I encourage all of you to check out my good friend Matt Sekerke's tribute to Ronald Reagan, which is a pleasure to read. Matt's erudition really comes out, as it does throughout the rest of his blog. I only wish he would update it more.

There are, however, two points of contention I would like to raise, a minor one and a major one.

First, the minor one: Take a look at what Matt writes here. The italics are mine.

His approach, therefore, stands far apart from the practice of politics in our time. Gone are debates and principles, and in are the opinion polls, sloganeering, vacuous terminology and fluid commitments. Bill Clinton gave us the era of feel-good politics and conquered public opinion with the force of his personality. By contrast, George W. Bush repeats the same formulaic phrases, speaks in bullet points, and appeals to messianism or eschatology.

Matt is right to be concerned about the end times language that sometimes pops out in the president's speeches. There is some anecedotal evidence that Bush wants to accelerate the Second Coming by paving the way for the rebuilding of Solomon's temple on the highly contested Temple Mount. I find it deeply troubling that Biblical prophecies could play any role in Bush's ardent support of Israel.

But, contra Matt, if there was a president who really went too far with the eschatology, it was not Bush. It was Reagan. Look at what Reagan said at a California state senate banquet in 1971. (This was quoted for memory in San Diego Magazine by former California state senate president pro tempore James Mills.)

"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.

"Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.

"For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons."

Wow. OK. Think that was just how he felt before taking office? He was at it again in a 1983 People magazine interview:

"[T]heologians had been studying the ancient prophecies -- what would portend the coming of Armageddon-- and have said that never, in the time between the prophecies up until now, has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this."

These are things that George W. Bush would never say in public, although he might believe them privately. While Matt is correct in saying that Reagan's ideas were based on principle, these principles were often tied to some of the wildest religious fantasies ever known to the presidency. So much for my first point.

My second point concerns Matt's favorable treatment of the approach he thinks Reagan would have taken to the war on terror. (If you still haven't read his entry, read it now.) According to this idea, the nation-state as we know it has failed in the Middle East. Countries such as Iraq do not constitute a social organizing unit. The only meaningful organizations in the region are supranational and subnational, and it is to these that people turn. This is how terrorism develops. Thus, the best way to combat terrorism is to "reestablish the supremacy of the state as a form of social organization." Moreover, "we should run the states ourselves. Yes: Like an empire."

I think that this strategy is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. Consider two Arab states which have come closest to this model: Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both have relatively homogenous populations and strong central governments with close ties to the United States. Egypt gets more money from us than any other country except Israel, and the Bush family's cozy relation with House of Saud is well known. While our influence in these countries is nowhere near the level of empire, it is arguably closer to Matt's ideal than it is in any other Arab country in the region.

Now let's take a look at the 19 hijackers on 9/11 and their country of origin. Fourteen of them were Saudis, the ringleader was Egyptian, and the rest were mostly from the United Arab Emirates, which is also closely tied to America and as far as I know has a strong central government!

Terrorism thrives in these countries not because the state is too weak, but because it is too strong; more importantly, not because America is not involved enough, but because it is involved too much. Consider another example, this time Matt's own: Before the Iraq War, the United States had no internal influence in the Baathist government. And what was Iraq's contribution to terrorism? Nothing. Now we rule Iraq, and look what's happening. There is a terrorist attack at least once a week. Iraq under Saddam might provide a good example of a strong state's control of sub- and supranational terrorism, but get the United States involved and the example goes out the window.

For those who still don't understand why we are facing a terrorism problem (and there are still some people in the government who think it is because terrorists 'hate freedom') you have to look no further than Osama bin Laden's own speeches. It's all in there. He has been trying for years to get the American military out of Saudi Arabia. More recently, and perhaps as a recruitment tactic, he has condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The message is clear: He and his terrorist followers want America out of the Middle East. Increasing our presence over there, as Matt suggests, is only going to piss these guys off even more. It's the exact opposite of what we should do.