I enclose an article by Victor Davis Hanson, who is one of the few right-wing ideologues who can write in complete sentences. I suppose that's due to his training as a classicist.
In this article, Mr. Hanson seems to assert that the U.S. is now a less reliable ally than it was under President Bush. But that's not actually what he's asserting. What he really says is that the Europeans ought to perceive President Obama as less reliable than President Bush because Obama is "to the left of Europe." He adduces no evidence that anyone in Europe actually perceives Obama as less reliable than Bush.
What struck me the most, though, was that at the base of Hanson's accusations is that Obama does not believe in "absolute truth," but in some relativistic vision of history. I've had a number of discussions on this sort of thing over the years, and "absolute truth" usually means "the particular version of the truth to which I subscribe." In matters of history and politics, there aren't a lot of absolute truths running around, and the people who believe that they possess absolute truth are almost certainly wrong. Does Hanson really want the President of the United States to up himself in the same category as the Supreme Leader of Iran, Osama bin Laden, and Mullah Omar?
Of course Obama needs to take a relativistic stance! That's called "empathy" or seeing the affair from the other person's point of view. How can we possibly hope to defeat the jihadists if we don't try to see how the world looks from their side of the table?
"Absolute truth" is absolute bunk!
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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2 comments:
Glenn, have you ever encountered a science fiction story called Empire Star, by Samuel Delaney? Fun light read.
Anyway, in that story, Delaney makes a distinction among three types of thinking - simplex, complex, and multiplex.
Bush 43 was a simplex thinker, I believe. Bush 41 complex. And Obama is multiplex. It shows in his innovative approaches. Very impressive. And in how hard it is to establish "where" he is on some matter - left of Europe, right of Europe, or perhaps not describable in those terms.
The absolute truthers tend to be simplex as well as not empathic.
Excellent point, Ken! Excellent point!
There is a tendency, not always ill-founded, for people to find multiplex thinkers too ambiguous in their morality. If, after all, you see all sides of a question, and particularly if you can articulate several sides of a question, you may appear to be granting all sides equal moral weight.
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