the more we can achieve and the more progress we will make toward the ideal. It is a goal for the generations that follow but it will require leaders who possess the rare combination of vision bolstered by courage of convictions and wisdom.
I don't think President Bush believes that we will ever have a world in which we have universal peace and freedom, at least not this side of the Second Coming. But I think he knows that if we pursue that goal, hundreds of millions of people will one day live in freedom because we had the courage to make the effort. In that regard, his speech may one day be held in the same high esteem as those of Reagan's whose vision, after all, proved to be prophetic.
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