by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Free at Last<\/strong><\/p>\n For any of those who went into a coma around January of last year and just woke up, let me explain this new era after Bush (A.B.), variously known as \u201cthis is our moment,\u201d \u201cwe are the ones we\u2019ve been waiting for,\u201d and the era when the \u201cplanet healed\u201d and the seas \u201creceded.\u201d<\/p>\n In sum, in the year 2 AB, your fossilized world thankfully no longer quite exists. Global warming is \u201cclimate change\u201d and its data is \u201cinterpreted\u201d rather than blindly \u201cfollowed.\u201d Natural calamities like the old Katrina hurricane were really man-caused disasters; and man-caused disasters like the new BP spill and the federal reaction to it were really unpreventable natural disasters. Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and Al Gore are men-of-the-people feminists who need comfort, not tawdry womanizing mansion-aficionados.<\/p>\n \u201cGreatest Achievement\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Iraq is no longer \u201clost,\u201d but the greatest achievement of the Obama administration. Somehow its messy politics are proof of real democracy. Indeed, at last our influential intellectuals can talk of real \u201cpolitics\u201d going on in Baghdad.<\/p>\n Surging is now good. So is the architect of that policy, Gen. Petraeus. If any Republicans were now to suggest in a confirmation hearing that the Afghan ground commander \u201cpunted\u201d on the truth, or that his testimony \u201crequired a suspension of disbelief,\u201d or that Afghanistan should be trisected, well, he would be rightly castigated as a subversive, rather than praised as \u201cpatriotic.\u201d Partisanship now stops at the shoreline.<\/p>\n The IED is on page 18 where it belongs; the discounted General Betray Us ads at the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0are filed away.<\/p>\n \u201cClosed\u201d Is a State of Mind<\/strong><\/p>\n Guantanamo Bay virtually closed; only the Republican Congress prevented it from really being closed in the archaic sense of actually being still open. Wanting to do something is far more important than mundanely doing it.<\/p>\n Predator targeted assassinations are as necessary and humane as three waterboarding incidents were not. I know that because Ivy League law deans are silent about, or have signed off on, the current targeted assassinations. After all, would you rather have water illegally poured down your throat, or legally be vaporized as if hit by lightning? We are not killing \u201cterrorists\u201d or \u201cIslamists\u201d in Waziristan; instead our \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d are aimed at reminding Muslims that their own past contributions to science have led to breakthroughs like Hellfire missiles.<\/p>\n No Enemies, Plenty of Friends<\/strong><\/p>\n No longer need we arbitrarily dub an Ahmadinejad, Assad, or a Chavez as \u201chostile\u201d or a Colombia, India, Israel, Poland, or the Czech Republic intrinsically an \u201cally.\u201d Easy labels are gone; sophisticated reset analysis is back \u2014 about what we would expect when we drop the nonsense about being \u201cexceptional\u201d and instead contextualize to the world our own past sins from slavery to genocide to dropping the atomic bombs.<\/p>\n No one now falls for \u201cneocon\u201d propaganda, so we wisely keep mum about Iranian protestors and their supposed \u201cdemocracy\u201d or Honduras justices and their talk of \u201cconstitutional government\u201d \u2014 at least when authentic progressive leaders are in jeopardy from reactionary capitalists. After all, why wait 234 years for a revolutionary American president, and then when we finally get him, waste that historical occasion by not bonding with other revolutionary leaders?<\/p>\n The People\u2019s \u201cLaw\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n In the last two years, we have evolved also beyond the old Neanderthal notion of the \u201claw,\u201d as if it were some moral notion engraved on stone tablets that \u201cdeserves\u201d our \u201cadherence.\u201d How quaint is that?<\/p>\n Instead, a higher moral calling now adjudicates legal obedience. Immigration law is a construct that at times can or cannot be followed, depending on the plight of those affected. Voting fraud is really a race and class issue: one man\u2019s \u201cfraud\u201d is another man\u2019s \u201cactivism.\u201d Big polluters can be invited to contribute billions to remedy their errors \u2014 and, lo and behold, they most certainly will if asked properly! Contracts? What contracts?<\/p>\n Spurring Wealth<\/strong><\/p>\n The smart way of fine-tuning the economy is to remind businesses that government and the people are its masters. When money-grubbing surgeons lop limbs or Las Vegas lures in the poor to blow their money, they will be called on it, and then work doubly hard to set things right with us, the people. Barack Obama and his business advisors know far better than speculators which creditor, in fact, deserves to be paid back, and which does not deserve to be paid back at Chrysler.<\/p>\n Taxes Are Good for Some<\/strong><\/p>\n Few until now understood how fair tax rates \u2014 like 40% on income, 10% in some states on income, and, hopefully, 15.3% for FICA on all income, and new health surcharges \u2014 encourage social stability, spur entrepreneurship, and create wealth. Ask Timothy Geithner or Charles Rangel. Deficits, debts, and \u201cborrowing\u201d were just linguistic gymnastics, since money itself is a construct, a sort of record-keeping for those who hold power over others. Zero interest, \u201cstimulus,\u201d and \u201credistributive change\u201d far better locate capital in our lives. The more trillions we borrow, the more we blinked and failed to create the necessary \u201cstimulus.\u201d<\/p>\n There are no longer things like a \u201cjobless recovery\u201d \u2014 that archaic term that once upon a time in 2004 referred to 6%, not 9+% unemployment. Indeed, there is really no longer such a thing as an unemployment rate at all. \u201cJobs saved\u201d and \u201cjobs not lost\u201d are the better barometers, in that they require thought, reflection, interpretation, and imagination.<\/p>\n $800 billion in borrowed money saved millions of jobs; that unemployment did not stay below 8% as promised is a symptom of the same old DC \u201cgottacha\u201d game that relies on abstract numbers not the lives of real people. Instead, we live in an age of thanksgiving that someone prevented us from falling into 15% unemployment or even higher.<\/p>\n Racial Healing<\/strong><\/p>\n In this brave new age of A.B., racial relations have vastly improved. We know that because there is a new honesty and candor about a once taboo subject. The attorney general bravely called for a novel conversation and then single-handedly initiated that by calling us \u201ccowards\u201d \u2014 a cry from the heart for dialogue.<\/p>\n The president raised the difficult issue by carefully reminding us how \u201cstupidly\u201d our police act toward African-Americans \u2014 as he subtly elaborated on his earlier candor about the proverbial \u201ctypical white person\u201d and those lower class whites who are xenophobic and cling to their guns. So we at last have a \u201cwise Latina\u201d at the Supreme Court, and had a \u201cgreen czar\u201d who was bold enough not just to explain how mass murdering was a largely white phenomenon, but how George Bush was in on 9\/11.<\/p>\n The only bad thing about the new age of \u201cAfter Bush\u201d is that he never quite left. $1.7 trillion annual deficits? Bush did it. Another $3 trillion plus to the deficit? All Bush. GM bailout? Bush\u2019s fingerprints. Afghanistan heats up? Bush again. A ruined Gulf? Bush and his oil cronies. Falling polls for President Obama? The legacy of the Bush racism. Guantanamo open? Bush\u2019s people. Higher taxes? The Bush deficits.<\/p>\n In the age of \u201cAfter Bush,\u201d everything that is now good comes despite him, everything that is still bad is because of him. Remember that \u2014 and that is all ye need to know.<\/p>\n PS: Kaiser Postmortem<\/strong><\/p>\n The hike on Saturday, July 10 up Kaiser Peak went especially well \u2014 perfect weather, magnificent views, few other hikers, the Huntington Lake regatta below, and only a snow patch or two on the way. About 28 of us met at the pack station base camp; we introduced ourselves, and then headed up to the summit at 10,300 feet. Everyone was relaxed; some wanted to go a 1\/4, 1\/2, or 3\/4 of the way up, and explored on their own along the way.<\/p>\n About half of us in a long column after 3.5 hours made it to the top, talked, and enjoyed the view \u2014 and were all down by about 2-230 PM. About 20 of us went over to my house nearby and had tri-tip and beverages. After that shared ordeal, there were no strangers, and we all had a good time and more frank discussion.<\/p>\n I think we will do it again next year. I am always encouraged how well-read and well-informed readers are; and to meet them reminds me that things are not all that bad when so many know so much, even if they are now so worried about the commonwealth.<\/p>\n One topic that seem to reoccur, especially at the summit and its vistas: we all commented on the ingenuity and daring of our predecessors who a century ago built the Shaver\/Huntington\/Florence\/Edison dams and hydro-electrical network with a fraction of the material wealth and technology that we now have on hand. The system resulted in beautiful lakes, power, and is largely unchanged a century later, so sturdy was their construction, so brilliant was their vision, and so hard was their work. There was a brief note of melancholy as we compared their vision of California to ours.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Free at Last For any of those who went into a coma around January of last year and just woke up, let me explain this new era after Bush (A.B.), variously known as \u201cthis is our moment,\u201d \u201cwe are the ones we\u2019ve been waiting for,\u201d and the era when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[586],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-oa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7582,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/lots-of-recent-man-caused-disasters\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":0},"title":"Lots of Recent Man-Caused Disasters","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide. Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2837,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-new-sort-of-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":1},"title":"Our New Sort of War","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama proclaims no more of George Bush's \"war on terror,\" even as he silently keeps most of it in place. The result is as confusing as it soon will be dangerous. In these first 100 days of his presidency, Barack Obama has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2009"","block_context":{"text":"April 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/april-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1617,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-there-a-pattern-here-or-what\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":2},"title":"Is There a Pattern Here or What?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The jihadist symptoms of Major Hasan were ignored; General Casey lamented the possible ramifications of Hasan's killings to the army's diversity program; the warnings of Mr. Mutallab's father about his son's jihadist tendencies were ignored but the latter's Miranda rights were not; and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1515,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/think-about-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":3},"title":"Think About It!","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1.\u00a0Some vice presidential wisdom: most might now think it to be safer to go hunting with Dick Cheney than to be in a hotel room with Al Gore. 2. Not since the era of Earl Butz and James Watt have cabinet members been as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2010"","block_context":{"text":"July 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/july-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11564,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-perpetual-presidency\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":4},"title":"The Perpetual Presidency","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Former President Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, Donald Trump. Obama\u2019s charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1565,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/twin-disasters\/","url_meta":{"origin":1498,"position":5},"title":"Twin Disasters","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The strange attitude of the administration to immigration and debt. by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Wages of Multiculturalism How strange that the president of Mexico, while a guest on the lawn of the White House, would attack the laws of a U.S. state, while his own country's immigration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2010"","block_context":{"text":"June 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/june-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1499,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/1499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}