On the ‘Freedom Agenda’ and the George W. Bush Legacy:
A Philosophical Inquiry
Shane J. Ralston
Pennsylvania State University Hazleton
sjr21@psu.edu
Published in
Perspectives on the Legacy of George W. Bush
Edited by M.O. Grossman and R.E. Matthews
Cambridge Scholars Press
Abstract
The legacy of George W. Bush will probably be associated with the President’s infallibly certain
style of visionary leadership and his specific vision of a ‘Freedom Agenda’. According to this
vision, the United States must spread democracy to all people who desire liberty and vanquish
those tyrants and terrorists who despise it. Freedom is universally valued, and the United States
is everywhere perceived as freedom’s protector and purveyor. So, the mission of the Freedom
Agenda is to guard existing freedoms as well as spread the democratic political system to those
countries lacking comparable freedoms. Recent analyses of the Bush Freedom Agenda examine
its roots in realist foreign policy and neoconservative political thought. In this paper, I take a
different approach, connecting the Freedom Agenda to the ideas of two philosophers: (i) Isaiah
Berlin’s notion of positive-negative liberty and (ii) John Dewey’s concept of freedom as a
function of culture. My central claim is that when compared with the ideas of Berlin and Dewey,
the Freedom Agenda is a faulty construct, both conceptually and practically, for understanding
America’s role in global affairs. The Freedom Agenda proves to be neither conservative nor
universal. Nevertheless, it constitutes an essential element of George W. Bush’s legacy, a vision
of American purpose in a threatening and divisive world.
Key Words: George W. Bush, John Dewey, Isaiah Berlin, liberalism, foreign policy,
international relations.
On the ‘Freedom Agenda’ and the George W. Bush Legacy:
A Philosophical Inquiry
At heart, Bush is a revolutionary. [ . . . ] In his actions as well as his doctrines, he has
changed the course of American foreign policy.
-I.H. Daalder and J.M. Lindsay (2003:376)
Freedom is certainly never far from the lips of an American President, but it has rarely
been so invoked so often and with such intensity. It is a central motif in virtually every
speech that Bush makes, and its appearance at the locus of key events and discourses . .
. suggest that something is afoot.
-A. Burke (2005:318)
The legacy of George W. Bush will probably be associated with the President’s infallibly
certain style of visionary leadership and his specific vision of a ‘Freedom Agenda’.1 According
to this vision, the United States must spread democracy to all people who desire liberty and
vanquish those tyrants and terrorists who despise it. Freedom is universally valued, and the
United States is everywhere perceived as freedom’s protector and purveyor. So, the mission of
the Freedom Agenda is to guard existing freedoms as well as spread the democratic political
system to those countries lacking comparable freedoms.
Recent analyses of the Bush Freedom Agenda, both friendly and critical, examine its roots
in realist foreign policy and neoconservative political thought.2 For example, on Edward
Rhodes’s (2003:141) evaluation, Bush’s Freedom Agenda reveals “a deeply troubling vision of
America and America’s role in the world.” Likewise, Daalder and Lindsay (2003:374) argue
that, “[t]he Bush philosophy turns John Quincy Adams on his head and argues that the United
States should aggressively go abroad to search for monsters to destroy.” Anthony Burke
(2005:317) sees the Freedom Agenda as “tainted by the neo-conservative agenda for which
‘freedom’ now stands as a potent signifier.” Such criticisms of the Freedom Agenda tend to be
1
directed from the outside, that is, motivated by rival ideological views and based upon otherwise
incompatible assumptions.
In contrast, I deploy an internal critique, one starting from the Bush administration’s own
assumptions. My central claim is that the Freedom Agenda is a faulty construct, both
conceptually and practically, for envisioning America’s role in global affairs. In his critique of
Bush’s moralistic rhetoric, Australian ethicist Peter Singer (2004:225) presumes that the
president “is sincere.” Furthermore, he writes, “we should take his ethic seriously, assessing it on
its own terms, and asking how well he has done by his own standards” (Ibid). In a similar spirit,
I evaluate the Freedom Agenda in terms of its two standard assumptions, and with the assistance
of two well-known philosophers’ ideas: (i) the distinction between positive and negative liberty
offered by the Latvian-born Oxford don Isaiah Berlin and (ii) the concept of freedom as a
function of culture articulated by the American Pragmatist John Dewey.
Two Assumptions of Bush’s ‘Freedom Agenda’
At least two assumptions are integral to, though by no means exhaustive of, the Freedom
Agenda: (i) its universalism and (ii) its conservatism.3
1. Universalism. According to the Freedom Agenda, the scope of human liberty is
nothing less than universal. In his speeches, Bush (2006, 2002b, 2003) regularly appeals to the
“universality of freedom,” to “[t]he requirements of freedom [that] apply fully” to people around
the world, to “freedom [that] is the right of every person and the future of every nation,” and to
“liberty we prize [that] is not America’s gift to the world” but “is God’s gift to humanity.” After
characterizing the Freedom Agenda’s core values as “[f]reedom, democracy, and free enterprise,”
the Bush (2002a) administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) goes on to describe freedom
as the “birthright of every person,” the “values of freedom . . . [as] right and true for every
2
person, in every society,” and the “duty of protecting” these values as the “the common calling of
freedom-loving people across the globe and across the ages.” In Bush’s (2005) second inaugural
address, his speech-writers borrowed heavily from Abraham Lincoln, universally proclaiming
that “no one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave.”
Invocations of universal freedom draw their inspiration from the ideas of Enlightenment
liberals, such as John Locke (1689), Immanuel Kant (1785), and Thomas Jefferson (1776), but
come into conflict with contemporary liberal appeals to multiculturalism and pluralism.4 Each of
these Enlightenment thinkers sought to ground the legitimacy of the state on a theory of rationalmoral political order reflecting universal truths about human nature—for instance, that humans
are carriers of inalienable rights (Locke), autonomous agents (Kant), or fundamentally equal
creations (Jefferson). However, many contemporary liberals fault Enlightenment liberalism, or
classic liberal theories grounded on universal moral truths, for antagonizing, rather than
harmonizing, the plurality of incompatible and equally reasonable religious, moral and
philosophical doctrines held by citizens of multicultural societies.5 Why? Rather than offering a
neutral framework, Enlightenment liberalism discloses a full-blooded doctrine that competes with
alternative views of truth, the good life, and human nature.6
In spite of this objection, Bush’s Freedom Agenda resuscitates Enlightenment liberalism,
albeit in a slightly altered and updated form. According to Burke (2005:316), “freedom exists in
a frame without questions: it is a profound form of social truth that animates an enlightenment we
understand and know how to live.” Preserved is the strong claim to universal moral truth.7
Discarded is the thick conception of human nature. In its place, Bush (2002b) offers a
comparatively thinner and more pluralism-friendly portrait of human nature than Enlightenment
liberals, one in which humans universally desire liberty understood as a schedule of “want[s]” or
“values of freedom,” namely, to “be able to speak freely; choose who will govern them; worship
3
as they please; educate their children—male and female; own property; and enjoy the benefits of
their labor.” Also, implicit in the Freedom Agenda is the idea that no nation is by nature subject
to another nation’s authority. However, if that authority reflects a state’s exceptional status—say,
its high moral standing (consider Benjamin Franklin’s claim that “only a virtuous people are
capable of freedom”8) or its historical calling (think of Pericles’s appeal to the Athenians during
the Funeral Oration), then the consent of freedom-wanting nations and their peoples will be
forthcoming. So, America’s moral authority must be employed for good purposes, namely, to
lead other nations toward accepting free markets and free institutions—or, in two words:
democracy promotion.9 Thus, the special calling of the United States, according to the Bush
(2002a) administration’s NSS, is “to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe . . . [to]
actively bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner
of the world.”
2. Conservatism. Although ‘conservative’ and ‘conservatism’ have a bundle of
connotations in contemporary politics, the terms are usually employed by political philosophers
and theorists to designate a worldview favoring the status quo, traditional mores and slow,
incremental change. According to Edmund Burke (1770; 1790), conservatism means that
inherited institutions, such as the state and Church, should guide the gradual and organic
development of society, its customs and practices; not demagogues and revolutionaries who
initiate sharp breaks with the past that threaten social stability and collective security.10 Of
course, conservatives come in many colors. Social-cultural conservatives wish to preserve timehonored beliefs and customs tied to cultural roots and national heritage; religious conservatives
conserve traditional values imparted through religious texts and teachings; and fiscal
conservatives defend individual property rights and condemn the government’s power to tax and
spend.
4
Despite the varieties of conservatism, what conservatives generally share in common is
resistance to transformative change, not in virtue of it being change per se, but because it is the
wrong kind of change, namely, stability-threatening change. In four compact paragraphs of his
2002 address to the graduating class at West Point, Bush (2002b) spells out the Freedom Agenda
in mostly conservative terms. To summarize: (i) the “gravest danger to freedom” is the threat
that rogue groups and states will acquire technology (e.g., ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons)
to harm large states; (ii) the strategies of deterrence and containment are no longer suited to
defusing these “new threats”; (iii) if the United States adopts a “wait-and-see” attitude towards
these dangers then its security will surely be undermined; and (iv) a new strategy of preemption,
or anticipating threats before they actualize, is justified given the substantial threat that tyrants,
terrorists and technology (the three t’s) pose to liberty.
At first blush, the preemption strategy radically departs from precedent—whether the
Cold War strategies of containment and deterrence or Bush’s own pre-9/11 promise to institute a
“humble” foreign policy.11 Nevertheless, its warrant is essentially conservative. In an
international arena that resembles Hobbes’s (1651) state of nature, a “war of all against all”
where non-state actors threaten to make the lives of free citizens “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short,” the hegemon’s rationale for preemption is to maintain, in the terminology of the Bush
(2002a) administration’s NSS, “a balance of power that favors freedom.”12 Also integral to the
Bush doctrine is a plan to rebuild failed states as “free and open societies” and to encourage the
development of democratic institutions in weak states ruled by tyrants (Ibid). Although
harkening back to the idealistic Wilsonian vision of “making the world safe for democracy,”
democracy promotion under the Freedom Agenda aims to conserve global order and stability, to
combat terrorism and tyranny, all in order to ensure American security—in other words, for the
sake of conservative, not radical, ends.13
5
Isaiah Berlin on Two Kinds of Liberty
In his essay “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Isaiah Berlin formulates a distinction between negative
and positive freedom that is especially germane to an evaluation of Bush’s Freedom Agenda.
Expressing the idea of liberty in its negative form, Berlin (1969:122) writes, “I am said to be free
to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity.” In other words, my
fellows and my government must abstain from intervening in my private affairs, preventing me
from pursuing my chosen interests, desires, and projects, or otherwise coercing me into doing
what they believe, however genuinely, is in my best interest. This is what Berlin calls “freedom
from” (124). For the libertarian, taking negative liberty seriously means not only “warding off
interference”, but also shrinking the scope of state power to that of “a night-watchman or traffic
policeman” (127).14 Yet there is no need to go as far as the libertarian, so long as it is possible to
maintain “a certain minimum area of personal freedom,” a zone of unfettered individual activity,
such as to speak, to assemble, to worship, and to bear arms (124).
Next, Berlin turns to consider positive liberty. He notes that “conceptions of freedom
directly derive from views of what constitutes a self, a person, a man” (134). If one wishes to be
more than a solitary or hermit-like individual, isolated from one’s fellows and one’s government,
then one might think that human flourishing requires a different, more positive, conception of
liberty. Positive freedom permits us to exercise not merely freedom from interference, but more
directly and potently, freedom for pursuing a higher goal or purpose. In exercising positive
liberty, agents sublimate their personal desires to a single comprehensive vision of excellence
offered by “some super-personal entity—a state, a class, a nation, or the march of history itself”
(Ibid). In return, the super-personal entity—for instance, the state—provides more primary goods
(e.g., housing, jobs, and healthcare) in order to facilitate the citizen’s self-realization consistent
with a state-sanctioned conception of the good life.15 Unfortunately, affording too much positive
6
liberty tends to strangle negative liberty.16 It gives the state license to paternalistically impose
ends on citizens that they would not otherwise choose, “to coerce men in the name of some goal .
. . which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves, pursue, but do not, because they
are blind or ignorant or corrupt” (132-3).
So, which of Berlin’s two kinds of liberty does the Bush Freedom Agenda endorse? In
some ways, both and neither; rather, the agenda appears to equivocate between the two. Negative
liberty emerges in Bush’s (2002b) schedule of wants and freedoms, especially the freedoms to
speak, to worship, to be a property-owner and to enjoy the fruits of property-ownership. All of
these liberties generate a protected sphere of individual activity in which there is a presumption
against government intrusion, except when necessary to referee a dispute between individuals
(e.g., a case of breach of contract demands a legal system and courts of law in order to adjudicate
the conflict, so as to prevent self-enforcement). More debatable candidates for negative liberties
are the freedoms to select one’s political leaders and to provide one’s children with education.
Their exercise entails more than freedom from. They also require freedom to, in the sense of
positive enablement and intervention in the lives of ordinary citizens by the state (e.g., the design
and operation of an electoral system or a public education system). Still, exercising these
freedoms, however tainted they are by state involvement, does not force people to subordinate
their individual life plans, interests and desires to a state-sanctioned vision of the good life. Still,
with regard to education, as well as many other policy areas, conservative policy-makers remain
wary of solutions that enlarge positive liberty—such as national or centrally-planned school
systems—and more sympathetic to solutions that expand negative liberty by minimizing state
intervention—such as free-market-based school voucher systems.
On closer inspection, though, the Freedom Agenda resembles a vehicle for enlarging
positive liberty through the ‘Trojan horse’ of negative liberty. In the newly-formed democracies
7
of Iraq and Afghanistan, two products of the preemption strategy, the U.S. distributes primary
goods through the reconstruction of war-torn infrastructure, the improvement of economic and
military capacity, and other state and community-building activities. In return, the U.S. expects
the allegiance of their citizens and leaders to a single comprehensive vision of freedom and
democracy, one that represents a sharp, radical, and thus un-conservative break with their
existing political traditions and ways of life.17 Therefore, to the extent that the Bush Freedom
Agenda enlarges positive liberty, it compromises its own conservative credentials.
John Dewey on Freedom as a Function of Culture
In the first two chapters of Freedom and Culture, John Dewey (1939:65) recasts the so-called
“problem of freedom” in order to overcome a vicious dualism. Historically, the problem has
been seen as a struggle to define liberty in terms of either the individual or the social, the “native
tendencies” shared by individual human beings versus the rational-moral purposes served by
collective agencies (82). Whereas in the Anglo-American liberal tradition, freedom is typically
conceived as an individual entitlement or right, in the Continental-European republican tradition,
it is more often understood as reason objectified in social, legal and political institutions—the
difference between, for example, John Locke (1689) and G.W.F. Hegel (1807).
Dewey (1939:83) argues that framing the freedom problem in this way proves woefully
inadequate, for it presents a false dichotomy. Either way, the tendency is to make human liberty
reliant on some ultimate factor, thereby pushing it in “what philosophers call a monistic
direction,” whether toward a universal desire of humans to be free or rationally grounded state
authority (72). Shifting to the exclusively American tradition, Dewey credits Thomas Jefferson
and his fellow Founders for establishing an “ideology” and a vision embodied in the Declaration
of Independence, which “has taught us that attainment of freedom is the goal of history; that self-
8
government is the inherent right of free men and is that which, when it is achieved, men prize it
above all else” (66). Even the Founders’ inspiring vision of a historical march toward freedom is
flawed, though, for it “attempts to make some constituent of human nature the source of
motivation of action,” namely, “inherent love of freedom,” and in so doing provides only a flimsy
basis upon which to legitimate self-government (74).18 Why? As a monistic account , the
universal desire for freedom cannot accommodate, in Dewey’s words, the “degree of plasticity in
human nature,” the multiplicity of “occupations, interests, skills, [and] beliefs” that humans have
and value, as well as the “complex conditions . . . the terms upon which human beings associate
and live together” (67-8). Together, he terms this plurality of human ends, activities, and
conditions ‘culture’, and insists that once we view the problem of freedom through the prism of
culture, we begin to appreciate its complex contours and relations. According to Dewey, “[t]he
problem of freedom and of democratic institutions is tied up with the kind of culture that exists”
(72).19 In other words, the meaning of the concept ‘liberty’ (and one might add ‘democracy’) is
contingent upon the specific culture within which any particular conception flourishes. Hence,
the desire to be free cannot resemble a universal trait of human nature, despite what
Enlightenment liberals and the American Founders claimed.
What are the implications of Dewey’s ‘freedom as a function of culture’ thesis for the
Bush Freedom Agenda? Some are quite obvious; while others are less so. Although leaders in a
democracy might feel the need to justify their foreign policy agenda in terms of how it advances
freedom, not every citizen—or in the language of political theorists, not every ‘conception of the
good life’—will of necessity, or in every circumstance, give absolute priority to freedom over
other values (e.g., security, recognition, quality of life). Of course, this is not to deny the
efficacy of ‘freedom’ rhetoric or, for that matter, freedom-oriented issue-framing (perhaps, in a
variant on Lakoff’s (2004:3) exercise, we could try “Don’t think of freedom!”).20 As already
9
mentioned, the Bush (2002a) Freedom Agenda’s thesis that freedom is universally valued, “right
and true for every person,” invokes a cherished source of the American cultural and national
heritage: Enlightenment liberalism. In this way, it is undeniably attractive to the social-cultural
conservative. Moreover, if appeals to the Enlightenment notion of universal freedom inspire
broad public support, then it should not be surprising that crafty rhetoricians and prudent policymakers would regularly make the notion front and center in their speeches and policy vehicles.21
This point is quite obvious
Less obvious is that if those invocations of universal freedom are treated as more than
hollow rhetoric, as “sincere” (to borrow Singer’s (2004:225) term), then Bush’s Freedom Agenda
should be appraised on its own terms, by its own lights, and relative to its own assumptions. So,
we must determine, in Singer’s words, “how well he [i.e., Bush] has done by his own standards”
(Ibid). Even though Bush announces to the 2002 West Point graduating class that the desire for
freedom is universal, freedom construed as an individual right or entitlement is intimately
connected to the American political tradition. As Dewey (1939:81) acknowledges, “freedom has
had its practical significance fixed in different ways in different cultural contexts.” Given that
Bush’s conception of freedom is culturally contingent, exporting it to other nations with distinctly
different cultures presents formidable obstacles, both conceptually and practically. Likewise,
spreading American democracy, founded as it is on a culturally-specific set of beliefs (e.g., in
freedom and individualism), is a difficult, if not impossible, task—as policy-makers have
discovered in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Although large-scale social-cultural reengineering
would achieve the desired end, the scope of paternalistic intervention required by this policy
would surely infringe upon people’s negative liberty. Such an interventionist policy would also
prove inconsistent with a key assumption of the Freedom Agenda: its conservativism.22
10
Conclusion
The ‘Freedom Agenda’ is internally flawed when judged by the lights of its own core
assumptions: (i) its conservatism and (ii) its universalism. When juxtaposed against Berlin’s
negative-positive liberty distinction and Dewey’s thesis that freedom is a function of culture,
cracks in the armor of the Freedom Agenda immediately reveal themselves. First, the agenda
equivocates between the two types of freedom, surreptitiously enlarging positive liberty under the
false banner of defending negative liberty. Second, it appeals to a culturally-specific tradition of
freedom and democracy. So, despite what most will agree are its two core assumptions, the
Freedom Agenda proves to be neither universal nor conservative. Nevertheless, it does constitute
an essential element of George W. Bush’s legacy, a revolutionary vision of America’s purpose in
a threatening and divisive world. Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-eighth president of the U.S.,
sought to articulate a similarly radical vision of America’s raison d’être, to “make the world safe
for democracy”—a vision that the world and even the United States was not quite ready for
(witness Wilson’s failed attempt to persuade the U.S. Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and
join the League of Nations). In a similar vein, George W. Bush and his administration have
articulated a revolutionary and idealistic vision of universal freedom and democratic
expansionism in the ‘Freedom Agenda’—a vision that because it is ahead of its time is surely to
outlast the second Bush presidency.
11
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14
Endnotes
1
It is not known whether G.W. Bush is or was familiar with the visionary and transformational leadership literature.
His tenure as an MBA student at Harvard Business School lasted from 1973 to 1975, at least two years prior to the
publication of the landmark work on transformational leadership by James MacGregor Burns (1978); see Denhardt
and Campbell (2006). Nevertheless, some writers have offered accounts of Bush’s style of leadership in terms of
visionary and transformational leadership; see Ware and Thompson (2002) and Nye (2006). More often, Bush is
associated with the management theorist Peter Drucker and his approach of management-by-objective; see Cannon
and Cannon (2008).
2
For example, on Edward Rhodes’s (2003:141) evaluation, Bush’s Freedom Agenda reveals “a deeply troubling
vision of America and America’s role in the world.” Likewise, Daalder and Lindsay (2003:374) argue that, “[t]he
Bush philosophy turns John Quincy Adams on his head and argues that the United States should aggressively go
abroad to search for monsters to destroy.”
3
If the agenda were compared to an individual’s web of systematic beliefs, then these two assumptive beliefs would
be situated at the center of the web or system, where credence is strongest, rather than at the periphery, where beliefs
are weakest. While these commitments are necessary, since revising or discarding them would threaten the agenda’s
core meaning and overall coherence, they are not—or at least I am not claiming that that they are—sufficient for
defining the Freedom Agenda en toto.
4
By calling these figures Enlightenment liberals I am not claiming that all views associated with the 17th and 18th
century Enlightenment were quintessentially liberal. It is typical for political philosophers to associate the rightsbased liberal tradition with the “Enlightenment” and particularly the ideas of Kant (1785).
5
It is important to note that the meaning of liberalism has not remained constant through time. According to Garrard
(1997:282), “the meanings of words change over time, and this is as true of liberalism and its core values as it is of
any ideology.” Many philosophers have contended that the non-neutral doctrine of Enlightenment liberalism cannot
accommodate the fact of pluralism in modern multicultural states; see Berlin (1969), Rorty (1989), Rawls (1996),
Gray (2000), and Talisse (2000a, 2000b).
6
Even when contemporary liberal governments try to accommodate pluralism or deep differences among their
citizens, problems can ensue. Consider the recent ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate in Canada. When a law or
norm is contrary to the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, the government has a legal obligation to
modify the law or norm accordingly. For instance, despite the legal requirement that voters show their face when
casting a ballot, Elections Canada has permitted, in keeping with the enumerated freedom of religious practice, an
exemption for Muslim women wearing the niqab (veil) or burka. Though these exemptions are well-intentioned,
heated dispute has arisen at the margins, between those groups whose members have been granted exemptions and
rival groups claiming that the exemptions violate norms of equal treatment. So, the question persists, under what
circumstances does accommodation become unreasonable, and when does the failure to accommodate become
intolerance?
7
In Bush’s (2002b) West Point Address, he claims that “[m]oral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and
in every place.”
8
Franklin’s letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnaud, April 17, 1787, cited by Pangle (2007:23).
9
One tendency among supporters of the Bush Freedom Agenda is to conflate democratic and free market institutions
into the single concept of ‘democracy’ and their dual endorsement as ‘democracy promotion’. This conflation is
likely a legacy of Francis Fukuyama’s (1989) manifesto declaring that the “end of history” or the ideological
evolution of all political societies is toward liberal democracy coupled with a capitalist economy.
15
10
While Burke (1790) was a virulent critic of the French Revolution, he was sympathetic to the ideals and aims of
the American Revolution. See Elkins (2006) for an internal critique of so-called ‘conservative’ forces in politics
based on Burke’s patently conservative philosophy.
11
In the second presidential debate between Gore and Bush (2000), Bush declared: “If we’re an arrogant nation,
they’ll resent us; if we’re a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in
the world in terms of power, and that's why we've got to be humble, and yet project strength in a way that promotes
freedom.” More recently, Bush’s war cabinet has decided to reconsider the possibility that deterrence might be an
appropriate strategy for preventing terrorist cells from carrying out attacks; see “U.S. Adapts Cold-War Idea to Fight
Terrorists” (2008).
12
The preemptive strategy is more accurately described as a preventative strategy. According to Daalder and Lindsay
(2003:372), the usual description conflates the notions of preemptive and preventive wars: “Preemptive wars are
initiated when another country is clearly about to attack. [. . .] Preventive wars are launched by states against others
before the state being attacked poses a real or imminent threat.”
13
For an account of the development of Wilsonian idealism in American foreign policy, see Kissinger (1995).
14
For this libertarian perspective, see F. Hayek (1960), R. Nozick (1974), and J.L. Talmon (1968).
15
For instance, governing by faith-based initiatives permits acceptable religious organizations to provide vital
services and proselytize those served too.
16
One possible objection is that in practice the line between positive and negative liberty is blurry or difficult to
detect. For instance, MacCallum (1993:102) objects that, “[f]reedom is always both freedom from something and
freedom to do something.” Berlin did not deny that this could be the case. Nevertheless, the harmful consequences
of embracing one kind of liberty to the exclusion of another cannot be denied. In Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams’s correspondence, Jefferson informed Adams, “mischief may be done negatively and positively.” Cited by
T.L. Putterman (2006:422).
17
For information on spending levels for reconstruction, capacity-building, community-building and state-building
activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, see the CBO Report (2007). A possible objection is that a long-term
developmental view of the matter would suggest that eventually these new democracies will be capable of providing
those goods for themselves. However, a central insight of contemporary conservative thought is that expansive
entitlement programs create long-term expectations and breed long-term dependence, and there is no reason to
believe that the citizens and leaders of new democracies—as compared to, for instance, welfare recipients in old
democracies—will behave much differently.
18
Dewey (1939:68) writes: “The view that love of freedom is so inherent in man that, if it only has a chance given it
by abolition of oppressions exercised by church and state, it will produce and maintain free institutions is no longer
adequate.” Despite Dewey’s critique of the Founders’ position that the desire for freedom was a universal feature of
human nature, he was not as critical of their Enlightenment sources. Indeed, Dewey (1925:20) compared the
philosophy of Pragmatism to the French Enlightenment philosophy of Voltaire, Diderot and the other philosophes.
19
For instance, consider the raw individualism that emerges from America’s independent yeoman farmers, pioneers,
and business entrepreneurs. Indeed, Dewey (1939:77) relies on the identical example: “The idea that human nature is
inherently and exclusively individual is itself a product of a cultural individualistic movement.”
20
Lakoff (2004:4) defines framing as “getting language that fits your worldview. The ideas are primary—and the
language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas.”
21
See Ralston (2001) and Belanger (2005).
22
See Ralston (2002). The Bush Freedom Agenda has had undesirable consequences outside of Iraq and Afghanistan
too. In reaction to the democracy-promotion agenda and the series of “color revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and
16
Kyrgyzstan, leaders in Russia, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia have repressed the democracy-building activities
of Western NGOs—in what Thomas Carothers (2006:68) calls the “democracy backlash.”
17