Posted on 01/21/2005 12:29:43 PM PST by baseball_fan
The inaugural address was in several respects confusing. The arresting feature of it was of course the exuberant idealism. But one wonders whether signals were crossed in its production, and a lead here is some of the language used.
The commentators divulged that the speech was unusual especially in one respect, namely that President Bush turned his attention to it the very next day after his reelection. Peggy Noonan and Karen Hughes, speaking in different television studios, agreed that this was unusual. Presidents attach great importance to inaugural addresses, but they don’t, as a rule, begin to think about them on the first Wednesday after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But in this case, that is evidently what happened. And this leads the observer to wonder about some of the formulations that were used, and clumsiness that was tolerated.
Mr. Bush said that “whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny.” You can simmer in resentment, but not in tyranny. He said that every man and woman on this earth has “matchless value.” What does that mean? His most solemn duty as President, he said, was to protect America from “emerging threats.” Did he mean, guard against emerging threats? He told the world that “there can be no human rights without human liberty.” But that isn’t true. The acknowledgment of human rights leads to the realization of human liberty. “The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people you must learn to trust them.” What is a “habit of control”?
An inaugural address is a deliberate statement, not an improvisation. Having been informed about how long the president spent in preparing it, the listener is invited to pay special attention to its message...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
It looks like the article did not require a subscription after all:
"What Is Bush Saying?
The inaugural address and the language used.
The inaugural address was in several respects confusing. The arresting feature of it was of course the exuberant idealism. But one wonders whether signals were crossed in its production, and a lead here is some of the language used.
The commentators divulged that the speech was unusual especially in one respect, namely that President Bush turned his attention to it the very next day after his reelection. Peggy Noonan and Karen Hughes, speaking in different television studios, agreed that this was unusual. Presidents attach great importance to inaugural addresses, but they don’t, as a rule, begin to think about them on the first Wednesday after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But in this case, that is evidently what happened. And this leads the observer to wonder about some of the formulations that were used, and clumsiness that was tolerated.
Mr. Bush said that “whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny.” You can simmer in resentment, but not in tyranny. He said that every man and woman on this earth has “matchless value.” What does that mean? His most solemn duty as President, he said, was to protect America from “emerging threats.” Did he mean, guard against emerging threats? He told the world that “there can be no human rights without human liberty.” But that isn’t true. The acknowledgment of human rights leads to the realization of human liberty. “The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people you must learn to trust them.” What is a “habit of control”?
An inaugural address is a deliberate statement, not an improvisation. Having been informed about how long the president spent in preparing it, the listener is invited to pay special attention to its message and the language in which it is conveyed.
The speech was the most committed endorsement of international human liberty ever made at an inaugural ceremony. The president seemed to be saying that unless liberty survives elsewhere, our own is vulnerable. He said that U.S. policy is “to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture.” But that, of course, other nations and other cultures will “find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.”
The age-old aphorism says that hard cases make bad law. The meaning of this is that complexities piled on top of complexities can cause the governing law to gaggle in confusion. There is — let’s demonstrate — a law against murder. But how do you deal with the man who fired the bullet at the cuckolder in mid-stroke, egged on to do so by his daughter, who is suffering from a fatal illness? But even granted the difficulties in applying the Bush code everywhere, the American realist inevitably asked himself questions, upon hearing the soaring, Biblical rhetoric of the president. How to apply the presidential criteria?
Okay. Never mind the tyrannies in spotty little states in Africa. Those cases are so hard as to make very bad law. A foreign policy that insists on the hygiene of the Central African Republic may be asking too much.
But what about China? Is it U.S. policy to importune Chinese dissidents “to start on this journey of progress and justice”? How will we manifest our readiness to “walk at [their] side”?
China, so massive, is maybe too massive a challenge for our liberationist policy, even as the Central African Republic is too exiguous. Then what about Saudi Arabia? Here is a country embedded in oppression. Does President Bush really intend to make a point of this? Where? At the U.N.? At the Organization of African Unity? Will we refuse to buy Saudi oil?
The sentiments of President Bush are fine, and his sincerity was transparent. But in speaking about bringing liberty to the rest of the world, he could have gone at it more platonically: but this would have required him to corral his enthusiasm for liberty everywhere with appropriately moderate rhetoric.
This he seemed resolute in not doing. But the confusion in language in the speech itself leaves some listeners wondering whether last-minute thoughts were had, which failed to iron out the policy statements, even as they had failed to iron out the language."
Safire vs Buckley.
Rush vs Noonan.
I had no trouble understanding this speech. Seems Americans were in agreement.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1325652/posts
Buckley querries words. Noonan preaches pessimism and asks less focus on God.
Rush and Safire focus on the heart of the speech. It's substance. It's vision. I know where I stand, and thankfully we now know where Noonan and Buckley stand.
Thinking out Iraq...to withdraw or not?
Buckley is hesitantly crying 'Uncle'.
Bush is saying 'full steam ahead'.
The other thing that the nitpickers misunderstood was that Bush was not talking about accomplishing all of that during his Presidency alone. He was talking about the principles and end goals that would guide his decisions. He was not saying that he was going to end all tyranny within four years.
"Buckley must really be getting senile. President Bush's speech was crystal clear: It's open season on the bad guys, and we're going to roll them back like no one's business."
That's not it. Buckley understood the speech, like Noonan. They didn't LIKE it. There exists a division within American conservatism, between those some call the "neoconservatives" and the "traditional" conservatives (including "paleo-" conservatives). Traditional conservatives never liked "nation building", thinking it not realistic. Neoconservatives think that it is the only realistic way to have peace in the long term.
Traditional conservatives have been sniping at the "Neocons" in the Bush Administration for a long time: Rumsfeld and Cheney, mutedly, Wolfowitz more openly (because he is politically expendable).
Traditional conservatives could always paint George Bush as being much more of a middle-of-the-road conservative, being pushed further to the Neoconservative side because of the weight of so many advisors.
With this speech, which Bush operatives say the President has planned for a month, Bush just squarely and specifically declared that he, personally, is a Neocon, that he himself, personally, believes in nation building.
Traditional conservatives do not like that, at all, because it means that the Republican Party itself is a ship being intentionally steered by its captain into waters they think are full of shoals. So they are expressing their frustration. President Bush is himself, personally, unambiguously a Neocon, and American policy is going to be Neoconservative - full stop - for the next four years. Traditional conservatives have to decide whether they are going to quietly oppose the policies of their party, or grudgingly accept the new party line, which Bush just unambiguously declared and underlined three times. Buckley, and even Limbaugh, have to decide whether to divide their party or to support a policy of intentional, overt nationbuilding which they have long opposed.
My bet is that they will grumble and grouse, per Noonan's and Buckley's articles, but go along. What choice do they have?
Cut the guy some slack, he didn't write it, he just read it or possibly repeated it.
At least dick morris liked it.
Example of "boilerplate" or "platitudes" in the speech, please.
It would have been better stated had Bush said:
"... they simmer in resentment as they suffer under tyranny."
Dude, Pub is a P.E. (Professional Engineer) so he is pretty brillant. BTW, I agree with Buckley.
Perhaps, Mr. Buckley, he was referring to the fact the creator endowed every human being with a special purpose which is uniquely theirs, unlike any other, i.e "matchless".
Perhaps.
...because Buckley's so well-known for his knack for speaking plainly, clearly, and so all can understand?
Dan
The countries that produce terrorists have, for the most part, given their people no real choices in life. If perhaps some of these young men were given the opportunity to make something of themselves, or to even simply have a productive job, maybe they would want to live. Education is the real problem, and countries that mandate schools that teach only the Koran (sitting on the floor, rocking and learning to hate the West), create wave after wave of monsters who think killing infidels is noble. It is worth a shot, since whatever they have been doing does not seem to encourage respect for human life. The only other answer is carpet bombing, and I don't think that would be well received. ;)
And btw, it is really petty and juvenile for you to characterize those who were inspired by the speech as "knee jerk".
I, for example, can expound on the greatness of the speech citing examples while you hurl out baseless charges of "boilerplate" without buttressing your charge at all.
Pity.
Buckley is one of them there, what you call, intellectuals, albeit one of conservative stripes. Intellectuals have a hard time with straight talk. They prefer pontification, embellishment, and bloviating. They use Cadillac words when Chevy words are sufficient. They get lost and confused when they hear simplistic matter-of-fact speech such as, America - good, terrorists - evil, freedom - good, tyranny - bad. It just blows their gourd.
Whatever. I understood what he was saying and thought he did a damn fine job doing it.
Pffft!
Well, let's start with not being able to simmer in tyranny. Why not? Do you thing that the people of Venezuela have not been simmering in tyranny, that fear of Chavez has not prevented a full boil of revolt?
lOL. Very well put, I may steal this post one day.
All this brouhaha about the speech baffles me. IT WAS A SPEECH. My Gosh.
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