President Obama, in a speech, left his teleprompter and startled his aides by saying that if Assad used chemical weapons on his own people that he will have crossed a red line and that the United States would then act. There is now credible evidence that Assad has indeed used chemical weapons on the rebels, and Obama is now backing down and looking for a way out. The question is not whether the United States should now intervene in the Syrian civil war, we should not, but what damage to the credibility of the United States has been done by a president who talks tough and threatens retaliation who then backs down and weasels his way out of his words.

He struts and says they shall not pass

With lips firm as a small mouth bass

Fierce eyes and brow like shiny brass

A strutting popinjay

With red lines drawn he stares them down

And when they’re crossed they cause a frown

He looks for ways he can back down

And he is here to stay

Each day there comes an acolyte

Explaining why things aren’t right

But when they are why then we’ll fight

As honor slips away

In the aftermath of the death and capture of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Tsarnaev brothers, the American Left breathed a sigh of relief that they were not the Muslim enemy, even though they were practicing Muslims who had received terrorist training in Chechnya, but, in the words of CNN, “stereotypical white Americans.” The Left is wrong in many ways, not the least of it their contempt for all that is right about the United States. And as for stereotypical, the Left has no idea what a stereotypical White American is, and neither do the Muslims who are killing us, who think we will stand still forever in the face of their murderous fanaticism. Here, in brief, is the definition of a stereotypical White American.

I am, my brother

A stereotypical white man

Blond of hair and blue of eye

Whose ancestors bestrode the world

With savage cruelty and bloody sword

So that no man could stand against us

And those who tried were slain upon the fields

Where bloomed the poppies and the gorse

I am, my brother

A peaceful man who takes his ease

In the twilight of a working day

An easeful life until aroused

But once aroused, my brother

You will find the fury of the white man called again

And you shall disappear from this Earth

Amid the lamentations of your women

And the sobs of your fatherless children

I am, my brother

A stereotypical white man

Take note, and be afraid

Pundits have been crying for some time now about the imminent decline of the West in general and the United States in particular. I believe the first mention of imminent decline was found in a cave painting in southern France. Empires grow sclerotic and decline; democracies do not. Democracies are self-cleansing.

Since I’m in my declining years

And rid of my once youthful fears

I find the prospect of decline

To be a little short of fine

But on the whole I can’t complain

My life has been good in the main

I lived when honor was the way

That men and women lived their day

When presidents did not tell lies

And games we played could end in ties

The country was much better then

And better still will be again

The present always looks so dark

The prospects always seem so stark

But we’ll survive we always do

We’ve miles to go ‘fore toodle-oo

The Middle East is boiling over, North Korea threatens to nuke Seoul and Austin, Texas, and Iran continues its relentless progress to nuclear weapons that will no doubt very soon come into the hands of terrorists with designs on New York and Washington, and all of this the result of the United States, under Obama, deciding to lead from behind, allowing the world’s bad guys free rein to do whatever they have in mind. The foreign policy of the Obama administration is beyond feckless, it is reckless. The world is now like Tombstone Territory before the Law arrived, endangering the peace of the world and placing the United States in mortal danger.

When our policy is feckless

Then the crazy guys get reckless

Begging for a stout rope necklace

But Obama is asleep

Oh he’s posturing and scowling

And his britches he is fouling

With the wind in Tombstone howling

Digging holes some six feet deep

Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where the Moynahans and the Scoop Jacksons? They are gone, and their like will not return in our lifetimes. The best and brightest have been replace in our government by the worst and the dumbest, who believe that the public was placed on Earth to support them in luxury, and whose lust for power over us knows no bounds.

The best and brightest are long fast asleep

The worst of the dumbest now rules

They say money earned is not ours to just keep

But belongs to the state where the tools

Of our very existence are hammered and forged

By officials we’ve placed in our stead

Officials and bureaucrats now much engorged

And with appetites that must be fed