Victor Davis Hanson: Words that Don’t Matter, The new buzz vocabulary of anti-Americanism

NRO ^ | 02/27/2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Valin]

Note Victor has a new book of his essays out.

[ClearCase_guy]

No, I don't think it's bad to have people like VDH in the Dem Party -- though I truly hope that party becomes extinct and has no one inside it within my lifetime.

I'm simply surprised. It's like finding a Rabbi inside the Nazi Party. Maybe he can do some good. Maybe he can persuade some Nazis not to be so anti-semitic. But the overall feeling is: "What's HE doing in THAT party?"

[Kryptonite]

A democrat? News to me. He's an environmentalist and has been reported to live somewhat of a minimalist lifestyle...but I've never heard that he's a member of the Democratic Party.

[Valin]

We need two parties(at least) and I want the other party to be filled with people that won't get me killed. That's not the case right now.

[Tax-chick]

To me, "preemption" means a political speech coming on the TV in place of the show you really wanted to watch! I'm stuck in the 1980's, I guess ...

[ClearCase_guy]

I used to consider myself a Libertarian, but I do not anymore. But here is what I'd like to see in America in terms of two parties:

1) The elimination of the Democrats
2) The Republican Party. Conservative on social issues, perhaps not-conservative-enough on financial issues.
3) The Libertarian Party. Too Liberal on social issues. Conservative on financial issues.

I'd vote Republican every time, but if the Libertarians won once in a while, it wouldn't be the end of the world. And there'd be no Marxism in that picture.

[hershey]

He has a superb grasp of history and its lessons and always makes you think.

[NZerFromHK]

Do you think Europeans read (or even care) about VDH?

[lainde]

bttt

[Tolik]

After learning about his ideas influence on this administration, they might, if only to try to guess a next move. I can't imagine they would admire him as we do.

I understand, yours was just a rhetorical question. It's paradoxical, but they claim our brainwashing when looks like we have more variety of the opinion sources, and they look more brainwashed to me. :))

[NZerFromHK]

I agree. Europeans (IMHO and British as well) always look down on American scholars who are experts in classical Greece and Rome. Of course given that they actually own the monuments of ancient Greco-Roman civilizations they think they certinaly know better than Americans on these areas.

But of course the reality is very different. I think they seem to resonate more with the post-Westphalian European Great Powers politics (European history from 1648 to 1945 - it seems like a continuous struggle between various balances of powers) than classical Greco-Roman philosophies. Therefore we can safely bet that any European educated in history will probably know more about a Bismarck or a Metternich than a Cicero or a Thucydides. Talking to them about lessons from classical history will probably draw blank stares from them, if not reactions like "Sir, you should think more about European balance of power history than ancient Greece or Rome. It has more relevance to our world!" (BTW this trend transcends the Left-Right divide in Europe.)

And it is interesting that, as you have posted many VDH articles and given that they touch collective psyches of many modern individual European countries, we haven't seen any European freepers replying to these messages. It is because they don't even know about classics in modern Europe (as I outlined above)? I will leave this to them.