Victor David Hanson: Divided we stand http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson102601.shtml "Those in the media seemed startled to see Richard Gere and Senator Clinton roundly booed at a recent benefit concert for the victims of September 11. Gere clearly earned his opprobrium, by smugly lecturing the audience - among them relatives and close friends of the dead - about the immorality of their desire to punish the murderers. Mrs. Clinton may have been hissed because the politics of her husband's administration projected national weakness and timidity, which prompted these attacks. Or perhaps concertgoers remembered some of her hare-brained pronouncements about her own purported victimhood during the health-care debate, when she was bothered by angry callers. Or maybe New Yorkers in general were just fed up with her past coziness with Palestinian leaders. Or was it that the crowd believed that Gere and Clinton live in a different world from their own? There is a growing class division in this country over the war. Of course, 90 percent of us, of all classes, at least for now profess support for strong military action. Yet at least a tenth of the country - a very influential tenth in the media, the university, politics, foundations, churches, and the arts - is adamantly and vocally at odds with most Americans. Why is this so? It is often not a divide between Democrats and Republicans. Nor does the abyss always separate the wealthy from the poor. Most strikingly, the fault line pits a utopian cultural elite against the working middle class. On campuses, especially public universities such as the California State University system, one feels the tension constantly. The tenured, well educated, and relatively affluent among the faculty are adamantly against the military response in Afghanistan. Yet the students - mostly children of the working-class of every conceivable ethnic background - almost uniformly support our troops. Similarly, I watch the well-heeled upper echelon on television chastising our government and then see my twin brother - with decrepit pickup truck, fighting the lowest agricultural prices since the Great Depression, losing an ancestral small farm to the bank - proudly driving in and out with a tattered flag flying from his truck antenna. Recent emigrants in Selma, my hometown - which is now nearly 85 percent Mexican-American - have plastered fresh American decals over faded Mexican flags. Yet when I come to work, professors, who have done far better in America, suggest that our classes should now read Edward Said to "understand" the crisis "in its proper prospective." Those who are not thriving in America seem incensed by attacks on their country, while the beneficiaries of this wonderful system of freedom and capitalism are cranky - like angry puppies who gnaw and chew at their mother's ample teats. The usual explanations about the sociology of dissent do not quite make sense any more. So far, those who are fighting in Afghanistan - mostly highly trained pilots and special-forces operatives - are not from among the unwashed poor. The affluent Left, then, is not opposed to action because the less-privileged are dying in droves. Is it because the better educated are more sensitive to world opinion? To the nuances of Islam? To the "Other" in Afghanistan, who are not male WASPs? To the vagaries of the European press? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Rather, I think fashionable anti-Americanism and pacifism have now become completely aristocratic pursuits, the dividends of limited experience with the muscular classes and the indulgence such studied distance breeds. Our pampered critics may be as clever as Odysseus, but they have lost his nerve, strength, and sense of morality. And so they have neither the ability nor desire to ram a hot stake into the eye of the savage Cyclops to save their comrades. ... Our new smug aristocrats are convinced that the Taliban and bin Laden are akin to an angry news producer, a supercilious dean, or perhaps a high school vice-principal run amok - pushy types who can be reasoned with or flattered, or, barring that, paid off, out-argued, petitioned, or ignored. Theirs is the arrogance of the Enlightenment, fueled by the ease of American materialism, which alike suggest that their nation is too good, too sophisticated, too wealthy, and too modern ever to stoop to fight in the gutter with 13th-century terrorists over a mere 6,000 dead. Cannot the hateful gaze of fascists in the Middle East - like those of the crazed road-warriors on the freeway, or wild-eyed thugs on the train home - be simply avoided? Or reported to the authorities? Or - in extremis - reasoned with in polite give-and-take? Would a man or woman with ample free time, a title, and a nice car and house - America's critics circa 2001 - risk all that to tangle with a psychopath who has nothing to lose? And over what? An insult? A little money? Or perhaps your life? The firemen and policemen in the audience know how to deal with bin Laden because they have seen something like him everyday, and protect those who have not from his ilk. They suspect that Richard Gere and Senator Clinton not only know little about real evil - much less how to deal with it - but most certainly, in safety, will sometimes scoff at those who do." To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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