To the Editor:
Victor Davis Hanson provides a thoughtful analysis of the role of affluence, security, and privilege in fomenting anti-Americanism in the U.S. [“ ‘I Love Iraq, Bomb Texas,’ ” December 2002]. He correctly notes that such sentiments are found predominantly on the Left, but he fails to ask why this should be so. One factor Mr. Hanson dismisses is Marxism. Though he notes its legacy in the radical egalitarianism of postmodernists and multiculturalists, he writes that “that particular religion . . . is just about gone from the picture these days.”
I would suggest, however, that far from abating, the influence of Marxism is the live wire sparking today’s anti-Americanism. Soviet Communism promised a paradise of fairness and justice, but was ultimately defeated because of its inability to compete against our economic and military strength. Many on the Left took this as a loss for the cause of social equity. The sin for which they now hold the U.S. culpable is deicide. No one looks with favor upon those who destroy their gods, and the reflexive anti-American rage of today’s Left is not surprising.
Gerald Smallberg
New York City
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To the Editor:
In his otherwise excellent piece, Victor Davis Hanson mistakenly asserts that the American military is “the largest and best-trained . . . in history.” He certainly knows that today’s 1.4-million-person force is dwarfed by the wartime armies of the last century, and probably falls well short of China’s in manpower strength.
The more interesting question is whether the U.S. military is ready for future challenges. Today’s force is doubtless the most technologically advanced in history, but training is another matter. It requires time, money, land, and available troops. As America’s military commitments grow, training will suffer in the absence of significant increases in force size. Despite the recent Afghan campaign, the “war on terror,” the looming conflict with Iraq, and ongoing commitments in Korea, the Balkans, the Sinai, and elsewhere, the Bush administration has made no effort to increase significantly the size of our military, nor has it made a public appeal for additional volunteers—much less invoked the possibility of a draft.
In comparing today’s anti-Americanism to the decadence of the Romans, Mr. Hanson ignores the increasingly mercenary makeup of Rome’s military during its late imperial period. As he notes, earlier Romans “knew what it was to be Roman.” Roman citizens were willing to fight for their nation and commit their sons to its defense. It is not clear that either the American public or its military feels the same way, and the United States is the weaker for it.
Jonathan f. Keiler
Bowie, Maryland
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To the Editor:
In an otherwise superb article, Victor Davis Hanson compares the left-wing “groupspeak” that dominates contemporary academic life to that of both Soviet apparatchiks and the medieval Church. This yokes together a very unequal team. It is difficult to see any real similarity between the mind-withering aridity of the Marxist / Leninist intellectual climate and the philosophical fecundity of a period in Church history that gave us Abelard, Anselm, Ockham, and, of course, Thomas Aquinas.
Craig S. Maxwell
La Mesa, California
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To the Editor:
Long live Victor Davis Hanson! Americans who decry U.S. policies abroad while living a life of luxury and security here perhaps should not be ridden out of town on a rail—but they should be ignored as the sanctimonious hypocrites that they are.
Ken Daniels
Denver, Colorado
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Victor Davis Hanson writes:
Gerald Smallberg apparently wants to punch up my reference to “Marxist professors signing their mass mailings with the pompous titles of their chairs, endowed through capitalist largess.” He may be right to tie our cultural elite’s anti-Americanism to doctrinaire Marxism, but I wonder whether this really applies outside the philosophy-department lounge. Few in the widely diverse group of actors, media personalities, and writers who express an automatic dislike of their country have read much or know anything about Marx. Most, like Barbra Streisand or Sean Penn, would seem to have come to their half-baked ideas out of ignorance, a vague sense of guilt, a desire to win the approbation of their peers, and a need to compensate in the abstract for what they do and how they live in the concrete.
My even mushier reference to “the radical egalitarianism of multiculturalism and postmodernism” was not meant to be exclusionary—I am sure some anti-Americans are not merely Marxists but Communists—but rather to acknowledge that today’s Utopians are usually not the type to make lockstep, Marxist-style demands for an end to democratic elections or private property.
I thank jonathan F. Keiler for reminding us that China’s is the much larger army. My phrase “largest and best-trained” was intended to suggest two interconnected criteria; no other army (China’s included) has been both as large and as well-trained as our own. I also agree that our military is too small for the obligations that it is now asked to undertake—as Donald and Frederick Kagan have pointed out so well in a series of writings.
That the Romans forgot what it was to be Roman is perfectly consistent with—in fact, it is in some ways illustrative of—their increasing reliance on mercenaries. But the problem was more than just one of volunteer legionaries. The general malaise was a result of rampant high-level corruption, the moral failure of a once broad and civic-minded elite, onerous taxation, the destruction of independent farmers, and the inability to inculcate a common culture, language, and values among millions along the northern borders.
By contrast, the professionalization of the ranks (if that, rather than “alien,” captures the meaning of Mr. Keiler’s use of “mercenary”) was a centuries-long process. The Roman Republic, remember, had expanded in the 1st century B.C.E. on the backs of a volunteer army; mercenary or not, the legions were superbly trained, enjoyed high morale, and had the support of the people. The process did not necessarily prove fatal until the 5th century when, for the deeper reasons I have cited, Roman society at large simply no longer believed in itself.
I share with Mr. Keiler certain worries about the current attitude of many Americans toward their armed forces; fortunately, from what I have seen of the enlisted ranks and officer corps, our soldiers seem more than willing to fight for the idea of America—and daily take on steep sacrifices, monetary and otherwise.
Craig S. Maxwell has misinterpreted me. In evoking both apparatchiks and the medieval Church, I hardly meant to suggest that the content of their thinking was alike, much less that it was similar to that of our current cultural elites. The linking idea, as he correctly notes, was “groupspeak.” What led to the Reformation was not the brilliance of an Abelard or Aquinas but the bureaucracy, corruption, and hypocrisy of hundreds of thousands of lesser clergy who had lost their way and come to believe in empty ritual and public professions of piety rather than true spiritual guidance and public service.
I thank Ken Daniels for his kind encouragement, and I appreciate (even if I cannot always follow) his advice to ignore the “sanctimonious hypocrites” instead of dutifully confronting them. They really are an exhausting bunch.
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