Weekend Question 3: Can Victor Davis Hanson Really Recognize Business Opportunists?
Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers! June 13: Hewitt readers arriving today or later get a bonus — here is an updated link to a complete collection of posts on what has happened in the original New London Kelo eminent-domain case since the Supreme Court decision. Especially if you haven’t kept up with that story, I encourage you to go there. You will be amazed, but probably not amused.
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The noted historian and past Breindel Award winner (this year’s winner was the awe-inspiring Mark Steyn) most certainly can recognize a certain class of them. He does it, mostly in passing, in this Hugh Hewitt interview excerpt posted at Radio Blogger (bold is mine):
Hanson: Remember when Uday and Qusay were killed, and immediately, we were told that the embalming was horrific, that we showed the bodies on camera. Then we caught Saddam, remember we gave him the dental exam. So it’s almost a Pavlovian response that whatever the United States does, there’s going to be a cadre of pretty sophisticated, elite, leisured people who are protected by other types of people who don’t share their beliefs, and they’re always going to be critical, they’re always going to be cynical, because let’s be honest. It fills some deep, psychological need in these people to hate the very system that created them, and makes life good for them.
Hewitt: Now does that…can that be eradicated? Can that be driven out? Not by force, but by argument, or by counter-argument?
Hanson: It’s kind of like rust. You know, it just keeps creeping, and it always has to be dealt with and addressed. I think that’s the only criticism that I have of this administration, and that is that I think they thought that by going into Afghanistan and Iraq, that these were facistic regimes, we were going to try and implement democracy, it was a no-brainer that this was a moral, humane idea. And they did not have to respond to these left wing blogs, New York Times, National Public Radio, New Yorker Magazine, Harper’s. These were all elites that were in a minority now in this country. And they forgot just how influential and pernicious these people can be. And you always have to address them. What you do on your radio show is…it’s like scrubbing rust off iron. It has to be done every day, or they take over the dominant conversation.
They sell books, get paid thousands for speeches and get visibility at the snap of a finger, state as facts things they often know are not true, and often give opinions they can’t possibly believe themselves. That defines a business opportunist, and taken far enough, a scam artist.
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UPDATE: Gosh, I can’t believe I forgot about this previous post on liberal hypocrisy, mostly of the financial kind based on this book “Do As I Say Not As I Do” written last year.
VDH is right, as usual, that these people are opportunists and filling psychological voids they cannot otherwise fill. Still, are they no more pernicious than rust? It seems to me, especially in light of what’s becoming know about Haditha, that we may be dealing with something much more dangerous. Can we afford to deal with sulphuric acid in the same way as rust? The President MUST be more proactive in communications, agreed, but sooner or later, doesn’t subversion eventually have to be called out for what it is?
Comment by reindeer rider — June 12, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
#1, the point you’re making is excellent, and I meant to hit on it, which is that you don’t fight scam artists by staying silent. The Admin has not spoken out forcefully or consistently enough.
Comment by TBlumer — June 12, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
From the response to 9/11 onwards President Bush has never come out to tell the problem before the US, the West and the civilization built upon Nation States. By not doing so he cannot put forward goals that would allow those that corrode the Nation State system of International relations to be found and stopped from doing so. And by not doing that and not coming out to admit that no matter what the Federal government does, it is not enough to combat this problem, he has not engaged the People of the Nation nor put Congress aright to use its War Powers and fully engage the People in this fight. I have many problems with other issues with this President, but I voted for him as he at least *understood* that we are in a fight, even if he is not capable of giving scope to it. This rust that is adhering to the Nation is weakening it from the inside to the point that the Nation is having problems considering itself as a whole.
Coming from Buffalo, I can tell you that the adage: ‘I’m afraid that if I scrub off the rust the car will fall apart… its the only thing keeping it together’ is a true one. I agree the rust must go… and we must find a Nation under it, for if we just find space then we shall be a Nation divided amongst itself.
Comment by ajacksonian — June 12, 2006 @ 1:23 pm
#3, great metaphor add-on.
Comment by TBlumer — June 12, 2006 @ 2:55 pm
As you drive through the small mountain villiages and pastoral landscapes of the Pelopenese it’s hard to imagine women there counseling their sons and husbands to come home from battles with their shields or upon them. Where has that stalwartness gone?
Today I read on POWERLINE (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/014364.php) that maybe now with the death of Zarqawi President Bush will find a bounce in the polls. This is no slam on POWERLINE (who are telling the truth) but on the idea that the public needs periodic good news to stay the course. How would this public have fared during the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, or for that matter WWII? Are we permanently handicapped by Vietnam?
And then there is this from John Derbyshire (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmYxNjgzMjFkMTQ3MDE1ZTIyYzFlNDc3ZWFlZjY4NzI=) at NRO “Apologizing for Iraq” where he apparently regrets supporting the war in the first place. His point that the negative press has eroded our ability to act against Iran is well taken but the problem isn’t our excersion into Iraq but the media blackwash of the war and the reasons for going there. Turn back the clock and look at the situation at the time and our actions would be repeated. Even now can anyone truthfully say that the WMD did not exist in Iraq or that we have not nearly reached our goals there?
Where has our national resolve gone? Where is the national charactar that demanded victory above all else in WWII? Where indeed is the spirit born in sleepy Greek towns that ring like high tensil steel, even to this age, at the sound of the name: Sparta?
Comment by Brad — June 13, 2006 @ 2:23 am
#5, legit points.
There were plenty of WMD, and they were reported in MSM stories. Anything we find extra is a bonus:
The “No WMD” Lie (with LINKED Proof)
http://www.bizzyblog.com/?p=760
Comment by TBlumer — June 13, 2006 @ 2:37 am