Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers

Victor Davis Hanson: Caroline Kennedy's possible appointment to the Senate reveals as much about her as about the press. "A Media Morality Tale" 1/7/09

Middle East

Victor Davis Hanson: Israel can't win, so their alternative is simply to win in Gaza. "A Lose-Lose World" 1/6/09

Middle East

Victor Davis Hanson: Is there an explanation for why Hamas militants can rocket bomb Israel for weeks and when Israel decides to defend itself world opinion condemns them? "The Gaza Rules" 1/5/09

Week December 29-January 4, 2009

Middle East

Victor Davis Hanson: The media has turned the aggressors into the victims in Gaza. "Surreal Gaza" 1/2/09

2008: The Long Year

Victor Davis Hanson: Did we relive the Roaring 20s, 1930s, or 1960s in this year of campaign, corruption, and collapse? "A Year Like None Other" 1/1/09

2008 Reconsidered

Victor Davis Hanson: Take a moment to consider the extraordinary changes in oil prices, policy on Iraq, the economy, politics and the president elect. "2008 Teeter Totter" 12/29/08

Book Review

Terry Scambray: Cornelius Hunter's Science's Blind Spot reminds us that science does not have all the answers. "Obstructed View" 12/29/08

Islam

Raymond Ibrahim: Linguistic analysis tells us a great deal about cultural attitudes. Here is a short exploration of Islam on women. "Are Slave-girls in Islam Equivalent to Animals?" 12/29/08

Week December 22-28, 2008

California

Victor Davis Hanson: California's crisis ought to tell us something about the direction or misdirection of big government. "More California Dreaming" 12/28/08

Culture

Victor Davis Hanson: American democracy is being transformed by tribalism, ethical relativism, and aristocratic privilege. "For the People?" 12/27/08

The Senate

Victor Davis Hanson: Caroline Kennedy's probable appointment to the Senate makes us wonder if Democrats perfer aristocracy to democracy. "Desperately Seeking Caroline" 12/23/08

Presidential Politics

Victor Davis Hanson: What a candidate says and what he does once in office are often at odds. "Campaign Rhetoric and Presidential Reality" 12/22/08

Week December 15-21, 2008

Chicago Politics

Victor Davis Hanson: Blagojevich makes us wonder what "misspoke" means for the Obama people. "That Was Then, This Is Now" 12/21/08

California Economy

Victor Davis Hanson: Is California's crisis taxes, legislative spendthrifts, illegal aliens, or the brain- and capital-drain? Or all of the above? "California Declares a Fiscal Crisis! You Think?" 12/21/08

The New Administration

Victor Davis Hanson: Who is to blame for war on terror and the financial meltdown? "Blame Bush, Obama - or Us?" 12/16/08

Rhetoric in History

Terry Scambray: Xenophobia, racism, and anti-Americanisms have long been used to belie the truth of crimes and criminals. "The Defense of Thugs" 12/16/08

Week December 8-14, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "No Monopoly on Moral Paralysis" 12/14/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Blagotrocious" 12/12/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Humanities Move Off Campus" 12/10/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Back to the Old 9/11 World" 12/8/08

Week December 1-7, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "Political Madness - Some Hotspots" 12/07/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Parallel Lives" 12/06/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Hysterical Style" 12/01/08

Week November 24-30, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson:"Some Thanksgiving" 11/30/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Bush Through the Obama Prism" 11/30/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Time Warp" 11/27/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Ten Random, Politically-Incorrect Thoughts" 11/26/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "What Went Wrong?" 11/25/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Failure Is Not an Option" 11/24/08

Week November 17-23, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "Is It All That Bad?" 11/22/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Campaign Rhetoric, Election Realities" 11/21/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Same Old Change" 11/17/08

Week November 11-17, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "Which Way Will Obama Go?" 11/16/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Upside Down World" 11/14/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Win One for the Messiah!" 11/12/08

Mark Arvanigian: "Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and the Obama Phenomenon" 11/11/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Make Haste Slowly, President Obama?" 11/10/08

Week November 4-10, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson:"The Day After" 11/08/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Be Careful What You Wish For" 11/07/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "A Blank Slate" 11/04/08

Karen Lugo: "Obama Will Use the Courts to Spread the Wealth" 11/04/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "America Compared to What" 11/04/08

Week October 27-November 2, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "The End of Journalism" 11/01/08

Raymond Ibrahim: "Al Qaeda and the Election" 10/31/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Campaign Takes a Very Strange Turn" 10/31/08

Linda Halderman: "Obamacare: A Case of Medical Misdiagnosis" 10/29/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "The Obama Enigma" 10/28/08

Week October 20-26, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: "The Coptic Conundrum" 10/26/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "An Instructive Candidacy" 10/25/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Obama and Friends" 10/23/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "It's the Debt, Stupid" 10/20/08

Week October 13-19, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: "Islam and Innocence" 10/19/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Jumping Ship" 10/17/08

Raymond Ibrahim: "The Hammer" 10/16/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Hope and Despair" 10/15/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Wall Street 101" 10/13/08

Week October 6-12, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "Not Over Yet" 10/11/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "What Is Wisdom?" 10/10/08

Raymond Ibrahim: "Osama bin Laden: Man of Love?" 10/08/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Iraq, Round Three" 10/07/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "America's Nervous Breakdown - and The World's" 10/06/08

Week September 22-28, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: "What Al Qaeda Wants" 9/22/08

Week September 15-21, 2008

Bruce S. Thornton: "No We Can't" 9/17/08

Week: August 18-24, 2008

Victor Davis Hanson: "Angry Reader: Germany is better, VDH" 8/22/08

Raymond Ibrahim: "Today in History" 8/19/07

Week August 11-17, 2008

Joseph Tartakovsky: "Man of a Thousand Faces" 8/17/08

Sen. Sam Aanestad: "More Uninsured, Please" 8/17/08

Bruce Thornton: "Islam Without Apologetics" 8/14/08

Week August 4-10, 2008

Bruce Thornton: "Obama's Race Card" 8/07/08

Victor Davis Hanson: "Angry Reader" 8/06/08

Week July 28-August 3, 2008

Chapter 1: 'Chapter 1" 7/30/08

Chapter 2: "Chapter 2" 7/30/08

Chapter 3: "Chapter 3" 7/30/08

Week July 21-27, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: "Al-Jazeera and History" 7/22/08

Week July 14-20, 2008

Honora Howell Chapman: "Sensible Solutions" 7/17/08

Raymond Ibrahim: "Excusing Taqiyya?" 7/14/08

Week July 7-13, 2008

Raymond Ibrahim: "Land Dispute or Jihad?" (7/10/08)

Honora Howell Chapman: "Who Killed Homer? Ten Years Later" (7/8/08)

Bruce S. Thornton: "Religion and the Age" (7/8/08)

June 24, 2008
The Politics of Predicting
The left has authored more atrocities than the right.
by Terry Scambray
Private Papers

A version of this essay was published in The Fresno Bee, May 31, 2008.

Phillip Jenkins, respected historian at Penn State University, writes in The Los Angeles Times that there “is a sound basis in American political history” for predicting that the election of a Democratic president will cause “assassinations and bombings” by right wingers.

More "The Politics of Predicting"

June 20, 2008
Would a Jihadi by Any Other Name Smell as Foul?
by Raymond Ibrahim
The American Thinker

The terminology we use to describe our enemy in the war on terror matters a lot. A spirited debate is underway among specialists and in the press.

An op-ed published in the New York Times entitled "What do you call a Terror(Jihad)ist?", by P.W. Singer and Elina Noor, attempts to defend the recent State Department memo advising government personnel to refrain from using theologically-laden terms — "jihadi," "mujahidin," "caliphate," "Islamo-fascism," "salafi," "wahhabi," "ummah" — when describing Islamic radicals and their motives. Instead, generics — "terrorists," "extremists" — should suffice.

More "Would a Jihadi by Any Other Name Smell as Foul?"

Books & Things

July 2, 2008
Gathering Storm
by Bruce S. Thornton
National Review Magazine

A review of Andrew C. McCarthy, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, Encounter Books, 2008.

Eight years before the terrorist attacks on 9/11, Islamic jihadists sent America a wake-up call that most of us slept through.

More "Gathering Storm"

June 26, 2008
Islam's History of Anti-Semitism
by Raymond Ibrahim
Washington Times

Is there such a thing as Islamic anti-Semitism? That is the implicit question that Andrew Bostom's new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, tackles.

More "Islam's History of Antisemitism"

June 12, 2008
Clarity, Courage and Culture
Few defend the West like Somali-born Hirsi Ali.
by Bruce S. Thornton
The New Individualist

A review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (The Free Press, 2007, pp. 353).

Our most dangerous weakness in the war against Islamic terror is the failure of cultural nerve afflicting many Westerners.

More "Clarity, Courage and Culture"

June 3, 2008
Plan for a Century
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Magazine

Review of Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century, by Philip Bobbitt (Knopf, 2008, 688 pp.)

Anyone who finished Philip Bobbitt’s massive, 900-page-plus The Shield of Achilles (2002) might not be surprised about the size and organization of its sequel, Terror and Consent — a 600-page-plus volume replete with book parts, chapters within chapters, Roman-numeraled subsections, bullet-marked sub-subsections, a conclusion, and a coda, all fortified with lengthy indented quotations, footnotes, and italicized passages.

More "Plan for a Century"

May 3, 2008
Darwin & Co., Ltd.
Just how limited?
by Terry Scambray
Private Papers

A review of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. (The Free Press, 2007) which appeared in the Fall 2007 edition of Faith & Reason.

“Buy low and sell high,” is the proverbial path to wealth. But have you ever thought of an opposite pathway? “Buy high; sell low — Make it up on volume!”

More "Darwin & Co., Ltd."

April 26, 2008
The Will to Reason
Can we expect rational man from tribal society?
by Bruce Thornton
The New Individualist

A review of Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason. Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (New York: Basic Books, 2007)

Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

More "The Will to Reason"

March 27, 2008
Radical Thoughts
Dr. Tawfik Hamid reveals life as an Islamicist.
by Raymond R. Ibrahim
Private Papers

This review of Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam by Dr. Tawfik Hamid (Top Executive Media, 2006) was originally published at ASMEA as “An Insider’s Thoughts on Radical Islam.”

Several singular reasons make Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam by Dr. Tawfik Hamid a welcome contribution to the otherwise growing lore on radical Islam.

More "Radical Thoughts"

February 21, 2008
The Alchemist
Brother Tariq can’t turn his Muslim to Western.
by Bruce S. Thornton
Private Papers

A review of Brother Tariq. The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest, trans. by Joana Wieder and John Atherton (Encounter Books, 2008)

The moderate Muslim leader is the theologico-political philosopher’s stone that many in the West believe can reconcile Islam with modernity and thus transmute disaffected Muslims, ripe for jihadist recruitment, into tolerant liberal democrats.

More "The Alchemist"

January 29, 2008
Twilight of the Nation-State
European transnationalism is a utopian dream, Pierre Manent warns.
Bruce S. Thornton
City Journal

A review of Democracy Without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe by Pierre Manent, translated by Paul Seaton (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 130 pp.)

The European Union’s grand project rests on the belief that nationalism is passé, indeed pernicious.

More "Twilight of the Nation-State"