Krauthammer: Decline is a Choice

The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research hosted its 22nd annual Wriston Lecture on October 5, 2009.

Charles Krauthammer delivered the keynote address, "Decline Is a Choice."

Krauthammer makes the case that America's decline under Obama is intentional.

Video of the event.

Before Krauthammer begins his lecture, he makes some very amusing remarks about the 2016 Wriston Lecture. Yes, it's been awarded to Chicago.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I have some breaking news I was asked by the Board of Directors of the Manhattan Institute to announce that the 2016 Wriston Lecture --

(Laughter)

Don't get ahead of me now -- has been awarded to the city of Chicago.

(Applause)

What sealed the deal, I'm told, was that President Obama's personal appeal was persuasive, Michelle's outfit was outstanding and sleeveless, and Oprah made them cry.

(Laughter)

However, the clincher was Rahm Emanuel. His presentation, I'm told in confidence, was the most persuasive since the 1996 Wriston Award was awarded to Brooklyn after a particularly persuasive presentation by John Gotti.

(Laughter)

Video excerpt of Krauthammer's "Decline is a Choice."



Transcript

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The current foreign policy of the United States is an exercise in contraction. It begins with the demolition of the moral foundation of American dominance. In Strasbourg, President Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer? "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Interesting response. Because if everyone is exceptional, no one is.

Indeed, as he made his hajj from Strasbourg to Prague to Ankara to Istanbul to Cairo and finally to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama drew the picture of an America quite exceptional--exceptional in moral culpability and heavy-handedness, exceptional in guilt for its treatment of other nations and peoples. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantánamo, for unilateralism, and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

Quite an indictment, the fundamental consequence of which is to effectively undermine any moral claim that America might have to world leadership, as well as the moral confidence that any nation needs to have in order to justify to itself and to others its position of leadership. According to the new dispensation, having forfeited the mandate of heaven--if it ever had one--a newly humbled America now seeks a more modest place among the nations, not above them.

But that leads to the question: How does this new world govern itself? How is the international system to function?

Read the full essay written by Krauthammer, adapted from his 2009 Wriston Lecture, in The Weekly Standard.

Krauthammer concludes with a call to action:

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."