Victor Davis Hansen: Bravo

Civilization vs. Trivia

The title of his latest essay says it all.

Mr. Hansen once more goes into the difference between form and substance, between deph and shallowness. Differences that have been polarized to the point of hysteria by the media and leftwing politicans.

Quote: 'Last week, the carnivore Saddam Hussein faced the world in the docket. There was none of the usual Middle East barbarity. The mass murderer was not hooded and then beheaded on tape, in the manner of al Qaeda. Civilization has come to Iraq.

Nor was the destroyer of Iraqi dissidents hitched — Saudi-style — to a Humvee and dragged to pieces through the streets of Baghdad. The pillager of Kuwait did not lose a limb on the precepts of a sharia-inspired fatwa. A young Saddam-like Baathist assassin did not break in and shoot the desecrator of the Mesopotamian marshlands in the back of the head. And a West Bank-like mob did not lynch the torturer of dissidents in the public square. Even al Jazeera, an enthusiast of the usual barbarity, was wondering what the heck was going on in its own neck of the medieval woods.'

Quote: 'In response to the historic events of the week, one columnist for the New York Times decried George Bush's pronunciation of "Eye-rack." Another pundit trumped that profundity by whining that Bush had written "Let Freedom Reign," rather than "Ring" — a verb that, had Mr. Bush employed it, she would most likely have denounced as a hackneyed cliché.

At a time when tens of thousands are risking their lives to end the barbarism that has spawned a quarter century of worldwide terror, the New York Times wishes us to know that its columnists can properly pronounce Iraq and really do remember that freedom "rings" more often than "reigns."

Meanwhile, an even smugger Billy Crystal was introducing the billionaire John Kerry at a millionaires' banquet in L.A. with similar gravitas — comparing 9/11 to the president's SAT scores. Oh yes, 3,000 incinerated on September 11 add up to the president's combined SAT score. Analyze that: comparing charred corpses to multiple-choice tests taken by high-school seniors.'

This last one especially is important: For some odd reason the Left does not speak of the obvious successes, the really amazing changes that have taken and are still taking place in Iraq.
No, indeed they'd rather ridicule the way the US president pronounces the name of that country. In fact, it is the worst thing they can find about the way he's handled the whole issue.

Read it all.