Great Commentary by Victor Davis Hanson

The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

By Victor Davis Hanson  January 19, 2014 In Culture,Education,Politics | (Part III of III)

Civilization Seems to Be Losing
Popular culture is likewise anti-civilizational ^[11]. Does anyone believe that Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga are updates to Glenn Miller, jazz, Bob Dylan and the Beatles? Even in the bimbo mode, Marilyn Monroe had an aura ^[12] that Ms. Kardashian and Ms. Hilton lack. Teens wearing bobby socks and jeans have transmogrified to strange creatures in our midst with head-to -oe tattoos and piercings ^[13] as if we copied Papua New Guinea rather than it us. Why the superficial skin-deep desire to revert to the premodern? When I walk in some American malls and soak in the fashion, I am reminded of National Geographic tribal photos of the 1950s.

Again the theme: the more we borrow to provide iPads to our supposedly deprived youth, the more in theory they can access in a nano-second the treasures of their culture and heritage, and in fact the more likely it is that they have no clue what Gettysburg was ^[14], who Thomas Jefferson was ^[15], or who fought whom over what ^[16] in World War II. Our managers in education, terrified of confronting the causes of ignorance, believed that the faster youths could transmit nothingness, the more likely they might stumble onto somethingness.

The fourth-century Greeks at the end pasted silver over their worthless bronze coins — “reds” being the protruding noses and hair of the portraiture that first appeared bronze-like, as the silver patina rubbed off. The bastardization of the currency fostered many books on Roman decline. More worthless money for more people was a sign of “crisis” — analogous to our own quantitative easing and $17 trillion in debt.

Once more the theme here is not just that we are insolvent, but that we are so insolvent that it is now a thought-crime to talk of dissolution, bankruptness, and irresponsible spending — all damned as symptoms of “callousness” to the poor, proof of “social injustice”, and “obsessions” with deficits. The medicine of austerity always becomes worse than the disease of profligacy.
What do I mean about the “thinning strand of civilization”?

A shrinking percentage of our population feeds us, finds our energy, protects us, and builds things we count on. They get up each morning to do these things, in part in quest for the good life, in part out of a sense of social obligation and basic humanity, in part because they know they will die if idle and thrive only when busy, and in part simply because “they like it.”

We can stack the deck against them with ever higher taxes, ever more regulations, ever more obligations to others, and they may well continue. But not if we also damn them as the “1%” and call them the agents of inequality and the fat cats who did not build what they built or who profited when they should not have.

You cannot expect the military to protect us, and then continually order it to reflect every aspect of postmodern American sensitivity in a risky premodern world. Filing a lawsuit to divert a river’s water to the sea during a drought is a lot easier and cleaner than welding together well-casings at sea. Last week, an off-duty armed correctional officer in Fresno intervened in a wild carjacking, shooting and killing the gang-member killer and thus limiting his carnage to one death and two woundings rather than five or six killings — at the very moment Harvey Weinstein — of guns-blazing Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction fame and profits — promised to destroy the NRA ^[17]. These contrasts say everything about the premodern, the postmodern and the innocent who pay the tab in-between.

Each day when I drive to work I try to look at the surrounding communities, and count how many are working and how many of the able-bodied are not. I listen to the car radio and tally up how many stories, both in their subject matter and method of presentation, seem to preserve civilization, or how many seem to tear it down. I try to assess how many drivers stay between the lines, how many weave while texting or zoom in and out of traffic at 90mph or honk and flip off drivers.
Today, as the reader can note from the tone of this apocalyptic essay, civilization seemed to be losing.

Great Commentary by Victor Davis Hanson

The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

By Victor Davis Hanson January 19, 2014 In Culture,Education,Politics | (Part II)

Much of the Modern University Output Coarsens American Life
We will hear even more shrillness about “fairness” and “equality.” The more government support, all the more will grow the sense of being shorted. When someone idle receives a free iPhone, he doesn’t thank government for its magnanimity. More likely, he damns it for allowing someone else the ability to purchase an updated, superior model. I have talked to several students about their iPhones; so far not one has said, “Wow, I have more computer and communications power in my palm than a multi-millionaire had ^[5] just 15 years ago.” Mostly they wished they had an updated version like someone better off.

An indebted and crippled U.S. has so far survived the second decade of the 21^st century largely due to some ingenious engineers and audacious workers who revolutionized the gas and oil industry, at a time when wind and solar merely amused us, when our enemies considered us ripe for perpetual petro-blackmail, and when our wherewithal to pay for more imported energy was increasingly questionable.

A very few people are saving very many. But how thin the strand of civilization hangs — given that the forces of our modern Lotus Eaters (every bit as dangerous in their postmodern imaginations as the Cyclopes are in their premodern savagery) have stopped the Keystone Pipeline, stopped most federal leasing of new gas and oil finds, and are trying to regulate fracking and horizontal drilling out of existence where it might be most vital to the U.S. — as in the Monterey Shale formation in California.

How ironic is the Sierra Club Bay Area grandee who finds light when he flips on his office switch, and would find no light were his utopian ideas about wind, solar, and biomass to come to full fruition ^[6]. 

Only what he despises ^[7] — radioactive uranium, messy drilling rigs, and unnatural dams — for now continue to bring him what he must have. Again, the theme: the more the green activists empty reservoirs to save a bait fish, or stop fracking, or prevent salvage logging, the angrier they sigh that it is not enough and the more they must count on someone ignoring them to provide them with what they must have.

The universities were the great backbone of the West, from the Academy and Lyceum to medieval Pisa and Oxbridge to the great 18^th- and 19^th-century founding of American campuses. Not necessarily any longer ^[8]. Too many are bankrupt morally, economically ^[9], politically, and culturally.


The symptoms are terrifying: one trillion dollars in student debt (many of these loans accruing at higher than average interest rates and even before students have graduated); a small Eloi class ^[10] of rarefied elites who teach little and write in runes that no one can decipher;  a large Morlock class of part-timers and oppressed lecturers who subsidize the fat and waste of the tenured and administrative classes; graduates who are arrogant but ignorant, nursed on –studies ideology without the liberal arts foundations to back up their zeal; and a BA/BS brand that no longer ensures better-paying jobs, if any jobs at all.

In sum, apart from the sciences and medicine, most of the university coarsens rather than enlightens American life.

The current campus is unsustainable and we are beginning to see its decline, as online courses and for-profit tech schools usurp its students. The liberal arts are not nurtured and protected for another generation in the university. Instead, their umbilical cords have become cut with the cleaver of race/class/gender no-nothingism. Again the theme: the more bloated, exploitive, and costly the university, the more it lashes out it that it is short-changed, the victim of philistine budget cuts, and the last bastion of civilized life.

Great Commentary by Victor Davis Hanson

The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization

By Victor Davis Hanson January 19, 2014 In Culture,Education,Politics | (Part I)

 Had the Greeks lost at Salamis, Western civilization might easily have been strangled in its adolescence. Had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, the European democracies would have probably remained overwhelmed. And had the Japanese just sidestepped the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, as they gobbled up the orphaned Pacific colonies of a defunct Western Europe, the Pacific World as we know it now might be a far different, far darker place.

I am not engaging in pop counterfactual history ^[1], as much as reminding us of how thin the thread of civilization sometimes hangs, both in its beginning and full maturity. Something analogous is happening currently in the 21^st-century West. But the old alarmist scenarios — a nuclear exchange, global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, a new lethal AIDS-like virus — should not be our worry.

Rather our way of life is changing not with a bang, but with a whimper ^[2], insidiously and self-inflicted, rather than abruptly and from foreign stimuli. Most of the problem is cultural. Unfortunately it was predicted by a host of pessimistic anti-democratic philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Spengler ^[3]. I’ve always hoped that these gloom-and-doomers were wrong about the Western paradigm, but some days it becomes harder.

Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working ^[4] (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.

Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young. The former help the disabled, the latter take resources from them. The gang-banger has only disdain for the geek at the mall — until one Saturday night his liver is shredded by gang gunfire and suddenly he whimpers (who is now the real wimp?) that he needs such a Stanford-trained nerd to do sophisticated surgery to get him back in one piece to the carjackings, muggings, assaults, and knockout games — or lawsuits follow!

Given that the number of non-working is growing (an additional 10 million were idled in the Obama “recovery” alone), it is likely to keep growing. At some point, we will hit a 50/50 ratio of idle versus active. Then things will get interesting. The percentage of workers’ pay deducted to pay for the non-working will soar even higher. So will the present redistributive schemes and the borrowing from the unborn.

We forget that the obligations of the working to care for the 70-80 million who genuinely cannot work become more difficult, when the 90 million who can work for all sorts of reasons won’t. Note the theme of this essay: the more in humane fashion we provide unemployment insurance, food stamps, subsidized housing, legal advice, health care and disability insurance, the more the recipients find it all inadequate, inherent proof of unfairness and inequality, and always not enough.

Establishment Republicans Wrong Again

Steve King Was Right: 12-Year Old Busted Smuggling Drugs Across the Border

By Top Right News on January 6, 2014

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) was right: illegal alien minors have, in fact, been used to smuggle large volumes of illicit drugs into the United States of America on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

Journalist Lorne Matalon reported for Fronteras in mid-December 2013 that U.S. authorities arrested six Mexican nationals–including four minors–attempting to carry marijuana across the border.

“U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested six Mexicans with more than 300 pounds of marijuana,” Matalon wrote on Dec. 10, 2013. “Four of the six were juveniles including two 17-year-olds, a 16-year-old and a 12-year-old boy. The arrests took place near a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint south of Marfa, Texas, on the road that links Ojinaga, Chihuahua, with borderland Texas.”

Matalon reported that Border Patrol agents say the group carried the marijuana on their backs and attempted to walk around a checkpoint at which drug sniffing dogs were stationed.

Reportedly, the 12-year-old boy carried the heaviest load of 80 pounds of marijuana. If this sounds very familiar, it is no accident. Because Rep. King was lambasted from the Obama Administration — and even his own Speaker and Majority Leader – for merely pointing out that this was happening.

In an interview with NewsMax published in mid-July, Rep. King–a fierce opponent against granting amnesty to illegal aliens–made the following statement:

“Some of them are valedictorians — and their parents brought them in,” King argued. “It wasn’t their fault. It’s true in some cases, but they aren’t all valedictorians. They weren’t all brought in by their parents.”

“For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert,” King added in the interview. “Those people would be legalized with the same act.”

The pro-amnesty RINOs went ballistic. House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), a lawmaker pushing a bill called the KIDS Act which would grant amnesty to illegal alien youths, rushed in to attack King. “I strongly disagree with his characterization of the children of immigrants and find the comments inexcusable,” Cantor said at the time.

Less than an hour later, House Speaker John Boehner seconded Cantor’s criticisms. “There can be honest disagreements about policy without using hateful language,” Boehner said in a statement. “Everyone needs to remember that.”

According to Fox News, Boehner went even further at a later press conference, attacking King’s character as a leader. “I want to be clear. There’s no place in this debate for hateful or ignorant comments from elected officials,” Boehner said. ”What (King) said does not reflect the values of the American people or the Republican Party, and we all need to do our work in a constructive, open and respectful way.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney also criticized King: “I think a number of people have pointed out that they were offensive,” Carney said in a comment to reporters aboard Air Force One. “They certainly don’t help any efforts by Republicans to improve their standing among Hispanic Americans, I would assume.”

In their zeal to pander to Hispanic and blast King, Cantor, Boehner and Carney ignored that fact that King’s statements were factually accurate — and easily provable. Media outlets, from the Christian Science Monitor to local news outlets in San Diego to the Associated Press to Fox News Latino, have confirmed in their reporting what King said: illegal alien minors have been used by drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States. A simple Google search from any of them would have confirmed that fact.

The media also hammered King relentlessly for his truth-telling. The Dallas Morning News was one of the media outlets that attacked King over the remarks. It issued a searing editorial ripping King for the comments, but on Dec. 27, in response to a Washington Times article regarding the news that Matalon broke in Fronteras, Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rodger Jones argued that, in light of the recent news, his paper should consider issuing a formal apology to King for the attack:

In view of this, do we here at The News have a responsibility to amend the record? This incident shows that youthful drug mules remain at work on the border, despite our assertion that the notion is based in stereotypes. It comes down to the math. Would we claim that King’s 100-1 ratio is merely way wide of the mark? If we went there, wouldn’t we be obligated to find some valedictorians to prove it?

Jones added that he personally does support open borders policies but that such policies should only be advanced with facts: “Don’t get me wrong: I’m more an open-borders guy than anything else, but when a hard-liner on immigration like King asserts something strong, it’s not enough to ridicule and insult and simply pronounce him wrong,” Jones wrote. “The Border Patrol will have a long memory on this issue, and every border drug bust involving kids will be a handy reminder at the agency’s disposal.”

Not one person who attacked King incorrectly, as Breitbart News noted at the time and as the Dallas Morning News’ Jones and others now admit, has apologized for their inaccuracies. Nonetheless, King soldiers on against amnesty. “My critics were either woefully uninformed or deliberately misinformed the public for the purpose of advancing their amnesty agenda.”

We salute Steve King and stand with him in the coming fight to defeat amnesty this year.

To demand that Boehner and Cantor APOLOGIZE for the disgraceful, race-baiting attacks on the patriot King, you can contact them here:  House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH): FACEBOOK, TWITTER, EMAIL (use zip 45069 + 4057), Phone: 202-225-6205
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA): FACEBOOK, TWITTER, EMAIL, Phone: 202-225-2815