The Full Crowley
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness In the second presidential election debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012, CNN moderator Candy Crowley sensed that Obama, coming off a dismal initial September 26 debate, was again floundering. Romney was driving home the valid point that the Obama Administration had inadequately prepared the […]
Trump, Escaping Wile E. Coyotevirus
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Once it was announced that President Trump had COVID-19, the media almost immediately talked of all the people in the “Trump orbit” who fell ill from COVID-19 — including many on his staff, U.S. senators, and at least three White House reporters. The surreal subtext was not that the toxic […]
The Unscientific Attacks on the Science of Dr. Scott Atlas
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The news media until recently had rarely criticized the medical advice of experts — especially those who worked for federal bureaucracies, international organizations, or elite universities. Yet the much-praised Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, has demonstrably weakened the effort to fight COVID-19. During the critical initial […]
Our Socialist Future?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review After the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in custody of officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, protesters demanded the fair prosecution of those responsible. Yet quickly the demonstrations devolved into a veritable cultural revolution, spearheaded by two groups, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, both with strong […]
The Progressive Medusa
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness There was once a tradition of Democratic liberalism. But that wing of the Democratic Party no longer exists and died sometime in the 1990s. Old-style liberalism has been absorbed by Progressivism at best and unapologetic socialism at worst—in a journey on the supposedly predetermined arc of history that bends […]
Civilization Requires Collective Common Sense
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review After the summer protests and rioting in many large cities, activists demanded a defunding, or at least radical pullbacks, of the police. So-called crime experts often concurred. So some city governments ignored public warnings and diminished their police presence despite a sharp rise in crime in many cities. Looting and […]
Navalny Poisoning Just A Bump In The Road For Nord Stream 2
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory published by Forbes Trying to figure whither Nord Stream 2 (hereafter NS2) – the undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – is akin to solving five complicated jigsaw puzzles at once. Competing interests, changing legal foundations, and momentum all make it difficult to either start or […]
When Conventional Wisdom Gets Downright Dangerous
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The problem with conventional wisdom is not that it is always wrong. The rub is that the majority of “experts” unthinkingly and habitually mouth its validity until they ensure that it becomes static, unchanging, and immune from reexamination and dissent — an intolerant religious orthodoxy that finally become dangerous. The […]
How American Journalism Died
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In 2017, the liberal Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University found that 93 percent of CNN’s coverage of the Trump administration was negative. The center found similarly negative Trump coverage at other major news outlets. The election year 2020 has only accelerated that asymmetrical bias […]
The Same Old, Same Old California Suicide
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Fall is almost here in California. So we know the annual script. A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will […]
Strategika #67: U.S. Troop Deployments in Germany
America—A European Power No More? Shifting Tectonics, Changing Interests, And The Shrinking Size Of U.S. Troops In Europe Please read a new essay by my colleague, Josef Joffe in Strategika. The Trump drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe is not the end of the alliance, but part of a familiar story. America’s military presence has been […]
Biden, ‘The Great and Powerful’
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Media bias is not new. In addition to the Russian collusion hoax and the phone-call impeachment farce, who can forget the marquee media toadies of JournoList and the release of John Podesta’s email trove? Or the moderator Donna Brazile’s primary debate questions, leaked through CNN, or Candy Crowley’s hijacking […]
Victor Davis Hanson: Greek-Turkish rivalry again near the boiling point
Victor Davis Hanson // Bozeman Daily Chronicle Almost daily, Greek and Turkish aircraft and ships fight mock battles over disputed oil and gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Since the loss of much of the Christian Balkans to the Ottomans in the 15th century, Greece and what would later become modern Turkey have been rivals, […]
Trump, Race, and Class
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review There are some stunning indications that the supposedly satanic racist Donald Trump could be polling in some surveys around a 35-40 approval rate among Latinos and 20–30 percent among African Americans. Other polls are more equivocal but suggest an unexpected Trump surge among minority voters. If those polls are accurate […]
Don’t expect Europe to hold Putin accountable in Navalny poisoning
The following article is from my colleague, Paul Roderick Gregory, in The Hill Vladimir Putin is a notorious risk-taker. Many of his ventures have paid off for him, but did his luck run out when a suspected plot to take out opposition leader Aleksei Navalny veered wildly off course? Instead of being pronounced dead from “natural causes” upon arriving […]
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Increasingly volatile voters
Victor Davis Hanson // Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette Joe Biden and his handlers know that he should be out and about, weighing in daily on the issues of the campaign. In impromptu interviews, Biden should be offering alternative plans for dealing with the virus, the lockdown, the economic recovery, the violence and the looting, and […]
Silence About the Violence
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review It is not just conservatives at the recent Republican National Convention who wonder why the Democratic Party and its media appendages have not without qualification decried the looting, arson, violence, and occasional killing that have swept the nation’s cities. Recently even left-wing CNN’s incendiary Don Lemon wondered out loud why […]
Cultural Suicide Is Painless
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness In February, New York was the world’s most dynamic metropolis. By August, the city was more like the ruins of Ephesus. It is not all that hard to blow up a culture. You can do it in a summer if you haven’t much worry about others. When you loot […]
Victor Davis Hanson: The cowards of ‘cancel culture’
Victor Davis Hanson // The Hill Each generation deals with its own manifestations of age-old mob frenzies, bullying and public shaming. Salem, Mass., had its witch trials in the 1690s. The 1950s endured its McCarthyism. And we now are enduring our “cancel culture.” But 21st-century public shaming reaches not thousands but tens of millions. And […]
Angry Reader 08-30-2020
From An Angry Reader: Hello Professor Hanson, First let me say, I am a regular reader and viewer of yours. I relish your take on the important issues. This evening on Tucker Carlson Tonight with Brian Kilmeade 7/16/2020 you used some imprecise language that caused both me and my bride of many years great distress […]