by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.<\/p>\n Students of history are sickened when they read of the long-ago, gruesome practice of beheading. How brutal were those societies that chopped off the heads of Cicero, Sir Thomas More and Marie Antoinette. And how lucky we thought we were to have evolved from such elemental barbarity.<\/p>\n Twenty-four hundred years ago, Socrates was executed for unpopular speech. The 18th-century European Enlightenment gave people freedom to express views formerly censored by clerics and the state. Just imagine what life was like once upon a time when no one could write music, compose fiction or paint without court or church approval?<\/p>\n Over 400 years before the birth of Christ, ancient Greek literary characters, from Lysistrata to Antigone, reflected the struggle for sexual equality. The subsequent notion that women could vote, divorce, dress or marry as they pleased was a millennia-long struggle.<\/p>\n It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past.<\/p>\n Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity \u2014 and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims’ heads on poles for public display, would’ve been thrilled by such a gruesome show.<\/p>\n Who would have thought centuries after the Enlightenment that sophisticated Europeans \u2014 in fear of radical Islamists \u2014 would be afraid to write a novel, put on an opera, draw a cartoon, film a documentary or have their pope discuss comparative theology?<\/p>\n T<\/span>he astonishing fact is not just that millions of women worldwide in 2006 are still veiled from head-to-toe, trapped in arranged marriages, subject to polygamy, honor killings and forced circumcision, or are without the right to vote or appear alone in public. What is more baffling is that in the West, liberal Europeans are often wary of protecting female citizens from the excesses of Sharia law \u2014 sometimes even fearful of asking women to unveil their faces for purposes of simple identification and official conversation.<\/p>\n Who these days is shocked that Israel is hated by Arab nations and threatened with annihilation by radical Iran? Instead, the surprise is that even in places like Paris or Seattle, Jews are singled out and killed for the apparent crime of being Jewish.<\/p>\n Since Sept. 11, the West has fought enemies who are determined to bring back the nightmarish world that we thought was long past. And there are lessons Westerners can learn from radical Islamists’ ghastly efforts.<\/p>\n First, the Western liberal tradition is fragile and can still disappear. Just because we have sophisticated cell phones, CAT scanners and jets does not ensure that we are permanently civilized or safe. Technology used by the civilized for positive purposes can easily be manipulated by barbarians for destruction.<\/p>\n Second, the Enlightenment is not always lost on the battlefield. It can be surrendered through either fear or indifference as well. Westerners fearful of terrorist reprisals themselves shut down a production of a Mozart opera in Berlin deemed offensive to Muslims. Few came to the aid of a Salman Rushdie or Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh when their unpopular expression earned death threats from Islamists. Van Gogh, of course, was ultimately killed.<\/p>\n The Goths and Vandals did not sack Rome solely through the power of their hordes; they also relied on the paralysis of Roman elites who no longer knew what it was to be Roman \u2014 much less whether it was any better than the alternative.<\/p>\n Third, civilization is forfeited with a whimper, not a bang. Insidiously, we have allowed radical Islamists to redefine the primordial into the not-so-bad. Perhaps women in head-to-toe burkas in Europe prefer them? Maybe that crass German opera was just too over the top after all? Aren’t both parties equally to blame in the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan wars?<\/p>\n To grasp the flavor of our own Civil War, impersonators now don period dress and reconstruct the battles of Shiloh or Gettysburg. But we need not show such historical reenactment of the Dark Ages. You see, they are back with us \u2014 live almost daily from the Middle East.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.<\/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":[766],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-YO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13473,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-regressive-dark-ages\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":0},"title":"A New Regressive Dark Ages","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 31, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Image by kai Stachowiak, Public Domain Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data.\u00a0 In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-new-regressive-dark-ages\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/medievalskullbooks.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3784,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/do-we-have-a-strategy-in-the-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":1},"title":"Do We Have a Strategy in the War?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, and a multifaceted one, at that. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It is often said that the United States has neither a long-term strategy in this larger war against terror nor an immediate one in Iraq. Both are unfair charges, since we seem to have both. Against\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2006"","block_context":{"text":"October 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/october-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1002,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-face-of-muhammad\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":2},"title":"The Face of Muhammad","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly Review of\u00a0Images of Muhammad: Narratives of the Prophet in Islam across the Centuries\u00a0by Tarif Khalidi (New York: Doubleday, 2009. Pp. 327). True to its title, this study by a professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut chronicles the myriad images of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4541,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-real-humanists-revolution-from-afghanistan-to-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":3},"title":"The Real Humanists: Revolution from Afghanistan to Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In September and early October 2001 we were warned that an invasion of Afghanistan was impossible \u2014 peaks too high, winter and Ramadan on the way, weak and perfidious allies as bad as the Islamists \u2014 and thus that the invasion would result\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2004"","block_context":{"text":"November 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/november-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4698,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-global-stakes-at-khobar\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":4},"title":"The Global Stakes at Khobar","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The Australian The recent terrorist murdering of Westerners in Saudi Arabia had all the hallmarks of the present global war waged by al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Attack the Western presence in Saudi Arabia to force the departure of foreign experts. Shake the regime\u2014and thus bring\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "June 2004"","block_context":{"text":"June 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/june-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8482,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-postcolonial-rot-spreads-beyond-middle-east-studies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3770,"position":5},"title":"The Postcolonial Rot Spreads Beyond Middle East Studies","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine In theory, Middle East Studies programs are a good idea. One of the biggest impediments to countering modern jihadism has been the lack of historical knowledge about the region and Islam. But even the attention and urgency that followed the terrorist attacks on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"middle-east-scholarships","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/middle-east-scholarships.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770"}],"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=3770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3870,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3770\/revisions\/3870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}