Revisionist illusions

Today the New York Sun has an unusually intelligent editorial attacking Nicholas Baker’s Human Smoke, another in the long line of revisionist histories of World War II which argue that Britain and the world would have been better off if Britain had—uh, you know—accepted Hitler’s domination of Europe and avoided that nasty war.

The editorial is a response to a letter from Baker responding to an earlier Sun editorial on his book. The letter, and the Sun’s response, expose him as the phony he is.

Liberals are metaphysical parasites who will be with us as long as civilization exists. Like the spoiled son of a rich father, they take for granted the success and achievements of their civilization. Instead of honoring and nurturing the qualities it took to create it, they (1) assume that their civilization is a built-in, immutable feature of the universe, like stars and trees; (2) complain that its goods are not equally distributed; (3) argue that the civilization can never be morally legitimate unless it attains an equality that, in reality, cannot be attained on this earth; and (4) proceed to dismantle the civilization in order to achieve true equality. Baker’s revisionism is a variation on that classic liberal pattern. He takes for granted the safe and free world made possible by the defeat of Hitler, while complaining about the unequal things that had to be done to achieve that result, such as dropping bombs on the enemy.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 26, 2008 10:03 PM | Send