Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and their endless sequelae have ended up as an epitaph for a spent culture for which its remedies are felt to be worse than its diseases. Think 338 B.C., A.D. 476, 1453, or 1939.
The coordinated effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court required the systematic refutation of the entire notion of Western jurisprudence by senators and much of the American legal establishment. And there was no hesitation in doing just that on the part of Senate Democrats, the #MeToo movement, and the press. And I write this at a moment in which conservatives and Republicans still control the majority of governorships, state legislatures, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court and the presidency—a reminder that culture so often is far more powerful than politics.
So, here we were to be left with a new legal and cultural standard in adjudicating future disagreements and disputes, an utterly anti-Western standard quite befitting for our new relativist age:
- The veracity of accusations will hinge on the particular identity, emotions, and ideology of the accuser;
- Evidence, or lack of it, will be tangential, given the supposed unimpeachable motives of the ideologically correct accuser;
- The burden of proof and evidence will rest with the accused to disprove the preordained assumption of guilt;
I saved this article on the Desktop area of my laptop when I came across it , which I’m shocked to see was just over five years ago! Such is the condition of my mind that it notices and stores discrete pieces of indicia that we humans are still capable of rational, if not always original, thought. Indeed, the pull of the not-always-original on my own thinking lies in the fact that it resonated among others who, like me, are constantly on the search for more nuggets of truth or wisdom. In my squirrel-like fashion, then, I have held onto this essay for years. Today, however, it once again flitted into my awareness of its presence on my Desktop and I decided to consume it. Fortunately, it hadn’t gone in the least bit stale. I’m grateful to Professor Hanson for going to the trouble of substantiating his insights and statements about the strange new Dark Age we’re living in. He’s saved me the trouble 🙂
Every so often, I come across something written or an interview of Dr. Hanson. I’m always interested in what he has to say and especially because he has the courage of his convictions and doesn’t hesitate to express his informed opinions. Indeed, he upturns the notion of “speaking truth to power”! as he points out what the dominant “progressive” (if ever there was a misnomer!) culture diligently seeks to suppress. I had something more personal to write, but seem to have run out of paper….