The Conservative Idealists I

It may be about time to retire the overused, underdefined term "neo-conservative" and replace it with the more descriptive term "conservative idealist".

In 1987, then Vice-President Bush famously derided "the vision thing." The words would haunt his presidency, a concise reminder of how he felt short of his predecessor. Apparently, the lesson was learned well. Since September 11th, the second President Bush has given a number of stirring, idealistic speeches displaying a new vision of America's role in the world -- as the most powerful of the free nations with the consequent moral responsibility to help spread that freedom to those less fortunate.

Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. (Applause.)

Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
SOTU'02

Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.
SOTU'03

Has any Democrat since Kennedy spoken like this on foreign policy and meant it?