Reno Hayek Symposium

We were once a great nation, leader of the free world. We are no longer. Obama is taking us down more rapidly than demographics would ultimately accomplish. He apologizes for our past leadership, he apologizes for our strength and diplomacy, he apologizes for our arrogance. He abandons Israel, Poland, and the Czech Republic. He curries favor with Iran, Venezuela and Russia.

Charles Krauthammer’s NRO October 16th post, Debacle in Moscow, says it very well, calls it “amateurish…wrapped in naivete.” When describing the soft leftist criticism of his Nobel Peace Prize as “premature,” he hits the nail on the head: ” If the Nobel committee had waited a few years Obama’s Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged. “National self-denigration–excuse me, outreach and understanding–is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign-policy successes shall come.” (Now for you Peter Sellers fans:) “CHAUNCEY GARDINER COULD NOT HAVE SAID IT BETTER.” (Emphasis added!)

That we will eventually yield world leadership is inevitable, I think. The course, though, and the end results are not. The novice in the White House puts us on a very risky course with more dangerous end results assuredly in the mix.

The American electorate can, and hopefully will, change the composition of the Congress in 2010. It cannot change the composition of Obama’s foreign policy. Whether that policy is to pick unnecessary protectionist fights with our largest creditor while facing national debt approaching 100% of GNP or that policy is to abandon Israel, disarm in the Mideast and leave the critical region to Russia, we are stuck with that policy until 2012.

In short, we are stuck with Chauncey Gardiner. God save us!

Tom Motherway