The Art of Appreciating America from Abroad
6. Go to Europe and see the left-wing desired future for America: dense urban apartment living by design rather than by necessity; one smart car; no backyard or third bedroom; dependence on mass transit; political graffiti everywhere demanding more union benefits or social entitlements; entourages of horn-blaring, police-escorted technocrats racing through the streets on the hour; gated inherited homes of an aristocratic technocracy on the Mediterranean coast, Rhine, Danube, etc., exempt from much socialist and environmental law; $10 a gallon gas; sky-high power bills; racial segregation coupled with elite praise of illegal immigration and diversity; and unexamined groupthink on green issues, entitlements, and the culpability of the U.S. Drink it all in and you have the liberal agenda for an America to be.
7. America is judged in terms of what politicians say, the media reports, the entertainment industry blares out, or what economic gurus assert, rather than in terms of what those are saying or doing who pump oil, produce food, build homes, or engineer plants, roads, and bridges. The former in the news are our planers and trimmers; the forgotten latter are elemental builders. But to understand America, consult the last groups as often as you should ignore the first. While one talks and whines, the other simply keeps things running and works to make things better.
8. Do not listen to most of what is written or reported about America from abroad; instead look at global fashion, dress, travel, and immigration, and then see who is copying or emulating whom. America is as damned overseas as it is the favorite destination of Chinese students, the Oaxacan impoverished, Middle Eastern shopkeepers, and Russian doctors. The more Europe critiques the U.S., the more it finds safety in our military; Mexico hates America as much as it likes our $30 billion in remittances. Take away America, and even a socialist Strauss-Kahn has nowhere to visit his daughter or find a golden parachute. And why not? The suburban ranch 3/2 house of the middle class American, with its many appurtenances, is a mini-estate in Europe, a mansion in the Middle East, and a castle in Africa or most of Asia.
9. The contemporary university increasingly sounds like 19th-century carriage makers damning new auto companies. Surely academics know that tuition cannot any longer climb higher each year than inflation, that the number of administrators cannot any more match the number of teachers on campus, that faculty cannot deserve lifelong tenured appointments or by fiat should teach only four classes a year. Surely academics know that their subsidized esoteric research is mostly irrelevant — and increasingly recognized as such by the public. No one believes in a disinterested campus; everyone accepts that the university is one of the most politically illiberal and prejudiced institutions in America. Case in point: academics tend to patronize and favor African-Americans on campus; academics tend to despise as a group conservatives; but academics tend to hate without rhyme or reason conservative African-Americans, whose race goes from being a plus to a far larger minus — his independence and autonomy now earning him far greater hatred than his party-line platitudes once did useful condescension.
10. Reduce much of what Barack Obama says, advocates, and tries to implement and you find a particular kind of despised but uniquely American species in his cross-hairs: upper-middle class, making $200-800,000 a year, employed as a professional or small business person, living in the suburbs or small town America, children in non-Ivy League private and public colleges, a nice house, perhaps a vacation home, boat, 2-3 nice cars, residing outside the east and west coasts without an aristocratic pedigree, for whom food stamps are as much an anathema as is Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol.
Massive debt, ObamaCare, vast expansions in federal spending, new regulations, affirmative action, open borders, and environmental legislation are all targeted at this profile. He neither generates the cheap sympathy accorded to the distant poor nor wins the envy and admiration of the tasteful idle old money or the new mega-rich. When I see him plugging away on his vacation on a Sierra Nevada highway — a club cab new Chevy V-8 truck pulling a sleek powerboat or fancy trailer with two jet-skies — I think of a doomed wooly mammoth soon to go down amid the ropes, nets, and missiles from a vast array of gleeful hunters.
Another masterpiece from the professor who has proceeded from being one who lectured us on the wisdom of classic intellectuals to now genuinely being a modern day version himself. We sit at your feet in awe, learned sir, and give thanks that we need not climb a mountain to do so.
Also, let me add to: “…everyone accepts that the university is one of the most politically illiberal and prejudiced institutions in America.”
And also one of the most bureaucratic as well. Anyone who has ever had to correct some adminstrative error in his college records or secure a coherent answer as to how to meet some obtuse academic requirement knows this quite well. I say this with over 4 years of time in the Pentagon under my belt, so it is no small thing.
Oh, a wise guy, eh?
Jerome Howard.
I have read Europeans who described America as populated by scum. But then so do the professors who have attained tenure in the American Studies movement, as well as in other branches of the humanities. I wrote about their horrid propaganda here: http://clarespark.com/2009/09/06/the-hebraic-american-landscape-sublime-or-despotic/. See the burgeoning field of “whiteness studies.”
This post is unusually blunt. The tone suggests that the good professor is fed up to the point where denouncing the lies and hypocracy is more useful than analysis. There is wisdom in this approach. Those who see the rot don’t need anymore convincing. Those who don’t see it never will.
hypocrisy
(don’t get mad, be glad)
Come to Texas; life’s to short of California.
Don’t come to Texas if you are a California freeloader. You won’t be safe here except in Austin. Thank goodness.
Coming from California i just need a few coffee shops and good Chinese food and i am good to go. State income tax and all it buys i can live without.
I think he was trying to recruit VDH.
Smart, insightful commentary by Dr VDH. Now provide us with a plan to turn things around – or is it too late ? Have the Liberals and their choice of Obama ruined the opportunity to save America from a European fate ? Please draw some conclusions Dr VDH, or at least present the blueprint to rescue the country.
Palin 2012…unapologetically believes in American exceptionalism & has the courage, work ethic & smarts to fight to get us back on track…but she can’t do it alone…Game On
From where I stand I think you are 100% on target.
Speaking for myself, I see political solutions as unlikely. The untenable weight of the socialist pyramid scheme will be its own undoing. From amid its rubble and broken rafters, reality once again in control, we will have the opportunity for renaissance. Of course, this does gloss over an awful lot of pain and strife in the intermediate, but the socialist model is doomed to this inevitable failure. Was it Bastiat who said something along the lines of “government is that great fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else”? Or for the more contemporary and blunt version by Lady Thatcher, “socialism works until you run out of other people’s money”. It’s as axiomatic as gravity.
Some suggestions. First from your own “microcosmic” perspective, your self, which as inherently free – or “saved”, if you prefer, and endowed with free thought – actually underlies the creation of everything positive. Therefore, form and go forth with your own individual plan to be or become more free asap, taking clues from others. This will strengthen and enlighten your further responses to your, and our, condition.
For example, prepare to move to a more free and solvent State or community. Try to secure or at least buffer your material condition, say, by having at least a few months cash, food and drinking water on hand, at most by also lowering your whole economic profile.
Arm up, if only to increase the statistic or have the option available as a last resort. The implied intention matters, and it’s your right as created, and created with a free-thought capacity, to defend yourself.
Keep thinking, connecting thoughts, and forming your own analysis and outlook. Your own creation of insights is a very powerful capacity which can also help improve upon everyone else’s via what I call “thought mating”, where the idea is to create new insights, not merely to repeat memes or mantras.
Connect with real people, the ones who make everything work. Rednecks are smarter than the elite.
Me, I repaired to a County of 7,000 people some time ago, became much more efficient, and found the people there to be smart, self-reliant, and trustworthy – with raw and cultivated Nature giving a very powerful assist to it all. Given the Internet, talk radio, and the above possibility of “thought mating” with independent minds wherever, I think I can strike back much more effectively than before, although the form this should or will take is always an ongoing challenge.
Keep pushing back based upon the U.S. Constitution and your inherent right as free to be free.
Macroscopically, the seemingly sudden appearance and power of us “Teapartiers” certainly indicates an effective political course and is likewise much feared by our controllist, pre-enlightenment, “throwback” or “dead end” opposition. Granted that, however, I personally don’t know exactly what esle to do beyond being a member, supporting like structures which express the Teaparty’s Constitutional values; and, of course, by trying to personally take on face to face and in comments and boycots the Totalitarian entities and their “perception is reality” – that is, their “delusional or intending to delude” – word games and other propagandistic tactics, where “the ends justify the means”, but the means are also the ends = thought control.
The freshman Congressmembers and conservative candidates also have to come through, and I think they will, with our help in whatever rationally responsible way we think up. The question of “If they don’t” is something I don’t need to worry about right now, except to know it’s a possibility and, therefore, at some time I might have to modify my acts accordingly.
Greaat last sentence,Victor. This wooly mammoth is neither upper middle class nor elitist(just down home conservative), and if it comes to a showdown between hunter with the government club and me, no matter what transpires, I’ll not be vanquished because evolution still grants me the larger measure of a moral and rational brain.
I’m more with poster KRC, above — what’s the ten-step plan for Nonsense into Sense, Victor-won Kenobi?
Please forgive me for presuming to suggest the first step:
A recognition of who we are before God, which would put us on our knees asking for forgiveness, mercy, healing, and restoration.
… if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land … (2 Chronicles 7:14).
I applaud VDH for so articulately diagnosing the disease. That’s a good start. But, it’s clear to me that the only antidote to the mess we’re in is Divine intervention — which we have to sincerely desire and ask for.
There’s a call out for a national day of prayer on July 3, the very specific kind of prayer you reminded us is described in Chronicles. I think the website is call2fall dot com if you want more info.
Thanks, Joe. I’ll check out the Website.
Amen, Brother. I, too, believe this with all my heart!
” . . . a particular kind of despised but uniquely American species in his cross-hairs . . ”
I had to smile with recognition through the angry tears.
That’s our family. My beyond-retirement-years husband is still disappearing into the cave of a clinic (no windows) where he performs breast biopsies on frightened, grateful women who are spared major surgery by new technology-driven modalities and, if tumors have spread, passed into the hands of oncologists and surgeons.
Yes. He’s very highly trained and skilled. Poor as a church mouse as a kid – distinguished himself academically while scholarships and loans propelled him through nearly a decade of professional training so that
. . yes – he could enjoy a sail boat and that vacation home.
And heart disease and cancer . .
and the pleasure of being in Obama’s cross-hairs.
Dear Catherine
Your post reminds me of one of the best calls that ever came into the Rush Limbaugh show. I will never forget it.
The wife of a Doctor phones in sometime in 2008-9 to tell Rush about how hard her husband worked, never got to spend time with the kids, missed all the school plays etc.. He was a surgeon. The sacrifice was one very few ever dare to make. His gift to society beyond measure, yet she knew and her husband knew that they were in the crosshairs of The One, who never worked a day in his life.
Our family has saved our money , we have not had a vacation in years, I don’t have extra expenses like a cell phone, I never get my nails done and all those things that just add up like a coffee or two everyday through a drive through. We don’t have a mortgage the cars are paid off, zero debt. Now we are the ones that have to pay for those that never planned. VDH describes the ant who finally gets to reward himself with some luxuries only to have the grasshopper come along and tell him he’ll have to share the boat and cottage every other weekend, for free!
mayrann:
Did you understand what the president meant in 2008 when he promised anyone who would listen that if elected he would redistribute the wealth of those who had worked and saved on their own initiative and give it to those who had not, could not or simply would not?
Many people now commenting here seem to have not received his message.
“Many people now commenting here seem to have not received his message.”
People commenting here like Catherine & maryann, who paid their own way, more than likely weren’t Obama voters. In fact, I think “paying for your own stuff” pretty much disqualifies you from the Dem Party.
No cell phone? That IS somewhat wooly-mammouth-like.
Dwight.
I know many “Maryann’s”.
The fact of going “cell-less” is not as you smirk -
“wooly-mammouth-like.”
We knuckle-draggers in fly-over country characterize disciplined spending, judicious decision-making, delaying gratification for future security . . . . as
wise and responsible adult behavior.
Curious that you don’t recognize it as such.
Sadly, predictably – curious.
I’m another one. No cell phone, no manicures, no hair cuts even. (My husband cuts my hair.)
And no debt. Paid off the mortgage finally. Hoping to weather the storms. Knowing they will take as much from us as they can, to give to those who bought and partied.
Perhaps there are more like us than we think?
My kids forced me to purchase a cell phone for “safety” reasons: They must think I am getting old! I got the cheapest “pay-as-you-go” phone I could find. I haven’t watched TV in over two years. I am definitely going toward “no-tech,” not “low-tech!”
Dear Maryann,
Thank you. You are the America that renews my hope that all is not lost . .
that the sacrifices and struggles of our forebears were not in vain and that their decency and courage live on in their descendants and that this great and good land will brave the current storm and persevere.
Perhaps it’s time to vote with our feet. It’s time to move those that we care about if we can’t find leadership to return us to much smaller, near-independent units of government – that are still larger than all but a few businesses – i.e. 100K families are more than capable of being a self-sustaining governmental unit – look at the number of small Swiss cantons that manage (and fully fund) most everything from education to public safety to health-care and taking care of their own indigent.
This country is still a center-right country and people here still distrust their elected officials. Europeans routinely dismiss the misgivings, frauds, and unethical actions of their ruling class because they believe this elite group of people are simply better than them. This post is spot on. I would like to add, do not dismiss the misgivings of American politicans. When we begin to accept the ideal that our politicians are truly better than us, we will have failed as a nation and will be doomed to a European model of society and government.
Europeans have been so traumatized by two world wars fought on their soil that they value consensus and peace above all else, including elemental freedoms. Germans have always been like this, they have always preferred order over freedom; many believe order IS freedom. The trauma is real; many of the generation whose fathers fought in WWII grew up without a father, or a father who was psychologically damaged by the war, or was an unrepentant Nazi. Hardly a basis on which to build a happy society.
If you speak privately with Germans and other northern Europeans, you will find them unhappy about immigration, the lack of democracy in the EU apparatus, and the loss of their traditional culture. But most live prosperous lives and make the adjustments and compromises needed to fit in, just like lots of folks in the US. For instance, opinion polls routinely show that at least 30% of Germans would favor a monarch over a president in the context of a parliamentary democracy. However, few will voice such leanings publicly, less they suffer social ostracism or loss of professional standing. When it comes time to vote, most of them go for the status quo. The Green Party in Germany has noticed this trend, and has been fine-tuning itself to appeal to Everyman, with noticeably positive results in recent elections.
The conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the senior partner in the current ruling coalition, has also diluted its core values (in an effort to avoid serious discussion about the country’s future) to the point where it is neither Christian nor democratic. Whether the steady alienation of its natural constituency in an attempt to appeal to as many people as possible will pay off in future elections is open to question.
A better metaphor might be Dr. Frankenstien. We did create the environment that allows the leftists/statists/elitists to flourish. We have only ourselves to blame.
As for the fate of the mammoth, ask any hunter who has ever wounded one how that is likely to turn out. A wounded mammoth is a fearsome thing.
I have tried to ask those hunters, but their language, if you want to call it that, is difficult to understand. ;-)
Dwight, let me put it in a little more contempory format for you. If you have any knowledge of that happend on Kings Mountain when the troops of King George thought that they could threaten the “over the mountain” settlers in the American Revolution, then you will have some idea of what lies ahead for liberals like yourself.
It has been said, and this is perhaps apocryphal, that British Maj. Ferguson was so dismissive of the Patriot militia from the mountains of NC and TN that he declared God Himself could not remove him from that mountain. And indeed, God did not remove him from that mountain, he is still lying there in his grave.
My family fought at Kings Mountain, so I know and brag about the battle. For others, you will need to flesh out the tale. As an additional thought, the Japanese never considered a ground war with us since they knew our citizens, unlike the Japanese, were armed.
What VDH says is true. Nontheless, we remain a nation in steep decline and I take no comfort in relativism. None at all.
Dido. We could be so much better than this. I don’t want to suck less than others.
Excellent article by Professor Hansen as usual. He once mentioned that we live in the Kingdom of lies and that the liberal plutocrats who rule the American government have been lying to us for years. They told us that we were fighting communism when in reality we were supporting it everywhere in the world; they told us we had to spend billions to educate our young so that America could be the leader of the free world, another lie when in reality we are producing one of the dumbest generations in our history; they told us that aids was going to kill off half the population and that it was everybodys disease when in reality it is confined almost exclusively to a small male homosexual species; they told us that swine flu was going to kill many many people, in fact there was no such epidemic; they told us that the temperatures would rise precipitiously and that the oceans would cover the earth in ten years, in fact the science of global warming has been seriously compromised. What all these scare tactics have really done is to have forced us to pay more and more tax money to the favorites of the plutocrats, the academics, the entertainer, the media liars, the unethical scientists and of course the big corporations like GE and Wall Street. We are a nation of suckers for every believing anyone in government. Ecrazez l,infame.
“by extension, explain the 1860-like division in America.’ If this nest of rats should win reelection there would truly be a cycle of reconstruction and retribution unlike anything in our past. The denial of disaster recognition in Alabama is only pretense to what this bunch will degenerate into. The recent news from California is almost unbearable, I fear they may be lost forever.
I spent most of the 80′s in Berkeley, in graduate school in Linguistics. I was trying very hard to study historical linguistics of American Indian laguages, based on real data, about the history of languages and their structure. I was contstantly harrassed because I refused to adhere to one of the current language theories…at that time it was “Government and Binding”. I didn’t CARE about theory. I just wanted to look at the data as everyone had done for 200 years. But my refusal to pass the “test” made it impossible for me to stay. I continued to study on my own but getting a degree was impossible.
Thanks, UC Berkeley.
Scott, I’ve sadly seen many similar examples: decent, smart people who were interested in humanities or social sciences careers, but they were either hounded away from pursuing such a dream because of Political Correctness, or they didn’t bother to even start down that road because they knew about the suffocating atmosphere. I’m sure there are many excellent scholars and teachers who never got a chance to fulfill those roles here due to PC.
I hope this higher ed bubble bursts very, very soon.
Egil:
I had a similar experience in a graduate seminar at a big Ten school. We were to write a paper on an educational topic, I chose Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory. I had to write that paper three times because the PhD of Educational Psych kept insisting that I stop presenting evidence and drawing conclusions, but rather that I present competing ideas and assert that picking one view would be an oppression since good is relative. The only B I recieved in grad school. I made it out with a terminal degree and now work at a small college. My primary aim is to “retake the high ground of the academy” and banish the destructive relativism and cowardice we see in the Humanities, and to do it one student, one semester at a time. I daresay Professor Hanson would agree this needs to be done, though having just attained tenure, I have to say I’m one of a lucky few. Two courses per semester is a pipe dream for me, however. Last Fall I taught six. Eexpectation is five, and this won’t change. Public higher ed is changing due to competition from commercial providers. Institutions that don’t keep up will fall, it’s the American way.
<i…but rather that I present competing ideas and assert that picking one view would be an oppression since good is relative.
Ha ha, then why write anything to begin with? In fact, the further implication of relativism is that words and statements don’t even have any meanings, you know, because their “meanings” are relative or “subjective” – all of which amounts to an inherently self-contradictory “position”, which is impossible to state by definition, a definition which is also impossible to state so that it’s understandable. I guess you could have just written down letters or random marks and then let your preceptor to do whatever he wanted with them, as fun for the feeble minded
Further on “good is relative”:
As I learned in my pre-Postmodern Philosophy classes, “good” is a word which is usually meant to have some function in the real world. A lot of Philosophy has actually been concerned with the definition of this word as it relates to human activity, and of other words which relate to the human condition, such as “reality”, “fact” and “perception”, and what it means to “exist” [ontogeny] or to have “knowledge” [epistemology] etc..
But in order for the word “good” to mean anything – that is, for it to be applied to anything meaningfully in relation to the real world in which we exist – there must be some possible empirical meaning to the words “not good” or “not as good” or “better”, etc., and as reflected or at least possibly existent in the real world.
Otherwise, why bother to speak using these words – that is, if they don’t apply to anything we’re dealing with or doing or can possibly deal with or do, in which case they are linguistically and empirically meaningless, except within the world of otherwise unhinged words? See Obamaspeak.
The same goes for for “dreaming”, “equal”, etc., and for “commerce”.
In order for “commerce” to have a concrete economic meaning which can be used in the real world of economic reality, there must be something possible to do in the real world which is “not commerce”, like just sitting around doing nothing.
But this is essentially what the Sophistic[ated] advocates of Obamacare are denying. According to them, just sitting around doing nothing, and maybe even just thinking about anything, would instead be an “economic choice”, and therefore “commerce”, for which the gov’t should be able to make you pay in order to support other people doing anything else whatsoever which the Great Central Government deems as “commerce”.
But if this is what the Sophists mean by “commerce”, then their use of “commerce” has no practical meaning. It is nonsensical because it can be made to apply to, or is ‘consistent with’, anything and everything we do or can possibly do.
In other words there is in effect or by fiat no such thing as “not commerce” even as a possibility, something which is apparently what the Sophists intend for all words and concepts, especially those involving the U.S. Constitution which is likewise reduced to gibberish, except of course for “might makes right”.
Keep up the great work, Terbreugghen! I would guess that you’re already seeing how the good students will appreciate what you’re doing. Keep us posted.
I know we’re gonna make it, but in the interim I like .223, .308, 30-30 and 12 gauge, plus .45 acp, 38 Special and for really BIG problems 44 Magnum
I think .338 Lapua is all that is required.
touche (but that thing is a liitle much around the home 20, yes)
And may I add, sir, 7.62, 9mm, and even a little .40? I think it is the duty of all concerned parents to learn how to shoot a firearm well, and then pass that knowledge on to their children. . . .sooner rather than later. My son may not be able to hit a 3 pointer, or a line drive to center field, but he can hit a squirrel in the trees, or any other target he aims at. I await the squeals of the urban yups . . . .
I like those numbers. I have for some time been saying forget gold, invest in steel, brass and lead. I really don’t see us getting out of this without a fight. When the Dept. of Education can issue arrest warrants and send a SWAT team to break down your door at 6 A.M., when cops storm a health food store with guns drawn over the selling of raw milk, when the TSA threatens to create a no fly zone over a state who threatened to outlaw their groping “security” checks, we’ve jumped the shark. We’ve reached that point Ayn Rand warned of, where government does as it pleases and we must ask permission for anything we do.
My only consolation is, at the end of the day, we will either wrest our Liberty back from those trying to steal it, or we will die fighting for it. I’ll gladly go either way with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, but I will in no way, under no circumstances and for no amount of “security” live as a slave to an overbearing state that dictates my every decision. Better to die on your feet a freeman, than live on your knees a slave. God Save The Republic and Keep Your Powder Dry.
As we have come to depend, Dr. Hanson limns the truth in memorable phrases. So far no one has mentioned one that caught my eye:
Accept that asymmetry and almost everything not only makes sense about these two cultural guideposts, but can, by extension, explain the 1860-like division in American itself..
The 1860-like division is accurate. I fear that 1861 is coming. We will know between November of next year, and mid-January of 2013.
Subotai Bahadur
I am slowly and with regret and reluctance coming to the conclusion that we may indeed be facing something akin to the awful schism of 1860. There are things that are too explosive to honestly talk about between people — that otherwise would be friends and kin. I am a Tea Partier, and a small-government fiscal conservative … and I am tired beyond everything of the awful avalanche of insult and bigotry that descends when I start a discussion about this in various personal and internet venues. I just don’t want to talk to these people any more. Is this where civil war begins? I hate to think so, but as a writer of historical novels set in 19th century America, I am starting to believe so with more conviction every day.
Sgt. Mom, I’ve been thinking these same thoughts since about 1980. It is difficult if not impossible to have a calm, rational conversation with liberals because they have no historical knowledge and little or no awareness of what makes things work. They are clueless as to the labor and investment required to assure food reaches the supermarket, the ingenuity required to bring electricity to charge the iPod, invent the NMR scanner, and so forth. They, and their welfare dependent serfs, believe wealth and productivity come from greed and evil intent which must be ‘redistributed’ or else they assume it comes from the magic wand of big government.
I can see no means of reconciling our differences with liberals. They want it all. Its their way or the highway (or in their deepest S&M dreams the dungeon). IMO we are going to crash. After the crash is when the real fighting begins. I think this is inevitable. The sooner the better because my only worry is that it will come too late for my eyes to clearly focus on the front sight.
Sgt. Mom and Parker, we are indeed about to see an internal war. Call it a civil war, call it Revolution 2.0, call it what you will, it’s coming. The question one must ask themselves is “who is our enemy?” Our enemy are those enacting the policies of the socialists, (those who work in federal agencies and enforce the regulatory edicts from on high which bypassed that pesky little congress) our enemies are those who support them, leftist institutions, (from the ACLU to high academia) progressive groups, unions, open borders groups, the UN and the main stream media for the most part, both broadcast, and the dying deadwood enterprises of newspapers and magazines.
They are our enemy precisely because those who make the rules, issue the edicts and are, when all is said and done, the ones responsible for creating this nightmare, unreachable by us for the most part. Destroy the gears and the machine breaks down.
What would one expect from Europeans, given their age-old structured society? If you look beneath the surface of 19th century socialist doctrines, you cannot miss the class divisions where everyone belonged to that class to which he was born and hated the upper classes to which he could not aspire. Marx appeared to dream of a world where the common working class would rule; however, he still thought in collectives, not individual people. The people who designed our government were focused not on collectives, but on the individual person. The US is the only nation established on individual freedom.
For generations, politicians, the media and the lobbies/non-profits/crony capitalists have been inching toward a collectivist state where elites rule.
The media since the 1960′s have beat the drum of ethnic warfare, continually reminding non-anglos that the anglos are the reason for every failure, and that anglos should pay for historical abuses. Isn’t this an example of the old European mind-set that seeks to keep people in their proper strata? That concept is totally alien to most Americans; read the Rasmussen polls on political class vs electorate opinions. Also, read Scott Rasmussen’s book, “In Search of Self-Governance”. The Internet is breaking down the old political order; it will take time, but my money is on those center-right Americans which are the topic of the above book. Americans are now becoming aware of the problems, thanks to the electronic revolution which is shining a bright light on the corruption that has led to this situation.
emmaliza:
I’m convinced that the assault on private property seen underneath President Obama’s “spread the wealth around” is at the heart of the current threat to American prosperity and security. I don’t believe Mr. Obama is the cause, but rather he’s just another symptom of a long slide to where we are now. When government no longer sees its primary duty as protection of lawfully earned and owned private property and instead becomes a threat to it, incentive is banished and economic and cultural chaos begins.
You nailed it. That was a direct and very succinct summation of the core of the problem
The assault on private property started with property taxes. If you buy an item from a store you own that item and can use it as you please without further payments to anyone for it until it is used up or you sell or give it away. Not so with property. You may “buy” property, and even if you pay off the bank that loaned you the money for it you still do not “own” it. You may have “bought” it from the bank, but you still must pay government “property taxes” on that property to retain your ownership rights (equity etc) otherwise the government will seize your property and sell it for the back rent you did not pay them under the name of taxes, and you have now lost your ownership rights to the property you never did, in fact, “own.”
As usual another very good article by the good doctor. I guess we all seem poised on the brink of something that we’re trying to avert our eyes from even as we struggle to understand what it is. BHO has become a metaphor for our times. It’s almost like we’re in B-movie starring this senseless monster that wants to kill everyone and everything in sight and the viewer is supposed to accept its mindless bloodlust as a given because this is what B-movie monsters and Marxist politicians do. Barack Hussein may not be a monster in spirit and motivation, but he is one as far as everything else about him is concerned. And, if given four more years, he certainly will Godzilla the American economy to a pulp. But he won’t be given this chance because Americans were faked by a good trailer into seeing this flick, which at the time didn’t look like it would turn out to be this much of a stinker. But last year, and half way through the BHO epic, the American people said they wanted out of the theater. They will finally get their wish in November of next year and Barackzilla can then turn on the Democratic Party as his next victim for mindless demolition.
Your comment echoes earlier appraisals of BHO made by Nat Hentoff and “Spengler” (David Goldman). To the effect Obama is one of if not the most destructive Presidents we’ve ever had.
Only Buchanan was a worse President. Tragically millions of Americans saw it coming.
Obama should be remembered as the third most stupid thing the US ever did. The first was not eliminating slavery in the constitution 1789, the second was the Sedition Act.
Good list… but as a tie for 2nd place, I would add prohibition – both the kind we repealed in 1933 and the kind which persists to-day.
My maternal grandfather, God rest his Christian soul, really straightened out my thinking on this subject, since he lived through both incarnations of it. It’s but one of many things for which I can say – thanks, Grandpa.
While I’m here, and on this subject, I would add this: a nation which worships youth above all else, and refuses to accept the wisdom which comes only with productive life experience, is truly doomed. Again – thanks, Grandpa.
the university is one of the most politically illiberal and prejudiced institutions in America
Remember, when you reduce di-versity, you are left with uni-verity.
President Obama, in kindest terms, is untruthful. More accurately he is personally committed to the destruction of the United Staes of America. He sees himself as a dictator, not the presient of a constitutional republic. If what he hopes to achieve had any merit to it, one could shrug his or her shoulders. Obama, however, wants nothing less than the impoverishment of Americans who support but remain independent of Washington.
I’m reading about marauding gangs of black “youth” in Chicago, beating and stealing from white and Asian victims. I’ve thought for a year or three now, that the predatory unemployable underclass have pretty much succeeded in stealing everything from each other that it’s possible to steal. When you see a dope dealer on a bicycle, what does that say about the economic opportunities of dealing dope any more?
So they’re branching out of the ghetto and going to where the money and the rich pickings are. Seems logical, if you’re a predator.
I’m also seeing hints that such flash mobs might also be found in other large cities this summer with an accompanying supposition that this might be a Twitterfied national uprising of the have-nots. That seems rather paranoid, because even if these juveniles can manage to steal someone’s Ipod, how are they going to be able to afford the hook-up fees? So as long as they can’t afford to climb into the national social network, I think what we’ll be seeing are pockets of estranged and desperate bandido’s who have wrung their own particular ghetto dry and are merely going to the nearest place where there’s someone amiable (and unarmed) to be bopped over the head and robbed.
If Chicago wants, I’m sure Los Angeles would be delighted to send them a herd of pre-trained Latino thugs who are extremely good at racial hatreds themselves and like nothing better than to drive-by shoot a black person or three. And, I’m extremely grateful that Los Angeles does *not* have the sort of mass transit system Chicago, New York and DC have. Means racially-motivated flash mobs can’t hop on a bus or a train and get off in Beverly Hills to race through Saks on a robbing spree, and then attack who-ever might be in their way on their way back to their favorite mode of mass transit to effect their escape among normal travellers.
Victor, I have followed you now for several years, and you continue to reflect my views. I consider myself Libertarian, and align myself in formal politics with Conservatives.
It astonishes me that the Liberal-Left, who have the reigns of power, pretend to be for the underdog, “the worker”, when they are simply multi-millionares pretending; when the democratic party, that they support, raises more money for an election than the republicans (supposed evil rich people).
Ooohhhh, I could go on. At some point, though, we rightists must bring down the temple of Liberalism. It might be that they bring the temple down upon themselves, then we move in. That, though, is a horrible possibility.
“Never sell this small piece of land, you may need it some day as a refuge from what you don’t wish to become.”
Grandfathers advice from the previous posting about rotten edifices. Going further into the generations, grandfather’s grandfather left Europe for a reason. I tend to think that restlessness and the yearning for something better (than Victorian England for instance) is encoded on our collective DNA. That makes us different from our cousins in Scandinavia, France, Germany, England etc. I don’t see us sitting around the cafe’ on an extended breaks anymore than us dwelling in confined spaces with no elbow room. Too many of us have work to do on the farms, highways, factories, software mills and so forth.
There is just too much to grasp in these VDH blog postings. Very thought provoking. The wisdom of the Swedish farmer. No doubt we are in for a hard landing. Those that accept that life has it’s ups and downs, triumph and tragedy will come out fine. It’s those who expect the State to do all and everything for them will be in trouble. VDH is fortunate to have the family farm to fall back on. Ag may be the coming thing in the not too distant future.
We are like mushrooms to the MSM, keep us in the dark and feed us S!@#. Seeking truth rather than whatever fits with what you want to believe is hard work.
Excellent, as always VDH! As somebody else said, this article is blunt. But that’s what it takes. The Left has ZERO INTEREST in being “civil” or “PC” when it comes to dealing with their opponents. So in order to thwart their agenda there is no alternative but to be equally blunt and resolute. As depressing as the current state of affairs can be, it’s comforting to know that the Left can be counted on to overplay its hand, time after time. They are the Establishment reactionaries now.
As one who felt the sting “The Population Bomb” told us was coming—that is, as a naïve youngish university student in 1970 or so, I believed it—the whole overpopulation con game quite a while ago was undressed.
I read an irrefutable what if statistic—enjoy:
You could put every human into Texas and the population density would be about the same as London.
Maybe you need a little more land, nowadays, because I read this some time ago, when there were less people.
Also, the old “born with hands as well as a mouth” realization married with the most obvious human trait—our BRAINS—seems to me to guarantee mankind will never run out of the potential to grow—unless a giant physical catastrophe or human mistake culls us, as has certainly happened in the past.
In short, just as Huber and Mills “The Bottomless Well: the twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste, and why we will never run out of energy” book demonstrates, energy is limitless, humanity can easily double in numbers, and adapt along the way.
Say what?
By the third sentence I was looking for a sig. In the third paragraph I gave up. The article stands as a whole.
Bravo, Victor. Bravo! I think that in our hearts we knew these things, but you have put them down in concrete terms for all to read.
So where do we go from here?
Charlie (there’s no way to go but up)
All of the foregoing notwithstanding, I am yet quietly amused watching our intellectual betters experience the implosion of their cherished leftist fantasy world now that they are in charge and for a while even had total control of the government. It is clear this administration has no idea what to do about the economy, having made things worse from day one, and its foreign policy is incoherent. Is it the 1967 borders, or is it not? The stimulus didn’t work because—- . Are we going to oust Quadaffi, or dither over UN resolutions? Budget? What is a budget? And on and on. If it weren’t for the tragic consequences for the people affected, it would all be worth a hearty horselaugh every day this persists.
Excellent article as usual. However, Europe is definitely much more than southern Italy and Corsica. We from the north associate these places with crime, poverty and corruption.Just think about how organized crime organisations for years have dumped toxic waste in the beautiful surroundings of Naples. How can they do something like that to their own people just to make money ?
Damn. Bad news for Mammoth Lakes I guess.
Timely meme; I’m headed tomorrow to tour Denmark on $10/gallon gas and intend to love every minute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_drEFOaPaK8
That is an amazingly haunting performance. I was not familar with his work. Thank you for posting that URL.
I’ve a deep respect for VDH, having read nearly all his published work. For like minded, intellectually curious folks I’d like to test the bounds of propriety here and make a small plug for David Mamet’s new book, “The Secret Knowledge”. I think you’ll all enjoy it. Buy a copy for a liberal friend.
Craig;
Mamet’s book incorporates an exercise of introspection and elaboration, which is voodoo to Liberals.
According to the Left, all life’s shortcomings are the fault of external forces; i.e. Conservatives and their values.
No introspection required.
Europe has very very few independent pro-liberty voices, among the exceptions are the writings of Daniel Hannan who blogs for the [London] Telegraph, and for those who can read Spanish there is libertaddigital.es from Spain.
Geert Wilders is being persecuted for calling a spade a spade, and Michael [Weiner] Savage is still not allowed into the UK bye the fake-o “conservative” government.
To really find out about what is going on in Europe you have to turn to outside sources like RT-TV (Russia Today) which is very very good and pulls no punches, or Israeli conservative website israelnationalnews.com and jpost.com
The only other pro-liberty websites I have cognizance of are in East Europe, Poland and Hungary, and are only in the local languages.
FANTASTIC ARTICLE!!!!!!
Once again Mr. Hanson you have written something that goes to the heart of those of us in “fly-over country.” You have hit every point. We don’t listen to the chattering clASSes and temper our opinions on what is reported by reading, listening to and watching a variety of news to make sure we are not Kool-aide drinkers too. What I really want to know is how to get invited on your next military history tour of Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily! Wow, what a trip and to have you as the historian, those 60 are quite lucky indeed!
Professor Hanson, you do use the words aristocracy, medieval and Dark Ages. And it really does seem like the Left has a feudal mindset. There’s a ruling elite, dictating to the great unwashed serfs how to run their lives. But one wins one’s spurs in the halls of academia rather than on the now declasse’ battlefield. And instead of the Roman Catholic Church religion, with debates upon how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, we have academia pushing AGW and gender/ethnic studies. And both got very corrupt. Indulgences, sons following fathers as Pope (um, er?) versus what we have now.
There are just too many parallels between feudalism and the current Left. And both hate Jews.
This is a brilliant analysis of the left…I even linked to it on FB…thank you.
Another sharp-witted, truly enjoyable read, Dr. Hanson. Thanks again.
I believe the U.S., at this time in history, is beginning to resemble the U.S.S.R. before the Berlin Wall was torn down. There are calls for a “Reagan” to emerge to help recover the “American Dream”, spirit, intellectual curiosity, and diligence of the Founders.
A prescient journalist once wrote that with the fall of “The Wall”, the U.S.S.R of old would be missed, based on the reason that during that time, the Communist Machine of autocratic rule was contained within the borders of the Soviet State. As long as the Soviet Machine was isolated, it could be excoriated as the abysmal authority it was by the media of the “Free People”.
Today the U.S. mirrors the U.S.S.R., with it’s obsequious media, subservient and unaccountable czars, and oppressive Government mandates.
What America really needs is a Gorbachev who is aware of the failure inherent in the current Regime, and is unafraid to embrace and proclaim the Western Philosophy that created the United States of America, which enabled most of the planet Earth to rescue itself from the slavery of ignorance and primitive ethics of a State like the U.S.S.R. of old.
As you know so well, Dr. Hanson; A United States with a stable leader and government is necessary for a stable, peaceful, and prosperous planet Earth.
(By the way; upon your arrival home, I hope you cleared the confines with a robot and video camera to make sure there were no squatting felons.)
NYT and MSNBC article on multimillion dollar Cybercrime
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43389964/ns/technology_and_science-the_new_york_times/
links another
“Sarah Palin supporters hack Twitter feed…”
which includes examples of “bile” laced comments such as “Obama’s Energy Policies to Drive Electricity Rates up 40 to 60%” and “Emails: Gov. Palin a Hard-Working Public Servant” by “some foul mouthed ‘twit’ spoil” —
You just can’t argue with their impeccable logic and equivalency.
I was thinking of you yesterday as I was sweating in my garden, happy that my work was about much more than just planting tomatoes!
The best quote I’ve heard from Sarah Palin is this: “Self esteem comes from pride in hard work.” So simple, so true, so foreign to our elitist-driven popular culture..
Thanks so much for a great column.
History has an ironic habit of catching up to the present eventually and demonstrating its inveterate power over mankind’s idiocy.
The Dark Ages was a period that ran from 476 AD to about 800 A.D. following the fall of the Roman Empire – more than 300 years. Why did it happen? Because of the corruption and missteps of the Roman Empire and the geopolitical vacuum that resulted when that empire fell apart.. Who is that model in these modern times? The U.S. who is the new boogeyman and international whipping boy and the elites’ tool for a crazy experiment of “hope and change.”
.
What will happen to the world if the U.S. folds its tent and deconstructs? Probably a new Dark Ages that may last just as long as the original one. But then the elites with all their graduate degrees and amazing intellect either don’t bother to read (or teach) history or arrogantly believe they know more than history has taught mankind – thus – we have a ripe environment waiting in the wings for its moment of truth and another historical apocalypse.
Anyone for a spaceship commute to another planet? Oh yes, I forgot. We’re putting the U.S. space program in mothballs too. So I guess all we’ll be left with is a mountain in Montana or similar faraway piece of quiet and isolation away from the chaos hopefully..
Yes Dr. Hanson, you’re getting there. A long hard slog to state openly, no holds barred, who the enemy is. Some questions are
1. WHY do they hate Americans so much? What is their individual and group
psychopathology. They are not “normal”, in some cases even not rational/sane.
2. WHO gave them the instruments, the weapons for their war on American Institutions which are limited by Law as to what they may do in and to America/Americans. To large extent the Americans themselves have surrendered , submitted to the lying flim-flam of these highwaymen, these criminal psychopaths, these hyenas.
3. What, if anything, can be done to remove these predators from the environment. Send them back to their natural habitat, let them eat each other.
4. WHO of these hyenas is graced with “aristocratic pedigree”. America is not old enough to have an aristocracy.
Yes, the 1860-like division between Americans. Can we dare to hope that, this time, those who want to live lives not ruled by the Federal Government might win?
The first one was asserting their right to hold slaves. You might want to avoid the equivalent this time around.
I would take issue with:
“upper-middle class, making $200-800,000 a year”
A FAMILY earning 200k per year is well into the top 3%, with the national median household income coming in at around 46k. These people are hardly part of the middle class. The data may be skewed in California but the reference was to outside east and west Coasts. Even Maestro Alan Greenspan advocates a return to Clinton era tax rates, the above folks were the main beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts. Sorry folks, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche. Sell the M3 and buy a smaller boat. Meanwhile some kid named Martinez puts his life on the line for us in the Middle East.
Stop it. I’m sick of that lie and I’m sick of you people. It was a 10% across the board tax cut. And I’m not even going to address your racism/classism in referring to the war.
Bring 1860 on – I want a divorce from you filthy people!
Sorry Lolly, there are a lot of things I am sick of too. I paid for every single dime my Children’s UC education and on a lot less money and I am proud of it. What about the guy in the $200k plus category down the street in the big mansion who used his cadre of lawyers and accountants (yeah, they belong to the upper middle class too) to reduce his income to the point we taxpayers financed his children’s UC education? I don’t worry about these “upper middle class” folks, it’s the real middle class who don’t have the lawyers and accountants I worry about. The ones that grew up thinking they could work hard with their hands, live a modest lifestyle and maybe even save a few bucks along the way. We may be headed for class warfare but it’s not their fault. Who is going to be left to pay the bills after they drop out?
Feel free to call me a hater because I really do, sincerely, hate you people (actions, not individuals) and what you are doing to my country.
Oh lolly you say it so well, thank you. The tax cut issue is such a lie and I too am sick of hearing it. Me and some of my family live in CA where $200K for a family of four doesn’t go very far, what with mortgage, insurance, taxes, school expenses, insane salestax, transportation cost etc. Not upper middle, just middle class. When we raised our children, we rarely took a vacation and when we did it was with a tent in a park or by a beach. My late husband and I felt it our duty to pay our children’s education so they would be spared instant debt as they started their independent lives. I worked at my job until my 74th birthday. In fact I might still be working if I didn’t have grandmotherly duties. People make their own fortune and I am sick of being told how fortunate that I am.
abroad is not better than being home in the USA.
Nice photo with the headline, Dr. Hanson. The success of your European tour shows in your expression.
And the vacation (diversion) in Europe is evident in this article. You deserved it, and look like you are back in shape for more incisive diagnosis of America’s quandary.
Welcome back, and thanks again, sir.
http://theviewfrom302.blogspot.com/2011/06/true-words.html
Making stuff up about Europe doesn’t make it right you know. Thought somebody should point that out.
Funny thing. I’ve lived in towns where the Queen has visited in England and I’ve lived in Cities where the President or VP has visited.
The President fits your description of limos and escorts more than the head of state of the country I was born in.
The more I read of you guys. The more I think I should take my business back to the UK and stop bothering.
$200-800k a year is upper middle class? Good grief VDH. I have all those things you mention on 100-200k a year. Your analysis is correct, but even in my world of many blessings 200-800k a year is not upper middle class, but damn near elite even in the USA.