Dartblog

Click to enlarge.

Here we are, hurtling through the final fortnight in the Year of Our Lord, whomever that lord may be, Two Thousand and Five, and Agence France-Presse has seen fit to punctuate this annus mirabilis by kindly letting the masses know that a certain cliché embraced by a certain president has, as political clichés do every few centuries, birthed globe-altering fruit: freedom is spreading. In a dispatch headlined with that timeless trio of words, the AFP reports that, “The number of electoral democracies around the world rose from 119 to 122 this year, setting a new record as freedom made inroads in the Middle East and Africa…”

A new record.

Readers who dismissed as miraculism what has been called the Bush doctrine are faced with a fork in the road, as they pour over those heavy words. Down one bend, there is the bruised highway of Bush hatred, and of factionism. The vanguard doesn’t fly your preferred flag, so there’s no sense following it, regardless of the noble end it marches toward. Yet it takes something uniquely mad, something stripped of human veneer, to grimace at the words ‘freedom spreads’ and distill political venom from them. There is also, as Frost says, the road less traveled by. It is bereft of cynicism; it requires a touch of faith—not in any particular god but more faith in faith. It shakes off our national shackles of “realism” and, in so doing, shakes off other shackles that are real indeed. Those who choose to see and believe will confess to themselves that a touch of faith made all the difference in reaching that wonderful headline: “Freedom Spreads.” They’ll give credit where due, take their lumps, and join the fraternity.

Readers will read the article and think of a coterie of nations and peoples around the earth, united by nothing but revolution, and decide if perhaps it really is dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. They’ll look at America, which is in the lonely position of having an agenda that threatens to underwrite a better life for all six billion non-American men and women, and they’ll decide if America’s burden is theirs to shoulder and its victories theirs to share. And, I hope, they’ll look at Lebanon, and Iraq, and Egypt, and Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan, and they’ll see the victories. Incomplete ones; pocked ones. But victories nonetheless. The ones who choose the path less traveled by will be able to smile, whether they voted for the man in the White House or not. Some have put themselves in boxes, angling dangerously close to despair for despair’s sake, and subconsciously rooting for failure. They are, unfortunately, legion in number—but they needn’t be.

The time is fast approaching for peace on earth, good will toward men, and for the traditional New Year Resolution. Pursuant to all of these ancient traditions, may naysayers say ‘yea’ this Winter, as the freedom ticker ticks relentlessly up.