George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Chapter -XXIII- The End of History
Der Staat ist als die Wirklichkeit des substantiellen Willens, die er in dem zu
seiner Allgemeinheit erhobenen besonderen Selbstbewusstseyn hat, das an und
fuer sich Vernuenftige. Diese substantielle Einheit ist absoluter unbewegter
Selbstzweck, in welchem die Freiheit zu ihrem hoechsten Recht kommt, so wie
dieser Endzweck das hoechste Recht gegen die Einzelnen hat, deren hoechste
Pflicht es ist, Mitglieder des Staats zu seyn.
G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts.
George Bush's inaugural address of January 21, 1989, was on the whole an eminently
colorless and forgettable oration. The speech was for the most part a rehash of the tired
demagogy of Bush's election campaign, with the ritual references to "a thousand points of
light" and the hollow pledge that when it came to the drug inundation which Bush had
supposedly been fighting for most of the decade, "This scourge will stop." Bush talked of
"stewardship" being passed on from one generation to another. There was almost nothing
about the state of the US economy. Bush was preoccupied with the "divisiveness" left
over from the Vietnam era, and this he pledged to end in favor of a return to bipartisan
consensus between the president and the Congress, since "the statute of limitations has
been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long
afford to be sundered by a memory." There is good reason to believe that Bush was
already contemplating the new round of foreign military adventures which were not long
in coming.
One thing is certain: Bush's inaugural address contained no promise to keep the peace of
the sort that had figured in his New Orleans acceptance speech back in August.
The characteristic note of Bush's remarks came at the outset, in the passages in which he
celebrated the triumph of the American variant of the bureaucratic-authoritarian police
state, based on usury, which chooses to characterize itself as "freedom:"
We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to
secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth- through free markets, free speech, free
elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
For the first time in this century, for the first time perhaps in all history, man does not have to
invent a system by which to live. We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of
government is better. We don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to summon it
from within ourselves. We must act on what we know. [fn 1]
After the inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol were completed, George and Barbara
Bush descended Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House in a triumphant
progress, getting out of their limousine every block or two to walk among the crowds and
savour the ovations. George Bush, imperial administrator and bureaucrat, had now
reached the apex of his career, the last station of the cursus honorum: the chief
magistracy. Bush now assumed leadership of a Washington bureaucracy that was