Greg Ransom
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America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home, the unfinished work of AmericanGeorge Orwell made me do it.freedomsocial democracy. In a world moving towardlibertysocial democracy, we are determined to show the meaning and promise oflibertythe welfare state.In America's ideal of
freedomthe welfare state, citizens find the dignity and security of economicindependencedependence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition oflibertyvote buying that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act and the G.I. Bill of Rights.And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. To give every American a stake in
the promise and future of our countryan ever expanding Federal government, we will bring the higheststandardsspending levels to our schools and buildan ownershipa government handout society. We willwidenexpand subsidy programs for the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance preparing our people for the challenges of life in afree societywelfare state. By making every citizenan agent of his or her own destinydependent on government assistance, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear, and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt says, "It is a speech that brought together the greatest themes of Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR, Truman and JFK." That would be four Democrats and two expand the government Republicans.
UPDATE II: Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, "A Conservative President?":
Aw, gee. He’s our guy, I like him .. But the speech was in almost no way that of a conservative. To the contrary. It amounted to a thoroughgoing exaltation of the state.Andrew Sullivan:Bush has just announced that we must remake the entire third world in order to feel safe in our own homes, and he has done so without sounding a single note of reluctance or hesitation. This overturns the nation’s fundamental stance toward foreign policy since its inception. Washington warned of "foreign entanglements." The second President Adams asserted that "we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." During the Cold War, even Republican presidents made it clear that we played our large role upon the world stage only to defend ourselves and our allies, seeking to changed the world by our example rather than by force ..
On domestic policy, a "broader definition of liberty?" Citing as useful precedents the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act, and the G. I. Bill? Compare what Bush said today with the inaugural address of Lyndon Baines Johnson and the first inaugural address of Ronald Reagan and you'll find that Bush sounds much, much more like LBJ. He as much as announced that from now on the GOP will be a party of big government .. Bush may yet win critical conservative victories in this second term — notably by managing to enact private retirement accounts. But his "broader definition of liberty" makes me mighty nervous.
Tell me I'm wrong. Please.
Bush is a Wilsonian liberal abroad and a Bismarckian at home.UPDATE III: An opposing view from Ed Morrissey:
this might be one of the most radically classical-liberal American speeches in a generation.President Bush spoke strongest when he said the following:
We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty. When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength - tested, but not weary - we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.Perhaps these are the words that moved Ed. Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute thinks Bush is subverting -- not embracing -- the Roosevelt legacy:
Then comes the most problematic—and ambitious—part of the speech, translating our world commitments to the "essential work at home." Here he sees a "broader vision of liberty" behind Lincoln's Homestead Act and FDR's Social Security Act and GI Bill of Rights. That vision leads to "reforming great institutions [e.g., Social Security] to serve the needs of our time." Moreover, "by making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear and make our society more prosperous and just and equal." Is Bush captured by FDR ("freedom from want and fear" and the use of "equal," hinting at the legitimacy of redistribution) or does his means, the focus on individual rights, subvert FDR by appealing beyond him to the Jeffersonian-Lincolnian understanding of the Declaration?Posted by Greg RansomIs this an extension of FDR's "second bill of rights," one assuring security, which he proposed because the Founders' political rights "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness"? FDR asserts, "We have come to the clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist with economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.'" Sixty years ago FDR concluded, in his January 11, 1944 address to Congress, "unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world."
Bush's speech should be read as a reply to FDR and an attempted reversal of the process he started domestically, why affirming its international presence but bypassing the United Nations FDR supported. Bush would maintain America as a force in the world and use that commitment to bring more freedom to America. Bush appears to be aiming at a grand political realignment here, one that questions the very basis of the Progressivism that undermined American constitutionalism. What does such a realignment involve? As America's preeminent Lincoln scholar Harry V. Jaffa has argued (see Equality and Liberty), the American political landscape has been transformed by three critical elections that have produced realignments: the elections of Jefferson in 1800, Lincoln in 1860, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Further, Jaffa maintains, each of these realignments has been based on reinterpretations of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. For Jefferson, his election meant the Declaration's vindication of limited government. For Lincoln, the Declaration's principle of equality truly would apply to all men and self-government would be legitimated. FDR (aided by Woodrow Wilson) transformed the earlier understanding of equality by making the Declaration an instrument of class warfare and a means of overthrowing limited government.
Bush's challenge is to overthrow the FDR legacy. It appears he knows what he's doing. In his New Yorker profile of Bush advisor Karl Rove, Nicholas Lemann concludes that "Rove's Republican-majority America would be not just pre-Great Society, and not just pre-New Deal, but pre-Progressive era…. Rove's intellectual hero is James Madison."
