I didn't know how pleased, until I read this. Hugh Hewitt read it on the air, but sometimes it doesn't seem like he gets to the root of things with his analyses.
The highlight of the speech was this remarkable passage, strategically placed near the end:
"Americans, of all people, should not be surprised by freedom's power. A nation founded on the universal claim of individual rights should not be surprised when other people claim those rights."
...
Terminology is important. The term "individual rights," as it gets more use and acceptance, orients people to the individualist frame of reference, rescuing social-political thought from collectivist practice of thinking in terms of community, race, or family.
But more than that, Bush has now stated that America was founded upon individual rights. In an age in which intellectuals vilify America as the most violent, racist, imperialist nation in history, it takes courage to proudly assert that America was founded upon the principle of rights. Making that point means something; it takes a stand.
I'm also pleased with the appointments of John Bolton to the UN and Wolfowitz to the World Bank.
Here's a 'graph on Bolton from that link:
As part of the Republican Party's legal team, headed by former Secretary of State Baker, Bolton's boss during the George H.W. Bush administration, Bolton put his hard-ball approach to partisan politics to work. In a complimentary article on Bolton, the Wall Street Journal in July 2002 reported that Bolton's "most memorable moment came after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to the recount, when Mr. Bolton strode into a Tallahassee library, where the count was still going on, and declared: 'I'm with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the vote'."
I rather prefer what Mark Steyn said. Whoops. Can't find it.
There's a great article in the Asia Times on Wolfowitz. The first half is all con, the second half seems pretty positive. They probably hoped you'd get bored by then.
This is supposed to be an objection:
Wolfowitz is an architect of many of the post-invasion policies in Iraq, including privatization, deregulation and commodification of social services and public goods, along with plans to end subsidies that sustain millions of Iraqi citizens. "Wolfowitz's role in promoting economic changes in Iraq and elsewhere suggest he would work to push the bank to focus even more on imposing the so-called 'structural adjustment' policies like forced privatization and indiscriminate trade liberalization, policies which have failed to create growth and have exacerbated poverty across the globe," said Neil Watkins, national coordinator for the anti-debt campaigning group Jubilee USA Network
Failed, eh? I don't see most of the globe trying them.
These 50 Years Is Enough Network people actually seem pretty sharp:
"Paul Wolfowitz is the most controversial choice Bush could have made," said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network. "As the most prominent advocate of imposing the US's will on the world, this appointment signals to developing countries that the US is just as serious about imposing its will on borrowers from the World Bank as on the countries of the Middle East," she added.
I fear that too, though I agree that some principles are worth fighting for. Mostly the matters enumerated by Neil Watkins above. The reason the World Bank and the IMF have been ineffective is that they loan money to governments, which, when they aren't run by tyrants and oligarchs (read kleptocrats) are run by people who think that money is evil and don't understand how to use it. Money has to be invested in production.
I'm also given to understand that exporters in the US lobby hard to see that money come back to American producers and an awful lot of Americans think this is a good thing. It's giving them a fish rather than teaching them to fish.
It's a subsidy which acts just like all subsidies, warping consumption patterns from needs to goofy fads and fashions that can change with the wind direction. (That's sort of the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle.) Then the note comes due and a bunch of people who've become experts at consuming our stuff and lost their expertise at producing their own stuff have to pay up. And they can't. They have nothing to sell... except themselves, maybe. This is not an improvement in their condition and harms our relations with them.
I don't like to see people defaulting on loans or failing to pay their debts, but the bank that loans money out to bad credit risks (like tyrannical governments - "But they promised they'd change!") gets what it deserves when they go bankrupt.
A little farther down, a positive tone:
But some economists argue against his lack of experience in development and poverty issues. "His term as ambassador to Indonesia taught him a lot about development," said Peter Timmer, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington. "My personal sense is he got the idea of what a liberal Muslim society would look like by working in Indonesia. I honestly think he is going to surprise people and turn out to be quite effective," said Timmer, who worked as a development economist in Indonesia while Wolfowitz was ambassador, and later served on academic committees with him.
And a little flip from this bunch, 50 Years Is Enough Network, that I like:
But some longtime critics of the bank see a silver lining to the controversial nomination. "If confirmed, we would no longer have to work so hard to convince people that the World Bank is an instrument of US foreign and economic policy," said Soren Ambrose, senior policy analyst with the 50 Years Is Enough Network. "Wolfowitz has no experience in development, just a fierce ideological dedication to hardcore neo-liberal economics and US domination. In other words, between exposing the true dangers of the lack of democracy at the World Bank and putting the most visible symbol of US imperialism in the most prominent position in international development, President Bush will accomplish more in de-legitimizing the World Bank than any other single action ever could," said Ambrose.
No guarantee that that's not his goal. Or a positive possibility if Wolfowitz can't turn things around there.
Kind of like my year in MPIRG.
