Ohioan:It is not a benign mindset that keeps trying to justify such really contemptible experiments.
You take a short snatch of his out of context and a shorter snatch of mine out of context, and think you have made a point. Let us see:
President Bush: Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. 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.
Here you have picked something that sounds reasonable--until put into the context of the rest of the speech, where he uses Freedom in many and conflicting senses. But consider the implied premise, even in this one brief tempering passage--he has already formed the judgment that many of the peoples he is concerned with have not already found "their own voice," attained "their own freedom," and made "their own way." You know, every strong Government is not hated by its people. Many monarchies, for example, enjoy huge popular support. Just who is an American President to be judging, whether other peoples, in very different parts of the world, have or have not attained their freedom?
Consider our own history. Freedom for the Pilgrims in Massachusetts was the ability have their own Puritan society, where one could be put in stocks and humiliated for slight indiscretions that offended the religious dogma. Were they not enjoying the freedom they had attained by risking great hardship and danger, to be free of more permissive neighbors in the Old World?
William Flax