Victor Davis Hanson: America's new discontents

JewishWorldReview ^ | March 17, 2005 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

Sometime in the 1960s there arose a new home-grown distrust of the United States, followed by an erosion of faith in the values of the West. Perhaps the culprit was the fiasco in Vietnam or the rise of a trendy multiculturalism that followed from it.

Our schools often insisted that all cultures were to be roughly the same. History devolved more into melodrama than tragedy. America was no longer exceptional — and thus in no position to criticize a Cuba as undemocratic or condemn the Iranian mullahs as murderously theocratic.

The enormous wealth and leisure that followed from global capitalism and democracy insulated us — creating an unreality about the sources for our privilege and naiveté about why life was so bad outside our shores.

Consequently, some utopian elites forgot the free-market origins of their own riches and why they had the freedom and leisure to be so censorious of their own culture. Maybe they were guilty over our bounty. One way of enjoying an upscale American lifestyle, while simultaneously feeling pretty terrible about it, is to castigate the history and global conduct of the United States in the abstract — without ever giving up much in the concrete.

How else could the currency speculator George Soros — whose 1992 financial manipulations almost destroyed the Bank of England and thousands of its small depositors — win praise from leftists for comparing President Bush's conduct to Nazism? The angry architects of Moveon.org were neither poor nor oppressed. Nor were they bothered that their Soros millions originated from the financial losses of others. But they did reflect that the most strident anti-Americanism is largely found among our unhappy upper-middle classes.

[Tolik]

OK

If anybody needs to catch up with Hanson's writing, his FR-posted articles are indexed here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-victordavishanson/browse

His NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

His blog: http://victorhanson.com/index.html     BIO: http://victorhanson.com/Author/index.html

Yes, he is listened by the Bush Administration; they like him maybe as much as we do: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1085464/posts?page=6#6

[reluctantwarrior]

If a republican had dared to utter something so stupid during the Clinton years like wasn't sOMALIA GREAT IT SURE MADE THE DEMS LOOK BAD THEY WOULD OF BEEN FRONT PAGE NEWS FOR A MONTH UNTIL THEY WERE FORCED FROM OFFICE SOORY ABOUT THE CAPS LOCK....

rw

[Jabba the Nutt]

"They setup a straw man of prefection (that never existed) and demand that until America meet these standars we can't criticize anyone else."

This is a practice straight out of Marxism. The Marxist would compare their utopian society to reality, which of course would fall short and demand instant change.

[Valin]

The Marxist would compare their utopian society to reality, which of course would fall short and demand instant change.

Reminds me of some here.

[freddiedavis]

add me to the ping list...thanks

[SierraWasp]

Thanks! Bookmarked!! I agree with your comment, completely!!!

[SierraWasp]

Hey! I thought I was on some of your ping lists... what happened???

Hi Lando, my good Chicagoland FRiend!

[SuziQ]

But they did reflect that the most strident anti-Americanism is largely found among our unhappy upper-middle classes.

I have to laugh when folks talk about Woodstock as some 'defining moment' in the culture of America. Maybe in the minds of the media, because it was their ilk who were represented in that throng. The upper middle class youts had the time and money from their increasingly disinterested parents to engage in activities of this sort. The population of Woodstock was very homogeneous; i.e. WHITE, upper middle class, but history wants us all to think they represented all of their age group. Alhough the media coverage helped mold the ideas of some middle and lower middle class kids to want to be like those they saw at Woodstock, most of us just went on our merry ways, not buying into the hippie lifestyle and radical politics.

We see a similar situation today in the mainstream women's movement and anti-war movement; they are largely upper middle class and overwhelmingly white, so they don't represent the nation as a whole, by a long shot. Yet it is the leaders of these groups who are contacted by the media for a take on the situation of people as a whole. VEY annoying!

[nosofar]

The Marxist would compare their utopian society to reality, which of course would fall short and demand instant change.

So they always have the justification for yet more radical change.

[nosofar]

The population of Woodstock was very homogeneous; i.e. WHITE, upper middle class,

I suspect there was a disproportionate number who later went into 'journalism'.

[spodefly]

BTTT

[Billthedrill]

How sad that our most educated and sophisticated cannot fathom that an Iraqi Kurd, an Afghan woman or a Lebanese shopkeeper simply wants the same freedom and opportunity for their children that so many of the most blessed — but bitter — in America either take for granted, feel guilty about or so cynically dismiss.

You get a two-pronged approach in denial here: first, "they're not like us," i.e. they enjoy being shot in the back of the head in a soccer stadium, and second and more prevalent, that America is irredeemably corrupt due to racismsexismhomophobia or whatever the outrage of the moment turns out to be and hence not a model for anyone. It is this second that is nihilistic and masks that nihilism by insisting on unreachable utopias.

In practice the difference is fairly easy to determine, and describes the difference between an old-line liberal and the sort of radical who is currently struggling for control of the Democratic party. The old-line liberal (they're not extinct, I believe) will say "this is OK but that would be better and here's how we'll get there." He may be wrong but at least he has a plan. The radical says "this is completely wrong and has to be destroyed before we can go forward." He'll be happy to take care of the destruction part - it's his thing. The "going forward" part is harder.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Terrific!

*******************************************

Read this to understand the Anti-Capitalist Anti-USA BS.....

Started with Gramsci....

*******************************************

Unholy Alliance
by David Horowitz
Regnery Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 089526076X
Hardcover - 256 pages (September 2004)

In this tour de force on the most important issue of our time, David Horowitz, confronts the paradox of how so many Americans, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, could turn against the War on Terror. He finds an answer in a political Left that shares a view of America as the “Great Satan” with America’s radical Islamic enemies. This Left, which once made common cause with Communists, has now joined forces with radical Islam in attacking America’s defenses at home and its policies abroad. From their positions of influence in the university and media culture, leftists have defined America as the “root cause” of the attacks against it. In a remarkable exploration of the “Mind of the Left,” Horowitz traces the evolution of American radicalism from its Communist past to its “anti-war” present. He then shows how this Left was able to turn the Democratic Party presidential campaign around and reshape its views on the War on Terror.

Horowitz’s Unholy Alliance, writes John Haynes, the noted historian of American Communism, “is an insightful, brilliant examination of the mental world of the radical left. Horowitz shows how today’s radicals, unwilling to reflect on the internal flaws that destroyed Marxism-Leninism from within, have embraced an all-consuming nihilism in its place. This has led them to a hatred of American institutions and a solidarity with Islamic terrorists that makes the radical left more properly regarded as dangerous than loony.”

Unholy Alliance is an eye-opening book that should unsettle conventional assumptions and reveals why intellectuals and political leaders who applaud Michael Moore are no laughing matter. As Harvey Klehr, author of Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, writes, “The world Communist movement may be moribund, but its habits of mind and ideological fantasies have not disappeared. This is a fascinating and depressing account.”

Price: $19.01 - Click here to order:

[Tolik]

Here is more -- Lee Harris digs into the same subject in one of his best articles:

The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing (Fascinating!)

Posted by Remember_Salamis On News/Activism 05/08/2004 6:45:29 AM EDT · 80 replies · 243+ views PolicyReview.org ^ | Dec, 2002 | Lee Harris Specter haunts the world, and that specter is America. This is not the America discoverable in the pages of a world atlas, but a mythical America that is the target of the new form of anti-Americanism that Salman Rushdie, writing in the Guardian (February 6, 2002), says "is presently taking the world by storm" and that forms the subject of a Washington Post essay by Martin Kettle significantly entitled "U.S. Bashing: It's All The Rage In Europe" (January 7, 2002). It is an America that Anatol Lieven assures us, in a recent article in the London Review of Books, is nothing less than "a menace to itself and to mankind" and that Noam Chomsky has repeatedly characterized as the world's major terrorist state. But above all it is the America that is responsible for the evils of the rest of the world.

keep reading

[krunkygirl]

save

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Great article.

[MARTIAL MONK]

gooseBUMP