"Decline Is a Choice: The New Liberalism and the End of American Ascendancy." That was the title of the devastating critique of Obama Administration foreign, defense, and domestic policies delivered by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at the annual Wriston Lecture at the Manhattan Institute in New York City on October 5.

Krauthammer responds to commentators arguing that America is suffering overdue, inevitable decline, saying, "For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline -- or continued ascendancy -- is in our hands."

And what are our leaders deciding? Krauthammer quite correctly explains, "The current liberal ascendancy in the United States -- controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture -- has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies."

President Obama and the ultraliberal leadership of Congress are now pursuing policies that will by design produce major declines in the standard of living of the American people. They are pursuing a foreign policy of worldwide retreat. They are actively tearing down our nation's defenses. Krauthammer is sounding the alarm for the American people to wake up.

America: Just Another Country

In pursuit of this policy of decline, President Obama is traveling the world over denying the fundamental morality of American world leadership. Krauthammer said:

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. [P]resident 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.

Translating Obama's quoted language into plain English, what he is saying is that there is nothing special about America. Everything he says and does is consistent with that view.

Krauthammer continues:

[A]s 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....Obama indicted his own country for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness (toward Europe), for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo, 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.

Krauthammer further notes that in denouncing the idea that any nation or group of nations should be elevated above any other, Obama has effectively dismissed as well the moral standing and leadership of the UN Security Council, the G-20, and the Western Alliance. In denouncing "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of the long gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world," Obama has effectively dismissed any moral authority or leadership for NATO as well.

Krauthammer concludes: "This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from 'the community of nations' as a whole," of which America is only one nation among many. In other words, the only legitimate moral authority for world leadership is a body like the UN General Assembly, with its assorted tyrants and kooks, where America is just another country. This is the moral vision of the man we elected President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Notice that although John Guardiano and Charles Krauthammer both point to Obama bringing decline to America, Guardiano suggests that the intent of Obama's shortchanging of our defense budget is to address domestic issues, whereas Krauthammer writes that with the New Liberalism having the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture, Obama has set us on a course for a decline that includes both foreign and domestic policies.

While both Guardiano and Krauthammer are dead-on target accurate in their conclusions - Obama's defense budget shortchanges our defense to allow greater expenditures on his 'socialist' domestic agenda, and Obama's policies are bringing about the decline of America in both domestic and foreign policies, Guardiano's point serves as a benchmark for where Barack Obama is taking America. We're headed downhill fast, and as Krauthammer warns, "Decline - or continued ascendancy - is in our hands."

In other words, Obama's defense budget only serves to make both men's points. America had better wake up. And quickly.