The anxiety of influence

The proprietor of Strange Women Lying in Ponds discerns one of the powerful influences on key components of the president’s speech yesterday in the president’s recent reading: “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.”
Last month at Victor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers, Bruce Thornton provided a sympathetic but critical summary of the book identified by SWLIP in “From Gulag to Israel: Will freedom necessarily conquer fear societies?” The hero of the book identified by SWLIP is Ronald Reagan.
Which brings us back to where we began yesterday morning in saluting President Bush’s inauguration. Under changed circumstances, President Bush continues to think through and apply the lessons of Reagan’s statecraft to the defense of the United States in the war that has been visited upon us.