you I correct Jewish Studies it's an honor a pleasure and a privilege to welcome Victor Davis Hanson here he's received many honors and awards not least of which is the 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award of the University of California Santa Cruz for his important work as a scholar of the classical world and his reflections on our contemporary condition Victor Davis Hanson graduated from Santa Cruz in 1975 he studied at the American School of Classical Studies went on to receive his PhD from Stanford also in classics in 1980 in 91 he was awarded an American phylogeny sociation excellence in Teaching Award I'm convinced it was because of the fine teaching he had here at Santa Cruz which we still think about and that award is given yearly to the country's top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin those of you who care for languages know how important that is Hansen was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the behavioral sciences at Stanford a visiting professor of classics at Stanford and he was also the visiting Shiffrin chair of military history at the u.s. Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland in 2002 2003 he's the author of a stream of articles book reviews newspaper editorials on Greek agrarian and military history as well as essays on contemporary culture he has written or edited 13 books including ripples of battle his latest which was published in autumn 2003 his books and articles have enriched our understanding of the classical world including the connection of the great city-states of ancient Greece and their supporting and surrounding rural and agricultural environs an issue I find particularly interesting as a scholar of modern urban culture Hanson is perhaps in my view the most important contemporary voice speaking for values that Thomas Jefferson located at the heart of American political culture and he speaks as a scholar and is well out of personal experience as someone who grew up in and farmed in the Central Valley he lives there and I understand continues to work the land as well as serving as a professor of classics at California State University at Fresno and a senior research associate a Hoover fellow at Stanford he speaks to our situation and condition with the long view of the classical scholar and the urgency of the public intellectual a combination articulated not only by the ancient Greeks Greeks but their middle-eastern compatriots the Jews the Jewish Studies program is thus doubly honored by his presence here today he speaks today as part of the work of the Jewish Studies Program we have a regular series of speakers at our research colloquium who enlighten us and help us move forward with our work our research by presenting new and often provocative work we hope you will be interested in joining us at other activities Jewish Studies is supported by the humanities division of the University of California Santa Cruz by individual donors and I see some of you among us and we thank you for that help by the Helen ins and for Diller Endowment for Jewish Studies and by the correct foundation today we celebrate as well the 25th anniversary of the correct foundation I will say something about that foundation later which is sponsoring this lecture as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations professor Hanson will speak on warfare and democracy in the ancient and contemporary Middle East please join me in welcoming him thank you very much that was very kind introduction I'm perfectly willing to discuss the contemporary political situation the Middle East but I perhaps should wait until the questions because I'd like to try to look at the problem in a longer expansive time and space maybe specifically the nature of war throughout civilization and how it might enlighten us about the contemporary troubles in the Middle East we had this idea I was talking not long ago to somebody said Israel is always fighting they've been in five wars this is so unusual I thought Heraclitus would have disagree he said war as a father of us all Plato said pieces but a parenthesis that didn't mean that they like warfare but they accepted it as part of the tragic condition I once had a master student who went through the 5th century greatest century in the history of Western civilization in some ways and Athens was at war 77 out of a hundred years and when I replied to the person who's talking about Israel's Wars I said there are more people been killed since World War two than during world wars and the United States has been active since Vietnam in places as diverse as Grenada Somalia Panama Gulf War one whatever we want to call the latest Serbia Kosovo in other words that it is seems that it's innate to the human condition that one side or the other is going to achieve or try to achieve by war what they can't during peace you see that in the ancient world so often that they sometimes come up with Roman numerals first Peloponnesian War second Peloponnesian War be much easier if we said that the Middle East first war second war third war fourth we say 47 56 60 77382 but the ancient source at First Punic War second Punic War third Punic War in the way that we have World War One World War two we thought that we had transcended that primordial state in the Gulf War so we called it Gulf War now I start to see that it has a Roman numeral Gulf War one and we even see with battles First Battle of Manassas Second Battle of Manassas nine was fought around ancient Thebes first corneas second coordinate whether we like it or not war seems to be endemic with the species that does not mean we like that situation simply that it's part of something we have to accept and the morality of those wars are adjudicated by the landscape in which they take place so the Greeks for example thought the Persian War was a so-called quote/unquote good war because it was trying to save a small society in the southern Balkans of about two million people from a monstrous empire that invaded them in a way that they were troubled about the Peloponnesian War moderate oligarchs fighting Democrats both spoke Greek twenty-seven years long usually when people see wars that go on and on and on like world war one it's considered disaster in the way the war of 1870 the pressure Franken war is not so what is a war for how is it conducted how many are lost and whether the eventual results usually tell us whether the war enters that murky realm of being just or unjust or effective or a waste of time or attracted in other words you we have to look at these things on the individual basis rather than just saying all war is bad because after all all the great isms that originated in Europe in the 19th and 20th century fascism Nazism communism or either defeated by war the threat of war cold war and some of our own isms chattel slavery I don't think you could tell the greatest wealthiest class in the history of civilization was probably the three percent who we so called plague plantations in the antebellum South that had more capital concentrated in fewer hands in almost any time in history there was no way you were going to tell those people to give up a system they found lucrative without the threat of war and I think we should remember that Japanese militarism didn't disappear because we had a dialogue or conflict resolution with Tojo these are things that are hard first accept but nevertheless they suggest there's something about this phenomenon that's either innate to the human species or to the nation-state I'm not going to get into that I know that when 1986 when the United Nations said that war is outlawed special Group Committee said it was not a natural phenomena good still have them this means we should try to accept it on its terms what makes it break out well in the postmarks period I think we look for obviously economic exploitation people are poor people have been done it injustice and therefore they go to war out of legitimate grievances I say why didn't way that the Greeks would find this absolutely crazy that anybody would think that I mean there was an embargo on megara Knollys but most of the wars that I've looked at in the ancient world are fought over borderland and the funny thing about borderland the ancient world it's worth nothing it's scrub hills between two nice flat plains that are worth something then they go out and fight over this why because it'd be it's symbolic as a matter of state prestige your honor or one-upmanship it's very interesting to see that because it reminds us that Argentina did not go to war Oh in the Falklands to take valuable Malvinas back so that they could cultivate it or find oil there rather a crooked dictatorship declared war to restore failing policies of public opinion and thought that they could get away with very cheap and humiliated former colonial power this would be good to keep in mind because it suggests that countries like Germany who had more territory and fewer people in 1939 talked about Lebensraum in a way they don't today or the Japan that has more people and less territory and no natural resources doesn't seem to want to go to war now but they felt they just had to in the 30s more about that later on what's made it changed I think has something to do with consensual government but nevertheless if you look at the Middle East for example I keep hearing that there has to be some oil there has to be some natural resource there has to be land well there's plenty of land for everybody in the Middle East but for whatever reason when you have a sophisticated society that's liberal and has a consent government in a free press and it has the entire engine of Western civilization it's right around a sea of autocracy and one small country has a larger gross national product in every country in North Africa from Egypt to Morocco combined then you have all the classical ingredients for very strong emotions such as jealousy honor envy and you have really the embryo of war the Greeks believed that most people would not say they had legitimate reasons they always gave perceived grievances but unlike us they had a word for it a pro fascist a fake a pretext that's very funny sparta says they had to go to war against athens because of the fear the foe boasts of Athenians in 431 you look back at what the Athenians did they had almost no provocation there was really nothing that Sparta couldn't have got through diplomacy but they were absolutely right that if they didn't do anything that this engine of Athenian democracy liberality was sweeping the agenda invest in it and they were becoming more and more marginalized and so it would be as if the Soviet Union had made the same decision to strike in 1988 before this crass popular culture and globalization overwhelmed it which it did there's a reason why they did and I think it was called deterrence and I think that's very very important to keep in mind that when most sides go to war and they say they have legitimate agreements it doesn't necessarily mean it so just talking to a person about the Middle East he said it's all about the West Bank that were true then 47 56 and 67 would be about the West Bank I don't think it's about the West Bank entirely or even most of them I think again there is a sense a sense of grievance and that sense of grievance has been magnified partly out of fear partly out of sense of honor partly out of envy out of jealousy if you look at bin Laden to take a similar example he went to war against us on September 11th did you just forget what he said remember the pretext what he said two reasons he went to war he said the marvel of Iraq was starving Iraqi children we know now that Saddam Hussein was starving Iraqi children but that's over with and there were 10,000 troops in Saudi Arabia they're out now you didn't say that ok I'm not going to go to war he also said that Jewish women were walking with bear arms in the holy cities and shrines of Saudi Arabia which was entirely false in fact if you looked at the record the United States and as much as any great power has anything other than their own national narrow interests which most of them do I have no friends they just have interests but nevertheless if you look at the United States very funny at bombed a Christian Orthodox Serbia to stop the extermination of Muslims in Europe when you're a perfectly willing to let it go on for eight years it had tried to feed Muslim Somalians it was the only country if you go back and look at the record that really made criticisms to Russia of destroying 80,000 chetan's remember they went into Grozny the first hundred Russian tanks got destroyed and they killed seven to eight thousand Muslims in Grozny so rather than saying Jeanine grab maybe we should say Grozny grab that was a far greater fight it was just it's just boggles the mind in any case if we look at the record of the United States whether it's real politic or not in Afghanistan it was trying to stop Soviet Athey and isn't taking over traditional society and if you look at the 19th province of Iraq which was Kuwait until we went in and liberated the Kuwait ease you get the impression the United States didn't have that battle record if you look at the combined foreign aid to Egypt the Palestinians and Jordan it was loosely not necessarily entire but loosely in the aggregate equivalent to what we were giving Israel based on the 75 Accords I think that's important to realize there wasn't really a legitimate grievance against the United States and when I saw giving an example of how these proceed proved perceived grievances can be very powerful I saw right after 9/11 the Gallup poll polled 21 Arab societies the one that had the highest level of anti-americanism was Kuwait 67% said they did not trust the American and when asked specifically why they didn't the first reason as you can all imagine was Israel and our treatment of Palestinians if you think and take your breath this was a country that did not exist in 1990 it was restored by the United States and then proceeded without trials without adjudication to ethnically cleanse every Palestinian in Kuwait 350,000 and were sent by ship back to Jordan or other places and so you see that a country doesn't like us because we're too hard on the Palestinians who were giving four hundred million dollars to and they epically cleanse them and were restored to sovereignty by us so it doesn't mean necessarily there has to be a lot of logic so why did Ben Lord and really do it given the record that we treated Muslims in a particularly I think even-handed fashion there were no Jewish women walking around Mecca it might be that this engine of crass Western capitalism with globalization had started to whatever you think about it make real inroads and everywhere from Latin America to Africa to Southeast Asia where even former Stalinist places like Vietnam we're starting to look like West Hollywood and out of this culture whether it's bear navels or the Internet you start to see all of the traditional hierarchies challenge the hierarchy of the patriarch who says the child can marry this person and not that person the idea of gender apartheid where somebody doesn't have equal rights the idea that autocratic government can be undermine the idea that religious tolerance is starting to be accepted by people very powerful engine this is we don't really think of it in the abstract that way but perhaps mr. bin Laden like the Spartans out of fear thought he could pre em and stop this in a way that I think makes perfect sense I think his only as we were talking earlier the only mistake he does he took off the whole building rather than the top third if he had had taken the top three I don't think there would have been much a much problem for him so wars can start not all the time whether it's Japan or Germany out of inflated sense of Lebensraum perceived grievances just one final statement on this another person was talking about occupied land why the United Nations have 50% of its UN resolutions over a 40-year period were about the occupation of Israel I don't think it the what so called West Bank laser I don't think it had anything to do with the principle of occupation otherwise Tibet would have been a constant reference it's much bigger than the West Bank but China is big and powerful you don't want to antagonize school in the Security Council by condemning them 45 times in a way that you can with Israel are disciples question Turkey gobbled Cyprus most of it up turkeys a powerful country in NATO or the soxhlet Islands that Russia just took after World War two nobody talks about the soccer night nobody talks about the 10% of Germany that was lost to Poland the Germany's in Poland are a whole different story than Israel and the West Bank so I think it's important to see that when people say there is a real grievance usually and they go to war over that it's usually not necessarily and I think rarely true white Awards break out we're told in the era of conflict resolution that it's usually because of miscommunication misunderstand I can't think of one war and I'd like to have somebody in the question period cite a war that broke out over a misunderstanding hard to start wars we had a spy plane that was recklessly close to the Chinese coast it was shot down we didn't go to world China we're told the missiles of October 1962 imagine nuclear missiles pointed at the United States we still didn't go to war we say well we almost did but we didn't and I don't think that World War one was started by a miscommunication World War two surely wasn't only a miscue miscommunication in the sense of intent somebody missed reading another powers intention to provide deterrence but they're very very hard to start and if they sometimes and often start out of perceived grievances and not out of act and how this shootings start why do people we have little differences with China we have real differences with other countries we don't necessarily go to war with seems to me whether we like it or not that there's this old classical idea of deterrence reminded that for years probably from 379 BC to 371 Sparta routinely invaded Thebes and Thebes took it and suddenly in 371 the Spartan army miraculously although it outnumbered the Thebans two-to-one was destroyed or almost destroyed the battle of leuctra and the next year the Thebans not only went on the offensive they went down and dismantle the entire Spartan state because for the first time they thought they could because Sparta had lost the sense of deterrence that's a theme throughout the city's history each time the Athenians or the Spartans sucker is set back all of a sudden they find their opponents are increased and the likelihood for the war increases because they've lost this sense of deterrence if we would apply this very primitive way of thinking it is affirmative to our own war against terror in the Middle East it might be something like this that this war could have been envisioned as starting 25 years ago in November 1979 when the Iranian embassy was storm we really didn't do much there were 262 Marines killed in one day in Lebanon and the embassy and the annex that you were blown up other than a few shelling by the USS New Jersey it wasn't much a reaction the East African embassies were attacked there was various murders some planes blown up Khobar towers where they killed a lot of Americans in that first World Trade Center USS cold weather we knew it or not we were giving the impression that the United States was at its greatest period of affluence and leisure and either could not or would not revert back to this primordial world to restore its sense of deterrence if we apply that to Israel why did the Intifada start why all of this at a period when by any measure they had the most liberal government and the most interested I think in trying to find a real dialogue I think if we could bring out some Neanderthal Greek from the past he would say well you should have asked yourself it was sober and judicious not to reply to Saddam Hussein that was smart not to do it you would have wrecked the coalition but there was a reason why there were 39 minarets in Baghdad glorifying the scuds and there were people up on the roofs of Palestine glorifying hoping that those missiles were filled with gas and although you could not retaliate you might have given the impression under coercion of the United States that you that you were a new generation that had transcended the old laws of the jungle and you didn't really believe you had to get down on the primordial muck and fight people this is something out of our past and if you add the Lebanon it Lebanon was a disaster that was at the ED Nam and it was sober and judicious for the Israelis to pull out but the manner in which they pulled out might have given the impression to the Hezbollah who actually put posters on the border with a decapitated Israeli soldier and Arabic instructions for Hamas to do what they had done we push them out of Lebanon it's your turn to push them out of Palestine and although I think it was sober and judicious to offer concessions I think it almost worked at the Camp David whether they knew it or not I think that submitted the impression that a new generation of affluent Western teenagers were not the same group that founded the Jewish state in 1947 and either could not or would not react in the same way that we found ourselves faced with 9/11 and what usually happens in these crisis points and we can go back to ask ourselves why is it in 338 the Greek city-states cannot stop 30,000 Macedonians who just 150 years stopped a quarter million Persians coming from the north or why is it that all of a sudden democracies in 1939 decided they just can't defeat Germany and why is it that the German army who goes into Poland in 1939 is almost naked on the Western Front and the French just sit there why they raped Poland even though they had 250 divisions and the Germans only had 80 facing because I think the ideas they had lost a sense of deterrence and the enemy no longer respected them if we could go back to this crazy silly Falklands I like this example because it's absolutely no stakes whatsoever in those awful god-awful islands it might be that that one minesweeper pulled out a new government under Margaret Thatcher a woman who in the machismo culture of Argentina just was too weak to do anything they're British perhaps by accident gave the impression that these were not valuable assets and they either would not or would could not go all the way down in the South Atlantic and restore them and that's very dangerous when you lose that sense of deterrence and your opponent is someone who's not the end of history and does not necessarily believe in consensual government and usually when that happens then you need somebody to come in that's character in the past fat drunk ugly whoever it may be sometimes it's a Churchill you bring him out of the closet you say restore deterrence a man whose career was ended or perhaps it's who knows I'm not impressed with the vocabulary of George Bush but he brought him out and he's this is what he's supposed to do this and I don't think the Israelis were ever elected Ariel's her own but they basically brought him out of their past and they said push the mountain said you've got to tell the enemy that we are not a luxurious idle chatter in class and you restore deterrence and when you're done whether it's Churchill or whether it's your own or whether it's Lucy and get the help out of here because we have no place in a polite legitimate consensual Society but for this moment at this time you have a duty and that's to restore the term that's I think it's what mr. Jerome is trying to do when these wars break out then usually to recap war is common there are usually over non-economic but perceived grievances that can really turn in if one side is naive enough to lose the sense of deterrence into a shooting war what happens when the war begins that would be arrogant to say over time and space and you could have any model or paradigm that would predict who wins or loses but look at Israel have a debate not long ago with the Palestinian says United States gives everything to Israel what we gave 600 Abrams tanks the Abrams tank is better than Moreau it's better paying they have better tanks and Israel business in Egypt before 1967 Israel got almost no aid from the United States in fact that famous line in Michael Oren with Israeli in void goes to the goal and says just please sell us for the Mirage Jets and says you're from a small country with a sorry history no thanks and Israel one they weren't really armed until after 67 how did Israel win well I think you can make the argument that Israel in the same manner in Britain in a single matter of America and Europe and the Greeks the answer lies somewhere in Alexander being on the in distress than fifty thousand men are Caesar taking all of the private northwestern you're less than six legions or Cortes with sixteen hundred men we're not talking about a matter of morality but efficacy and there's something about this strange Western paradigm of consensual government at least more consensual than the alternative does it mean that the conquistadors were Democrats but after all when Cortes was in tanoshii land he was served a writ and sued in the process that he had to address possible under as as tech society there's something about consensual government open markets free press civic audit a greater degree of secularism that creates lafalot II on the battlefield that whether that's high-technology or Western idea of discipline where you fight in a group and you march on orders you retreat according to protocol you have a a civic audit of your officers that allows you to have military power that's not explicable by the small size or population of a Europe versus the alternative or Israel Israel has a system that's not explicable just in technology or wealth or logistics but a system that's Western which brings gives it enormous military capability and earns at the same time a great deal of hatred and there's always a way to check that throughout 2500 years of history by the non West who realize that a conventional battle field usually fought beyond the west and places like zulu land or Midway there's a way to check that one of them of course is to be parasitic on the West that is to use Western weaponry and think that you can win without importing the whole cargo of individual liberty and freedom and secularism and civilian audit and simply get the weapons the job he's tried it Admiral Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay there was no Western weapons at all by 1905 it had a better Navy than everybody in the world except Britain because it had sent 250,000 Japanese students to Western universities and learned this system and grafted onto this Shinto Buddhism militarism so people have tried that Saddam Hussein tried to do that imported weaponry and thought that he could use the romance of Eric Arab tribalism grafted onto Soviet state ISM and create a more efficient military doesn't work but it gives you some element of Perry the people who are making the suicide belts today all of that explosive is not made in Arab countries that's if it is it's made on Western designs or its import from caches that were probably in Eastern Europe and the same thing as two of our P G's that are killing Americans as we speak in Fallujah that's an imported parasitic process that's one way to check Western conventional superiority the second is of course Western societies are more consensual so what happens you can appeal to the better angels of their nature you can have Ted Kennedy say that this is the worst thing since Vietnam and hope that we can have a discussion here and call off the war or in Israel you can have you can try to blow up somebody right during a lude referendum so that you can stop this process which is apparently very bringing a lot of terror and anxiety to the policy what's more scary if you're a resident of Gaza to have to run Gaza on your own for once and not have somebody to blame so that's one way of doing it remember that the French fleet hosted the Ottomans but that is not new we we learned before the Battle of Lepanto and the Ottoman strategy to nullify Western military intrinsic advantage was always to divide the West between Orthodox Christianity Roman Catholicism and Protestantism trisect the West and be unified so that's another method besides parasitism is to have divisions within the West we saw it in the UN with France and Germany the United States visa via Iraq another is as I said to have debate and the consensual government to call it off at another is this idea of asymmetry that because Western societies tend to be very affluent and they derive their strength not necessarily from territory or population alone but the wealth and education and so-called sophistication you can kill a westerner and create construct a greater loss and if you lose a non-lisp especially when the Western societies have a monopoly over the media that means and it goes vice versa with losing people that means if you go into Jeanine and you kill 55 people in 26 or so of them or combatants you can tell the world that that's janenn grass that's a terrible thing and why because that's considered a symmetrical and Grozny who cares about Grozny that 7,000 people were killed who cares about 80,000 Chet means who cares about Kashmir we had this very strange Orwellian situation we had two nuclear powers India and Pakistan and Kashmir and one week they kill a hundred and ten people and the world was talking about Jeanine and it's because the Jeanine had captured the popular imagination and the opponents of Israel realize if the Western media's attention was turned to it that these particulars would have value beyond just a single person or two or three that they could be constructed into something that was quite quite different than actually happen it's almost as if today if a person in Fallujah realizes if he has eight kids and one goes out and blows up a man sitting on a park Apache helicopter if he can take out a man with a BA from West Point it was worth 250,000 and a million dollar Apache that's going to be worth more in the world's value system or to the grievance of the United States and if he loses ten people that's been true throughout the history that Western societies because they're not populous and they are sophisticated they have capital feel the losses at least they're perceived a fuel loss is much more and that allows some advantage to the enemy how do these wars in then I wish I could tell you that I'm just before I proceed that's I think explains that Britain was a to a greater degree was westernized in Argentina so it was across time and space all the way down to Argentina to transport troops that were more disciplined more highly motivated with better technology than Argentina that either had to import its technology did not have a consensual Society and did not have the same level of morale how do these wars in getting back to our Falklands example I wish I could tell you that there was an East Falklands and a West Falklands the UN when ten made a green line and then they said that mrs. Thatcher you have to talk to dictator Galtieri he says he's a legitimate interlocutor of course they didn't do that they were very unilateral and they preempted went down there and they defeated the enemy and the problem is solved all right if that's true it suggests that maybe that conflict resolution theory only creates what we would call in Latin the bellum interruptive between the first and second Punic War in the second and third Punic War the First Punic War its first telephone Asian war there is a first Peloponnesian War and there's a second but there's not a third because the Spartans were on the Athenian Acropolis and dismantled the reasons to go to war in the same way there is not a fourth Punic War terrific as that seems I was struck by the axis of evil I know that's a banal term but who was in it and who wasn't Vietnam was in it that's been decided there's a communist unified country we lost politically Japan wasn't it the reason we went to war with Japan was a militaristic adventurous government that's over with it's in the family of democratic nation Germany's not in Iraq was I don't think it'll be in it now Iran was because I think that difference has never been solved between the United States or the west and Iran the idea that a theocratic government is going to use oil revenues and find a way either through some type of terror weapon or nuclear weapons to blackmail or to gain some advantage what it can't on the conventional battle that's a problem and North Korea's on whatever you think about the Korean War it was simply over in 1951 and that last two years were just a settled a bellicose settlement but we've never really discussed that the idea that there's going to be a totalitarian Stalinist government that would threaten and be aggressive to the south which we wanted to progress along the usual Western capitals paradigm those are classical examples it seems to me a Bella interrupted that they haven't been signed and I'm getting of course as you can see to Israel because 1947 1956 1967 1973 1982 couple things one is that there that there has never been a war where the natural processes have been allowed to proceed natural processes were always interrupted by one phenomena remember that usually the Soviet Union Gromyko most the time called up Dean Acheson or kissing her and said stop or Alice in the United States usually said if I understand Kissinger's memoirs correctly that he wrote about the Yom Kippur War can't hear you well bad connection call me tomorrow morning I'm going to sleeping and then he called the gold of my ear and said you got 24 hours you want to put your own on the other side get him over there quick and then the Soviet Union said usually ah you're you're deceiving us he's over there and this and then they threatened Israel directly and then they stopped notice we haven't had a conventional war since 1989 since 82 in fact and I think the answer is that that classical Soviet deterrent remember we talked about insurance is now absent and whether it's Syria Lebanon Jordan Syria excuse me Egypt if they were to start another war after day six or day seven there would not be a nuclear powered country to call the United States to call the Israeli on the Israelis whether they know it or not have created classical deterrence now except with - I think worries for the future one were into an asymmetrical warfare that we talked about with their parasitic of Western technology they're trying to kill one Westerner for every five Palestinians and therefore inner war oven of exhaustion or attrition and most importantly they're on a break neck it seems to me effort in Iran in Syria maybe even Saudi Arabia to find a surrogate Soviet deterrent some type of super weapon gas bomb so that if they do start another war the Israelis will not be able to finish it in a conventional way it's a way they weren't in the past if say in 1973 if the tanks that came up the goal on once they were blown up and the originals went down if they had have gone into Damascus I think made a very clear demonstration that at anytime they wanted they could do pretty much what they want blow up the sewer system blow up the water system inflict real damage it's horrific as that says I think today we would have a sense that the Israelis were unpredictable they were dangerous and there were no restraints on the use of retaliation and you probably would have the ingredients of some type of of resolution which we which suggests to me that in the case has been Laden getting back to the war on terror fits the same paradigm he attack is because of a perceived grievance he was able to because we lost the sense of deterrence once the war started the traditional forget what people said Afghanistan's too far at seven thousand miles away it's the graveyard the British Empire it's to colds to high forget what they said about Iraq in the beginning you can't go there the sandstorm put a conventional war the West will always win but in the unconventional asymmetrical psychological aftermath it's a different story and we start to see that today and I think we really won't be over the war and terror until one side clearly has won and loss and that means that people in the Middle East realize that Islamic fundamentalism has same currency as say Nazism in about 1946 by that I mean if you had asked anybody just think of it 1941 june german army is in control of everything from the english channel to 45 miles outside of moscow up from the arctic circle in norway down to the sahara desert this is the new ideology of the ages it's unstoppable if you add in japanese expansionism it's pretty bleak you have just the democracies in britain in the united states and what's fascinating about that period is the fistic movements in places like Mexico forget Spain everybody know Spain but Argentina and other places in Asia if you had up said we can defeat Nazism in 1941 they would have thought you were absolutely crazy but if you had up said that 1946 you couldn't have found a Nazi in Germany or Mexico nobody said they had anything to do with Nazism and why was that because it was not only defeated and humiliated but the message was sent if you were connected with it it was synonymous with your own ruin and until you can create that climate with Islamic fundamentalism I don't think the war will in why are we final concluding now why we find this so disturbing its reptilian its Neanderthal that the idea that think about that this Greek way of looking at war and peace it suggests that people might not have as much ideology as wanting to be on the winning team it would suggest it's people in Iraq kind of want to join the Americans but only if we're winning so they know if they step forward they're going to be on the winning side it would suggest that Libya has no ideology but it only came forward because this crazy Qaddafi didn't want to end up like Saddam Hussein or dr. Khan and Pakistan suddenly divulged us all this horrific information because he thinks that the government of Pakistan is putting pressure because we're pretty impressed because we went into Afghanistan or that Iran suddenly wants to bring in the UN and I don't think they will want to bring in the UN if we fail in Iraq it's it's a pretty depressing scenario that not ideology not idealism much less idealism there's a certain logic of war and peace and it's the sense of deterrence and advantage and power doesn't mean that we have to accept this and like it we don't want to be real politic I think that was a great tragedy of the Kissinger administration it was completely without idealism it just means that we have to realize it until we get to the end of history we're all in the same page of consensual government's because that's the nice I want to none of them a happy no and that is throughout history it's very rare for a consensual society to attack another consensual society not since the ancient Athens attacked Sicily and it's hard to know quite what the Constitution of Sicily is we're told it was democratic do you see that Democrat democracies 18:12 their parliamentary government England's not quite democratic like America the Boer Parliament not quite like England Confederate Senate not quite it's very rare to find any case where democracy will fight another so what what's the prescription their prognosis for Israel for the future it's I think it's deterrence deterrence deterrence until there's a change of mine in the Middle East and that these differences if people have can be adjudicated through peaceful negotiation by like-minded I don't mean like cultures but people who accept the principles of constitutional government I don't think that will come until the people who have got so much advantage of not doing that are defeated humiliated it may take ten years it may take twenty it may take fifty but in the meantime it's critical that the civilization of Israel is protected by people like of all people somebody like Ariel sharone I which want to finish with a final comment about Israel I've been to Europe about five or six times this year and I spoke at about twenty or thirty campuses and I've never seen such hostility toward Israel anti-semitism I don't know whether it's because of realpolitik that the Arabs have oil in Israel doesn't demographic crisis in Europe fear of Islamic people's that have clout in your fear of terror association with Israel with colonialism guilt over colonialism association of Israel with the United States but doesn't make sense that's what I'm trying to tell you that sophisticated European people can't get a basic no brainer question that you have a consensual Society with a free press right next to autocracy and it's liberal in every sense of it whether it's every left-wing issue that you want to look at whether it's treatment of homosexuals or feminism or Free Press or religious tolerance a Shiite Muslim has a more a better chance to worship in Israel than he does in Saudi Arabia but it doesn't make sense and what I want to end on is that I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley very conservative place I never met a person my age who was Jewish till I came to UC Santa Cruz I remember asking professors who what are Jews I really didn't know I was a very rural society I'd heard about them this is what's important I had a lot of neighbors many from Armenia and Lebanon but other people from all around the world hoops every time the price was low they said the Jews did it who were these Jews well there were some murky people in New York that sort of finagle all the futures of our fruit so if I would go down on the alleyway and I say grandpa can we buy a new truck no no we can't and I say why he'd say well it's a bad year and I said well so-and-so across the road said the Jews took all our money in New York no no no that's what people do and he would say this that's what people do who believe that there's fluoride is poisoning you and there's a white race the point I'm making is anti-semitism was easily identifiable with a sort of fringe group on the right United States it was not fashionable among high circles it was surely not associated with alone but the last trips that I go to Europe and in the United States it's much more dangerous as I see it now because under the cover of fashionable leftist politics everything I've seen and heard in the last three years in Europe the United States it's critical of Israel and Jews and generalists come from somebody on the left and usually it's under the idea of progressive politics whether it's guilt over neo colonialism and we have seen in my view one of the greatest transmogrification of an idea in our time and that is that Palestinians who have some legitimate grievances nevertheless function within a tribal autocratic society that does not have the same liberal vision of civilization as Israel and it has grafted that cause onto the whole wider scope of victimology on the University campus and it has allowed people to say things and do things that otherwise would be absolutely impossible and I think I'll leave you with that note because it seems to me that the challenge of everybody is not to be silent when that happens but to speak out and whatever your ideology or your current or prior politics are I think that each generation has a challenge when I was growing up in rural California in the 50s a challenge was from the Neanderthal right and I think that challenge is met today I see it from the boutique aristocratic it's sophisticated laughs thank we have time for a few questions Ted Goldstein Oaks 83 let's see in I can't remember if it was the tape after 9/11 or one of the tapes soon after that but I remember very clearly Osama bin Laden talking about how part of the the reason of the the war against the West was because of andalasia yes and I was really struck that hey this is a 500 plus year old conflict right here is you know the underlays year the probably the most progressive time of Arab civilization are when they had you know incredible culture and learning that dwarfed what medieval Europe was coming out of and you know the the by comparison the ruffian Spanish pushing the Moors out of Spain and he's saying you know this is this is the next Battle of it so for for I was thinking well gee if that's a 500 year old war you know reprisal for them maybe they expect another 500 years of war and then we're making our plans on you know one month two months we'll be out of the Middle East you know out by June 30th but in fact they're planning for a war for 500 years and our is our sense of time you know totally backwards here between the two different two civilizations hands delwip the great German military historian distinguish what he called a war of exhaustion versus a war of annihilation he said that each strategy had strengths and weaknesses I think that's exactly right that they use the same terminology bin Laden has with Israel this is just simply a crusader Kingdom and the Crusader kingdoms lasted for 200 years this has only been there a little half a century it will leave - it's a long duration of time and we in the West look at things very differently in the immediate short-term gratification hundred cable channels we're Restless were impatient and there are much more patient society and they have the longer view I would say though that I think that a lot of what he says is not shared by most of the people in the Middle East because from there viagra to their cell phones to their contact lenses it all comes from the West and this is this has created these passive aggressive and really conflict at emotions at them I have it from a lot of students from Saudi Arabian Kuwait who come to Cal State and they're attracted by having a girlfriend having liberality freedom and they're also repelled at the same time it's very conflicting so I don't think most people want they want in the abstract to destroy the West but they don't want to do it in the concrete because it means the end of everything as I said from penicillin to dialysis and that's why you see these conflicted emotions in Israel's is the most Orwellian thing I've ever seen that he's the Jews are getting out of Gaza it's almost like you can't get out of the New Scientist and he can't get out of Gaza because who knew and I just heard it Palestinian spokesman saying who's going to supply the electricity as if somebody is going to say well the answer is build a power plant don't blame the Jews for not having electricity so I'm worried about that absolutely and and all fistic movements remember what they do they create a myth or history whether it's Hitler or uncle of an earlier time a reactionary earlier time when and rather than facing the problems inflation or the problems of modernism as whether it's Hitler or Franco it's always there was a better time in the past when we were pure in religion and we appear in race and if we can just go back to this reactionary purity then all our problems will disappear so he's got the classical symptoms of a fistic mind bin Laden does and I think it's very important to say that the war against terror and the war that Israel is is dealing that's a good term to use fistic Arafat's of fascist Hamas or fascist Hezbollah are fascists and I think that's important to use the language and proper use thank you yeah I'm Jack Haines also its class of 72 cow you know ariel sharon's recent defeat in in the by the local party and i was wondering with regard to the disengagement plan at least it was put to a vote I don't know to the extent to which it will in any way stymie the plan but but the causes for that vote that rejection whether that Ariel Sharon's plan was not sufficiently too turnt in the minds of the look good there were other reasons I'm sure this is settlers of had political pressure but to a good extent I would think that this the failure of even Ariel Sharon to project a deterrent effect by means of this plan was a root cause for it it is and you've got a problem there because how can you have a deterrent when you're leaving so we have this word they call punitive withdraw to shoot we get out of town shooting your six-shooter but the point that I'm making is that the la cude party is not the majority opinion of israel as i understand it's about 65 percent favor seems to me that at this time in place Ariel Sharon came up with a beautiful brilliant idea and simply he looked at the demographic crisis of Israel and realized that every Israeli possible given the security interest of Israel needed to be in Israel and that Gaza was a mess and that the fence was creeping down and there would be a time where Israel would disconnect psychologically culturally for a long period 5 years 10 and then allow this problem to recede into the world's imagination as I say in the way that Cyprus or Tibet has and go on with life in Israel and it seems to me that that has put the fear of God into the Palestinians because it has a whole array of questions that we've never asked can Hamas really be a government can they provide sewage and water the way the Israelis can what do you do when you can't go in for emergency surgery what does it mean you can't go in on Monday and blow somebody up on Tuesday take your dad to get stitched up and on Wednesday you have a three hour coffee break spinning conspiracies and then on the fourth day angry that you're not allowed work all of these inconsistencies are going to be clarified and that's why I think people hate you're wrong and I think that you'll see a fence I think you'll see it withdrawal from Gaza I think you'll see it would draw from most settlements and accept from a small area in Israel and I think you'll see it unilaterally and then Israel can quite legitimately say we're waiting for consensual revolution in the West Bank and if we have any remaining differences we can talk about them as serious partners but until then no thanks and I think he's got the support of the American people I think it's a solution Etan the vari of Monterey what do you see is the role of agriculture in this conflict Israel of having a very advanced agricultural system whereas the other Arab countries are very primitive in their agriculture with a lot of waste and many of them are not even food sufficient do you see this as being anything and do you think that Arielle cherone owns a very large 1,200 acre farm may have some kind of influence on his perspective on this conflict strange question but you know it reminds me that I wrote two books one fields without dreams the one called land was everything about the ant outrage and anger of the family farmer who couldn't compete with the corporate agricultural not be the first to suggest there was outrage of capital formation efficiency was I thought there were cultural values and being family farm but the point I'm making is that agriculture is part of this dynamism of Israel that's Western and has this protocol you can go there you know you know you everybody knows it everything is lawful is a rule of law it's a sophisticated society the number of scientific articles cited per capita is the highest in the world and it's plop right down next to this society that's failing at any time you have that whether it's North Korea or South Korea or the form of China when it was next to Hong Kong or East and West Germany or Tijuana and San Diego you have the prescription for disaster because you draw these emotions up people see this thing they want everybody in the West Bank wants to have a society like that but from getting from A to Z requires a complete rejection of some of the main tenets of your society whether it's a tribal attitude that your allegiance to your first cousin rather than the state or whether it's an idea that women and men are not equal or whether it's an idea that you have the right to kill somebody who's destroyed the honor of your family through adultery all of these things in very very subtle ways explain why Israel is like it is in Palestine when you add the idea that you want that system but you do not want to make the necessary changes to create that system you have a you just open the door and then all of these irrational conspiratorial motions come in and that's the problem agriculture is one of that in a traditional peasant society and I can see that I wrote a district first book I wrote was called warfare and Agriculture's about the destruction of agriculture in ancient Greece olive trees and vines and to show you if you look at the number of olive trees in Palestine it's over 10 million of them when Israel went in after suicide bombing one of the things they did to clear some management was deliberately cut down some olive trees I looked at that and the number of olive trees was about a hundred acres about 120 to an acre was about a thousand olive trees out of 10 million there was 4000 Google searches on the olive trees of Palestine with things in the Manchester Guardian olive greens wiped out in the whole stuff because they had such symbolic capital to a traditional Society so again it's a it's a it's a barometer of how irrational and symbolic causes are fueling this war and yet I just give one or anecdote I was given a lecture at Santa Clara and I was heckled by somebody from Palestine and she gave a long speech I said would you please ask the question she said you won't address the problem I used to be able to go to Brooklyn each year through the Tel Aviv and now I have to go to a Mon and then Zurich and then and this is terrible but this is after a long diatribe about Israel was worthy of discussion so let me get this straight the country that you want to destroy you're angry at because you can't fly out it's Airport and she said yes and I just said I it was the end of the day it was tired I said I'll tell you what and this is after a long anti American diet right so I promise I'll never go to your country if you promise not to go to mine that's all I said and it was it was and this is what so this is what my point was after saying that and after having this long fiery anger she burst into tears and she came up with three people and said we're going to report you to your Dean for being cruel and insensitive to me you can't do that and what I mean is that there's a perception in the Middle East that the West is decadent and is saw and either is so sensitive and once not it snows not so much that we want were afraid of being convicted of being a liberal we're afraid of being charged with being a liberal and that empowers the opponents of Israel so a person can tell everybody to put not only nuts and bolts but feces and rat poison and suicide bombs and blow up women and children with always the assumption that if you reply back and destroy somebody who's doing that like a cheek Eocene is ordering that there will always be people in the West who will either be utopian pacifists multicultural or cultural equivalents it's the same thing it's all violence all violence is banned they know that and that's the great burden that's the great strength of the West that we have open debate that's also the great burden guilt Stein the Stevenson 71 sounds to me from what you've been saying that one of the worst things that Israel could do at this point would be to withdraw from the Golan Heights when you're talking about deterrence if there would be a withdrawal that such as we're being had proposed that would have probably encouraged a further for terrorism yeah well I was fascinating when I went on the Golan Heights fascinated by looking for 73 war everything I've been ever had been told about the Golan Heights was false his ratings in 67 had fashion Sherman tanks they had patent out-of-date obsolete tanks in 73 and they blew apart sophisticated so they're still there you hear these stories you read about them and the funny thing about the Golan Heights is that if you've been up there lately it looks like Napa Valley you've got all these people from the Napa Valley and UC Davis who went over and made this beautiful society and it's not inhabited like the West Bank it's strategically critical and it was mostly people by the druze who given their druthers would probably whether it be in Israel than Syria all that being said I think after talking to hundreds of Israelis as soon as Syria has an election and a transparent society maybe in the year 2525 whenever that is I think that Israel will be more than happy to give it up I even talked to a person in the winery and he said to me a very naive but idealistic fashion I said you have any idea what's going to happen this wine me when you give it back to Syria he says well someday we'll be able to share joint ownership I said no it won't happen not until they change so I think the idea is to keep on the Golan Heights until Syria will be happy to give this over when we feel that you're on the same protocols as we are and I'm just sorry that's the way the world is you shouldn't attack three times that's what usually happens when you attack this is final thing is you tell Germany attacked Poland and they did it twice and after 1945 the world said okay no more 10% of this country there's no such thing as get Danzig its Gdansk no more and you don't see Germans blowing themselves up maybe it will later but they're not now and I think the rule of them is if you attack a country repeatedly and you lose that's life strategy and you should try to be humane and work it out I think Israel's willing they gave back everything in the Sinai once Egypt which wasn't even democratic renounced attack I don't know that how long that allows because they're not consensual but nevertheless it shows you that they're willing to give up land once they find an interlocking tour that's democratic until that time comes I wouldn't give up an inch I'm David Goldblum and I'm from Aptos and professor Hansen I knows that I taught in the same institution that he did until I retired but a completely different subject it's an awfully difficult I prepared it before I came but it's very difficult to put into words and when you're when you answered the last but one question you'd led me into it I think you were talking about appealing to our better nature how it's abhorrent to us the are to reply in kind the kind of attacks we're receiving but I've been trying to think along simple lines about what war means and you're the expert and I'm not but surely you probably would agree with me in the case of modern war what we've always seen until terrorism came along was armies representing countries all combatants wearing uniforms there was the idea of a collective grudge collective responsibility collective guilt the terrorist thinks he's found a way around that he thinks that there's no collective responsibility on his part that he has entitled in the case of the Arab Islam terrorists to kill any Jew anywhere in the world it seems to me and I'm asking your opinion trying to put this in the form of a question as to how we face the fact that we you mention the other term that help me stepping down into the primordial slime we have to face the fact how do you feel about facing that we've got to step down into the gutter and deal with these people the same way I know we've just seen a very bad example of weakness in Fallujah I think four of our appeared there I saw horrific photograph in a magazine of these charred bodies well I think I'd say enough in my clumsy way what do you think of the audience Alexis Napoleon said about Vienna to paraphrase Napoleon going to walk if you're going to march on Fallujah then you've got to take Volusion you said that about the N word not in a war against terror terrorism method if you like saying that we're in a war against mr. Schmitt 109 or were word a war with submarines or we reward the KGB these are all methods terrorists is we all know have to sleep they have to use an eight TM card they have sanctuary and they practice out of the eat they practice under the aegis of the Middle East and their to be fair their area abu nidal was in baghdad abu abbas was in advance a car he was in back their area of operations is shrinking with the closing down of Iraq and in Afghanistan and we know where they operate from basically three places Iran Syria and Lebanon give them tacit support money sanctuary and the war will not be over with until those countries realize that that support is synonymous with some high consequences I don't think it terrorism it's very old that it's what the Jews were doing against the Romans with asakari I don't want to advocate that and switch in front of this audience but remember what the Romans did I mean that's where the temple was destroyed and they used they did not only destroy the Great Temple they use the proceeds to build a Coliseum so as I guess adding insult to injury but the great Mahdi was a terrorist and the British handled him there's always a response to terrorism it's simply to offer a political agenda that makes it better to join in whether that's the Romans offering habeas corpus and sewers and a strong idea of collective guilt that if people Harbor those people in aid and abet them they have to pay a price the people of Fallujah not all of them but there were more than 1,500 people who were aiding and abetting the people who were killing Americans there were people who are sleeping with RPGs under their blanket and they knew where to go and if you want to defeat them you have to make I hate to use that term Sherman Youth but war it's so terrible and the people who start they won't do it again and that's very hard for a sophisticated postmodern society yes professor Hanson thank you very much for coming I admire you very much I am a 1959 graduate of the University of Chicago and I'm Lila Beckwith would you speak to the complete liberal left silence about apartheid and forced expulsion of people as would occur in the Gaza evacuation we get your question again my question is why is it that we use the terms Gaza disengagement West Bank evacuation and we don't use the terms which equally apply of apartheid in the case of Jews leaving Gaza being forced to leave this or forced expulsion or everything because we have this asymmetry in the West and that means that we all know that the only Arab peoples in the Middle East that can vote and write a letter to the editor live in Israel that's why there's 200 over 150,000 illegal immigrants in Israel and we all know that we're not supposed to say that and we all know that right now there would be a solution to the settlers if we just simply said this that the million Arabs who live in Israel have certain rights under constitutional law and all of the settlers can still live there if they want under Palestine will have the same rights and responsibilities as Arabs in Israel we all know that that is an absolute bald-faced lie that as soon as a Palestinian state is created the people in Gaza who are living there will suffer the same fate as the 900,000 Jews did in Baghdad Cairo Damascus between 1947 and nobody talks about them they were all ethnically cleansed out of the bill because it's this asymmetry we're Westerners in there there I guess it's their overconfidence in the Enlightenment that reason can solve all things and we and we don't realize that these emotions are there and there's this dishonesty so yes I agree with everything you say it's you have they're telling the Israelis you can't live in that society you've got to get out because Sharona is telling them if you stay there we can't protect you it's in the long-term interest of you not to be there and under this Palestinian state they'll cut every one of your throats in a way that we would never even imagine doing to Arabs I don't have an answer for that I wrote something The Wall Street Journal this morning about this horrific prisoners naked it was terrible what we did but the fact is it'll be adjudicated there will be people court-martialed there will be a whole national hysteria why this was happening nobody's talking about Macedonian just butchering seven Pakistanis or nobody's talking about Daniel Pearl's head the same Arab I looked at the same newspaper that said shame because a female was looking at the genitalia of eight men and pointing to them shame that same newspaper when Daniel pearls head was cut off thought that it was you know basically okay so there's an asymmetry here and we have to recognize hi I'm a sophomore sociology McKee I wanted to know how you could say that that a Palestinians are being inconsistent when you have when they're faced every day with such things as checkpoints which are completely economically slowing their lives and and they are controlled by the Israelis yeah so what would you suggest they do I'm just asking I'm curious well no I just don't think I don't think that they're being inconsistent by by going into Israel and and you know having suicide bombs they it's it's it's all going into each other they're not it why don't you say that you objected to the Israeli checkpoints because they were demeaning you Millie and they are who wants a checkpoint so why don't we just not have any checkpoints this was under the there wasn't very many checkpoints in the year 2000 it's pretty easy you can go anywhere you want why do the checkpoints come now in 2001 there are many many after the Intifada yeah point is that if you don't believe there's any danger you just get I never what I try to avoid maybe you find it crazy but I don't read what Westerners say I always read what non-westerners say about the situation so when I want to discuss checkpoints and suicide bombing I read the Arab newspapers are all in English now and just read what they write and it's read what mr. Zakaria said the other day give me an example he's a terrorist that we're all looking for well he sent a bunch of people to kill everybody in Amman so they put him on Jordanian TV which had a translated transcript and the Jordanian government said this is so terrible he could have killed 80,000 Muslims with chemical weapons and he'd sent out an infomercial fought war whatever we call it he said I did not use chemical weapons I was just trying to kill people if I had to use chemical weapons and I had them that would prove I had them I would have killed all the Jews the fact that I haven't killed the Jews with chemical weapons shows I don't have any so don't you know impugn my motives I just want to kill people normally and when you're dealing with that I don't see that checkpoints you know I don't know what example that you have if you say well checkpoints are there because you've got to get out of the West Bank well they're getting out of the West Bank they're going to give 97 percent of the West Bank back they've already said that but I have a feeling that they're still going to have people in Palestine that want to come into Israel I don't think a lot once the settlers get out of Gaza you won't have any Israelis that want to go into Gaza but you'll have a lot of Palestinians that want to get into Israel and not you have to ask yourself why that is why are all Palestinians dying every day to come into Israel and the Israelis are not dying if that's why you have checkpoints and when that answer is solved you'll have peace if you can answer to yourself why it is it got Palestinians want to go into Israel and work or live it's 100,000 illegal aliens in Israel these are what settlers you could call them separate why is that and if we can find the answer then we can find peace well but then is it are the years is the Israeli army just going into Gaza and and just like shooting people point-blank because of the Palestinians doing something wrong because oh well I think yeah I think that's the idea that Hamas is the radio station but there is a difference but it's only Finnish there is a difference between this is very important in the universe to campus because in the 1980s we came up with this idea of conflict resolution and moral equivalence and we've raised a whole generation that really does believe it's the same thing to shoot a pregnant woman and shoot all four girls and execute them that's the same thing as blowing apart with an Apache helicopter a mastermind who ordered that and I don't think it's the same that's where we differ thank you you you
This talk ought to be titled "Views of a Neoconservative".
From the very get-go he charges into building up the framework that supports his political positions. I really couldn't sit through more than 15 minutes of this. Paraphrasing : "War is ubiquitous and therefore normal. War is, or can be, great as some times of great advancement in the West were very violent. The so-called legitimate grievances of other peoples/states ought to generally be dismissed as mere smoke screens. Whether wars are (considered) great or illegitimate/tragic depends primarily on how successful they turn out to be..."
I think that I have a pretty strong bullshit detector and when people start of their talk in such a self-congratulatory way, in such a morally relativistic way, then my alarm goes off. I google the SOB and find gems such as this (on wikipedia) :
Facepalm.
And this :