Thanks to its brilliant editor, Robert Tracinski, every day I get the TIA Daily (TIA standing for ‘the intellectual advocate’), and believe thee me there is no more stimulating, informative or enjoyable publication on line or on dead trees. Subscriptions cost money, but it’s well worth it.
Today Robert reruns something from a year ago, which featured part of a column from the London Times by Anatole Kaletsky, one of the current stars in the British firmament:
“You Think Our Age Is Turbulent? What Nonsense,” Anatole Kaletsky, Times of London, April 12
We are constantly told by politicians, journalists and business experts that we live in an era of unprecedented change—a dizzying period of technological and geopolitical revolutions, in which every year brings some new and astonishing upheaval for which our nervous, insecure societies are totally unprepared. What nonsense.
Never in human history has life been more predictable, safe and stable—at least for that large minority of the human race who live in the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe, North America, and East Asia.
This thought overwhelmed me last week as I prepared a tribute for my mother, who was born in Odessa in 1916 just before the Russian Revolution, and died peacefully in London on March 31. Who would have imagined, in the terrible and wonderful 20th century, almost all of which she lived through, that she would end her days peacefully in her own home in London—surrounded by the secure, comfortable family whose prosperity she had created literally from nothing—instead of being carried off by the wars, famines, revolutions, epidemics and state terrors that had dogged the first half of her life?…
Compared with the upheavals of the early 20th century, the challenges we face today—whether as families and individuals or as societies and nations—are almost laughably trivial. Have psychologists who tell us that accident witnesses need grief counselling forgotten about Holocaust survivors and POWs in Burma? Do environmentalists really believe that global warming is the greatest threat ever faced by Western civilisation?…
Anatole Kaletsky is a very smart guy, and Robert Tracinski does well to provoke us with Kaletsky’s thoughts, but I think that the message is wrong. How shall I put this? Yes, life in London is predictable, stable, and pretty easy…until it isn’t. And with regard to Anatole’s mother, her life in London was a lot better than it was in Odessa, until it wasn’t, until Nazi bombs started to fall on her and her children. I think it’s foolish to say that the challenges we face today are “almost laughably trivial,” compared to what the citizens of the 20th century went through. It’s foolish above all because we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. And I have to say that it’s pretty clear that there is a great perturbation in the Force.
I have the sensation that everything is somehow up for grabs. I think most of the world has lousy leadership, certainly most of the free world, and I think that our people know that, and are very confused about which way to turn. That confusion translates into unpredictable elections sometimes (I have no clue about the likely candidates from the two major parties, and a third party run, maybe even a fourth party run, does not seem at all unlikely to me, nor does the prospect of real political conventions next year, perhaps for both parties).
This may turn out well; we may get a terrific president in 2009. But we may not, with all that entails.
Ditto for the fundamental conflicts. I believe we’re already in a big regional war in the Middle East, and it can spread quickly all over the place. But I can also imagine events (the fall of the regimes in Tehran and/or Damascus, for example) that would give us enormous opportunities for a dramatic expansion of freedom.
Ditto for the globalized economy. Economists are divided–shocker!–over what the next few months will bring. Recession or worse? Soft landing? Continued growth? Nobody really knows, and indeed I don’t think they CAN know, because, as in the other cases, the outcomes will depend on decisions of men and women who, today, don’t know what they’re going to do. It all depends.
Which brings me back to Anatole Kaletsky, and his happy thought that we are living in a rare moment of tranquility and security. I think that was true for about half a century after the Second World War, but I don’t think it’s true today. Today it’s all up for grabs, and no one can reasonably predict what’s coming.
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drellberg:I disagree that life is more up for grabs now than in prior times. The statement is objectively and demonstrably false. Thus, for example, mothers almost never die in childbirth in developing countries, whereas not so many decades ago it was rather routine. The financial system, by any reasonable measure, is far more resilient and robust than in 1930. The list goes on nearly forever.
And yet all we talk about in the mainstream media is risk. Democrats today make their living painting pictures of a world that is about to end via global warming, subprime mortgage crises, wholesale violation of civil liberties, etc. and it just isn’t so.
Having said that, I think Dr. Ledeen is on to something quite profound, though I would rephrase it. I believe that our present astonishingly stable and predictable status quo creates a sense of complacency and dereliction. We do not recognize that our gloriously stable worlds are no stronger than their weakest links, which we do not shore up especially well. Through willful ignorance we overlook and misread/misjudge risks to the status quo, and in doing so we invite disaster. It is not so much that we see no risk so much as it is that we make too much of relatively small risks (e.g., to the financial system) while refusing to acknowledge existential threats. We have lost the capacity as a society even to have meaningful discussions of certain existential threats, in no small part because we have allowed favored coalitions to render such discussions off limits.
Dec 21, 2007 - 4:57 pm drellberg:Can’t help myself … More to say. The Republican party has allowed liberals to monopolize all discussions of risk. George Bush is faulted for his lack of competence and his faulty values, while all that Democrats talk about is risk. Global warming risks; risks of missing out on stem cell advances; subprime risks; risks to our civil liberties; and so on without end.
The Republican candidates for president talk almost entirely about competence and about values. When was the last time any Republican candidate rebutted the Democrats on these issues of risk, or highlighted the sorts of risks that keep Dr. Ledeen up at night?
Dec 21, 2007 - 5:02 pm winston:The Iranian regime is a source of insecurity in our world. You have long advocated for the removal of that regime and I think you’ve been right all along. As long as Mullahs are out there ruling the masses and spent the petro-dollars to fund terrorism, we won’t be safe at all.
Dec 21, 2007 - 5:05 pm narciso:Between Stalin’s genocideal famine on one side, and Petlura and Stepan Bandera’s OUN; along with the Nazis
Dec 21, 2007 - 11:56 pm a Duoist:on the other. I don’t see a whole lot of tranquility till maybe 1951.
We’ve leave out the British role in Operation Keelhaul for a minute
We humans often have a pessimist’s tendency to consider the near term to be the worst ever, and the past to be the best ever. Romanticism with its ‘nobel savage’ and Sayyid Qutb with his protege, Osama bin Laden, are two examples of pessimists absorbed by their hatred for the present and their desire for a revival of the glorious past.
Step back, and take a long view. The past is gone, the future is wide open; it is the present which is the best opportunity for improvement. With a long view, the past five hundred years of growing human freedom is nothing less than staggering, and freedom is still increasing, not stagnating or retreating. Think of freedom’s growth as resembling the chart of a bull market: ratcheting up and down in the near term, yes, but unmistakably, the long term is a steady bull run with higher highs and ever-higher lows.
The long-term days of the thugs everywhere, and especially the short-term theofascists in Iran, are numbered. It will take a while, and some strong opposition by freedom-lovers on the short-term will always be necessary, but the process is now inexorable. We, humanity, have passed a threshold in the last century, at the cost of well over one hundred sixty million innocent dead. We are NOT going to follow the pessimists back into their idealized past.
Pessimists who love the past never talk about the moral of ‘freedom’; they always invoke the ideal of ‘peace.’ Think long-term, and plug away at the reality of the present. The past is past; leave the past to the pessimists.
ML:
Yes. On the other hand, we have just lived through the bloodiest century in human history. That “past” is still with us, it’s in active memory all over the world, both for the optimists and the pessimists.
I’m not a pessimist, obviously. But I do think it’s foolish to believe that just because things have been great for most of us for a couple of generations, it will continue to be that way. I think it’s wide open, and I don’t think our leaders–with rare exceptions, both those in office and those who crave it–are fighting evil hard enough.
Dec 22, 2007 - 5:21 am Stephen Dugas:To me, an apt analogy is to the passengers on the Titanic (or Lusitania, even more so, given the onsest of shooting hostilities at the time), who were quite stable and secure until all hell broke loose. We cruise along day by day in an apparrently safe, secure and stable envirnoment, but with the awareness that upon the occurrence of a single event–a terrorist nuclear detonation in a major US city–our ship will sink, and we may go down with it. Meanwhile, we enjoy the buffet.
Dec 22, 2007 - 7:35 am David Thomson:“I believe that our present astonishingly stable and predictable status quo creates a sense of complacency and dereliction.”
Our affluence keeps many people from acknowledging the threat of Islamic nihilism. It is hard to comprehend that one’s society may be under serious threat when you just picked up your new BMW at the dealership and spent two weeks vacationing in Acapulco. Sadly, the polling data supports my theory. Terrorism is not perceived by the majority of Americans to be the top problem. This is the sole reason why the Democrats or the intellectually immature Mike Huckabee have a viable chance of winning the White House.
Dec 22, 2007 - 11:40 am steve:Mr. Ledeen,
I couldn’t agree more with your praise for Robert Tracinski and The Intellectual Activist; since I subscribed a year ago I feel as my real education has begun.
I subscribed immediately after reading his article “To Win in Baghdad, Strike at Tehran” which suggested we “go wide”. “Going wide means recognizing that the conflict in Iraq is fueled and magnified by the intervention of Iran and Syria…The fact is that we are fighting the wrong war in the wrong place–though not in the way critics of that war complain. We are trying to fight a regional war by limiting ourselves to a local conflict–and we are fighting that war in Baghdad, when it has its source in Damascus and Tehran.”
I often send links of your work, Mr. Ledeen, to Robert for inclusion on the TIA. In my eyes, You and Robert are working on parallel tracks to save the world. Thank you for your passionate devotion to Iranian dissidents, a subject all but ignored in the MSM.
Fascintating discussion on Democrats and risk by drellberg.
P.S. I grew up sharing meals with Mark Riebling and forward him The Intellectual Activist from time to time. He used to get the mail order version way back in 1982.
ml:
Mark is great, thanks for underlining that.
Dec 22, 2007 - 1:20 pm David W. Lincoln:The future belongs to those who want it the most.
That, in essence, sums up the past and is as accurate and succinct an analysis that I can come up with as to what the future would be.
ML:
maybe too succinct. they have to want it, and get the necessary good fortune which is always required for victory.
Dec 22, 2007 - 2:46 pm Ira Zad:I agree with drellberg and winston in their posts.
Dr. Ledeen wrote: “…I believe we’re already in a big regional war in the Middle East, and it can spread quickly all over the place. But I can also imagine events (the fall of the regimes in Tehran and/or Damascus, for example) that would give us enormous opportunities for a dramatic expansion of freedom.”
I believe we all agree with his opinion, but unfortunately, what is actually happening now at the highest levels of our government is 180 degrees in opposition with any sort of ‘regime change’ in Iran or Syria. The President has, sadly, given up the helm of foreign policy to appeasers and deal-makers like Condi Rice, Robert Gates, et al.
“US Has No Permanent Enemies”, asserted our esteemed secretary of state yesterday. “I continue to say that if Iran will just do the one thing…— and that is suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities — then I’m prepared to meet my counterpart any place and anytime and anywhere and we can talk about anything.”, Rice continued. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/12/21/national/w073848S16.DTL
By emphasizing only one condition to start getting chummy with Iran and begin the Libya-nization of the Iranian regime, Rice has been betraying the initial ‘axis of evil’ directive to overthrow these regimes. Instead, she has long been extremely eager to sit down at the table and please the Iranians at any and all cost. Rice and her cohorts have betrayed the original ‘axis of evil’ policy set by the President, as well as our interest in the region. But Rice has done more than that: She has also betrayed the secular democracy movement in Iran.
Instead of supporting Iran’s secular democratic opposition by any and every means at our disposal, we are actually trying our damnest to make deals with a rotting, wobbly, medieval despotic Theocracy in Tehran. By saying last week that it is time for those who oppose enrichment in Iran to step forward, Rice is only hoping for the return of the Iranian “reformists” like Khatami and Rafsanjani who have European ties. Rice’s version of ‘regime change’ is ‘no’ to Ahmadinejad, but a big ‘yes’ to Khatami and/or Rafsanjani.
Seems some in the administration are so desperate to leave some sort of a legacy behind that they are quiet willing to sacrifice our national security, and even democracy itself to achieve that hollow legacy.
Questions that should be asked by serious observers here are these: Is this really our policy towards Iran? Is this what we wanted from the start?
http://mor2com.blogspot.com/
ML:
Well they may be your questions, and they are serious questions, but they are not questions about the matter I’ve been trying to understand on this thread, which is whether these days are more secure than the old days…or whether we are somehow on the edge of real trouble.
Try thinking about it. There are lots of other threads here about Iran. This one is different, it’s about this historical moment.
Dec 22, 2007 - 11:12 pm Ira zad:Yes, indeed, I believe it is becoming clearer every day that we are at the verge of a new period of chaos in the world. We have just been witnessing only the birth pangs of this evil in the past 29 years or so. Namely, an Islamic-Fascism surge which promises to wreak havoc in regions of the world like we have never seen before in history.
The Shiite Mullah takeover of Iran in 1979 (who were backed by the Europeans) was one of its first major strokes. And 9/11 was another. Both examples of Battle Cries of a new kind of Fascism emerging, if you will.
Currently, the main Director for this movement, the ‘head of the snake’, is in Tehran in the form of the Iranian regime which will be, in a more likely case than not, a menace armed with nuclear weapons before long.
ML:
The Islamic Republic is not the first and will not be the last example of this sort of evil. We must learn to see it in a broader context.
Dec 23, 2007 - 5:41 pm Dominique R. Poirier:Nothing to say. You teach us, and most of us can’t do anything but learning.
Merry Christmas, Mr Ledeen; and a happy new year.
Sincerely,
ML
And to you and all your dear ones.
Dec 24, 2007 - 1:47 pm Martin:I think it may be a matter of perspective and Geography Mr, Ledeen.
Would you feel the same if you were on the wrong side of the fence in Darfur or Liberia? A Kurd? A Jew across from Gaza with 500,000 bloodthirsty Islamofascists waiting to go?
ML:
What I have said is that ‘everything is up for grabs,’ that the world is unstable and explosive, that terrible things may happen but that wonderful things are possible.
I don’t know how I would feel if I were in Darfur or Kurdistan or Israel, but those people are in the eye of this storm, and I hope we will treat them well.
Dec 24, 2007 - 5:13 pm maximus:The western politicians just dont get it. Islamic Republic is serious about exporting its ideology and it will not be pretty one, just ask the Iranian people.
Iran: Europe will become a Muslim continent, says Khamenei’s spokesman:
Dec 25, 2007 - 7:17 amhttp://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Politics/?id=1.0.1696552901