Blair speech in L.A.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair made the following remarks several weeks ago in the midst of the Lebanon/Israel crisis.

“..We must commit ourselves to a complete renaissance of our strategy to defeat those that threaten us. There is an arc of extremism now stretching across the Middle East and touching, with increasing definition, countries far outside that region. To defeat it will need an alliance of moderation, that paints a different future in which Muslim, Jew and Christian; Arab and Western; wealthy and developing nations can make progress in peace and harmony with each other. My argument to you today is this: we will not win the battle against this global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force, unless we show we are even-handed, fair and just in our application of those values to the world...

Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win. And this is a battle we must win.”

Find the rest at http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page9948.asp. I think this is a good speech, maybe a Winston Churchill “Iron Curtain” speech of our time. All we need know is a Truman to deliver.

I’m reading an old biography on Leo Tolstoy by author Isaiah Berlin titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” He writes “there is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’” Berlin divides leaders, thinkers, and others into two categories; the hedgehog, who tries to integrate all of his experiences and thoughts into a single, overarching concept of life and the fox, who as he puts it, have ideas about the world "without seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."

Berlin summarizes that the famous Russian author was a fox that wanted to be a hedgehog in his latter years. I think Tony Blair is a fox too. He’s showed himself to be steadfast and ethical, not insular or sanctimonious. Now, if Blair is the fox of modern times, who is the hedgehog?