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Support the Danes!
While I am not a button-wearer (except I do like to wear my Bush-Cheney button on the 42 bus that goes through one of the most left-wing 'hoods in America: mine), I have wanted to get a Danish flag or do some other little thing to show my support in the face of the cartoon riots.
Writing on Tech Central Station, Lee Harris, author of "Civilization and Its Enemies," shares my concern:
"In the wake of the Cartoon Jihad, as Daniel Pipes has called it, Danish embassies have been attacked and burned, while Moslems are calling for a boycott of Danish products. Meanwhile, those of us who feel sympathy for Denmark are at a loss to know how we can stand up for this tiny and beleaguered nation. There are those who had urged us to buy Danish. But how many Danish plum hams and delectable Danish butter cookies can you eat before endangering your waistline, and possibly even your health? Certainly, there must be a low-calorie alternative."
Harris puts forward an original alternative--go to the music store and buy a CD of a symphony by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), the great Danish composer. There is also a Buy Danish website with ideas of how you might support the Danes. And Canada's Western Standard asks, "T-Shirt Anyone?"
Of course, the real way to support the Danes is to realize what we're up against: bullies (and that's a nice way of putting it). The tendency is always to appease. That is what happened in the 1930s, and that is the temptation (especially to an elite media more obsessed with Dick Cheney's hunting accident than the peril of our civilization) now. In a piece headlined "Appeasement 101, Dealing with Bullies," the historian Victor Davis Hanson shows how difficult it is to recognize our predicament. He writes:
"It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler, given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable. Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish--or about fighting radical Islamism in general."
I can't resist quoting one more chilling bit from Hanson's piece:
"[T]he moral high ground today supposedly was to refer both the Iraqi and Iranian problems to the UN. But considering the oil-for-food scandals and Saddam Hussein's constant violations of UN resolutions, it is unlikely that the Iranian theocracy has much fear that the UN Security Council will thwart its uranium enrichment. As fascism spread, France worked on fortifying its German border with the Maginot Line, Oxford undergraduates voted to refuse 'in any circumstances to fight for king and country,' and British newspapers decried the Treaty of Versailles for unduly punishing Germany. This was all long before the 'no blood for oil' slogan and Al Gore in Saudi Arabia apologizing for the supposed American maltreatment of Arabs. But deja vu pertains not just to us but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists harken back to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism."
Writing on Tech Central Station, Lee Harris, author of "Civilization and Its Enemies," shares my concern:
"In the wake of the Cartoon Jihad, as Daniel Pipes has called it, Danish embassies have been attacked and burned, while Moslems are calling for a boycott of Danish products. Meanwhile, those of us who feel sympathy for Denmark are at a loss to know how we can stand up for this tiny and beleaguered nation. There are those who had urged us to buy Danish. But how many Danish plum hams and delectable Danish butter cookies can you eat before endangering your waistline, and possibly even your health? Certainly, there must be a low-calorie alternative."
Harris puts forward an original alternative--go to the music store and buy a CD of a symphony by Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), the great Danish composer. There is also a Buy Danish website with ideas of how you might support the Danes. And Canada's Western Standard asks, "T-Shirt Anyone?"
Of course, the real way to support the Danes is to realize what we're up against: bullies (and that's a nice way of putting it). The tendency is always to appease. That is what happened in the 1930s, and that is the temptation (especially to an elite media more obsessed with Dick Cheney's hunting accident than the peril of our civilization) now. In a piece headlined "Appeasement 101, Dealing with Bullies," the historian Victor Davis Hanson shows how difficult it is to recognize our predicament. He writes:
"It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler, given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable. Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish--or about fighting radical Islamism in general."
I can't resist quoting one more chilling bit from Hanson's piece:
"[T]he moral high ground today supposedly was to refer both the Iraqi and Iranian problems to the UN. But considering the oil-for-food scandals and Saddam Hussein's constant violations of UN resolutions, it is unlikely that the Iranian theocracy has much fear that the UN Security Council will thwart its uranium enrichment. As fascism spread, France worked on fortifying its German border with the Maginot Line, Oxford undergraduates voted to refuse 'in any circumstances to fight for king and country,' and British newspapers decried the Treaty of Versailles for unduly punishing Germany. This was all long before the 'no blood for oil' slogan and Al Gore in Saudi Arabia apologizing for the supposed American maltreatment of Arabs. But deja vu pertains not just to us but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists harken back to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism."
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