Dad29 (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
First Things notes that Condi Rice admits that the Administration made a change in US foreign policy. It went all Wilsonian (over the serious and repeated objections of folks like PJ Buchanan, for example.) “We recognize that democratic state building is now an urgent component of our national interest ,” writes Rice. “And in the broader Middle East, we recognize that freedom and democracy are the...
FIRST THINGS (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
Twenty years ago historian J.G.A. Pocock shook the academic establishment with a sweeping account of the development of republican political ideals, from Florence in the Renaissance to the American Founding. His work, The Machiavellian Moment, was perhaps the most ambitious of its kind to trace the transmission of a cluster of ideasincluding civic virtue, [...]
BrothersJudd Blog (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
In Search of Realism (Joseph Loconte, July 23, 2008, First Things: On the Square) As is well known, the Bush doctrine represents a remarkable about-face for an administration that initially swore off “nation-building.” Its repudiation of decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East—stability at the cost of freedom—has been no less astonishing. Nevertheless, despite its candor, the document leaves...
