The current rhetoric about making the world safe for democracy is a wonderful ideal. And, in order to move toward an ideal it seems useful to take some time for an introspective assessment of why this ideal is important - to myself as well as to those likely to be impacted. Without the benefit of an inward look I set myself up to be, at best, driven by my ego and, at the worst, influenced by others in ways in which I have no awareness (see my posting of Feb. 01).
This is what is so telling and so disturbing about President Bush saying aboard Air Force One on June 4, 2003: "I'm also not very analytical. You know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things."