Michael Totten’s first essay for the new centrist blog Donkelephant is a winner. I believe a good bit of the left vs. right conflict would be tempered by a better recall of what I call "true history" (distinct from "media history" which is evidently what they teach at the Columbia School of Journalism). True history is what Michael supplies here -certainly another read-the-whole-thing item - including the associated comments:
On September 11, 2001, and for a period shortly thereafter, the United States felt like one unified country for the first time in my life. Of course there were cranks on the left- and right-wing fringes who felt America had “asked” to be terrorized, who thought pacifism or isolationism were the answer to the worst attack on our own soil in history. But they were as far away from the political center as they could be. The center, on September 11, was hundreds of millions of people in size.
I had spent my entire adulthood rather far from the political center, on the left. But once the center moved dramatically leftward and swept me up in it, I decided things were better there. No longer was I a political minority railing at the majority. Those who did continue to rail at the majority – the Noam Chomskys and Jerry Falwells – clearly were lunatics. Those on both the center-left and the center-right were my political friends, so to speak, and I decided it needed to stay that way.
The minute regime-change in Iraq was placed on the table the political center imploded. It just couldn’t hold. Perhaps that’s natural when we’re not actively under attack in real time. But I’ve felt ill at ease since it happened. In The Art of War Sun Tzu said, when describing ways to defeat an enemy: “When he is united, divide him.” We have become divided, and we’ve become divided in war time. Al Qaeda did not do this to us. We did this to ourselves.
Also worrying is how Western Civilization is divided against itself. Many Europeans and Americans are not even on speaking terms these days. France is the favorite Western punching bag of even many liberal Americans – and many Europeans as well when they aren’t trashing the United States as the new evil imperialist Empire. Anti-Americanism in Western Europe often goes well beyond mere criticism and ventures deep into the territory of vituperative hate-mongering. And it has been matched by a nascent and often nasty anti-Europeanism in the United States. It’s sad. We are all threatened by totalitarian Islamists. How to best respond to that threat is precisely where our intra-Western battle lines are drawn.
It’s nothing new, though. Somehow many (most?) Americans have come to believe that European countries are supposed to be our allies now because they were always our allies in the past. Anguished cries, mostly from the liberal left, that “we must not alienate Europe” have become a common refrain ever since September 11. I think I understand where this sentiment comes from. The center in Western politics is a dangerous gaping void, and it’s a dangerous gaping void during war time. Reaching out to Europe, and chastising those who refuse to do so, is an honorable attempt at seeking the center just as I seek the center myself in the United States.
The problem is that not all Europeans are our natural allies. We may wish they were and imagine they are, but some of them just aren’t. Many are old enemies. Many were enemies not in ancient history but within living memory…
Another good commentary on the "true history" of Europe and the Anglosphere is the Transatlantic Intelligencer.
0 Responses to “The West Has Never Been One”