The Rudderless Nation

     The United States of America has always been special because we have been a nation of laws, and not a nation of men. But that is not to say that the people we elect to high public office are not an integral determinant to the direction of the country, especially the President. For it is from the Oval Office that policy agendas are implemented and sold to Congress and the people of the United States. The President of the United States is analogous to a rudder on a boat, he provides the steering mechanism by which the nation presents itself, not only to its own citizens, but to the rest of the world.
     If there is one salient conclusion that can be taken away from the 30-month turmoil in Syria, it is that the United States has been rudderless for the last five years. Strong and decisive leadership is the cornerstone to the edifice of a purposeful nation, it is also something, unfortunately, in which the current occupant of the White House is wholly deficient. A leader is the first one into the water and the point man for the rest of the expedition as they make their way up the treacherous mountain to the summit. In Syria, as he has done during so much of his term as President, Barack Obama has not lead, instead waiting for someone else to do the job, or for the situation to magically resolve of its own accord. Mr. Obama's inability to be motivated by moral certitude has facilitated the deaths of over one hundred thousand Syrians since the uprising began over two years ago. Earlier action may have saved tens of thousands of lives and not allowed Al Qaeda to co opt the rebellion.
     But Syria is just a current illustration of the ineptness of this President to lead. He has been unable to work with members of the opposition party in Congress, instead choosing to mock, intimidate and demonize them in public. He dragged his feet on the Gulf oil spill early in his first term, waiting a full six weeks to take action, and then his first instinct was to send lawyers to the affected area to initiate the Justice Department shakedown of BP.  President Obama has not even shown a modicum of leadership when it comes to his own agenda items, like health care, instead opting for out-sourcing his responsibility of leadership to others. Even with his only claim to fame in his first term, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, he was dragged kicking and screaming to the decision by Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and others after three times refusing to give the go ahead order on the mission.
     When a watercraft has no rudder by which to steer, it drifts aimlessly in the open waters. There can be no better illustration of this than the current state of America ushered in by the Obama regime. In foreign policy, we have become the paper tiger that Bin Laden said we were in the 1990s which lead to the 9-11 attacks. Our friends, like Poland, Czechoslovakia and others know that they can not count on us, and our enemies like Iran, Syria and Russia know that they can bully us into inaction or delayed action to their benefit. Domestically, the rudderless nation is adrift in the economic sludge of over-regulation and high taxes. Four years since the official end of the recession and our leaderless nation has struggled like an injured animal to crawl to the safety of prosperity, only to find that our own federal government has blocked the pathway with its boot of oppression.
     The rudderless nation that has resulted from five years of Barack Obama is in danger of drifting so far off the course of self-government and liberty that the Founding Fathers set for it, that it may never regain the proper heading again. And this would not only be a tragedy for this great nation, but for the world that depends on our leadership to show the pathway to the light of liberty and freedom.