June 2005

Response to Readership

What do you think of the U.S. Supreme Court decision this week? Are and were you required to contribute to the production of those "California Raisins" commercials?

We used to be required to contribute through assessments on every ton of raisins sent in. Then some sued, and we were relieved of a moderate excise tax, the ads disappeared — and oddly so did raisin sales. By 1998, they were at all time lows — well below the cost of production. Raisin farmers, about 4,000 left, are dying out. Large corporations are taking over, ripping out the old vineyards, and planting super pergola vineyards that can be machine harvested, computer irrigated and fertilized, and produce three times the old yield. In general, I wrote about the entire raisin industry in Fields Without Dreams and The Land Was Everything. It is a tale of woe. In 1983 Sun Maid Raisin cooperative experienced a scandal, lost it capital retain, and had to recapitalize, renouncing the debt to its membership. Our family lost several thousand dollars and we joined dozens others who tried to force the cooperative to pay us what we were contractually owed. I think the settlement ended up with about 10-20% recovery of the lost money and we along with hundreds quit the cooperative.

How as an educator can we bring principles of equal rights and not equal-ness back into the classroom?
My grandfather was a founding member of Sun Maid, so he would have rolled over had he seen what it had become. Yet in the quarter-century since its collapse, it has restructured and is now doing fine. The emergence of China and India into a Western mode of production has meant at last food, like natural resources, is at an all time premium, and so the lowly raisin is back for a time. Just when the dancing raisins might come back, it may be true they are not needed, since 2 billion new consumers might do what our millions of ad dollars could not.
Hanson: The solution lies in the education departments who train our teachers and value social engineering over academic excellence. So our teachers increasingly are said to be sensitive and yet known to be ignorant at the same time. What to do?

1. Allow those with MA degrees in academic fields to substitute such graduate work for the teaching credential. That way we could get people who know something and have avoided the education lobby altogether.

2. Allow vouchers. Competition will bring reality to the public schools and allow a fair playing field where schools that take a different approach can be fairly assessed in comparison to the public system.

3. Jettison the therapeutic state-mandated mush on race/class/gender and substitute the old literature, history, math, and science hard learning. Allow teachers, not the state to pick schoolbooks, most of which are now boring and inaccurate.

4. Avoid giving money to the major Ivy League and elite universities. Target small liberal arts colleagues that have strong curricula and have traditional standards and courses.

How do we create an atmosphere again where casually joking about the death of the President should be more taboo than saying anything bad about Islam? What are good talking points with leftists on this issue?

Hanson: Ask them what would be their reaction if a current play, an Alfred Knopf book, a traveling comedian, an art exhibition — all venues of liberalism — suddenly reiterated various themes on killing a Kofi Annan or a leading Democratic senator? Would Alfred Knopf publish a book about characters ruminating shooting Ted Kennedy? Of course not.

What would be the editorial reaction of the New York Times or what would CBS News run? So this 'hate Bush/wish he was assassinated' subculture is dangerous, and should be denounced by the left. I was in a profound state of depression these past few weeks as the mainstream media scrambled to beat the Koran bashing story to death, in hopes that if they ran enough "the Koran got wet" or "the Koran was dropped" stories, we would forgive Newsweek for the earlier unprofessional and untrue allegations.

In a larger sense, there is a deep, deep malady in postmodern Western society, an arrogance about claims to utopian perfection, often by the beneficiaries of capitalism who have never created wealth only enjoyed it and slandered the means to obtaining it.

Would you recommend a book on the history of the Vietnam war that actually details the Tet Offensive as a U.S. victory, describes the critically damaging role of the media during that period, gives an accurate portrayal of Vietnamization, and fully describes how the region was affected after our retreat?

Hanson: I think Lewis Sorley's A Better War is a good place to start, and in the bibliography of the chapter devoted to Tet in Carnage and Culture, I suggested some balanced treatment of Tet and the Vietnam war in general. Remember that by 1974 our objectives of getting U.S. ground troops out, stabilizing the South, and achieving a peace agreement recognizing two nations were largely met. Michael Lind's Vietnam: The Necessary War is balanced and takes a different view. The subsequent collapse was a result of the Congress's cut-off of aid money and the financing of American air support, hence the rather easy conventional invasion from the North by an army stocked with the latest Chinese and Russian weaponry

I'm increasingly struck at the seeming polarization our military's 'warrior caste' and the 'dissent is patriotic' crowd. In a very general sense, how healthy do you think it is for America to be so dramatically represented by the panty-flashing, sex-worker-promoting, liberalization-of-drugs crowd? Do you think it would be beneficial for Americans to begin exhibiting the sort of patriotism, honor, and sacrifice associated with the Greatest Generation?

Hanson: Of course I do. The dominant culture today is in danger of being characterized by cynicism, nihilism, and a pervasive skepticism, symptoms of distress in all Western leisured and affluent societies from Rome to 20^th-century Europe. Moreover, we are losing our body politic, as particular groups — ethnic minorities, radical feminists, politicized gays — all make claims on their constituents for primary loyalty. At some point, if a nation is to survive, it must accept its past, warts and all, show unity in the present, and express confidence about the future.

I wish Hollywood, the intelligentsia, and our politicians would show more confidence in the exceptionalism of the United States and the need to see that we are still good when we aren't perfect. There is a war going on, but it doesn't feel like it. One wonders whether the left after 9-11 was on board only because the U.S. enjoyed victim status, and thus might have wished us to remain perpetually a target rather than striking back.

I read your essay on remembering World War II (in the National Review Online), and I would like your recommendations for a book or books (non-revisionist!) that provide a good overview of the war.

There are so many. Anything written by John Keegan or Martin Gilbert is reliable. My favorite is Gerhard Weinberg's A World at Arms. I think it is a classic work of scholarship and sound sense. Unfortunately, WWII in our schools has become little more than the Japanese internment and Hiroshima; few students know anything of the Bulge or Okinawa.

Can you explain why the U.S. continues to give aid to countries that are ruled by dictators and how is this promoting democracy, especially given the past histories of these regimes that have shown no commitment to reform of their political system in order to promote economic growth? Also, can you explain why the people of these countries are having to repay this debt, especially when our government is aware that we are giving money to regimes which have not illustrated any willingness to convert to a democracy, whose administrations are not transparent, and whose elites always have the out of blaming the U.S. social ills, while they themselves empty state coffers?

Hanson: I wrote about these issues in a recent Commentary essay. We are going slowly for two reasons: we don't want to trigger chaos in the transition (one real vote, one time), and we have built up during the Cold War years a vast array of diplomatic, military, and corporate ties with Third World illiberal regimes that are hard to unravel all at once. But once Americans began to die for democratic change in Iraq, then the logic of reform made it increasingly hard to justify silence in the face of autocracy in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States.

I suppose the idea is that debts must be repaid otherwise the entire banking system would collapse, as each new government blamed its "illiberal" predecessor for debts in an effort to get a clean slate and a new line of credit. But in the case of Saddam's palaces, it is hard to believe foreign engineers didn't know what they were doing, and expected to be paid royally from revenues siphoned from the people.

To what do you attribute the large decline in homicide bombings in Israel over the past year?

Hanson: A brilliant but much misunderstood and caricatured policy:

1. The isolation of Arafat and his thugs, an ostracism that delegitimized him at his death
2. The building of the wall that is shrinking the parameters of suicide-bombing operations
3. The targeting of the Hamas leadership
4. The recent elections on the West Bank
5. The planned pullouts from strategically hard-to-defend settlements in Gaza and elsewhere

This is a unilateral policy that says, "We are doing this on our own for our own security; when you have a liberal and functioning government that is democratic, come back and talk to us about the remaining land and issues of contention. Until then, no more appeasement."

I think it is working, and Sharon may well go down in history as a truly great man if he pulls it off — note how he is hated by both Left and Right. The dangers? There are plenty, chief among them: how not to incite Arab fanaticism with the withdrawal from Gaza; terrorists will claim credit for it, cite Israeli weakness, and become emboldened. So it has to be couched in Israeli self-interest, and that is hard, given domestic politics.

It seems today that anti-Semitism they mean persecution and blame of Jews, as well as Holocaust denial. In your opinion, was Shakespeare anti-Semitic?

Hanson: I don't think so, at least no more so than any of his age. I am a classicist, not a Shakespearean scholar. But it seems to me a Shylock, while he may reflect the author's stereotypes, more likely functions as a realist character, in the sense of what Englishmen of the age felt about Jews, or blacks, as perhaps in the case of the more sympathetic Othello. Also, remember that we have 500 years of the Enlightenment on our side that Shakespeare did not — or even over a century since Dickens' Fagan. It is not quite sound to go back and judge history and literature on the grounds of 21^st-century morality and ethics. What is surprising is not that Shakespeare is sometimes either a captive or reflection of the biases of his time, but that his themes are more often eternal, transcending time and space, and thus speak to us today.

What are your thoughts on Michelle Malkin's new book: In Defence of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in WW-II and the War on Terror?

Hanson: I have not read it, so I will withhold judgment. I have read only what people write about what she writes, which is always a poor way to comment. In general I like Michelle Malkin, have met her, and found her candid and intellectually honest.

I know that much of the internment is shrouded in shame and, as Malkin argues I think, that we forget thousands were not Americans, but Japanese citizens and that a liberal Earl Warren and FDR, not southern bigots, got the legislation through.

All that being said, I grew up with a popular take on the internment since many of our neighbors were Japanese and were forced to relocate. My mother and grandfather were adamantly opposed, and the local editor of the Selma Enterprise, a wonderful man named Lowell Pratt, tried to oppose the efforts of the yellow journalism of the local Fresno Bee of the time. And here in the San Joaquin Valley there was more than one case of farms being sold off at forced low prices, while the owners were away. Indeed, some prominent local farm fortunes, whose names will remain unsaid, had their start in the sky-high farm prices of the late 1940s and the acquisition of prime Japanese-American farms.

We should remember not merely that Japanese-Americans lost their farms, but lost them in one of the few periods between 1942-5 when prices were at an all-time high, a lucrative war-time agricultural economy that would not return until the expansionary 1960s and 1970s. So here in California, we all grew up with the issue, and long ago, by autopsy and empiricism, concluded that the order unjustly took away our lifelong friends who were above suspicion, a relocation, we felt, served no real purpose, and reminded us of our inability or unwillingness to stop it.

Note that no one now is advocating repeating such a rounding up an ethnic group en masse. There was nothing wrong with the FBI looking into the histories of citizens of Japan residing in the United States during the war, and there is nothing wrong now in following leads about Middle Eastern citizens in America. Part of the problem of this war is the hysteria and misinformation. Abu Ghraib becomes the death camps; the Gulag is the same as Guantanamo, and background checks are another interment. The worst thing about current national debate is this hysterical use of the exaggeration and ahistorical parallels.

What is your position on the Great Books programs offered by St. John's College, Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM?

Hanson: I gave the graduation address at Annapolis in 2001 and had spoken earlier and admired both the college, and its faculty and students a great deal. The students were not merely bright but extremely well read; the faculty I met were not the normal faddish theorists out to make a cutting-edge name doing some such -ism or -ology, but rather learned and dedicated sorts. I cannot say enough about the college, and am glad to see that their finances are improving and their record being even more appreciated. It is a very valuable American institution, and a corrective to much of what is wrong with our current universities.

What are your views on Sayeed Qutb's critique of the West in his "Milestones"? Do you see parallels with his views on the "western decadence" in Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan? In what way is his critique different?

Admiral Yamamoto had similar observations after his brief sojourn in the states — feeling of envy and admiration, mixed with a sense that the affluent American lifestyle created decadence. We remember his caution to the militarists about latent American power, but forget he harbored a contempt for America, and felt Japanese purity and zeal could do what a lack of numbers and assets could not — at least for a while. For the curious non-Westerner who visits the West and never quite fits in, it is sometimes common to develop feelings of hatred for what entices the appetites, leading to identification with anti-democratic, anti-liberal reactionary cliques.

In all these reactionary movements, the call is always to a mythical past embodied by the superior cult of the warrior: the uncorrupted knights of the Volk, the samurai wedded to Bushido, or the jihadists of the caliphate. They all sound terrible, but ultimately arouse a somnolent liberal West, and then find themselves not merely defeated but obliterated. The jihadists and their patrons should take note; at some point if we see another 9-11 the gloves will come off, and they will feel the full might of the U.S. So let al Qaeda learn from what happened to earlier fascists who claimed American decadence.

My question comes from the C-Span interview, which I only caught the last 40 minutes of. They presented a list of people whom you most admire. Jesus was on that list. Why?

I taught the New Testament for 20 years as part of second semester Introductory Greek, and read almost all of it finally in Greek, except parts of Acts. Given the history and culture of the 1st century Mediterranean, his message as recorded by Gospels is nearly inexplicable, contrary to old classical values ('hurt your friends, help your enemies') and the general crassness of popular culture of the times. There seems to me no other explanation for such a doctrine of the Sermon of the Mount, except through divine guidance. So my religiosity came back to me, after a drought, through philology and then entered the realm of faith again.

Faith of course is more than reason, and ultimately depends on trusting in things that cannot be proven but require belief. The great accomplishment of the West was this amazing balance that emerged in the last three centuries when phenomena were explained not by superstition but by science and logic — and yet in the midst of the Enlightenment areas of human experience were reserved for religion, thereby avoiding both the intolerance and anti-enlightenment tendencies of fundamentalist religion and yet the arrogance of pure reason that makes claims it cannot sustain.

This current war has brought that achievement out into the open as never before, as we see this weird symbiosis of the 7th century Islamic fundamentalist and the postmodern, cynical and atheistic Westerner, who both hate the very culture that they cannot do without. So Christianity was an amazing achievement in its long ordeal to bond with classical Western culture. And all in all, I think it was a success, a gift that must be constantly protected not only from the now caricatured Christian fundamentalist who purportedly wishes a theocracy, but also the nihilist atheist who denies the singularity of the United States' Christian roots.

Can you give me a basic summary of the history and central tenets of neo-conservative ideology? Being a knowledgeable pundit on foreign policy, can you present a view of neo-conservatism that isn't so distorted with half-truths and conspiracy theories? Are there alternatives to neo-conservativism that don't border appeasement?

Hanson: The neo-conservative movement that grew up around William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, and other New York disenchanted liberals in the 1960s and 1970s (who often wrote in Commentary and the National Interest), was initially prominent for domestic critiques: realization that the Great Society and the following 60's generation values were not merely failures, but pathological with long-term damage to American society.

In terms of foreign policy, these former Democrats (their connection with Leo Strauss is tenuous and largely a creation of the conspiracists) felt that the McGovern peace candidacy was dangerous, and, post-Watergate, that Jimmy Carter was a disaster in his naiveté about communism. Yet they also showed their earlier FDR and Scoop Jackson idealism in believing that Nixonian-Kissingerian realism wrongly accepted the status quo of global communism: hence their support for Reagan's rollback policies.

Generally, neoconservatives ("new conservatives") argue for idealism (= democracy) in guiding foreign policy, while they navigate a middle ground between liberals and paleo-conservatives ("old conservatives") on social issues. Thus they tend to be less interested in such social controversies as illegal immigration, abortion, gay marriage, etc. that reflect their original Democratic and liberal roots. I tend to favor their foreign policy, but am suspicious about some neo-conservative stances on open borders among others.

One important point: supporting democracies is not, as caricatured, a naïve pipe dream, but a sort of realist acceptance of trying something different from the realist policy of the last 50 years that led in some sense to 9-11. It seeks to break the old calculus of the Middle East of Islamicists using popular dissatisfaction to blame the US and Israel for all their problems, abetted of course by corrupt autocrats who like to deflect criticism from their own failures. In that regard, neoconservatism has elements of realism as well in it.

Why does the term raise such hysteria? Perhaps because many of the most prominent neo's were not politicians, but intellectuals and thus were under suspicion of elitism or pulling levers behind the curtains. Many, but not most, were Jewish and supported democratic Israel. Liberals were suspicious that others had hijacked their concern with democracy and human rights, but in a context of strong American muscularity. Conservatives felt neo's were Johnny-Come-Late opportunists and were soft on social issues, thus diluting and confusing Republican causes. After Iraq, calling someone a neoconservative was the equivalent of being slandered as a communist or fascist — much of the suspicion engendered by anti-Semitism ('wily, liberal Jews in the shadows mesmerizing good 'ole Americans to do their bidding for Israel'). All in all, rarely has such a legitimate ideology been so slandered without consequences or apology.

The younger generation in South Korea, largely behind the victory of President Roh Moo-Hyun, shows an increasing dislike and distrust of America and American military presence in South Korea.   In "Welcome back, Europe" you clarify the significance of troop withdrawals from Europe.  Do you think a similar analysis applies to South Korea?

Hanson: Yes, and it is already happening with the redeployments down to Pusan and gradually thinning at the DMZ. And consider the sudden Korean presence in Iraq in response. I think the Sunshine policy is fraught with inconsistencies: if the Stalinist Murder, Inc. in the North is not really that dangerous to the South, then why in the world would 40,000 Americans need to be in harm's way? At some point, Seoul will have to shoulder its own defense — and we will be right behind them with airpower should they chose to fight if attacked.

Note too that Japan and Taiwan show no such nonsense in their appraisals of communist threats. For a long time I've heard and read the nonsense that many South Korean academics have been saying and writing, and I was wondering when someone would finally say the emperor had no clothes, e.g., "Ok, if you think the Korean War was our fault and we are a hegemonic burdensome presence, then please ask us to leave so we can redeploy our troops where they are appreciated." I think that we are politely calling their bluff, and a policy of slow withdrawal will be calibrated on their relative statements of appeasement or resistance.

Based on your ideas of the value of “shock infantry” found in Carnage and Culture (Chapter 3: Gaugamela, October 1, 331 B.C.). I was wondering how you would classify armor.  Do you consider it a form of mobilized infantry, allowing it to act as a shock force? Or is it more correctly viewed as armored cavalry, which, if I understand your thinking, would make it less decisive?  Or does it depend on how it's utilized?

Hanson: I think your final alternative is the most apt: consider the age-old controversy of whether tanks should blast a hole for infantry to follow (in the manner of Alexander's heavy horse at Issos and Gaugamela)—with all the attendant dangers of having exposed armor knocked out by enemy infantry with anti-armor rockets and guns—or infantry should first secure the way to ensure a pathway free of RPGs and mines, thus allowing tanks to pursue and exploit (as classical cavalry did after battles such as Leuktra.).

So it is both a shock force and one of mobile exploitation. And, of course, the proper usage of armor also depends on the quality of tank and the challenge/response dynamic between armor and anti-armor projectiles at any given age: a Sherman in WWII was extremely vulnerable to Panzerfaust rockets, while a modern Abrams can weather hits from RPGs, and thus can take the lead to create holes in the enemy lines.

In your Natinal Review Online piece on World War II revisionism, you say the Allies would have had to fight Russia to avert the take-over of Central and Eastern Europe. A number of recent biographies of Russian leaders at the time suggest otherwise. For instance William Taubman, in his Kruschev biography, paints a convincing picture of Stalin as largely in awe of the U.S.

There seems little question that if Roosevelt had taken a strong line at Yalta, he could have reshaped Stalin's calculation of how far to push. Churchill, though he goes out of his way to whitewash Roosevelt's behavior at Yalta, nevertheless reveals how the U.S. marginalized Britain at the conference by refusing to meet beforehand to agree to a joint position.

Roosevelt's ridiculing of Churchill in Stalin's presence makes sour reading today, as does his coddling of Stalin at the various sessions. It's difficult to read these accounts without concluding that someone as perceptive as Stalin must have left Yalta knowing the U.S. was giving him carte blanche. How else can we explain Eisenhower's orders to the Allied armies to halt in place and let the Russian army advance to meet them, rather than, as Churchill put it, "shaking hands" as far east as possible?

Between declaring war on Russia and the pathetic caving of Roosevelt, there was a viable third option. The Allies could have marched much further east and confronted the Red Army, not with war, but with a fait accompli. 

There are two points here that you rightly delineate: the demarcation line between us and the Russians during WWII proper, and the eventual struggle over all of Eastern Europe. I believe it was a tragic mistake not only not to go to Berlin, but to stop Patton outside of Prague, and wrote to that effect in the Soul of Battle. Most German troops would not have fought us as assiduously as they did the Red Army in Berlin and we could have saved much of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps some other small segments of Eastern Europe by presenting Stalin with a fait accompli as you say through our breakneck advance east during the closing months of the war.

That being said, the larger question of forcing Stalin to honor the agreements that governed territories the Red Army had captured by say March 1945 is a completely different matter. Our supply lines from the French and Dutch coasts were long, our armies thinning, and the public not quite ready to start another war against a former ally that might entail using former enemies like the Germans and to end up in a year or two going nuclear. There were 400 Russian divisions versus our roughly 200 — with the Japanese still unconquered and Okinawa not yet pacified — and an untried new President.

So how we could have ejected the Red Army from ground taken is unclear. The question properly is not who lost Eastern Europe, but who lost portions of East Germany and Czechoslovakia that were attainable?