This is definately a good read what ever side of the issues you are on.
I read it. Nothing new, no new insights.
This paragraph from the link is so brilliant and spot on, it deserves its own place:
“There is, in fact, a long list of reasons, among them most surely the assurance that cruel critics of things Western rant without being killed. Such cowards puff out their chests when trashing an ill Oriana Fallaci or a comatose Ariel Sharon or beleaguered George W. Bush in the most demonic of tones, but they prove sunken and sullen when threatened by a thuggish Dr. Zawahiri or a grand mufti of some obscure mosque.”
People don’t get anrgy at America because they sympithize with terrorism.
I don’t think America and the West are “bad”.
I think they can do better.
Complacency and “the good life” have been the downfall of many an empire, as the West may discover to its cost.
Victor Davis Hanson is one of my favorite historians, and this was quite a good article. Who’d have thought someone from Fresno could be so goshdarned eloquent? 
Eloquent? Gushy, I’d say. Maybe that was because the piece began life as a paean to Winnie Churchill. It seems to have ended up as a sort of clash of civilizations fight song. Yessirree rich folks, up and outta them hot tubs, off with you to go fight the islamists.
Or maybe by “lose, if even for a brief moment, the enjoyment of our good life” he meant a tax increase?
BWAHahahahaha! Ain’t gonna happen.
He do talk purty, though.
Let’s face it: as an historian this guy is Dr. Feelgood. His main trick is that he can get all the way through his version of the story without ever once using the word ‘oil.’ Yeah, right: like this is all about enlightenment envy.
Fantastic article.
Hanson is one of our generation’s best military and agrarian historians.
And he is willing to discuss the problems we face in a broader context - something that too many either can’t, or won’t, do.
Until the last word i desperatley waited for the interessting part…
How come that some hardcore american conservatives, like Sean Hannity, so ofen qoute Churchill? If he was alive hed trash the Bush government like anybody with a reasoning ability.
[quote]Ken Kaniff wrote:
Until the last word i desperatley waited for the interessting part…
How come that some hardcore american conservatives, like Sean Hannity, so ofen qoute Churchill? If he was alive hed trash the Bush government like anybody with a reasoning ability.[/quote]
And he’d tell you to learn to fucking spell and learn how to construct a fucking sentence! Path-fucking-ethic!
[quote]Ken Kaniff wrote:
How come that some hardcore american conservatives, like Sean Hannity, so ofen qoute Churchill? If he was alive hed trash the Bush government like anybody with a reasoning ability.[/quote]
Is this a joke? Go read any of Churchill’s speeches - assuming you can read.
I can’t say what Winston Churchill would say about Bush, that is speculative, but Winston is known as perhaps the greatest conservative of the 20th century.
Perhaps you are thinking Ward Churchill?