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.