In today's NR Online (which I'd never have found without the kind consideration of a wingnut acquaintance of mine) every right winger's favorite classicist, Victor Davis Hansen, published "It’s America, Obama A modest dissent to the citizen of the world."
And yes, since Victor seems to be one of those tools used by the right to put a veneer of academia on their basest fears, it's worth looking at in detail.
What disturbed me about Barack Obama's Berlin speech were some reoccurring utopian assumptions about cause and effect — namely, that bad things happen almost as if by accident, and are to be addressed by faceless, universal forces of good will.
Really, now? You actually found those "utopian assumptions"? In what "utopia" do terrorists "accidentally" hijack airplanes and fly them into skyscrapers and the Pentagon?
If that's Victor Davis Hanson's idea of "utopia", I suggest better drugs.
Unlike Obama, I would not speak to anyone as "a fellow citizen of the world,"
We know that, Victor ... because there are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and the idea of being a "citizen" of anything that has 1.2 billion Muslims would be scary enough to make you soil your Depends on a regular basis.
but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran.
Guess what, Victor - you share your citizenship of America with a lot of poor souls who don't have cushy well-funded think tank jobs, and have to worry so much on a day to day basis about their ability to pay rent and afford decent clothes for their kids and buy food for the family - and some of them also about medical problems that go untreated - that they really don't get to spend as much time as you do sitting back in a comfy leather chair and "appreciating their American identity".
Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less.
I have no doubt that were Victor Davis Hanson stripped of his American citizenship, he'd be no more than an shells mouthing mere
platitudes ... since I doubt that without his citizenship he'd be any different than he is today.
In this regard, postmodern, post-national Europe is not quite the ideal, but a warning of how good intentions can run amuck. Ask the dead of Srebrenica, or the ostracized Danish cartoonists, or the archbishop of Canterbury with his supposed concern for transcendent universal human rights.
The dead of Srebrenica are currently hanging out with 4000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians. Reporters on America's on southern bordersare being killed regularly. And it's not a shock hat Victor Davis Hanson rejects any interpretation of Christianity which doesn't advocate violence against the Muslim world, but that view isn't unique to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope isn't too keen on war, either, if Hanson hasn't noticed.
With all due respect, I also don't believe the world did anything to save Berlin, just as it did nothing to save the Rwandans or the Iraqis under Saddam — or will do anything for those of Darfur; it was only the U.S. Air Force that risked war to feed the helpless of Berlin as it saved the Muslims of the Balkans.
Of course, during the Berlin Airlift RAF provided planes along with the US Air Force. And alongside the British and U.S. personnel were aircrews from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa..
If Victor Davis Hanson is a historian, he should be sued for malpractice.
And I don't think we have much to do in America with creating a world in which "famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."
Of course Victor Davis Hanson does not believe in anthropromorphic induced climate change. It certainly can't be proven through reading Aristotle in the original.
Bad, often evil, autocratic governments abroad cause hunger, often despite rich natural landscapes; and nature, in tragic fashion, not "the carbon we send into atmosphere," causes "terrible storms," just as it has and will for millennia.
The narrowness of little minds, who can only comprehend a single causality to any phenomena.
Perhaps conflict-resolution theory posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings; but I think military history suggests that culpability exists — and is not merely hopelessly relative or just in the eye of the beholder.
When you actually find any politician on the left who "posits there are no villains, only misunderstandings", I'd like to hear of it. Although I sometimes wonder when I hear some Dems say "President Bush wants the same things we do...", and think about Naomi Klines The Shock Doctrine.
So despite Obama’s soaring moral rhetoric, I am troubled by his historical revisionism that, "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love."
Perhaps because there is nothing Victor Davis Hanson loves more than war??
I would beg to differ again, and suggest instead that a mass-murdering Soviet tyranny came close to destroying the European continent (as it had, in fact, wiped out millions of its own people) and much beyond as well — and was checked only by an often lone and caricatured US superpower and its nuclear deterrence.
Certainly there is a caricature here, in Victor's house of mirrors.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no danger to the world from American nuclear weapons "destroying all we have built" — while the inverse would not have been true, had nuclear and totalitarian communism prevailed.
No, because the Victor Davis Hanson's only want nuclear weapons to destroy what OTHERS build. Particularly if those others occupy Muslim countries.
We sleep too lightly tonight not because democratic Israel has obtained nuclear weapons, but because a frightening Iran just might.
Victor may sleep well knowing Israel has nuclear weapons, only because he knows they'd never be turned on him. Children on the streets of Teheran have no such rest. And there are those of us who lose sleep worrying about a militant Israeli leader overplaying his hand and drawing the US into a massive and unwinnable war against 1.2 billion Muslims across the globe that will only result in millions of unnecessary deaths, and a justification for a brutally authoritarian regime to take complete control in America.
When Obama shouts,
"Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?"
it is the world, not the U.S., that needs to listen most.
And this is why Obama speaks as a "Citizen of the World" ... because he wants torture to stop both in Guantanamo and in Riyadh. He wants rule of law both in Washington and in Bejing. He wants California and Kuwait to welcome immigrants and shun discimination, he wants Kansas and France to keep the promise of equality and opportunity.
It is the failure of Victor Davis Hanson that he hears these things and considers them a condemnation of America, and not a charge for the world at large.
In this regard I would have preferred Sen. Obama of mixed ancestry to have begun with "In the recent tradition of African-American Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice," rather than the less factual, "I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city."
Because when people remember speeches in Germany by famous Americans, they don't think of John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan... they think of Colin Powell and Condi Rice.
A classicist with a tin ear for great historic moments. Sad ... and understandable that he must find work in a conservative think tank.
I want also to shout back that the United States does stand for the rule of law, as even the killers of Guantanamo realize with their present redress of grievances, access to complex jurisprudence, and humane treatment — all in a measure beyond what such terrorists would receive anywhere else.
The United States continues to stand for the rule of law IN SPITE of the Victor Davis Hansons, who would willingly suspend the rule of law for a class of people because they envision a global war going on between Islam and the rest of civilization.
And I didn't know that Victor Davis Hanson felt so harshly against those who have been responsible for killing others in Guantanamo.
It is the United States that takes in more immigrants than does any country in the world, and thus is the prime destination of those who flee the miseries of this often wretched globe.
Ahh - seven paragraphs in, and finally a statement of hope, and a statement of truth. Commendable, Dr. Hanson.
American immigration policies are humane, not only in easy comparison to the savagery shown the "other" in Africa or the Middle East, but fair and compassionate in comparison to what we see presently accorded aliens in Mexico, France, and, yes, Germany.
Again, Hanson hears Obama, speaking as a "Citizen of the world" to millions of Germans, and assumes Obama's charge to the world is a criticism of America. It is sad to see Hansen so sensitive about America, sad that 7 years of Bushism have made words of criticism of some of the worst regimes around the world resonate with some of the worst recent practices by America to the point that even Hanson is stung by them.
Again, in all this fuzziness — this sermonizing in condescending fashion reminiscent at times of the Pennsylvania remonstration — there is the whiff of American culpability, but certainly not much of a nod to American exceptionalism.
If America is truly exceptional, Barak Obama does not need to shout it, or even nod to it. It is, and everyone knows it. If America has become so soiled under Bush that we are tarred by the very condemnations we have always levelled against offenders of human rights around the world, it is the Victor Davis Hansens who have brought pitch to the battles they envisioned around them, not caring that some of the pitch would inevitably stick to our own hands.
Politicians characteristically say to applauding audiences abroad what they wish to hear. True statesmen often do not.
Statesmen draw people to our side, to support what we need to do in the world going forward without bullying or threats - which is what Obama is doing, and what Hanson fears, as Hanson's own viewpoint becomes increasingly marginalized.
In terms of foreign affairs, I think Americans will finally come to vote for a candidate, who with goodwill, a lot of humility, and a little grace, can persuade the world that universal moral progress, freedom, and material prosperity best advance under the aegis of free markets, constitutional government, and individual freedom, rather than for someone who seems to think, in naïve fashion, that these are necessarily shared and natural human practices, or are presently in force outside the West — or will arise due to dialogue or international good intentions.
I was looking through this convoluted conclusory paragraph some condemnation of George Bush attending the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics - but alas, it was not to be found.