Week of Jan. 29, 2007

By the way, have I reported yet just how popular Mein Kampf is in India? It is most casually displayed in paper back form alongside popular help literature. During a recent trip to Hampee we ran across a school group. I told them that I was from the US and that we also had some Germans traveling with us."Oh, Hitler," the Indian teacher said."That was a long time ago," responded the horrified Germans. The Indian teacher looked surprised."He was good," he said."In the end, he was very bad," responded the German."But we admired Bose.""Yes, Bose was very good," agreed the teacher.

Subhas Chandra Bose was a radical leftist (surprise, surprise!) Indian leader who supported the Axis powers during the W.W.II and even traveled to Germany to meet with Hitler. He was not alone then and he may not be alone now.

In other words, Hitler may be dead but National Socialism lives on.

Faced with cultural differences, their tendency is to oscillate between a flaccid we-are-the-world universalism —"people are people everywhere" — and its unexpected corollary, the certitude that any generalization constitutes stereotyping. What is missing is the middle ground of cultural space where individual particularity and human universality find their daily context and most of their real meaning.

"You can't say that," a student will object when you suggest that, say, the ritualized sit-down dinner or the five-week vacation might tell us something broadly significant about the French attitude toward the present moment."I know people back home who eat long meals. Everyone is different. You can't generalize like that."

The irony is that in essentially refusing to discuss culture, my students are actually obeying powerful cultural imperatives. For what better manifestation of American mythic individualism is there than the conviction that the basic unit of human society is the autonomous self?

Neither Senator Webb nor Vice President Cheney wins points for his social graces. But what Letitia Baldrige said of the Webb encounter — “It was an uncivil reply to an uncivil remark” — does not apply equally to the vice president. Mr. Cheney has openly promoted an anti-gay agenda. His own base has called his daughter’s pregnancy unconscionable. Family values have been his calling card. And our Prohibitionist vice president can’t summon the courage to address the gin mill in the basement?

Mr. Webb was rude on principle; Mr. Cheney rude out of hypocrisy. One man took a stand. The other scurried away.

Richard Salva, author of a book on the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln, counters comparisons of presidential candidate Barack Obama with the Civil War president. His book, Soul Journey from Lincoln to Lindbergh, provides evidence through nearly 500 astonishing connections that Lincoln was reborn as Charles Lindbergh.

Bush committed to do too much with too little, like President Harry Truman before the Korean War. Korea called Truman's bluff and he never recovered politically from the exposure. It fell to his successors to muster support for the long haul. So Iraq has called Bush's bluff. His end-game will soon be out of his hands.

China, which supplies nearly all the AK-47s that are used to kill children in Darfur, has underwritten the genocide. Lately, it has encouraged Sudan to be more responsible, but President Hu Jintao is visiting Sudan shortly — let’s see whether he publicly expresses concern about Chinese-supported atrocities in Africa that far exceed the Rape of Nanjing.