[Just mythoughts]

Do you remember exactly what day it was that old lady senator, from New York took to the Senate floor and with her New York newspaper ask the question of President Bush, what did you know and when did you know it? In my mind that was the opening salvo for the leftist going off the proverbial cliff.

[popdonnelly]

Excellent analysis in this article. Unfortunately, we've allowed the Left to take over academia.

[trek]

"Hegemonist doctrine has no place in it for phenomena like Al-Quaeda and the Jihadists. There is no way to fit them into the theory, because to acknowledge that a tangible, undeniable threat exists is to negate every other element of the thesis. So they are ignored. No solution is offered, no suggestions are made. They are simply pushed aside as irrelevant. The doctrine that underlies all opposition to American policies in the War on Terror has absolutely nothing to say about the forces that triggered the war, forces that have already attacked two American cities and have promised to return."

Good piece. Sadly, the disease this author so clearly diagnoses has only one cure: a terrorist attack that kills a lot more Americans. For only then will the American people realize that they have been hoodwinked by the provacateurs on left.

[Cannoneer No. 4]

ping

[PGalt]

OUTSTANDING!

Hooray J.R.Dunn!

[M Kehoe]

We can not allow the left in America to destroy this country from within. No matter what it takes.

5.56mm

[Maine Mariner]

Jessie Jackson and others were opposed to any type of military action even in Afganistan. I remember quite clearly that within a day or so after 9/11 he and others were talking about taking Bin Ladin and Omar to the World Court for trial.

I am sure many on the left applauded the death and distruction of the pentagon. They felt we deserved it.

There is probably very little we can do about left wing domination of many academic departments at our colleges and universities. Left wing students preselect themselves to attend leftwing programs with leftwing professors.
There is one small ray of hope-we saw it yesterday and the day before: the former lacrosse player at Duke suing the professor who failed him presumably because he was a lacrosse player. Parents and students need to be prepared to that more offend.

[lonestar67]

This article is totally correct. It is however naieve not to recognize that many conservatives such as Pat Buchannan contribute mightily to this probelm.

Had paleoconservatives not broken ranks with Bush the Shehans could not have prevailed as far as they have.

America is an idea which is inevitably correct. It is hegemonic because it is a better idea than any other currently circulating on the globe. Great ideas bring a responsibility of defense. A mixture of reactionaries left and right are unwilling to defend the idea of America and so they both hide behind things such as realism and multiculturalism.

[o_zarkman44]

The Hippies of the 1960,s have been able to revive the cottage industry that made their message of peace and love the rally cry in the 1960's.

They must be eating their heart out thinking that they have been given, despite the decadence of capitalism, much prosperity and peace, without sacrifice or consequence.

The bastions of liberal lies and activity are safe from the vaporization of an Al Queda attack. Only the capitalist element of the war machine is accountable or vulnerable, so they think.

They are dead wrong. Sharia law will kill the hippies just as dead as quickly as any other co-operative infidel.
How can we communicate that when everyone is under a pharmaceutical influenced feel good stupor?

[fat city]

Great piece! Thanks!

[IronJack]

I recall ... thinking ... [i]t was the end of the postwar flirtation with apostasy, ... the end of political frivolity, the birth of a new kind of patriotism, one annealed by fire, one that would become part of framework of the country, one that would last.

I thought the same thing: here is an event that will -- that MUST -- unite us, a horror next to which all mundane concerns pale. There is no place in THIS world for petty bickering and self-serving partisanship.

Man, was I wrong ...

[drhogan]

the problem with Dunn's analysis is that it only covers the sins of the left, and ignores any weaknesses or errors on the right. if a person reads the neocon's new american century manifesto, it is hard to think of anything but British imperialism. Brit imperialism wasn't all bad, but it is not necessarily the model that we should follow.
i initially thought the invasion of Iraq was the right course of action, but, to say the least, there have been some real errors in the non-military aspects of the war.
Dunn ignores all these factors, but they are part of why the American public turned against the war in iraq.

[antisocial]

Bump for later

[RightWhale]

At any rate the Ds are back in power, so anything that happens is on their watch.

[jordan8]

When the left talks about American hegemony, it should be read WHITE American hegemony, the white is usually (but far from always) silent, but seldom far beneath the surface. The left had degenerated into a white hating racist movement by the late 1960's, and until you acknowledge that fact you are saying very little. Knee-jerk anti-Americanism may have had its roots in the cold war but nobody of any consequence will now publicly defend the idea of a command economy, so "anti-racism" must fill the void. The left doesn't simply object to capitalist hegemony abroad they object to the very existence of the core culture of America, and are well on the way to getting rid of it. Susan Sontag's remark "White people are the cancer of human history" is an eloquent summary of the new left's post communist morality and the explanation of why the thinking decried in this article didn't disappear with the cold war

[Yardstick]

Wow, great piece. What's interesting is that there's nothing in it that any Freeper doesn't already know. Conservatives understand the Left forwards and backwards. We see clearly what they're up to. We know what makes them tick with scientific precision. Meanwhile, liberals chronically misjudge conservatives and misunderstand conservatism. According to the doctrines of Lao Tzu (is that the Chinese strategist's name?) we should be winning decisively. It's troubling to think that the Left, whose ideas are so detached from reality, is as successful as it is. On the other hand, human foibles like class envy are very real, and the Left exploits these with great skill.

[driftless2]

Unfortunately we have reached the point where a great many Americans don't really believe in America anymore. Not the America I knew growing up fifty years ago. No one at the time thought that we were perfect. But we knew that America was good even though from time to time some of its citizens or actions were flawed. Now we have millions of citizens who would like to see us turned into another effete, toothless, European-style nanny state completely at the mercy of our enemies. In short, most libs don't believe in America.

[Dumb_Ox]

Countries fighting legitimate defensive wars don't suffer this kind of erosion of public support in the midst of hostilities.

Ergo...

The public has been brainwashed into pacifism!!!!

The mass of citizens, as described in an earlier work, White Collar (1951), were effectively mindless androids bullied and channeled by the bureaucracy.

Mindless militarists, mindless pacifists. This reminds me of the old advertising saw: half of the public is mindless, but nobody knows which half.

The potency of the doctrine rose not from any innate theoretical brilliance or predictive power, but from the fact that it embodied a number of impulses (usually involving petty resentments) as old as human nature itself. The notion that some vague "they" - usually identified with politicians and industrialists -- were running things for their own benefit.

On the contrary, the self-interested nature of elites is a presupposition of the American political order, which the designers of the constitution were at pains to sublimate into drives conducive to good government. Their design has mostly failed.