Victor Davis Hanson Saturday continues here on Fraters Libertas.
Over the past month or so, Front Page Magazine has hosted a series of virtual symposiums on various foreign policy issues of the day. The format is a discussion (which I presume is held electronically) between four noted observers on any given subject, moderated by a Front Page staffer, who is also typically an expert on the subject at hand.
The most recent symposium was published on Friday and regarded the topic "Appeasement Then and Now" and contributing to the discussion, among others, were Pat Buchanan, Michael Ledeen, and Victor Davis Hanson. I encourage you to read the whole thing, as it's fascinating, with well articulated opinions all around. I especially liked this exchange between Buchanan and Hanson. Mr. Buchanan's arguments regarding the correlation between burdeonsome overseas commitments (which he refers to as "empire") and terrorism always seemed plausible to me. But watch how Hanson crushes him with his superior knowledge of history and its application to current events:
Buchanan: ..... terrorism is the price of empire. The Irgun used terror to drive the Brits out of Palestine, the Algerians used it to drive the French out of Algeria, Hezbollah used terror to drive Israelis out of Lebanon. Chechens are using terror to drive out the Russians out of Chechnya. When imperialists go home where they belong, they find that the terrorism diminishes in almost every case, and in many it disappears.
Now that the United States has been isolated from Iran, by Iran's choice, for almost a quarter of a century, one finds that the people of Iran are less anti-American than the people of many of the Islamic nations we defend.
We see anti-American riots today in South Korea and yesterday in Okinawa. If we withdraw from both, as we wisely did from Subic Bay we will find that the anti-Americanism dissipates. Several years back, in A Republic Not an Empire, I predicted an act of cataclysmic terror would take place on American soil. If we do not deep six this drive for some new empire, down the road an American city may pay the price. What is there over there worth mass slaughter in my home town of Washington, D.C.?
Hanson: In reference to Mr. Buchanan, let me say this: supporting autocracies like present-day Saudi Arabia or Egypt is wrong but not necessarily must be synonymous with positive activism per se abroad. What we did in Afghanistan and Serbia made better not worse countries, as was true of Panama and Grenada. Kurdistan is a more humane place for the no-fly zones; take away our "imperial" jets and you would have thousands gassed in minutes.
The problem in Iran was initial support for a dictator without pressing him for reform-followed by sudden abandonment of him by Carter and coddling of religious murderers. Terror may seem the cost of so-called "empire" due to the vastly increased exposure of Americans abroad. But three points are salient to avoid simplistic generalizations. First, it is easy to tally the price of an American presence overseas when terrorists strike, but far harder to calibrate the value to the world when China chooses not to invade Taiwan or intimidate Japan due to the 7th fleet; the lives we save and the ruin we prevent are always unappreciated vis-à- vis the more visible hazards we incur.
Second, we do not exercise an empire like the British or Romans: we colonize no one; pay for bases rather than demand them; take no territory; and steal no one's national treasure. South Korea, Greece, or Japan can ask us to leave anytime they wish -- as did the Philippines -- and we will be departing promptly. Instead Filipinos seemed to have been saying "Leave and take all of us with you" -- if their immigration patterns are any indication.
Indeed, Mr. Buchanan is angry at our presence abroad precisely because its value to us is not explainable in terms of national advantage and results in none of the profits of his examples of traditional empires. Quite literally, we bear the costs -- unduly as I can attest as a smaller farmer who has seen my entire family wiped out by cheap imported food -- of a world gradually evolving toward democracy and market capitalism that sorely bothers tribal and traditional peoples.
The better question rather is a South America or Asia better or worse for our promotion of consensual government and opposition to thuggery abroad? We can retreat homeward, but without US influence abroad -- impossible without military power -- we will soon be dealing with a nuclear Brazil, a threatening North Korea, and a Middle East blackmailed by theocracies and dictators who will buy multi-staged rockets and nuclear material from Europe, China, and Russia. Isolationism did not prevent nor win the World Wars, nor stop Russian divisions from overrunning Europe, and it will not appease or thwart the present criminal regimes. They despise us--at home, abroad, whatever--for what we are, not what we do.
Third, with all due respect to Mr. Buchanan, there is not necessarily any direct connection between terror and empire: The Maryland sniper was a thug not a terrorist with a political agenda; the British, Dutch, Greeks, Italians, and French are being terrorized by Islamists despite staying home in Europe for a half century. Why do the Kenyans get killed when they have no profile; did their neutrality earn them a reprieve? Did Australians colonize Bali? Are Paraguay and Uruguay frequented by al Qaeda because of their imperial pasts? By such logic the Catholic Church should call in all its missionaries abroad to stop the daily threats to the Vatican from Islamists who have "legitimate" grievances due to priests in the Holy Land. If Mr. Buchanan were right, the Tibetans would be bombing their Chinese occupiers who really are brutal imperialists. Indeed, his array of false exegesis almost lends legitimacy to the fundamentalists, who are mostly pampered and educated; they are not national liberationists, but opportunistic criminals who envy and crave what they cannot create themselves and take out their sense of inferiority by talking grandly of the Crusades and Moorish Spain as bromides for their own failed tribalism, fundamentalism, and gender apartheid.
Saturday, December 14, 2002
Ronald Reagan University
Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting article on NRO called “Our Islands in the Storm”. No, it’s not a nostalgic look back on the visceral pop rock dynamite provided by Kenny (“Nitro”) Rogers and Dolly (“Glycerin”) Parton back in the 80’s. Although I would like to hear Hanson’s treatment of this topic (I think he’d compare them to the Sapphic Assemblage Choir of Eos, so popular among the light country/AOR alternative demographic in the hoplite ranks during the First Punic War), this time he’s writing on the aircraft carrier and its vital role in the American defense plan.
He speculates that these ultimate weapons of the modern age are uniquely American, in ways that transcend technology and capital investment:
Our aircraft carriers are this nation's [Greek] phalanxes, at once frightening weapons and symbols of American freedom. Few countries can build such behemoths; fewer still operate them with any degree of efficiency. Germany in its darkest hours never launched a single one. Japan's were long ago sent to the bottom of the Pacific. Russia's attempts resulted in abysmal failure. England has a couple, France one — in the aggregate all lack the power of a single American carrier. And we have twelve of these colossuses — $5 billion, 80,000-90,000-ton monsters, each home to a crew of 5,000. Their flight decks cover 4.5 acres, and the 70 (and more) planes on each wield more destructive power than do most countries.
The carrier's efficiency and lethality, however, are not a consequence of mere technological superiority, but of the dividends of a peculiarly American set of values. If we gave the Truman to Egypt it would sink on its maiden voyage. The French Charles de Gaulle I imagine has better food than the Roosevelt, but far fewer planes and even fewer launches. Israel has astonishing pilots, but few if any could land on the Vinson. Even the Swiss or Dutch could not build a Ronald Reagan. China claims they can soon launch a simulacrum to our carriers; but though they can steal the technology of an Enterprise, they still cannot emulate the ethic and creed at the heart of its success — unless China too first creates a culture of freedom. Carriers, in other words, are an American thing, and I am glad we at least will never have to meet such things in battle
Hanson also goes on to compare the culture aboard one of these military ships versus what exists in the elite universities of the United States. Read this and ruminate on where you‘d prefer our country’s best and brightest to spend the first 4 years of their adulthood:
The average age of [the USS John F. Kennedy’s] crew seemed about 19 or 20. Most Americans don't trust their children to take out the family van on Saturday night; our navy entrusts $50 million jets to teenagers, whose courage and maturity trump those of most adults.
At Stanford University, where our wealthier and supposedly more educated reside, silly theme houses exist with names like Casa Zapata and Ujama, as upscale students are segregated by race in a balkanized and separatist landscape. My own university in California has auxiliary but separate graduation ceremonies for Mexican Americans.
By contrast, in the far less comfortable but much more real world of the Kennedy, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites are indistinguishable in the manner in which they eat, sleep, and work, united as they are as Americans in a common cause, not separated by race, class, and tribe. African-American officers supervise whites, and vice-versa in a meritocracy where equality is a natural, not an induced, phenomenon. Women fly planes that men service or the other way around or both. And recently graduated Naval Academy ensigns learn from tough men with tattoos and calluses who inhabit primordial places of fire and oil in the ship's bowels or who work on the flight deck where a momentary lapse in concentration can get one disemboweled or vaporized in seconds. Our universities might do better to mothball Ethnic Studies and send the entire freshman class to the Kennedy for a semester.
If I had to do it all over again (that is, my life, not this posting) a military career under the circumstances described would sound mighty attractive. Or if I still chose to go to college, I at least would have had made sure I was taught by a professor like Hanson.
He speculates that these ultimate weapons of the modern age are uniquely American, in ways that transcend technology and capital investment:
Our aircraft carriers are this nation's [Greek] phalanxes, at once frightening weapons and symbols of American freedom. Few countries can build such behemoths; fewer still operate them with any degree of efficiency. Germany in its darkest hours never launched a single one. Japan's were long ago sent to the bottom of the Pacific. Russia's attempts resulted in abysmal failure. England has a couple, France one — in the aggregate all lack the power of a single American carrier. And we have twelve of these colossuses — $5 billion, 80,000-90,000-ton monsters, each home to a crew of 5,000. Their flight decks cover 4.5 acres, and the 70 (and more) planes on each wield more destructive power than do most countries.
The carrier's efficiency and lethality, however, are not a consequence of mere technological superiority, but of the dividends of a peculiarly American set of values. If we gave the Truman to Egypt it would sink on its maiden voyage. The French Charles de Gaulle I imagine has better food than the Roosevelt, but far fewer planes and even fewer launches. Israel has astonishing pilots, but few if any could land on the Vinson. Even the Swiss or Dutch could not build a Ronald Reagan. China claims they can soon launch a simulacrum to our carriers; but though they can steal the technology of an Enterprise, they still cannot emulate the ethic and creed at the heart of its success — unless China too first creates a culture of freedom. Carriers, in other words, are an American thing, and I am glad we at least will never have to meet such things in battle
Hanson also goes on to compare the culture aboard one of these military ships versus what exists in the elite universities of the United States. Read this and ruminate on where you‘d prefer our country’s best and brightest to spend the first 4 years of their adulthood:
The average age of [the USS John F. Kennedy’s] crew seemed about 19 or 20. Most Americans don't trust their children to take out the family van on Saturday night; our navy entrusts $50 million jets to teenagers, whose courage and maturity trump those of most adults.
At Stanford University, where our wealthier and supposedly more educated reside, silly theme houses exist with names like Casa Zapata and Ujama, as upscale students are segregated by race in a balkanized and separatist landscape. My own university in California has auxiliary but separate graduation ceremonies for Mexican Americans.
By contrast, in the far less comfortable but much more real world of the Kennedy, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites are indistinguishable in the manner in which they eat, sleep, and work, united as they are as Americans in a common cause, not separated by race, class, and tribe. African-American officers supervise whites, and vice-versa in a meritocracy where equality is a natural, not an induced, phenomenon. Women fly planes that men service or the other way around or both. And recently graduated Naval Academy ensigns learn from tough men with tattoos and calluses who inhabit primordial places of fire and oil in the ship's bowels or who work on the flight deck where a momentary lapse in concentration can get one disemboweled or vaporized in seconds. Our universities might do better to mothball Ethnic Studies and send the entire freshman class to the Kennedy for a semester.
If I had to do it all over again (that is, my life, not this posting) a military career under the circumstances described would sound mighty attractive. Or if I still chose to go to college, I at least would have had made sure I was taught by a professor like Hanson.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Working Up a Flop Sweat For Christmas?
For those of you getting a bit anxious as the shopping days before Christmas dwindle away like Ted Turner's fortune (oh how I wish it were really so) here's a recommendation for music fans on your list. The Flops, a band composed of former Trip Shakespeare members John Munson (now of Semisonic fame) and Matt Wilson, have recently released a CD called Ooh La La. It actually is a music CD along with a CD-ROM with photography, fiction, and a video. I haven't had a chance to check out the CD-ROM yet but the music is top notch. I picked up my copy at the The Electric Fetus record store in Minneapolis. Well actually I ordered it online from the Fetus because quite honestly I'm far too lazy to drive down to the store and besides this way I was able to avoid all that uncomfortable and unnecessary human interaction that is required when you leave your house.
Whole Lotta Love For Lott
The Younger weighs in for keeping Lott:
Mississippi...Elder, you are out of line with dissing this state. Why? One word, Elvis. Born in Tupelo 1935--reason enough to spare it from your barbs. A state that created one of the Greatest Americans Ever cannot be swept asunder...or something.
Now onto my main point. The Lott stays. After listening to Rush yesterday I've become convinced we have to keep him. Not because he is a great leader or a cogent articulator of the conservative movement but rather because if we do as Jesse and Teddy desire we are setting up ALL future Repubs to be summarily dismissed for similar thought crimes.
As we speak, senate pages from Smith college are scouring the internet looking for any possible evidence of a thought crime spoken aloud by a major republican to get them next. We simply can't give them the idea that this is the new Borking that will lead them to power.
Let's not start doubting GW at this point. He dissed Lott publicly and that was that.
Let's face it, Lott's an idiot but he's our idiot and for the sake of the party (and the future Borkees) the Lott stays.
Mississippi...Elder, you are out of line with dissing this state. Why? One word, Elvis. Born in Tupelo 1935--reason enough to spare it from your barbs. A state that created one of the Greatest Americans Ever cannot be swept asunder...or something.
Now onto my main point. The Lott stays. After listening to Rush yesterday I've become convinced we have to keep him. Not because he is a great leader or a cogent articulator of the conservative movement but rather because if we do as Jesse and Teddy desire we are setting up ALL future Repubs to be summarily dismissed for similar thought crimes.
As we speak, senate pages from Smith college are scouring the internet looking for any possible evidence of a thought crime spoken aloud by a major republican to get them next. We simply can't give them the idea that this is the new Borking that will lead them to power.
Let's not start doubting GW at this point. He dissed Lott publicly and that was that.
Let's face it, Lott's an idiot but he's our idiot and for the sake of the party (and the future Borkees) the Lott stays.
The Real Reason Lott Must Go (Part II)
This morning listening to the local talk radio station I heard the most convincing evidence yet as to why Trent Lott must be given the boot. Lucky Rosenbloom leader of the Black Republican Coalition of Minnesota was on the air explaining how his efforts to bring the Republican mesage to the local black community, always a tough sell, had become seriously compromised by Lott's ill chosen remarks. What was especially disheartening to hear was that Rosenbloom believed that there was a real opportunity for inroads for the GOP especially among younger blacks due in large part to Bush having Collin Powell and Condi Rice in such prominent roles in his cabinet. As Rosenbloom explained it, seeing Powell and Rice on television every Sunday wielding positions of power was a very effective tool for him to use to persuade black audiences that Republicans were not a narrowly based party but rather that they had something to offer to all groups. One particularly interesting comment that he made was how Condi Rice had become a role model for young black woman. Now that's a story that hasn't gotten any play in the mainstream media.
Rosenbloom has one of the most thankless jobs I can imagine. And just when he thinks he might be starting to make some progress Lott opens his yap and trashes much of what he had worked for. The damage is not completely irrepairable but it is serious and keeping Lott around is like keeping an open wound exposed. As long as he's still in a leadership role the mission of Lucky and other black Republicans is damn near an impossible dream. For their sake he's gotta go.
Rosenbloom has one of the most thankless jobs I can imagine. And just when he thinks he might be starting to make some progress Lott opens his yap and trashes much of what he had worked for. The damage is not completely irrepairable but it is serious and keeping Lott around is like keeping an open wound exposed. As long as he's still in a leadership role the mission of Lucky and other black Republicans is damn near an impossible dream. For their sake he's gotta go.
Thursday, December 12, 2002
Let There Be Peace On Earth
Interested in experiencing some wonder and awe? Then check out this wonderful and awesome picture, courtesy of NASA. (And if you haven't been accessing the link listed on our blog roll, NASA provides these kind of spectacular images daily). An American astronaut on the moon, with Old Glory planted valiantly behind him. Let this serve as a reminder to our enemies (and to ourselves) of exactly what we're capable of. This image alone should be enough to send the radical Islamicists and the radical Leftist elements of the West into a dismal spiral of doubt and self loathing for weeks. But listen up you Gloomy Gusses, there is hope. All you have to do is embrace capitalism and democracy and then you too could join us up there. Really, it's that simple.
Ve Have Vays Of Making You Angry
So I was reading the latest Molly Ivins column on Henry Kissinger yesterday and as usual was wadding through the mushy logic, muddled reasoning, and meandering thoughts when I came across this gem from Molly:
The only time I ever interviewed Kissinger, he told me three lies in the first sentence he spoke, each word. Dropping. From. His. Mouth. Like. A. Stone. He lies with more authority than anyone I have ever known.
With a great deal of help from our crack Fraters research staff (I owe you guys a round at our next happy hour event) I was able to uncover a transcript of the original interview and have learned that this was Kissinger's infamous opening sentence:
"Miss Ivins you are a very attractive, intelligent voman vith a vonderful sense of humor."
I really think Molly is being too hard on old Hank here by calling him a liar for his remark. Isn't one man's lying just another man's flattery after all? And is it really three individual lies or just one big lie when Kissinger describes Ivins in terms that clearly bear no resemblance to the truth?
Molly's column then goes on to call Kissinger a war criminal, blaming him for the 3 million Cambodians who perished in the Killing Fields, and labels him a liar several more times.
Kissinger's most notorious crime was the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War. William Shawcross argued persuasively in his book "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia" that the Cambodian bombing unleashed the Khmer Rouge on that country -- which, if true, certainly ups Kissinger's body count.
He is also a notorious liar. He has lied repeatedly to Congress, the press and the public; he is toady to power and a lackey of the Establishment, and for many years now the hireling of despotic regimes around the world. Old Cover-Up Kissinger, the man who double-crossed the Iraqi Kurds ... just the man to lead an independent inquiry into 9-11.
At one point she even taunts him with the children's refrain: Liar, liar pants on fire. Hanging from a telephone wire. Okay, I just made that part up, but it's clear that despite Hank's earlier attempts to woo Molly over she holds a Texas size grudge against him today.
By the way I haven't seen "the Establishment" charge brought out for many years. Molly's not a Boomer by any chance is she?
Compared to most Ivin's columns at this point her attacks on Kissinger didn't really get my blood boiling since I'm not a huge fan of the man myself (although his book Diplomacy is a masterpiece on the history of balance of power global politics). But Molly has to be Molly and so she suddenly veers off topic and criticizes administrative officials for attacking Islam:
Meanwhile, our neo-con hawks have moved from the bellicose to the bizarre. Ken Adelman, a member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, has joined several other hawks in direct attacks on Islam. Calling Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make," announced Adelman. "The more you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus."
Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen, says, "Nobody would like to think that a major world religion has a deeply aggressive and dangerous strain in it -- a strain often excused or misrepresented in the name of good feelings. But uttering uncomfortable and unpleasant truths is one of the things that defines leadership."
Hardly what I consider vitriolic statements against Islam. In fact they seem to be quite reasonable given events of late. But Molly is outraged by these "attacks" and so responds in the manner she know best. By attacking what she considers the religion of the right:
The Christian right has gone completely batty on the subject: Rev. Jerry Falwell called Mohammed "a terrorist," Rev. Franklin Graham said Islam is "evil" and so forth.
Let's see, where does that leave Christianity, the religion of peace and love, founded by the Prince of Peace?
Among the more notable Christian crimes were the unbearably bloody Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, regular slaughter of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants, genocide against Native Americans (featuring biological warfare), slavery, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, Northern Ireland ... and the list goes on and on and on.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Especially when they are making bellicose statements and beating the war drums relentlessly for what may be an unnecessary war.
This is absolutely outrageous. Why should we give Islam a free pass for events happening TODAY because some Franks killed some Arabs when they took Jerusalem HUNDREDS of years ago? This is the sort of moral relativism that the Left perfected during the Cold War when we were told that we could not criticize the actions of the Soviet Union because of our less than perfect past.
By adding items like "innumerable pogroms" and "regular slaughter of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants" Molly pads her list without providing any historical details (who, where, when). By "ethnic cleansing" I assume she means the Serbs although with such a vague reference she leaves it open to assume that Christianity is responsible for all examples of it.
But by far the most offensive piece is her claim that the Holocaust was a crime of Christianity. The Nazis simply were not Christians. While they might have embraced Christian symbols and tradition for propaganda purposes they were not a movement based on Christianity and came closer to a sort of pagan mythology as their "official" religion. To imply that Christianity was behind the Holocaust is intellectually dishonest and morally repugnant. But I guess I shouldn't expect much more from Miss Ivins who is one of the most hateful and despicable voices of the Left.
People like Molly who live in glass houses shouldn't look at their reflections. They might not like what they see.
The only time I ever interviewed Kissinger, he told me three lies in the first sentence he spoke, each word. Dropping. From. His. Mouth. Like. A. Stone. He lies with more authority than anyone I have ever known.
With a great deal of help from our crack Fraters research staff (I owe you guys a round at our next happy hour event) I was able to uncover a transcript of the original interview and have learned that this was Kissinger's infamous opening sentence:
"Miss Ivins you are a very attractive, intelligent voman vith a vonderful sense of humor."
I really think Molly is being too hard on old Hank here by calling him a liar for his remark. Isn't one man's lying just another man's flattery after all? And is it really three individual lies or just one big lie when Kissinger describes Ivins in terms that clearly bear no resemblance to the truth?
Molly's column then goes on to call Kissinger a war criminal, blaming him for the 3 million Cambodians who perished in the Killing Fields, and labels him a liar several more times.
Kissinger's most notorious crime was the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War. William Shawcross argued persuasively in his book "Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia" that the Cambodian bombing unleashed the Khmer Rouge on that country -- which, if true, certainly ups Kissinger's body count.
He is also a notorious liar. He has lied repeatedly to Congress, the press and the public; he is toady to power and a lackey of the Establishment, and for many years now the hireling of despotic regimes around the world. Old Cover-Up Kissinger, the man who double-crossed the Iraqi Kurds ... just the man to lead an independent inquiry into 9-11.
At one point she even taunts him with the children's refrain: Liar, liar pants on fire. Hanging from a telephone wire. Okay, I just made that part up, but it's clear that despite Hank's earlier attempts to woo Molly over she holds a Texas size grudge against him today.
By the way I haven't seen "the Establishment" charge brought out for many years. Molly's not a Boomer by any chance is she?
Compared to most Ivin's columns at this point her attacks on Kissinger didn't really get my blood boiling since I'm not a huge fan of the man myself (although his book Diplomacy is a masterpiece on the history of balance of power global politics). But Molly has to be Molly and so she suddenly veers off topic and criticizes administrative officials for attacking Islam:
Meanwhile, our neo-con hawks have moved from the bellicose to the bizarre. Ken Adelman, a member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, has joined several other hawks in direct attacks on Islam. Calling Islam a peaceful religion "is an increasingly hard argument to make," announced Adelman. "The more you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus."
Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen, says, "Nobody would like to think that a major world religion has a deeply aggressive and dangerous strain in it -- a strain often excused or misrepresented in the name of good feelings. But uttering uncomfortable and unpleasant truths is one of the things that defines leadership."
Hardly what I consider vitriolic statements against Islam. In fact they seem to be quite reasonable given events of late. But Molly is outraged by these "attacks" and so responds in the manner she know best. By attacking what she considers the religion of the right:
The Christian right has gone completely batty on the subject: Rev. Jerry Falwell called Mohammed "a terrorist," Rev. Franklin Graham said Islam is "evil" and so forth.
Let's see, where does that leave Christianity, the religion of peace and love, founded by the Prince of Peace?
Among the more notable Christian crimes were the unbearably bloody Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, regular slaughter of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants, genocide against Native Americans (featuring biological warfare), slavery, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, Northern Ireland ... and the list goes on and on and on.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Especially when they are making bellicose statements and beating the war drums relentlessly for what may be an unnecessary war.
This is absolutely outrageous. Why should we give Islam a free pass for events happening TODAY because some Franks killed some Arabs when they took Jerusalem HUNDREDS of years ago? This is the sort of moral relativism that the Left perfected during the Cold War when we were told that we could not criticize the actions of the Soviet Union because of our less than perfect past.
By adding items like "innumerable pogroms" and "regular slaughter of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants" Molly pads her list without providing any historical details (who, where, when). By "ethnic cleansing" I assume she means the Serbs although with such a vague reference she leaves it open to assume that Christianity is responsible for all examples of it.
But by far the most offensive piece is her claim that the Holocaust was a crime of Christianity. The Nazis simply were not Christians. While they might have embraced Christian symbols and tradition for propaganda purposes they were not a movement based on Christianity and came closer to a sort of pagan mythology as their "official" religion. To imply that Christianity was behind the Holocaust is intellectually dishonest and morally repugnant. But I guess I shouldn't expect much more from Miss Ivins who is one of the most hateful and despicable voices of the Left.
People like Molly who live in glass houses shouldn't look at their reflections. They might not like what they see.
The Best Reason That Lott Must Go
He's from Mississippi. I mean come on. Mississippi? People from frickin' backward arsed Alabama look down their noses at Mississippi. Do we really need any more? Send him packin'.
The Resurrection Blues
The most recent issue of Policy Review contains an excellent article by Lee Harris called "The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing". By this title alone, it should be clear that Harris isn't delving into the nature of Jeanine Garafalo's and Mike Farrel's motivations in opposing American action against Iraq. No, that topic is a better fit for Mad Magazine and a proper skewering by Al Jaffe.
Harris acknowledges that America bashing is all the rage across Europe, the Third World, and among the restless, liberal elite and coffee house revolutionaries of America. But his focus isn't on the common causes often cited for this phenomenon: envy, guilt, pride, ignorance, immaturity, the heart break of psoriasis. Rather, Harris focuses on its intellectual origin as a pure ideology, which is then disseminated and gradually diluted until lesser intellects can properly digest it, infuse it with their own pathologies (envy, guilt, pride, ignorance, etc.) and regurgitate it back in our faces as: "No War on Iraq" or "Bush Is the Real Terrorist."
And what is that intellectual origin you ask? Surprise! It's our old adversary, that rough and envious beast Marxism. According to Harris, the positioning of America as the ultimate evil in the world presents the opportunity of not only diminishing the influence of the single greatest exponent of capitalism in the world today, but also in saving the ideology of Marxism itself.
This process plays out as follows, as outlined by Harris and paraphrased by me (which I might add, I'm doing without his permission and above what I'm sure would be his strenuous objections as to my lack of qualifications to undertake this task):
Now then, (insert sound of me clearing my throat in a scholarly and credible manner) Marx believed that he had identified the historical pattern of economics which would inevitably lead to socialism. That is to say, socialism would not come about as a result of wishful thinking or through the idealistic pursuit of a utopian vision by the cognitive elite. No, to Marx, socialism had to occur because, as Harris states:
...the unavoidable breakdown of the capitalist system [which] would force the turn to socialism upon those societies that, prior to the breakdown, had been organized along capitalist lines. Schematically the scenario went something like this:
1) The capitalists would begin to suffer from a falling rate of profit.
2) The workers would therefore be "immiserized"; they would become poorer as the capitalists struggled to keep their own heads above water.
3) The poverty of the workers would drive them to overthrow the capitalist system--their poverty, not their ideals.
Unfortunately (for him and Noam Chomsky), since Marx wrote those words in the mid-19th century, these predictions of the future have proven to be quite incorrect. Over time, capitalists haven't suffered from a falling rate of profit, instead their profits and their creation of wealth has exploded. The workers in capitalist countries have not become immiserized--instead they've prospered immensely, especially compared to 19th century standards. And because of these favorable conditions, there has been no economic reason for them to overthrow the capitalist system--instead workers in First world nations have largely embraced the systems that produce the comfort and material wealth now at their disposal.
Because of these stubborn facts, it's been awfully hard to be an intellecuatully honest Marxist over the last 100 years or so. But that hasn't prevented those beholden to the faith from trying to rescue their dreams from the ash heap of history. Harris details various efforts to revise classic Marxist interpretations, so they could fit better with the historical facts. In particularly, he notes the concept of "relative immiserization," which began to be promoted in the early 20th century. This concept, grossly simplified, was that even though the proletariat's condition might be improving, it's not improving at the same rate as the condition of the capitalist class, therefore unrest would foment. However, this grasp at a philosophical straw has proven to be false as well. As summarized by Harris:
"The problem with this revision lay not in its economic premises, but its political ones. Could one realistically believe that workers would overthrow an economic system that was continually improving their own lot, simply because that of the capitalist class was improving at a marginally better rate?
Certainly, the workers might envy the capitalists; but such emotions simply could not supply the gigantic impetus required to overthrow a structure as massive as the capitalist system. Before workers of a capitalist society could unite, they had to feel they had nothing to lose--nothing to lose but their proverbial chains. For if they had homes and cars and boats and RVs to lose as well, then it became quite another matter.”
Because of this logical construct and its practical implications, relative immiserization, and by prerequisite association classical immiserization theory, have been largely discredited as accurate models of historical patterns. And thus the viability of Marxism itself comes into question. Harris again:
"For the failure of immiserization thesis is in fact the failure of classical Marxism. If there is no misery, there is no revolution, and if there is no revolution, there is no socialism. Q.E.D. Socialism goes back to being a utopian fantasy."
However, this entity isn't dead yet (and I get the feeling it never will be, given the stubborn and enduring nature of any widely believed religious doctrine). The latest theory revision giving Marxists the world over hope is that of "global immiserization," first proposed by Paul Baran in 1957 and expanded by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974. In short, the so-called Baran-Wallerstein revision:
...propounded a causal connection between the prosperity of the advanced capitalist countries and the impoverishment of the Third World.
What Baran has done is to globalize the traditional doctrine of immiserization so that, instead of applying to the workers of the advanced capitalist countries, it now came to apply to the entire population of those countries that have not achieved advanced capitalism: It was the rest of the world that was being impoverished by capitalism, not the workers of the advanced countries.
If indeed [the phenomenon of America-bashing] aspires to be an objective and realistic assessment of the relationship of America to the rest of the world, then that element of seriousness is to be found in the global immiserization thesis: America has gotten rich by making other countries poor."
Harris doesn't endeavor to attempt to disprove the theory of global immiserization and therefore, neither will I--because I can't! (That is, I can't without using up the time and intellectual energy I have already budgeted toward putting together my fantasy football roster for this week.) But he does go about showing how this revision serves as the initial impetus for the worldwide anti-American activity of the Left. This particularly manifests itself in the odious valorization of 9-11 and of Arab terrorists as "the oppressed finally striking a blow against the oppressor."
Granted, those such as Woody Harrelson and R.T. Ryback probably don't fully appreciate the Marxist antecedents of their own beliefs in this regard. They're too caught up in their own pathologies and the ego-driven drama of being engaged in "righteous dissent" and of appearing to be more compassionate than the rest of us.
But next time you run into one of our friends from the Left defacing a Coleman billboard on I94 or staging a "die in" in front of the Orange Julius at Rosedale, or exiting a limo on their way into a dinner party at Garrison Keillor's house in Crocus Hill, I suggest you accuse them of embracing the Baran-Wallerstein revision of the immiserization thesis. I can't imagine they'll have a coherent response to this. But if they do, you’re on your own from there.
Harris acknowledges that America bashing is all the rage across Europe, the Third World, and among the restless, liberal elite and coffee house revolutionaries of America. But his focus isn't on the common causes often cited for this phenomenon: envy, guilt, pride, ignorance, immaturity, the heart break of psoriasis. Rather, Harris focuses on its intellectual origin as a pure ideology, which is then disseminated and gradually diluted until lesser intellects can properly digest it, infuse it with their own pathologies (envy, guilt, pride, ignorance, etc.) and regurgitate it back in our faces as: "No War on Iraq" or "Bush Is the Real Terrorist."
And what is that intellectual origin you ask? Surprise! It's our old adversary, that rough and envious beast Marxism. According to Harris, the positioning of America as the ultimate evil in the world presents the opportunity of not only diminishing the influence of the single greatest exponent of capitalism in the world today, but also in saving the ideology of Marxism itself.
This process plays out as follows, as outlined by Harris and paraphrased by me (which I might add, I'm doing without his permission and above what I'm sure would be his strenuous objections as to my lack of qualifications to undertake this task):
Now then, (insert sound of me clearing my throat in a scholarly and credible manner) Marx believed that he had identified the historical pattern of economics which would inevitably lead to socialism. That is to say, socialism would not come about as a result of wishful thinking or through the idealistic pursuit of a utopian vision by the cognitive elite. No, to Marx, socialism had to occur because, as Harris states:
...the unavoidable breakdown of the capitalist system [which] would force the turn to socialism upon those societies that, prior to the breakdown, had been organized along capitalist lines. Schematically the scenario went something like this:
1) The capitalists would begin to suffer from a falling rate of profit.
2) The workers would therefore be "immiserized"; they would become poorer as the capitalists struggled to keep their own heads above water.
3) The poverty of the workers would drive them to overthrow the capitalist system--their poverty, not their ideals.
Unfortunately (for him and Noam Chomsky), since Marx wrote those words in the mid-19th century, these predictions of the future have proven to be quite incorrect. Over time, capitalists haven't suffered from a falling rate of profit, instead their profits and their creation of wealth has exploded. The workers in capitalist countries have not become immiserized--instead they've prospered immensely, especially compared to 19th century standards. And because of these favorable conditions, there has been no economic reason for them to overthrow the capitalist system--instead workers in First world nations have largely embraced the systems that produce the comfort and material wealth now at their disposal.
Because of these stubborn facts, it's been awfully hard to be an intellecuatully honest Marxist over the last 100 years or so. But that hasn't prevented those beholden to the faith from trying to rescue their dreams from the ash heap of history. Harris details various efforts to revise classic Marxist interpretations, so they could fit better with the historical facts. In particularly, he notes the concept of "relative immiserization," which began to be promoted in the early 20th century. This concept, grossly simplified, was that even though the proletariat's condition might be improving, it's not improving at the same rate as the condition of the capitalist class, therefore unrest would foment. However, this grasp at a philosophical straw has proven to be false as well. As summarized by Harris:
"The problem with this revision lay not in its economic premises, but its political ones. Could one realistically believe that workers would overthrow an economic system that was continually improving their own lot, simply because that of the capitalist class was improving at a marginally better rate?
Certainly, the workers might envy the capitalists; but such emotions simply could not supply the gigantic impetus required to overthrow a structure as massive as the capitalist system. Before workers of a capitalist society could unite, they had to feel they had nothing to lose--nothing to lose but their proverbial chains. For if they had homes and cars and boats and RVs to lose as well, then it became quite another matter.”
Because of this logical construct and its practical implications, relative immiserization, and by prerequisite association classical immiserization theory, have been largely discredited as accurate models of historical patterns. And thus the viability of Marxism itself comes into question. Harris again:
"For the failure of immiserization thesis is in fact the failure of classical Marxism. If there is no misery, there is no revolution, and if there is no revolution, there is no socialism. Q.E.D. Socialism goes back to being a utopian fantasy."
However, this entity isn't dead yet (and I get the feeling it never will be, given the stubborn and enduring nature of any widely believed religious doctrine). The latest theory revision giving Marxists the world over hope is that of "global immiserization," first proposed by Paul Baran in 1957 and expanded by Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974. In short, the so-called Baran-Wallerstein revision:
...propounded a causal connection between the prosperity of the advanced capitalist countries and the impoverishment of the Third World.
What Baran has done is to globalize the traditional doctrine of immiserization so that, instead of applying to the workers of the advanced capitalist countries, it now came to apply to the entire population of those countries that have not achieved advanced capitalism: It was the rest of the world that was being impoverished by capitalism, not the workers of the advanced countries.
If indeed [the phenomenon of America-bashing] aspires to be an objective and realistic assessment of the relationship of America to the rest of the world, then that element of seriousness is to be found in the global immiserization thesis: America has gotten rich by making other countries poor."
Harris doesn't endeavor to attempt to disprove the theory of global immiserization and therefore, neither will I--because I can't! (That is, I can't without using up the time and intellectual energy I have already budgeted toward putting together my fantasy football roster for this week.) But he does go about showing how this revision serves as the initial impetus for the worldwide anti-American activity of the Left. This particularly manifests itself in the odious valorization of 9-11 and of Arab terrorists as "the oppressed finally striking a blow against the oppressor."
Granted, those such as Woody Harrelson and R.T. Ryback probably don't fully appreciate the Marxist antecedents of their own beliefs in this regard. They're too caught up in their own pathologies and the ego-driven drama of being engaged in "righteous dissent" and of appearing to be more compassionate than the rest of us.
But next time you run into one of our friends from the Left defacing a Coleman billboard on I94 or staging a "die in" in front of the Orange Julius at Rosedale, or exiting a limo on their way into a dinner party at Garrison Keillor's house in Crocus Hill, I suggest you accuse them of embracing the Baran-Wallerstein revision of the immiserization thesis. I can't imagine they'll have a coherent response to this. But if they do, you’re on your own from there.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Kick Start My Heart
Motley Crew--spotted in downtown Minneapolis yesterday. Here are all the pictures.
It Just Doesn't Matter
After listening to the arguments put forward by the antiwar Left during the last couple of days, I'm convinced that if a video were to surface that showed Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden in Baghdad having tea over a nuclear warhead and discussing the most effective way to detonate the weapon in Washington D.C. in order to maximize civilian causalities, their response would be to decry the "rush to war," ask "where's the smoking gun?," complain that "we can't act without the U.N.," and call on the U.S. to "give the weapons inspections program a chance." The same baseless assertions that were being made six months ago are being repeated today as if nothing has happened in the mean time. My favorite is the accusation that the Bush administration "rushing us into a war." Rushing into war? Iraq has been front and center in the national discussion since last year's State of the Union address if not earlier. We're not rushing to war. We're crawling painfully slowly towards it with all the speed of a DMV worker returning from a smoke break.
The truth is that it doesn't matter how long we wait. Or how much we deliberate. Or how many countries are willing to join us. Or what evidence we have. Or whether the U.N. approves or not. From the moment military action was first considered against Iraq to the moment the first shot is fired the anti-war Left is and will be against anything the Bush administration does. It just doesn't matter.
The truth is that it doesn't matter how long we wait. Or how much we deliberate. Or how many countries are willing to join us. Or what evidence we have. Or whether the U.N. approves or not. From the moment military action was first considered against Iraq to the moment the first shot is fired the anti-war Left is and will be against anything the Bush administration does. It just doesn't matter.
Rumors and Allegations
G.R. Anderson Jr. of the City Pages appears to have birthed a brand new blog and so far it's been pretty compelling stuff. His material has been heavy on media observations, and since he's an "insider" in this realm I think he has the potential to provide some real insight (as opposed to me merely trying to foul the waters with irony and providing third hand second guessing from outside the inner circles of power).
He's even straying into my St. Paul neighborhood to eavesdrop on conversations between KSTP's Ron Rosenbaum and Senator Elect Norm Coleman from the bar at the Lex. It's interesting and decidely inside stuff--and better yet, it might even be true.
He's even straying into my St. Paul neighborhood to eavesdrop on conversations between KSTP's Ron Rosenbaum and Senator Elect Norm Coleman from the bar at the Lex. It's interesting and decidely inside stuff--and better yet, it might even be true.
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