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Victor Davis Hanson: "All Fall Down"
PJ Media ^ | 05/06/2012 | Victor Davis Hanson

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 ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: liberalismisadisease; vdh; victordavishanson
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VDH nails it again. Calls out all the phoniness in Liberalism.
1 posted on 05/06/2012 5:34:49 PM PDT by Eccl 10:2
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To: Eccl 10:2

BUMP


2 posted on 05/06/2012 5:45:09 PM PDT by Lancey Howard (No Romney, no way.)
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To: Eccl 10:2

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.


3 posted on 05/06/2012 5:58:48 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Talent Without Ambition Is Sad - Ambition Without Talent Is Worse")
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To: SkyDancer

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.


4 posted on 05/06/2012 6:03:13 PM PDT by unkus (Silence Is Consent)
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To: SkyDancer

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.


5 posted on 05/06/2012 6:08:33 PM PDT by Doctor 2Brains (If the government were Paris Hilton, it could not score a free drink in a bar full of lonely sailors)
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To: Eccl 10:2

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.


6 posted on 05/06/2012 6:13:52 PM PDT by Piranha (If you seek perfection you will end up with Democrats.)
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To: Eccl 10:2

ginp


7 posted on 05/06/2012 6:15:23 PM PDT by razorback-bert (Some days it's not worth chewing through the straps.)
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To: SkyDancer

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.


8 posted on 05/06/2012 6:22:19 PM PDT by Nifster
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To: Nifster
In the book "The Wars of the Ancient Greeks: And the Invention of Western Military Culture" he writes that "that war criminal LeMay ......"

Which was good enough for me to return the book at that point to the library.

9 posted on 05/06/2012 6:28:15 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Talent Without Ambition Is Sad - Ambition Without Talent Is Worse")
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To: SkyDancer

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.


10 posted on 05/06/2012 6:32:22 PM PDT by unkus (Silence Is Consent)
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To: SkyDancer

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.


11 posted on 05/06/2012 6:32:26 PM PDT by unkus (Silence Is Consent)
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To: SkyDancer
Really. Curtis LeMay was a hero in WWII. He designed the "box formation" used by B-17s to raid Germany without fighter escorts. It wasn't perfect but it maximized the effectiveness of the Flying Fortresses' numerous .50 cal guns in defending against the Luftwaffe.

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.

12 posted on 05/06/2012 6:34:35 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: Eccl 10:2

Excellent. Bump.


13 posted on 05/06/2012 6:35:53 PM PDT by RightOnline (I am Andrew Breitbart!)
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To: unkus

Well good. I hope you enjoyed reading about an American hero called a war criminal.


14 posted on 05/06/2012 6:40:09 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Talent Without Ambition Is Sad - Ambition Without Talent Is Worse")
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To: SkyDancer

Read it again brother.


15 posted on 05/06/2012 6:40:09 PM PDT by bill1952 (Choice is an illusion created between those with power - and those without)
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To: hinckley buzzard

Yes. I’ve read his biography. It’s VDH you have to address.


16 posted on 05/06/2012 6:41:20 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Talent Without Ambition Is Sad - Ambition Without Talent Is Worse")
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To: bill1952

I won’t and I’m not your brother.


17 posted on 05/06/2012 6:42:31 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Talent Without Ambition Is Sad - Ambition Without Talent Is Worse")
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To: hinckley buzzard
Given the concentration of japanese war industries in Korea we'd probably shortened the war a bit by carpet bombing them. The Japanese had been engaged in a plan to keep the home islands pristine and clean by putting their industry offshore in colonial territories.

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.

18 posted on 05/06/2012 6:44:17 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Eccl 10:2
One of VDH's best, and thanks for posting. The full depth of media complicity in this is illustrated very clearly here:

In 2004, the media’s “jobless recovery” was the description of George W. Bush’s 5.4% unemployment rate. “It’s the economy, stupid” referred to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 annual 3.3-4% GDP growth rate. “Unpatriotic” was W’s $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 West—both 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.

19 posted on 05/06/2012 7:00:39 PM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: SkyDancer

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


20 posted on 05/06/2012 7:04:19 PM PDT by Nifster
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