Contemporary liberalism: minimalism at home, maximalism abroad
So Kurt Andersen devoted a segment of his show Studio 360 to ISIS’s destruction of various cultural shrines and monuments in Iraq and Syria. It sounds beyond awful. As did the Taliban’s destruction of all those Buddhist monuments back in 2001. But here’s what I don’t understand about these types of reports from western journalists. When NYU destroyed Edgar Allan Poe’s home, did Kurt Andersen publicly say a word? That was an assault on our cultural heritage that he might have helped avert, but there’s no record of him, at least not that I can find, saying a thing. Yet here he is having a good old time with some State Department flack, calling for “archaeological boots on the ground”—presumably to match the other kind of boots—in order to save these treasures of civilization. But when it comes to our own treasures, our own New York treasures (the guy lives in Brooklyn), not a word. Kurt Andersen’s also the sort of guy who would castigate the left for not caring enough about America.
Contemporary liberalism: minimalism at home, maximalism abroad.