Posted on 05/06/2012 5:34:43 PM PDT by Eccl 10:2
The temple of postmodern liberalism was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
BUMP
In a book I read by him he called Curtis LeMay a war criminal for his bombing campaign on Japan during WWII. I have no use for him.
In a book I read by him he called Curtis LeMay a war criminal for his bombing campaign on Japan during WWII. I have no use for him.
Curtis LeMay said he would have been considered a War Criminal if we had lost the war.
I like Victor Davis Hanson.
I read that book, and unless I am very wrong VDH was in full-throated support of LeMay, while pointing out that many others would call him a war criminal. If I’m wrong, I will freely admit it.
Victor seems to have reconciled himself to his fate. I often felt bad for him, in that he came from a working class background and made it to the hallowed groves of high-level academia, only to reach his full strength at a time when he has to spend so much of his brainpower understanding a crude Chicago thug rather than intellectual abstractions.
Here I think he has embraced his situation, at long last.
ginp
Actually it was a review that VDH wrote about a biography of Lemay
the direct quotation is:
“Did the mad bomber of Japan gleefully and without regret burn its cities to the ground, along with hundreds of thousands of civilians in them? LeMay, in fact, thought carefully about the strategy, approved leaflets warning of the conflagration to come, and, after the war, confessed that he would understandably have been tried as a war criminal if the U.S. had lost.”
I think you have developed a misunderstanding of VDH and hence are missing out on some most excellent pieces and analyses.
Which was good enough for me to return the book at that point to the library.
Which was good enough for me to return the book at that point to the library.
I was called and told that someone had returned the book early. I picked it up right away.
Thanks.
Which was good enough for me to return the book at that point to the library.
I was called and told that someone had returned the book early. I picked it up right away.
Thanks.
As for Imperial Japan, who really gives a damn. They deserved anything that could conceivably have been done to them. Including carpet bombing with incendiary bombs and atom bombs to boot.
Excellent. Bump.
Well good. I hope you enjoyed reading about an American hero called a war criminal.
Read it again brother.
Yes. I’ve read his biography. It’s VDH you have to address.
I won’t and I’m not your brother.
Another point was we could have waited until we had more than 3 of the suckers and whipped a bunch of people to seize Siberia for its mineral wealth.
In 2004, the medias jobless recovery was the description of George W. Bushs 5.4% unemployment rate. Its the economy, stupid referred to George H.W. Bushs 1992 annual 3.3-4% GDP growth rate. Unpatriotic was Ws $4 trillion in borrowing in eight years, not $5 trillion in three. If Obama right now had 5.4% unemployment, 3.4% economic growth, and a budget deficit of about $400 billion, what would the media call it...?
They'd be screeching and swooning like adolescent girls over a pimply pop star; in short, nothing much would change at all. And it gets worse, much worse, because that same tendency for uncritical, even callow, admiration for a manufactured fantasy is behind the admiration for things European that leads the average progressive to gush "why can't we be more like the Europeans" in the same tone we usually hear marriage proposals to the likes of Justin Bieber.
We can't, because it would be a particularly stupid thing to do. And the level of stubborn denial of this that exists in the academic fools 0bama has placed in some of the highest offices of the land is a testament to nothing more than their refusal to grow up politically and ideologically.
In short, liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature...statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the Westboth serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses.
It would be a rather satisfying thing to watch except for the inconvenient fact that we won't be viewing from afar but underneath the rubble. Which is, actually, not a bad working description of our current position with the media desperately piping "Happy days are here again" loudly enough to swoozle the poor bastards who have been buried. "It's not so bad," we hear, "a ton of rock is nothing compared to the layer of dust we endured under Bush." Yeah, right.
But the ridiculous pretension of the 0bama administration are, as VDH points out, a symptom rather than the systemic problem, although this is like saying that an exploding abdomen is a symptom of a deeper medical problem. At some point it doesn't matter. The Van Jones, Elizabeth Warren types are polyps in the festering colon of modern progressive politics but enough of them can kill you.
That said, I do look forward to the shrieking that will ensue when this pack of degreed illiterates is finally shown the door, to assume the dignity of a former functionary who is safe in the knowledge that his media co-conspirators will cover for him, even regale him with an occasional Nobel Peace Prize. These will rejoin their respective well-remunerated faculties to produce yet another wave of intellectual weeds should the American people be fortunate enough to take VDH's booster shot against idiot liberalism. I just hope it takes.
Why not give the full context. Criminy you take three words and jump beyond all possible rational conclusion. You could at least give the full paragraph.
I read the book and I do not recall feeling that VDH was negative re:Lemay.
Please give context else I will maintain my previous stance
It’s odd. When I hear VDH on the Hugh Hewitt show, I can’t get enough of his brilliance. When I read his essays, they seem rambling.
depressing because it is so right
To a point, I agree. Perhaps, it’s just because I have been reading him so long that I can follow his literary train. His writing style, at least to me, brings complicated concepts down to an easy understanding.
My wife says it's because of the full moon!
What a completely ignorant comment - a commodity of increasing frequency at FR. Reread what you think you read.
Gosh...even when given a chance, you choose to remain a colossal ignoramus.
Thanks, Bill. That is so beautiful, it almost makes me cry.
The perfect analogy for this colon-clogging clan. (sniff)
"... statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the Westboth serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector."
The media co-conspirators also need to be shown the door.
I suspect SkyDancer’s dislike of Victor Davis Hanson has less to do with what he claims he wrote of Curtis LeMay and more to do with something else. Maybe he can come clean and admit what that “something” is.
Because you used Google. Get the book. Read it. Somewhere in the third or fourth chapter he calls LeMay a war criminal.
Bookmark.
Skydancer is a she if my eyes are correct.
Amazing how just stating the obvious sounds so brilliant.
Enjoyed even more by your succinct and apt discription of the usual suspects. . .
"pack of degreed illiterates" and "intellectual weeds. enjoyed/agree your comments
Gosh - when someone who says they read the book cannot come up with the comment he made. Golly.
Gee, I dunno.
I bought a book on the war in the pacific (WWII) and the English author wrote that American pilots in P-38s “murdered” General Yamamoto.
I was angry but too lazy to return it (and to get it now) so, “War is hell” and all that. There’s a lot to be said about the winners calling the shots, as Kurt “Panzer” Meyer found out.
So I’m sort of on his side and care enough to post something, but not really, and wasn’t this supposed to be about an article Victor Davis Hanson wrote?
He’s got his s*** wrapped in a tight little ball. I’ll read it later. Oh no, the apathy is hitting me in waves.
Oh, getting any rain there in God’s Country? Never mind.
Since the post was about VDH I just commented on a book he wrote and his mentioning of LeMay. It was a “just saying” and people got their knickers in a twist.

"So... How did you come up with the name, 'Max Power'"?
"I don't know... (shrug) ...I saw it on a hair dryer."
And your smartypants knickers are in a twist unless you get in the last word, so who cares what you think?
Gen. Curtis LeMay saved many thousands of lives. Ours, and plenty of Japanese too as all they had to do was get the hell out of the way as they were warned to.
And here I thought that some people had a modicum of intelligence to understand that I was talking about VDH’s comment on LeMay, not mine. I don’t know what your problem with comprehension is.
“So... How did you come up with the name, ‘Max Power’”?
“I don’t know... (shrug) ...I saw it on a hair dryer.”
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
LOL. That reminds me of one of my hare-brained money making ideas.
I live in Charlotte. Our electric utility is Duke Power.
So I was going to change my name to Duke Power, open a mailbox, and get people to send me their electric bill payments there every month.
VDH’s Father was a B-29 bomber pilot (or crew - can’t remember exactly which).
Great article.
Which is exactly what LeMay did and I commend him for it. The Japanese were warned. It was LeMay who figured out that our B-29s could safely operate below the Japanese flak level. Two B-29s would lay a cross-pattern of incendiaries, essentially making an 'x-marks-the-spot', and the rest of the strike had a perfect target. The fact that Japanese cities were essentially built of wood and paper helped a lot too.
Ironically, the use of atomic bombs actually saved lives in that there were less casualties from Hiroshima and Nagasaki than from the fire-bombing campaign. And that is without even considering how many Japanese civilian casualties would have resulted from a full-scale invasion of the Home Islands.
Right now, a Carteresque Era would be an improvement!
Scary... we could be in for a very interesting fall.
Ping
Get a copy of his “Mexifornia” and read it. He nails the immigration issue through the lens of California’s idiocy.
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