Why do they hate us?

[Griff]

Dinesh D'Souza, Robert Higgs, and Gore Vidal had a very interesting exchange here.

Weaknesses IMHO

D'Souza- Overvalues the usefulness of force in solving problems.

Robert Higgs- Doesn't completely recognize the role that Islamic Civilizations humiliation plays.

Gore Vidal-As always wants a simple conspiracy, but he's a beautiful writer so I forgive him.

My reasoning most closely follows that of Higgs.

tw can feel free to hammer me for length

Transcript 702: Enemies of the State
Funding for this program is provided by
John M. Olin Foundation and Starr Foundation.
Peter Robinson: Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Gore Vidal on 'My Country... wrong.'

Announcer: Funding for this program is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation and the Starr Foundation.

[Music]

Peter Robinson: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I'm Peter Robinson. Our show today: how we got to be so hated. Ever since the September 11th terrorist attacks, the question has been on everybody's mind, why does the United States engender such hatred, especially in the Islamic world? Is it something we've done or something we are? In other words, is it our foreign policies that people hate or is it our ideal of liberty itself that is difficult for some to accept? And how do we win over the hearts and minds of people who despise us?

Joining us today, three guests. Robert Higgs is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. Gore Vidal has been an author, essayist, playwright, and commentator on the American political scene for more than five decades. His latest book: Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace, How We Got to be So Hated. Dinesh D'Souza is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, his latest book: What's So Great About America. Vitriol and apple pie...

Title: Enemies of the State

Peter Robinson: I begin with the words of Gore Vidal: "Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all." If you want to know why the United States got to be hated, in other words, we got to be hated by behaving hatefully. Dinesh?

Dinesh D'Souza: Complete nonsense. The United States first of all is both hated and loved. You have to explain why it is a magnet for immigrants all over the world. Young people throughout the world are fascinated by the United States. So one has to account simultaneously for the appeal of America and for why some people, both abroad and in America, hate America.

Peter Robinson: Robert?

Robert Higgs: It's imperative to draw a distinction between hatred of America and hatred of government policy, particularly the U.S. government's policy abroad. Just because people take offense at the actions of the U.S. Government somewhere in the--the world abroad, does not mean those people hate Americans.

Peter Robinson: What about this, we are the largest rogue state of all, do you subscribe to that?

Robert Higgs: Well, I think there's certainly more than grains of truth in that statement.

Peter Robinson: I'll give you the opportunity to save us a whole show of time by saying you didn't really mean it.

Gore Vidal: I certainly meant it and I'd love to know about all these people who want to come--who immigrate here. It's been a long time since a Norwegian has asked for a green card. People don't leave Europe for the United States. We get a lot of people from south of the border, particularly countries that we have destroyed as a rogue state--Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, we've had our heavy hands in their affairs, so we get a lot of refugees from south of the border. Also from Southeast Asia where we ran amok for some thirteen or fourteen years. Yes they try to come here and that's perhaps their revenge in a way. And but the first world countries do not regard us with anything except some irritability and at times fear.

Dinesh D'Souza: Well the irritability is justified. The forceful countries, you know, used to run the world and don't anymore so there's a--more than a…

Peter Robinson: We're talking about Europe.

Dinesh D'Souza: We're talking about Europe. Europe used to run the world and used to run the world by force. I mean the British ruled India with a heavy hand; they had a hundred thousand troops there. The appeal of America that is astonishing is it is not primarily the appeal of force. You walk into a hotel in Barbados or Bombay and the bellhop is whistling the theme song from Titanic. That's a different kind of appeal. You know, and as an immigrant from India in my case, it seems to me that my reason for coming here has little to do with America destroying my country and everything to do with the fact that if I lived in India, my destiny, my life, would to a large degree have been given to me--shaped for me. Whom to marry, what to become, what to believe, all these decisions are in a sense enforced by the society--by parents, by culture, by norms, by rules. In America by contrast, I feel that to a large degree, I can shape--I can write the script of my own life.

Peter Robinson: Let's bring us up to the present conflict, September 11th. Quoting you yet again, Gore Vidal: "That our ruling junta might have seriously provoked Osama was never dealt with." Did we provoke Osama Bin Laden?

Robert Higgs: The presence of the United States troops in Saudi Arabia, Osama declares to be one of his chief grievances, along with the U.S. policy toward Palestine and the U.S. policy toward Iraq. So yes, those actions have provoked him.

Peter Robinson: Saudi Arabia has a population only slightly less than that of Iraq and a per-capita GDP four times as big as that of Iraq, shouldn't it be able to defend itself in the Mideast without our troops?

Dinesh D'Souza: Well, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait resulted in the Saudi government and other governments asking the United States to intervene. The United States had strategic interests there, I don't deny it but the United States also intervened to liberate the Kuwaiti people from tyranny. And, so that, look, I'm not--I wouldn't defend every American policy here, but the notion that three thousand Americans deserve to die because the U.S. has troops in Saudi Arabia is ludicrous.

Robert Higgs: That's changing the question to say those people deserve to die. That's a completely different issue from cause and effect issues of whether U.S. foreign policy actions provoked some reactions on the part of others.

Peter Robinson: All right, but what about the notion that we're hated not because of what we do but because of what we represent.

Title: Death to the West

Peter Robinson: On the one hand, you've got the notion that by various, specific, foreign policy initiatives we, perhaps unwittingly would be the charitable construction, provoked Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic radicals. All right. Then you have the other answer to that which is your answer--which I take to be your answer--which is it's not so much a question of specific policies as simply the American ideal is in itself a provocation to the Muslim world. Have I got that right? Explicate that a little bit.

Dinesh D'Souza: Islam used to be the greatest civilization in the world. And the Islamic view, stated in the Koran, is that the idea of Islam should rule the whole world. This is part of the doctrine of Islam. Now the Crusades were mounted to stop the forces of Islam, they were unsuccessful. Something has happened in the past couple of hundred years in which this one great civilization has now been reduced to insignificance. About all that it produces of any value is oil. When is the last time you heard about a great Islamic invention or discovery? So what you have is an envious, humiliated civilization lashing out against a more successful civilization that is making inroads into Islam because of the tremendous appeal of its ideas. In that sense, yes we did provoke Osama, but Osama is in a sense, lashing out at the superiority and justified superiority of American civilization.

Peter Robinson: Now let me quote Dinesh to you: "The Islamic fundamentalists don't object to the excesses of American liberty alone, they object to liberty itself." We are an affront to their way of life.

Gore Vidal: I find generalities of this nature totally irrelevant to any discourse. You cannot generalize about Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, very--this is not a monolithic culture, Islam.

Dinesh D'Souza: You generalized about America.

Gore Vidal: Yes, because I'm an American and my family has been here a long time and helped invent the country.

Peter Robinson: All right. But you do have a phenomenon...

Gore Vidal: We invented Oklahoma. You can't be more American than that. A great musical came out…

Dinesh D'Souza: You just said you can't generalize about Indonesia. Why can you generalize about America?

Gore Vidal: I'm not going to generalize; you are generalizing about this humiliated culture.

Peter Robinson: One poll after another shows that once you get to the borders of the Muslim world, attitudes toward the United States become hostile. So to that extent Indonesia, which is undoubtedly a quite different country from Egypt, which is different again from Iraq, to that much--to that extent they do have something in common. They share a religion and to some extent a culture, but they certainly share anti-Americanism. And my question is how come?

Dinesh D'Souza: Let's look at this, you've got--you have three ancient civilizations, you had the civilization of India, of China, and of the Islamic world. These were the three advanced civilizations in knowledge, and learning, and art. Now India and China have made powerful efforts, if you will, to embrace western modernity, to embrace technology. And if you look at the, for example, at the--the technological revolution, the Indians and the Chinese are a big part of it--Silicon Valley, lots of Indians, lots of Chinese. All I'm saying is that the huge events that have transformed the west, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, it's a historical fact that those events had very little impact in the western world and I would…

Peter Robinson: In the world of Islam you mean.

Dinesh D'Souza: I'm sorry, in the world of Islam and so you have a civilization that's been left behind by Western modernity. Now why is that not a fact?

Peter Robinson: You buy that reading?

Robert Higgs: I think these considerations have virtually nothing to do with the nineteen young men who chose to kill themselves and crash airplanes into buildings on September 11th. Those people were goaded by altogether different concerns than the historic humiliation of the world of Islam.

Peter Robinson: Let me quote someone who agrees with Dinesh and knows a thing or two about the world of Islam.