A startling defection in the neocon ranks

Echoing VFR, Peggy Noonan derides President Bush’s second inaugural address for its arrogant global utopianism. She even describes his rhetoric as “boilerplate.” This is the first critical thinking I’ve seen from Miss Sentimentality since, since I can’t remember when—and critical of the democratist Bush ideology, no less. But where has Noonan been? Bush been sounding off this way for the last three years, and she’s been an adoring fan of his all along. Perhaps it’s just a matter of his having gone “too far” this time. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pope Norman Podhoretz has already been on the phone this morning with the errant Noonan, or perhaps with intermediaries in the neoconservative establishment, to let her know of his displeasure. Having such a prominent Bush fan depart so publicly from the One True Faith is not acceptable.

Here are excerpts from her column:

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush’s second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

History is dynamic and changeable. On the other hand, some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven.

The president’s speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. “The Author of Liberty.” “God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind … the longing of the soul.”

It seemed a document produced by a White House on a mission. The United States, the speech said, has put the world on notice: Good governments that are just to their people are our friends, and those that are not are, essentially, not. We know the way: democracy. The president told every nondemocratic government in the world to shape up. “Success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people.”

The speech did not deal with specifics—9/11, terrorism, particular alliances, Iraq. It was, instead, assertively abstract.

“We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.” “Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self government… . Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.” “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world.”

Ending tyranny in the world? Well that’s an ambition, and if you’re going to have an ambition it might as well be a big one. But this declaration, which is not wrong by any means, seemed to me to land somewhere between dreamy and disturbing. Tyranny is a very bad thing and quite wicked, but one doesn’t expect we’re going to eradicate it any time soon. Again, this is not heaven, it’s earth.

… And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. “Renewed in our strength—tested, but not weary—we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

This is—how else to put it?—over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past “mission inebriation.” A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn’t ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 21, 2005 09:40 AM | Send