“America is Losing the Free World,” was the arresting headline over the Financial Times column by Gideon Rachman. His thesis:
The largest democracies of South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia — Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, India — are all moving out of America’s orbit. “(T)he assumption that the democracies would stick together is proving unfounded.”
On New Year’s Day, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki issued an ultimatum to the West: Accept a swap of part of our 2 ton stockpile of low-enriched uranium for your higher-enriched uranium for our U.S.-built reactor, or we start enriching to 20 percent ourselves.
Had he not proven incompetent to detonate his lap bomb, Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab would have carried off an air massacre to rival Lockerbie. We would all have ended Christmas day watching TV footage of 300 mangled bodies being picked up around Detroit.
About the first decade of what was to be the Second American Century, the pessimists have been proven right.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States began the century producing 32 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. We ended the decade producing 24 percent. No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade.
“And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger.
“And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men of good will.”
For Democrats like Harry Reid, who called them “evil-mongers,” and Nancy Pelosi, who called them “un-American,” the NBC News poll must have hit like a sucker punch at a Georgetown wine-and-cheese. The Tea Party movement, those folks rallying against spending last spring and Obamacare in the summer town halls, are …
If you would know what Copenhagen is all about, hearken to this nugget in The Washington Post’s report from the Danish capital:
“It’s time to stop worrying about the deficit — and start panicking about the debt,” the Washington Post editorial began. “The fiscal situation was serious before the recession. It is now dire.”
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