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Lots of links today, but Jay Nordlinger’s reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos are truly entertaining. You can find day two here, in which he writes a lot about the keynote speech by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The speech was excellent in a way we see too seldom these days. You can read the whole thing here.

First, let us take development. Amidst the extraordinary opportunities of the global economy, which we will talk about here, the amount of deprivation in our world still remains unacceptable. Half of our fellow human beings live on less than $2 a day. That’s simply not acceptable in a civilized world. But as we approach the challenges of development, let us remember that we know what works: We know that when states embrace free markets and free trade, govern justly and invest in their people, they can create prosperity and then translate it into social justice for all their citizens.

And later:

And even today, from time to time, we catch the occasional glimpse of what a better world could look like. I have seen it while sitting in a provincial council in Kirkuk, and watching as Iraqis search in peace for ways to resolve their differences. I have seen it when I watched the Saudi foreign minister applaud the Israeli prime minister’s speech about a new opportunity for peace.

And I have seen what a better future could look like when, improbably, I have watched the American president stand with elected leaders under the flags of a democratic Iraq, a democratic Afghanistan, and the democratic future state of Palestine.

That ultimately is the role of confidence in the eventual triumph of our ideals: to face the world every day as it is, but to know that it does not have to be that way — and to keep in sight the better, not perfect, but better world that it can be.

Makes me hope that she would run for president one day, though speeches are speeches and politics is politics.

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