Last week in Washington D.C., our nation got a well-deserved chance to look pretty. We gelled our hair, brushed our teeth, shined our shoes and partied until the wee hours. The last few years have been difficult, but the hard work is paying off and we deserved a break.

Of course, our liberal friends disagree. They say President Bush’s inauguration was inappropriate and fails to deliver our message to the world.

In quite possibly the most eloquent speech of his tenure, he clearly outlined where we have been, how we have reacted and the challenges that still lie ahead.

He said, “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.”

The entire speech could have been condensed to those two sentences.

The war on terror must be fought abroad. We must bring our armies to any nation that harbors forces seeking our destruction. Governments that are friendly to terrorists must be removed. Citizens living under tyrannical leaders must be liberated. This all must happen now.

I’m not sure if liberals hate freedom, or they think other people don’t deserve freedom, or if someone once told them that freedom grows on trees. Does freedom grow on trees? Maybe one of you could write a poem about Freedom Trees and post it on the Facebook group “Citizens United Against Chuck Prochaska.” That’d be cute.

Regardless, President Bush succeeded in delivering a solid message of hope to the world. We will achieve peace through superior power.

Aside from these criticisms, many have charged the President with egregious materialism in the face of widespread foreign unrest:

“$40 million for an inauguration? Why, that could be spent on tsunami relief!”

“What must the world think about us now – partying while our soldiers slaughter Iraqi babies in an unjust war!”

“Where’s my invitation? What the hell?!”

How short the liberal mind really is… (“Didn’t you use that line in a column last week?”)

Hollywood and some others who hate this country partied it up for a full week in D.C. in 1993 to the tune of a $25 million inauguration for President Clinton. At the same time, Angola was mired in a civil war, Somalia was suffering from famine, Mexico was recovering from devastating floods, Russia’s economy was on the brink of collapse, volcanoes were erupting in Columbia and hundreds were dying in a bitterly cold winter in Bosnia.

Yet, I don’t recall liberals demanding that Slick Willy slash his party fund and give some to the starving children in Africa. I’m pretty sure they bought their gowns and tuxedos while ignoring the rest of the world, excited to go boogie with their favorite adulterer. For an entire week, the Democratic Party Newsletter, also known as the New York Times, reported nothing but roses and rainbows out of Washington.

Yet, the smattering of hippies that crawled out of their coffee shops to call Bush a war criminal made front-page news last week, even at our own Daily Illini. Next to them were stories of war and waves. And beneath that, “Oh, by the way, the President vowed to end tyranny.”

Lesson learned? Liberals hate big parties only when they aren’t invited.

This bold and extravagant inauguration couldn’t have come at a better time for our nation. Shortly after a very divided election, we must be able to unite under a leader who will always put America first. In the midst of a difficult battle for freedom, we must be reminded that freedom must be achieved at any cost – our lives depend on it. And just before one of the most challenging democratic experiments this world has ever seen, we need to be told that our efforts abroad are slowly bringing lifetimes of peace and prosperity to people who otherwise would have never known such concepts.

Chuck Prochaska is a sophomore in LAS. His column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached at [email protected].