Bill Kristol is awestruck by Romney's "eloquent and powerful" Warsaw speech:
It's striking that in these remarks, Romney chooses to speak not as a "citizen of the world" but as a citizen of the free world. He suggests that American exceptionalism isn't a basis for some sort of arrogant disdain for the rest of the world, but rather provides the grounds for a duty to stand with others around the world fighting for freedom.
I defy anyone to locate any powerfully eloquent significance reflected in Kristol's platitudinous muddle.
Mitt Romney boldly refuses to speak as a citizen of Kazakhstan, but with free peoples he hangs his hat. Goosebumps, huh? What's more, only the ruthlessly tortured concept of "American exceptionalism" allows Romney to heroically "stand with others around the world fighting for freedom."
And here we get to Kristol's real objective: the labored protection of neoconservatism's exclusive appropriation of human freedom in American foreign policy. Forget Franklin Roosevelt's historic internationalism on behalf of human freedom, as well as Harry Truman's and John Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's (as twisted as it was) and Jimmy Carter's and Bill Clinton's and now Barack Obama's.
The only internationalism that counts as humanly splendid and truly freedom-seeking, contends Kristol, is that beheld by Republican neoconservatives, even if the neocons did vapidly botch freedom-loving internationalism through unprovoked slaughter and trillions in fiscal waste.
Now that's some powerful material. Mighty powerful.
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