The American Spectator

/blockquote> br> Next we come to Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman. Like Bush, Truman was at first regarded as a mediocre politician with no interest in and no grasp of foreign policy. But as he watched the Soviet Union forcing Communist regimes on more and more countries in East Europe while also using local Communist parties to subvert countries in other parts of the world, Truman (again like Bush after 9/11) amazed everyone by rising to the challenge. p>It all began on March 12, 1947, when he appealed to Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey, both of which, he said, were threatened by Soviet-led “movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.” He was, he went on, “fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey,” and in spelling these out he enunciated the main principle of what soon was being called the Truman Doctrine: br> /p> blockquote>At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. br> Our way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual freedom, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. br> The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. br> I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. /blockquote> br> Fourteen years later, on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy, like FDR in relation to Wilson, went Truman one better: br>

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

br> These were the most famous words Kennedy was ever to utter, but in connection with the criticisms of Bush’s Second Inaugural as containing too much God and for universalizing the hunger for freedom, it is worth quoting the much less familiar passage that led up to them: br>