War on Two Fronts...
This is a must read by one of my favorite thinkers/writers Victor Davis Hanson. Also my friend Pastorius has a good write up on this piece over at CUANAS Enjoy...
(excerpt)
...So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.
This is nothing new.
The spectacular inroads of the Ottomans in the16th century to the gates of Vienna and the shores of the Adriatic were not explainable according to Istanbul’s vibrant economy, impressive universities, or widespread scientific dynamism and literacy, or even a technologically superior and richly equipped military. Instead, a beleaguered Europe was trisected by squabbling Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians — as a wealthy northwest, with Atlantic seaports, ignored the besieged Mediterranean and Balkans and turned its attention to getting rich in the New World.
So too we are divided over two antithetical views of the evolving West — Europe at odds with America, red and blue states in intellectual and spiritual divergence, the tragic view resisting the creeping therapeutic mindset.
These interior splits largely explain why creepy killers from the Dark Ages, parasitic on the West from their weapons to communications, are still plaguing us four years after their initial surprise attack.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Read the whole thing...
(excerpt)
...So it is not true to say that Western civilization is at war against Dark Age Islamism. Properly speaking, only about half of the West is involved, the shrinking segment that still sees human nature as unchanging and history as therefore replete with a rich heritage of tragic lessons.
This is nothing new.
The spectacular inroads of the Ottomans in the16th century to the gates of Vienna and the shores of the Adriatic were not explainable according to Istanbul’s vibrant economy, impressive universities, or widespread scientific dynamism and literacy, or even a technologically superior and richly equipped military. Instead, a beleaguered Europe was trisected by squabbling Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians — as a wealthy northwest, with Atlantic seaports, ignored the besieged Mediterranean and Balkans and turned its attention to getting rich in the New World.
So too we are divided over two antithetical views of the evolving West — Europe at odds with America, red and blue states in intellectual and spiritual divergence, the tragic view resisting the creeping therapeutic mindset.
These interior splits largely explain why creepy killers from the Dark Ages, parasitic on the West from their weapons to communications, are still plaguing us four years after their initial surprise attack.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Read the whole thing...
posted by Lil' Mermaid | 8:59 AM
2 Comments:
I was just telling my wife this morning that I heard Victor Davis Hanson interviewed yesterday on the Hugh Hewitt Show, and that I have decided that he is my hero.
Funny, my heroes used to be musicians and basketball players. 9/11 really knocked some sense into me.
Pastorius
Shortly after 9/11 I began reading his book "The Soul of Battle" I read the first third of it and loved it but I haven't made it back to finish it yet (I have many books that I am still "reading" off and on). His essays after 9/11 were very thought proviking. I always love his soberness, amazing grasp of the sweep of human history, and his ability to cut right to the meat of the matter.
Publius2000
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