“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville
In his famous admonition about the tyranny of the majority, Tocqueville went on to warn that “Liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty, and if they miss their aim resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them except equality, and rather than lose it they resolve to perish.” Read more →
The attacks on the US embassy yesterday in Cairo and the storming of the American consulate in Libya, where the US ambassador was murdered along with three staff members — and the initial official American reaction to the mayhem — are all reprehensible, each in their own way. Let us sort out this terrible chain of events. Read more →
Citizen control of the military is one of the most important foundations of political freedom. Rather than an instrument of a powerful autocrat or king, the army in a republic serves the collective interests, security, and policies of the state as determined by the citizens through the constitutional processes of deliberation and election. Read more →
One of Broadway’s big hits this season is the musical The Book of Mormon, a creation of the scatological geniuses behind the cartoon South Park. As one would expect, the show is “blasphemous, scurrilous and more foul-mouthed than David Mamet on a blue streak,” as the New York Times put it, satirizing every dimension of Mormonism from its obligatory missionary work to the planet Kolob God supposedly lived on or near. Read more →
Every time a crazy person perpetrates irrational mayhem, we immediately start demanding explanations that gratify our ideological assumptions. For liberals, something in the environment drives people to such acts. Read more →
Victor discusses the neutron bomb effect of COVID, Biden and 2022, lefty Stanford profs and their Hoover Hate, Trump wows CPAC, Cancel Culture bites Dr. Seuss on Mulberry Street while Democratic congressman try to de-cable the Right.
Amazon disappears Ryan Anderson’s important 2018 book, When Harry Met Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, amigo Rush Limbaugh remembered, Joe Biden’s into-war stumbling, and the race card played quickly against Senate foes of a nasty lefty nominee. Today’s episode is sponsored by the new documentary, The Dissident, and by the Bradley Foundation’s “We the People” speaker series.
Victor takes on the Lincoln Project’s muddied moralists, Andrew Cuomo’s gubernatorial lethality, Big Tech’s Trump-hate, the reemerged Parler and its fight to survive, the lies about Officer Brian Sicknick’s death, and their role in the Trump impeachment follies.
Victor Davis Hanson explores how military history can illuminate current foreign policy challenges, delineates which nations pose the greatest threats to the United States, explores the role that human rights should play in international affairs, looks at the changing shape of America’s alliances, and provides a reading list for future commanders-in-chief.
Victor Davis Hanson explains the work of President Trump’s 1776 Commission (a body on which he served), describes the decline of history as an academic discipline, and explains why humility is an essential ingredient when judging figures from the past.
Victor Davis Hanson diagnoses the biggest challenges facing America in the years ahead, from debt to immigration to Chinese aggression — and pauses for a special remembrance of his friend Rush Limbaugh.
Area 45: Victor Davis Hanson: Holding The Trump Card
Iran’s next move, a Senate impeachment trial, and the beginning of the Democratic primaries. Despite January and February’s uncertainties, Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow, believes in this certainty: President Trump is on a path to reelection this fall.
Victor Davis Hanson discusses the damaging disclosure about Obama keeping tabs on the FBI Hillary Clinton email investigation, State Department unmasking, why Hillary’s and Obama’s hubris may be their own downfall and how this can very well be a Watergate or Iran-Contra type scandal.
The Idol of Equality
To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
—Alexis de Tocqueville
In his famous admonition about the tyranny of the majority, Tocqueville went on to warn that “Liberty is not the chief and constant object of their desires; equality is their idol: they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty, and if they miss their aim resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them except equality, and rather than lose it they resolve to perish.” Read more →
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