Decline and Fall

NRO ^ | May 20, 2005, 8:37 a.m. | By Victor Davis Hanson

[.cnI redruM]

Diamond, and unfortunately, many other researchers at my graduate alma mater, suffer from what I refer to as myopic diversity. That is they argue we should seek out every type of person there is and learn from them, but in reality all people are the same. If all people are the same and equal, what could you possibly learn from someone other than yourself?

[.cnI redruM]

You'd enjoy this. Diamond has a swollen head and has ridden entirely too far on a wave of unearned adulation.

[wideawake]

Good. That idiotic Diamond book has been driving me nuts for years now. Every PC RINO in the world loves and quotes from that book ad nauseam.

[Van Jenerette]

...good reading.

[SAJ]

Diamond idealizes the Netherlands as one of the world’s most environmentally sound countries, where the need to manage the tides has made it an especially communitarian culture of the “polter”...

Aha, I get it. The Dutch zeitgeist is that of the communitarian culture of the polter, thus, presumably, making it a poltergeist.

Makes about as much sense as any of this nimrod's bizarre historical 'analysis'.

[rlmorel]

I read his other book. PC diversity-cultural equivalency-evil white men claptrap.

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

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[A Balrog of Morgoth]

I was going to read it, but I soon discovered that it makes a fine doorstop.

[LS]

Hanson is not only brilliant, but he hangs out in seminars with Jack Goldstone, one of the few sociologists I can stomach. Goldstone has an incredible article I require in my classes called "Cultural Orthodoxy, Risk, and Innovation." He argues that western traditions of competition, property rights, willingness to take risk via acceptance of failure, religious toleration and individual rights all made the West rich. It's a complex piece, but very powerful and when you combine it with VDH, you pretty much have the explanation for why the West kicks butt.

[LS]

Worse, his stupid book was (and remains) ranked ahead of PHUSA. (Oh, never mind, that's mercantilist/zero sum thinking! But I still want to see our book ranked ahead of his!)

[Restorer]

I enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel. I thought Diamond makes some excellent points, although I got very tired of his one-sided moralizing. He somehow always manages to work in a moral denunciation of any expansionism by white men, while merely reporting the no doubt equally genocidal expansionism of other groups.

Both Diamond and VDH are correct, in their different ways.

Diamond shows that without the tools and resources necessary to built a civilization, it won't get built.

VDH is correct that the mere presence of potential resources doesn't generate advancement. That requires a cultural orientation capable of using them effectively.

[rlmorel]

Me too. It came highly recommended to me, so I dutifully borrowed it and began to read.

I have to admit, it just plain pissed me off to read it. I was almost angry at the person who recommended it to me. But then, if you already believe that claptrap, then the book just validates what you think.

[.cnI redruM]

Guns, Germs, And Really Crapping Thinking is sort of the Deconstruction of history. He totally assumes the people in question are non factors in what happens next. This is the only way he can reach his ultimate conclusion.

[.cnI redruM]

I got about 2/3 of the way through of Guns, Germs and Really Crappy Thinking. It was good in parts, but the chapter entitled Spacious Skies and Titled Axis was enough to end my respect for intellect.

[redgolum]

Part of Germs Guns and Steel I liked. The factor of epidemic diseases causing major culture changes is one thing most historians forget.

However, his flights of fancy bored me, and then it began to dawn on me that Diamond, like so many others, just likes to pontificate on everything. Comment on everything, but really think about little.

[.cnI redruM]

Again, he gives no one credit for intellectual intellect. It's all just deterministic in his opinion. After a few hundred pages, the question that came to my mind is that if the average person makes so little difference in the world, how could you possible justify the expense of paying Dr. Diamond to teach them?

[rlmorel]

I found a more interesting way to look at this. There are some books out there called "What If...' and deal with things like...what if Alexander the Great had been killed in battle, as he nearly was. What if Cortez had been dragged off with the rest of his men and sacrificed, instead of being rescued (as he was in the process of being dragged off) by one of his lieutenants, who was killed rescuing him. Very interesting stuff.

Basically, Jared Diamond thinks America became great by killing all the natives and stealing this wonderful country from them.

I personally think it is our Constitution and capitalist bent that has made this country great. Just my opinion...:)

[Red Boots]

Goldstone has an incredible article I require in my classes called "Cultural Orthodoxy, Risk, and Innovation

Thanks for that reference. I'm going to read it and probably require it in my homeschool highschool.

[LS]

It may be tough for highschoolers, no matter how bright. I only use it with upper classmen, and even then, they really struggle. Check it out.

[CasearianDaoist]

Sir, you are too kind: What they are afflicted with is Marxism, and they suffer us to bear the din of their agitprop.

This screed is nothing more than a barely veiled attempt to degrade Western Civilization. It has become so vile in the academy that the mask can now be purely symbolic. The mask is merely a mannerism - it is not meant to conceal anything

I keep wanting to write a book that contrasts this period of learning with other decadent periods, say the Scholastic period or the early Georgian. Certainly these clowns today are in pursuit of substances as rare as phlogisten and alkahest

This is not history: It is modern alchemy. (I would wager, however, that the "author" would take this as a compliment.)

What a wholly ignorant, uncivilized and brutish lot have taken over our schools. Can we survive it?

It is like watching a orangutan with a rare oboe in its hands.

These people haven't th faintest clue about what a civilization is or what it is for. They think it is about tastes in coffees.