by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n In the last year, many of the dreams of an emerging international elite have imploded \u2014 and this, in a new century that was to usher in a regime of global liberal ecumenism.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lies and academic fraud of Climategate reminded us that it is almost impossible for even disinterested scientists to fathom the complex history of global climate change. But it also \u2014 and more importantly \u2014 reminded us how Western universities have turned into rigid medieval centers of intolerant orthodoxy. Our new academic monks, in their isolated sanctuaries \u2014 cut off by grants, subsidies, tenure, and cadres of obsequious graduate students from the grubby efforts of others to stay alive \u2014 have for years breezily issued all sorts of near-religious exegeses and edicts about the public\u2019s ruination of the planet. We lesser folk were supposed to find salvation through installing windmills and junking our incandescent light bulbs under the tutelage of wiser overseers.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the last few weeks, nature did what no human industry had ever quite done \u2014 shut down much of European airspace with a huge toxic cloud. But the mess was not a DuPont emission, or soot from Eastern Europe\u2019s network of coal plants, or any such man-caused disaster, but the work of a prosaic volcano. The ensuing economic chaos and toxic air pollution were accepted with a shrug in that they were natural and had nothing to do with Halliburton.<\/p>\n Another dream \u2014 the European Union \u2014 is also imploding. Beneath the hysteria over Greece is a simple truth: All the capital that Germany piled up over the last 20 years through its export-driven economy was never really there; it must now be forfeited to those who borrowed from Germany in order to buy from Germany. In some sense, if a taxi driver in the Peloponnese drove a Mercedes beyond the reach of most Americans, it was not because of his capital-creating productivity, but rather because of his country\u2019s ability to lure the Germans into lending Greece euros at nearly nonexistent interest.<\/p>\n For decades we were lectured about the EU\u2019s nuanced practice of \u201csoft power,\u201d and we were told how life was at last good when one garnered cradle-to-grave government entitlements, retired early, and expected American arms to protect and German money to subsidize the collective borrowing binge. Apparently because Europeans did not drawl and go to church, we were supposed to believe that they had reinvented finance, and loans could be floated rather than paid back.<\/p>\n In 2009, the vision of the new Obama administration was European: foreign-policy triangulation, government takeovers of private enterprises, higher taxes, more entitlements and public workers, and always more \u201cthem\/us\u201d class-warfare rhetoric from members of a technocratic guardian class who had played the very system they were now to oversee. Apparently Obama\u2019s high-level appointees \u2014 from Timothy Geithner to Van Jones \u2014 thought they were our versions of Brussels bureaucrats, who could say and do anything with no need to worry about popular reaction.<\/p>\n Then came the Greek meltdown. The music of this parlor game stopped, and all the poor players standing \u2014 German banks, anonymous bondholders, EU technocrats, Greek politicians and public unions \u2014 lunged for the far too few seats.<\/p>\n What are we left with? At best, a slow devolution to something like the original Common Market of northwestern European nations, a strengthening of NATO (to keep America in, Germany down, and Russia out), and loud diplomacy to stop the rising European tensions \u2014 all too reminiscent of 1939 \u2014 that seem to hinge on unresolved historical grievances, cultural stereotypes, and the old north\/south, cold\/hot divide.<\/p>\n Here in the United States, we will have a last chance in November to brake before following the European bus into the abyss. Who would have thought, a mere year ago, that the theme of 2010 would be: How lucky is Turkey that it has not been accepted into the European Union!<\/p>\n Aside from the passing of messianic environmentalism and European utopianism, we are also seeing the unraveling of Obama\u2019s reset-button foreign policy, announced to such fanfare in January 2009. It was apparently predicated on the assumption that much of the tension in the world was caused by George W. Bush\u2019s United States, and therefore could be ameliorated through apology, retrenchment, dialogue, public self-critique, and criticism of prior presidents.<\/p>\n So add it all up: the\u00a0Al Arabiya<\/em>\u00a0interview, the Cairo speech, the distancing from Israel, the euphemisms like \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d and \u201cman-caused disasters,\u201d the politically correct banishment of any anti-terrorism phraseology associated with Islam, the repeated announcements of the closing of Guantanamo and the trying of KSM in New York, the strange case of Attorney General Eric Holder, who can call his own fellow citizens \u201ccowards\u201d but not associate radical Islam with recent attempts by Muslims to kill those fellow citizens\u00a0en masse<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 and we get Syria supplying terrorists with missiles, Iran ever closer to a bomb, and the largest number of terrorist attempts inside the U.S. over the past year than during any other twelve-month period since September 11, 2001.<\/p>\n Indeed, a trait of this administration is to speak far more harshly of fellow Americans than it does of our enemies: Arizonans vote to enforce federal immigration laws, so the administration offers them up to the Chinese as an example of American civil-liberties violations. In our morally equivalent world, a government that would enforce laws against those who entered the country illegally is not all that different from a government that not long ago killed more than 40 million of its own.<\/p>\n If Europe is our model of soft power; if Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other autocracies are the moral equivalents of democratic Israel; if it is not radical Islam that empowered a Hasan, an Abdulmutallab, or a Shahzad; if Iran can be reasoned with to abandon its nuclear agenda; and if Russia can be flattered into acting responsibly \u2014 then the world suddenly does not work in the way it has in the past 2,500 years of civilization.<\/p>\n What is common to all these disillusionments \u2014 the intolerance and dishonesty of environmental extremism, the European Union crackup, and Barack Obama\u2019s renewal of Jimmy Carter\u2019s failed foreign policy? They all can be traced to a global Western elite that in its intellectual arrogance confused late-20th-century technological progress with a supposed evolution in human nature itself. Heaven on earth was to be ushered in by those who deemed themselves so wise and so moral that they could remake civilization in their own image \u2014 even if that sometimes meant the end of disinterested research, basic arithmetic, and simple common sense.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Masters of the Universe don’t looks so omnipotent. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the last year, many of the dreams of an emerging international elite have imploded \u2014 and this, in a new century that was to usher in a regime of global liberal ecumenism.\u00a0<\/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":[589],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-pK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12090,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dream-team-redux\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":0},"title":"\u2018Dream-Team\u2019 Redux?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There was a lot of pre-hearing hype about the Democrats\u2019 supposedly stellar academic experts, sort of analogous to the giddiness about the \u201cdream team,\u201d \u201call-stars,\u201d and \u201chunter-killer\u201d legal eagles that Robert Mueller supposedly had assembled to pick apart the Trump carrion \u2014 and they\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2264,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/barack-obama-college-administrator\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":1},"title":"Barack Obama, College Administrator","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Is the commander-in-chief really president of the University of America? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2839,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/piratical-thoughts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":2},"title":"Piratical Thoughts","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Pirates (the word peira\u00f4 is Greek for \u2018to try\u2019 or \u2018make the attempt\u2019) were common in the ancient world. They appear everywhere from Hellenistic novels to stories about Pompey\u2019s clean-up of the Cilician robbers. Some random thoughts. 1)\u00a0Hit \u2018em where they are. If we\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":11152,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-to-wage-war-and-how-to-win-a-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":3},"title":"When to Wage War, and How to Win: A Guide","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ New York Times What is \u201cgrand strategy\u201d as opposed to simple strategy? The term is mostly an academic one. It denotes encompassing all the resources that a state can focus \u2014 military, economic, political and cultural \u2014 to further its own interests in a global landscape.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Military"","block_context":{"text":"Military","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/military\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2857,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-presidential-first-stone\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":4},"title":"The Presidential First Stone","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner In this great age of atonement, in a mere two or three days the world has been reminded that (1) the U.S. has been arrogant; (2) dismissive and derisive to Europe; (3) was a slave-owning society; (4) practiced genocide against native Americans; (5) did\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":1591,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-turkish-government-global-arbiter-of-ethnic-violence\/","url_meta":{"origin":1596,"position":5},"title":"The Turkish Government: Global Arbiter of Ethnic Violence?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The virulent worldwide reaction to Israeli\u2019s handling of the Gaza flotilla has been quite instructive. The bankrupt Greeks, for example, are taking a holiday from railing at the Germans to demonstrate in solidarity with the Turkish-organized Gaza effort, which puts them on the same\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\/1596"}],"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=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}