FREEDOM VS. STABILITY:

A Few Words Between Friends (Fred Hiatt, February 15, 2005, Washington Post)

To measure the gap that President Bush will be trying to bridge on his goodwill tour of Europe next week, you could start by counting words.

In his inaugural address Bush used the word "freedom" 27 times. Twenty-one more "freedoms" graced his State of the Union speech.

On Saturday German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's speech was the opening event of the Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual gathering of U.S. and European defense and foreign policy bigwigs. Schroeder (whose speech was read by his defense minister when the chancellor fell ill) touched on many of the same subjects that Bush did: Middle East peace, terrorism, 21st-century threats and 21st-century defenses.

Here's how many times Schroeder used the word "freedom": zero. By contrast he cited "stability" or "instability" or "stabilization" or "stabilizing" eight times.

Of course, the Germans are still bitter that we destabilized them twice and forced freedom down their throats.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 17, 2005 7:27 AM