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.
Same here.
And altho' some may think this "heretical", I just didn't take President Bush's address as *dead seriously* as others seem to have taken it. I view the whole event as being something Presidents have to do as a matter of tradition, standing before the American people and attempting to encourage them with eloquent words and ambitious ideas that may not actually come to fruition.