America is still the nation whose eyes say ‘yes’

Madasafish

Well sorry, I would like to shre your optimism.
I see a country which is in denial on energy usage: it takes $4 gallon gas prioes to amke it think, a country in denial on its disastrous foreign policies, in denial about its finacial position (subprime basically being a large scale fraud) and living on past glories..

Moral authority? What's that?

Ellen

Moral authority, Madasafish?

What are you talking about?

Getting your idle chatter in before the Caliphate comes. Good idea.

And don't you ever go running to America for help.

Joanne Byrnes

Thank you Mr. Murray for your article. Some of our isolationists believe America should abstain from its global responsibilities and ignore its numerous treaties from faulty economic & social logic "tend to our own knitting & fight only in self-defense. Friends & neighbors around the world look to America's fleet to keep the sea lanes open, & to honor our commitments. Other citizens subscribe to the sophomoric "citizens of the world, give peace a chance" philosophy, which, unfortunately, the aggressive nations & misguided fanatical groups do not. World citizenship only works if there is 100% world participation, an unlikely scenario in our lifetimes. America has always had its flaws, as the most patriotic among us, natural born and naturalized recognize. But few countries have so agonized over their own failings, or spent so much blood and treasure to correct them. Obama's platform threatens far more than our delicate and vitally important foreign policy. Obama's philosophy of governance is diametrically opposed to all American values of liberty, self-help, community, and minimal government interference in a citizen's opportunities to choose his own path and strive for success. Obama, having been handed wealth and success without working for it, denigrates all who strive for a better life for themselves and their children as avaricious, selfish people, who must be forced to support all those who expect the government to provide from cradle to grave. All of his policies were already tried during The New Deal. America thus endured 8 more years of The Great Depression than the rest of the world. Sorry Obama, been there, done that, got the breadlines. Some of us DO know American history.

Joanne Byrnes

Madasafish, dear, America uses energy in direct proportion to its productivity and the high standard of living of its population. If we all lived in tents without air conditioning or central heating, and beat little burros to carry our goods around town, we would not use so much gas, or electricity. But then, millions of people wouldn't risk everything to try to get to America, would they? They can live that way at home. Oh, by the way, since 2004 America has surpassed Brazil as a producer of ethanol, which we also make from manure besides corn, is the world leader in windpower, and within 1 year will be the world leader in the use of hybrid vehicles. The requirements for all transportation to be energy efficient, from public buses to private cars are more stringent in America than anywhere else on the planet. Go chat up China with their hundreds of new dirty coal plants. America has been "thinking" via private enterprise, the enterpreneurship that built our country and is the hope of other countries, for decades. Since we don't depend on our government to handwalk us through life and run our economy, we have been busy solving our issues while Congressional partisans like Nancy Pelosi block votes on important national issues. You know what - it has always been that way from the beginning, and, by most standards, we've done pretty well for hundreds of years. The lesson: expect little from government, don't give government your money, invest it in something productive, and you just might improve things - in fact, lift many other boats besides your own.

Joanne Byrnes

Madafish, thanks for mentioning America's past glories. Read a biography of Benjamin Franklin, one of our Founders, who gave the world bifocals and the lightning rod. Read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, another self-made man who gave the fullest measure, and his most-respected nemesis, our beloved Robert E. Lee. One of the things you will learn is that even Great Men and U.S. Presidents do not, under our Constitution, singlehandedly control foreign policy. Our State Department is people with bureaucrats who have total job security and can undermine the sitting administration with impunity. Also, the Congress controls the purse strings and approves major trade agreements and treaties - or not. The world is a complicated place, and our only hope if Baby Obama gets elected is that the Dems will be so busy arguing among themselves about how to create their socialist utopia out of a country of independent self-helpers, that they will suffer utter gridlock and do as little harm as possible. Of course, that requires the rest of the world to behave themselves and not beat each other up at every opportunity, a situation that has never existed, and is unlikely. If you were the rich eldest brother in a family of 12 siblings, would you control their lives and maintain perfect harmony and balance? No. Neither can America. We do our best, knowing we always fall short of the ideal. Fortunately, we are our own worst critic. Come visit us. You will see more good than bad, more hope than despair, more generosity than selfishness, more ingenuity and hard work than sloth. On balance, America is, as Mr. Murray says, an example most of the world chooses to emulate as best they can for a reason: it works, and no one has come up with anything better, yet.

Nick Strange

"And just as America’s economic model remains the basis for all global economic successes, so its political system and ideals remain the only ideals which tyrannical regimes must either answer or, by necessity, silence."

"... all [] successes", "... only ideals"? These sentiments would be cloyingly fulsome if applied to the Archangel Gabriel.

Would it be crudely anti-American of me to suggest that their application to the USA, or to any other country come to that, is demented?

ron reece

Exactly what the career anti Americans should be force read and digest.
America is still "the shining city on the hill "to millions of people world wide.

alcook54

The old canard of Democrats as socialists:
"Obama's platform threatens far more than our delicate and vitally important foreign policy. Obama's philosophy of governance is diametrically opposed to all American values of liberty, self-help, community, and minimal government interference in a citizen's opportunities to choose his own path and strive for success."
You fail to relize that it is not ninety percent of the population that lives on farms and can lift themselves up by their own bootstraps; but it is the other way around, with 90% dependent on commerce to provide them with the wages and the means to lift themselves up. When the economy falters or fails, government is the only resource.
We can no longer be hoodwinked by Conservatives and the Republican Party into believing that it is still Morning in America. I have worked factories, fast food, construction, retail, and served in the miltary as enlisted and officer. I have lived in farm country and city. I am privy not only to the legend and lore of those who have gone before, but of the truth of their lives. try peddling yor wares on the next corner.

Bikerdad

Alcook54,
I too have served in the military, worked fast food, retail and construction. I've also worked as a truck driver, as a technology instructor, a technology professional, law enforcement and private security, environmental researcher, and various other occupations. I've lived in, worked in, or travelled to 49 of our 50 states, as well as half a dozen foreign countries.

And I've reached the opposite conclusions that you've reached. Government is rarely the solution, and more often the problem. This is primarily because government creates little itself, so most of its economic activity amounts to reallocation (i.e. redistribution) of resources.

Your analysis that as a result of being dependent on commerce rather than farming, people can't "bootstrap" is utterly wrong. Perhaps you should take a look at Hong Kong, where less than 1% of the population is involved in agriculture, and challenge yourself to understand how they managed to bootstrap themselves into a economic pocket tyro. The key role the government played in the transformation? Not meddling in the economy! Or look at the thousands of wealthy immigrants and first generation Americans who literally arrived here with nothing save their clothes, this within our own life times. Vietnamese boat people and Cuban refugees come to mind.

However, for most folks to succeed under the "American system", they need one key thing. A sense of responsibility for their own lives. That is what differentiates Obama's vision of America from mine. Not to say that Obama's vision doesn't fit HIS experience, because it does. If one grows thinking that everybody is responsible for you, and is "fortunate" enough that everybody ELSE believes that they're responsible for you as well, then one can arrive at a vision like Obama's. It used to be we would call such a person, when they were a child, a spoiled brat. Now, unfortunately, we seem to call them Democrats.

The problem is, of course, that once a person gets into the real world doesn't work in the manner Democrats would prefer. Which raises the question, what happens when a spoiled brat doesn't get their way? What happens when the brat has the full power of the government available to them...

That easy to answer. The eyes say "no."

Grant Carlson

I'm a Canadian living next door to the greatest country in the world and am always flummoxed by those Americans who continue to rubbish their own country.

Every country, just as every person, has made mistakes but no one is reminded of errors, real or imagined, moreso than the United States.

The fact is that the world needs American to succeed. Never before has such a variety of people lived together in one nation with the unique idea of E Pluribus Unum. Every nation, religion, language and colour is represented and is surely an indication of how all the world, with good fortune, might one day appear.

If America fails then, in a very real way, we all fail.

Andrew C.

An interesting article, but neoconservatives like Murray will never understand the problem since they reject the cause-CULTURE. Britain is dissolving today not because you lost your Empire, something that was inevitable, but because you no longer know what makes the Englishman "civilized"; you are (like Obama), egalitarians now, citizens of the EU, citizens of the world. You see Americans as, falsely, this epic, creedal Nation with the Godlike goal of spreading "democratism" whether the peoples and cultures we spread it to want/understand/are ready for it or not. Jefferson would have been horrified at such Jacobin-influenced ideological nonsense. But then, neocons, like leftists, (or progressives; the true "liberals" like Ron Paul who follow Jeffersonianism have little influence) are all Hamiltonians, not Jeffersonians. They believe in Empire, and empires will always fall eventually. It's time the world grew up and policed itself; I don't want our 50 sovereign States destroyed forever policing it for you. And, by the way, I'd like to see Britain (or at least England, and all things English) survive, so why don't you? If you did, you'd be voting UKIP, not NuLab, not Tory, not LibDem, or the extremes of Green and BNP. Tell us why you're so screwed up before you tell us why we must continue to substitute one leftism (neoconservatism) for another (Marxist democratic socialism)? I'm genuinely curious-I read Mr. Murray's book, but there were no coherent philosophical answers there to my questions.

Susan

I was inspired by this article. I am looking for the candidate who will uphold the United States Constitution. Isn't that what Jefferson did?

Hal

There are ways for America to help democracries around the world without pulling stunts like the Iraq invasion, which wss based on lies and arrogance. Few liberals in the US are isolationists. There are ways to be engaged in the world without looking for the next war to start.

With all the author's aspersions cast at Barack Obama (and no mention that he'd be the most intelligent president in quite a while), he has not a word to say about John McCain.

If you think that the American military is being underused and that another war somewhere would be nice, McCain is your man. I doubt he can win this year, however.

David Nilsson

Neocons and their Limey running dogs such as Murray have made the term "isolationist" one of abuse; but all the Founders were isolationists-- politically, not economically-- and the refusal to heed their wisdom since FDR started provoking the Japanese is ruining the USA, turning a republic into an uneasy and short-lived "informal empire".

With 700 "defense" establishments in three-quarters of the world's countries, spending half its total on "defense", America is totally in thrall to the military industrial complex-- as a later fine soldier and president warned it would become. Spurious and lame threats such as "Islamofascism" have to be concocted to keep the motor running.

Meanwhile the USA is turning into Greater Brazil, becoming less than half white in population by 2050 as its economic malaise deepens and the antics of its neoconised presidents make it look more and more ridiculous in the world.

Why should Britain continue to hitch its wagon to this fading star? We are big enough to go our own way like Switzerland or Sweden (or China!): those dreadful "isolationist" nation states which don't trot around the globe looking for foreigners to protect, meddle with and teach their manners.

Verity

Thank you, Douglas Murray, for an outstanding summing up.

And thank you, Joanne Byrnes, for your excellent posts - especially the first one.

David Stephens

Thank you, Mr. Murray. I'm not one who denies that America has faults. But it does grate that when some disaster happens America is pilloried for not doing enough and when some disaster in America happens no one cares. Bear in mind we'd be having this discussion in German, or Russian, if America didn't have muscle, which America flexes.

There are times that I want to take our football (the oblong one) and go home and let you sort it all out yourselves.

nancysabet

Hillary NOT Releasing Delegates
From, ALEGRE'S CORNER
http://alegrescorner.soapblox.net/
I just got a note from a friend who was on a conference call with Hillary yesterday. I want to get two things out here for you guys to ponder before I head out to work... 1) Harold Ickes said the new magic number is 2111.
2) Hillary said a few words about unity and winning in Nov. but she said NOTHING about releasing her delegates. Not a word.

So let's keep our head down - contact as many delegates as we can in the coming days - and stay strong.