"The Future of Western War" by Victor Davis Hanson

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered by Victor Davis Hanson at Hillsdale College on October 1, 2009, during the author's four-week teaching residency. It is also in print in Imprimis (Hillsdale College, Hillsdale Michigan).

I want to talk about the Western way of war and about the particular challenges that face the West today. But the first point I want to make is that war is a human enterprise that will always be with us. Unless we submit to genetic engineering, or unless video games have somehow reprogrammed our brains, or unless we are fundamentally changed by eating different nutrients—these are possibilities brought up by so-called peace and conflict resolution theorists—human nature will not change. And if human nature will not change—and I submit to you that human nature is a constant—then war will always be with us. Its methods or delivery systems—which can be traced through time from clubs to catapults and from flintlocks to nuclear weapons—will of course change. In this sense war is like water. You can pump water at 60 gallons per minute with a small gasoline engine or at 5000 gallons per minute with a gigantic turbine pump. But water is water—the same today as in 1880 or 500 B.C. Likewise war, because the essence of war is human nature.

Second, in talking about the Western way of war, what do we mean by the West? Roughly speaking, we refer to the culture that originated in Greece, spread to Rome, permeated Northern Europe, was incorporated by the Anglo-Saxon tradition, spread through British expansionism, and is associated today primarily with Europe, the United States, and the former commonwealth countries of Britain—as well as, to some extent, nations like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, which have incorporated some Western ideas. And what are Western ideas? This question is disputed, but I think we know them when we see them. They include a commitment to constitutional or limited government, freedom of the individual, religious freedom in a sense that precludes religious tyranny, respect for property rights, faith in free markets, and an openness to rationalism or to the explanation of natural phenomena through reason. These ideas were combined in various ways through Western history, and eventually brought us to where we are today. The resultant system creates more prosperity and affluence than any other. And of course, I don't mean to suggest that there was Jeffersonian democracy in 13th century England or in the Swiss cantons. But the blueprint for free government always existed in the West, in a way that it didn't elsewhere. Read the rest at Imprimis here)

The Never Ending Cooling/Warming of Planet Earth

On April 18, 1975 Newsweek magazine was trumpeting the cooling of the earth and all the terrible, horrible things that would happen to human kind. (READ).








And below is an article written in 1922 about the warming of the planet and how glaciers were melting! (You can find the entire article online: The Monthly Weather Review, November 1922, page 589).

THE CHANGING ARCTIC. By GEORGE NICOLAS IFW.

The Arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from
fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Sitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to
a radical change in climatic conditions, and hitherto unheard-
of high temperatures in that part of the earth's
surface.

...he first noted warmer conditions in 1915, that since
that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that to-day
the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same
region of 1865 to 1917.

Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable.
Where formerly great masses of ice were found
there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and
stones. At many points where glaciers extended far into the
sea they have entirely disappeared." READ

QUESTION FOR AL GORE AND HIS MINIONS: Could it be that we are just in another cycle of the ever changing atmospheric/climate changes that the EARTH goes through in it's billions of years of history? Honest people would look at the evidence and say - yes.

What Will It Be America? Modernity or Backwardness?

I listened to a very revealing interview with an environmentalist activist from India, Sunita Narain on the BBC (listen). The interviewer, while clearly sympathetic to the guest, tried several times to pin her down on several questions where she had seemed evasive. I thought she was clear as a bell.

She declared that climate change is very important particularly for India so government must take climate change seriously – because if glaciers melt as it seems to be the case then water will become an issue. She boldly made the claim that green house gases therefore economic growth, are directly linked to climate change, ignoring the fact that more and more scientists are questioning the so called facts behind rising CO2 emissions and it’s effect on climate (Gore’s Nobel Prize notwithstanding).

I’ll try to paraphrase some of her utterances but you’ll have to listen to the interview yourself to get the full idea of what she is really advocating.

She says that India must be allowed to emit CO2 in order to grow. She says “We have to share growth between the nations. Cooperation is not possible without justice and equity – this is not about coercion. We are definitely asking the rich countries to cut their emissions.”

Then the interviewer says: “Yes the rich are responsible for 70% of the emissions but in 25 years it’s the developing countries that will be responsible for 70%.”

Ms Narain exclaims: “Exactly the point. If you’re really talking about this one world let the rich decrease their emissions so the poor world can increase. But we don’t want to be as irresponsible as the rest of the world was.”

“But then don’t you need legally binding limits imposed on you?” (Interviewer)

“Absolutely! But for the rich! By 2050 we must reduce carbon emissions by 80% if we want half a chance to save this world…There is an over fascination that there is a technological fix for our problems – there isn’t.” (Ms. Narain)

“With what face and what morality can anyone in the rich world even speak about climate change today? We in India are emitting but we are also suffering for the problems we did not even initiate.”

Apparently, Ms. Narian’s vision of the proper model to emulate is the Himalayas. Why? “That lifestyle teaches us how you can live with so little…you can build a rural economy with resources from the environment. We can learn from the rationality and the frugality of the poor people.”

More and more pressure will be placed on the United States and other countries that have chosen reason as their means of climbing out of backwardness, to cut their emissions. Remember cutting carbon emissions means cutting production which means regressing to poverty. My question is – Are our leaders in Washington and state governments philosophically armed to be able to defend our way of life and do they have the backbone to prevent the ‘do-gooders’ from turning us into a third world country? I have very grave doubts indeed. What this woman appears to be advocating is one world rule.

So as the number of these self-appointed saviors of the world increase, it will be interesting to see which road we choose as a nation: progress, modernity and all the conveniences that applying reason and science to problems brings, or, decline, backwardness and all the drudgery that anti-reason brings to human life.

To quote Ayn Rand from her book "The Anti-Industrial Revolution" - published in 1971:

"The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of
capitalism in today's mixed economy, the establishment of a global
dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred-many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end."