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Today From the Party of Ideas

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neville-chamberlain

Finally, some fresh thinking from a respected conservative scholar. Victor Davis Hanson has a critique of the Iran deal, and you will never in a million years guess the original historical analogy he thought of!

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was a beloved peacemaker after the Munich Agreement of 1938 with Adolf Hitler but derided as a conceited fool and naif by May 1940.

I believe that, in the fervid imaginations of hack conservative op-ed columnists, Khamenei is now the five thousandth Hitler, and Obama the five thousandth Chamberlain, to have emerged since 1945. It’s frankly amazing any of us are still alive.

Still, every conservative pundit in America is probably writing this same idiotic argument as we speak. What makes Hanson special are the historical flourishes:

Second, the appeasement of autocrats always pulls the rug out from under domestic reformers and idealists. After the Western capitulation at Munich, no dissenter in Germany dared to question the ascendant dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

Yes, the Hitler regime would totally have been peacefully toppled had it not been for that meddling Neville Chamberlain. Similarly, had Obama refused to make a deal with Iran I think we could have expected a liberal democratic regime led by Paul Bremer to emerge no later than 2017. Needs moar Jay-Z, though.

One thing about the everything-is-Munich arguments that should be noted more often as that they tend to be as stupid about Munich as they are about contemporary politics.

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