{"id":3293,"date":"2008-08-22T22:51:41","date_gmt":"2008-08-22T22:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=3293"},"modified":"2013-03-25T22:55:01","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T22:55:01","slug":"angry-reader-germany-is-better-vdh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-germany-is-better-vdh\/","title":{"rendered":"Angry Reader: Germany is Better, VDH!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Dear Julian,<\/p>\n

<\/b>I reply to your letter in bold print after each paragraph. VDH<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Dear Mr. Hanson,<\/p>\n

<\/b>After reading your article “Reflection Day” I can only come to two conclusions about you and neither of them are very flattering. I feel you are either sadly brainwashed in the red, white and blue freedom and wealth myth or you are one of the classic brainwashers who perpetuate that myth.
\nVDH: It\u2019s a reflection on your powers of perception that you cannot even determine whether one is an active perpetrator or a passive victim.<\/strong>
\nI say that from the perspective of being an ex-patriot. Born and raised in the U.S., I now live in Germany and must say that freedom and wealth for the average person here are much stronger than anything I have ever experienced in the U.S. and I have lived in the North, South, East and West there.<\/p>\n

VDH: I have been to Germany a number of times, and admire the country, but putting aside the matter that the U.S. for over sixty years has protected Germany and provided for its defense, we apparently saw a different country, at least in terms of cars, consumer goods, size of houses, the price of food and gas, and other barometers of the standard of living.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A word of warning, I don\u2019t think you wish to make this comparison apply to the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century, not with 1914-18 and 1939-45. I\u2019ll pass on the Berlin airlift and six decades of NATO. I grew up with stories of cousins, and uncles who went over to Europe to save millions from Germans, including my grandfather who was gassed in 1918 in the Argonne. I don\u2019t recall any German coming over here to protect Canadian democracy from American Nazism. I\u2019ll take a Pershing, Ike, or Petraeus any day over Hindenburg, Sepp Dietrich, or Jaschka Fischer.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Take freedom, you are either free from something or free to do something. Consider healthcare, most probably you saw the film\u00a0Sicko<\/i>. Well, here we are free to live our lives without the fear and worry of how to pay our health bills no matter how high they might be. In the U.S. you have the illusion of heathcare, once you really get sick you’ll see how the insurance companies will toss you under the bus. And then think about all those automobile workers from the big three who got pink slips in the last 2 years and were forced to move on to lower paying jobs and had to lose their insurance. How many of them now have preexisting conditions and will consequently never get insurance again? No matter, right? The myth must be perpetuated at all costs.<\/p>\n

<\/b>VDH: Case closed: anyone who evokes\u00a0Sicko<\/i>\u00a0is, well, sort of sick. U.S. companies pay more for their employees healthcare than anywhere else in the world. I have been hospitalized abroad both in Europe and in the Middle East. I can assure you that any sane person would prefer U.S. healthcare. Getting something inferior \u201cfor free\u201d through high taxation is no bargain.
\n<\/strong>
\nAs for employment here, how could the slave master U.S. system ever hope to compare with what our employees take for granted here. First, they mostly get better paid, then, they have much more job security, and, of course, all of them get the luxury of 6 weeks paid vacation annually. Believe me, being “free” to pay your rent or mortgage, and also being financially free to just fly away somewhere for a vacation is a reality here and mostly a pipe dream in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Granted, working for Burger King is a poor example of a gratifying job, but let’s compare working for this company in both countries. In the U.S. a beginning Burger King employee earns minimum wage and gets 2 weeks vacation per year with no healthcare benefits. The same Burger King employee here earns 6 Euros per hour (a terribly low pay but still at least $2.00 more per hour than in the U.S.). He also is guaranteed full health insurance with half paid by his employer.<\/p>\n

Finally, he gets almost 6 weeks paid vacation by law. How can you compare? Which employee is better off? Which employee is freer?<\/p>\n

VDH: Most here who work at Burger King are in entry level jobs, and when they buy a Burger King Burger it is far cheaper, as are almost all their consumer goods. Try comparing prices at Walmart here and a German Store or filling up your car. If you look at German labor laws, taxation, and government entitlements, I think you will understand why real economic growth and employment rates have been stronger in the U.S. the last two decades.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only thing I can actually point to in the U.S. where there is more “freedom” is in your insane gun laws. Just drop your money down, load the bullets and voila you’re a MAN who supposedly can protect his family. Except all those sickos out there are also armed, so when your kids or wife are out about town they are basically at the mercy of all those gun-toting sickos. Here, I live without the fear of gunners. Yet in the U.S. that is part of your urban experience and now based on the mass murders that seem to be always taking place in the rural areas there, I guess there’s no place left to move to except Canada to be certain to avoid being a gun violence victim.<\/p>\n

VDH: Perhaps had you had constitutional rights to own private guns, you might not have ended up with either Hitlet and Co., or Stalin in the East. It\u2019s ironic to suggest that a country that gave the world Marx, Prussian militarism, Hitlerian Nazism, and European socialism would compare favorably on matters of freedom with the world\u2019s current oldest democracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few comments to your article directly:<\/p>\n

1) immigration in Germany is easily as strong as in the U.S. Immigration in Britain and France is also very high.<\/p>\n

VDH: The U.S. takes in more immigrants, legal and illegal, than any other country in the world \u2014 largely because we are the most favored destination. From my visits to Germany, compared with what I see in the U.S., I see in your adopted fatherland far more racial separatism, unassimilated minorities, and problems with radical Islam than here at home. I\u2019ll pass on Germany\u2019s demographic crisis.<\/strong>
\n2) Your political system is stable indeed. From the perspective of our multi-party sharing of power system,\u00a0<\/b>your “one” party (democrats and republicans both belonging either slightly left or right of a frighteningly red neck center)) dictatorship looks like living in the former Communist Russia. Take the rise of our green party, or the current rise of the “Die Linke” party as examples of real freedom. We actually have a choice and actually get proportional representation.<\/p>\n

VDH: I suggest that the ACLU would have a field day in Germany, if it examined the number of video cams, government control of the media and its reception, and the far weaker constitutional protections for the accused. I wouldn\u2019t evoke \u201ccommunist Russia,\u201d given that a third of Germany was communist Russia\u2019s ally, and West Germany was free only to the extent the U.S. military was willing to protect it from Russian aggression.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of Germany\u2019s current anger at the U.S., as your letter seems to reflect, is itself a reflection of the end of the cold war, when American guarantees were seen as no longer vital. If you are worried about morality, I suggest you examine German appeasement of current Russian aggression, best typified by your former Chancellor Schroeder\u2019s employment of Russia\u2019s Gazprom, and the political shilling he does on behalf of Putin.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>3) Your merit system in education is a farce. There, starting in the 1st grade, rich kids go to good schools and poor kids go to poor schools based on local taxation. Then, when you get to the university the division becomes even greater. Except for the token black or Latino kid from the ghetto or the token genius, the best schools are pretty much reserved for the upper classes. Here we have a true merit system where sports ability, wealth and who your parents are will play no part in your getting into any university.<\/p>\n

VDH: As someone who taught 20 years in a public university, I don\u2019t know what \u201ctoken\u201d means, so-called \u201cwhites\u201d are minorities in many California colleges, Asians are the largest group of students at UC Berkeley. Germany doesn\u2019t seem to have many black, Arab, or Asian secretaries of state, national security advisors \u2014 or chancellors, and won\u2019t. We don\u2019t have anything like your skin-head, neo-Nazi youth movements.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Race in the U.S. is an advantage in universities, whether in hiring or admissions. The ability to place minority students into Ph.D. programs, law or medical schools, or MBA programs, in my experience, was far easier than was the case with white males. Anyone who does not know that, knows essentially nothing about American higher education. In most surveys, 15-18 of the top 20 world universities are American, their campuses are as diverse as Germany\u2019s are lily white. I suggest you look at the two countries respective Olympic teams for tutelage on this question.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>In Germany, the most any student will pay for “tuition” is 500 Euros a semester. My son studies medicine and pays the same! That’s a real merit system and freedom from debt to boot!<\/p>\n

VDH: There is no such thing as free anything. What is not paid for by tuition, is paid for by higher taxation, as is true in Germany. Furthermore, the vast majority of American students simply do not pay the full price of their educations, which are often discounted in the case of public universities, or subsidized by grants, fellowships, and student loans.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>4) A note on all that “U.S. wealth” you were bragging about. I guess you…uh…kind of forgot about the millions and millions of poor and worse yet the homeless who dig around in your trash cans at night.<\/p>\n

<\/b>VDH: In all honesty, I don\u2019t see the contrasts. I live in one of the poorer areas of the U.S., southern Fresno County, at ground zero of illegal immigration. And what is striking is the number of people from Mexico, who in a mere decade have cars, good housing, jobs, and in many cases, government entitlements and subsidies \u2014 and apparently a lot of disposable cash to send home, if the $50 billion a year sent as remittances from illegal aliens to Mexico and Latin America are any indication.<\/p>\n

After being panhandled daily in Brussels this summer, in the past nearly robbed by assailants in Naples (amid the garbage), and lost in the Arab Quarter outside Paris, I don\u2019t think you really want to go there.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>5) Yeah, 1979 was indeed a terrible year. The Russians\u00a0were<\/b>\u00a0invading Afghanistan and\u00a0now you are invading the very same country.<\/b>\u00a0Are you really so blind sir?<\/p>\n

<\/b>VDH: Perhaps, but I can at least distinguish a Stalinist power invading without provocation a neighbor to impose communism \u2014 from a democracy retaliating against an al Qaeda attack \u2014 based in Afghanistan and aided by the Taliban \u2014 that killed 3000 of its own, and staying on to spend billions to foster democracy and economic development. (Remember, the Marshall Plan and German Recovery? Do you really think, given German history from 1870 to 1945, that Germany would either be a democracy today or its neighbors safe from it without American postwar reconstruction?)
\n<\/strong>
\nI could go on in much more detail, but suffice it to say, I have never met an American who wasn’t either brainwashed or a brainwasher. The only exceptions are the numerous fellow countrymen I have meet who live somewhere overseas of their own choosing. Only they seem to have been able to rip off the cultural shackles and American blinders and are able to see their country in some sort of realistic way.<\/p>\n

VDH: Thank God, you are no longer here in America, and can at last enjoy the socialism you so clearly appreciate. \u00a0I suppose when Iran sends one of its missiles your way, or an ascendant Russia moves ever closer, or you are hit by terrorists originating from the Middle East, your adopted country will be clearly able to take care of itself. I suggest you compare German experience in Afghanistan for guidance on all this.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>So which is it?\u00a0 Are you brainwashed or a brainwasher?<\/p>\n

VDH: Neither, just an appreciative rather than ashamed American. But I am gladdened that you matched word with deed and at least left America, and therefore made both of us happier.
\n<\/strong>
\nRegards,<\/p>\n

Julian<\/p>\n

P.S. I suggest you reread\u00a01984<\/i>\u00a0once again. Don’t you see that you are a classic example of O’brien in that novel. So, I don’t want to keep you any longer, I’m sure you have a lot to do in the “Ministry of Love!”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a92008 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Private Papers Dear Julian, I reply to your letter in bold print after each paragraph. VDH<\/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":[740,6],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-R7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9889,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9889-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3293,"position":0},"title":"02\/22\/17 From an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 22, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"02\/22\/17 From an Angry Reader: VDH, Read your piece LA Times this a.m., then another in National Review. Big, sweeping rhetorical claims and attendant slamming- mostly about progressives trajectory. Your type of policy wonk rap is common and toothless. Evidence specific? Not. Easy to see why you're just a fellow.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9627,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9627\/","url_meta":{"origin":3293,"position":1},"title":"From an Angry Reader: She\u2026","author":"Megan Ring","date":"November 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: She WON the popular vote!!!!! Victor Davis Hanson's Reply: Dear Angry Reader Suzanne Williams, I got your point without the capital letters and the five exclamation marks. As a general rule the resort to exclamation is a reflection of an absence of argument. Let words speak\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9561,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9561\/","url_meta":{"origin":3293,"position":2},"title":"Comment from an Angry Reader:\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Comment from an Angry Reader: You\u2019re a civil guy, and it is appreciated. It would be a waste of time, however, for us to engage in colloquy. I can only hope that you are not spared the results of your short-sightedness, and cheerleading for Donald Trump\u2014the word is apt, despite\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10451,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10451-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3293,"position":3},"title":"From An Angry Reader: Often,\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Often, as in debates with flat Earth proponents, global warming denier, the mentally ill, or the Vatican persecution of Galileo, it is quite simply ludicrous to champion \u201cfair and balanced\u201d coverage, validating both sides\u2019 integrity. What one needs is a fire alarm. 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HAS HE ONCE\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5374,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-future-with-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":3293,"position":5},"title":"The Future with Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Swiss newspaper\u00a0Junge Freiheit\u00a0interviews VDH Private Papers JF: Professor Hanson, you criticize U.S. immigration policy in your recent bookMexifornia. What is it that bothers you about the development at the Southern border? 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