From Yale to Y'all, the Twang Bar King, or hang'n down with traiter Bush.
The line traiter Bush isn't mine and probably isn't what you think it is. It's from a recent opinion piece by historian Victor Hanson Victor Davis Hanson on Bush Hatred on National Review Online. I begin to feel I'm seeing a little too much of Mr. Hanson recently. The article title in print: "On Loathing Bush: It[base ']s not about what he does", carries that extra nuance, which telegraphs that he will say you can't dislike Bush without engaging in irrational and hypocritical emotionalism. About three quarters through you reach the section labeled RENEGADE ARISTOCRAT followed by: George Bush is a traitor of the most frightening sort to his class: He is not an ideological tribune like Roosevelt or Kennedy, but someone far worse, who seems to dislike the entire baggage of sophisticated, highbrow society. Now it's clear. It is the establishment elite he is traitor to; those dammable continent-edgers, east and left coasters, not folk. He is really a hero, a champion of the people.
I heard President Bush in a stump speech the other night - he was telling the audience that he was gonna git Al Qeada. I wondered whether it was just my imagination or has the President's speechifyin' picked up an extra twang as of late. Whether some condition has affected his ability to git all the way through a gerand, heightened his taste for cornpone. Victor Hanson has noticed: For the Left, Mr. Bush is automatically under a cloud of suspicion; he is an unapologetic twanger who likes guns, barbeques, NASCAR, "the ranch," and pick-up trucks. Gosh he left out mom and apple pie. And puppies he left out puppies.
Hanson thinks that we hate Bush because he has taken to imitating the voice of people Karl Rove believes are too ignorant to understand they are being condescended to. Or maybe we are religion bigots: Similarly, Bush's Christianity seems evangelical and literal. It comes across as disturbing to liberals of the country who see religion as a mere social formality at best, useful for weddings and funerals, perhaps comforting at Christmas and Easter of course, but otherwise a potential threat to the full expression of lifestyle "choices". Oh my, who would be like that? Victor will tell you: Episcopalian, Unitarian, or Congregationalist, perhaps even mainstream but quiet Methodists or Presbyterians. His next sentence make clear he does not regard these as real religion. As a Congregationalist, I would like to take this moment to thank Mr. Hanson for putting his words in our mouths, for his own purposes. I'll continue to stand by the UCC and its Just Peace covenants. Note the "scare" quotes he drapes around "choices" you also get those in the line: "Pushy" neocons [~] not Shimon Peres groupies [~] advise him on Israel. No missing the point there. It seems he feels the National Review's readership will not respond to subtly. He gives them nothing they can't use. In short, the Left hates George W. Bush for who he is rather than what he does. Southern conservatism, evangelical Christianity, a black-and-white worldview, and a wealthy man's disdain for elite culture [~] none by itself earns hatred, of course, but each is a force multiplier of the other and so helps explain the evolution of disagreement into pathological venom. Like the line of his above, where you might have noticed the word "seems" between the president and his affected religious beliefs, you can also note George W. Bush's wealthy man's disdain for elite culture, is not a disdain for wealth, power, privilege, and separation. No it is simply a matter of style, like a silver-clasp string necktie
Victor Davis Hanson has been ubiquitous for the last few years - that observation comes from a friendly review of one of his books. Handy; though, because I always get ubiquitous mixed up with obsequious. I also confuse Osama Bin Laden with Usama Bin Laden the same way. Mr. Hanson has written a lot of books. The soul of battle : from ancient times to the present day, how three great liberators vanquished tyranny, Bonfire of the humanities : rescuing the classics in an impoverished age, Ripples of battle : how wars of the past still determine how we fight, how we live, and how we think, Between war and peace : lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq . Just to name a few from recent years. Also he has written a book named Mexifornia : a state of becoming. The review of this book tells us that before becoming a classics professor Victor Hanson and his brother grew grapes for the raisin trade on the family farm for many years. The book is supposed to contain all manner of sympathy for the migrant worker. But his underlying view is that mexicans are getting into California and they're not leaving and not assimilating, and not learning english. They are changing California. Apparently it has escaped his attention that many Mexicans were already Californians: living in and around all five Presidio's. Years, generations before people like him and his high white friends [alto palo] came into the territory.
It was with his last couple books I began to doubt. His book on the Peloponnesian war took an ossified and rigid look at that episode in history, keeping one eye on the present much like his previous book Between war and Peace. He is a man who believes in using the lessons of the past to chop the fire wood of the present. There are other ways of looking at Athens and Sparta. Despite its reputation as the revolutionary and experimental state, because of its regard for democracy, Athens was in many ways the more natural and organic state, its laws and customs through Pericles time had less to do with radicalism or revolution than ambition, enterprise and guarded civic respect among the demos. Sparta in contrast was state, set into being. Unapologetically subsuming the individual to the needs of the state and evolved traditional for artificial mandated novel traditions. Deliberately and comprehensively reorganized into a military state in reaction to a set of defeats prior to 600bc. It was in that respect a reactionary New Order state, a utopian vision of oligarchs .
There are those today, like Mr. Hanson who admire who own uncontained admiration for Sparta for that vision - over the rule of the demos - with as much fondness as they can muster for anything.
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