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April 2008
Elsewhere on the WebVictor Davis Hanson’s Private Papers Victor Davis Hanson Archive on National Review OnlineTour Books
A War Like No Other How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War
by Victor Hanson
Amazon.com’s Best of 2001 Many theories have been offered regarding why Western culture has spread so successfully across the world, with arguments ranging from genetics to superior technology to the creation of enlightened economic, moral, and political systems. In Carnage and Culture, military historian Victor Hanson takes all of these factors into account in making a bold, and sure to be controversial, argument: Westerners are more effective killers.
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson, John Keegan Hanson, for those who somehow have missed him until now, is a professor of Classics at California State and also is a part time farmer, both of which have contributed to his writing as a military historian. As a classicist, Hanson is well versed in the sources in their original Greek, and as a farmer he understands how agriculture affected the experience of the Greeks at war.
by Victor Davis Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
Hanson relates the life stories of his farmer neighbors, writing that their way of life will likely soon disappear, thanks in part to a federal system of agricultural subsidies that favors large-scale, industrial farm corporations over individual “yeomen.” This is a sobering and eye-opening book. by Victor Davis Hanson On first glance, The Soul of Battle appears to be three different books: biographies of two well-known generals—Sherman and Patton—and one who is virtually unknown today, the ancient Greek leader Epaminondas. Yet Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor and author of The Western Way of War, makes a compelling connection between these three men. They were “eccentrics, considered unbalanced or worse by their own superiors” who led democratic armies on missions of freedom.
by Robert B. Strassler (Editor), Victor Davis Hanson (Introduction)
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April 7, 2008 1:39 PM
Liberalism—a Strange Thing IndeedWhere Art Thou Democrats? With the release of the Clintons’ combined $109 million post-presidential aggregate income (cf. Hillary’s call for the creation of a poverty czar), we are a long way from clips of Harry Truman strolling around Independence, Missouri in his retirement. John Edwards’ 30,000 sq ft. castle (apparently part of one of his “Two Americas”) is a far cry from the hole in Adlai Stevenson’s shoe. And John Kerry’s various mansions are not quite like Hubert Humphrey’s tract house in the DC suburbs. But then the Rev. Wright’s gated estate and the Obama income aren’t quite like Martin Luther King’s either. The point? In the general enrichment of the United States over the last quarter-century of globalization, it is hard to ascertain one’s politics by one’s financial circumstances. Being a Democratic leader now does not suggest any greater intimacy with poverty than a Republican’s, or any greater reluctance to indulge in the rarified good life. If anything, the Democratic party (cf. the Obama nexus) is increasingly an alliance of those who want federal entitlements, combined with the elite who are willing to hand them out—precisely because their own financial circumstances mean that tax increases hardly affect their standard of living. Indeed, whereas indulgences in gambling, sex, or drugs may have embarrassed conservative Republicans, the hypocrisy for Democrats lies in the combination of high living and condemnation of the present economic system. Al Gore leaves a bigger carbon foot-print than most of those he condemns. Rev. Wright disdains the middle class—perhaps because he lives as if he were in the upper-class. The Clintons talk ad nauseam about “fairness,” but weren’t about to stop at $50 million when $100 million could buy so much more. The Academic Morass I have never quite encountered an intrinsically less fair institution than the university, at least in liberal terms of egalitarianism and respect for the underclass. A full professor may damn Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart would never get away with the two-tier system that the university in built upon: the PhD part-timer has no job security, sometimes no benefits, no privileges, and earns usually about 25% of the compensation that is paid to the full professor to teach the identical class. When one factors in the use of graduate assistants not merely to TA courses, but to teach them in their entirety, then you can appreciate the level of exploitation that the university is built on. And add to the notion that tuition has climbed higher than the annual rate of inflation, and the picture is complete of an institution that is entirely immune from public scrutiny. I have a modest prediction—just as the bloggers, talk-radio, and cable news began to make irrelevant the grandees at the New York Times and the likes of Dan Rather at CBS, so too online colleges, web-based data archives, and junior colleges are starting to question the notion that one pays $40-50 thousand a year for university training—and often gets biased professors, part-timers and TAs, and a curriculum imbued with popular culture and politically-driven therapeutic courses. Learning and the university are not any longer synonymous, and the divide is ever widening. The idea that we were going to devote 25% of America’s prime corn acreage to ethanol (while supplying millions of dollars of subsidies to large farms) was always absurd. And now we see the wages in increased prices for meat, rice, soy, corn, and wheat, as food for fuel means less food for eating. At some point someone is going to say that an oil well in a tiny patch in Anwar is a far more humane proposition than taking out hundreds of acres of food land to produce the same amount of energy, or sending millions over to terrorist-sponsoring nations for comparable oil production, or allowing Russia or Nigeria to desecrate planet earth through far less careful protocols of extraction to produce the same amount of petroleum. Who’s What? Close your eyes and imagine. You hear one party demand tariffs and an end to free trade. Its supporters talk in terms of racial values and racial separateness, as it leaders calculate the white versus black vote state-by-state. It denounces the idea of protecting a democracy abroad from thugs and terrorists. And it has out-raised its counterpart over 3-1 in cash donations for political campaigning. Its nominating process is Byzantine and ultimately determined by the undemocratic votes of unelected Superdelegates accountable to no one. And this is all deemed “liberal.” Airline absurdities #3 In two past postings I listed the sort of craziness that follows when you cram dozens of people on transcontinental flights, from cell-phoning in the aisle to smashing two gigantic carry-ons into tiny overhead compartments. I noticed three others today flying back from New York. 1. The seats are so small and Americans are so large that it is almost impossible to walk down an aisle without hitting a knee or ankle. The stewards have a strange solution: they simply slam their mega-food carts full speed ahead and hardly worry how many bruises they inflict on the way, the theory being that once your foot is run over by a stainless steel cart you won’t put it out there again. 2. Boarding is a joke. A huge crowd assembles in a circle. The various zones are announced, and then everyone feeds his own self-declared line into the fray, from all sides—the duration one has been there waiting mattering little. The poor ticket gatherer sometimes rejects a Zone-4er trying to get into Zone 1, sometimes not. The theory is that the crowd swarms to ensure claim to the rare on-board carry-on space above the seats? 3. I don’t understand the protocol of “lounge” position of the seats. I try never to use it, since the person ahead of me almost destroys my computer or knees when he goes into full “relax” position and leans back, and I wouldn’t wish to do that to those to my rear. I thought, to paraphrase Aristotle about land alienability, that while it is legal, “it is not done” out of deference and manners? True or not? 4. I think airline pilots should be hired by politicians. With a simple mike and ad hoc, they can so spin and reconstruct terrible delays due to mechanical slips, weather, incompetence, or simply traffic that one hardly objects. Usually a calm, slightly southern male voice comes on, notes a sense of frustration at the incompetence of others that has made us all late, and then in JFK-fashion assures us of a terrible, but necessary “10 minute delay” or “15 minute hitch”—and then one hour later we still are not mad when the voice returns to comfort us that “we are now on our way” (10 more minutes follow). These are pros and natural press secretaries—at least far better than a Scott McClellan. Comments (16)EvilDave :misterarthur :Re: Air Travel. I think your theory of boarding swarming is exactly correct: it's based on the fear that your carry-on bag will be gate checked, or, worse, put into the baggage hold, which can mean an additional 45 minute wait (SFO/Northwest) for your luggage. (By the way, the mega food carts have disappeared on Northwest's Detroit - SFO flights. You are now offered the opportunity to purchase a snack box. Ron Kean :I can't talk to liberals anymore. It's like they have a force field around their mind. I understand. I used to be one. Clinton lying to a grand jury? I thought, 'who cares?' I argued that Carter won the debates with Reagan. I was loud. Then it's like I woke up. I went to college from '67 to '71. The best thing was the music. The early capitalists had their cartels. Violence and legislation brought them under control with unions and governmental agencies. Is some similar redress to OPEC possible? I bought 'A War Like No Other' in an airport last year. It was one of the few times I bought a book full price retail. David Smith :Were Democrat leaders ever more likely to be poor (or to have "come up" from poverty, however genteel) than Republicans? Kennedy? Roosevelt? Wilson? Reagan? Nixon? Eisenhower? This is just another example of how the Stupid Party has given the Dems a free ride. Advocates for the poor and downtrodden? Which party really deserves that label? Trudy B. Taylor :dr hanson: where indeed has true liberalism got off to? it is right enough that many of our liberal political leaders aspire to live like mini-saddhams. then they ironically push a class warfare rhetoric as their framework for growing government and weakening individual rights and responsibilities here and abroad. and make no mistake,they do this to increase their own personal power. there was a time, in my grandparents day, when liberals were the watchmen of anti-totalitarianism. aside from the sad fact that they displayed remarkable recalcitrance in identifying communism as a form of totalitarianism (because it originated on the left end of the political spectrum), liberals once knew how to stand up to the nazis and italian fascists. by all indicators they should have been the first wave of u.s. citizens to reflexively and comprehensively condemm islamofacism for what it is. their flaw, i think, is their inability to recognize evil when it appears to arise from the left. individual freedoms can be stolen from either political direction, but then, in our lifetime liberals havent seem so interested in individual freedom anymore. im beginning to fear that they honestly want no part of a growing, thriving middle class either, as that one societal mechanism prevents power concentration better than any other societal contrivance. Anonymous :I'm loathe to presume to recommend an essay topic for VDH, but I had been expecting something rich and historical about William F. Buckley. He is hardly required to do so, but I really hoped some historical contrast would be provided by him showing how WFB was in the tradition of a Demosthenes or a Cato, or even a Brutus - noble, intelligent preserevers of liberty and of republics. Just a recommendation, but I'd love to see a piece on the importance of men of letters being a bulwark of civic life. Such as VDH himself. Jrod :Prof. Hanson, I will not begrudge you for choosing to fly business class; especially when traveling across the country. Dave Begley -Omaha :I'm convinced that a university education is a brand, but that some brands are way overvalued and some way undervalued. Parents and students pay for the Ivy League brand, but maybe they don't get their money's worth if they never have the famous profs and are taught by TAs. I think a big part of a university president's job is to protect and enhance the brand or reputation of the university. During my time at Creighton, I can't recall ever having anyone less than a full PhD teach a class. And I think they all had tenure. I can only think of two exceptions. Our professors weren't on PBS and didn't publish all that much, but they did teach. IMO, a Jesuit university education is way undervalued on both the cost and value scales. BTW, it took years to restore Creighton's reputation after Kevin Ross. I know the whole story and it was liberalism run amuck. And to top it off, Kevin Ross was a *terrible* player. Result? No more academic or off-campus disasters at Creighton. Coach Altman runs them off early if they don't cut it either in the classroom or otherwise. Ivanhoe :Another point lost in all the cheering about how ethanol will save our “way of life” in the Midwest is the incredible amount of environmental damage that intensive corn and soybean cropping does to soil and to water. The 8000 square miles of “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico due in large part to fertilizer runoff generated in the Midwest is not spoken of by environmentalists, nor the compromised waterways all over the Midwest due to field and confinement runoff. Corn is essentially a petroleum product that dominates our food supply. A simple review of many food item labels reveals “corn fructose” or corn syrup, which isn’t exactly health food and may be in part responsible for the sizable kiesters trying to squeeze into airplane seats. Market forces may or may not result in ethanol and corn's dominance in the food supply, but we’ll never know as corn state Congressman are not about to allow the welfare system ensconced in the Ag bill to be seriously threatened. Jimmy J. :As a retired airline pilot it pains me to see how far the industry has fallen. (I retired in 1993.) For me one of the benefits of the job was the service we provided. Getting businessmen to cities to make deals, uniting families, bringing servicemen home on leave, taking people on memorable vacations and more all felt good to me and made it feel as if what I did made a positive difference. I began when the industry was still regulated. The service was good, on time operation was pretty good, and the prices too high . (Food was served on china with real knives and forks too.) Deregulation brought lower prices, but it also brought more airplanes into the skies. The Air Traffic Control system did not evolve with the new demands. They control the airways and determine who will fly on their highways in the sky and in what order. The last three years of my career were spent mostly trying to outwit Air Traffic Control. They were the primary thing standing between me and an on time departure or an on time arrival. It has only gotten worse. Remember that the flight crew is strapped into their seats and would like to take you to your destination as safely, smoothly, and quickly as possible. They don't really enjoy sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Most delays are the result of ATC dictating departure times, slowing planes enroute, and or vectoring aircraft all over the sky to fit them into traffic patterns. It will not improve until the FAA modernizes the Air Traffic Control system and more new runways are built at major hub airports. Deregulation had the effect of making flying very affordable. But it had the unintended consequence of driving service to the lowest common denominator and clogging up the nations airways and airports. I still travel. I allow much more time for everything - check in, getting to the plane, and I always check my bag, so allow for that at the destination. It allows me to be less stressed. The seats are too small, but I've learned to do isometric exercises enroute to keep the blood flowing. Went to London and back last year. 12 hours enroute - quite a challenge to these old bones. One small tip, the first flight of the day usually leaves on time. I share your dissatisfaction and wish I had it in my power to change things. Alas, it is one of those things only the government can really change. Not holding my breath. jdg :The marriage of technology with learning is the future of education, at all levels. Imagine having Dr. Hanson teaching an interactive, streaming media, on-line course on the Peloponnesian War, complete with maps, illustrations, graphics, and similar visual tools? The potentially large audiences the web enables totally changes the underlying economics of locality and rewards more richly merit. In this way, educational courseware would function more like the publishing or software industry, where product development and product marketing reign. Andrew Oliver :First, I acknowledge that socialism distorts markets, and that its tenacles reach into every corner of this country's marketplace. I know that there are farmers and then there are farmers. Your farming does not match mine, nor does the Chicago Board of Trade's decisions on daily price fluctuations have much to do with the price of olives. It is not the fault of biofuel subsidies that has driven the prices of corn, soybeans, and wheat to their current levels. The best estimate in 2005 was that they would add an additional $.35 per bushel to the price we receive at harvest. It is the Hedge funds. It is common knowledge among those of us who live and die by the CBOT prices that a month's total trade volume now equals what last year's total trade volume was. The margin calls in this market has forced many of the local and, lately, major elevators to stand aside and not allow farmers to benefit from the prices by doing what we have done for decades...forward contract our crops. Now all future contracts are limited to 60 days out, and our local basis (the difference between CBOT price and what we are offered) are at historical levels. When Minneapolis wheat went to $24 per bushel in January, the basis was $15. When cotton went to $.98 per pound for 08 December, no one would offer a contract at ANY BASIS OFF THE PRICE. Dex Quire :Dr. Hanson, Why don't you and Dr. Thornton found an online classics degree program? Or if you are pinched for time - which I imagine you both are - give it - as a thesis - to an ambitious Masters or PhD candidate: to design and impliment a working classics program online - from introductory language courses to later reading and understanding of the great Greek & Latin masters - and make it financially feasible (a combined Classics/Business degree?) CAP :I think you are going to be correct about the university. But what about middle school? This entire week our son's public middle school, with all 6th, 7th and 8th grades clases participating, is being devoted to an "Iraq Teach-In." When asked, our son's teacher could not produce a curriculum and could not say who the speakers were going to be. In the hallway there is a large poster with the discredited figure of 600,000+ war dead. Lawrence May :Regarding your comments on the cost and quality of higher education – when it comes to price gouging, Oil companies and mortgage brokers are piker’s compared to our universities. Highlighting this, CNN has been running a series of economic tales of woe on its web site. One of the victims/people was a young lady with a graduate degree in Urban Planning. She was earning a $40,000 per year salary; however, her college loan payments are $1400 per month. I did some rough calculations and it would seem she had borrowed around $120,000 for school (give or take). So there was a financial aid advisor who put her into these loans, knowing that her major (urban planning) was not a very well compensated field. Talk about predatory lending! I believe a good test for economic literacy is to ask “what should be done about the high cost of college?” Is a person’s answer is to increase federal aid, they just flunked the test. All colleges do when federal aid for education (paid or loaned to the individual) is increased is to raise their tuition and fees. They charge exactly the maximum that people can afford to pay and not a penny less. Since most of federal aid is in the form of subsidized loans, students and families end up with ever higher levels of debt. All this to support bloated bureaucracies and no-show tenured professorships (no-show as in the Sopranos – a bunch of guys sitting around a construction site in lawn chairs). Any other industry engaging in these practices would be hauled before congress and investigated to the hilt. Robert :If there were two lines, one for a domestic flight, and the other for a swift kick in the rear, I wonder which line would attract more people. I would add to Andrew Oliver's comments the Wall Street financial institutions, in deep trouble with trillions in losses on derivatives once you count the leverage on them, trying to make money to cover those losses by outright manipulating the commodity markets. What business does Goldman Sachs have with renting oil storage terminals all over the world, for example? Is Goldman Sachs thinking of starting up an oil refining division? Or are they looking to buy up the world's surplus oil and hold it off the market, and then adding massive buying of their own to the futures markets to create more buyers than sellers there and force the price higher, using credit they created to pay for the margin requirements? And this is repeated in gold, silver, aluminum, zinc, copper, platinum, palladium, soybeans, wheat, corn, coffee, sugar, and cocoa, among others, with various other players. Comments have been archived for this page. |
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Inspired by your airline comments, I repost my airline comments for a while back.
(Yes, I am being lazy by not re-packaging my thoughts.)
In response to: [varifrank.com/archives/2006/08/y...]
Nice thought ("Make airline travel fun again.")
Unfortunately, it will never happen.
The airlines view their "customers" as an inconvenience. And, passengers respond in kind.
I don't remember when you could go to the airplane without going through a metal detector. Of course, on the upside they have stopped asking the 2 stupid questions: "Did you pack your bags?" "Has anyone asked you to carry items on this flight?". Great great so you are admitting that all this hassle was worthless and you're just going to fall back to honesty as a terrorist prevention measure? Great.
Well, at least with the post-911 regulations they cut those insulting questions out.
What this will result in is not more conveniences, but more selling opportunities. More opportunities to get abused by the angry waitress on the plane. Remember after 911 the "flight attendants" decided to take out their fears and aggressions on the passengers? I do.
I also remember being physically shoved off an airplane because they miscounted; while I tried to explain that my wife had to get off the plane with me (I had the only set of keys to the house BTW.). I wasn't trying to stay; I just wanted to tell that lady in that seat that we're getting off the plane. Now if I had shoved back what do you think would have happened? Probably the same thing that happened to the guy behind me who said "What the Hell" when the stewardess yanked (and I mean yanked) his luggage out of this hand. His ticket was voided and he was "banned" from the airline. He was also told he was NOT allowed to see the manager. And this was pre-911.
All I want on my flight (and in life in general) is to be left alone. I want the pilot to stop acting like a tour guide. If he would just shut up I could go to sleep. I try not to bother anyone. I wish they would try to not bother me.
Yeah, I fear that soon my iPod (with my audiobook) and my physical book will no longer be allowed on the plane. Then I'll have no way to escape the stale air, the smelly seats, and the guy that has reclined his chair to the point that I wonder if I am supposed to give him a shave (more power to the airlines that stop reclining seats).
I check everything. I just sit down, shut up, and read as soon as I can get on the plane. And, I don't stop until I am at the next airport.
I love international flights (aside from LAX security, but you know). International flights at least don't beat you with a stick. I like nothing more than paying $300-$500 for domestic flights only to get abused by the staff. Really wasn't there a "common carrier" legal standard for the treatment of passengers?
The airlines are not going to change who they are. Not as long as Chapter 11 is available to them. (Let them fail and let something else move in.)
I HATE flying. Actually I am OK with going though the air. It is the airport and 25% of the flight attendants I hate.
Apr 7, 2008 02:28 PM