I regard Niall Fergusson as like a lot of the more noted British academics and journalists who take up posts with US universities or magazines, as more pro USA and supportive of US cultural values than any real Americans. I recently listened to Niall Fergusson on Chinese Tv9 in an interview about whether the US would accept China rising to equal status and Niall answered that America’s core value was liberty not equality and I would agree, as would many other members of my family, but few others NZers, would.
In terms of the extract from Wall St Journal the reality is most people and most intelligent people haven’t got time for community and professional organization as they prefer to devote most of their time to work related activity or the pursuit of sex. The days of the big society, clubs and cultural organisations was partly of a simpler time where people wanted less and less was allowed. However many of these professional organisations and even church groups were really clubs where the elite could segregate themselves from the rest of society and far less about good works, big brother society or religion.
Also my own view is that many able and intelligent people and intelligent women prefer individual life and really only want to meet people, even possibly their husband for sex and coffee. My own view is many women do not really want to marry, but do so only for social acceptability and for the father to be a sort of cuckoo bird regardless of whether he is the real father, who the women will tolerate for just long enough as she see’s as necessary for her son’s and occasionally daughters interest.
In terms of the Vietnam war, my own view an d I think McNamara’s, the war is not really fought to win or for NZ or Australia’s interest- but to give a ferocious indication to China and Russia that the US was really prepared to fight and hit them hard if necessary. To me the Vietnam war is fought by the US on a percentage atrocity basis, so the kill ratio, is the real criterion and ultimately Nixon wins the 1972 election by the ferocity of Operation Linebacker where Le Mays plans for the smashing of Nth Vietnamese military infrastructure is partly implemented, the dykes smashed and last USN gun cruisers conduct a massive gun assault more ferocious than D day, the power of gun cruisers like the Newport News hitting ruthlessly and giving massive gunfire support to the last US troops. McNamara deliberately decided to downgrade the intellectual and social capability of the US forces for Vietnam and post Vietnam because they would not complain about the savage way Villages and towns would be systematically destroyed – in the percentage atrocity war plan although of course the Rand Corp would never have been so literal. The sons of the elite were still present in the US military and for Vietnam , McNamara was right the likes of John Kerry and many of those who later served in the senate were essentially appalled and sickened by the way the war was fought. It was cold war calibrated escalation not a victory plan. However since Vietnam, the lack of really able middle and upper classes throughout the US military is increasingly disastrous as the war against terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is a war to defend middle class interest and the right to unlimited freedom, it is a war against egalitarianism and the power of ordinary men and ordinary man can not really fight it well.