by Dante Chinni

Christian Science Monitor

01/24/05

Say what you will about President Bush's second inaugural speech, as rhetoric goes, it was a fine effort. The president is for freedom and wants to make the world freer. He doesn't want to tell the world what to do with freedom -- that's up to the newly freed folks, as he might say. ...

OK, there were a few points to quibble on. There were the obvious contradictions between the president's stated goals and the reality of his first term. Freedom, after all, isn't exactly on the march in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or China or even Russia for that matter. ... There was [also] the weird incongruity of talking about 'oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right,' as the president said, in a city where the parade route was essentially walled off from the rest of the city. No ticket? Find a TV...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0125/p09s01-codc.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp