Europe and Victor Davis Hansen

Victor Davis Hansen's "Letter to the Europeans" was a bit over the top but I think the response to it here has been so as well. First, I think everyone here needs to read the piece a bit more closely. It seems like you are missing some of what he is actually saying because you want to portray him as a right wing ideologue. That's fine if this is DailyKOS or Atrios, but if we are to provide a "ruthless interrogation of narratives" it is improper. If you want to disagree with conservatism (actually, liberalism in this case) then you need to interrogate it correctly.

Second, if you look at what anti-Americanism means to American intellectuals, it helps explain why conservative intellectuals are always so pissed and dramatic at it.

Reading Closely
Because, in your portrayal of it, the comment on Africa is the most ridiculous I would like to begin with it. The fact that Hansen is a respected scholar despite unpopular political views might tell you something: the guy is smart. Therefore, it would be sensible to read his essays closely; even if this means dealing with the "cry, the beloved" phrase a few more times (which I agree is lame). If you look above, to the beginning of his rejoinder against anticipated European replies, he says the following:

But the choices are not so starkly bipolar between either chauvinistic saber rattling or studied pacifism. There is a third way, the promise of muscular democratic government that does not apologize for 2,500 years of civilization and is willing to defend it from the enemies of liberalism, who would undo all that we wrought.

This is the "promise" that Hansen is referring to when he talks about the threat from Africa. Let us reanalyze that statement, now that we have made this discovery. How could "famine and savagery in Africa" threaten this promise?
Quite easily, it turns out. Who are the enemies of liberalism? Perhaps those who committed atrocities in: Sudan. Somalia. Liberia. Libya. Rwanda. Those are off the top of my head. Scantron, I know you believe that you are a liberal (believer in liberalism). Liberalism is the doctrine that says that human beings have rights, or should have rights. Aren't those who violate these rights in the most basic way not only the enemies of liberalism itself, but... your enemies? They are the enemies of human kind. They should be killed or stopped.

For the sake of argument, let's forget any notion that we had about liberalism meaning freedom for all people, and forget that in a long term view failed states are breeding ground for terrorism. What threat is posed to us by Africa? Well, that depends. Do you want to feed the Africans who are starving all the time? That's what we tried to do in Somalia. It didn't work out well. Ok. Let's not do anything, but we'll keep embassies there just in case shit gets better or something. Oops, we had two embassies bombed there already.... from Wikipedia: "more than 220 people were killed and over 4,000 wounded in simultaneous [1] car bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya". Furthermore:

Twelve of the 22 individuals on the FBI's 'Most Wanted Terrorist" list released by the White House on Wednesday are from African nations.
Seven of the men are Egyptian, three more come, respectively, from Libya, Zanzibar and the Comoro Islands, while two more come from Kenya.... from AllAfrica

There is a significant threat to everyone, Africans, Europeans, Asians and Americans alike from Africa. I'm not going to get into the comments, but I find the quick pile on remarkably similar to the mob politics thing I wrote about earlier.

Anti-Semitism

Beginning in 2000, verbal attacks directed against Jews increased while incidents of vandalism (e.g. graffiti, fire bombings of Jewish schools, desecration of synagogues and cemeteries) surged. Physical assaults including beatings, stabbings and other violence against Jews in Europe increased markedly, in a number of cases resulting in serious injury and even death. From the State Department.

There is fucked up shit going on. Hansen isn't talking about Anti-Zionism, and calling it anti-Semitism. Where have the most Jews died, historically? Europe. And the continent, not merely individual countries, still has a problem with this. I make Jewish jokes all the time. I shouldn't, but we've reached a point where they are actually funny (for most people) in America. This is not the case in Europe. I met my first Nazi there. Another kid, who was completely liberal and of course anti-war, a German, mentioned something mocking about "very nice people who were Jews" that he had met in America. Europe has a serious problem here and doesn't seem to admit it. Many of the non-white people I met in Germany used to talk about how they wouldn't go to East Germany because of the Skinheads there. I never saw skinheads. But if I were Jewish I don't think I would go there. That is a problem.

The Beloved Continent
Jews don't have the ability to travel safely in Europe. This, the continent that is allegedly the safest and most civilized. The last part is that which throws conservative intellectuals into such a fury. We owe Europe, big time. Not in terms of money, but because it created the intellectual tradition that allowed us to found our country. But conservative intellectuals believe that Europe has thrown away that intellectual tradition. And it has, to an extent. Europeans government has nothing to do with liberalism. Free speech, but you can't say anything about Nazism or perhaps, soon, Islam. Private property, but it's taxed up your ass. Independence from the government? Forget it. You need your unemployment check. Liberalism does not and cannot exist in pure form. But it certainly does not exist in Europe.
The worst part about this for conservative intellectuals, I think, is that left-wing intellectuals in the United States cite Europe's commitment to statism and corporatism as showing that this is "modern". It really isn't. It's the same old compromise between different classes that has been going on for thousands of years. But, because Europe is Europe, everything takes on a new shiny edge.
This brings me to my last point. Europe really has lost the goodwill of a certain majority of Americans. Certainly not the target audience of one of Hansen's academic works, but perhaps those who sometimes read the newspaper at Wendy's if it's sitting around. But that doesn't matter to the part of America that Hansen probably has to go to cocktail parties with. Because Europe will always, always, always be cited as the civilized and modern "other" among the liberal intellectual elite. Thus Hansen's letter is not really to Europe. It's to the Americans who cite Europe as embodying civilization. The truth is that it doesn't. It's a pretty fucked up place, just like America.




PS: I know this sounds aggressive/hostile. That leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. But it's worth it, I think, because we should preserve this place as one where people address others on what they are actually writing. If Stalin says something that you don't like, hit him as hard as you want, but hit Stalin and not a straw man. Otherwise you're just trying to score points.