Those Who Cannot Learn From History… Like to Complain About Others Who Can’t Either

Sadly, I’m working today. So I took a break from work, and on a lark, looked up Victor Davis Hanson.

He writes:

I support globalization, and see that at its essence it is Westernization, and that bright people make the world better by allowing an exhange [sic] of ideas and life-saving appurtenances. But I want no part of the necessary globalized CEO, who believes in nothing, says nothing, knows nothing other than a sort of adolescent watered-down Gorism. Every MBA program should have one, just one introductory class in Western Civ to introduce to these historically illiterate that the basis for their present globalized system was the West, so that they might not so often preen that it was cobbled together from the Middle East, the Orient, Africa, in some sort of alaphabet [sic] soup concoction.

From this, we learn that Hanson feels that business school grads don’t know much about history, and as a result of that, believe in nothing, say nothing, yadda yadda yadda, a couple more yaddas thrown in for good measure, and maybe one more yadda, no take back that last yadda, it was too many, but preen (in this context, does that involve belief?) that the “present globalized system” was “cobbled together from the Middle East, the Orient, Africa.”

I would remind readers that it wasn’t long ago that we here at Angry Bear had occasion to quote Hanson ourselves:

The war is not lost — no more than it was in winter 1776, July 1864, December 1945 or November 1950. The challenge is winning back hearts and minds at home, rather than in Iraq, where brave thousands join us each day to fight an evil sort the likes of which we haven’t seen in recent memory.

As I noted at the time, this amounts to stating that the low point in the Civil War came a few months after the Declaration of Independence, the low point in the Civil War came right before Sherman began cutting a swath of terror through Georgia and Grant was cutting off Petersberg, and most obviously, the low point in World War 2 came a third of a year after the war ended. He is more or less right about Korea, but from what I’ve read, things probably looked bleakest in Korea in December 1950, not November. Since Hanson is in the ballpark on this one, I shouldn’t quibble.

So why would Hanson complain that B-school grads are historically illiterate. It seems being historically illiterate doesn’t stop some people from earning a good living as a military historian.