To John Hughes of The Christian Science Monitor, Bush’s speech to the National Endowment for Democracy should have won him more support. If only his detractors had paid attention.
[N]obody, after reading that democracy speech, can doubt the man’s passion for bringing at least some form of democracy to those parts of the world where people are still denied it.
Listening to the popular liberal rhetoric of the day, one might assume Bush blends babies down in Crawford, Texas. But he is a man with much sympathy for repressed people the world over, and not a cold, heartless man.
Irregardless of Bush’s true kind nature, some in American media feel the need to report the opinions of Britons that have been brought to the fore because of Bush’s trip to England, sort of like an I-told-you-so for their American readers.
The Sunday Times of London, which has been supportive of Bush, recently asked almost 2,000 Britons which characteristics they most associate with the U.S. president. Almost 60 percent said he was “a danger to world peace,” 37 percent said “stupid” and 33 percent said “incoherent,” according to the Times. “Only a minority saw positive characteristics in Bush, with just 7 percent regarding him as a good world leader, 6 percent as articulate and 10 percent as intelligent.”
But morality comes not from the approval of others. How else, for example, might we have escaped the evils of slavery? Right and wrong are independent of world opinion, and if what’s right right now goes against a majority of Britons then so be it.