John Derbyshire: Seismic 79, The year the ice cracked.

NRO ^ | May 27, 2004 | John Derbyshire

[Tolik]

Anniversaries are, of course, of merely numerological significance. If God in His wisdom had given us six fingers on each hand instead of five, then we should have to wait 144 years to celebrate the centenary of a great man, and there would be 1,728 years in a millennium. As it is, we nod in perfunctory recognition as the tenth, 25th, 50th, or 100th anniversary of some momentous event passes by. There is no harm in this. It is good to cast a backward glance once in a while, and these numbers, though arbitrary, are convenient pegs on which to hang our remembrances.

A 25th anniversary has some slight extra significance, as 25 years make up more or less one human generation. In 25 years a new cohort of humanity is born, grows to maturity, and begins to accomplish things in the world. This is also about the period that a middle-aged person can look back over with complete understanding, having lived through it in full and worldly consciousness.

Let us look back 25 years from the present day, then, to 1979. I believe a case can be made — I am going to try to make it — that 1979 was a key year in modern history, the year a great logjam began to shift and break up.

The major events of that year can easily be listed:

Communist China and the U.S. established diplomatic relations, and Deng Xiaoping came visiting.

Iran underwent a revolution. The Shah left, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from 15 years of exile, and the U.S. embassy hostage crisis began.

Pope John Paul II visited Poland.

Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of the U.K.

The Carter presidency began its slow disintegration, and Ronald Reagan announced that he would be a candidate in the 1980 presidential election.

China invaded Vietnam, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Russia invaded Afghanistan.

Every one of these events cast a long shadow forward through time. For example: China's Deng Xiaoping had already determined upon economic reform and put forward the slogan: "To get rich is glorious!" Others in his party still needed convincing, though. Deng's U.S. trip, and the TV broadcasts of it beamed back to China, opened the eyes of Deng's colleagues to the distance their country had fallen behind the West, and made the necessity of reform plain to all. Back home again, Deng launched the free-trading New Economic Zones. At the same time he cracked down savagely on those seeking political liberalization, crushing the Democracy Wall movement and jailing Wei Jingsheng, the highest-profile dissident, after a show trial. The main outlines of Chinese policy were thereby set for the rest of the century and beyond: verligte economics, verkrampte politics.

The Iranian revolution was, of course, an appalling disaster for that country. It was also a key factor in the implosion of the Carter presidency. In retrospect, it is hard not to feel sorry for Jimmy Carter. As often happens with failing projects — Herbert Hoover comes to mind — once the Fates had decided against him, they piled on, and misfortunes came thick and fast. The first were already showing up in 1979: the Three Mile Island catastrophe in March, the 24-percent OPEC price hikes in June, the resignation of Andrew Young in August. Then, at the end of the year, in quick succession came the Chrysler bailout, the takeover of our Teheran embassy, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Carter's famous "malaise" speech of July 15 makes melancholy reading now. A clever and sincere man, filled with public spirit and the desire to do good, Carter had the misfortune to be president at time when his particular weaknesses were just those most disastrous to the nation and his plans. Abroad, amoral despots and madmen with bazaar-trading skill-sets behind their glittering eyes combined to make him look like a babe in the woods. At home, as David Frum chronicled in his book about the 1970s, Carter presided over a time when the great shifts of thought and behavior that the baby-boom rebels of the 1960s had pioneered — hedonism, anti-authoritarianism, "loathing" of the military, the obsession with equality and rights and "root causes" — had soaked deep into American life. Possibly the country was ungovernable by 1979. Certainly it is depressing to see an earnest man telling the nation plain truths that it did not (and, a cynic might add, still does not) care to hear:

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Tell it, preacher! But Carter's own faults — his naivety, feebleness of will, and obsession with detail — contributed much to the malaise he complained of. The year closed with an annual inflation rate of 11.3 percent, the highest in 30 years.

Of the three great figures who together took up arms against the negative trends of that time, the first had already mounted the world stage in 1979. In October of the previous year, Karol Wojtyla had been elected Pope at the comparatively young age of 58. A vigorous man of firmly conservative convictions, John Paul II swiftly asserted his church's role in world affairs, mediating a dispute between Argentina and Chile, receiving the Soviet Foreign Minister in audience, and then, in June of 1979, paying the first-ever Papal visit to a Communist country, his own native Poland. Those nine days in Poland changed everything. From them came the rise of the "Solidarity" workers' movement the following year, and from that, in ever swifter steps, the collapse of Communism in Europe. As Mikhail Gorbachev himself ruefully testified: "It would have been impossible without the Pope."

The second of those three world-changing figures appeared on May 4 of that pivotal year. I was living in England at that time. Late in January I had left the country to visit friends in Hong Kong. The leaving, in bitterly cold weather, had itself been something of a trial. This was Britain's "winter of discontent," when the country was plagued by strikes, inflation, and economic mismanagement. The teams responsible for de-icing the runways were in some sort of dispute with the management of Gatwick airport, and I was stuck in the departure lounge all night with several dozen angry travelers. When we got into the air at last, I remember recalling an observation of Tim Garton Ash's, that when a plane outward bound from the U.S.S.R. crossed the Iron Curtain into the free world, the pilot would sometimes announce the fact, and the passengers would burst into applause. I felt inclined to do the same as the coast of late-socialist Britain passed beneath and behind us.

I came back three months later just in time to see Margaret Thatcher's party elected into government. It was actually at the home of some left-wing friends that I watched the election coverage on TV. My friends were in a sour mood, of course, and I felt vaguely sorry for them. I had not paid much attention to the campaign, being out of the country for its entire duration; but when I saw the news clips the next day of Mrs. Thatcher coming to Downing Street from the Palace, speaking plain clear words to a confused and unhappy nation, I knew that something great and good was in the air, that some corner had been turned. The words she spoke were actually, she told us, from St. Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope."

My instinct was correct. In Britain, and soon in the world, a great reaction had commenced. On November 13, in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton, Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in yet more plain, inspiring words: "A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny... [W]e will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and — above all — responsible liberty for every individual."

The miserable shuffling retreat had been stopped. Western civilization had turned to face its enemies, both those inside the walls and those without. The war that then commenced is not yet over. Perhaps it never will be; but it was in 1979 that we got our nerve back, picked up our discarded weapons again, and resolved to fight. This was the year it all changed, the year the ice cracked.

[Tolik]

I like how somebody called him Dhimmi Carter. Suits him well.

[Tolik]

There are I guess occupations where being nice and compassionate like Carter, with all his weaknesses, is good, or OK. Not the presidency, I agree.

Another saying that suits him well: Mercy to cruel is a cruelty to mercyfull.

Interesting side note on Clinton: he was obsessed by his legacy. Nevertheless he missed the biggest opportunity of all: being The President Who Stomped out Terrorism before it turned into 9/11.

To be totally fair, not just Clinton, but practically everybody (with rare exceptions) did not connect the dots before 9/11. Still, I think he or Gore would treat 9/11 as a crime/police matter even after 9/11.

It's good we have a stronger President than they. My only wish is for him to be even STRONGER.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>6 DA YA THINK I'M SEXY? - Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart pump. (just don't mention the infamous 'tummy ache concert')

[sionnsar]

You mean: Carter Sold Out Iran 1977-1978. Yes, that's part what I was thinking of. There was also something about a shakedown of the Shah to enrich some of Carter's buddies. If the article is true, Carter was a far bigger crook than Nixon was ever portrayed to be.

Thanks.

[CGVet58]

bttt

[metesky]

A clever and sincere man, filled with public spirit and the desire to do good, Carter...

Oh please!

[John O]

Will the next Great Villain be Islamic? Will it be Chinese? How does one tell?

The next great villians are blatantly obvious.
#1 democrats.
#2 islam

[Valin]

For the youngester here, there was a book written in the late 70's called "The Third World War August 1985" by Sir John Hackett. It' about a soviet invasion of NATO,(if memory serves) the writer had 12 scenarios about how this would resolve it's self. In only one did the west win.

I recall after dessert one thinking to myself "Can't we do ANYTHING right?".


Thank God for Reagan!

[Moonman62]

I think there are some FReepers here who have posted material that has a very different take on Carter -- that his recent behavior is much more consistent with what he really was, as opposed to the image he projected, back then.

You're absolutely right. Derbyshire has fallen for the Carter scam. Carter is not a good man.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Will the next Great Villain be Islamic? Will it be Chinese? How does one tell?

Go back to bed. The future is already here, and you're missing it.

[r9etb]

Your head may be pointy, but it is very dull.

[LauraJean]

I stopped feeling sorry for Carter when I get my head together and figured what a blithering idiot he was.

[jpl]

I agree with everything here, with the exception of the section lauding Jimmy Carter as a fundamentally decent and honest man. I used to think that way as well, but the last couple of years have proven otherwise to me. As a failed former President, a truly honorable man would have the decency to live out his life in dignified silence, but Carter feels increasingly compelled to open his mouth and embarrass himself even further.

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Uh huh. As is your brain. You don't even know who the villain is. Well, I'm not going to tell you. It's a seeeeeeecret!

[shempy]

I think it will likely be the European Union that is the next evil enemy. They desperately want to gain enough power to FORCE the United States to join the environmentalist cult.

[r9etb]

There are plenty of normal villains, of course, but they're not Great Villains, such as Stalin and his USSR, or Hitler and Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan, who all had the motivation and means to pose serious threats to the whole world.

That's not currently the case with, say, Islamic terrorism. It is bloody and dangerous, but on the "world threat" scale it's still merely an annoyance, because they have neither the numbers nor the resources to do more. If they can figure out a way organize the Islamic world, perhaps they will become the next big threat.

Perhaps this helps you to understand what I'm talking about....

[happygrl]

Western civilization had turned to face its enemies, both those inside the walls and those without. The war that then commenced is not yet over. Perhaps it never will be; but it was in 1979 that we got our nerve back, picked up our discarded weapons again, and resolved to fight. This was the year it all changed, the year the ice cracked.

Chills.

[happygrl]

"The Third World War August 1985" by Sir John Hackett.

I haven't thought about that book in a long time.

If you remember, WWIII started with an Iranian attack on an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The Soviets then took advantage of the chaos. There was much fear then that the West was too weak and suffering from "malaise" to defend itself.

The lesson that I take from looking back is that, most often, we lack the imagination to see what the REALLY significant, world changing events are. What is transpiring NOW that will prove to the roots of villainy in twenty five years ? We fought the Cold War for 45+ years, but its roots were in the 19th Century writings of Karl Marx. One might say that the roots of the present Islamic Jihad go back to the pact between the House of Saud and the Wahabbi clerics with their fundamentalist ideas about Islam.

Are we within ten years of resolving this War with Jihad, or are we at the beginning of a generations long struggle, as in the Cold War in 1945 ? Perhaps by the end of President Bush's second term, we shall have a clue.

[happygrl]

I think it will likely be the European Union that is the next evil enemy.

BINGO for the right answer. Contrary to the popular notion that China will shape up to be our next threat (after we're finished with the Jihadists) I think that with the explosive growth of Christianity in China, we will have more common ground with them than with the Eurabians.

[Hunble]

Hey, I still love disco music. Olivia Newton-John is still considered a "babe" in my book.

I have never understood why this is almost a joke today.

I will take disco and dancing over RAP music any day.