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April 2006
Response to Readership
Have we finally succumbed to the notion that what is good for business is good for the country regardless of social implications? Can the political ideologies of the two major parties survive, considering the leaders of these institutions are subscribers and benefactors of the "good for business" doctrine? Is the history of a good people and nation being supplanted by a nation that placed the good of commerce ahead of the good of our founding principles?
Hanson: I don’t quite understand your question since it is put in the vaguest of terms. If you mean something like is it right that an oil executive took a $400 million retirement package while his countrymen paid billions, as oil shot from $18 to $71 a barrel, then, no, that is unethical. If you mean did wealthy oil execs affect U.S. policy toward energy independence, like opposition to federal mandated conservation, mileage standards, and alternative fuels, the answer is perhaps in some cases. And if you mean did the United States prop up dictatorial regimes abroad after the Cold War for purposes of commerce as well, the answer is yes.
In this regard, there is little difference between the two parties, just as leaders of each differ little in their wealth. Democrats used to be idealists abroad, now they write realistic op-eds disparaging democracy advocacy; Republicans used to be realists; most still are, but some are not and push consensual government.
We know socialism and communism don’t work — look at the history of the Soviet Union and the current stagnation in Europe. Cuba is a disaster; Latin America is heading that way. So the answer is to have a vibrant capitalist system that enforces a moral ethic upon its more successful to think of the general commonwealth. Politically, we’ve been there before at the turn of the century, which gave us needed anti-trust legislation, and later, in the post-depression, watchdog agencies on Wall Street. Our system is an arena where the fittest survives and creates wealth that filters down — but it won’t work if those stronger feel that they have no respect for the rule of law or the ethnical concerns of millions that will never share a modicum of their privilege.
Do you believe that popular entertainment using the Classics is useful in drawing neophytes into the field? Or do you think that the distortions inherent in such works (e.g. the upcoming movie The Three Hundred about the battle of Thermopylae) devalue their benefit? Also, what are your favorite pieces of historical fiction covering Classical Greece?
Hanson: Yes, I do if done correctly. But there is a paradox: filmmakers and novelists have the knack for popular appeal but little deep appreciation or knowledge of the ancient world; classicists do, but have been trained to be dispassionate and often lack the tools to bring their field alive. I look forward to the The Three Hundred. Gladiator was as wonderful a film as Alexander was awful. I liked the Mary Renault novels, and read Ben Hur about five years ago, and for all the purple passages found the plot ingenious and riveting.
Your recent article in the San Jose Mercury News, in some of its opinions, made me want to burn the newspaper. Even though we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum at times, I would like to ask you, what are your thoughts and assessment of the recently re-released Cosmos mini-series by Dr. Carl Sagan? Have you ever met Carl Sagan? And, of his summaries of the classical Greek thinkers — especially concerning science — do you take Dr. Sagan to be accurate?
Hanson: As long as you only wish to burn the newspaper, it's ok. Take a deep breath and exhale slowly when these moods on Thursdays come on. Never met Carl Sagan and only vaguely recall his series. He, I think, suffers the wages of all popularizers — the time needed to distill information and the publicity circuit takes time away from needed research: sort of a paradox in that the hard work that gives one attention will soon be shorted by that attention. I can't recall much of anything Sagan said about the Greeks, other than he admired them for their empirical inquiry about science. My own admiration for the Greek derives from their honesty and self-criticism; they rarely self-censured themselves and let the chips fall where they may.
Politicians today lack the courage and strength to deal forthrightly with illegal immigration and see it through to the end: to secure the border, and promote and insist on the assimilation of aliens here now. The fact that 60 to 80% of the electorate wants this will not compete with the withering corrosive power of the charge of "racism.” As they say, one video news clip of a deportation of an illegal alien with a child...and it will be all over. What do you think?
Hanson: I wrote a lot on it, and discussed the angle from a variety of perspectives, including a critique of the therapeutic and anecdotal that uses emotion in lieu of an argument. So I tend to agree. Open-borders advocates have changed the very language of the debate to put the onus of racism on any who argue for legality. The solution involves limiting the number of entrants, making sure they are all legal, going back to the melting pot, and working with those that are already here for, say, five years. Your take on the political side is simply a description of human nature which avoids conflict and hopes problems just fade away.
Arab leaders seem the ultimate practitioners of realpolitik, saying one thing to the West and another to the Arab street. Why then do we care what they say? In the end, democracy expresses the underlying morality and values of a given people. We should care more about that morality than its political expression. Do you agree that, if that morality is deeply corrupt and evil, our only course is to destroy it?
For years, most of the West deluded itself about Nazism and refused to confront its evil. You seem to suggest we do the same thing again in the Middle East?
Hanson: We always wish to be liked rather than respected, especially the last few years, and so get our feelings hurt when some horrific leader claims we are imperialist. Democracy is more than plebiscites, but involves human rights, a free press, and tolerance for minorities. I’m suggesting that it took a long time to get into this mess — billions of petrodollars in the hands of infantile dictators is a bad policy — and will take as long to get out of it. Starting liberalization is the only hope other than outright war. In Iraq, for all the caricatures, the Iraqis are the only Arabs who fight the terrorists because they have a stake in their own government.
Let us be patient and see where these ripples go. The Arab world is beset by tribalism, fundamentalism, gender apartheid, and lawlessness; the only way to rectify that is to fight terrorists and dictators and offer a third alternative other than theocracy and autocracy. But it is hard with our nation’s short attention span, and the present hysteria. So we press on. President Bush may end up like Margaret Thatcher, turned on by his own, but appreciated ever more as the years pass.
Though I applaud the Iraqi's voting, I fear the newly elected government will become a close ally to our current enemy, Iran. Al-Sadr reportedly has 30 seats in the Parliament and has a huge influence on the Iraqi prime minister. Should we have killed him back in 2004 or is this the right path, allowing him to gain power like Hitler did in the early 1930s?
Hanson: I think Sistani and Co. can marginalize Al-Sadr on the basis that Iraqis are Arabs first, Shiites second. We will see. What we did or did not do in 2004 in the British sector is now immaterial. Our best hope is that he is politicized by the responsibility of government. The more factions and competing interests in the formation of the government, the better for us to stay out of it.
What is your opinion of the relationship between China and Iran? Does Iran's bluster have China's support? Is China working on gaining control of the worlds' resources in the same way Russia did during the Cold War?
Hanson: Sort of. China is classically amoral — it asks nothing of anyone in commerce other than to pay up. It gets away with all this —as well as commercial piracy and police state tactics at home — on two principles:
1. It seems a better state than its past when it was the greatest mass murderer of its own in history.
2. The patina of Mao suits and revolution fool millions of useful idiots into thinking it is a radically egalitarian society that need not meet the standards of civilized nations.
As far as Iran, China needs oil; Iran needs cheap Westernized technology; so the exchange is mutually beneficial. Note the cowardice involved: China is far harder on Muslims than is the United States, but any Muslim fanatic knows that to take out a skyscraper in Shanghai is to earn a nuke in response. Very depressing the world's hypocrisy.
Some argue that Islam is still trapped in medieval modes of thought and action, and thus needs a sort of Lutheran-style reformation as befell 16th-century Catholicism. Are there any Martin Luthers among the Muslim moderates?
Hanson: Yes, I think there are, but mostly in exile or abroad. Right now we are in the great silence about radical Islam out of fear and cowardice. Few in the world question why anyone can walk into the
And this equation is not only a matter of religious tolerance, but in the end also gender apartheid. There is a sick mommy-boy syndrome with these hijacker/terrorists/beheaders who reflect great fear of women and liberality in general, and have been raised by second-class exploited women who pour their frustrations and aspirations out by doting on these sons, who sort of go on to become the one male in their lives that offer them some sort of recompense. I could go on, but the wages of fundamentalism, tribalism, and apartheid create a very sick society that is passive-aggressive, needy, and yet dangerous as well — as if the Middle East is a collective teenager: emotionally unstable, full of pride and braggadocio, in need of guidance and attention, and, in some strange way, secretly wishing to change and grow up. We, like parents, don't know whether to spank them, ignore them, work with them, help them — or just have them move out and get a life. So it is very hard, what we are trying to do in
Vice President Dick Cheney, in my mind, is a most intriguing character. I admire and respect his intelligence, calm demeanor, and toughness, especially since the
Hanson: A good question. A good book could be written about how a formerly much admired public servant has become demonized by the far Left to such a degree that his general poll ratings reflect a newfound public antipathy—despite his constancy and rock-solid views that are not predicated on adulation. But I doubt Cheney cares much for the polls of the age, and counts on history's verdict that more likely will see us in a long war against Islamic fascism, and thus his own tough worldview substantiated. Many of the media hate him because they sense he is on to them, and sees them as vain and in constant need of affirmation and adulation. Whether true or not, it matters little, since no felony is worse in
In "The Other Greeks" and "The Land Was Everything", you argue that the yeoman farmer's independence plus his work with nature make him the unique source of citizenship. Is the yeoman farmer actually unique in this regard? What about a self-employed trucker, whose broken-down engine offers no more quarter than the yeoman's rotted raisins?
Hanson: A frequently asked question, and I usually confess that such autonomous hard-working people are analogous to farmers and play the same necessary role in our society, as being free of the insidious groupthink found in both the corporate and government universe. No farmer would count on anything as secure in this world, given that crops are lost hours before harvest that must pay back loans accrued over an entire year.
My only defense would be that there is something about the daily battle against nature, in such a raw and firsthand manner, that makes the farmer's experience invaluable. I know my grandfather gauged his day by the phases of the moon, the direction of the wind, the annual dates on the calendar as well as the cycle of his crops. Listening to him was like having a time machine connection to wisdom of some 2,500 years past. Even admirable truck drivers don't wake up in the morning and sigh "Five days before the equinox; an odd south wind; blossoms early this year" or tie their history and outlook to the physical world. But in general, I agree that autonomy is found beyond agriculture — at least for a time still.
I have always favored the invasion of Iraq. However, I still have some reservations:
a. The anti-war group has a point about the war — wasn't it supposed to be over by now? Nancy Soderberg, a former Clinton official, makes this argument: it will be won, but it will have taken time and resources that were not necessarily supposed to be used that way.
b. A stable Iraq is a good thing, but even better is an Iraqi government that agrees, at some point, to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
c. When you say that the Iraqi army will be the most efficient army in the Middle East, does that mean Israel has nothing to worry about in the future? Would it be wise, at some point, to persuade Iraq to emancipate themselves from the Arab League ideology?
Hanson: We are in a fourth war: a) 1991; b) then the 12-year-long no-fly zones/bomb from the air war; c) the three-week war of 2003: d) and the fourth war to birth democracy in the face of Islamic fanaticism. I visited the new Iraqi 10th mechanized division, and could see how such an impressive force might soon evolve into the most capable in the Middle East.
True, we walk a fine line in both Iraq and Afghanistan (cf. the recent Rahman controversy concerning apostasy): we promote democratization, but accept that the embrace of Western culture in toto and immediately may alienate our hosts, and tar our supporters with the charge of working with Westerners at the expense of Arab or Islamic nationalism. It is a minefield, where we can't be seen completely Westernizing these fragile democracies, and yet must stand for our principles. I doubt that Iraq will recognize Israel soon, although it might be the most likely to do so in the distant future.
I have two small ranches in the Central Valley, one with peaches the other open ground waiting to be planted in pomegranates. I am interested in your recent ideas on the direction that immigrant labor supply is headed for us fruit growers. I hesitate to plant peaches mostly because thinning and harvest costs are going to someday be unthinkable. And grapes are in a glut so it seems. What's a part time farmer to do?
Hanson: I don't know, but assume that labor-intensive crops will only be an ever worse headache in years to come. Take away development pressures, and our farmland would hit rock bottom, inasmuch as our costs, regulations, and labor problems make it hard to compete with a Turkey, South Africa, Chile, or almost anywhere else where a similar climate allows identical fruit production.
Anyone who borrows money to plant an orchard or vineyard quickly realizes that it is an emotional not a financial decision, since it is now almost impossible to recap such capital costs years later. Indeed, you are lucky to get back production costs at year's end on land that is paid for and without any debt at all. Ideally, mechanization would allow us to get by with one or two permanent employees per 100 acres or so. We are seeing enormous progress in the raisin industry, despite the paradox that only those with sources of outside capital usually have the resources to purchase the necessary equipment or retrofit the trellising of their vineyards. Next year the U.S. will probably become a net importer of food, which I find scary in a variety of ways.
Given that political alliances are based on common interests, it seems that the U.S. and nationalist Sunni insurgents in Iraq have at least four interests in common: they both want
1)U.S. forces out of Iraq.
2) to minimize Iranian influence in Iraq.
3) to avoid a theocracy in Iraq.
4) Al Qaeda out of Iraq.
Also, given the dangerous, and probably insoluble, matter of a nuclear Iran, some renowned pundits have asserted that perhaps we invaded the wrong country. Are we supporting the right side in Iraq? Is there a way to ally with the nationalist insurgency to achieve mutual aspirations?
Hanson: Clever argument, but yours also has some glaring flaws:
1) Too many Sunnis, both in and outside Iraq, favor bin Laden, overtly and covertly.
2) The Shiite question may cut both ways, some Shiites may be emissaries of Iranian fanaticism, but also participants in democracy that could be contagious across the border.
3) Iraqi Shiites seem to be more Arabs than part of some religious brotherhood that trumps language and culture.
We invaded the right country; most who claim we should be tougher on Iran would be the first to castigate us should we actually be so.
The insurgency is killing innocents and employing the tactics of 9/11. We must defeat it, and in the process draw away its supporters who renounce such tactics. For the hardcore Wahhabi killers, there must be either their defeat or demise. The Sunni Al Qaedists are the Waffen SS of our age.