Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

During America’s first-ever national lockdown, thousands of unelected bureaucrats, as well as federal and state governments, assumed enormous powers not usually accorded them. 

They picked and chose which businesses could stay open without much rationale. They sent the infected into rest homes occupied by the weak and vulnerable. 

Their rules of prosecuting those who violated social distancing, sheltering in place, mask-wearing, or violent protesting hinged on political grounds. Their spending bills on “infrastructure” and “health care” were excuses to lard up redistributive entitlements. 

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Victor Davis Hanson Show // June 3, 2021

Introducing the new home for the “Victor Davis Hanson Show” published by John Solomon’s Just the News on the Art19 platform. This is the permanent home for the show which features episodes of “The Traditionalist” and “The Classicist.” We hope you enjoy.

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Part One

Isn’t it true that almost every “big” news story of the last four years has proved to be an utter lie?

Moscow Fantasies

Do we even remember the months of the Russian collusion lies? The daily fare that in one hour or so Trump would be indicted and frog-marched, and the next hour he would turn state’s evidence? That Russians were in constant communications with the Trump campaign, that Carter Page was a Trump Russian “asset”? The Alpha Bank Russian computer pings? That Brennan and Clapper winked and nodded to us about their secret sources that proved Trump was going down.

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Has Any of This Happened to You?

Reader, confess the following. If you voted for Trump, or even were suspected of such, has at least one of the following things happened to you?

• A once close associate (or was it a grandson, uncle, cousin, or in-law?), perhaps even one of your once best friends, suddenly, out the blue, with no warning, texts, calls, emails or writes you a cancel letter, to the extent that you are now tried, convicted and to be punished as a horrific person. Wow. This is strange, you think. In fact, the provocateur goes on to say that he suspected you were always deranged, or cruel, or xenophobic, and now he has confirmed it during the autumn of 2020. He ends with something like “Don’t ever call me again” (He called you, not vice versa). Or “I don’t want you ever contacting me again” (You never have). You note that you have never so informed any friend who voted for Obama or Biden with such commensurate cut-offs.

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

Once upon a time long ago, we agreed there were certain immutable laws of human nature. These laws were based on facts, reality, and data. 

In other words, we accepted common sense about the way the world worked according to logical and even “scientific” principles. That assumption defined us as “enlightened” rather than Dark Age reductionists and ideological- or myth-driven zealots. 

Not now. “Progressives,” especially the media, are most often regressive, anti-Enlightenment, and intolerant people, who start with a deductive premise and then make the evidence conform to it—or else. 

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Victor Davis Hanson // The Ingram Angle

Part II. The Dark Grove

In the 1880s when the eastern San Joaquin Valley began to be populated with vineyardists and orchard men, there was a shortage of construction-grade wood. Farmers needed lumber that would not rot as fence posts, vineyard stakes, and barn trusses. The Sierra redwood (the majestic Sequoiadendron giganteum), thank God, earlier on was found to split apart and thus never harvested.

So the next best answer was apparently to import the Australian “blue gum” (eucalyptus globulus) that rose to 250 feet, required little water, and whose oils prevented rot. Naïve farmers planted 2- to 5-acre plots everywhere.

Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler // Private Papers