Stardate 20021223.2317

(Captain's log): It's interesting how people can look at the same things and yet see such differences, or at least claim that they do. In some cases I think it's posturing, but in other cases it can result in genuine mystification.

Part of it is, I think, differences in values and differences in perspective, and even simple things like differences in age. It is natural in young people to be both motivated and dissatisfied; to compare what they see to an ideal and be appalled by the shortcomings, and to try to improve it. It is equally natural for those who are older to recognize that life is not ideal, that nearly everything involves compromises, and to recognize that a partial success is not a total failure. It is natural for the young to see a glass partially empty, and for those who are older to see it as partially full. That is true even if the glass is 95% full. Which is why Churchill famously said that if you were not liberal when you were young then you didn't have a heart, and if you were not conservative when you were old then you didn't have a brain. Age tends to season us, perhaps even disillusion us a bit, and it makes us more practical.

I would not have it otherwise, for though it's true that those like me who are more in touch with the real limits the world imposes on us tend to fail less, it's also true that we're less likely to attempt the absurd, and thus to achieve the impossible. We need the impractical idealism of the young just as much as the pragmatism of the old. (I fear the consequences to humanity if we ever actually do acquire some means of vastly extending our healthy and productive lifespan, because I fear to tip that balance.)

Of course, it's also the case that many, I would venture to say most, of those who have taken up blogging have been much younger than I am. I only know of a few people other people who are old farts. The vast majority are in their 20's and many of those are only a few years out of college, and are still a bit immersed in the received wisdom in many colleges that things are going to hell and that America is the most evil and deeply flawed nation on the planet, the one country whose total elimination would actually result in the greatest improvement in the human condition, and that all true Americans who are intellectually honest will be ashamed of their nation, and that anyone who actually seems proud of America or tries to claim that there are aspects of this nation which are worthy of praise is a jingoistic patriot. Note that within this culture, "patriot" is a curse.

I have encountered two cases recently from my refers of other bloggers who have commented on things I've written along these lines. One was being fashionably sardonic (or if you're less generous, was engaged in fatuous posturing) and the other seems genuinely confused.

Long time readers will know how highly I think of Ralph Peters' article listing seven clear signs of noncompetitive states. It was actually the article which inspired me to create my "essential library", for I kept linking to it and finally realized that I needed a local mirror of it in case the original should go offline for any reason. I've cited it many times, but in particular I cited it heavily as part of my analysis last September of who we were fighting, why they were fighting us, and what we'd have to do to defeat them (in two long parts). It was an essential part of my analysis that western culture generally and the US in particular are objectively more successful in nearly every way to the diseased Arab traditionalist culture which has spawned the attacks against us, and that the biggest reason that they hate us is because our success exposes their failure in the starkest possible terms. As part of that, I did cite the Peters article as one way of evaluating the utter failure of the Arab nations to actually compete in any meaningful way in the modern world.

Of course, to a good multiculturalist, the idea that someone (like me) actually states forthrightly that we truly are better than they are, and that the only way this war can end is when they admit that to themselves and abandon their own ways and adopt many of ours instead, well that's just plain intolerable. It's arrogant. It's so damned patriotic. Can't have it. Can't have it.

Obviously, if I use Peters to prove that we're better than the Arabs, then we gotta see a demonstration of how we, too, fail according to Peters' criteria, and that seems to be the reason that Glenn Hauman wrote this glib rejoinder.

Glenn does his best, but it's feeble and basically misses the point. He's also being a bit dishonest, because he's palming a card. He's using a common argument that says more or less that anything short of perfection is total failure, and that every such failure is equally bad. This is sort of like saying that a person suffering from a cold is just as sick as someone suffering from the Bubonic Plague. In this case, he's attempting to take a small number of relatively unimportant acts by a few deeply-hated members of the government which will have negligible long term consequences for the course of our society and us