archenemy blog

Over at The Darmouth Review, Nathaniel Ward provides coverage of a debate between Victor Davis Hanson and Dartmouth “History Professor” Ronald Edsforth:

Professor Edsforth presented himself as a “peace activist” and not a pacifist—pacifists abhor all wars, while activists oppose some and support others. He approved of the 2001 Afghan campaign but not the attack on Serbia in 1999. He said “all war is mass murder” and that wars bring out man’s “instinct to kill, our delight in torture.”

Our delight in torture? Speak for yourself, Edsforth.

By invading Iraq, he went on, the United States has abandoned its own democratic ideology and gone “down the slippery slope to militarism”

Right, that’s the axis, definately. Democracy < ---- > Militarism. Because real democracies eschew the ability to defend themselves, preferring instead to depend on the kindness of strangers. WTF?

and become “willing to delegate to our commander in chief the powers of a king.”

I wonder if he enumerated these “powers of a king” that our CinC supposedly has?

As evidence, he said that the War on Terror has morphed into a broader War on Tyranny—a conflict not likely to end during his own lifetime.

Unlike the war on Poverty, or on Drugs, or on Crime, or on any number of other things the gov’t sees fit to try to eradicate. Is this guy’s time preference horizon so short that if a policy doesn’t achieve its end before he gains another ten pounds, he starts flinging the feces and banana peels? If President Kerry were leading the war on terror, there wouldn’t be a peep out of this jerk.

He proposed that the United States military was too large; he noted in particular that the United States maintains ten aircraft carrier battle groups, and is in fact the only nation to have even one. “The wars of empire are over,” he said.

Well, after the revolution the market will decided how big our various military entities should be. Given how affluent the US is, and how much more affluent it would be without the gov’t albatross around its neck, and how shitty the rest of the world still is, I’d guess they’d be pretty large. Maybe even larger than now, since we’ll get more bang for our buck.

Edsforth proposed that the human race has learned the dangers of war, especially after the blood-soaked twentieth century. “Evolution [of human behavior] is a fact,” he said. “It didn’t stop back in ancient times… We are capable of learning as humans and changing our environment in such a way that that which we abhor is less and less likely.” Indeed, he suggested that American foreign policy has over the past several decades been a reactionary effort to “turn back the clock” to the systems of the past. “We should lead the world in creating this new environment,” he said, “and not stand as a roadblock before its creation.”

Well, at least he’s not overtly calling for the creation of the New Socialist Man. This sort of “beat our swords into plough-shares and congratulate ourselves for transcending history, all the while looking the other way in the USSR, China, Cambodia, Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda, Darfur, etc.” is scumbaggery of the highest order.

Then, when it can’t get any better, the students chime in:

At a question-and-answer session at the end of the debate, this view of human nature was the subject of much disdain by many members of the audience. One fellow questioned whether “you and Homer and Thucydides two-thousand years ago” were cut out for modernity. Another asked Hanson when the war in Iraq would come to end—“when will we reap the benefits of preemptive war?”—and wondered whether “Pericles would have any advice for defeating suicide bombers in an urban environment.” Actually, Hanson retorted, the juxtaposition was poorly-chosen, as Peloponnesian War lasted for “twenty-seven and a half years.”

During one of the lighter moments, Hanson jokingly observed that the Iraq war had made some unlikely allies. “I never thought in my lifetime that Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan would have an alliance of convenience,” he said, smiling.

And not quite meanwhile, Dartmouth student blogger Joe reports on his argument with the French Consul to New England:

I argued that the EU is an ineffectual union with the sole aim of being the world’s counterbalance to the United States. (Such fun to confound academics like this.) This objective, it seems, is only achieved through obstinate contrariness on every foreign policy issue. I noted Europe’s rather terrible track record of spreading freedom through the world- a charge successfully assumed in recent history only by America.

Prof. Rassias and the consul’s assistant chortled smugly when I said this, which was a pretty rude thing to do.

No kidding! Joe provides the Consul with a new sphincter, and then continues:

Well, the air sort of cleared and he asked for one more question. A girl to the right of me asked, “Most French students here decide to study in France. What can we do to improve the image of Americans to the French?” There were murmurs of agreement and head-nodding from the faculty present.

“Mon dieu,” I thought.

I must add that my French professor, Brigitte Mosenthal, who I am certain disagrees with me politically, was very supportive. After the talk was over, she thanked me for livening it up. She acknowledged that everyone seems to have the same opinions at Dartmouth and so some questioning of the norm is healthy. Being as she was the one who brought me to the talk, she could have been angry that one of her students bucked the liberal hardline in front of the department chair, but she wasn’t. That was awfully big of her, and I was impressed and thankful.

Now, this is just Dartmouth, but from other reading and various anecdotes I’ve heard (not very scientific, I know) I assume this is either typical of or not as bad as other campuses around the country. I wonder how many disciplines have resisted the pressure to devolve to mere political indocrination? How long will it take graduates to unlearn this crap they’re being taught, and how much damage will they cause themselves and everyone else before they do?