July 6, 2005
A World Wonder
A Speech Given to the Woodrow Wilson Center on Democracy
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers

JUNE 2, 2005: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  My name is John Sitilides and I am Chairman of the Board of Advisors for the Woodrow Wilson Southeast Europe Project. It is a distinct honor and pleasure to welcome to the Woodrow Wilson Center a man who I have come to greatly admire, and am just getting to know on a personal level as well, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.

Before we begin, I would very much like to acknowledge the co-sponsorship of today’s program by the West European Studies program led by my colleague Dr. Sam Wells here at the Wilson Center. Also, Dr. Hanson’s presentation today is the latest installment of the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Lecture Series here at the Southeast Europe Project, which serves as a forum for world leaders and distinguished scholars who study, understand and manifest Hellenism’s many lessons in contemporary statecraft and society.

It’s in a dual context that we’re especially pleased to have Dr. Hanson with us here today.  Dr. Hanson is a classicist, he’s a military historian, and he’s a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in California.  Like many, I first discovered Dr. Hanson’s writings immediately after the September 2001 terror attacks.  He had written “Carnage and Culture,” which was published just prior to the attacks — I believe in August that year.  And he had posited in that book that free markets, free elections and free speech — rooted in ancient Greece — have led directly to Western force superiority against non-Western enemies throughout history.  Specifically, Dr. Hanson put forward the thesis that by bringing together personal freedom, discipline and organization to the battlefield, powerful marching democracies were more apt to defeat non-Western forces assembled by unstable or tyrannical governments, of limited funding, and intolerant of open discussion.  At the same time, and I quote Dr. Hanson, “it is typical of all democratic people who audit their government and often seek perfection rather than success,” a symptom that President Bush clearly understands today, as have many American presidents who have sent our young men and women into harm’s way in years past.

But we are also here today to welcome Dr. Hanson as the author of “Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom.”  In that book, published in 1998, Dr. Hanson explained the traditions of the ancient Greeks as the basis for the unique dynamism of Western culture, and why its tenets of democracy, capitalism, materialism, personal freedom, civil liberty, and constitutional government are sweeping the globe.  That was several years before the Bush administration launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. government began promoting a policy of advancing freedom and liberty throughout the world.

I’m not sure if Dr. Hanson is comfortable with this particular aspect of my introduction, but many have noted that President Bush credited the book that he read over the Christmas holidays, by Natan Scharansky, on the importance of freedom and of liberty as a driving force in his foreign policy. Many also have credited Dr. Hanson’s writings with strengthening the thinking of Vice President Cheney, and apparently Vice President Cheney has strongly recommended that his staff read Dr. Hanson’s writings of the past several years.  In this way, today’s presentation by Dr. Hanson certainly and clearly bridges ancient democracy and modern geopolitics.

We’ve also asked Dr. Hanson to discuss specific examples of democratization in Southeastern Europe, specifically in Turkey, a secular country with an overwhelmingly Muslim society and now a moderate Islamist government in power, and in the Balkans, where the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations are encouraging governments, societies and institutions to embrace free market democracy as the surest path toward regional stability and eventual prosperity.

You have the fuller biography of Dr. Victor Davis Hanson we have already distributed.  I need not say anything else about him at this time.  It is indeed a pleasure and an honor to introduce Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.