THE DEMOCRATIC FAITH:

Wilson, FDR, Truman, Bush: A "messianic militarist" in the White House? It's happened before. (JOSEPH LOCONTE, May 14, 2004, Wall Street Journal)

"These are times in which we could literally change the world by the spread of freedom," President Bush told supporters last week at a Wisconsin rally. "Freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." In such declarations--and they are frequent from Mr. Bush--critics see a "messianic militarist" at work, to borrow a phase from Ralph Nader.

By historical standards, however, Mr. Bush's political ideals are in the mainstream of presidential rhetoric. Every U.S. president, Democrat and Republican, has upheld the sacred dignity of the individual as an essential tenet of the nation's political creed. Even John Kennedy, who famously denied that his Catholic faith would influence his politics, denounced communism by asserting that "the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." [...]

Follow the logic of Mr. Bush's detractors, and most of the country's leaders look like messianic zealots. Calvin Coolidge, who approved the 1928 Pact of Paris, a quixotic attempt to persuade nations to renounce war, saw a divine role for the U.S. in such a peace-keeping mission. "America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force," he said. "The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but with the cross."

Dwight Eisenhower, known for his modest attachment to "religion in general," would be savaged today for describing the Cold War in biblical terms. "We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history," he said in 1953. "Destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world's leadership." Ronald Reagan, of course, was mocked for calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire"--exactly what those who suffered under its rule knew it to be. [...]

Nazism and communism confronted American presidents with profoundly malignant, secular ideologies. In a similar way, the attacks of 9/11 thrust upon Mr. Bush the reality of a malevolent Islamic radicalism. In each case the language of the materialist seems unfit to address the evil of the hour; in each case our leaders turn instinctively to religious ideals. "As we meet the terror and violence of the world," Mr. Bush told an audience last November, "we can be certain the author of freedom is not indifferent to the fate of freedom."

Is it hubris to talk this way? Perhaps, but most Americans don't live in an existentialist universe; they believe in moral truths, embedded in human nature and validated by nature's God. This is the touchstone of America's democratic faith. The nation's leaders have sometimes failed miserably to advance this vision of freedom in the world, but it's important to ask what the world would be like without it.

In fact, it is those who oppose this vision who are departing from American tradition.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 21, 2004 7:51 PM