Article

2007-10-24 -Short Attention Span Theater-

Lefty blogger promises to "take down" Victor Davis Hanson

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Mike 2007-10-24 06:26|| || Front Page|| [11124 views ] Top

#1 "So, how did that lefty blogger taste, Dr Hanson? Like chicken."

Posted by gromgoru 2007-10-24 09:05|| 2007-10-24 09:05|| Front Page Top

#2 "... the worst sort of polemicist: one who claims academic credentials as a neutral observer, but then insidiously inserts political interpretations of his own present-day biases into the historical record."

Breathtaking quote... on the basis of that, Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal are in sooooo much trouble!

So, who's making the popcorn for the audience?

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2007-10-24 09:23|| www.celiahayes.com]">[www.celiahayes.com] 2007-10-24 09:23|| Front Page Top

#3 So, who's making the popcorn for the audience?

Paging Barbara Skolaut to the white courtesy phone.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-10-24 09:34|| 2007-10-24 09:34|| Front Page Top

#4 I have to criticize VDH as well, for making a classical blunder of Social Studies, creating a simple structural model, then trying to force history to conform to it with argument. While there may be some degree of truth to the axiom, it fails in the harsh light of example.

Case in point: there is a western way of doing things and an eastern, or Asiatic way of doing things. But this does not mean that they are polar opposites, any more than saying that "Dogs are the opposite of cats".

All societies must have some degree of all the elements he attributes as decisive. And none of them have these elements in their purest form. So you cannot say "Freer societies always win", or even that "Modernism and technology always wins".

It is hard to even say that "The winners always won", because generally they didn't win completely, or they lost many times en route to a win, or their win didn't last, etc.

In the eastern philosophy, "winning" and "losing" make little sense in the cyclical approach to things. "Balance" and "imbalance" are often far more to the point.

In history, you could cherry pick and find major events in which the East won decisively against the West, such as the fall of Constantinople, and the eastern front defeat of the Nazis by the Soviets.

Among historians, they distinguish between themselves, as "historians", and those who write about history, as "historical writers", more concerned with historical theories they want to advance than actual history.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-10-24 09:56|| 2007-10-24 09:56|| Front Page Top

#5 anonymoose.
Ref winning& losing vs. balance and imbalance.

You left out the part where we may want to win, rather than suffer imbalance, or, for that matter, whatever passes for balance.

Posted by Richard Aubrey">Richard Aubrey 2007-10-24 12:02|| 2007-10-24 12:02|| Front Page Top

#6 VDH writes as a historian. This lefty blogger's work will hit the same trash bin as Freud's work and VDH's work will be read for centuries.

Posted by Unutle McGurque8861 2007-10-24 12:03|| 2007-10-24 12:03|| Front Page Top

#7 Anonymoose, maybe this article might put things in perspective.
You fight for your "Parish". One of the major purposes of teaching history should be to tell you what you did right AND what you did wrong in those existential struggles as opposed to petty intrafamily squabbles.

Posted by tipper 2007-10-24 12:09|| 2007-10-24 12:09|| Front Page Top

#8 Lefty blogger promises to "take down" Victor Davis Hanson

Because taking down Rush was so successful. /sarcasm off

Posted by Procopius2k 2007-10-24 13:44|| 2007-10-24 13:44|| Front Page Top

#9 Richard Aubrey: We want to win. The East seeks balance. For us to want to seek balance is just silly. For the East to want just to win is about as silly.

Much of Asia seems inscrutable to westerners because we do not grasp this. For example, in China there is little drive for what we think of as "good" government instead of "balanced" government. This is because they see government as a cycle of four different kinds of government.

The first kind rebuilds China from scratch, in a manner of speaking. Everything is new. Then once this cycle is completed, the next kind of government takes over, whose purpose is to maintain what the previous government built and get all the kinks out. Then the third form of government takes over, and lets things degenerate and fall apart. The fourth kind of government then destroys everything, usually killing a lot of people, so China can be rebuilt from scratch once again.

To a westerner this looks idiotic. But to the Chinese it is so powerfully "the way of things" that no government can do otherwise. The people and bureaucracy just won't let them. It didn't even matter that Mao Tse Tung was a communist, he still had to behave just like he was an emperor, at that time in the cycle. A destroyer emperor, I might add. (The "last" emperor had been a degenerate emperor.)

Now compare that to the West, where we always want *good* government. From the Chinese point of view that is ridiculous and unnatural, and it will never work because it ignores "reality". From their point of view, we too will have a four cycle government. We just don't know it. Makes you think about Bill Clinton.

Even today, strategically, the US and China contend with each other using those different cultural philosophies. For example, we invite tens of thousands of Chinese here to educate them and show them "the western way", and the Chinese government sends them here to teach us "the Chinese way". Of course, both sides have lots of other reasons as well.

Neither side are having much luck with the cultural thing.

I might add that China doesn't even consider losing a war necessarily a "loss", because for over a thousand years, they kept getting conquered by enemies who, in a generation or two, would do everything the Chinese way, and act like Chinese. So while their country lost, their "way" continued.

It really is apples and oranges to our way of thinking.

Posted by Anonymoose 2007-10-24 13:56|| 2007-10-24 13:56|| Front Page Top

#10 moose - it is about balance. But what you miss is that democracy is about balance.

Posted by Unutle McGurque8861 2007-10-24 16:11|| 2007-10-24 16:11|| Front Page Top

#11 I just have a hard time believing an Airborne Officer could be that left-wing unlesss......he's a plant.

Posted by Jack is Back!">Jack is Back! 2007-10-24 16:29|| 2007-10-24 16:29|| Front Page Top

#12 The West tends to win and the East tends to claim victory when they lose.

The West often believes the media bull that things are gloomy or worse than they are. The East tends to believe the stories and inunedo that they are winning or that it's someone elses fault.

Posted by rjschwarz 2007-10-24 17:43|| 2007-10-24 17:43|| Front Page Top

#13 Nope, not a plant, just read the history, and then compare it to that 12th Imam thingie, this actually makes a lot of sense.

Posted by Drive by lurker 2007-10-24 19:34|| 2007-10-24 19:34|| Front Page Top

#14 Oh, and jack is back, I'm not looking for a fight here, but there is nothing leftwing in Anonymoose's post.

Posted by Drive by lurker 2007-10-24 19:36|| 2007-10-24 19:36|| Front Page Top

#15 "Lefty blogger promises to 'take down' Victor Davis Hanson"

Uh-huh.

GFL on that one....

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2007-10-24 21:14|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/] 2007-10-24 21:14|| Front Page Top

#16 Sgt. Mom, Zen - I'm popping as fast as I can!

Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut 2007-10-24 21:14|| http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/]">[http://ariellestjohndesigns.com/] 2007-10-24 21:14|| Front Page Top

#17 ION, DEFENSETECH.org > AXE: DISBAND THE AIR FORCE; + MARDETS BACK IN THE MIX. Marine Detachments to return and serve aboard "wide variety" of USN ships, from brown/green-water littorals to USCG Cutters, etc???

Posted by JosephMendiola 2007-10-24 21:59|| 2007-10-24 21:59|| Front Page Top

23:34 Sock Puppet of Doom
23:33 crosspatch
23:29 Sock Puppet of Doom
23:16 WTF
23:16 Zenster
23:08 Phinater Thraviger
22:55 WTF
22:49 Jonathan
22:43 Chuckles Jaise7272
22:40 Jules
22:29 Slappy
22:29 Zenster
22:27 Besoeker
22:26 Zenster
22:20 Zenster
22:20 Red Dawg
22:15 Barbara Skolaut
22:13 Cliper Ghibelline3346
22:12 Unutle McGurque8861
22:12 Mike N.
22:10 Unutle McGurque8861
22:07 Besoeker
22:01 Unutle McGurque8861
21:59 Besoeker