by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Can\u2019t We All Just Get Along?<\/strong><\/p>\n Make no mistake about it, this is a dishonest age. That our daily lies are purportedly advanced in the cause of the common good, nevertheless do not make them any less lies.<\/p>\n Beware of sudden and apparently reasonable \u201ccalls for civility.\u201d That pathetic mantra is usually voiced by a liberal administration and its supporters when criticism mounts that they are taking the country too far to the Left \u2014 like the Clinton implosion in 1993 or Obama today. I fear \u201ccivility\u201d does not mean one should not write novels or produce movies contemplating murdering George Bush \u2014 that\u2019s sort of an understandable agitprop art. \u201cCivility\u201d does not mean the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/em>should not give discounts to run ads in wartime like \u201cGeneral Betray Us.\u201d That\u2019s needed dissidence. Civility does not suggest that a Sen. Durbin, or Sen. Kerry, or Sen. Kennedy not use inflammatory language that compares our own troops or personnel to terrorists, Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalinists, or Saddam Hussein\u2019s torturers; that most certainly is not uncivil. And it was certainly not impolite for Rep. Stark to call President Bush a \u201cliar.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCivility\u201d does not mean that we should not spew hate at anti-war protests; that\u2019s grassroots popular protest. It doesn\u2019t mean that we should not employ Nazi and fascistic labels to tar the President of the United States like John Glenn or Al Gore or Robert Byrd did. \u201cCivility\u201d does not mean that a shrill Hillary Clinton should not scream that the Bush administration is trying to silence critics, or suggest that the commanding general of an entire theater was lying to Congress in ways that require a \u201csuspension of disbelief.\u201d That\u2019s needed pushback.<\/p>\n O Ye of Little Memory!<\/strong><\/p>\n Do we recall any American shock when the Guardian published Charles Brooker\u2019s lament \u2014 \u201cJohn Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. \u2014 where are you now that we need you?\u201d And I don\u2019t recall anyone felt that language was getting too heated when Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, fumed, \u201cI hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.\u201d And was it not\u00a0The New Republic<\/em>\u00a0that highlighted Jonathan Chait\u2019s infamous \u201cWhy I Hate George W. Bush\u201d article? Of course, there was that thoroughly civil New York play, \u201cI\u2019m Gonna Kill the President.\u201d<\/p>\n So, please, spare us the sanctimonious rot about being shocked by conservative metaphors like \u201clock and load\u201d or \u201ctargeting\u201d vulnerable Democratic districts. Like it or not, \u201ccivility\u201d has nothing to do with real civility that is bipartisan in fashion and necessary for tolerance in a politically diverse culture. It simply means that conservatives must be stopped in their Neanderthal opposition to an enlightened agenda by any means necessary \u2014 by being uncivil to them when conservatives are in power, and demanding they not do the same when liberals run things. All political parties wish it both ways; but in the present age, the media and a cultural elite really have convinced themselves that speaking out against Barack Obama is a sort of heresy while smearing the Bush \u201cregime\u201d was de rigueur.<\/p>\n Diversity? Not.<\/strong><\/p>\n Beware of the ubiquitous \u201cdiversity.\u201d Diversity does not mean needed difference, as in a community of religiously diverse people \u2014 for example, a Harvard with plentiful booths in the free speech area promoting Mormonism, or ROTC, or support for Israel, or anti-abortion. \u201cDiversity\u201d does not mean 51-49 % votes in the faculty Senate over condemning or supporting the Iraq War of 2003.<\/p>\n \u201cDiversity\u201d does not equate to a faculty department equally divided among Marxists, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. No, sadly \u201cdiversity\u201d is a second-generation word that was by needs reinvented to supplant the Orwellian \u201caffirmative action.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 1980s, American elite culture grasped that the old superstructure of racial preference was both too cumbersome and too narrow all at once: Too cumbersome in the sense that too many were asking uncomfortable questions like, \u201cWhy are we giving preference in hiring or admission to a Spanish aristocrat named Jos\u00e9 Lopes, as if he were a supposedly underprivileged Mexican-American who suffers from a legacy of racism?\u201d or \u201cWhy is someone in the upper-middle class who is half African-American given preference, and not a poor darker Mohinder Singh from the Punjab who in theory would encounter as much or more discrimination?\u201d or \u201cWhy are all these cynical white-looking kids claiming their grandmothers were one-eighth Cherokee?\u201d<\/p>\n And yet affirmatives action was also all too narrow in the sense that should not upper-class women, and wealthy gays or hyper-achieving, wealthy Asians, likewise, be entitled to help?<\/p>\n In answer to both the contradictions of racial preferences and its narrowness, \u201cdiversity\u201d came onto the scene. To the degree that anyone could establish that they were not completely white, male, Christian and heterosexual, they were \u201cdiverse\u201d members of the community and could perhaps find some advantage or boost in the fierce competition for jobs and influence and money. No one could define diversity, but miraculously all seem to recognize it when they saw it.<\/p>\n The real diversity \u2014 that of differences in thinking and independence of opinion \u2014 was hardly welcome, and any sort of call for such genuine diversity of thought was seen as hostile and sometimes had to be dubbed \u201creactionary,\u201d \u201cracist,\u201d \u201chomophobic,\u201d \u201csexist,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n So we ended up with \u201cdiversity\u201d meaning \u201cuniversity\u201d \u2014 a synonym for monolithic intolerance, for everyone worshiping \u201cdiversity\u201d without exception. If that seems harsh, it is also the way things are.<\/p>\n Wind and Solar and Millions of Green Jobs!<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cGreen Power\u201d and \u201cwind and solar\u201d oddly do not mean that we are going to power our homes and cars with entirely new fuels, at least not in our lifetimes.<\/p>\n Instead that entire green lexicon assures us that we can feel good about ourselves by symbolic gestures, like subsidizing a noble wind farm or putting up an impressive solar panel through government subsidies that mask the current non-competitiveness of such alternate power. The truth is that 21st-century internal combustion engines are revolutionary compared with their fossilized predecessors just three decades ago. Like it or not, such engines \u2014 preferably in the near future burning natural gas that is becoming more, not less retrievable, and in combination with batteries or biofuel blends \u2014 will continue to power our cars. Semi-trucks, earth-moving equipment, and tractors are not going to become electrically powered any time soon.<\/p>\n Nuclear power, when all the acrimony dies down, will be reluctantly seen as the real green power. Again, for now all the Gore-related vocabulary will serve two main purposes: to make those who master and manipulate it quite rich, and the rest of us feel very good about ourselves \u2014 all the while as some sort of carbon-based fuel helps to power our cars, or a nuclear fuel powers our homes and charges car batteries, allowing us energy independence and a reduction in pollution. As we see with the current unprecedented shut-down of all air travel in Europe, nature in a second, not mankind in years, determines what we puny humans will and will not do.<\/p>\n Stimulus Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n Recoil from the word \u201cstimulus\u201d \u2014 whether used by a Republican or Democratic administration. There is no such thing as an easy, fuzzy notion of instant money creating economic growth. Instead it is a euphemism not for borrowing, but for massive borrowing and unsustainable debt. Indeed, note that we do not even use words like \u201cborrowing\u201d or \u201cdebt,\u201d but instead prefer \u201cdeficit\u201d (e.g., It\u2019s only a year-to-year thing) and \u201cstimulus\u201d (e.g., spending what we don\u2019t have somehow makes us richer in the future).<\/p>\n \u201cStimulus\u201d is thus a lie as it is used, or at best a half-truth.<\/p>\n The truth \u2014 even if right now we were to go ahead with a return to the Clinton tax tables, raise the caps on income subject to Social Security taxes, have the states keep increasing their sales and income taxes, and apply new Obama surcharges on healthcare \u2014 is that we are still going broke.<\/p>\n Do the math: $12 trillion is a lot of debt ($40,000 for each of us, $200,000 for a family of five starting out in the world \u2014 like a second home mortgage in other words). Twenty trillion dollars in just eight more years is doom (like two family vacation homes to pay for without the vacation homes to vacation in).<\/p>\n We are lied to about this almost every day: the government is going to have to cut federal spending in massive amounts, unless we choose to impose a nightmarish VAT tax, and watch thousands of new unionized federal employees spend trillions of hours deciding which item is politically incorrect enough to be VATed.<\/p>\n So when I hear \u201cstimulus,\u201d or \u201cjobs bill,\u201d I conclude that when the interest rates return to normal soon, we are going to take on Medicare, Social Security, defense, and almost everything else in the federal budget. Euphemism will perhaps again help some. Maybe we can invent new words like \u201cfurlough,\u201d as in California where it really means, \u201cSince we can\u2019t touch your union contracted salary, you simply won\u2019t work a day a month and we won\u2019t pay you either.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuts to Medicare can be \u201cadjustments.\u201d Reductions in Social Security can be \u201crefinements.\u201d \u201cDownsizing\u201d means getting rid of three carrier groups. \u201cForward looking\u201d will be ending NASA as we knew it. As solace, at least our politicians will feel that the lying will be of the Platonic noble sort, inasmuch as we will be creating falsity to lower rather than raise spending, albeit brought on by the law of physics rather than our wise intentions.<\/p>\n Illegal What?<\/strong><\/p>\n Almost everything said in association with \u201cillegal immigration\u201d is false. No, the now stalled fence is not a futile symbol of apartheid; in places where it is finished, it has discouraged illegal entry and reminded us that all counties have rights of autonomy.<\/p>\n Do not believe that \u201cillegal alien\u201d is necessarily a hurtful or inexact term. Everyone who crosses the border without proper authorization is both doing something \u201cillegal\u201d (not a mere \u201cinfraction\u201d), and is an alien (not a U.S. citizen; \u201calien\u201d = \u201cnot of this place\u201d.) When I lived in Greece in the 1970s, I was an alien; had I overstayed my visa, or accepted work without proper documentation, I would have been an illegal alien.<\/p>\n \u201cAnti-immigrant\u201d is also a lie peddled in service to open borders \u2014 a lie by virtue that it deliberately blends \u201cimmigrant\u201d with \u201cillegal immigrant\u201d to suggest opposition to all legal immigration. (In fact, Americans quite clearly support legal immigration.) It\u2019s a lie by virtue that it personalizes opposition to particular \u201cimmigrants\u201d rather than the concept of \u201cillegal immigration.\u201d And it\u2019s a lie by its emphasis on \u201canti,\u201d since opponents of open borders are not \u201canti\u201d anything; they are pro-law and pro-enforcement of existing statutes. Those who break the law or advocate undermining existing legislation are clearly \u201canti\u201d a lot.<\/p>\n Avoid blanket generalizations that all illegal aliens are either criminals or all hard-working wonderful people, just trying to get ahead. Instead, simply imagine what you would do if you lived in dire poverty under a corrupt, racist system and survival was a mere 6 hours a way to the north \u2014 and factor in all the psychological, emotional, and intellectual rationalizations that you would embrace to justify your illegal entry and efforts to feed you or your family, either through minimum wage steady employment, off the books cash for ad hoc labor, or government entitlement, or all three.<\/p>\n To the degree we are getting audacious bold people willing to take risks to come to America, we are also perhaps getting people who have little problem breaking the law with the acknowledgment that they will have to keep breaking law for years after arrival. I\u2019ll let you decide which plus does or does not make up for which minus in that illegal immigration equation.<\/p>\n To the degree illegal aliens are poor in comparison, not with their comrades back home, but with communities in their new country, is to the degree anyone would be so, who does not know the language, does not have legal sanction and does not have a high school diploma. Racism plays little, if any, role. To remedy all three as quickly and painlessly as possible, one would of course support making speaking English optional, making being legal superfluous, and making diplomas mere certificates rather than proof of rigorous years of education.<\/p>\n To the degree one is poor, is to the degree all unskilled laborers are in a terrible recession, and to the degree any immigrants would be, who, on limited wages, in aggregate send back a collective $25 billion home in remittances.<\/p>\n So what is illegal immigration? For most, it is a desperate attempt by the poor of Latin America to find a better life in America, made all the more attractive because postmodern America has no confidence in its institutions and thus asks little of its immigrants in accepting our own culture.<\/p>\n And for Us, the Hosts?<\/strong><\/p>\n For the corporation it is a way to profit, masked in libertarian apologetics, of letting the market adjudicate labor costs without government interference.<\/p>\n For the racial tribalist it is payback for the Mexican War of two centuries prior.<\/p>\n For the liberal machine, it is an instant way through serial amnesty to hook a block constituency and redraw the electoral map of the American Southwest.<\/p>\n For the postmodernist, it is a way to accelerate the end of the old melting pot and to substitute a salad bowl of constantly competing ethnic and tribal interests that can be united under elite liberal guidance to thwart the entrenched interests of supposedly corporate and nativist-run America.<\/p>\n The problem I think right now for the liberal cause is not just the Tea Parties. Rather, tens of millions of Americans have tuned out the sermons, and no longer believe much of what they are told. They clearly do not care for the moral lectures that they are subjected to. Instead, they suspect that their self-appointed moral censors are either self-interested or disingenuous \u2014 or worse still.<\/p>\n So how odd: we live in an age of untruth in which millions privately shrug and nod at the daily lies of our elites.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Can\u2019t We All Just Get Along? Make no mistake about it, this is a dishonest age. That our daily lies are purportedly advanced in the cause of the common good, nevertheless do not make them any less lies.<\/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":[590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-rb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4075,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/civility-for-thee\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":0},"title":"Civility for Thee","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online An evil psychopath, Jared Lee Loughner \u2014 a man with no discernible ideology or political affiliation, and declared by those who know him to be both unhinged and unacquainted with contemporary media \u2014 shot a US congresswoman, murdered a federal judge, and killed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-new-civility\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":1},"title":"Obama and the New Civility","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The heated rhetoric of the Bush years gone. A new age has dawned. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse \u2014 another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/spare-us-the-sermons-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":2},"title":"Spare Us the Sermons, Mr. President","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services During the recent debt crisis, President Obama talked about the need for bipartisan compromise and, as in the past, urged civility. Giving ground and engaging in polite discourse, of course, can be noble aims. But, like most one-eyed-jack politicians, Obama has rarely embraced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3834,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/goodbye-to-all-that-2004-2007\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":3},"title":"Goodbye to All That: 2004-2007","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Days of Rage In times to come, the period between the failed campaign of John Kerry and the Democratic control of the Congress, coupled with the beginning of the successful surge, should be known as \u201cThe Insane Years.\u201d This was the era in which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1011,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-labels-no-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":4},"title":"“No Labels,” No Democracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com Earlier this month, Republican David Frum and Democrat William A. Galston published a\u00a0manifesto\u00a0in the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0announcing the birth of a new political movement, No Labels, the first meeting of which was December 13. The \u201chyper-polarization of our politics,\u201d Frum and Galston write, \u201cthwarts an adult conversation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11389,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/res-ipsa-loquitur\/","url_meta":{"origin":1685,"position":5},"title":"Res Ipsa Loquitur","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Donald Trump in his Twitter storms apparently has no idea that he is winning. The Brett Kavanaugh opening hearing turned into a progressive circus, with shouting would-be Democratic presidential candidates vying with screaming protesters to see who could be the most obnoxious. Ossified senior\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685"}],"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=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1686,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}