Posted on 01/20/2005 9:33:31 PM PST by RWR8189
Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?
It was an interesting Inauguration Day. Washington had warmed up, the swift storm of the previous day had passed, the sky was overcast but the air wasn't painful in a wind-chill way, and the capital was full of men in cowboy hats and women in long furs. In fact, the night of the inaugural balls became known this year as The Night of the Long Furs.
Laura Bush's beauty has grown more obvious; she was chic in shades of white, and smiled warmly. The Bush daughters looked exactly as they are, beautiful and young. A well-behaved city was on its best behavior, everyone from cops to doormen to journalists eager to help visitors in any way.
For me there was some unexpected merriness. In my hotel the night before the inauguration, all the guests were evacuated at 1:45 in the morning. There were fire alarms and flashing lights on each floor, and a public address system instructed us to take the stairs, not the elevators. Hundreds of people wound up outside in the slush, eventually gathering inside the lobby, waiting to find out what next.
The staff--kindly, clucking--tried to figure out if the fire existed and, if so, where it was. Hundreds of inaugural revelers wound up observing each other. Over there on the couch was Warren Buffet in bright blue pajamas and a white hotel robe. James Baker was in trench coat and throat scarf. I remembered my keys and eyeglasses but walked out without my shoes. After a while the "all clear" came,
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
I never cared much for Dean Martin, preferring Tony Bennett myself. And, hey! That song's not so old - to me anyway. :-)
"It is foolhardy to think we can eliminate tyranny from the planet, and foolhardy to make such a task the goal of the United States. The Founders had a far more modest, and realistic, vision: to establish freedom here."
Great comment, by the way. Mind if I add it to the quotes on my profile page?
I don't agree with everything you say, but at least I'll defend your right to say whatever you want without checking for someone else's OK--unlike some of those who believe that your comments ought to be subject to approval by the RNC.
Thanks. Yes, feel free to use the quote.
One of the posts had even been yanked by the mod before I got to see it. Rats. I do so love to be insulted with impunity.
So much for the exchange of intellectual ideas with fellow freepers, eh?
When you boys get beaten in the realm of ideas, you turn to potty language. Really cool.......both of you. We're all impressed.
After reading comments like post 21, then fifty-odd "jealousy, thy name is Noonan" posts, I and a few other poor souls posit that Noonan should be allowed to speak her mind about Bush's address, and that people shouldn't reflexively insult her just because they disagree with her review of this speech, that blind allegiance is foolhardy.
You and your pinged pals call us idiots and tell us we must be joking. You tell us that we're only saying there are blind followers here because WE are personally bitter, and offensive to boot.
Then you act as if we should not reply in kind to comments like that. Someone on the 'bot side goes crying to the mods when you get a taste of what you dish out. The "neener-neener-you-got-pulled-so-you're-guilty" post to which I'm replying is a prime example of a love some of you have for hounding those with whom you disagree, insulting them until you find something offensive enough in their replies to bitch to the mods. Meanwhile, you consider the insults you're lobbing back and forth with your opposition the "exchange of intellectual ideas," and that you are the reasonable parties, while your opening and further posts are insulting us all the way. I always enjoy the laugh when you do actually post something to the effect of this last post, that we're "beaten in the realm of ideas." Let me know when you find a single one of us who agrees with that pie-in-the-sky post.
The worst part is that we AREN'T your opposition and weren't insulting YOU at all--unless you all self-identify with people who ARE blind followers. I speak for myself, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find I speak for others, when I say again that I am only criticizing and attacking the folks who insult Noonan instead of addressing her comments, or insult me. While you and your pals don't seem to think we have any right to even DEFEND her ability to comment without joining DU, and that Noonan should join DU for her sacrilege in criticizing Bush, too, we agree that YOU have an absolute right to disagree with her. But calling her jealous and no conservative and ugly, and calling us idiots or bitter or worse is just not at all what discussion and debate are about. We have every right to demonstrate disdain for those people who believe that debate is about making sure you get to yell loud insults--and instead make ours the louder insult--as opposed to attempting to reason with people who have shown they don't appreciate or understand reasonable discussion at all. That any of you identify with those people who cannot attack her ideas without attacking her person speaks volumes as to your true 'reasonableness.'
Perhaps she speaks with fork-ed tongue. I didn't realize she worked with Blather.
I appreciate your post.
I haven't been following this thread very closely, so I must've missed some of the really obnoxious comments.
When I first heard about this it did surprise me quite a bit. But Noonan's been right on the mark enough in the past that it would be silly to dismiss her completely on this piece alone.
And call me crazy but I still suspect she wasn't *really* upset at the "God-drenched"-ness of the speech so much as some other issues that are personally bothering her. I wish she'd just come out and say it.
May I also add Noonan is far from ugly.
My first response to this was to think: Contemptible! Peggy, "you're such a silly woman! Put de lime in de coconut an' drink 'em bot' up!" But, it has been observed that "in politics, things always happen for a reason." The thing was caculated and calibrated - the question is, why?
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/
Bush to World: Get Real
The consensus on President Bush's second inaugural address seems to be that it was a very idealistic speech, which it was. As to its meaning, however, the president's critics and supporters alike are divided. The New York Times editorial board yawns that Bush simply fulfilled his "role, which was to summon the generalities that unite us":
Once in a long while, a newly sworn-in president moves beyond the deeply felt but slightly bland oratory and says something that people will repeat long after he has moved into history. Mr. Bush's speech did not seem in danger of becoming immortal, but its universal intent suited the day.
The Times' news story, however, says that Bush delivered a memorable speech--but says it in a hilariously backhanded way:
His speech was infused with a deliberate sense of timelessness, and it often seemed as though his words were directed as much to history as to the crowd of invited Republicans, who huddled on the snow-covered lawn beneath the West Front of the Capitol.
And of course it's true that many of the themes the president sounded have been heard in inaugural addresses before, including JFK's in 1961 and Bill Clinton's in 1993. (Homer nods: Yesterday's item, since corrected, erroneously said 1997.)
Yet in part because Bush's rhetoric went further and in part because he has already undertaken so many deeds to match his words, others are accusing him of overreaching. Agence France-Presse reports on British media reaction:
The liberal Guardian summed up the concern in a commentary under the headline "Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world."
It compared the massive fireworks display used in the inauguration celebration to the ordnance US "occupation forces" would expend in Iraq in 24 hours.
"The contrasts between this uninhibited triumphalism and the real world are as wide as the American continent," it said. . . .
In its lead editorial, the conservative Daily Telegraph also wondered whether Bush's brave words could survive the test of reality.
Bush's "ringing encomium of freedom in his inaugural address yesterday faces a cruel and immediate test in Iraq," the Telegraph said.
Also among the skeptics is our own Peggy Noonan:
[Bush declared:] "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world."
Ending tyranny in the world? Well that's an ambition, and if you're going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn't expect we're going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it's earth. . . .
One wonders if [those in the White House] shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.
Carping from the antidemocrats and anti-Republicans who make up the left is to be expected, but criticism from the likes of the Telegraph and Noonan can't be easily dismissed. A couple of points, though, seem worth making.
First, those who fault Bush for an excess of idealism, or an insufficiency of realism, are not grappling with the conceptual breakthrough of his speech, which is to declare the idealism-realism dichotomy a false choice. A key passage:
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
The lesson Bush drew from Sept. 11 is that "realism" is unrealistic--that the "stability" that results from an accommodation with tyranny is illusory. To Bush, there is no fundamental conflict between American ideals and American interests; by promoting the former, we secure the latter. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong, but for now the burden ought to be on those who, in the wake of Sept. 11, hold to a pre-9/11 view of what is "realistic."
Noonan is right that "ending tyranny in the world" is a fantastically ambitious aspiration, one that isn't going to be realized anytime soon. But Bush didn't promise to do it in the next four years or even in our lifetimes. He said it was "the ultimate goal" and "the concentrated work of generations."
"We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery," Bush said--not the only point in his speech in which he invoked the struggle against slavery. And it isn't the first speech in which he made that connection. As he put it in a July 2003 speech at Senegal's Goree Island:
My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all. . . .
With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there is suffering, and liberty where there is tyranny.
Slavery was once an accepted fact of life, and ending it even in America was an epic struggle. Today, however, slavery has been legally abolished everywhere in the world, and it is still practiced only in a few backward lands. One could argue that slavery still exists, in different forms: child labor, prostitution, communism. Perfection is indeed impossible, but progress is still worth pursuing.
Good Find!
I don't doubt that there are some other issues that may come into play with her column, but I think that we should probably give her the benefit of the doubt--we do with other conservative columnists (obviously, "we" meaning MOST posters here). A better way to deal with Noonan's critique is to answer her concerns point by point, instead of by attacking her (you didn't, I'm just reiterating my above point). I do think that her comments about God were comments that she probably did not make about other inaugurals, and I don't think that the language of her Reagan speeches was any more impressive or less sweeping than the language of this one, so her critique is certainly odd there.
I do agree with her, though, that the goal is too much. The same thing was true about JFK's grand statements to the same effect. The U.S. simply CAN'T bear any burden and pay any price to secure liberty and freedom for everyone, and it won't. We will make our choices to intervene as we can, and where we must, but though I appreciate setting that as the goal, I cannot imagine Americans being for an intervention in Rwanda or whatever tinpot backwater without strong reasons to suspect they are a threat to our security.
It's always irked me that JFK made those statements, knowing he would never fully back them up. There is simply no way that, having said that we'll do anything and pay anything to free them, we can avoid pissing off the poor bastards who suffer under these tyrannies and want them overthrown. It makes us look either like we're weak or we're lying that we don't do it ourselves having spouted off. I don't like America fibbing to the world--it diminishes us as a nation to be perceived as a big wuss sellout, yapping about how great liberty is and what we'll do to get it for everyone while our pals China and Russia and Saudi Arabia are clamping down on it.
Thank you.
Something like it should probably be posted every day until the righteous stop persisting in squelching FRee speech on FR.
You and Peggy Noonan have every right to express your opinion. And I have the right to post that I think you and Peggy Noonan wrong. Did you think there is a right to speak without being criticized? That sounds like the Hollywood mind-set.
I am enjoying finding all the wildly divergent interpretations..from German greenies(horrors) to Iranian mullahs and back home to the Washington Post.
Liberty and freedom from tyranny and from slavery for all people, a goal for generations to come, seems to be quite controversial..
That such an idealistic ,but long term, far reaching goal for others should also improve our own and their own security if attained seems to have escaped some democratic countries thinking and that of some pundits.
It is not to be attained by military alone, diplomacy, encouragement, sanctions,economic policy alone.
Someone posted an article saying that the prisoners in the gulag gained courage when their names were read aloud by Jeanne Kirkpatrick in the UN..They were not forgotten.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1326612/posts
Another interesting read.
The Tower of Babel was punishment for sin so that the people could not longer plot to disobey God. It is a stretch, based on your politics to relate it to your own personal view about globalism.
I can debate this point with specific Scriptures that regard God's love for the whole world, and the need for spreading the Gospel to the whole world, but I won't take the time now.
As to what the Scripture says about God and governments, you are absolutely correct. It is the conclusions, once again, that you draw, where we differ.
You have made some large leaps from what is there, once again, based on your political views, to what you believe (and I'm sure some others) as to what it means.
I respect you, Miss American Pie, and sooner or later, we always get down to a good discussion. We are very different. You think I'm wrong. I think you are.
But I would ask you to please stop implying that I am disobeying God in not thinking that George W. Bush is a globalist who is enabling the anti-Christ. It is not through ignorance or disobedience that I don't agree with you.
The Lord has laid upon my heart the need to pray intensely for President Bush, and I am being obedient to that. I pray, not just for blessing for him, but for instruction and correction where he is wrong. As long as you believe, as others do, that I am merely a "hero-worshipper" who doesn't obey God, you will never respect me, and I truly regret that, because I respect you.
The final thing I will say to you, is to ask you to think about your choice of the word "Pharisee" to insult me. Please do some research before you fling that word around again. It made no sense whatsoever, in light of anything I've said on this thread.
If you wish to discuss anything civilly at a future date, please give me a call. Otherwise, I'm not that interesting in reading about how sorry you are feeling for yourself.
I'm surprised you tried to put this shoe on, Miss Marple.
OTOH, I find it hard to believe you so inattentive as to not recognize the change in this forum over the last couple of years.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.