VDH Watch 21: Why Muslims don't want to be like Us, except when they do

Our man Vic is writing in the Moonie Times about those naughty Muslims rioting over cartoons: Bad taste and freedom by Victor Davis Hanson Washington Times 02/11/06.

Vic is fatuous in this piece. But saying that Victor Davis Hanson is writing something already says he's being fatuous. This column is mainly interesting because Vic gets so snarled up in his various sneers that he can hardly keep them straight. For instance:

Globalization is, in fact, mostly a one-way process. Western technology, democracy, freedom, capitalism and popular culture continue to infect the non-West. Once there, they often bulldoze time-honored culture. That resulting clash leads to a radical divergence of perceptions. The cocky West assumes non-Westerners wish to emulate it. They often do, but also soon resent deeply their newfound dependence and appetites for what is often antithetical to traditional life.

Now, this is not quite in keeping with the Party line about how Muslims all want to be like us. See, Vic, in public I think you're supposed to only say that Muslim extremists hate our way of life. The whole column is on the same level of logic as that paragraph. Gee, it's "cocky" for "Westerners" to assume that those lesser cultures want to be like us. Except they do want to be like us. Except it makes them mad that they want to be like us.

If Vic lets college students get aware with arguments like this in their papers, his classes must have the reputation for being an easy "A".

But Vic gives the Moonie Times readers a look at his regular schtick with this piece: repeat the neocon mantra in popular terms but dress it up with airhead historical generalizations that don't hold up to actual thought. The obligatory reference to Hitler is there, of course. Vic's bottom line: they (the evil Muslims) hate us (white people, er, ah, people in democratic countries) for our "very way of life."

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