Charles Krauthammer is a modern-day renaissance man who has worn many hats and enjoyed tremendous success first as a psychiatrist, then journalist, international relations theorist, and now a commentator. With the passing of William F. Buckley and Samuel Huntington last year, Krauthammer is arguably the finest conservative thinker around (Newt Gingrich certainly deserves honorable mention). Cable news is filled with hollow talking heads who do little more than regurgitate liberal and conservative talking points–both sides are guilty of this. You know, they’re the ones on TV with labels like “Democratic Strategist.” Hosts, like Keith Olbermann, are the worst. So insecure is Keith Olbermann in his ability to debate that he never has guests with opposing views on his program. Krauthammer’s ability to provide valuable insights on a myriad of issues from foreign policy to health care is remarkable. Krauthammer, unlike so many of his peers, is in the business of making cogent arguments–not the business of bloviating (see Keith Olbermann).
For any society that truly values freedom and individual liberty, conservatism is the superior political and social philosophy and Krauthammer is one of the best messengers of conservatism. He is erudite and thoughtful and, at the same time, genuine and sincere. Certain individuals have attempted to dumb-down conservatism, which is unfortunate because in the market place of ideas conservatism will almost always triumph over liberalism–at least in societies that favor individual liberty over excessive government rule. If you view the U.S. Constitution simply as an outdated piece of paper (which liberals do), then you probably disagree with me and my line of thought.
Krauthammer recently gave an interview to the German paper Dier Spiegel. I recommend you read the interview in its entirety, but here are a few excerpts:
ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN POWER:
The liberal vision of America is that it should be less arrogant, less unilateral, more internationalist. In Obama’s view, America would subsume itself under a fuzzy internationalism in which the international community, which I think is a fiction, governs itself through the UN…
…There is a way America will decline — if we choose first to wreck our economy and then to constrain our freedom of action through subordinating ourselves to international institutions which are 90 percent worthless and 10 percent harmful.
ON AFGHANISTAN:
The strategy he’s revising is not the Bush strategy, it’s the Obama strategy. On March 27, he stood there with a background of flags, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on one side and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the other, and said: “Today, I’m announcing a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” So don’t tell me this is revising eight years of Bush, he’s not. For all these weeks and months he’s been revising his own strategy, and that’s okay, you’re allowed to do that. But if you’re president and you’re commander-in-chief, and your guys are getting shot and killed in the field, and you think “maybe the strategy I myself announced with great fanfare six months ago needs to be revised,” do it in quiet. Don’t show the world that you’re utterly at sea and have no idea what to do! Your European allies already are skittish and reluctant, and wondering whether they ought to go ahead. It’s your own strategy, if it’s not working, then you revise it and fix it. You just don’t demoralize your allies.
ON AMERICAN POLITICS:
We see the usual overreading of history whenever one side loses. Look, there are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don’t have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself. We have no idea who will be the Republican nominee in 2012. The party structures are very fluid. We have a history of political parties being thrown out of the White House after two terms — as has happened every single time with only one exception (Ronald Reagan) since World War II. The idea that one party is done in the US is silly. The Republicans got killed in 2006 and 2008, but they will be back.
There are certainly some pearls of wisdom here in this interview.