Decline Is a Choice-The New Liberalism and the end of American ascendancy.

Weekly Standard ^ | 10/19/2009 | Charles Krauthammer

[sergeantdave]

“Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter.”

Gee, Charles, you need to get out of DC for a few days. You sound like a yapping French poodle. Take a tour of America once in a while. It’ll clear your head. A reaffirmation of the American revolution is going on all around you. And it’s just getting started. Come on out. We’ll even set you on a parade float. Chin up, old boy.

[ez]

American Exceptionalism is embodied in one single document...The Bill Of Rights., These ten Amendments to the US Constitution define the boundaries which should exist on democratic government...that is government by the people. If one believes in the natural rights found in the Bill Of Rights, he defacto must agree that the concepts should be brought to ALL nations, regardless of their culture...they are NATURAL rights which belong to all people. However, if one, like Obama, believes that the BoR is a hurdle to be vaulted in the pursuit of dictatorial governmental powers...if one believes the people must be guided by the State, then American exceptionalism is financial at best. And not for much longer...

[ez]

Somebody email this to Ms. Garofolo??? She loves to throw around words like hegemony.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Does he dare speak it?
Obama is too alienated from American culture to be president,
to be able to lead this country. He is too alienated from normal American culture
and always begins with negatives on the American narrative. It has something to
do with his childhood and upbringing. It seems to have been further enabled at
Columbia and Harvard.

[Pelham]

“Well then stop reading those magazines and crack a book.”

I’ll be glad to. I have the two volume Vintage edition of Democracy in America right here. And while I’ve read in it over the years I wouldn’t begin to pass myself off as an expert on the book. But you may be. So while I have your attention I’ll ask you to please point to where de Tocqueville uses the phrase “American exceptionalism”. It’s not in the index and not in the chapter headings. Boorstin doesn’t mention it in his preface, although he does credit de Tocqueville with having coined the term “individualism”. I don’t recall running across it, so I’m eager to learn from a de Tocqueville scholar.

“I noticed how you said “the monarchies of europe”. “

Yes, well de Tocqueville spent a good deal of his book contrasting the European character shaped by monarchical society with the individualistic character of American society shaped by democracy. American democracy made a big impression on de Tocqueville, hence the title of his book. Had American exceptionalism made a larger impact on him perhaps he would have titled his work Exceptionalism In America. But he didn’t. Go figure.

“Next to Burke, Smith and Locke(read them?) Tocqueville is the most reffed(he’s french guy ya know) outside this country’s founding.)”

You appear to have overlooked Montesquieu, arguably the most influential french guy upon the founders. Certainly upon Madison. I haven’t read Locke. Most of the Burke that I’ve read is from Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” and various essays on conservative revolution waged for the preservation of the rights of Englishmen. I’ve read Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and his Wealth of Nations. What exactly was it about them that you want to discuss?

[kellynla]

"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."

Not to forget that we have enough coal reserves to last the next 300 years.

[SuziQ]

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

We have to start by working to elect conservatives to Congress in 2010, and then support a strong, unapologetic conservative for President in 2012