The Summers storm might have been easy to forecast. But it says less, in the end, about the Harvard president than it does about the unwillingness of the modern academy to tolerate the kind of freewheeling inquiry that academics and intellectuals above all ought to prize rather than revile.

It is of course possible to doubt the significance of establishing a long-term commitment to ending tyrannies--if it's so long term, and has no or little practical relevance to the policies of the day, what does it matter? I have some sympathy for this view myself. On the other hand, consider Reagan's denunciation of the "evil empire" and refusal to accede to permanent co-existence. Saying these things obviously did not commit Reagan to immediate military action to overthrow the Soviet regime. Yet his rhetoric was not, for that reason, unimportant.

That said, I lean toward being moderately critical of the speech. I'll have more to say about its foreign-policy dimension in the next issue of NR. Here I'll just say a bit about the domestic portion--and return to the vexed question of whether Bush is a "big government conservative." If the president were to succeed in reducing Social Security benefits by $10-11 trillion in present-value terms, that would be a pretty substantial victory for smaller government. Personal accounts for Social Security, and personal ownership of health insurance, are not "Bismarckian" policies. A characterization of Bush's politics that ignores those policies is missing a lot about him and his administration.

Bush's isn't going to lead a crusade to slash the federal budget and close down agencies and departments. If he tried, he would fail. But he could (note that I'm saying "could," not "will") nonetheless do a lot to shrink government over the long run.

my prediction...the student lead revolution that will take place in Iran over the next 4 years will look back on Jan. 20, 2005 as the day George Bush told them that the United States of American was ready to aid them in their cause of bringing freedom to their nation, and that this speech will be the catalyst for their action.

Peter - All fair points. However, I'm kind of surprised you don't detect even the faintest whiff of Reaganism in that speech. Reagan could chuck quite a few words in the air himself -- as you well know having written so many of them. But he was quite practical about translating those words into policy. I don't know that anyone thinks Bush is going to send tanks into Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan tomorrow in order to be consistent with his speech. But, the more I think about it the more I believe that his speech was intended for a global and transgenerational audience. He was picking sides, throwing down the gauntlet, laying out first principles etc. I really would be surprised if that address isn't being cursed by mullahs and murderers around the world. You know umpteen times more about presidential rhetoric than I do, but I'm not sure that the intended audience was you, Peggy and WFB -- or that it should have been. Yes, he wrote a check yesterday we can never literally cash, but I like the dogma he laid out. And if we have to make practical concessions to reality every now and then -- and be called hypocritical for it -- that's fine by me. I'd rather fall short of that principle every now and then than stick to the wrong principles like glue.

The sign pointing to the sunny uplands of history is still pointing in the right direction even if it doesn't go there itself.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally Sir, judges. You heard Senator Reid there, filibusters are back and he says Republicans will rue the day if they use the so-called nuclear option to prevent filibusters. Do you have enough Republican votes to carry out that option if you want to?

SENATOR BILL FRIST: Yeah, first of all, the nuclear option was in the last Congress where 200 years of tradition and precedent were destroyed by the other side of the aisle by not giving a nominee from the president who has majority support an up or down vote. First time in 200, 200 years, and that happened in the last Congress. That was the big change. My goal, working with Harry Reid who I have tremendous respect for, in this new climate -- optimistic climate -- looking ahead to basically just agree that every nominee coming from the president who -- judicial nominee, not legislative filibuster but judicial nominees -- who make it through the system, not only do they not have to be approved, but all they have to agree to do is give them an up or down vote, and I think that that's what we'll see. I think everybody wants to be more reasonable. The American people deserve it. That's what they want.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, we'll see if you're right. Senator Frist, thank you very much.

Yet another theocrat moment from the top mullah:

"A FATWA against the author Salman Rushdie was reaffirmed by Iran’s spiritual leader last night in a message to Muslim pilgrims. British officials anxiously played down comments after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Muslims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Rushdie was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, according to the Iranian media."

Richard Samuelson agrees with my response to Peter Robinson and forwarded me a letter to the editor he wrote to Commentary addressing Norman Podhoretz's similar invocation of John Quincy Adams. Here's the letter:

To the Editor:

In his recent essay, "Strange Bedfellows: A Guide to the New Foreign-Policy Debates," Norman Podhoretz does his customary insightful job. In the spirit of his essay, I thought I would like to add one bit of evidence. Mr. Podhoretz points out that "when John Quincy Adams cautioned against going ‘abroad in search of monsters to destroy,’ he was not thinking of driving foreign merchants our of business." Actually, Adams’ tended even less to isolationism than Mr. Podhoretz implied.

Many people quote the strictures Adams expressed against entangling the U.S. in European affairs, which come from his July 4th address in 1821. Few, however, note that a few years later Adams cautioned against isolationism. In his Farewell Address, Washington said Americans should have "as little political connection as possible" with Europe. President Adams argued in 1826 that Washington was giving the prudent counsel of the day, not an eternal rule for American foreign policy. "I can not overlook the reflection that the counsel of Washington in that instance, like all the counsels of wisdom, was founded upon the circumstances in which our country and the world around us were situated at the time when it was given. . . . [But] compare our situation and the circumstances of that time with those of the present day, and what, from the very words of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen now?"

Adams went on to argue that the situation in his day was still such that relative non-engagement in European political affairs was prudent, but he argued that the U.S. had a duty to the new republics in South America because "we have an immensely growing commercial, and must have and have already important political, connections; with reference to whom our situation is neither distant nor detached; whose political principles and systems of government, congenial with our own, must and will have an action and counteraction upon us and ours to which we can not be indifferent if we would." One can hardly doubt what Adams would advise in today’s situation in which modern transportation and communication have extended the U.S.’s neighborhood across the ocean, and what he would think of the recent resurgence of isolationism. We should not let isolationists get away with citing him improperly as an authority on their side. Moreover, if, as the distinguished diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis notes, Adams’s published writings and diplomatic correspondence were an important influence upon Washington’s Farewell address, then he had some claim to give an authoritative interpretation of Washington’s advice.

Let me offer a brief dissent from Peter's analysis of the Bush inaugural address. I agree with him entirely about the basic ickiness of Bush's domestic-policy homage to "a broader definition of liberty" that justified the welfare state. But he did invoke it in such a way so as to justify the paring back of the welfare state through privatization, which pleases me just fine.

But on the foreign policy front, I'm unconvinced. Peter says Bush's doctrine "overturns the nation’s fundamental stance toward foreign policy since its inception. Washington warned of 'foreign entanglements.' The second President Adams asserted that "'we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.'"

It seems to me that Washington's warning of excessive foreign entanglements was grounded in a context where the Old World was half a world away. Besides, one of the chief criticisms -- admittedly from liberals, not Peter -- is that Bush is too keen on ignoring allies and refusing to get entangled in the liliputian snares of the "world community." More important Adams' warning about not going abroad in search of monsters to slay is not on point. The monsters came to us. The monsters are still coming to us. In a world which is much smaller and in which our economic interests (and citizens) are everywhere "abroad" really doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

I too hope there's a lot of realism under the rhetoric, but I for one am persuaded by the logic of the "drain the swamps" analogy. As for fighting for freedom being unconservative. I just don't see it, as my column yesterday notes.

Oh, the speech? Place me a little on the happier side of Peggy Noonan. The president called us to higher things, which is what a president is supposed to do in an inaugural speech. I didn't see his delivery, but reading through the speech, I think it's a good one.

Whether we can actually rise to those higher things -- whether events will allow us the luxury of so doing -- is another issue.

On the train back from D.C. Wednesday I read Richard A. Clarke's piece "America Attacked: The Sequel" in the Jan/Feb Atlantic. Yeah, yeah, I know, Richard Clarke...but one thing rang true.

In Clarke's prognostication, Al Qaeda launches a second wave of terrorist attacks on our home soil -- Las Vegas, theme parks, malls, big-city subways, cyberspace, etc. All this triggers a big withdrawal from Iraq. "The army was needed in the subways." Our Iraq effort dwindles to defense of some watchful enclaves. "Our goal now is just to prevent Iraq from becoming a series of terrorist training camps. If the new Iraqi army can't keep the peace among the factions, that's its problem."

If there is a new wave of terrorist attacks on our home ground, I think public opinion will indeed force something like this -- not Euro-style appeasement, but a retreat to a more defensive posture, with much less talk about "bringing democracy" and "helping the Iraqis" (and others). Inauguration-speech high idealism will, in short, go out the window, if we are attacked again. Says Clarke. And, even given that this is Clarke writing, I agree.

Attended a dinner club last night with special guest Donald Kagan, who had illuminating things to say about all sorts of topics, but especially (a) the Peloponnesian War, and (b) the current condition of elite academia (he teaches at Yale). There was some discussion about how many conservatives there are on the Yale faculty (not counting semi-autonomous outposts like the business school). Someone -- Harvey Mansfield, I think -- had publicized the number six; Prof. Kagan thought the correct number was three.

I asked Kagan to pass an opinion on Victor Davis Hanson's book The Other Greeks, which I've been meaning to read for ages but just haven't. Prof. Kagan effused such a torrent of praise that VDH, who I suppose was on his farm 3,000 miles away, must have wondered why he was suddenly blushing. "Terrific explanatory power... Improved our understanding by 20,000 times..." Wow. Now I **must** read it.

The role of the media corporations in the US is similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere: they decide what the public will and won't be allowed to hear, and either punish or recruit the social deviants who insist on telling a different story. The journalists they employ do what almost all journalists working under repressive regimes do: they internalise the demands of the censor, and understand, before anyone has told them, what is permissible and what is not. So, when they are faced with a choice between a fable which helps the Republicans, and a reality which hurts them, they choose the fable.

Washington –U.S. Senator Jon S. Corzine (D-NJ), who attended the Presidential Inauguration and swearing in ceremony today, released the following statement following President Bush’s address to the nation.

“We all join the President in fighting for the cause of freedom, human rights and liberty both at home and abroad. Freedom is our most fiercely held value as a nation, and I agree with the President that it is the cause of our time. The President’s philosophical framing of America’s fundamental embrace of freedom was important. The President failed, however, to lay out the specific sacrifices Americans will face in the days and years ahead.

“In fact, in a seventeen minute address that ran more than 2,000 words, the President used the word sacrifice but once.

“After the loss of almost 1,400 soldiers in Iraq and with the cost of war soon to exceed $200 billion, the people of New Jersey and the nation want to know what more is expected of them and what sacrifices they will have to make. The families of New Jersey’s active duty service members, National Guard and Reserves want to know how much more sacrifice is expected of them and their loved ones serving overseas. The brave men and women defending our freedoms are serving selflessly and are owed our highest admiration and support. They are also owed a realistic assessment from the President of the road and sacrifices ahead.

“Americans want to know how the President will repair relations with our allies so they can share the burden of rebuilding Iraq and advancing freedom around the globe. They expected to hear a commitment to our homeland security and to our firefighters, cops and other first responders who defend us every day. And they want to know that the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the war in Iraq will be corrected. The President was silent on these issues today.

“I stand ready to work with President Bush to achieve great things for our nation and New Jersey. We confront great challenges both at home and abroad. The President had an opportunity today to be straight with the American people about the long road ahead and the sacrifices they will be asked to make. In that respect, his remarks fell short of the mark.

Josh Marshall is silent on the address as well. Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly admits he's too bummed to blog much and Paul Glastris offers what has already become the clichéd quotation of choice among liberals -- that Jefferson bit on the reign of witches. Meanwhile The New Republic is silent as well, even on their blogs.

What's up with the Washington liberal establishment? Maybe it's just good manners? If you don't have anything nice to say....

I'm getting a lot of grief from folks (like Michael). I didn't say the speech -- as in the words -- was sedate. I think it was really outstanding. I wanted to read it through after the delivery to search for overt Wilsonianism and for a few other things I thought I heard. But I think it was a great speech (see my insta-analysis on the home page).

As for Bush's delivery, I do think it was a bit low energy and that he sold his last one better (which was also beautifully written). But Tim Graham and a few others think that impression might have been a result of the bad mixing of the crowd's audio. Maybe so.

Regardless, the more I think about it, I think this will probably be the most historic inaugural since at least Kennedy's and perhaps FDR's first or fourth.

I'm still pondering the content, though I'm generally a three-cheers for liberty kind of guy. But I do think Bush was surprisingly flat in his delivery. I think he was going for somber and sailed just a bit further past that to sedated. I do think that whatever its merits or demerits, this speech will end up being passed around in places like Iran like Samizdat for years to come. In that sense, I think it was a brilliant bit of foreign policy masked as domestic rhetoric. How can a dissident in Iran or Burma read such a thing and not feel emboldened?

In fact, I wish someone would wrap a dead fish with it and drop it off at the Saudi embassy.

Guerrillas launched a series of "indirect fire" attacks on civilian population centers in-and-around Ramadi a few hours ago. Several rounds struck inside residential neighborhoods.
Casualties not yet known.
... no doubt trying to discourage Iraqis from doing on January 30th what so many Americans take for granted here.

Today, I also speak anew to my fellow citizens:

From all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well – a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.

A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause – in the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy … the idealistic work of helping raise up free governments … the dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives – and we will always honor their names and their sacrifice.

All Americans have witnessed this idealism, and some for the first time. I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen duty and allegiance in the determined faces of our soldiers. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself – and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country, but to its character.

America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home – the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty

On this inaugauration day we should remember the sacrifices being made by the troops. Here's an update I received today from a friend of mine now serving in Baquba, Iraq.

With the elections are just around the corner, the pace of everything here has intensified. We are working flat out on many fronts. Terrorist activity has picked up in the last week or so, as we expected. The insurgents are threatened by the march of freedom, and are increasing their attacks. We were on the receiving end of one on Sunday evening, when mortars suddenly slammed into our compound. After seeing the blue flashes of a few exploding shells outside the window of the small building we were working in, and being covered by a thin film of dust that filtered down from the ceiling, my fellow soldiers and I said, "Phew, those were CLOSE!" Only the next morning did we learn that one of them was a direct hit on the roof of our building, and another landed ten meters away. We were glad they were smaller 60mm mortar rounds and not the larger ordinance used in IEDs and VBIEDs. Close, indeed! Still, the elections are moving inexorably forward. People have registered to vote, parties have issued their lists of candidates, posters have been plastered on walls and buildings in the marketplaces, and politicians are even appearing on television and radio. We are not looking for perfection, but for "free and fair" elections, which is the international standard, and the first step on a long road to recovery in the region.

John---Just finally got around to reading your column on humanitarians, and I've got a nit to pick. Hamlet's "Hecuba" line means the opposite of what you imply.

You imply that he's saying: why do they expect me to weep for Hecuba; I don't even know the girl.

First of all, the line is not "what's Hecuba to me or me to Hecuba" but "what's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba." Hamlet is not asking why people expect him to weep for Hecuba; he *has* just been weeping for Hecuba. He's praising the talents of the Player King who gets him to weep for Hecuba - who doesn't even exist - while he can't get himself stirred up sufficiently by the crimes that have gone on in his own father's house.

Here's the speech:

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd, Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, Make mad the guilty and appal the free, Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, And can say nothing; no, not for a king, Upon whose property and most dear life A damn'd defeat was made"

So: Hamlet is not saying, "why should I weep for Hecuba" but "why can't I even make myself weep and rage for my *own* cause, when this *actor* can weep - and make me weep - for someone who doesn't even exist!"

I dunno, there are lot of Bush-fans from Texas and Wyoming out in those crowds -- and they're wearing cowboy boots. I wouldn't want to bend over and moon the Commander-in-Chief if for no other reason than it would be about as perfect an invitation for a swift kick in the rear as man has ever conceived.

It's Bush's party and you can cry if you want to. Or you can crash it. True to the left's polymorphic ethos, there are plenty of ways to rain on the president's parade, from anarchists hoping to reprise their egg-throwing assault on his limo in 2001 to more liberal-minded folk who are calling on people to simply "Turn Your Back on Bush" in silent indignation. Not to be confused with "Turn Your Cheeks on Bush," a/k/a "Critical A**," an open call to moon Bush's motorcade as it whips by...