Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: grannie9; Mo1; sweetliberty; prairiebreeze

When I heard the courage of Bush speech I thought of kind of A Proclamation to the World of the America role is too this planet!

It also reminded me of this.....

Poems by Goethe

"Genius"
(This "motto" is actually from W.H. Murray, "The Scottish Himalayan Expedition", with the Goethe quote at the end.)

Until one is committed there is the chance to draw back;
always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation)
there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which
kills countless ideas and splendid plans:


that the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would not
otherwise have occured. A whole stream of events
issues from the decision, raising in one's favour
all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and
material assistance which no man would have dreamed
would come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it!
Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.

Begin it now!


666 posted on 01/22/2005 5:11:41 PM PST by restornu (I am an invisible being of DD.........Ghosty:))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 665 | View Replies ]


To: null and void

ha ha hehehe! I got 666.....


667 posted on 01/22/2005 5:16:42 PM PST by restornu (I am an invisible being of DD.........Ghosty:))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 666 | View Replies ]

To: restornu; Peach; All

Powerline Blog has an interesting take on the Bush Inaugural Speech and its critics:

Often immoderate, never confused

That's Dafydd ab Hugh. Here's his take on Bush's speech:

Every conservative criticism of the speech I've read is a variant on the same theme: Bush couldn't possibly have meant what he said; therefore, he was either confused or lying. How dare he!
This only proves how necessary, even vital, was this address: even conservatives have lost the ideological core that was once America. We as the people no longer truly believe in liberty, not as Americans did for the first sesquicentennial. We have become cynical; we are little, green pieces of rock.

The new Bush call to liberty is not rash. It does not require we drop everything to march to the crusade, launching simultaneous attacks on Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Russia. Neither does it prohibit temporary alliances with tyrannies in order to defeat larger ones, as in World War II. But it does say that no longer will we acquiesce in another nation's tyranny simply for our own convenience. We will not overturn elections, overthrow democracies, or even, by our money and our silence, encourage autocracies to crack down on their own people's natural, godly desire for freedom. Appeasement is a tactic of weakness, and we are strong.

We have done these things before; we justified them in the name of a higher cause: trade, security, anticommunism. But Bush notes that, in the long run, we cannot rely on trade with dictatorships; and tyranny (not poverty) begets terrorism, which threatens America's security; and we cannot fight an ideology like Communism -- or militant Islamism -- without an equally robust ideology of our own... you can't defeat something with nothing. Our "something" is liberty; and without it, we are nothing more than the new Roman Empire, adrift in an ocean of relativism and cynical realism.

This is foreign to our character. It is un-American. It is French.

To the extent that the dinosaurs of the movement -- Buckley, Noonan -- cannot recognize their own jadedness, they have become unhelpful. To the extent they fight against the new revivalism of that old time ideology of liberty, they give aid and comfort to the enemy... not only the internationalists across the aisle but even the torturers and beheaders across the sea. There may once have been an epoch of accomodation; but if so, it's time to move on. That was then.

This is now, today. And today, the watchword is liberty, and America is its guardian -- for all, at least by word if not always deed. Time for us all to learn it; it comes as second-nature to us Americans, if we'll just stop talking ourselves out of it.

http://powerlineblog.com/


668 posted on 01/22/2005 5:16:52 PM PST by prairiebreeze (George W Bush: Spending well-earned political capital.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 666 | View Replies ]

To: restornu

I have to admit to being a little distracted during the speech. I was busy watching the unwashed rent-a-mob out the window.


669 posted on 01/22/2005 5:20:18 PM PST by prairiebreeze (George W Bush: Spending well-earned political capital.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 666 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson