by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n After outlining some \u201cbad\u201d trends \u2014 the conservative abandonment of budgetary restraint, the new liberal-Wall-Street nexus, the rise of therapeutic excuse-making for substandard behavior \u2014 I now offer three \u201cugly\u201d trends. These are not merely bad, but sort of creepy as well. Don\u2019t despair \u2014 I\u2019ll end with some good developments on the next posting.<\/p>\n I)\u00a0The Corruption of the Press.<\/em>\u00a0We have no media \u2014 at least as we once knew it. Somewhere in late 2007, it disappeared entirely, and became something akin to the old Pravda, or the livelier Baghdad Bob\u2019s broadcasts, or the rants of Lord Haw-Haw. (We got everything from Judith Warner about the dreams of women having sex with Obama to \u201cI felt this thrill going up my leg\u201d Chris Matthews).<\/p>\n For the short-term thrill of ensuring the coronation of Barack Obama, it gave up all hard-won standards of journalistic objectivity \u2014 so much so that it is hard to adjudicate whether the rise of the Internet alone, or the clear bias of the print media, has nearly destroyed the newspaper industry.<\/p>\n Few any longer connect with a Newsweek editorial, a Time essay, a riff from NPR, or commentary on PBS. The front pages of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0orWashington Post<\/em>\u00a0are op-eds in thin disguise. The faculty of the Columbia School of Journalism is not objective. We live in an age of affluent, rather inbred ironists who punch in at the Ministry of Truth, and the result is that about half of the population still wakes up every morning and sighs when they turn on the television, listen to the radio news, or read the newspaper, \u201cHe\u2019s lying\u201d or \u201cShe\u2019s biased\u201d. The utopian ends of social egalitarianism for the new media lords justified the tawdry means of distorting reality.<\/p>\n Now we have those in Congress talking about saving the newspapers by making them \u201cnon-profit,\u201d tax-free entities that will drop political endorsements! That rather insane notion would have three deleterious effects:<\/p>\n 1) The papers would become even harder one-sided and Left, once market forces were eliminated and the now soon to be unemployed could find federal media tenure doing, at best, what NPR does, and, at worst, having a sinecure at something public, but analogous to Air America. Oh yes,\u00a0crede mihi<\/em>, tax-free newspapers will be very biased.<\/p>\n 2) A quasi-public print media will become even more incompetent. Think a very big DMV newsletter. Or perhaps a sort of tax-free sinecure for high-paid federal employees who make more at less stress than their private counterparts. Imagine a tax-exempt, quasi-public New York Times, running telethons, praising their public service investigatory work, begging for donations as they sell cups, plates, hats, etc., with scads of G-15 employees manning the phone banks on money-raising day, a Bill Moyers or senior journalist like Marvin Kalb extolling the courage of the new Times.<\/p>\n 3) More fossilization of the economy. Not all the harness-fabricators morphed into tractor producers, but in our new wisdom all newspapers will become \u2014 what? I simply don\u2019t know. We are trying to ossify American society at about 1965 in the age of LBJ, as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid prove to be the most reactionary politicians in a half-century.<\/p>\n In the meantime, we are beginning to see that the media is about to add humiliation to its moral failure, as it grasps that once you worship a Messiah, you cannot leave the cult. Mr. Obama tolerates no dissent among the believers. The recent Obama press conference showed what happens to the shunned New York Times or Washington Post once you even consider climbing over the fence of the compound. What were these sycophants thinking as they watched Obama produce all sorts of bogus figures in assuring that tripling the deficit, then halving it will translate into lessening the present red-ink? Again, imagine a sequel to the Wizard of Oz, where everyone goes on thinking that the floating image on the screen with the smoke really is Oz, despite seeing the tiny man behind the curtain with his hands busy with the levers. The media knows what they\u2019ve become, and already have seen the flip side of their one-eye Jack \u2014 and is now trapped in culthood.<\/p>\n II)\u00a0Universities<\/em>. Uglier still is what is going on in universities. Higher education in the humanities has devolved into a sort of indoctrination\/reeducation camp, on the following apologia: the corporation, the family, the church, the military, the government are illiberal. So in our precious, rare chance to have the nation\u2019s youth for a brief four years, we the professoriate have to offset, balance, offer an antithesis to these dominant conservative cultures. So, presto, we cannot be biased since we the anointed are the corrective to the bias.<\/p>\n Science and math hold out (it\u2019s hard to suggest a postmodern Pythagorean theory would pass muster, or houses could rest on ideological constructs of phallocentric power machinations), and still ensure America\u2019s universities are world-class as the partisan, ossified humanities departments piggy-bank on the reputation established by others.<\/p>\n We sadly assume that the higher one\u2019s office in the university \u2014 full professor to dean to provost to president \u2014 the more likely one has mastered doublespeak. There are no longer real contentious issues, there is only one correct all-encompassing ideology \u2014 America\u2019s history is largely race\/class\/gender exploitation; gay marriage and abortion on demand are civil rights issues of our times; diversity and affirmative action trump disinterested examination of merit; greedy capitalists have smoked the planet for their limos and private jets; improving student \u201cprofile,\u201d not demonstration of character and competence, ensures promotion.<\/p>\n The odd thing is that those who excel at all this don\u2019t even seem happy about it. They are empty suits, proverbial \u2018hollow men\u2019 without belief who have about as much self-respect for their habitual falsity as the Wall Street guy at AIG who assures his investors his company\u2019s liability is manageable. After all, you cannot make $100,000 a year for 9 months work, with lifelong ensured employment, full benefits, and no daily audit \u2014 and seriously believe that you are perennially manning the barricades at the tip of the revolutionary spear.<\/p>\n What might yet restore the university? Transparency would be a small start. Release the test scores, grades, etc. of those who are admitted (we can do that without the individual names). Suggest, in this new age of AIG-accountability, that those institutions that take public funds release full budgetary figures, not percentages, but real detailed expenditures. Cut public funding off for students after four years. Replace tenure with five-year renewable contracts. Have exit exams for graduating seniors (half might well flunk basic benchmarks for math and fundamental English).<\/p>\n As it is now, most colleges expect alumni to give blindly \u2014 assuming that they are to remain unaware of the nature of the faculty profile, the content of the curriculum, or the activities of the universities \u2014 on the premise that any would-be donor, had he known what his alma mater was up to, would not like to subsidize classes like \u201cThe poetics of the low-rider,\u201d or faculty like Ward Churchill (most colleges have a few), or $50,000 and up paid out for a 45-minute \u201cI hate Bush\u201d rant by Michael Moore at the student union, or 139-5 faculty senate votes (like Saddam\u2019s plebiscites) on extraneous issues like gay marriage. Yes, there is humor in higher education. Nothing is weirder to see a provost head-nod among a wacked-out faculty meeting, then put on a suit and rush off to a five-star restaurant to reassure an aging capitalist that the university is a steward of American values. It reminds me of Petronius\u2019s description of Croton.<\/p>\n III)\u00a0Europeanization.<\/em>\u00a0I don\u2019t know quite what the allure of Europe is for the American Left. But it seems to be that more of us will soon all be working for the government, habitually striking, hunting out that rare capitalist in hiding for a shake-down, and bitching over our weary 35 hr. work week.<\/p>\n Yet without hardship, challenge, and hope, the individual dies daily. Once the government ensures that all your needs will be taken care of, from your teeth and joints to job and retirement, ennui sets in, and with it the cargo we see in Europe \u2014 pacifism, cynicism, the loss of transcendence marked by atheism and childlessness, and worry about what others have rather than what you aspire to.<\/p>\n A Dutch friend once asked me why we Americans work 2-3 jobs. I replied to leave something better for our children than what we inherited. He answered, \u201cBut why? They will be taken care of by the state.\u201d But if one does not have a vision of building something big, a thing that will last, endure, or at least appreciating such audacity in others, then we will be sentenced to live crummy, little lives of punching in at the government clock, perennially worried that someone else has something marginally better in our view than what we were allotted. It\u2019s like running a race in which the goal is that all the runners cross the finish line at the same time, corner-eyes fixed on each other, scared to death that some trouble-maker might bolt out ahead.<\/p>\n So strange (or not so strange, after all?) that the liberal impulse in postwar Europe led to millions living in nearly identical houses and apartments, driving the same sort of cars, thinking about the same (their parties are like the feuds and squabbles among the Democratic Party here at home), and exuding the identical teen-age petulance when events belie the gospel.<\/p>\n We can see what Europeanization leads to: you worship at the altar of the goddess Pax, but hate the United States for still having a military that saves postmodern you from premodern others. You praise diversity, but are terrified of unassimilated Middle East Muslims thriving in your midst, who unlike you, really do believe in something and it\u2019s not Western liberalism. You praise openness and tolerance, but demonize anyone who questions orthodoxy, whether it be global warming or the efficacy of state redistribution. You rant about class and privilege, but live private lives of secret values predicated on status, aristocratic pedigree, and rank.<\/p>\n Europeanization is so at odds with human nature that it bifurcates it \u2014 a false public face, a cynical private one. (I used to love living in Greece, going to the beach in the summer as a student and seeing all these socialist public power, phone, water, bank, etc., vans parked as their left-wing employees \u201cgot away\u201d for some downtime around 2 PM \u2014 or being told I could hire a public worker after hours for cash for a phone installation rather than wait 9 months on \u201cthe list\u201d.) Marxist at the day-job, conniving entrepreneur in the night hours.<\/p>\n It seems that in just 60 days we are heading that way \u2014 fast. These gargantuan deficits will require the most insidious taxes (on everything, as in the age of Augustus) we have yet witnessed, to make up the soon to be $20 trillion national debt. Universal health care, college for everyone, government jobs will mean a vast array of technocrati and less-skilled overseers and guardians. Less defense, higher taxes, more social spending, bigger government will expand the public sector to such a degree that to dismantle it will result in the sort of European mass protests and strikes we see daily in Greece or France when a poor fool like Sarkozy thinks it could be 1950 again, and wants to head-off pension insolvency, or bring back a 40 hour work week to the subway drivers.<\/p>\n The one positive? Have any of you met a disenchanted European who emigrated to the States, or lives a life of near isolation in Europe? They are almost hyper-American in their free market and democratic zeal. So full of anger at what their nation under the E.U. has become, they appear nearly fanatical in their allegiance to the free market, merit, free-thinking, liberty, and Western traditions. I have met dozens and they are the most remarkably competent individuals that I have come across in my lifetime \u2014 sort of the last few with unsnatched bodies dodging the zombies of Europe. I only wish we would offer instant citizenship status for these highly educated, highly trained, highly motivated but disconnected Europeans. We could lure 20 million in one fell swoop if we offered fast-track legal American citizenship \u2014 and reap the technological and entrepreneurial dividends for a half century to come.<\/p>\n Next posting. The good \u2014 and there are lots of good developments. So don\u2019t despair.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media After outlining some \u201cbad\u201d trends \u2014 the conservative abandonment of budgetary restraint, the new liberal-Wall-Street nexus, the rise of therapeutic excuse-making for substandard behavior \u2014 I now offer three \u201cugly\u201d trends.<\/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":[723],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Kk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2129,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/where-has-the-thrill-gone\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":0},"title":"Where Has the Thrill Gone?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Harder They Fall? Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? And who releases touchy news \u2014 whether increased unemployment or trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1937,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-shalit-defining-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":1},"title":"The Shalit Defining Moment","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Palestinians have just shown the entire world their collective values \u2014 and the result is creepy beyond belief. Every once in a while a single incident crystallizes almost everything \u2014 all the cry-of-the-heart moral equivalence, all the special pleading, all the revisionism, all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Palestine"","block_context":{"text":"Palestine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/palestine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":2},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3059,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/alligators-moats-and-other-such-nonsense\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":3},"title":"Alligators, Moats and Other Such Nonsense","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama gave what was billed as an important speech on immigration last week near the border in El Paso, Texas. Unfortunately, it was one of the most demagogic moments in recent presidential history. Nearly everything Obama said was either factually incorrect or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3104,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fantasies-present-and-future\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":4},"title":"Fantasies, Present and Future","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Paradoxical President The Obama administration has offered a number of recent fantasies. Here are a few examples. a) Despite owning the presidency, the House and a filibuster-proof Senate between 2009-10, the president could not introduce an immigration bill, in the manner he rammed through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-uncool-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":2872,"position":5},"title":"The Uncool President","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In 2008, Barack \"No Drama\" Obama was the coolest presidential candidate America had ever seen \u2014 young, hip, Ivy League, mellifluous and black, with a melodic and exotic name. 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