[Pokey78]

VDH MEGA-PING!

[Utah Girl]

Victor Davis Hanson ping.

[Dark Wing]

ping

[Maynerd]

Excellent essay. Thank you for the post.

[lorrainer]

Should be required reading for every high school student in the country.

[beckett]

Here's a keeper. This guy is on his game today.

[July 4th]

Israel could give over the entire West Bank, suffer 10,000 dead from suicide bombers, and apologize formally for its existence, and it would still be despised by American and European intellectuals for being what it is--Western, prosperous, confident, and successful amid a sea of abject self-induced failure.

Sums up the entire Middle East conflict in one sentence. Slam dunk.

[Rocko]

Bump.

[Alas Babylon!]

Long, but worthy read.

[iconoclast]

The example of Rome, in short, is an apt one,

Very true, but not quite for the reasons this fellow cites.

The old right takes solace in the fact that our own cultural decay was/is well along before the thirst for empire set in.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Heh. I read this around two in the morning, said "Wow!" woke up my wife to read it to her, and got a "Wow!" from her as well.

[maica]

---snip---
As in the medieval church or among Soviet apparatchiks, the pull of groupspeak is always strong among compliant and opportunistic elites. For today's intellectuals, professors and artists, being on the team pays real dividends when it comes to tenure, promotion, publication, reviews, lecture invitations, social acceptance and psychic reassurance. And the dividends are compound: One is a lockstep member of one's crowd and one enjoys the frisson of dissidence, of being at variance, but always so comfortably at variance, with one's benighted fellow citizens.

---

Brilliant article - one to be printed out, studied, and used (tactfullly of course) in discussions with 'groupthinkers.'

[twigs]

the anti-American reflex could be linked with some rigor to the influence of Marxism

Nothing has changed. I've been reading an interesting account of the Mexican War. It's amazing to see how the arguments of the anti-war folks have not changed all that much over time. I could have changed a few of the names and dates and we would be hard pressed to differentiate whether the public debate was in the late 1840's or 2002-03. Not surprising was the opposition of Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor who ran Marx's articles.

I just received Victor D. Hansen's new book, An Autumn at War, which is a compilation of many of his articles written since 9/11. I haven't read it yet, but it's right by my bed where I can get to it easily. They are short--3 to 4 pages each--making it an easy book to read for those on the run.

[Paul Ross]

Earlier Romans knew what it was to be Roman, why it was at least better than the alternative, and why their culture had to be defended. Later in ignorance they forgot what they knew, in pride mocked who they were, and in consequence disappeared.

[Petronski]

Not only is this article brilliant, it is in its own compact way a DemocraticUnderground.com primer, a kind of field guide to the modern leftist radical.

Bump for a must read!

[300winmag]

A gem of an article, thanks for the ping.

About the only humble thing I would add would be the response of the hate-America left in the first few days (two months, actually) after September 11.

There was a lot of talk that the left was silent because they finally saw the light when the one unthinkable thing, mass destruction inside the United States, actually happened. Petty leftist causes like affirmative action, gun control, speech control, tax increases, and race pimping were dead, because they would be hooted off the now-serious wartime American stage.

What really happened was the scope of the evil temporarily took away the voice of the left, and forced them to examine, for the first time in their lives, their core beliefs. That examination told them that their beliefs were still the only proper ones to hold, so it was still somehow America's fault. It took about two months for the first trial balloons to emerge from their test kitchens, with more coming as they realized they wouldn't be lynched by the America they still hated as their vile messages became even more twisted and disgusting.

Having once again made the world safe for socialism, they are attempting to rebuild the glory days of Vietnam, where they can compete in spewing hate about the evil America, knowing full well that not only are they tolerated, but that they can freely celebrate their "courage".

America's upcoming victories will be both hateful and depressing to them. I can only hope that they send themselves to North Korea to be "human shields". Their only true value to humanity will be as fertilizer.

[damncat]

Their creed is really a malady, and it cries out to be confronted and exposed.
Beat me to the punch!

[KC_Conspirator]

Warnings in late September 2001 about the perils of Afghanistan--the peaks, the ice, the warring factions, Ramadan, jihad, and our fated rendezvous with the graveyard of mighty armies gone before us--faded by early November in the face of rapid and overwhelming American victory.

Ahh yes, I remember that time of "quagmire". I like to remind the liberals that President Bush did what only Alexander the Great accomplished - he conquer4ed Afgahnistan.

[SuziQ]

Israel could give over the entire West Bank, suffer 10,000 dead from suicide bombers, and apologize formally for its existence, and it would still be despised by American and European intellectuals for being what it is--Western, prosperous, confident, and successful amid a sea of abject self-induced failure.

If people in these oil rich nations and their Mustim neighbors are starving and without jobs, exactly whose fault is that? I don't see Saudi Arabia hiring 'Palestinians' to do the jobs that Americans have been doing for years in the Kingdom. The Palestinian refugees were ignored by their Muslim brothers except when they were being riled up to hate Israel and the US. The Muslim countries could have made life easier for those people they scared out of Israel in the late 40's, but they didn't because it didn't serve their political purpose.

[91B]

This is a great article and very true.

Postmodernism and multi"cult"uralism make up the perfect worldview for the left. Unlike socialism, which could be proven a failure wherever it was tried, postmodernism is not subject to real world tests. Only endless debate can follow as to the question of whether there is any truth to its tenets. Multi"cult"uralism allows the lefties to indulge in romanticizing the primitive and affirms the original lefty idea that "in a state of nature, man is inclined towards good behavior". Hence only because man is corrupted-in this case by horrible America-does the perfect utopia fail to come to pass.

Davis really nails the lefty mindset with this one.