The Speech: Comparisons to Churchill and FDR are popping up among sympathetic bloggers, perhaps because Bush's speech invoked Westminster and "the four freedoms" explicitly. (It's worth reading, by the way; Bush's speechwriters are good at their job.) There's no denying, as Michael Totten notes, that Bush's vision is decidedly a liberal one. Another noteworthy liberal, Gregg Easterbrook, called Bush's speech "a masterwork." I don't wish to beat a dead horse, but the policy that Bush outlined is steeped in the tradition and the best ideals of the left: self-determination, liberty, dignity:

The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.

Further, Bush expressed the great ideal of universality:

Time after time, observers have questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group, are "ready" for democracy -- as if freedom were a prize you win for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress.

As I listen, I become more and more convinced that, at least in foreign policy, a Bush presidency is the natural choice for liberals with a non-partisan attachment to their core principles. In fact, the very traditions that the GOP embraced for years, Bush explicitly rejects:

Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export.

What Bush rejects, as Totten notes, are the very realpolitik principles that liberals derided in the past (in Totten's words, the "our bastards" policy). But most of the liberal commentariat (i.e., those who define their liberal commitment by their degree of opposition to Bush) is silent on the speech. Perhaps I'm reading too much actual policy into a foot-stomper speech, but I don't think so. As Dan Drezner says, up until now, "President Bush hadn't articulated the case clearly enough for why the U.S. should be in Iraq regardless of the WMD question." Perhaps not, but he nailed it yesterday.