What other newspaper in America presents such a forthright defense of its editorial policy as does The Wall Street Journal? Some few may summarize their views in an annual editorial but where else does the publisher speak for the whole enterprise in so forthright a manner? This magnanimity presents a unique opportunity to discover what motivates this great newspaper.

In previous years, the annual publisher's report had been primarily a business statement. The 2004 report was different partly because of a change in leadership. The political cognoscenti knew the new editor of the Journal, Paul Gigot, from his respected Washington days as well as several of the major writers, and everyone recognized his esteemed predecessor, the recently deceased, Robert L. Bartley. But few knew Karen Elliott House, the recently appointed publisher. She had written many Journal op-ed pieces, had been foreign editor, and president of Dow Jones & Company ‘s International Group but operated in recent years in rarefied levels not accessible to many even of the privileged few.

This year's report left no doubt of her role in either news or opinion in the new management structure. "Only at the publisher's level do the reporting lines for news and opinion come together," Ms. House noted, directing her report to "the editorial pages of the Journal, which expresses this publication's opinions. I want to explain the philosophy that guides them." Whereas the news pages are devoted to accuracy and fairness, the opinion pages "are dedicated to advocating a consistent philosophy and the positions that emanate from them. That philosophy can be summed up as ‘free markets, free people.'" "Mr. Gigot assures that our opinion pages leave no doubt about what we think."

Ms. House declares herself "not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one we would say we are radical." This "radical" philosophy is "expansive and optimistic." Conversely, she resists the label "conservative" as "too confining" and "devoid of" optimism. This Journal philosophy embraces three elements: "an abiding faith in free markets" and competition rather than in supporting big business per se, the rule of law and morality as necessary to sustain that liberty, and the belief in "the fundamentally constructive role of U.S. power in today's dangerous world."

She concludes her philosophical review by quoting Bartley: "What I think I've learned over 30 years is that in this society, rationality wins out, progress happens and problems have solutions. This, I like to think, is what happens when a society incorporates the editorial credo of my newspaper, free markets and free people. In that kind of society, optimism pays." It is a tour de force in clarity and forthrightfulness and deserves to be applauded.

Naturally, given the orientation of our own little journal, our attention is directed to the publisher's unwillingness to describe its philosophy as conservative. We sympathize with the avowed purpose of not identifying with the status quo meaning of the term. Yet, that was a battle won by conservatives in the 1960s at the old National Review and elsewhere back when the Journal's pages were still almost aggressively moderate. It is interesting that Ms. House finds the term confining and not optimistic. Conservatism is a confining term, respecting an often-intractable core to human nature that limits its malleability, the same characteristic that makes it often seem less than optimistic. Conservatism follows the American Founders in believing that human nature was rather constant, neither angelic nor evil, but expressing both characteristics throughout history. To them, progress did not happen but had to be earned each day, even sometimes requiring the sacrifice of sacred fortunes.

Of course, Mr. Bartley limited his statement on optimism to "this society" of free markets and free people and optimism pretty much does pay there. Outside that small arena of human existence, and sometimes there, however, most conservatism has taught that too much optimism is dangerous. It is interesting that Ms. House adopts the term "radical," the European political term for secular, anti-clerical, classical liberalism. It is an Enlightenment term, one that emphasizes rationality and progress as its core values. F.A. Hayek identified two types of rationalism in the West, one based on the Enlightenment and Rene Descartes and relying upon pure reason, and a second that was pre-Enlightenment and based upon European tradition as well as reason. The term radical is identified with the former while Locke and the Founders epitomized the later.

Modern conservatism, beginning with Hayek and publicized by William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer, consciously adopted this "fusion" of reason and tradition—specifically as that Judeo-Christian European tradition cohered in America--as the essence of its philosophy. Obviously, it had no argument with free markets and free peoples for the United States. That was the basis of a fusionist conservatism promoting freedom that led the way to Ronald Reagan, even for The Wall Street Journal, which came much later to its more free market position under Bartley. But fusionist conservatism rejected the radicals' distain for traditional values. It is interesting that Ms. House notes that their greater emphasis on morality has come to the Journal even more recently. What is most different from fusionist conservatism, however, is the more positive "constructive role" for American power in the world posited by the Journal's self-described radical philosophy.

The historic conservative position has been that of George Washington, a policy that restricted American power to protecting its interests, especially in the Western hemisphere, with no permanent entangling alliances. As John Quincy Adams put it: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." This philosophy did not reject power but considered it dangerous unless restricted. Indeed, the whole point of the Constitution was to control power. Yet, even preemption might be necessary, as with the Barbary pirates, if it was to legitimately deter future aggression. Of course, World War II and the Cold War expanded the scope but, even then, the Sharon Statement adopted at Buckley's estate at the beginning of the conservative movement, accepted this only because it was considered necessary to defend America's freedom. September 11 further increased the range of interests to be protected but most conservatives still saw it in the context of protecting home interests. It was in that context that President Bush invoked the threat to America to justify combating terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ms. House anticipates the traditional conservative concern and defends her more aggressive foreign policy position against the charge that it is "too idealistic." She even argues that the positive use of American power in Iraq and elsewhere "can lead to the establishment of a functioning free society in that country and then to a spread of freer societies and freer markets across the Middle East." Her proof is that power has produced freedom in other parts of the world and that Arabs are not fundamentally different. Whether her optimism is shared or not by others, she considers it obvious to all that the "worst case" would be a premature withdrawal from Iraq and from general American "obligations of leadership" to prevent the world from unraveling, the non-acceptance of which leadership she labels "suicidal."

It is not at all obvious, however, that withdrawal would be worse than being bogged down for years in the middle of an ethnic civil war among the three historically distinct peoples of Iraq. Nor is it clear that there is a U.S. obligation to police the world other than to destroy terrorist cells, mostly through cooperation with existing states, even if they are not free societies--as we did recently with Libya. Nor does the world seem to be unraveling but simply needs some tending to control the only real threat at present, against fundamentalist Islam (not Arabism). Nor does it seem likely that American power can do much to spread freedom or democracy or the rule of law to nations that have never seen it. It is not clear which examples Ms. House has in mind but, certainly, partially Westernized and homogeneous Germany and Japan were very different cases. Only a score of nations in the world have tolerable standards on these principles even today. The rest of the world would seem to require a less idealistic and more cooperative approach.

It must be remembered that President Reagan, to whose idealism Ms. House appeals, was very reluctant to use force. He deployed fewer troops to fewer hot spots than any other recent president. Even when he did, very limited numbers of troops of elite units were committed, not mass armies, against very weak opponents. And when things got too dangerous, he had the sense to get out before being bogged down, as in Lebanon. Withdrawal was not the worst outcome to that president nor should it be to President Bush. Evil must be confronted as Ms. House avers but it is important that it is confronted wisely, within existing resources, which today are already stretched to the breaking point. Optimism should be balanced with a sense of history regarding what is possible.

Optimism has its limits, even for the very optimistic Ronald Reagan. At my last cabinet meeting with him in 1985, I was briefing him and the cabinet regarding how we were losing our earlier success in reducing the federal domestic bureaucracy. While the net reduction was still down, all of the numbers were edging up. At the end, he said: "I know it is tough to keep cutting government when all of the pressures are to increase it. In my study of history, no nation has turned back from bureaucratic statism having gone down so far as has the United States. Although no country has come back, I would like us to be the beginning, I would like us to be the first." It is great to have the optimism but conservatism requires one to also know history and the difficulty of overcoming it.

By Editor