Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796

What's Love Got to Do With It?  The second single on Tina Turner's Private Dancer in 1984 marked an "amazing comeback" by a singer-song writer whom overcame the cocaine addiction of a spouse, domestic violence, divorce, debt and an extensive business dry-spell. It is her only number one hit in US Pop Music History.  Yet, the songstress was not deemed exceptional because she had a number one song.  There are a multitude of one-hit wonders that could share such accolades.  Tina Turner is exceptional not because of the circumstances and obstacles that caused weaker persons to fall by the wayside. Every man, woman and child will face a burden so substantially that it will bring them to their knees.  She got up!  Turner was recognized by the Kennedy Center Honors at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and was elected to join an elite group of entertainers. President Bush commented on Turner's "natural skill, the energy and sensuality",  She is exceptional because she remained resolute in the midst of downturn, faithful to her ambition to succeed and unyielding in performing with the excellence that it would take to garner world recognition.  What does love have to do with it?  Love has everything to do with a commitment to servant leadership that seeks to preserve the greatness one inherits and the profitable stewardship by which one is noted in leaving an inheritance.  As George Washington observed, you must love this nation unceasingly in order to maintain its exceptional mystique.

 Fareed Zakaria hosts CNN’s flagship foreign affairs show, is Editor-at-Large of TIME Magazine, a Washington Post columnist, and a New York Times bestselling author.  Liberals and those stuck in airports, train or bus stations tune into him on Sundays at 10 AM and 1 PM on CNN.  Forbes, in January 2009, referred to Zakaria as one of the 25 most influential liberals in media.  While I have never subscribed to his political or economic opinion, others find him quite addictive.  Maybe my envy of his handsome persona blinds me to his stellar ability to pick winners and losers in public policy.  On his CNN program in 2008, Zakaria endorsed Barack Obama for the 2008 US Presidential Election.  How did Barack Obama pay him back?  He chose to follow the advice of the man of a 1,000 political philosophies.  In preparation to take the helm of the Most Powerful Nation in the History of Mankind, he spent time perusing the global policy etchings of the CNN mastermind.  Finding great ease toting the published manuscript about as he traveled, the Most Powerful Man in the Free World was coached on how to accept his place behind China, Russia, India and Brazil.  What better advice could Obama have received?   Prepare for  The Post-American World.  According to Amazon, the Global Policy Guru "describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world."  What followed such great advice?  The Obama Apology Tour!  "I'm grateful that President [Daniel] Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Mr. Obama said after the Nicaraguan delivered a 52-minute anti-American tirade that touched on the Bay of Pigs.  Somehow, sold on apologies as a sexy foreign policy, Obama traveled the world.  The impact?  He left such an indelible mark that liberal newspapers feel they must fact check the sins away from the apologies.  The impact?  An exceptional nation is weakened in the eyes of those that respect only strength.  That sameweakness abroad has been awakened at home and endorsed by the ONE deemed Executive of the Oval Office.

Nothing stirs the heart of a man more than, at 2 AM feeding, look into the eyes of his daughter and know that she will bear the burdens of economic and foreign policy decisions of the ONE called President.  Andy Barr, conservative candidate for Congress out of the great sta... (6D), said. "It kinda makes you mad that politicians can be so selfish..."  While many in Election 2012 will turn to the President as the Sage of Economic Recovery, his or her greatest role is military and foreign affairs.  According to Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution, the primary role of the President is military and foreign policy.  I digress for a moment.  Many commentators, inclusive of yours truly, have rightly questioned Herman Cain's military and foreign policy experience.  However, Cain spent six years in the United States Department of Navy, which provides operational and organizational support for both the Navy and Marines.  Cain supports the Bush Doctrine.  Which one of the many is questionable?  Of those in major foreign and military power today--Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Obama--none had military experience.  Their foreign policy skills were developed through Congressional briefings from the Pentagon and State Department.  By the way, Obama campaigned for two of the three years that he served in Congress as a Senator from Illinois and before that, he a community rabble rouser like the ones that shut down the Air and Space Museum.  I return to my road well worn.  If anything that the Obama Presidency has wrought America, it is a diminished image of a unique people that pursued equality, liberty, rule of law and free market enterprise with fervor.

What proof have you that we are weaker?  Let us look at two things.  One, the "hot, flat and crowded" theory that Zakaria builds upon in his writing.  Secondly, the booty obtained by the four nations before us in the treasured foreign policy of the ONE.  Zakaria borrows themes from Thomas Friedman, author of Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America.  The “Hot” is the global warming problem among industrializing nations.  The “Flat” is the growth of the middle class in all nations that are industrializing and reducing available resources.  The “Crowded” is the overpopulation of the planet that comes with global trade and technological advances.  Don't worry!  No lawsuit here for they loved exposing us to the scientific data that showed mankind frying the planet like an egg in a skillet.  O!  What's that?  There is no such thing as man-made global warming.  We know because GE will be shipping technologically advanced equipment overseas to lower emissions of the Far East's totalitarian industrialists.  Whew, at least they are creating jobs at home!  Whoah, Biff!  GE is taking the jobs over to the Far East to create middle class jobs for totalitarian regimes.  So what are we going to do about their overpopulation?  No worries!  We will reduce our own population and control it.  Obama will sign an Executive Order turning control of various US agency programs under Agenda 21.  A Central Planning Agency controlled by the United Nations.  One World Order at the expense of American Exceptionalism.  Settle any disharmony, we will take a  trip to the Heartland with a bus made in Canada.  We will have them toast us to Green Jobs!  Nothing could go wrong there!  Hey Boss, there are no real green jobs.  Really?  Yeah Boss and I quote:

A new report by the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General examined a $500 million grant under the stimulus program to the Employment and Training Administration to "train and prepare individuals for careers in 'green jobs.'" So far about $162.8 million has been spent. The program was supposed to train 125,000 workers, but only 53,000 have been "trained" so far, only 8,035 have found jobs, and only 1,033 were still in the job after six months.

Former lib Democratic pol/CNN host Eliot Spitzer told Fareed Zakaria it “brought a smile to my face” and “makes my heart warm” to learn President Obama “calls you for wisdom and advice about issues around the world.”  Such great advice from a visionary that sees the US ranked fifth.  

Secondly, let's see what foreign policy merits us the patriot citizen clinging to his guns and his religion.  Let's start with China,  This great nation of Mao Tse Tung holds $1,173.5 billion in US Debt.  Only Japan is safer with $914.8 billion in US Debt.  What did this buy Mainland China?  How about the right to tell the President of the Free World that the US had better shape and follow free market principles or else China will stop buying US debt.   Just starting a shopping spree.  Please add more to your military.  A number of J-20 Stealth Fighter Jets were added and tested.  Refurbish an aircraft carrier and plan to build two more.  The US military believes China appears on track to field a modern, regionally focused military by 2020.  Not a bad investment of US Dollars.  But there is one more thing, tell your friend Taiwan to stick it!  How dare you China?  We would never tell our best friend in the Far East to stick it.  We would never throw them under the bus?!  Let's see if they get the planes.  Russia gets a sweet Arms Treaty approved by RINO's on their way out of Washington after being pummeled in Election 2010.  What do we get?  Obama is endorsed by Putin.  Brazil drills for oil and natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico while Americans remain unemployed on the shores of Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.  India?  Every call to have your cellular phone activated or personal computer trouble shooted.  Enough said!

     Kathleen Parker writes:

On the right, the word exceptional--or exceptionalism--lately has become a litmus test for patriotism. It’s the new flag lapel pin, the one-word
pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution. … So why won’t Obama just
deliver the one word that would prompt arias from his doubters?

If lately is 1796 and the original tester is President George Washington then, Kathleen, you are in the ballpark.  It seems that the longer Obama remains in office the weaker we become at home and abroad.  In a scheme that I believed only Hollywood could fathom, Iran conjures a plan to assassinate a Saudi Arabian Ambassador using a Mexican Cartel on American soil.  This ain't CSI or Law and Order.  This is REAL!  Was this even considered as an attempt under the Bush Administration.  Historian Gordon Wood has argued, "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era.  So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy."  We once sent our best and brightest to fight the battles of liberty and democracy first by trade and then, war.  We believed that our strength was in our people and their individual desire to pursue life, liberty and property without guarantee of outcome or safety net of government.  Now, we have become a nation of entitled brats that seek a flag to defecate on because we can not garner a free car, a free house, a free education and a life free from work balanced on the backs of the rich.  In 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin chastised members of the American Communist Party for believing that America was independent of the Marxist laws of history "thanks to its natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions."  In 2011, a White House Marxist chastises the US Congress for not supporting class distinctions, reducing industrial productivity with regulations and forbidding any American company from excavating our nation's resources.  The Obama Presidency has wrought us the same malaise as the Jimmy Carter era.  Each blew out the candle on American Exceptionalism.  It will take an army of conservatives to reignite the candle that will allow America to shine like a light upon a hill.