THIS REMARKABLE PARAGRAPH came toward the end of President Bush’s Second Inaugural. It’s worth a closer look.

The subject of the paragraph is history, and Bush offers a certain view of it. History has a direction, one “set by liberty.” This direction is “visible”–meaning we can see it in events themselves. (Thus does Bush point to signal events in our history.) The movement toward freedom is not a straight line, however. It has “an ebb and flow,” meaning there are setbacks. But liberty will eventually triumph. And we can be completely confident that it will, not because such an outcome is preordained, but because human beings make choices that “move events,” and the choices that human beings everywhere ultimately make will favor liberty. But why be so confident about that? Because freedom is “the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.” Or, as Bush said in his First Inaugural, “it is the inborn hope of humanity.”