"Almost pornographic in its combination of thrill and terror"

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: Plate 43 of The Caprices (Los Caprichos), 1799 Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) Etching, aquatint, drypoint, and burin.

"The fascination with war can be 'almost pornographic in its combination of thrill and terror,'" wrote the ivory-tower-bound woman who would be President of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, in a 2004 article in the journal Civil War History cited today by blogger Jon Wiener at The Nation:

War, she writes, "offers an authenticity and intensity of experience" missing elsewhere in modern society. It provides "a moment of truth," when soldiers and civilians alike "have to define their deeply held priorities and act on them."

At first blush, her sparkling prose gave promise of some insight into the human condition. But reading on, we realized that her project is really -- isn't it always with Marxist feminists? -- all about her and her fellow travelers in academia and the "elite" media:

Those who write about war, she concludes -- journalists and historians -- need to acknowledge the power of war stories. Their job is to create "an orderly narrative, full of purpose and significance, about events that otherwise "would be simply violence," shapeless and meaningless.

Try telling that to the Marines, missy. Dr. Fausta's own violent, shapeless and meaningless verbal assault on the honorable men and women who make this world safe for her to pursue her muse took our breath away. She is William Arkin with a PhD. It gets worse:

Thus we are the ones who give meaning to war -- so it's up to us to come to terms with the power of war stories. "In acknowledging its attraction," she concludes," we diminish its power" -- we move from being part of the problem to part of the solution.

The arrogance is stunning. We guess it depends upon your definition of who "we" is. Try diminishing the power of Osama & Company with your acknowledgement of the power of their "war stories." In this hydra-headed war being fought on many fronts by today's best generation, the "we" is neither Marxist feminist Civil-War scholars like Faust nor the herd of reflexively bleating anti-American scribes in the mainstream media. The "ones who give meaning to war" today are mostly writing below the radar, the milbloggers either fighting or embedded at the front and those stateside keeping the homefires burning. They are the ones who are telling it like it is, each with a personal knowledge that Drew Gilpin Faust can only dream of, unfiltered by the tiresomely predictable Bush-bashing media narrative. We count among them some of our dearest personal blog friends, as well as the shining stars who sometimes get a larger audience, like like Michael Yon, Bill Roggio and John Burns (working for the New York Times, to its credit). As for those navel-gazing folk like Faust and Arkin who imagine themselves to be "the ones who give meaning to war," we thank Laura Lee for reminding us that Shakespeare always has the last word:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

The play's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the new Harvard President. It's not that she's a woman -- just as it's not that Hillary's a woman -- but that she must surely hold her womanhood cheap.

Comments

[goomp]

It is time for those humans in the world of the Fausta type to tell it like it is and to tell the fascists and the Marxists to turn it off before Islamic onslaught overwhelms the insipid politically correct world in which they live.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Magnificent post Sissy. My Harvard ancestors, Daniel Epps, Joseph Estabrook, and Ezra Whitmarsh must be spinning in their graves.

[Gayle Miller]

Hillary Rodham Clinton hijacking a girl scout meme really frosted me over the weekend.

This utterly cynical and sociopathic creature will say anything, do anything, lie about anything - shift and waffle and flipflop in any way she thinks necessary to attain POWER. She has no interest in serving our Republic - only in being a pettifogging dictator! She REALLY MUST BE STOPPED.

[Teresa]

"War, she writes, "offers an authenticity and intensity of experience" missing elsewhere in modern society."

Considering that there have been wars for as long as there have been humans, how does she explain it in "non-modern" societies? How does she explain it in third world African countries where there are no modern amenities to make life easier and thus war more appealing?

It's a stupid statement. As per your earlier entry on Ms. Faust, we see once again that she can only see things in relation to her own world view, which looks to me to be extremely narrow indeed.

[GreenmanTim]

Authentic and intense experiences abound for those who are not sleepwalking through their lives, content merely to consume and exist. These are not presented to us all gift wrapped and silver plattered, however. You have to seek authentic interaction within community, within nature, within the pleasure of work done well and burdens shared with others. Intensity comes from exercise, from artistry, from passion, from letting yourself feel and daring to do more than you or others might have believed possible. An authentic life is lived deeply, sensitively, engagingly, and purposefully, and not in a vacuum or for its own sake alone.

Not everything modernity offers is inauthentic and meaningless, but we who have so many choices available to us have to be more deliberate about what we will stand for and what we are willing to risk, and to gain, than those for whom daily survival is the overarching concern. Food security was a prerequisite of civilization, allowing time for specialists like academics to ply their craft without spending all their waking hours in the fields, on the hunt, or defending community resources from those who would take them for themselves. Without farmers, we do not eat. Without soldiers, we are not secure. Authentic and intense experience is not the sole province of either vocation, however, though it may elude those whose senses are dulled by drudgery or who accept an inward facing cloister of their own devising.

[james higham]

Yet another powerful post and I particularly liked the last paragraph. Will you accept from this man that he loves women but detests militant feminism because it tears us apart when we should be together. There are issues - yes. Women can't occupy some second rate position but equally, men and women are ideally suited to work together if they're allowed to. This is something Drew Gilpin Faust doesn't seem to understand.

[Prairiepundit]

Lawrence Keeley's book "War Before Civilization, The Myth of the peaceful Savage" appears to dispute her thesis. I was a little surprised that the myth existed in the first place since liberals tend to think war is a barbaric activity. War is orchestrated violence to achieve an objective that a person could not achieve on their own, and it took place long before people started writing about it. We just happen to know more about wars that have been written about. If we could ask the winners and losers of those unrecorded wars whether the event was meaningless, I feel certain they would disagree with her.

[james higham]

Here it is, Sissy:

http://nourishingobscurity.blogspot.com/2007/02/harvard-enormity-of-error.html

Really like Gayle Miller's comment above. Awesome. This is women against the Lizard Queen, whom we were given to understand had all women in her pocket.