The European Union and the United Nations, as well as globalization and advanced technology, were supposed to trump age-old cultural, geographical, and national differences and bring people together.
But for all the high-tech veneer of the 21st century, the world still looks very much as it did during the previous hundred years and well before that.
After the Greek financial meltdown and the emergence of German financial dominance, Europe once more obsesses over the so-called German problem. Should Europeans admire the industry of the German people, or fear that such competency and drive will eventually translate — as in 1870, 1914, and 1939 — into German political and military supremacy?
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The division of Germany, the common Soviet threat, the NATO alliance, the European Union, and German war guilt all repressed German singularity for half a century. But the first two realities have disappeared. The latter three soon might. Once again, no one quite knows how to deal with German exceptionalism. Apparently, the borders and the currency of Germany change, but the unrivaled work ethic and productivity of the German people do not.
Examine the violence of the world today, more than a decade after 9/11. Much of it is still Middle Eastern in general, and concerns Islam in particular. The protests of the Arab Spring may well turn into the repression of the Arab Autumn. Syria is aflame. Bombs go off almost daily in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Rockets are poised in Gaza and Lebanon. Iranians threaten to get a bomb and to use it once they get it. Fascism, Communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Islamism, and various dictators come and go. But the tribal nature of the Middle East and the unease of Islam with other religions somehow seem to remain the same, even with a modernizing world — whether at Lepanto in the 16th century or at the Strait of Hormuz in the 21st century.
There are autocrats in Russia again. From the czars to the Soviet Communists to Vladimir Putin’s cronies, there is something about constitutional government and liberal rule that bothers Mother Russia. The more that progressive outsiders seek to lecture or reform Russians, the more likely they are to bristle and push back with left-wing or right-wing nationalist strongmen. At present, we do not know whether there will be a Czar Vladimir, Comrade Putin, or Putin Inc. in charge, but we fear it does not matter much.
For centuries, Christianity often fought Islam in the mountainous, war-torn crossroads of the Balkans. And from the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to the ethnic-cleansing campaign of Slobodan Milosevic, the Balkans remain Europe’s powder keg. Now with rioting and unrest in Athens, a financial earthquake that started in tiny Balkan Greece is shaking up some 500 million people in the European Union.
America is not exempt from such stereotyping. Every so often Americans reluctantly get involved abroad, grandly seek to remake the world in our image, become frustrated that we cannot, and then start to disengage, disarm, retreat home, and promise to stay there — until we start the cycle over.
After World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and, more recently, our wars in the Middle East, we said “never again” — only to lecture others and, in schizophrenic fashion, intervene once more. At times,Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush all thought they could make the world safe for democracy. Calvin Coolidge, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama assumed we had neither the money nor the virtue to try.
New cure-all ideologies and organizations likewise have come and gone. Fascism, Communism, socialism, and the Keynesian redistributive state all promised a new, better sort of man. But mostly they ended up bringing neither peace nor prosperity.
In response to all this depressing predictability, technocratic elites still dream up international solutions. The League of Nations was a noble idea that proved to be an irrelevant hothouse. No one still believes the pretentious United Nations is much more than a collective debating society. The non-democratic European Union is going the way of the megalomaniac and failed dreams of Charlemagne, Napoleon, and Hitler of one united European continent, one system, one ideology.
What, then, are we left with? Only the humility of knowing that human nature does not change much.
That unpleasant fact means that about all we can do is to keep muddling through, stay vigilant, and hope for the best while preparing for the worst. For all the problems with national pride, democracy, free markets, alliances, and military preparedness, the alternatives seem far worse.
Czar Alexander I (177-1825) was taught liberal values by LaHarpe. The mental instablity of his father Paul I lead to his murder by army officers. Alexander sucumbed to Napoleon's persuasion on the raft at Tilsit.Two years later Alexander befrended the American representative to St. Petersburg John Quincy Adams. The Czar and the Republican used to take long walks along the Neva River. Alexander offered to mediate between GB and the USA during the War of 1812. Alexander ended his reign aligning with Austria and Prussia in the Holy Alliance of 1818. A bizzare reference to Alexander occured during the Potsdam conference in Aug 1945. Averil Harriman congratulated Stalin on the Russians getting all the way to Berlin. Stalin responded by saying Czar Alexander got to Paris. Stalin then said goodby and in parting said "We will meet again in Tokyo" Alexander Kerensky's short lived liberal Duma was OBE'd by what Winston Churchill called "the bacillicus sealed in a vacuum and delivered by the Germans to St. Petersburg". i.e. Lenin. Churchill said Russia suffered from two tragedies the Birth of Lenin and the Death of Lenin. The fatal year for Europe was 800 A.D. when The Treaty of Verdun was signed. Verdun would come back to haunt Franco-Prussian relations several times. By 1945 Germany Proper shrunk back to the borders of the Charlemagne's realm. A 19th Century cartoon by Puck showed a German school teacher pointing to a Map of Europe and exclaiming "This is what Germany is not". The Nazis viewed 800 A.D with more virulence. They claimed that was the year the first Hebrew settlers entered Central Europe. The ill fated nation between Germany and Russia: Poland. Poland in the 17th Century almost captured Moscow. Poland triggered the Second World War and was the source of friction in the closing days that triggered off the Cold War. Poland has a far greater influence in European affairs than the West admits. A Polish Pope played a critical role in the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe. The Russians threatened a Hungarian or Czech type of invasion of Poland, John Paul warned them of God's wrath, They backed down and the rest is as they say was History. History repeats itself more often because Historians repeat themselves more often than history itself does.
"Improving" the world has something to do with the political ego and desire for legacy; the need to do something. The things that now need fixing were themselves once the cure to some other problem. External Link
The non-belief in heaven is the source of much misery in the world. If this is all you have, then humans will dream up all kinds of ways to create/impose a heaven on earth. "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven".
The Left is most thoroughly vested in Utopianism and designed societies, at this point wether they work or not is irrelevant to them. Once they are defeated, then people of the West will easily retake the world from these petty dictators and human garbage that seems to matter so much today.
Dr. VDH has the right of it as usual. It's the reason to always, always mistrust those who promise utopia, because no matter how sincere they pretend to be, at root there's a nasty little tyrant inside yearning to smite his enemies, no matter whether they're Jews, Capitalists, Aristos, etc.
Eugene, assertion is neither evidence nor argument. In what way is it factually untrue? Unless you're prepared to argue that Pres. Carter assumed otherwise, I see nothing untrue in VDH's statement.
Human nature does not change -- at least not quickly. Instead of trying to repress and constrain our natural nature through things like communism, socialism, and Keynesian centrally-controlled systems, we must embrace free markets and personal responsibility.
Those that support big government claim no confidence in an individual's ability for compassion and responsibility so they take that away and give it to government. If, however, society embraced and supported these concepts for the individual, then, and only then, will we be able to move forward and become the people we should be. It is the only way we can become as good as our potential. Make a man responsible for his own life and he'll move forward careful, each step a triumph of life and reaffirmation that what an individual does matters . Allow a man to abdicate his responsibility to the state, and you've destroyed his self esteem and any possibility of growth.
Very high minded, but our society is not based on generosity but on mutual distrust. We agree not to harm each other and to settle our disagreements in court. It is a low standard, but solid.
Several years ago, when you could still directly email just about anyone else with an email address, I had a brief communication with Victor Davis Hanson, and referred to him as "the smartest man in the world".
He politely declined my offering, but I still wonder if maybe I wasn't right?
Thank you Dr. Hanson, for reminding us of the necessity for the virtue of humility in our political perspective. It is a quality entirely lacking in the progressive liberal outlook. One of the great verities of life is that human nature never changes and it is a truism to which the left is inimically hostile.
>The division of Germany, the common Soviet threat, the NATO alliance, the European Union, and German war guilt all repressed German singularity for half a century. But the first two realities have disappeared<
I seriously hate to disagree with VDH, but I'm compelled to note that not only is the German military one short step above the Boy Scouts, but German war guilt is alive and well. Should the Soviets invade, they will make short work of Germany. German ingenuity and productivity are somewhat alive and well but with a huge population of "yet to be converted from the entitlement mentality" from the East and no serious ability to defend themselves, this is just one more pathetic European nation that will need US assistance if the need arises. They happen to have more money and that is their only advantage. They're better than most of the rest of Europe but when you're on the bottom there is no place to go but up.
I admire VDH enormously, but I'm mystified how he can identify Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama as assuming we have had neither the money nor the virtue to try to remake the world. They obviously do believe in the inherent virtue of any of their personal whims, and they have sought to remake world in their own image through unconscionable appeasement. This does not mean refraining from war. It simply means passively supporting their own favorite tyrannies.
