Victor Davis Hanson on postmodernism

On The Perfect Storm of Hating Bush, Victor Davis Hanson disects as only he can the failures of postmodernism to cope with reality. In the four-part essay one finds gems like this:

Nuance is the essence of relativist interpretation. Manichean notions of barbarity and civilization, Western culture juxtaposed to eighth-century Islamic fascism, good versus evil—these “reductionist” and “simplistic” notions of the present Bushworld simply cannot stand. If such clear polarities were to be valid, the entire foundation of postmodern thinking would collapse under the weight of reason’s ability to gather data, make informed decisions, and pass judgments that cut across culture, race, and sex—and thus to conclude that a Taliban Afghanistan or Saddam’s Iraq was a uniquely evil example of self-induced misery.

Perhaps Washington Senator Patti Murray is ignorant of the source of her own recent intellectual heritage, but we know the ultimate dividend of years of inculcating cultural relativism, when a U.S. Senator such as herself lectures Americans on their need to emulate the purported public works program of an Osama bin Laden, the feminist pioneer. “For decades [Osama has been] building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful,” Murray pontificated, before concluding that “We haven’t done that.”

Read Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV