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Essay President George Washington Bush’s Second Inaugural Address

Decent Essays

Since President Abraham Lincoln’s great second inaugural address (May 4th 1865) nearly 150 years ago it was a long existing habit for the President’s inaugural address to present a quite ambiguous demand for diplomacy and transformation of the world. President Bush’s second inaugural address was no different. It set forth President Bush’s ambitious perception of the United States’ role in progressing of liberty, democracy, and freedom worldwide “with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world” . In spite of persuade his public to adhere to his arguably over ambiguous goal, President George W. Bush uses a rhetoric approach that blends parts of pathos and ethos with precise word choice to create ethically and emotionally charged …show more content…

To create common ideals and values President Bush relies on the assumption that he has successfully created a common history by saying that because we have a common history “America’s vital interests (ideals) and our deepest beliefs (values) are now one.” The establishment of common ethics is done in the same subtle manner as the establishment of common morals. When he is addressing the “peoples of the world” he is making promises on behave of the United States to support those who would seek liberty, freedom, and democracy. He then addresses his “fellow citizens” once again in paragraph 22 and says that we have “accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon.” In other words the US already has obligations to help the spread of freedom so either the audience supports his goal to end tyranny or they are dishonorable and thus unethical. Because President Bush’s address is ideological, it relies heavily on the assumption that his world views, religious views, and ideals line up with those of the audience. If there were discrepancies in any of the three, his argument would fall flat. He began his address by presenting his world view with the statement that, “for as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed

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