Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite conservative columnists. He's terrifically articulate while at the same time being wildly hyperbolic. The used to publish him in our local paper, The Oregonian," but I think he got a little too much "out there." I haven't seen him for some time. But a conservative friend forwarded this link to an article of his in the National Review.
The article was so unfair and outrageous, even for Hanson, that I was forced to respond.
The Technocrat's New Clothes by Victor Davis Hansen
Where to begin? Along with his towering contempt for anyone not rabidly reactionary, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction, esp. extreme conservatism or rightism in politics; opposing political or social change. Hanson trots out the entire panoply of conservative catch-phrases, which although wildly inaccurate and for the most part hyperbolic jingoism, are fanatically accepted dogma for the angry right-wing bah-humbug mob who embrace only one single nuanced phrase aside from up and down, right and left, black and white: "Money talks, bullshit walks," i.e. anything that makes money is inherently good, everything else is just chatter. Anyone who deviates from that one elemental truth is either naive of a Marxist.
Playing off that universally accepted (at least by conservatives and their snake-oil spokespeople in the right-wing propaganda industry) concept, Hanson makes some admirably articulate, if comically incorrect, assertions:
In 2009, the vision of the new Obama administration was European: foreign-policy triangulation, government takeovers of private enterprises, higher taxes, more entitlements and public workers, and always more "them/us" class-warfare rhetoric from members of a technocratic guardian class who had played the very system they were now to oversee. Apparently Obama’s high-level appointees — from Timothy Geithner to Van Jones — thought they were our versions of Brussels bureaucrats, who could say and do anything with no need to worry about popular reaction.
The assertion about Obama's "foreign-policy triangulation," exist only in Hanson's fevered imagination. Every individual in the Obama administration has enough education and experience to know that "government takeover of private enterprise," is a non-starter. Fox and RW-radio have successful indoctrinated the sheep into believing that is actually what liberals are after, even though we're not. Obama doesn't want to run GM. That's just part of the Right's Big Lie, their primary tactic, i.e. Tell a lie often enough and loud enough and some people will believe it.
He slips in "higher taxes" and "more entitlements and public workers,"' - not a goal of anyone with half a brain - as if they are accepted facts when they are actually just Republican talking points made up by political operatives, more applicable to Republicans (see Bush administration under whom government bureaucracy and spending grew exponentially) than Democrats.
"...always more "them/us" class-warfare rhetoric from members of a technocratic guardian class..." a theory and movement, prominent about 1932, advocating control of industrial resources, reform of financial institutions, and reorganization of the social system, based on the findings of technologists and engineers. i.e. Marxists. This is an old and comically baseless conservative assertion going back to the '50's when anyone who didn't bow down to the omnipotence of the military industrial transfer of wealth from the middle class to corporate interests was labeled "soft on communism." e.g. proponents of technocracy. Besides Geithner began under Bush and hasn't changed his emphasis under Obama.
Aside from the passing of messianic environmentalism and European utopianism, we are also seeing the unraveling of Obama’s reset-button foreign policy, announced to such fanfare in January 2009. It was apparently predicated on the assumption that much of the tension in the world was caused by George W. Bush’s United States, and therefore could be ameliorated through apology, retrenchment, dialogue, public self-critique, and criticism of prior presidents.
People who worry about pouring millions of tons a day of CO2 and particulates into our life support system aren't just being wise or prudent they're "messianic environmentalists." If you want a definition of hyperbole, look no further.
"European utopianism," yeah right. They just don't have the experience with different forms of government, centuries long grudges, unnecessary wars, monumental hubris, blind nationalism, jingoism and militarists that we do. They're just naive. Right.
Hey, I got news for you, much of the tension in the world was caused by Bush's blustering, bullying and posturing and the only way to repair it is through apology, retrenchment, dialogue, public self-critique and criticism of prior president's policies. Hanson's obvious contempt for this process hints that he is not only not married, but that he is one of those arrogant, blustering, bullying chicken hawks that got us into this mess in the first place.
So add it all up: the Al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, the distancing from Israel, the euphemisms like "overseas contingency operations" and "man-caused disasters," the politically correct banishment of any anti-terrorism phraseology associated with Islam, the repeated announcements of the closing of Guantanamo and the trying of KSM in New York, the strange case of Attorney General Eric Holder, who can call his own fellow citizens "cowards" but not associate radical Islam with recent attempts by Muslims to kill those fellow citizens en masse — and we get Syria supplying terrorists with missiles, Iran ever closer to a bomb, and the largest number of terrorist attempts inside the U.S. over the past year than during any other twelve-month period since September 11, 2001.
"...the politically correct banishment of any anti-terrorism phraseology associated with Islam." The term should be "wisdom," not "politically correct." PC has the RW-radio-instilled connotation of weakness or insincerity. It would be wise if we not insult the Muslim religion because of a relatively few fanatics who claim to speak for them. The Right certainly doesn't stand for that practice when it comes to Christian religious fanatics in this country.
"...the strange case of Attorney General Eric Holder..." I love it. Hanson can insult, insinuate and libel anyone and anything because he's a conservative and "we have the guns." And then he goes on to blame every ill under the sun on Obama, who's been in office what, eighteen months?
Victor Davis Hansen sounds really good to someone with "Right-Wing disease. To everyone else he sounds like a tool.
Eric