Dwarves Who Sit on the Shoulders of Dead Giants

Victor Davis Hanson sure has a way with words.

In his latest article, VDH discusses how modern Europe can thank the brave thinkers of its past for its current status as a world power, but warns that Europe is dishonoring its past by not standing up to the bullying of a loud and violent minority.

What would a Socrates, Galileo, Descartes, or Locke believe of the present decay in Europe — that all their bold and courageous thinking, won at such a great cost, would have devolved into such cheap surrender to fanaticism?

Just think: Put on an opera in today’s Germany, and have it shut down, not by Nazis, Communists, or kings, but by the simple fear of Islamic fanatics.

Write a novel deemed critical of the Prophet Mohammed, as did Salman Rushdie, and face years of ostracism and death threats — in the heart of Europe no less.

Compose a film, as did Theo Van Gogh, and find your throat cut in “liberal” Holland.

Or better yet, sketch a cartoon in postmodern Denmark, and then go into hiding.

Quote an ancient treatise, as did the pope, and learn your entire Church may come under assault, and the magnificent stones of the Vatican offer no refuge.

For all of Europe's posturing as an enlightened society, they spend a lot of time running away from instead of protecting ideals such as free speech and artistic expression.

VDH says it best with the following paragraph (the emphasis is mine):

The new enemies of Reason are not the enraged democrats who executed Socrates, the Christian zealots who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity, or the Nazis who burned books. No, they are a pampered and scared Western public that caves to barbarism — dwarves who sit on the shoulders of dead giants, and believe that their present exalted position is somehow related to their own cowardly sense of accommodation.

Genius.