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of the shock that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11th,
was the surprise, the unexpectedness. America's citizenry were almost
totally unprepared, in their minds, for the terrible reality.
There's much
to be said in this context. But if we go deeper we see that there
was something missing in the public, and general, understanding
of the possibilities. Above all, there was little established background
of knowledge about the mental world of those outside the American,
or Western, experience, and in particular, about the mental world
of the enemies of the democratic way of life. One result was the
assumption that the enemies of the Western culture can be won over
by goodwill; and that the West is to blame if such approaches do
not work.
This was not
just the natural parochialism of an apathetic population. It pervaded
the media and the educated strata in general. Is there, or was there,
some specific fault in the general presentation here of the outside
world in our books, our schools, our debates? Clearly, the answer
is "yes."
For many years, one can find two main faults in the presentation
to the American mind of major elements in the world. First, too
little information about those alien cultures and attitudes was
inculcated. Second, much of what was inculcated was erroneous.
The man in
the street, with less access to study, is still often better served
by his common sense than the expert is by his expertise. Yet, the
general atmosphere is pervaded by assumptions or preoccupations
with little empirical basis.
How can a citizen
be called educated if he has been trained to misunderstand the world?
Let me specify.
Our educational system, which, Thomas Jefferson said, should be
"chiefly historical" for an adult citizenry, was —
to put it mildly — not so. If we look at schools and universities
we must surely admit that. As a result, a large section of our supposedly
educated class are only so describable if we omit what Jefferson
thought to be the most vital point.
On the one
hand this affected our whole culture; on the other, it resulted,
even in "higher" education, with the substitution of various
theorizings that diverted attention from the real world. In his
inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford
(quoted in my recent Reflections
on a Ravaged Century), Sir Michael Howard remarked of the
"real lessons of history" that these apply to "people
often of masterful intelligence, trained usually in law or economics
or perhaps political science, who have led their governments into
disastrous miscalculations because they have no awareness whatever
of the historical background, the cultural universe of the foreign
societies with which they have to deal. It is an awareness for which
no amount of strategic or economic analysis, no techniques of crisis
management or conflict resolution "can provide a substitute."
And, if that
is often so among the foreign-policy elite, how much more so in
the academic circles where intrusive facts can be even more easily
kept out of the mind
It is also
the case that even in the restricted area where "history"
was practiced, the academic (and other) understanding of the earlier,
Stalinist, Maoist, Ho-ist anti-Americanism, was fatally distorted
in the late 1960s, probably as a result, or partly so, of anti-Vietnam
War atmospheres, so that — even to this day — there is
much "in denial" about Stalinism and its unappeasable
hatred of the West. It seems in part due to the fact that young
Viet Cong groupies who went into academe are now in high positions.
But one should not neglect the other academic trope — the idea
of being non-judgmental; the intrusion of suitable mind-blocking
theory. All this, moreover, still infects the glossy media, as with
the grotesquely falsified CNN series on the Cold War.
So? First,
back to Jefferson. We cannot understand the world without the study
and understanding of real history and real politics and beliefs.
A supposedly educated or academic output that misses this is unreal.
The specialists, or theoreticians, who have no such background are,
in effect, uneducated, and much more academic attention should go
to general realities. Academics already established in these fields
need a good deal of reeducation. Not that they are uninstructed,
but that they were instructed in often-sophisticated theory and
formula, rather than in the empirical realities. A double problem
for us in fact. We need more history, and better history. We need
less formula, and less anti-Americanism. Not the only problems,
but big ones and long-term ones.
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