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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (367859)	3/7/2003 1:56:27 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Thank you M. That is an amazing piece. I really enjoyed reading it. 3bruces.com .... the last few paragraphs. In the United States of today there is an unprecedented coincidence of supreme military might and simple ethical right. Conservatives cleave to the former, liberals to the latter. But they are absolutely inextricably linked. For our might requires our ethical right-only a fundamentally just society could hold together 300,000,000 people of every imaginable race and creed with the sheer massive stability that has characterized our country for 137 years. This is an achievement rendered possible only by a judicious balancing of an enormous diversity of social forces, and by a leadership that, despite some glaring exceptions, has been unparalleled for its simple sense of the realistic-for knowing the difference between fantasy and reality, and sticking as close to the latter as possible. Reality can inflict harsh punishment on racial hatred, as it inflicted on Nazi Germany, and harsh punishments for willfully violating the economic laws that govern human nature, as it did on Soviet Communism. And it inflicted a harsh punishment on us for our involvement in Vietnam-a lesson in the perilous fallacies of Wilsonian idealism. We cannot impose all our values on others-but we will not be able to continue existing unless we are able to impose a few. Let us make these the right ones. From the end of the twentieth century Hegel's famous dictum, "World History is World Judgment," looks different than it did in 1942. And this difference should sober everyone. There was nothing inevitable in the path that took us from 1942 to 2002. And there is nothing inevitable in the path that leads into the future. If it is to be a path fit to be walked by humanity, it must first cleared of many obstacles-and liberals exist to insist that these obstacles must be cleared. But it is a path that can only be cleared by the unflinching willingness to use power when there is simply no alternative. Reason is always better, but not always sufficient. And this is what conservatives must insist on. You may regard the path the world took from 1942 to today as the outcome of some inevitable historical process. I disagree. We are the beneficiaries of a world-historical serendipity. And so is the world, whether the world knows it or not. August 14, 2002 Stone Mountain