Hanson turns again—do you think he means it this time?

Victor Hanson, whom I’ve previously described as a liberal universalist with a gun, is turning into a cornered, angry guy with a gun. Summing up all the good liberal things the West has done for Muslims and only gotten hate and violence in return, he concludes:

Yet for all their threats, what the Islamists—from Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to the Iranian government in Tehran to the jihadists in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle—don’t understand is that they are slowly pushing tired Westerners into a corner. If diplomacy, or aid, or support for democracy, or multiculturalism, or withdrawal from contested lands, does not satisfy radical Islamists, what would?

Perhaps nothing.

What then would be the new Western approach to terrorism? Hard and quick retaliation—but without our past concern for nation-building, or offering a democratic alternative to theocracy and autocracy, or even worrying about whether other Muslims are unfairly lumped in with Islamists who operate freely in their midst.

Two thoughts: First, notice that Hanson only thinks of abandoning his liberal approach to the Islamic world when he feels that the West has been absolutely pushed into a corner. He was not able to abandon it simply by seeing what a patently false idea it was; no, the Muslims had to push our side into a corner in order for him to reach that point. People living in a democratic republic must feel, before they will see, said George Washington.

Second, Hanson writes on the basis of ego and adrenalin, not rational thought, and he frequently changes his mind, not only on democratization, but on immigration. Therefore his latest renunciation of democratism isn’t necessarily serious. He’s given up on the global-tolerance-and-democracy crusade before, and gone right back to it within a few weeks. So, if he feels less cornered and fed-up with Muslims a month or two from now, he’ll return to his default position of touting the global spread of tolerance.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2006 05:00 PM | Send