by Patrick J. Buchanan

In the calendar of the French Revolution, Thermidor was the second month of summer. On 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794), Robespierre was guillotined and the Reign of Terror came to an end. Thermidor has thus come to mean the turning point in a revolution, when the fever passes on and the fury abates. Trotsky called Stalin’s consolidation of power “Soviet Thermidor.” And it would appear Thermidor has come to the world democratic revolution of George W. Bush. In the catechism of the Bush Revolution, liberty is indivisible. If the whole world is not free, America’s freedom is not secure, and we must thus use American power in perpetuity to liberate mankind and, as Bush declared in his second Inaugural, “end tyranny on earth.” No more utopian ambition has ever been declared by an American president. In 2006, however, reality intruded…