The liberal fundamentalist

My connections at the highest levels of government have guaranteed me an advance copy of President Bush's State of the Union address, which he will deliver tonight at 9 p.m. in an effort to rescue his orphaned Iraq policy.\nHere are some excerpts of what he will say: "What's the point of having this superb military if we can't use it?" "America is the indispensable nation." "The requirements of justice are to bring democracy and freedom to people 'round the world. The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan -- they too are our cause."\nForgive me, I lied. These words are not Mr. Bush's. The above quotation is, in fact, a composite of statements made by Secretary of State Madeline Albright, her boss, President Bill Clinton, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- self-professed liberals all.\nWhat can this possibly mean? If holding these positions is to be effortlessly denounced as "conservative," as it usually is, where is the place for the genuine liberal? The meaning of the term is less clear than it seems, especially at a time when, as Robert Frost commented, it designates someone too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel. \nIt was not always thus. It is well-known to classical liberals, if almost no one else, that "liberal" is a word whose root is "liberty."\nThis is the point to keep one's eye on, because the confrontation between liberty and slavery has formed the basis of the Muslim world's raging civil war. To remind you of the contending parties in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the Near East: Indigenous liberals, aided by the United States, are rising up to fight for their dream of building a federal democratic state, while reactionary elements, aided by neighboring dictatorships, attempt to stamp back down by means of random and capricious barbarism. For whom does this not qualify as a worthy quarrel to join? \nGetting the categories right is perhaps easier for someone who traces his formative years -- in political as much as personal terms -- back to Europe (where Yours Truly was denounced, if you can believe it, as a liberal fundamentalist on the basis of my advocacy for free trade and anti-totalitarianism). So to me it was always axiomatic that the point at which fundamentalism entered politics was also the point at which liberalism needed to muster to resist them mightily as an enemy of political liberty.\nIt is a miserable thing to have to restate these obvious precepts, but what choice is there at a time when the left has sullied itself by adopting the most conservative position to offer?\nThe defense of liberty is not the post of the pacifist or the isolationist. Reluctant though many people are to accept this conclusion, it is, now as ever, the proper place for -- I see no reason to evade the right category -- the liberal.