Victor Davis Hanson Makes An Excellent Point

This from Victor Davis Hanson writing at PJM:

Conservatives are put into awkward positions of critiquing liberal ideas on grounds that they are impractical, unworkable, or counterproductive. Yet rarely, at least outside the religious sphere, do they identify the progressive as often immoral. And the unfortunate result is that they have often ceded moral claims to supposedly dreamy, utopian, and well-meaning progressives, when in fact the latter increasingly have little moral ground to stand upon.

Having pondered that for a bit, its clear that VDS has articulated an insightful and important point. VDS goes into detail, explaining how radical environmentalism, multiculturalism, illegal immigration, and affirmative action make his point. Do read his entire article. This is a suggestion that all on the right should take to heart. It is decades beyond time for the right to stop ceding the moral high ground to those on the left who are merely posing atop it.

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Protecting The Racial Spoils System

Last month, in an appearance at Columbia University, his alma mater, [Attorney General Eric] Holder made a jarring statement in support of racial preferences, saying he “can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.” “Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” he declared. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin. . . . When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”

John Fund, Infinite Affirmative Action, NRO, 6 March 2012

Where did that come from? We've had affirmative action for over sixty years. It has been, as Thomas Sowell points out here, here and here, largely ineffective and unintentionally damaging. It is, in today's America, as pointed out by Victor Davis Hanson, ludicrous as a means of supposedly redressing wrongs. And, as pointed out by former Senator Jim Webb, affirmative action is grossly unfair and wholly repugnant to the proposition of equality. So how and why can Holder possibly make such outrageous remarks?

As a threshold matter, not that Holder's remarks come on the heels of an expose from Breitbart.com showing a young Barry Obama hugging and promoting Dr. Derrick Bell, the creator of "critical race theory." It also comes on the heels of the revelation that Prof. Obama, teaching Constitutional Law at Univ. of Chicago law school, made Derrick Bell required reading for his class.

Promoting the canard of wide spread racism - and racial entitlement - in the U.S. is utterly central to the left's survival. It is a foundational source of votes, money and political patronage for the left. In the fantasy world painted by the left, it is always 1950 - with the important exception to historical reality being that it is the conservative right, not the Democrats, who are the font of the racism. If the edifice created by the left cracks, if they don't get 90% of the black vote in every election, the Democrats are in serious trouble.

In the near total absence of any overt racism today, the left last resort is to the claim that racism, even if not conscious, is none the less inherent and endemic. That is at the heart of the ludicrous theory of "color blind racism" now being expoused by the left. And it is at the heart of Derrick Bell's "critical race theory" (CRT). Both ultimately reject Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for equality of all races, arguing that because of permanent racism, blacks will always require special treatment. Skin color is not irrelevant to these people, rather it is the defining characteristic.

A description of Critical Race Theory was memorialized by now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan in her notes from a 1993 lecture on the topic:

Pervasiveness of racism: First, CRT takes as a given -- as its first premise -- that racism infects every aspect of American law and American life. That racism is deep and pervasive -- some would go so far as to say inevitable and permanent.

"Neutral" law as mechanism of racial subordination: Second, CRT attempts to show that the claims of the legal system to neutrality, to impartiality, and to objectivity are false claims. CRT attempts to show that the law -- even when it seems neutral and even-handed -- in fact works in the interest of dominant groups in American society and particularly in the interest of dominant racial groups. CRT attempts to show that the so-called "logic of the law," that so-called "neutral principles" are a sort of cover for a deeply ingrained system of racial domination.

Critical of civil rights strategies: Third, CRT generally is extremely critical of the activity -- the strategy and even the goals -- of the traditional civil rights movement. The thinking here is that the traditional civil rights movement believed that all that needed to be done was to make the laws neutral-- to end legal segregation in the schools, for example -- in order to achieve racial equality in America. But such reforms, critical race theorists say, were ineffectual, and necessarily so -- because they ignored the way even neutral laws could effect racial subordination. In addition, it might be said that critical race theorists see the civil rights movement as too "reformist," too "gradualist," not sufficiently committed to the broad-scale social transformations necessary to achieve racial equality.

Insistence on incorporation of minority perspectives and use of stories: Fourth, and relatedly, critical race theory insists that the law --legal doctrines of all sorts -- be reformulated, fundamentally altered, to reflect and incorporate the perspectives and experiences of so-called "outsider groups," who have known racism and racial subordination at first hand. Critical race theorists often write not in traditional, lawyerly terms, but with parables, and stories, and dialogues. The thinking is that these techniques can better demonstrate the actual experiences of members of minority group -- experiences which should be accepted by and incorporated in the law. In addition, the decision to spurn traditional techniques of legal argument reflects the belief that these apparently neutral techniques are not neutral at all -- that they have been the means of promoting not some objective system of truth and justice, but instead a system based on racial power.

Finally, Kagan demonstrated that Derrick Bell is an "examplar" of critical race theory:

Derrick Bell as examplar:

Now Derrick Bell's writing illustrates each of these four aspects of critical race theory. He believes that racism is a pervasive-- and a permanent --aspect of American society. Read 1. He believes that the legal system is a means of promoting a system of racial subordination--even, or perhaps especially, when it makes claims to objectivity and neutrality. Read 2. He is deeply critical of the strategies and goals of the traditional civil rights movement--of which he used to be a part. And he insists that law must take into account the experiences of minorities, which he attempts to explicate through dialogues and stories.

Is anyone in the least surprised that the same man who was BFF with unrepentant anti-American terrorists or who sat in the pews of a vile reverse racist for 20 years would embrace Critical Race Theory and Dr. Bell? And is anyone surprised that no administration in history has been so race-centric? Is anyone surprised that Obama, who campaigned on healing the racial divide, is actually intent on promoting the canard of wide spread racism and protecting, if not actually expanding, the racial spoils system?

Let's conclude with Dr. Thomas Sowell's thoughts on Derrick Bell from 1990:

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The Dysfunctional Mindset Of Europe - & A Part Of America

French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner has written a fascinating essay at City Journal. His topic is the modern - and dysfunctional - European mindset. It is a mindset that sees its own historic sins as unforgivable while forgiving the sins of (almost) all others. It is a mindset that refuses to acknowledge historical realities and indulges in dangerous fantasy. To give you a snippet from his essay:

. . . There is nothing more insidious than a collective guilt passed down from generation to generation, dyeing a people with a kind of permanent stain. Contrition cannot define a political order. As there is no hereditary transmission of victim status, so there is no transmission of oppressor status. The duty of remembering implies neither the automatic purity nor the automatic corruption of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. History is not divided between sinner nations and angelic ones but between democracies, which recognize their faults, and dictatorships, which drape themselves in the robes of martyrs. We have learned over the last half-century that every state is founded on crime and coercion, including those that have recently appeared on history’s stage. But there are states capable of recognizing this and of looking barbarism in the eye, and there are others that excuse their present misdeeds by citing yesterday’s oppression.

Remember this simple fact: Europe has vanquished its most horrible monsters. Slavery was abolished, colonialism abandoned, fascism defeated, and communism brought to its knees. What other continent can claim more? In the end, the good prevailed over the abominable. Europe is the Holocaust, but it is also the destruction of Nazism; it is the Gulag, but also the fall of the Wall; imperialism, but also decolonization; slavery, but also abolition. In each case, there is a form of violence that is not only left behind but delegitimized, a twofold progress in civilization and in law. At the end of the day, freedom prevailed over oppression, which is why life is better in Europe than on many other continents and why people from the rest of the world are knocking on Europe’s door while Europe wallows in guilt.

Europe no longer believes in evil but only in misunderstandings to be resolved by discussion and dialogue. She no longer has enemies but only partners. If she is nice to extremists, she thinks, they will be nice to her, and she will be able to disarm their aggressiveness and soften them up. Europe no longer likes History, for History is a nightmare, a minefield from which she escaped at great cost, first in 1945 and then again in 1989. And since History goes on without us, and everywhere emergent nations are recovering their dignity, their power, and their aggressiveness, Europe leaves it to the Americans to be in charge, while reserving the right to criticize them violently when they go astray. It is notable that Europe is the only region in the world where military budgets go down every year; we have no armies that would be able to defend our frontiers if we were so unlucky as to be attacked; after the Haitian crisis, Brussels could not dispatch even a few thousand men to help disaster victims. We are well equipped to calibrate the size of bananas or the composition of cheeses, but not to create a military force worthy of the name. . . .

Mssr. Buckner draws numerous contrasts with America, such as, for example:

[Europe] has a history, whereas America is still making history, animated by an eschatological tension toward the future. If the latter sometimes makes major mistakes, the former makes none because it attempts nothing. For Europe, prudence no longer consists in the art, defended by the ancients, of finding one’s way within an uncertain story. We hate America because she makes a difference. We prefer Europe because she is not a threat. Our repulsion represents a kind of homage, and our sympathy a kind of contempt.

I would add two thoughts to Mssr. Bruckner's essay. One, though he never mentions the word "multiculturalism," that is precisely what he is describing. It is deeply dysfunctional philosophy that will prove suicidal to Europe if allowed to follow its logical course.

Two, Mssr. Bruckner ignores the contribution of Karl Marx's philosophy to the development of the European mindset. Marx posited that all events should be viewed through the lens of oppressor and oppressed. It is a deeply distorting philophy that is at the heart of the European mindset. I explain this in more detail when writing on virtually the same topic in the essay, "Thoughts on Britain, Colonialism and Multiculturalism." I think it an important point to make as, if this scourge is ever to be vanquished from the national psyche of Europe, then one must understand the origins of the disease.

It is also of note that the dysfunctional mindset described by Mr. Bruckner precisely describes the mindset of the left wing intelligentsia in the U.S., a point made by Victor Davis Hanson in his latest offering at PJM:

. . . This is the most tolerant society in the world, the most multiracial and richest in religious diversity — and the most critical of its exceptional tolerance and the most lax in pointing out the intolerance of the least diverse and liberal.

It is market capitalism, unfettered meritocracy, and individual initiative within a free society that create the wealth for Al Gore to live in Montecito (indeed to create a Montecito in the first place), or for Michelle to jet to Marbella, or for John Kerry to buy a $7 million yacht. We know that, but our failure to occasionally express such a truth, coupled with a constant race/class/gender critique of American society, results in an insidious demoralization among the educated and bewilderment among the half- and uneducated.

In short, the great enigma of our postmodern age is how American society grew so wealthy and free to create so many residents that became so angry at the conditions that have made them so privileged — and how so many millions abroad fled the intolerance and poverty of their home country, and yet on arrival almost magically romanticize the very conditions in the abstract that they would never live under again in the concrete.

A final thought: given what we know of collectivism now and in the past, government in places like Mexico or Syria, multiculturalism in nations as diverse as the Balkans and central Africa, and the role of religion in most locales of the Middle East, how exactly could critics of the U.S. gain the security to protest, the capital to travel, and the freedom to criticize should the system that they find so lacking erode or even disappear?

Indeed, it would seem that the paradigm of the left is to push America towards Europe in all respects, including philosophical. All of the West can be thankful that, as of yet, our left has not been wholly successful in this endeavor.

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Posts of Interest

Some posts of interest that I don't have time to blog about:

AG Eric Holder engages in questionable legal reasoning to ignore Congressional intent and instead rule that ACORN is entitled to be paid under existing contracts. Powerline has the story.

The Cato Institute looks under the knickers of Obamacare and finds the actual price tag to be in the neighborhood of $6,000,000,000,000.00

The trials facing America that are being ignored by Obama could dwarf the problems seen so far. V. D. Hanson has the list. Topping both his - and my - concern is the price of oil.

The Weekly Standard has more on the boondoggle that are ethanol mandates.

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Obama's Cognitive Dissonance

Main Entry: cognitive dissonance
Function: noun
: anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like.

Dictionary.com Unabridged, Based on the Random House Dictionary

Victor Davis Hanson points out the tremendous cognitive dissonance which Obama and his many supporters would impose upon us:

1. The Budget. Wanting to cut $17 billion from the budget, as President Obama has promised, is proof of financial responsibility. Borrowing $1.84 trillion this year for new programs is “stimulus.” The old phrase “out-of-control spending” is inoperative.

2. Unemployment. The number of jobs theoretically saved, or created, by new government policies — not the actual percentage of Americans out of work, or the total number of jobs lost — is now the far better indicator of unemployment.

3. The Private Sector. Nationalizing much of the auto and financial industries, while regulating executive compensation, is an indication of our new government’s repeatedly stated reluctance to interfere in the private sector.

4. Race and Gender. Not what is said, but who says it and about whom reveals racism and sexism. For example, a Hispanic female judge isn’t being offensive if she states that Latinas are inherently better judges than white males. . . .

6. Terrorism. Acts of terror disappeared about six months ago. . . . [O]ngoing military tribunals, renditions, wiretaps, phone intercepts, and Predator-drone assassinations are no longer threats to the Constitution. . . .

9. Media. The media are disinterested and professional observers of the present administration. When television anchormen and senior magazine editors bow to the president, proclaim him a god, or feel tingling in the legs when he speaks, it is quite normal.

10. George W. Bush. Former president Bush did all sorts of bad things to the United States that only now we are learning will take at least eight years to sort out. “Bush did it” for the next decade will continue to explain the growing unemployment rate, the most recent deficit, the new round of tensions with Iran and North Korea, and the growing global unrest from the Middle East to South America.

Read the entire article. As Mr. Hanson conludes, "once we remember and accept the logic of the above, then almost everything about this Age of Obama begins to make perfect sense."

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Iran Buys Time, Obama Votes Present, Iraq's Status Is Recognized

The Mad Mullahs of Iran's theocracy now have some real problems. The perception of a stolen election has clearly animated what was, previously, an apathetic and beaten down populace. And the challenge of the populace is not merely to the election results - it is now to the legitimacy of the unelected theocracy itself. There has been another large protest today, even though the regime outlawed it. In a clear effort to buy time, Supreme Guide Khamenei has opted to acquisce to Mousavi's request to review the election for fraud. Obama, true to his word of not attempting to impose the evils of democracy on any nation, has opted to stay silent on the revolt. And finally, Tom Friedman and Victor Davis Hanson make points that I have been making for years: Iraq is of critical importance as a nascent democracy bordering Iran and in the heart of the Middle East.

This from the NYT on the latest developments in Iran:

The Iranian opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, appeared publicly on Monday for the first time in more than two days to call for calm as state media repeatedly broadcast a report that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had called for a high-level inquiry into accusations of election irregularities.

But more than half a million protesters massed in the streets of Tehran to renew the challenge to the outcome of the vote, and demonstrations were reported in other cities as well, despite the continued blocking of text-messaging services and disruption of Web sites and some cell phone networks.

News from the rest of Iran is not forthcoming, but given that every major city was home to large protests on Sunday, it would be surprising if what is happening in Tehran is not being repeated throughout the country. And it will be interesting to see how much control Mousavi can exert over those who have taken to his banner. As several commentors have noted, the challenge being posed by this revolt is not just to the election, but to the legitimacy of the unelected theocratic regime itself. Whether Khameini's decision to allow an investigation into Mousavi's allegations of fraud over the next ten days will succeed in diffusing this explosive situation is an open question.

ABC News is reporting on the radio as I draft this post that police have opened fire on demonstrators in Tehran and that at least one person is dead. If true, this is a substanial move along the continum from protest to open revolt.

Update: Gateway Pundit is following this through Twitter. There are fights going on throughout Iran and 15 people are reported dead.

This situation is at a point where Obama should be showing moral support for those people now risking life and limb in opposition to the regime. Obama should be speaking to the importance and need for real democracy. Yet Obama is silent. His record shows a preference for voting "present" in response to tough issues, and it appears that is what he is doing now. Indeed, he seems more concerned about what this will mean for his unconditional talks with Ahmedinejad than about supporting democracy and regime change in Iran.

The entire history of Iran's theocracy tells us that, unless we are prepared to use or threaten force, we are not going to move the mad mullahs off their determined path towards, one, a nuclear weapon, and two, the spread of their Khomeinist Revolution. There is only one other answer, and that is regime change in Iran. Iran's regime is not supported by the citizenry. There could be no clearer evidence of that then this stolen election and the blood now being spilled in the streets because of it. True, Obama does not and should not speak out in favor of Mousavi as that would be all the excuse the theocracy needs to justify its brutal repression. But Obama should be speaking out about the need for Iran to both hold free and fair elections and to honor the will of the people, not to repress them. He should be speaking words of concern about the integrity of voting process. Instead, not only has Obama been silent, but worse, he has indicated he will go ahead with unconditional talks irrespective of the ongoing revolt. That sends precisely the wrong message to both the theocracy and the citizens suffering under that theocracy.

The WSJ has weighed in on this also:

Having shown such courage, the demonstrators deserve Western support, not least from the media that have recently trumpeted the Mousavi candidacy as evidence of Iran's openness and potential for reform, conciliation and so on. Whatever happens in the days ahead, the world has now seen the tyranny raw. The least we owe the protestors is not to look away.

That moral obligation goes especially for the Obama Administration. President Obama came to office promising the world's dictators an open hand in exchange for an unclenched fist. But as with Kim Jong Il's nuclear advances and the sham trial of two Americans in North Korea, Mr. Khamenei has repudiated the President's diplomacy of friendly overture. It turns out that the "axis of evil" really is evil -- and not, as liberal sages would have it, merely misunderstood.

The vote should prompt Mr. Obama to rethink his pursuit of a grand nuclear bargain with Iran, though early indications suggest he plans to try anyway. On Saturday, the New York Times quoted one unnamed senior Administration official to the effect that the election uproar would cause Mr. Ahmadinejad to be more receptive to Mr. Obama's overtures as a sop to disgruntled public opinion. If the Administration really believes this, then Mr. Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter and the mullahs will play him for time to get their bomb. . . .

Mr. Obama has the opportunity to lend the protestors the considerable weight of U.S. moral support, just as he has the opportunity to show the regime there are consequences for stealing elections. One such consequence would be for the President to remove his opposition to various bills in Congress, sponsored by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and others, that sanction companies that sell gasoline to Iran. An estimated 40% of Iran's domestic gasoline consumption comes from foreign sources.

In Iran today, a sham election has been met with an open revolt. This takes great courage. The world's free nations need the courage to do better than respond with the sham policy of making nice with an illegitimate regime.

Lastly, I supported the Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2002 on the basis that it held the promise of creating an Arab Shia democracy in the Middle East and on the border of Iran. I have always thought that nothing could be more important in the long term to counter radicalism throughout the Middle East and, in particular, in Iran. And indeed, as I've pointed out repeatedly, Iraq poses a mortal threat to Iran. It does so because it has a rough but real democracy, it has a secular government, and it is honoring the millenia old Shia tradition of apolitical "quietism." Both Tom Friedman and Victor Davis Hanson have made similar points recently. This from Tom Friedman, commenting on the election in Lebanon:

There are a million things to hate about President Bush’s costly and wrenching wars. But the fact is, in ousting Saddam in Iraq in 2003 and mobilizing the U.N. to push Syria out of Lebanon in 2005, he opened space for real democratic politics that had not existed in Iraq or Lebanon for decades. “Bush had a simple idea, that the Arabs could be democratic, and at that particular moment simple ideas were what was needed, even if he was disingenuous,” said Michael Young, the opinion editor of The Beirut Daily Star.

What, if anything, was "disingnuous" about Bush's idea or why Friedman felt the need to include that attack on Bush is not apparent. This ad hominem attack is nothing more than the ridiulous, knee-jerk need of the left to delegitimize Bush whenever his memory is invoked. But to continue from Friedman:

“It was bolstered by the presence of a U.S. Army in the center of the Middle East. It created a sense that change was possible, that things did not always have to be as they were.”

When I reported from Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, I covered coups and wars. I never once stayed up late waiting for an election result. . . .

Lebanese, by contrast, just waited up all night for their election results — no one knew what they’d be.

Third, the Bush team opened a hole in the wall of Arab autocracy but did a poor job following through. . .

That's gruding praise indeed. And from VDS:

Much of Iran wants what they see going on in Iraq. How odd that the ‘experts’ assured us that Bush had empowered Iran by removing his rival Saddam. Perhaps in the short term-but in the long term TV, radio, and osmosis from free Iraq is proving more destabilizing to the theocracy in Iran than are Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and shaped charged IEDs to Iraq.

I could not have said it beter, though I have said it often.

Prior Posts:

Heating Up In Iran
Tehran Is Burning; What Will The Iranian Army Do? (Updated)
The Mad Mullah's Man Wins Again - For Now
The Next Moves In An Existential Chess Match (Background On Iran)

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Time For An End to Affirmative Action

A bit of late blogging. Victor Davis Hanson wrote the other day on the need to bring an end to affirmative action as the justification for establishing it half a century ago no longer exists and, as currently perpetuated, and as VDS documents with numerous examples, affirmative action creates gross distortions in society. His conclusion:

. . . [C]reating, recreating, and emphasizing racial identity, especially among elites, currently involves so many contortions that it has descended from the absurd to the outright pernicious-and is becoming a sort of racism itself. One gets the uncomfortable feeling that the perpetuators of the present system-mostly elite whites-find some sort of psychological absolution in such a system that allows them to alleviate guilt without living among poorer people of color, or sending their own children to the “diverse” public schools-two concrete steps that might quickly indeed ensure better neighborhoods and better education for the “other.” In any case, most white elites count on their own connections, wealth, and education, to find exemptions from the unfairness of racial identification. A Ted Kennedy, after all, had affirmative action well before it was based on race.

Unfortunately, unlike a Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, or Alberto Gonzales, President Obama has embraced identity politics in unprecedented fashion-and we are reaping what he has sown. In these first days of the Sotomayor nomination, we are not discussing Justice Sotomayor’s judicial competence as much as her Latina identification-and the political ramifications of such tribalism.

But then only in these race-conscious times could a Barack Obama have entered the racial labyrinth as a well-educated youth of mixed and foreign ancestry, and middle-class prep school lineage, and exited as a representative totem of the African-American underclass.

By virtue of that metamorphosis it matters not at all that he once subsidized the racial hatred of Rev. Wright’s Church, carelessly tossed out the epithet ‘typical white person’, stereotyped the white working class as ‘clingers,’ had his privileged Attorney General call Americans “cowards” on matters of race, and nominated a candidate for the Supreme Court who, despite all the tortured exegeses of exculpation, declared that white males could not possess the judicial wisdom and temperament of someone of her own race and gender.

You see, in matters of racial politics, we deal now only in fantasies rather than reality.

Do read the whole essay. Indeed, it is no more than Thomas Sowell has been screaming from the rooftops for years. For example, see:

The Grand Fraud: Affirmative Action For Blacks, Capitalism Magazine, April, 2003

Affirmative Action Around The World, Hoover Digest, 2004

The problem, of course, is that the politics of race defines Obama and the far left. As I've written before, it is their raison d'etre. Not until they screw us up so badly that we are nearly beyond recovery (which should take no longer than another year or two) will it be possible to use the backlash against Obama and his base to end this bit of incredibly pernicious grievance politics.

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World At A Crossroads .

In his essay below, Victor Davis Hanson quotes the ancient historian Thucydides famous judgment of the state of the world two and a half millenia ago. "The strong do as they will, the weak suffer as they must." The world Thucydides described was a world with no policeman and no external limitations upon the ruling class beyond calculations of raw power. It is a reality kept at bay in the modern world since World War II by American engagement. But as that changes, Victor Davis Hanson, in a bleak essay, sees us returning to a world Thucydides would recognize.

This from Mr. Hanson, writing at the NY Post:

RUSSIA invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at unimaginable levels. Gulf monar chies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch - all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing.

"Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from a system of free trade, electronic communications, diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism.

But was that ever quite true? In reality, to the extent globalism worked, it followed from three unspoken assumptions:

First, the US economy would keep importing goods from abroad to drive international economic growth.

Second, the US military would keep the sea-lanes open, and trade and travel protected. The Americans, as global sheriff, would deal with the occasional menace, like a Moammar al-Khadafy, Slobodan Milosevic, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il or the Taliban.

Third, America would ignore ankle-biting allies and remain engaged with the world - like a nurturing mom who at times must put up with the petulance of dependent teenagers.

But there've been a number of signs recently that globalization may soon lose its US parent.

The United States may be the most free, stable and meritocratic nation, but its resources and patience are not unlimited. It pays more than a half trillion dollars a year to import $115-a-barrel oil that's often pumped at a cost of about $5.

The Chinese, Japanese and Europeans hold trillions of dollars in US bonds - the result of massive trade deficits. The American dollar is at historic lows. We are piling up staggering national debt. Over 12 million live here illegally and freely transfer more than $50 billion annually to Mexico and Latin America.

Our military, after deposing Milosevic, the Taliban and Saddam, is tired. And Americans are increasingly becoming more sensitive to the cheap criticism of global moralists. But as America turns ever so slightly inward, the new globalized world will revert to a far poorer (and more dangerous) place.

Liberals like Barack Obama speak out against new free-trade agreements and want existing accords like NAFTA readjusted. . . .

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy becomes harder to take. After all, it is easy for self-appointed moralists to complain that terrorists don't enjoy Miranda rights at Guantanamo, but it'd be hard to do much about the Russian military invading Georgia's democracy and bombing its cities.

Al Gore crisscrosses the country, pontificating about Americans' carbon footprints. But he could do far better to fly to China to convince them not to open 500 new coal-burning power plants.

. . . So, what a richer but more critical world has forgotten is that in large part America was the model, not the villain - and that postwar globalization was always a form of engaged Americanization that enriched and protected billions.

Yet globalization, in all its manifestations, will run out of steam the moment we tire of fueling it, as the world returns instead to the mindset of the 1930s - with protectionist tariffs; weak, disarmed democracies; an isolationist America; predatory dictatorships; and a demoralized gloom-and-doom Western elite.

If America adopts the protectionist trade policies of Japan or China, global profits plummet. If our armed forces follow the European lead of demilitarization and inaction, rogue states advance. If we were to treat the environment as do China and India, the world would become quickly a lost cause

If we flee Iraq and call off the War on Terror, jihadists will regroup, not disband. When the Russians attack the next democracy, they won't listen to the United Nations, the European Union or Michael Moore.

We may be on our way back to an old world, where the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must

Read the entire article. I have long thought that we are a nation at a cross-roads. In the short term, our nation will survive. But if we follow down the post modern road, then sooner rather than later, we as a nation will suffer horrendously. The choices really could not be any more stark, nor the forseeable consequences more costly.

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Iraq, the Fall Of Al Qaeda, & Surrealism

Victor Davis s Hanson writes on the evidence of success in Iraq, the role of that success in the larger defeat of al Qaeda and discrediting of radical Islam, and the surreal posturing of the anti-war crowd here in America.
_______________________________________________________

This from Victor Davis Hanson writing at NRO:

How odd (or to be expected) that suddenly intelligence agencies, analysts, journalists, and terrorists themselves are attesting that al-Qaeda is in near ruins, that ideologically radical Islam is losing its appeal, and that terrorist incidents against Americans at home and abroad outside the war zones are at an all-time low—and yet few associate the radical change in fortune in Iraq as a contributory cause to our success.

But surely the US military contributed a great deal to the humiliation of al-Qaedists and the bankruptcy of their cause, since it has (1) killed thousands of generic jihadists, and to such a degree that the former Middle East romance of going to Iraq to fight the weak crusaders is now synonymous with a death sentence and defeat; (2) provided the window of security necessary for the growing confidence of the Maliki government whose success is absolutely destroying the Islamist canard that the U.S. backs only dictatorships. Indeed, al-Qaeda's greatest fear is successful Arab constitutional government; something still caricatured here at home as a neocon pipe dream.

In addition, the grotesque tactics that al-Qaeda in duress developed in Iraq weakened its case throughout the Middle East; . . .

I would expect the Maliki government to gain greater respect abroad, and maybe it will cease to be the punching bag here at home, given its recent accomplishments—made possible by the efforts of the U.S. military. . . .

Read the entire article. I would add that al Qaeda's greatest fear of a constitutional democracy in the Middle East is also the greatest fear of the radical Iranian theocracy's. Compare Hanson's piece with Andrew J. Sullivan who sees the success we are having as all the more reason to make an "expeditious withdrawl." He does not explain the tortured logic that could lead to such a conclusion, but apparently it deals with original sin of sorts. Whether to stay in Iraq has nothing to do with current realities in Iraq, Iran or the larger Middle East, but with the fact that the war was a "mistake" at inception. I am sure no one agrees more than the mad mullahs in Tehran. Surreal indeed.

(H/T Instapundit)

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VD Hanson On The Surreal Narrative Of The Left

I blogged earlier that evidence is ever mounting that two myths of the left - that the war in Iraq has increased terrorism and that Iran is stronger as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - are false (see here). Today, VD Hanson blogs on a similar theme, discussing the surreal left who cling to their narrative at all costs and who flatly refuse to find any ties between the improving figures and the President's conduct of the War on Terror.
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This from Victor Davis Hanson writing at the NRO:

Recent studies showing a decline in global incidents of Islamic terror have been interpreted as solely a Middle-East intramural affair. . . .

But surely the catalyst for the decline in terrorist incidents worldwide was the radically different response of the U.S. to terrorism and 9/11 that finally brought jihadism into an open-shooting war against the West (e.g., cf. the Left’s “creating terrorists”), in which the terrorists are losing the battle-space, along with the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East — as their own websites and cries of anguish attest.

The successful toppling of Saddam was followed in short order by the shutdown of Dr. Khan’s atomic shop, the surrender of WMDs by the Libyans, and the supposed sidetracking of the Iranian nuclear bomb program (at least according to the National Intelligence Estimate) — and yet no one thought the timing of all these events was odd (even when Ghaddafi himself reportedly connected his decision to abandon a weapons of mass destruction program to Saddam’s fate).

By the same token, the rise of governments that are sympathetic to the U.S. in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe is never associated with a shared and growing worry over Islamic radicalism — or a grudging, often private acknowledgment of the U.S. role abroad in beating back jihadism. How surreal to see a constitutional government in Iraq, with broad popular support, fighting and defeating terrorists and insurgents of both the Wahhabi and Iranian brand — at a time when the consensus is that Iraq only made terrorism much worse. . . .

So these are upside-down times when facts and events on the ground simply do not support the general pessimism of the Western media, the serial publication of gloomy he-did-it,-not-me memoirs about the post-9/11 supposed failures, and the shrill rhetoric of the Democratic primaries.

In general, the hard efforts of the last six years against radical Islam — that bore fruit by the radically changed atmosphere in Iraq, the decline in terrorism worldwide, the lack of a follow-up to 9/11, and polls that showed a marked fall in approval for al-Qaeda, Bin Laden, and the tactic of suicide bombing — are explained away in various ways. The common theme, however, is that one never mentions the efforts of the bogeyman George Bush. . . .

We have not won the war on terror, but we are starting to see how the combination of domestic security, international cooperation, military action, cultural ostracism of those who condone terrorism, and promotion of constitutional government in the Middle East can, and will, marginalize and eventually defeat the jihadists. We know this not just by the anguished complaints of the Islamists themselves, and real progress on the ground — but also by the mantra of increasingly ossified critics who still insist that things are either worse, or were never that bad, or abruptly got better on their own.

Read the entire article.

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