The address outlined the President's legislative proposals for the upcoming year and referenced the budget deficit, health care reform, the War on Terror, the Occupation of Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, the rising price of gasoline and the transfer to independent sources of alternative energy, illegal immigration, Hurricane Katrina and the federal response to natural disasters, Avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak, the Abramoff scandal and corruption within the government, the NSA spying controversy, the successful nomination of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, and the Administration's proposed ban on same-sex marriage.

He again used anaphora by repeating "We will choose," paralleling "pursuing the enemies of freedom," applicable to both the Axis of Evil and terrorists in general, with "Retreating "from our duties in the hope of an easier life," a direct attack on Criticism of the Iraq War, which particularly calls for withdrawal.

The president pointed out that there are 98 more Democratic countries in 2006 than there were in 1945, in addition to Women's suffrage in Afghanistan, the Purple Revolution in Iraq, and political discourse in Lebanon and Egypt, as evidence that Democracy, freedom, and self-governance have grown throughout the world.

Although many social and political analysts would agree that more people live in free and fair societies than at the end of World War II, all of the examples Bush provided lay in the Middle East.

Shifting away from the comparison of democracy and dictatorship during the Cold War and post-9/11 America, Bush outlined the major opposition to freedom as radical Islam, which he defines as "the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death."