VDH on Obama's Foreign Outreach

Victor Davis Hanson has the rather unusual and valuable perspective of a university professor who is also a farmer. He farms raisins up the road from us in Selma. A tough business. He wonders here how long it will be until President Obama gains "wisdom about the tragic universe in which we live".

In the first segment of his essay,

Obama Versus the Way of the Universe

VDH discusses the short-term focus of the Obama Administration's deficit spending and "Deficit Foreign Policy, Too".

VDH expects positive short-term effects from Obama's recent "I've changed America" speeches abroad. His favorite line from Obama's Cairo speech was the apology on Gitmo "where inmates have laptops and Mediterranean food,"

spoken to millions whose societies kill and maim tens of thousands in Gulags on a yearly  basis.

But though he expect short-term benefits, VDH doesn't share the enthusiasm of Evan Thomas during Obama's foreign tour that he's sort of God .

VDH thinks that Obama "hits against human nature" in his outreach to hostile governments and that only "someone who has not been in the real world, but only marketed rhetoric without consequences (e.g., if Obama had a bad day organizing, or legislating, was he fired?) could believe . . " that his conciliatory language would change the way the world works on a long-term basis.

By way of illustration, VDH presents a personal story:

A Farmer's Tale

"In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself–at 26."
Read the whole thing. The tale has a surprise ending.

Have you read it yet? A few observations:

Stephen R. Covey frequently speaks about the differences between relatively natural systems, such as a farm or caring for an infant, and more artificial systems such as academia and politics. He makes the point that on a farm, it becomes obvious right away if you have taken actions which do not take into account the laws of nature. If you plant too deep or put off planting at the proper time, you just won't get a crop. If you skip weeding, your crop will be meager. If you talk real nice to your neighbor while he steals your water, then go to the Water Board and expect them to do something, you could lose your farm to your neighbor in short order. The laws of human nature become obvious quickly on the farm, too.

In more artificial systems, natural laws are not as obvious, and they often operate more slowly. The day of reckoning is often delayed for a long time. In academia, for example, if you're clever, you can sometimes figure out what the teacher wants you to say or write, and get along fine for quite a long time by saying the right words and skating by on minimal actions. Sometimes you can even figure out how to improve your odds of answers on tests which will impress the teacher, rather than studying. But eventually, the deficiencies in your true learning become evident, sometimes all at once. Covey got a serious ulcer in graduate school when he finally went head-to-head in oral exams with fellow students who were less clever at gaming the system than he had been, but who had paid the price to actually learn their subject matter. He talks about the rewards for following through on an appropriate plan in discussing the "Law of the Harvest."

VDH talks elsewhere about how the baby-boomer generation is the first in America to consume more than it produces - to live off the work of past generations and foreign creditors. We are not producing much of a harvest. We've been living on credit and promises for some time now. The current administration seems to be extending this trend with truly massive deficit spending and "deficit foreign policy". Wonder how long it will be until it catches up with us in a really dramatic way?

Maybe there are some things we can do to make the shock less severe when it comes.