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Friday, January 21, 2005

# Posted 1:45 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

COMPARE BUSH'S ADDRESS TO REAGAN'S SECOND INAUGURAL: Reagan's emphasis is on freedom from government at home, an idea that Bush touched upon indirectly at best. Yet Reagan devoted one critical paragraph to the ideal of freedom abroad. He declared that:

We strive for peace and security, heartened by the changes all around us. Since the turn of the century, the number of democracies in the world has grown fourfold. Human freedom is on the march, and nowhere more so than in our own hemisphere. Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress.

America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world's only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace. Every blow we inflict against poverty will be a blow against its dark allies of oppression and war. Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.

This is the seed from which Bush's rhetoric of freedom has grown. Yet as Reagan learned, freedom is easier said than done.
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