Once Upon a Time in the West
From Matthew Yglesias comes a brilliant summary of Reynoldsism:
the doctrine that “the left” (whatever it is) has been captured by an irrational and pathological hatred for western values – is a dishonest, absurd, and manipulative piece of propaganda is the least of its problems.
The thing here is that when you tease out the argument Glenn’s trying to make, the consequences are completely absurd. The anti-west faction of the west turns out to include the majority of the citizens of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. The citizens, in other words, of every countries normally understood to be inhabited by western persons except for the United States and Israel. Nor have nations which have adopted western norms of human rights and governance (Turkey, Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan, etc.) seen their populations embrace the pro-west point of view. Indeed, outside of the Old Confederacy a majority of Americans are in the anti-west faction. The territories of Latin America, strongly influenced as they are by western culture, have turned against the west, have uniformly turned against the west.
Now if this is right, it constitutes a very serious problem indeed. A problem whose scale goes so far beyond anything insurgents may or may not due in Iraq that obsessing over the details of Ted Kennedy’s views seems irrelevant. The enemy is everywhere, apparently, and western man is doomed. The “transnational progressives” of warblogger fame have already won the battle. The only question is whether the TP faction will beat the Islamists or whether the Islamists will beat us. Or, perhaps, the ChiComs will inherit the earth after we’ve wiped each other out. The pro-western point of view has simply become a terribly small minority within its zone of cultural influence and has no hope of prevailing. Even the Pope isn’t really anti-war – he’s on the other side.
How could something like this have even happened? Most Americans have never even taken a humanities course at an elite university. But some of us have. Add to that the New York Times readers and the insidious influence of the BBC World News on continental opinion and maybe you can see.
Dreadful.