Obama Places Wreath in South Korea for Veteran's Day

President Obama took a break from praising muslims and apologizing for American "messy democracy" and placed a wreath for veterans to honor Veteran's Day.

Nothing could illustrate the yawning chasm between Obama and the American People greater than the breadth of the Pacific Ocean. I would complain about his lack of care and proper attention to our veterans, you know, those people that made America possible for the rest of us, but maybe overseas is where Obama really belongs. He waxes poetic about his stepfather's fight for Indonesian independence. He scraps the American space program in favor of praising muslims.

I think the message our "messy democracy" sent to him on November 2nd might be sinking in. Hope and change have finally come to America. Just not the kind that Obama had hoped for.

America - Benign Hegemon

Sure our Constitutional Republic is under attack by left wing radicals in the seat of our government. Charles Krauthammer understands this, but also gives a recipe for renewal. We can change our course. The dollar does not have to tank. We do not have to retire as a superpower. We can make better choices.

Decline is a choice. More than a choice, a temptation. How to resist it?

First, accept our role as hegemon. And reject those who deny its essential benignity. There is a reason that we are the only hegemon in modern history to have not immediately catalyzed the creation of a massive counter-hegemonic alliance--as occurred, for example, against Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany. There is a reason so many countries of the Pacific Rim and the Middle East and Eastern Europe and Latin America welcome our presence as balancer of power and guarantor of their freedom.

And that reason is simple: We are as benign a hegemon as the world has ever seen.

So, resistance to decline begins with moral self-confidence and will. But maintaining dominance is a matter not just of will but of wallet. We are not inherently in economic decline. We have the most dynamic, innovative, technologically advanced economy in the world. We enjoy the highest productivity. It is true that in the natural and often painful global division of labor wrought by globalization, less skilled endeavors like factory work migrate abroad, but America more than compensates by pioneering the newer technologies and industries of the information age.

There are, of course, major threats to the American economy. But there is nothing inevitable and inexorable about them. Take, for example, the threat to the dollar (as the world's reserve currency) that comes from our massive trade deficits. Here again, the China threat is vastly exaggerated. In fact, fully two-thirds of our trade imbalance comes from imported oil. This is not a fixed fact of life. We have a choice. We have it in our power, for example, to reverse the absurd de facto 30-year ban on new nuclear power plants. We have it in our power to release huge domestic petroleum reserves by dropping the ban on offshore and Arctic drilling. We have it in our power to institute a serious gasoline tax (refunded immediately through a payroll tax reduction) to curb consumption and induce conservation.

Nothing is written. Nothing is predetermined. We can reverse the slide, we can undo dependence if we will it.

The other looming threat to our economy--and to the dollar--comes from our fiscal deficits. They are not out of our control. There is no reason we should be structurally perpetuating the massive deficits incurred as temporary crisis measures during the financial panic of 2008. A crisis is a terrible thing to exploit when it is taken by the New Liberalism as a mandate for massive expansion of the state and of national debt--threatening the dollar, the entire economy, and consequently our superpower status abroad.

There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens. His reply? "I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now."

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist and contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. This essay is adapted from his 2009 Wriston Lecture delivered for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York on October 5.

Stimulus makes me nauseous

Oh, please don't do it. Please don't. Please DON'T. Please don't spend my children's and grandchildren's prosperity. Please don't pass the largest spending bill ever to be passed in the history of this country. Please don't put through a HUGE batch of entitlement programs that will essentially turn this country into a socialist nation. Please don't take away hope from my children. Please don't take away the incentive that comes with capitalism. Incentive for my kids to plan to work hard to get ahead. To exert themselves to make a good life for themselves and their families.

Do you remember my post about Memories of Socialism? I wrote about my experience as a foreign exchange student in Sweden in the 1980s. I specifically *asked* the kids there what they planned to do when they "grow up". To a MAN they said that they didn't plan to do anything grand. Because if they did, the government would take it all away from them. They would end up supporting 4 families in addition to their own. And the drunk down the street has a nice apartment. Their words.

Please don't.