VIEW MASTER:

Spreading democracy (Tod Lindberg, 1/17/05, Washington Times)

During the remarkable round of interviews he gave to major newspapers last week, President Bush spoke often of his commitment to the spread of democracy, sometimes in startling terms. As he told the Wall Street Journal in an aside after the end of the formal interview, "I understand there are many who say 'Bush is wrong.' I assume I'm right. It's exciting to be part of stimulating a debate of such significance. It really is the philosophical argument of the age." I don't know which is the more remarkable: An American president who thinks in terms of "the philosophical argument of the age." Or that, well, yes, Mr. Bush is right, the question of the spread of democracy really is the philosophical argument of the age.

Mr. Bush has picked his side: He stands for the promotion of democracy and, fresh from his own re-election, has reaffirmed his commitment of the United States to the cause of its promotion. So we have the leader of the world's biggest power committing it to securing "the Blessings of Liberty" — as the Constitution puts it — not just "to ourselves and our Posterity" but across the globe.

Mr. Bush thinks big. Some might have imagined the war on terror to have been his great project and the one on which his legacy would stand or fall. But here, he has subsumed even that task under the broader "philosophical argument of the age": The best weapon against terror is political participation of the sort only democracy allows. Terror is born of alienation from the political process, from denial of the ability to participate in making the decisions that govern one's life.

It's actually not the argument of the age, but of Creation. All of existence boils down to one simple contest between two competing human impulses: that towards freedom and that towards security. From the Fall to the Inaugural every minute of every day of our lives reflects the struggle to strike the proper balance between Freedom and Security.

This is why politics has always divided in two--the Right is essentially made up of those who would tilt the balance towards Freedom, the Left those who would tilt towards Security. Note that there is nothing perjorative in this characterization--Freedom is not a superior value in any absolute sense, though we conservatives prefer it. Without some significant level of Security there could be no Freedom, so, other than Libertarians, even the Right incorporates much Security into its political program. And, of course, even Christ told us to render unto Caesar. Our politics--all politics--would be a good deal less feverish if both sides could recognize that the other seeks to vindicate a desire that both share, just with different emphases.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 21, 2005 12:23 PM