AN AMERICAN REVOLUTION

by James K. Sweeney
November 4, 2003

President Bush’s recent speech was an event insufficiently noted and praised. It is difficult to find the full text or a transcript of the speech on the Internet. That is a pity as the speech was daunting in its vision. The President said nothing less than that the United States was henceforth committed, by its national policy, to the reversal of tyrannical, despotic and undemocratic governments of the Middle East. By extension, the President was applying that policy to all undemocratic governments, whether Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or China.

Mr. Bush said:

[T]he United States has adopted a new policy: a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before and it will yield the same results ... The advance of freedom is the calling of our time. It is the calling of our country. [Emphasis added.]

Now that is a policy liberals, conservatives, libertarians, greens and all Americans can and should support fully, enthusiastically and permanently.

Mr. Bush did not set out any priority or timetable. In my view, none is needed. He identified the Middle East and surely he includes North Korea as front and center on his presidential schedule. To actually succeed installing regime changes in one or two of that gaggle of gruesome governments would indeed be miraculous. Once the remaining rulers saw change of such magnitude even beginning elsewhere, they would begin their own timid changes or run like the devil. Here is a perfect place for the adage that the value of Damocles’ sword is not so much that it falls but that it hangs. It is the old domino theory writ large.

Specifically, the President called for recognition that life, liberty and the right to property, under the rule of the same law for all, not just the few, is the duty of a government empowered by the free consent of the governed. Mr. Bush said: “This is not the path to Utopia, but it’s the only path to national success and dignity.”

These are the principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal....” These are the words of a man who believes in their universal application. This is the policy of the world’s most admired and envied nation. This is the stuff of true and just revolution. It cannot yet be heard in many parts of the world but, as it moves inexorably onward, more and more people will hear and reply to the tocsin of freedom, self-determination and democratic government. Free people never freely consent to enslavement. Mr. Bush has set America’s course simple: All must be free; without exception.

It may be true, as some claim, that Mr. Bush is no genius. It may be true, as all hear, that Mr. Bush is no Demosthenes. It is decidedly true, as tyrants have begun to believe, that Mr. Bush acts as he speaks. He actually says that which he believes. And, mirabile dictu, he then goes on and does what he said he would do. The conventional political wisdom is that to get along, go along. George Bush is not a conventional politician.

The President rattled no sabers; he posited no explicit threat to a specific country or tyrant. Rather, he challenged all to do good, not merely to do well, and said that henceforth this would be the policy of the United States. The message is clear. It is the political religion of George Bush, an Act of Faith in a creed called compassionate conservatism.

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