I said so on Air America's Morning Sedition yesterday -- though I also quoted Zephyr Teachout when she told me that she liked what Bush said but wasn't sure he was the president to do it.
Still, this seemed to be a speech with vision, a doctrine with courage. I was eager to see how he carried it out with North Korea, Saudi Arabia... you name the undemocratic nation.
Yet already, there's spin from the White House -- the kind of spin you see when somebody tries to pedal backwards. Howard Kurtz captures it:
You might think that calling on the United States to spread freedom around the globe and stand against tyranny might have consequences.
It was a statement of ideals.
But what does the president plan to do to carry out those ideals?
There will be no change in administration policy.
But how can Bush call for action against regimes that oppress their people and still do business with the dictators of China, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan?
The goals the president set forth can only be met over a generation, not in a year or two.
Then was the speech just meaningless rhetoric?
It was an attempt to lay out his strategic vision about moral choices.
So we shouldn't take his words seriously?
The president believes in bold action to advance the cause of freedom.
But if he doesn't take any practical steps, won't he have failed to clear the bar he set for himself?
It was a statement of ideals.
Homeless
: The New York Post and The New York Times editorial pages almost agree that the homless should not be making the New York subway their home after a fire apparently started by one of them caused damage and disruption that will take months or even years to fix. The Post started it in an editorial:
Let's face it: Some subway-station bum starts a fire, probably to warm his tootsies, and subway riders suffer for years.
He's culpable, of course, even if he is crazy as a loon.
But blame for this fiasco also must accrue to those who have made the notion that "homelessness" is just an "alternative lifestyle" into public policy — which insanely grants vagrants the right to take up residence anywhere they damn please....
Was the perp just crazy? Was it deliberate arson? Or just carelessness or recklessness, a street-dweller trying to stay warm in sub-freezing temperatures? Or smoking a cigarette (or something else)?
Does it really matter?
New York City spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to feed, clothe, shelter and provide all manner of services to needy street folk.
When they resist help, their self-appointed "advocates" rise to defend their "rights" to do so.
What do these "advocates" say now, when millions will have to suffer, likely for years, so that the "rights" of a single lunatic could be preserved?
For years, responsible New Yorkers (including us) have argued that these people are a danger to themselves and others (not to mention, a daily blight).
If they refuse good-faith help, they need to be hauled off to Rikers Island.
For the benefit of law-abiding New Yorkers, if not for their own sake.
Cruel? Hardly.
After all, there's a lot more heat and food at Rikers than on the streets.
Living in the city's nooks and crannies — on a subway platform near a signal station, for example — must be a crime.
New Yorkers should be boiling at the thought that one man could be allowed to cause pain for millions, so he can exercise his right maybe to freeze to death.
And The Times editorializes today:
The subway is also no place for the homeless, and it's a sign of the system's shaky state that hundreds of people have been allowed to live in its grapevine of tunnels and passageways. It is not safe for them and, as Sunday's fire makes clear, it is not safe for the millions who ride through those tunnels every single day. The city's police and homeless outreach programs need to be mobilized right away.
Well, The Times isn't going for that Rikers Island solution but it is at least agreeing that the homeless shouldn't be living in the subway.
Rudy Guliani was the first politician in New York to have the guts to deal with this issue; other cities (I'm thinking of you, San Francisco) haven't.
And the real issue isn't homelessness. It's insanity. The laws in this country make it impossible to commit and help even the obvioulsy and often the dangerously insane.
I say that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is as much at fault as any politician, for it made the institution frightening and the people who run it bad guys.
Guliani saw that because of the fear of the rubber room, we ended up with a doctrine that said it's a right to lose your mind but he said it's not a right to interfere with the lives of people around you.
He got rid of the squeegee men years ago -- and personally, I was relieved, for a bunch of them attacked my car one night and tried to drag me out of it, sending my wife into premature labor. It is a danger.
The fact that people are living in the subways of New York is, in the end, a dereliction of our duty to these people. The Post and The Times are both right. Now let's do something about it.
: UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds and Helen Reynolds have much more here.
Damned ice dam
: I just spent the last two nights on a roof banging at ice-filled gutters on the roof above because ice is backing up under the roof and melting and dripping and driving us crazy: Jersey water torture. I hate heights. So I feared falling; I feared huge hunks of ice and gutter falling on my head; and because I fear looking like a dork, I refused my wife's suggestion that I wear a bike helmet. And now it's snowing again. Call me when winter's over.
Should I consider a metal roof?
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