Last week, President Bush gave an historic speech about foreign policy at London’s White Hall Palace before an audience of foreign policy experts.

In reply to European critics who call Americans “moralistic,” Bush not only embraced that description, but he also identified it as part of the Anglo-American cultural legacy. He spoke of the moral zeal “inspired … by the tireless compassion of Lord Shaftesbury, the righteous courage of Wilberforce, and the firm determination of the Royal Navy over the decades to fight and end the trade in slaves.”

The president’s invocation of William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, the committed Christians who worked tirelessly to relieve oppression wherever they found it, marks the first time in my lifetime that any president has set forth his policy in such an explicitly Christian context.

His identification with this tradition stands in contrast to what you read in the European press. There, they call the president a “cowboy,” at best, and a religious crank and eccentric, at worst. Rather than get defensive, the president has replied “this is the tradition from England that has come to America, and it is what informs our faith and what informs our beliefs today.”

But the president’s speech was hugely significant for more than his reference to our evangelical roots. He outlined the most honest and visionary approach to foreign policy that any other American president has taken in a long time.

Bush, reflecting a hard-headed realism, candidly stated that we’ve had decades of failed policy in the Middle East . We’ve been willing to bargain and to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe; it merely bought time while problems festered and men like Osama bin Laden got organized.

Not any more. We’re going to get to the heart of the problem, which is the lack of freedom in these societies. “No longer,” Bush said, “should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.”