We Are Approaching COVID-19 Gut-Check Time
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review We are a few days away from a rendezvous with some tough conclusions about COVID-19. A number of concurrent developments are coming to a head. Most will bring light where so far there was only heat. Greater information about the virus might cause as much acrimony as conciliation. Some experts […]
The Power of Media Ignorance
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Almost two weeks ago I offered at NRO a few synopses of various theories about why California — which, for a variety of reasons, had seemed so ripe for a New York–style epidemic — had nonetheless strangely been exempt at least for a while from the virus’s spread. I included the […]
The Thin Façade of Authority
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom. One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn, […]
The Eeyore Syndrome
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In A. A. Milne’s classic Winne-the-Pooh children’s tales, Eeyore, the old gray donkey, is perennially pessimistic and gloomy. He always expects the worst to happen. Milne understood that Eeyore’s outbursts of depression could at first be salutatory but then become monotonous. The outlook of the pessimist (“if you think it’s […]
Corona Meltdowns
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness As the coronavirus outbreak begins to reach its zenith, it remains unclear whether the measures taken to stem its tide will prove sufficient, insufficient, or an overreaction. What is certain, however, is that a number of individuals and entities have behaved shamefully and demonstrated no capacity for leadership or […]
America Is Still a Global Leader
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review A current global myth alleges that America under the Trump administration is not leading the world fight against the coronavirus in its accustomed role as the post-war global leader. Yet the U.S. was the first major nation to issue a travel ban on flights from China, with Donald Trump […]
Some Coronavirus Humility
Victor Davis Hanson // City Journal There are two well-known themes, or topoi, in classical literature. One concerns the graphic descriptions in Thucydides, Sophocles, and Procopius of plagues—especially the human misery and despair that accompanies outbreaks that killed large numbers. The unknown plague at Athens (430–429 BC) killed one-quarter of the Athenian population during the Peloponnesian […]
Viral Prerequisites and Nationalist Lessons in Time of Plague
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness President Donald Trump has courted endless controversies for promoting nonconventional policies and entertaining contrarian views. From the outset, he oddly seemed to have believed that having navigated the jungles of the Manhattan real estate market—crooked politicians, mercurial unions, neighborhood social activists, the green lobby, leery banks, cutthroat rivals—better prepared […]
Progressivism’s Bastardization of Science
Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America, Daniel Okrent. Scribner, 2019. 402 pp. Daniel Okrent has marshalled a compendium of damning statements and information which demonstrates the ignominy of the eugenics movement and […]
Strategika Issue #63: Should the United States Leave the Middle East?
Learning From Failure: Formulating A New U.S. Middle East Foreign Policy Please read a new essay by my colleague, Edward N. Luttwak in Strategika. A commentator recently complained that President Trump does not have a “Syria strategy” and therefore awful Assad is winning. Countless Op-Ed writers before him likewise commented that President X “did not have […]
Coronavirus: The California Herd
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The bluest state’s public officials have been warning for weeks that California will be overwhelmed, given federal-government unpreparedness and the purported inefficacy of the local, state, and federal governments. California governor Gavin Newsom has assured his state that over half of the population — or, in his words, 56 percent […]
Viral Prerequisites and Nationalist Lessons in Time of Plague
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness President Donald Trump has courted endless controversies for promoting nonconventional policies and entertaining contrarian views. From the outset, he oddly seemed to have believed that having navigated the jungles of the Manhattan real estate market—crooked politicians, mercurial unions, neighborhood social activists, the green lobby, leery banks, cutthroat rivals—better prepared […]
Trump’s Strategic Foresight Is Being Put to the Test
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The ancient Greeks believed that true leadership in a crisis came down to what they called pronoia — the Greek word for “strategic foresight.” Some statesmen, such as Pericles and Themistocles, had it. Most others, such as the often brilliant and charismatic but impulsive Alcibiades, usually did not. “Foresight” in crisis means […]
The Virus is Not Invincible, But It’s Exposing Who’s Irreplaceable
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness In all the gloom and doom, and media-driven nihilism, there is actually an array of good news. As many predicted, as testing spreads, and we get a better idea of the actual number and nature of cases, the death rate from coronavirus slowly but also seems to steadily decline. […]
Questions about the Coronavirus
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review More data is critical in understanding the virus in general and in particular its transmission in particular countries. Anyone who looks at rates of morality and lethality of influenza and related pneumonia, especially in the elderly and infirm, can be shocked at the wide variances between particular countries. 52 Reliable data alone […]
The Logic of Pottersville
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In director Frank Capra’s 1946 holiday classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life, an initial bank panic sweeps the small town of Bedford Falls. Small passbook account holders rush to George Bailey’s family-owned Bailey Building and Loan to demand the right to cash out all of their deposits — a sudden run […]
The Psychology of Viral Paradoxes
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review There are a lot of known unknowns and paradoxes in these times of uncertainty. Here are a few. 1) Trump is criticized as both “racist” and “xenophobic” in his condemnations of the “Chinese” virus, while he’s also criticized for “appeasing” President Xi when he makes friendly references to their […]
Trump the Uniter?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Editor’s Note: The following is the second excerpt from the revised and updated edition of The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. You can read the first excerpt here. So what had happened to the Democrats’ predicted blue wave that supposedly would rack up huge House majorities and win back the […]
The Mysterious Rise, Fall, and Rise of Joe Biden
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review For most of early 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — the declared custodian of liberalism who would continue the Obama glory years — seemed unstoppable. He led all other rivals for months. Biden seemed above the fray. Many Democrats saw the pre-debate and pre-election race for the nomination as […]
The 2018 Blue Wave That Wasn’t, Really
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Editor’s Note: The following is the first of two excerpts from the revised and updated edition of The Case for Trump, out Tuesday from Basic Books. Throughout the summer and early autumn of 2018, election experts had often predicted a massive blue wave of radical progressive pushback against Trump in the 2018 […]