The continued shock of “conservatives” at the left’s anti-Westernism

The unreadable but skimmable Victor Hanson catalogs some of the long list of anti-American lies and hit-jobs that have been put out by the left since 9/11, and then asks:

What explains this automatic censure of the United States, Israel, and to a lesser extent the Anglo-democracies of the United Kingdom and Australia?

He suggests some boring, secondary, psychological reasons for this phenomenon, such as the elites’ guilt over being well-to-do, or the American and European left’s resentment at their respective political impotence in the face of Bush’s and America’s successes, and such like.

The left’s hatred of America and the West is too big a subject to go into at the moment (though it is a subject I’ve discussed here at length). However, I would like to hint at a reason for the failure of “conservatives” such as Hanson to comprehend it:

Having reduced America and the West to nothing but an idea, the “conservatives” are shocked, shocked at the left, who see America and the West as nothing at all.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 05, 2005 03:44 PM | Send