ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the paradox that the author of Legitimacy and Force could at one and the same time be properly viewed as a moving force in the making of American foreign policy in the 1980s, and in the shaping of a broad perception of the United States as a nation of moral probity as well as political force in the world at large. Once upon a time, there was a widely accepted belief that public service is itself a public good. And that those scholars engaged in the making or execution of American policy, foreign or domestic, was entitled to special consideration. Jeane Kirkpatrick became the symbol, the lightning rod, of a new proud self-image of the United States as a democratic world leader, one at the helm of the several dozen other nation-states in the world that correlate political freedom and economic well-being.
