From: Bathus
To: Victor Davis Hanson
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 1:30 PM
Subject: Why Do We Hate Us

Dear Mr. Hanson,

Thanks for another excellent analysis, which I would refine to this extent:

All three phenomena--moral equivalence, utopian pacifism, and multiculturalism--which you identify as the cause of the left's "false narrative" can be traced to a single origin: relativism. That origin seems to me to be obvious as to the first and the last of the three, and less directly, but no less completely to account for utopian pacifism as well. (I've explored this topic in my usual clunky and round-about way in a recent blog post titled The Final Paradox.)

The question (I ask rhetorically) is, What is it that seems to make contemporary Western culture so especially susceptible to the seductions of relativism?

I think the source of that susceptibility can be located in the predominate passion of a democratic people, the passion Tocqueville catalogued so well: the love of equality. Relativism appears to allow one to hold all things equal, which is the first instinct of the democratic soul.

Add to that instinct the Western intellectual heritage of self-examination and self-doubt (e.g., Socrates and Descartes), a heritage grotesquely corrupted by relativism; and then add to that relativism's false promise to free us from the weight of moral judgment, thereby allowing all of us to do (with a clear conscience and mutual "tolerance") whatever our desires suggest, and relativism's seduction is, for us good democrats, almost irresistible.

The left's "false narrative" you recount is merely a particular manifestation of the intellectual confusion and moral self-loathing that relativism finally engenders.

So then the question becomes: What: can we do about it? What sort of thing can help democracy resist this dangerous inclination toward relativism?

Formerly, the main answer was religious instruction, but that doesn't seem to be working out so well these days. Perhaps our saving grace might be the painful yet fortuitous reception of external forces, which by creating a clear and immediate threat to our very survival would cause us, as a matter of self-preservation, to abandon the self-indulgent luxury of self-doubt. However, that "solution" works only so long as the external threat has a certain intensity and immediacy. In other words, if the Islamists are smart, they will treat us somewhat like the proverbial frog in the pot of boiling water: more 7/7s but no more 9/11s. (Don't you think bin Laden would admit in hind-sight that 9/11 was a too spectacular to serve his ends?)

One is rescued more often by one's enemies' vices than by one's own virtues. In that regard, I would add another animal analogy: If we aren't going to fight this war aggressively (an uncertain matter after the expiration of GWB's term of office), perhaps our best hope is that the "chase instinct" of our adversaries will divert them from the more patient and cerebral tactic of boiling the Western frog slowly, i.e., that the jihadists' vicious passions will tempt them to close in for the kill prematurely, or at least to kill too many too soon. Indeed, one could say that the jihadists' animal instinct to kill what they see as weak and contemptuous (i.e., us!) is almost the only explanation for their resort to terrorism because, without setting off a single bomb, the jihadists could more easily defeat us demographically and culturally, as they are now defeating the French and the Germans. How strange it would be if it turned out that the better course of action for us, rather than sitting idle like frogs in the pot, might be to run like rabbits--enticing our enemies to chase and to corner us while we still retain some latent capacity to resist. (Salamis!)

That's all very interesting, to me at least, but perhaps the best solution to our confounded moral, military, demographic problem is a lot more straightforward over the long haul: Marry and have babies!

Thanks again for all your fine writing.

Bathus