Candidate on a High Horse

George Will absolutely nails it with Candidate on a High Horse. At the end he mentions the Lynds' famous studies of Muncie, Indiana. In that connection it would be worth noting that the Lynds were subsequently viciously attacked and vilified by the academic Left for not supporting the required Marxian view of an oppressed working class. That sort of experience has been recapitulated many times, Sidney Hook's being just one other famous case. Will also takes on the Marxist notion of False Consciousness, and rightly so. It is hard to imagine a more pernicious doctrine; it gives a putatively enlightened elite license to do absolutely anything it wants to do, by any means it finds expedient. This was the Marcuse-inspired ethos of the New Left, an elitist movement to its core. (So was Lenin's.) Wannabe Pol Pots with pony tails and paid-up tuition, drinking herbal tea in the campus snack bar, seeking a cultural apocalypse. For a thorough intellectual demolition of this nonsense, see Lezek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Vol 3, The Breakdown.

Byron

Reading for Democrats

...and reading for our partisan, defeatist media, also, which has the attention span and historical sense of a two-year-old.

Arab Liberals Discuss Fifth Anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom

It's as simple as this: Bush has put Arab liberalism on the right side of history. Or, better said, he's moved history to their side. A corner has been turned. It is impossible to over-state what the long-run importance of that will be, and far beyond the Arab world.

Accomplishing this has required doggedly persisting against the implacable opposition of an assemblage of political panderers, those unwilling or unable to focus on anything beyond their own short-run political fortunes, and persisting against the relentlessly hostile campaign waged by their academic and media allies.

If there is any justice, Bush eventually will be recognized as the guy who had it right from Day One and never wavered, despite an intense and unceasing shower of personal vilification from every corner of the left-liberal peanut gallery. But I suspect that Bush would be the first to say that personal vindication is the least important thing. It will be enough if historians eventually notice that when it came to meeting the civilizational challenge of radical Islam, not a single plausible alternative to democratization of the Arab world was ever offered by any critic. Not a single one.

Good for you, GW. Good for you.

Byron