Hanson once again trashs the Founding Father – Palestinian Analogy

In today’s NRO:

A little boilerplate exegesis usually follows, relating the Israelis to the similarly imperialistic and militarily preponderant British, the weak and idealistic Palestinians to American "freedom-fighters" circa 1776.

The analogy is not only false, but offensive as well to the American nation. The Revolutionary War — for all the romance of the Minute Men, Nathanael Greene, and the Swamp Fox's irregulars — was won on the conventional battlefield by a real army. And while there were occasional atrocities on both sides, Americans did not blow up Loyalist American women and children, or dynamite Tory churches — much less have agents in London shooting British schoolgirls in their beds. The Palestinians name streets after murderers, and give bounties to those who butcher women at work and in their sleep; the Continental Congress did not.

Nor was America fighting for an "American Authority" under the dictatorial control of George Washington — himself also a different sort of man than Yasser Arafat, by any set of moral standards, then or now. A little boilerplate exegesis usually follows, relating the Israelis to the similarly imperialistic and militarily preponderant British, the weak and idealistic Palestinians to American "freedom-fighters" circa 1776.

The analogy is not only false, but offensive as well to the American nation. The Revolutionary War — for all the romance of the Minute Men, Nathanael Greene, and the Swamp Fox's irregulars — was won on the conventional battlefield by a real army. And while there were occasional atrocities on both sides, Americans did not blow up Loyalist American women and children, or dynamite Tory churches — much less have agents in London shooting British schoolgirls in their beds. The Palestinians name streets after murderers, and give bounties to those who butcher women at work and in their sleep; the Continental Congress did not.

Yeah, like Arafat or Hamas have a real lesson for the rest of the world.

Star Wars Redux

Since all the other bloggers are reminicing about "Star Wars" and it's influence on their youth, I'm going to throw my 2 cents in too. I was about 18 or something, a real scifi reading stoner. Lots of cynical dark stories of dystopias and environmental catastrophes or plain acid trip wierdness was my taste in scifi. Star Wars was real childish, with all the royalty and swords nonsense, it definitely seemed like Flash Gordon in it's Disney simplicity. Come on, in the 59th century, hereditary nobility is going to have meaning, not! People are going to be fighting with light sabres and not planet busting weapons, later! There's going to be some lame ass "Force", infantile! A spaceship is going to use manually controlled guns as defensive weapons, like a B-17, when even the B-29 had remote controlled guns and simple computer predictors, whatever? I was impressed with the special effects, but always considered the movie kidstuff. My best friends little brother and my nephews loved all the stuff, which doubly reinforced my impressions of its puerility and marketing appeal. The first one I actually liked a bit, I saw it 1.5 years after its release, and the special effects were great, but the story childish. Basically, the series had zilch appeal to me, and each movie was even more silly and pointless, but the suckers just kept lining up to squander their money on the pop culture bonanza of all time. Maybe I was too jaded and cynical to ever participate in this essentially anti-intellectual group think of the whole movement.