It’s incredible to think there is just one Battle of Britain pilot left - John ‘Paddy’ Hemingway. I can’t help think of all those I was lucky enough to have known best: Geoff Wellum, Tom Neil, Bob Doe, Pete Brothers, Bee Beamont, Jimmy Corbin, Bam Bamberger. All gone. It’s sad. pic.twitter.com/BjJwqBzPkX
The real British myth of the Second World War: after managing to survive 1940, Britain, exhausted and perhaps disheartened, stepped back and left the real effort to Russia and America | Robert Tombs #VEDay75https://t.co/sV6BQ8iO0q
What else would the Queen say? That the UK has been taken over by foreigners and cultural Marxists?
"Our streets are not empty. They are filled with the love and care that we have for each other. And when I look at our country & see what we are willing to do we are still a nation that those brave soldiers, sailors & airmen would recognise & admire"
AmConMag: Time to Foreclose on the Churchill Cult By PAUL GOTTFRIED
He's a religious faith that no one is allowed to question without forfeiting membership in Western civilization.
Catholics affirm that the state has the authority, within limits, to recognize marriage and to protect people who enter into it; to recognize the sanctity of life, and to do no harm to it; to recognize the dignity of the human person, and therefore ensure an economy in which every person can flourish according to their capacities without being debilitated by poverty. Yet currently, the Catholic is being asked to divide her affirmations and denials more or less equally between political parties that may or may not finally represent these concerns at all. It is like asking King Solomon, or a mother, to tear a child in half. That means that we are beyond the Churchillian “least bad” problem in choosing between parties. The political culture we inhabit has exceeded that problem. Ours is not only a polarized politics, it is also an excessive politics. It dominates every aspect of life. Political campaigns have learned to carefully cultivate every existing identity for itself, and only for itself. It has come to take over every aspect of life so there is no place where presidential politics is absent. I think this excessiveness is an enduring aspect of every politics that detaches itself from natural limits, that consistently refuses to allow space to that which is not politics, that refuses to admit that there is anything prior to politics, that habitually ignores anything which supersedes politics, and which denies anything which is not reducible to politics. All of this makes my post-election reflections sound like a plea for resistance to political instrumentalism. It is that, but it is also simply a plea for contemplation on those things which are not political, but are nevertheless important to political community. The popular motto of the Catholic resistance movement during WWII, “France be careful not to lose your soul” is worth recalling to this end. A generation earlier, Charles Péguy, the atheist socialist convert to Catholicism, sought to remind France to attend those things which were preludes to politics: metaphysics, narratives, language, family, friendship and contemplation upon the causes, effects, and ends of our most cherished commitments – our loves and our liberties (to recall St. Augustine). In our post-election reflections, Christians should be the ones asking the really substantial questions, not the ones asked at our very insubstantial presidential debates – but the questions we would want our children to ask: questions about existence, such as why there is something rather than nothing; about justice, and to whom it is owed; about truth, and making ourselves truthful; about the nature of goodness and how we can be formed in accordance with it. Questions like these are pre-political, but they matter for politics too. If these sorts of question whither, we will get the politics we deserve. Amongst ourselves as well as with others, we must be asking what it means to be a Christian in our excessive, polarized, political order. At its best, true Christianity has always resisted being instrumentalized by politics – it has always affirmed the legitimate authority of the state, but it has also helped the state to flourish precisely by pointing out its limits, and its disorder. Sometimes it has done so with martyrs, but usually with a different kind of Christian witness — one which entails discursive reasoning as well as contemplation and prayer, marked by both seriousness and joyfulness about things other than politics but which nevertheless matter for the political health of the places that God has entrusted to us.
Another Catholic intellectual trying to span the divide but going beyond it, but I don't think he goes far enough. The problem is not with "politics" per se, but with the scale of the "National Unity." Scale is one of those limits which few American Catholics recognize, probably because they have become habituated to living in this mess and thinking that it is normal.
I've been wondering if the lack of real conversion is due to a failure of witness, not only through words but in how we live. (As in that saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, "Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.") And not because we fail to live as Catholic individuals, but because we have failed to live as Catholics in community.
Obama doesn't understand Anglo-Saxon culture? He may understand Chicago political culture, but that isn't the same thing. He did goew up in the multicultural paradise of Hawaii but attended a school for the elites. He probably has some familiarity with some form of Yankee culture (especially in its "liberal" form); but that isn't the same as traditional American culture, now, is it? At least not the best part of it.
Who are the primary bearers of culture? Fathers or mothers? When it comes to passing on rules for men, fathers are crucial. There are many "unkind" words that could be used of Obama's mother and her choice in life, including her choice of spouses. What evidence did she give that she is anything but a deracinated white? What evidence has Obama given that he cares about his European heritage?
Yesterday I was looking through some Russell Kirk titles, including America's British Culture and Roots of American Order. Has Obama ever read these books? "Anglo-Saxon" does have a strict meaning, referring to certain Germanic tribes who mingled with the natives, initiating the "English" identity. "British" is more of a multiethnic (and multicultural) identity as it is comprised of 4 countries and their peoples, rejected by some (such as Joseph Pearce). I think the staffer's comments about "Anglo-Saxon," if they were actually made, should be understood as meaning "English."
"One thing that Britain and the US have in common is that they define nationhood in civic rather than ethnic terms. A hundred years ago, 80 per cent of British subjects were neither white nor Christian. You become British, as you become American, by signing up to a set of values."
Hannan seems to be a believer in the proposition nation. How unfortunate.
I reproduce below what 'HM' wrote (1st July, 9.16 pm, on the 'Demetriou Conundrum' thread), interleaving my comments in rebuttal and explanation:
'HM' ‘Yes, the point is clear now. If it had not been for the Polish guarantee Britain could have continued its successful policy of appeasement, and we would all have been much better off.’
PH: This is just crude. 'HM' makes it plain that he has not paid much attention, and is prevented from giving my argument fair consideration by prejudice and dogma. I have nowhere argued that the policy of 'appeasement', such as it was, was 'successful'. On the contrary, I have mocked Neville Chamberlain for his delusions about Munich.
The thing that 'HM’ cannot cope with, because it shakes his moral universe (as it shakes that of 'Stan') is the idea that Britain had no substantial interest in maintaining the Versailles-imposed borders of Eastern Europe. Those borders, by the way, have now been wholly abolished under the Schengen agreement and Versailles has been wholly undone, without any protest from Britain, or any special loss on our part. Even at the time, British inter-war diplomacy was at least flexible on these matters, and British public opinion increasingly grew to believe that Versailles had been a foolish treaty.
In fact, we had no such interest. The French did, or thought they did, and we were in a sort of alliance with France, but for what purpose? The heart of this argument is that Britain's interests were global and imperial, and that we gained nothing and lost much by intervening in continental matters at this stage.
As for 'we would have been much better off', this is also a crude caricature. All I am saying is that, had we not gone uselessly to war in September 1939, we might have saved our empire and much else. We might not. But it is certain that the September 1939 declaration of war (caused directly by the May guarantee to Poland) led to our catastrophic national decline, and very nearly got us invaded and subjugated for the first time since 1066.
What is interesting, once again, is the scornful sarcasm contained in this misunderstanding by 'HM'. He cannot see the subject straight. The Churchill legend is too precious to him. Anyone who questions it must be some sort of Hitlerite apologist. Not so.
'HM' (quoting me) ’...”we must look elsewhere for the decisive moment ... I think a persuasive case has been made for the Polish guarantee.” Persuasive indeed, if it had not been made and kept to, then no one would ever have taken us seriously again, and we could have given up on war for good.’
PH: But it was made, and it was not kept to. We did nothing to help Poland (and the French only undertook a symbolic and swift advance into the Saarland). We did not engage with the Germans on land until Churchill's disastrous and incompetent foray into Norway, months after Poland had been ploughed under by the USSR and the Third Reich. We did not engage with the Germans properly until they came down through Belgium, outflanked us and drove us into the sea. Who exactly did we want to take us seriously? Fiji? The only people whose opinion counted at the moment were the major European powers, Germany and the USSR. They treated us with contempt before the guarantee, after the guarantee, and again after we had failed to enforce it.
And why would giving a guarantee we couldn't enforce to a country we didn't in fact help make anyone take us seriously? This is diplomacy as melodrama, or soap opera. The conduct of Foreign Policy is not a job interview or a character test. By the way, who exactly has taken us seriously as a major power since then? Apart from Argentina, hardly a major power, what country have we been able to challenge and defeat on our own? We never again operated as an offensive military force after Dunkirk (leaving aside various imperial incursions in Iraq and Iran) except as an ally (and a dependent, bankrupt ally) of the USA.
The fact is that nobody would have taken Neville Chamberlain seriously again if he had done nothing after Hitler marched into Prague. And thanks to his wounded pride, vanity and weak political position, our country was hitched irrevocably to Poland's cart.
'HM' (quoting me) ‘ “But if this is the pivotal moment, then we went to war by mistake, for a cause already lost, rather than to save the world.” Exactly. That we did actually save the world does nothing to excuse this, since it only happened by accident.‘
PH: In what way did 'we' 'save' 'the world'? Without the USA and the USSR, our accidental and far from sentimental allies of necessity, we would have had to make terms with the Germans in the end anyway. Without their military alliances, Germany would not have been defeated. And how 'saved' were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria after the war was over? How saved, for that matter, were the people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, or the peoples of the Soviet Empire in general, set to endure decades of show trials, death camps and despotism lasting for almost half a century after our world-saving victory? Did it make their lives better or worse that we went to war in 1939 and promptly bankrupted ourselves and lost our empire? I don't see how. It is no good 'HM' trying to wriggle out of facing this by what appears to me to be sarcasm.
'HM' (quoting me): ’ “The Churchill myth has arisen for several reasons. One, it is comforting ... Two, it fosters the weird belief that the Second World War was primarily a conflict over goodness between free, democratic Britain and wicked Nazi Germany...” Precisely. Though Britain was free and democratic, and Nazi Germany was wicked, this was not the reason we went to war, so it’s something we can justifiably ignore.‘
PH: I am not sure what 'HM' is trying to say here. Is he admitting that we didn't go to war with Germany because of its regime (We didn't. Though it is hard to believe this in the light of the 'Finest Hour' interpretation of history)? If he is, then he must begin to ask why in that case *did* Britain go to war with Germany *when we did*. And here I must point out yet again that my case is not that we should never have gone to war with Hitler. It would probably have been necessary. It is that we shouldn't have done so in September 1939. And it is this uncomfortable question ‘Why, and why then?’ that I now refuse to shy away from.
HM (quoting me) ‘ “And if we were so keen on making war on wickedness, then why did we have wicked Stalin as our principal ally on land?” Why indeed? Being forced to is no defence.’
PH. On the contrary, it is a perfectly good defence. There is none better. As Mr Churchill rightly said, 'If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable remark about the Devil in the House of Commons'. Countries often have to make unwelcome alliances of necessity to serve their own interests, among which are survival and independence. It would be foolish not to do so. But it is absurd to pretend, if you make such alliances, that you are also fighting a great war of principle. In which case, and here comes the really awkward part of the argument, the Soviet alliance is justified if it was necessary for our own interests. But in that case what were our interests in fighting Hitler in 1939, which then compelled us to seek this unwelcome ally? How did going to war in September 1939 make our continued independence and survival more likely than staying out? Why did we start a war in 1939, when we didn't need to? If it was all right for the USA to stay out of the war until 1941 (and most 'Finest Hour' adherents think it was, since they are convinced that the USA is our bestest friend) then why wasn't it all right for us to stay out for just as long?
'HM' (once again quoting me): ‘ “Likewise, if we were so much against appeasement in 1939, why did we appease Stalin at Yalta...” We can have no excuse, even if we were exhausted, and out of money, and simply relieved to be at peace again.’
PH: Well, actually, we were not at peace yet during the Yalta conference, but let that go. If 'HM' accepts that Yalta was as bad a piece of appeasement as Munich (as it was) then why would it have been so wicked to push Poland into giving up Danzig and the corridor in 1939, or simply let Hitler take them? Why does HM not apply to Churchill at Yalta the strictures he applies to Chamberlain in May 1939? What 'HM' said about that was that ‘If [the Polish Guarantee] had not been made and kept to, then no one would ever have taken us seriously again, and we could have given up on war for good.’
So, having gone to war, mortgaged ourselves for generations, supposedly for the freedom of Poland, and expended untold lives, we then hand over Poland to Stalin, and 'HM' is quite happy and content, or at least willing to accept the cruel necessities of life. Or is he? Or is he, as it seems to me, trying to avoid the point? Does his moral hauteur apply only in 1939, when Hitler is involved, and fade mysteriously into real-politik in 1945, when we are dealing with Stalin?
HM (quoting me) ‘ “So the question still arises. Why did we go to war with Germany when we did?” Why indeed? If only we’d waited a better opportunity would have been sure to arise. Or we could simply have left it too late, after which it would all have been out of our hands.’
PH. It is true that a better opportunity might have arisen, though of course he can only acknowledge that truth sarcastically (in fact, sarcasm seems to be his main way of acknowledging the truth of my position). But what does he mean by 'leaving it too late'? Too late for what? Since from June 1941 onwards it was all out of our hands anyway (and we were already broke, and committed to a war from which we could only depart either by final victory as a client ally, on American and Soviet terms, or through a humiliating peace with Hitler), what does he envisage by the term 'out of our hands'?
The next set of quotes from me arranged by 'HM' is as follows: ‘ “We would have done far better to do as the USA did, and calculate our intervention to suit our own needs. Who knows what that might have led to?” No one. “But it would be unlikely to have been worse than what we in fact faced...” Sorry. No one except Peter Hitchens. “...the loss of our empire and our power, plus a narrow escape from subjugation.” Only the loss of our empire and our power, and a failure to escape subjugation would have been worse. And that couldn’t possible have happened, could it?’
PH: The level of wilful incomprehension here, mingled with the sarcastic bitterness of a man whose dreams have been trodden upon, is astonishing.
It might have happened. But 'HM' needs to explain the circumstances under which he thinks it would have happened. We know - because it did happen - that going to war over Poland in September 1939 cost us our empire and our standing as a major power. We know it nearly led to our subjugation. Why would staying out of the war, keeping our army intact and continuing to build up our forces have made it likely that the outcome would be worse? Does 'HM' think that if Hitler had truly wished to conquer this country he couldn't have done so in 1941, had he chosen to strike West instead of East? Yet he didn't, any more than he ever seriously intended to attack the USA. What does this (apart from all his published thoughts and writings) suggest about his actual priorities?
HM (quoting me): ‘ “We might also re-examine our own decayed, debauched national culture and realistically examine our standing with clear eyes, casting aside all sentimentality and self-delusion...” Quite so. If only we could abandon any lingering pride over WWII and focus on hating ourselves and longing for our empire we would be much happier as a nation, and so much less deluded.’
PH. Once again a bitter, sarcastic parody of what I actually say. Where do I recommend that we 'hate ourselves' or long for our empire (that is actually what many sentimentalists and 'Finest Hour' adherents do? I do not. I know only too well that the empire is gone for good). One thing we might not do, if we faced the truth, is try to continue to behave as if we were a great power, when we are not, or to have a vast and bloated welfare state we can't afford, or to insist, year by year, on maintaining a standard of living we cannot afford, as if we still were what we long ago ceased to be. We might also recognise the urgent need to salvage our national independence, which, in a fog of Churchillian fake grandeur, we have given away to the EU.
Kudos to Mr. Hitchens for engaging his readers; maybe he should write a book on World War II (and the decline of the British Empire) as well.
I don't think I've quoted Winston Churchill out of context at all, in the matter of the reoccupation of the Rhineland and his support for the League of Nations route (for all I know, still proceeding in some forgotten committee room in Geneva). My point is and remains that if even Churchill wasn't calling for an immediate military response to expel Germany from the reoccupied Rhineland (which would, I am sure, have led to the fall of Hitler had it happened, but alas, alack, it was never likely to happen) then it is absurd to pretend that such a thing was a realistic possibility. In which case we must look elsewhere for the decisive moment in the long procession towards war between Britain and Germany. In which case, where? I think a persuasive case has been made for the Polish guarantee. Britain had the freedom to choose what to do. It chose wrongly. But if this is the pivotal moment, then we went to war by mistake, for a cause already lost, rather than to save the world. And that makes nonsense of the Churchill myth, in which we were compelled by historic duty to stand, as it were, at the Pass of Thermopylae, against the Barbarians, and save civilisation by our exertions. As it happens, we were more or less mugged on a squalid street corner of history, having wandered foolishly with a full wallet into a bad part of town, and thinking we could talk our way out of trouble. We were lucky to escape with our lives.
The Churchill myth has arisen for several reasons. One, it is comforting (like the belief that we are good at football summed up in the moronic lumpen chant 'Two World Wars and One World Cup') especially when we consider what a diminished country we now are (this is specially well-known to those who actually know anything about the state, and the standing, of Britain in 1939).
Two, it fosters the weird belief that the Second World War was primarily a conflict over goodness between free, democratic Britain and wicked Nazi Germany, from which France feebly dropped out early, and which the USA joined late. (The USSR, which does not quite fit this narrative, tends not to be mentioned in this version, well summed up in another lumpen football chant directed at the French 'If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts!’) This is epitomised in the way in which we tend to refer to the 'The Germans' as 'The Nazis' (though we do not refer to the USSR as 'The Communists') and to speak of a 'war against Fascism'. The second of these is specially interesting. If we are being completely specific, then we were at war with Mussolini's Fascist Italy from late 1940 until 1943 - though we had for many years sought an alliance with him. But if we are using 'Fascist' as a sort of generic term for vaguely conservative militaristic dictatorships, then what do we call the regime of General Metaxas, our gallant Greek ally against Mussolini in 1940-41? And how do we view Spain's General Franco, and his canny refusal to join Hitler in war against us, which probably saved the Mediterranean for British sea power? I don't think 'war against Fascism' works. Nor does 'war against Nazism' work very well. It was Germany we were at war with, something we confirmed once we committed ourselves to the unconditional surrender of Germany, which meant we no longer cared who was in power in Berlin. We also, as I sometimes remind readers, did nothing to save the murdered Jews, not even attempting to bomb to the railway lines which took the victims to the death camps, and ignoring reports of those camps for years. Whereas we were quite willing to 'de-house' by bombing the German working class, who had voted till the end against Hitler and the Nazis.
Well, Britain and Germany were in that war, and fought each other, though Britain did not engage the main body of the Germans between 1940 and 1944 (and in both 1939-40 and 1944-45 did so as one army among allies. Some spoilsports might even say that the war in the West - even after D-Day and the Italian landings - was not the main theatre, which was the Russian Front from 1941 onwards).
And if we were so keen on making war on wickedness, then why did we have wicked Stalin as our principal ally on land?
Likewise, if we were so much against appeasement in 1939, why did we appease Stalin at Yalta, and act (as we had at Munich towards the Czechs) as the enforcers of a more powerful nation's desires?
Churchill told the Polish leader Stanislaw Mikolajczyk on October 1944 at the lovely British Embassy in Moscow (with its startling view of the Kremlin across the river) that he, Mikolajczyk, must accept the new borders of his country, ordered by Stalin, or ‘You are out of business forever. The Russians will sweep through your country and your people will be liquidated. You are on the verge of annihilation.’ This is more or less what Chamberlain had told Eduard Benes at Munich, substituting Czechoslovakia for Poland and Hitler for Stalin. Stalin kindly saw Churchill off from Moscow airport, waving his handkerchief.
You will have to read Patrick Buchanan's uncomfortable book to read the awful, self-deluding remark made by Churchill after Yalta, in which he compared his Yalta conduct favourably with Neville Chamberlain's Munich behaviour (plainly conscious that others might make a different, less kind comparison).
Britain didn't go to war with Germany because it was a wicked regime. No more did the USA or the USSR, who also liked (and still like) to pretend that this was so. Hitler was the aggressor (or at least the one who declared war) on both of them, and it is interesting to wonder how war between them would have come about otherwise. Nor was our involvement in the war at any point really central to German concerns, except after we had been thrown out of France and wouldn't make peace. I have said before that, by the time we had reached that point, Churchill was absolutely right. A Hitlerian peace, following military defeat, would have been worse than the long slow decline into unimportance and weakness we chose instead.
Germany did not (as has been pointed out) attempt to build a global navy before the war, nor take over the French Fleet when this might have altered the balance of naval power. No country seriously intending to challenge Britain could have done so without making huge naval and air war preparations. Even in its then decayed state, the Royal Navy could hold the Channel provided the RAF did not crack. Nor did the Luftwaffe ever develop a bombing force, or a heavy bomber equivalent to the Lancaster squadrons which we turned on Germany. The Blitz was misery for those who endured it, and unforgiveably barbaric, likewise the V1s and V2s, but small by comparison with the destruction we rained on Germany (Not, as I have mentioned elsewhere, that this destruction was either militarily effective or morally justified). Nor did Germany, at the height of its military power, make serious preparations to invade Britain. 'Sealion' was not much of a plan, and was never pursued with any zeal. Surely, if conquest and utter defeat of Britain had been at the heart of Hitler's purpose, he would have had the ships and planes and the plans to achieve it. Compare this with the awesome (in the proper use of the word) assembly of men and materiel which Hitler directed against his real objective, the USSR.
So the question still arises. Why did we go to war with Germany when we did? And no clear answer comes back. We would have done far better to do as the USA did, and calculate our intervention to suit our own needs. Who knows what that might have led to? But it would be unlikely to have been worse than what we in fact faced - the loss of our empire and our power, plus a narrow escape from subjugation.
On that basis we should judge present and future calls to go to war against 'evil dictators’ (Nasser, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein), all of which have produced severe unintended consequences. And we might remember that our most successful military alliance of the 20th century was the original NATO (not the absurd body which now goes under that name), which defeated the USSR not by engaging in emotive wars over Berlin in 1953, Budapest in 1956 or Berlin again in 1961, or Prague in 1968, or Poland in 1981, or any other Soviet outrage. But by remaining so strong that Moscow dared not attack it, and was unable to split it.
We might also re-examine our own decayed, debauched national culture and realistically examine our standing with clear eyes, casting aside all sentimentality and self-delusion, and particularly rejecting the soppy falsehood known as 'The Special Relationship'. It does not exist.
I think Patrick Buchanan's 'Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War' (which I suspect 'Stan' has not read, and urge him to obtain) shows beyond doubt that the conventional narrative of World War Two is simply unsustainable in the light of modern knowledge. Its poor reception arose partly out of the fact that, like all courageous history, it upset so many academic and political vested interests.
One of this book's most profound effects on me had nothing to do with the Polish guarantee. It was the realisation that my long-held view - that Britain and France should have acted against Hitler when he reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 - was hopelessly unrealistic. I notice some other readers till cling to this idea. I warn them against this. Alas, it is a rotten branch, and will snap beneath their weight.
Dunkirk: Are we finally ready to face the truth? I think enough time has passed since Dunkirk for us to admit the truth about it. It was not a triumph, but a terrible national defeat – surpassed in the 20th Century only by the other Churchillian catastrophe of Singapore in 1942.
Having entered a war for which we were wholly unready, for a cause which was already lost, at a time we did not choose and with allies on whom we could not rely, we were flung off the continent of Europe in weeks. Only thanks to a double devil’s pact did we survive as a nation. We sold our economy and our empire to Franklin Roosevelt’s USA, and we handed half of Europe to Joseph Stalin’s homicidal tyranny. They won the war in the end, though we had to contribute many lives to their victory. Then we looked on as they rearranged the world.
Sooner or later, the fuzzy, cosy myth of World War Two and our ‘Finest Hour’ will fade. We once needed to pretend Dunkirk was a triumph. If we are to carve our way in a hostile world, we now need to understand – as those who were actually on the beaches well knew – that it wasn’t any such thing.
I would also stress the divergence between our sides when it comes to extricating ourselves from the multicultural fever swamp. Possible neoconservative alternatives to what I’ve described, by such characteristic advocates as Lynne Cheney, David Horowitz and Bill Bennett, might include a compulsory course on the American heritage. This course would showcase our country as a self-perfecting global democracy; and it would take students on an inspirational journey from the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “All men are created equal” through FDR’s Four Freedoms down to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This and other similar measures would be used to teach students of all races and creeds “democratic values,” the spread of which, we would be told, is the high moral end for which the U.S. was brought into existence.
We might also hear a recommendation from neoconservative social commentator Dinesh D’Souza, calling for extraordinary efforts to integrate college students of all different ethnic backgrounds. D’Souza would accuse our administration of not going far enough to commit students and faculty to a universally exportable democratic way of life. We would also likely be told that recruiting minorities for the wrong reasons would create islands of separateness on our campus instead of making everyone into a member of the world’s first global nation. Finally we might be warned, perhaps by Cal Thomas or David Horowitz, that lurking behind calls for diversity is a hidden plea for anti-Zionism or a defeatist response to the War On Terror. Such hidden agendas characterize the advocates of diversity; who in any case are deviating from the goal of the saintly Martin Luther King, a firm opponent of all forms of quotas, even for black Americans.
Needless to say, I couldn’t think of anyone on the Alternative Right who would take any of these stands. Our side would stress that not every adolescent can do college work. Colleges that are serious about traditional disciplines might appeal to, at most, 20 percent of the young, which is the percentage of those who have the cognitive skills for doing college-level study. Given the fraudulent product that now passes for college education, it is not surprising that most students and faculty can neither learn nor teach what was once deemed appropriate as college subjects.
One could easily point to speakers at this conference who have taken the positions outlined. These fearless critics have questioned the transformation of American higher education into a devalued consumer product, made available to those who are incapable of real learning. Small wonder that colleges are turned into centers of multicultural social experiments and diversitarian gibberish! What better use could one find for a falsely advertised institution that is trying to entertain young social work, communication and primary education majors while taking their parents’ money!
Neoconservative educationists, we might also hear from the Alternative Right, have their own fish to fry. They are seeking to defend their version of the democratic welfare state as the best of all governments. They also have another far-reaching goal that is explicit or implicit in their college outreach. Neoconservatives, to speak about them specifically, wish to limit any disagreement on campuses generated by their aggressively internationalist foreign policy. In pursuit of this end, they happily falsify or obscure certain embarrassing historical facts, e.g., the massive deceit applied to pushing the U.S. into past foreign wars, and the published views of such neocon heroes as Churchill and Wilson dealing with racial and ethnic differences.
Neoconservatives and their defenders would accuse our side of taking positions that have no chance of being accepted. And they might be right on this last point. Our positions would infuriate the educational establishment and much of the public administration apparatus. Many of us, moreover, are strict constitutionalists, who would argue, to the consternation of the political class, that the federal government is excessively entangled in state and local education. It should be of no concern to public administrators whether a private college has or has not been recruiting designated minorities. Academic education should not be an occasion for government social planners to impose their vision on the private sector. Indeed private colleges, if they were truly concerned about being independent, would reject federal and state aid, and they would do all in their power to keep our managerial government from interfering with their institutions.
Note I am not defending “our side” in these debates. I am only making clear that we and they do not hold the same views about American education or about how its problems are to be engaged. I would also concede the obvious here, namely, that some people on our side of the divide may occasionally work for those on the other side and that the GOP out of power will occasionally get behind books and authors presenting arguments that would not please Republican administrations. Not all who make the arguments of the alternative Right have been subject to equally oppressive sanctions or have been uniformly denied a place in the sun. There are disparities in the ways that the GOP-movement conservative establishment has treated individual critics on the right. What seems beyond dispute however is that we and they disagree fundamentally on a wide range of questions, far more than we in this room would disagree with each other. The conventional conservative movement is therefore justified in recognizing that we are more different from their movement than establishment conservatives are from those on the center left. Movement conservatives and neoconservatives dialogue openly with the liberal Left while ignoring or ridiculing us—and this happens for a very good reason. The authorized version of the conservative movement understands that we and they are not of the same spirit. Unlike them, we do not serve the GOP; nor are we obliged to go along with neoconservative whims and fixations lest we lose our jobs or media outlets.
Tonight (6/4/08), the funniest man in TV news (frankly, I consider Colbert’s comic spin on news as credible as most of the knuckleheads on the major networks) will have 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr on, and tomorrow night (6/5/08) Colbert hosts the most prominent, true conservative this side of Ron Paul -Pat Buchanan. Buchanan is doing a book tour promoting his latest, a revisionist WWII history, focusing on Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.
I will be putting up the videos once they become available.
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unneces-sary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, Patrick J. Buchanan, Crown, 501 pages
by John Lukacs
Just a quibble with the last point Dr. Lukacs makes:
But there is a fatal contradiction in Buchanan’s theses: Hitler’s regime—including, one may think, its expansion—was evil, but warring against him was unnecessary and wrong. Either thesis may be argued, but not both.
But it isn't contradictory. Buchanan is not arguing both x and not-x.
