What is Grandiose Rhetoric? Posted by Michael Cohen

To respond to Shadi's point below, perhaps I should have been clearer in my earlier post. I would make the argument that the following is grandiose and overstated rhetoric:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

However, I don't think demanding that Egypt adhere to the rule of law and not arresting pro-democracy advocates is grandiose or overstated. But if you are going to demand that Egypt does these things you can't look the other way when the Mubarak regime does the opposite.

As I noted in my first post, "President Obama needs to speak about democracy in more manageable terms. He needs to offer a realistic and less dogmatic policy framework for discussing democracy promotion that takes into account both US interests and values." It's always a challenge to bridge US interests and values but when we make "democracy" the end all-be all, we make the challenge that greater.

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Expectations were raised by the grandiose rhetoric that preceded the summit with the British prime minister characterising it as a 'new Bretton Woods' and a 'global new deal', though it was later scaled back as "a part of a process".