Mr Bush, in his second inaugural speech, is to proclaim how freedom must spread to secure America and peace for the world. The nature of the freedom in his sights is one that is widely accepted in western and other “modern” democracies as freedom. It is the freedom to chose leaders from a narrow political sect who place above all other rights the right to own things, to keep them for yourself, free from interference.

As I pointed out in my last post, Post-Modernism, God and the Buddha. a truth universally acknowledged is not necessarily a universal truth. The kind of freedom offered to, actually demanded of, all the worlds people is as narrow and limiting as any other kind of freedom when imposed from above.

For the poor of America, who are likely to stay that way for generations, let alone the poor of less resource-rich land areas, this freedom has delineated their narrow hopes and opportunities. Mr Bush and his ilk are not inspired by any deep philosophical notions of freedom, for if they were their freedom would be more deeply rooted in the philosophy they claim, Christianity, and the poor would not suffer so.