History Begets History
Last night on the Report, Mr. Colbert interviewed Dinesh D’Souza regarding his new book, “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11.” Everyone is saying that D’Souza got his ass handed to him - he kind of did, I wouldn’t want to go up against Colbert, though I think Colbert would have done better to tone it down a touch. That being said, Colbert did push (or gently lead) D’Souza into what is rapidly becoming, as I think more about it, the most obviously genius statement in the history of the world.
Colbert asked, ““Doesn’t some of it lie at FDR’s doorstep? Doesn’t things like Social Security and Medicare and LBJ’s Great Society, doesn’t some of that send the wrong message to our enemies?” After some hemming and hawing, D’Souza agreed this was true - because apparently events in the world went directly from the Yalta Conference (1945) to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979).
What do we learn from this? Clearly, the title of this post. Events in history cause other events in history - no matter how far removed or what subsequent events might influence. With this logic, there would have been no Hitler without the Hundred Years’ War. No Queen Elizabeth without Robin Hood. Oh, and Magellan’s circumnavigation of the earth led directly to the space program. And the Kennedy assassination five years previous. And the Boer War, years before that (82 or 61 depending on which Boer War you mean).
This is not to say that history does not have connections - it does. But one could look at any leader or any series of events, in America or worldwide, and make connections that arrive at September 11. I bet I can get you from the Platt Amendment to 9/11 in six moves or less. The crusades to the iPhone in three. If you’re willing to make the connections broad enough, history can mean anything you want it to! Whether it’s an old man at his last world conference, or a younger man who would rather go on vacation for the entire month of August than lead a nation - I bet you can find an historical rationale for anything you don’t want at your own doorstep.
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January 19th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
I also really enjoyed when he highlighted that since cultural liberals are to blame for the 9/11 attacks, then the implicit logic is that we ought to take more cues from the oppressive culture Osama bin Laden is encouraging. I mean, if we just agreed with him, he wouldn’t want to kill us anymore. Kind of an extreme stance, but a certain amount of that thought process comes into play in his argument.