This is the first time that an American president has committed the

United States to side with democratic reformers worldwide. The end of

the cold war has allowed us such parameters, but the American people

also should be aware of the hard and necessary decisions entailed in

such idealism that go way beyond the easy rhetoric of calling for

change in Cuba, Syria, or Iran-distancing ourselves from the Saudi

Royal Family, pressuring the Mubarak dynasty to hold real elections,

hoping that a Pakistan can liberalize without becoming a theocracy,

and navigating with Putin in matters of the former Soviet republics,

all the while pressuring nuclear China, swaggering with cash and

confidence, to allow its citizens real liberty. I wholeheartedly

endorse the president’s historic stance, but also accept that we live

in an Orwellian world, where, for example, the liberal-talking

Europeans are reactionary-doing realists who trade with anyone who

pays and appease anyone who has arms-confident in their culture’s

ability always to package that abject realpolitik in the highest

utopian rhetoric. But nonetheless the president has formally declared

that we at least will be on the right side of history and thus we

have to let his critics sort of their own moral calculus.