"We have seen our vulnerability – and we have seen its deepest source.
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary.
The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.
We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery.
All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors.
The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”
Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom’s enemies.
the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies.
Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives
By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny,
Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom.
it is human choices that move events
America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof.
-Mostly these seem unsettling becasue they hint of imperialism and humanism, but maybe they mean something else to you.
2 comments:
I was at work and was unable to hear or see his speech.
but...
I saw over at strangewomenlyinginponds.typepad.com, President Bush's speech was largely based on a book he recently read: The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny & Terror.
Peggy Noonan thinks he over did it. http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006184
Sometimes Bush irritates me with his "soggy" conservatism on issues like pushing Islam as a religion of peace, and his complete lack of desire to truly fix our illegal immigration issues.
However, things could be a whole lot worse. President Kerry anyone? Humanism and social imperialism for all!
Here's a positive take on the president's speech:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/009284.php
"We have done these things before; we justified them in the name of a higher cause: trade, security, anticommunism. But Bush notes that, in the long run, we cannot rely on trade with dictatorships; and tyranny (not poverty) begets terrorism, which threatens America's security; and we cannot fight an ideology like Communism -- or militant Islamism -- without an equally robust ideology of our own... you can't defeat something with nothing. Our "something" is liberty; and without it, we are nothing more than the new Roman Empire, adrift in an ocean of relativism and cynical realism."
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