Is America Becoming Sinicized?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Alittle over 40 years ago, Chinese Communist strongman and reformer Deng Xiaoping began 15 years of sweeping economic reforms. They were designed to end the disastrous, even murderous planned economy of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976. The results of Deng’s revolution astonished the world. In four decades, China […]
Kurdish, Syrian, and Turkish Ironies
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Outrage met Donald Trump’s supposedly rash decision to pull back U.S. troops from possible confrontational zones between our Kurdish friends in Syria and Recep Erdogan’s expeditionary forces. Turkey claims that it will punish the Syrian Kurds for a variety of supposed provocations, including aiding and abetting Kurdish terrorist separatists […]
On the Whistleblower Kerfuffle, Imagine a Different Scenario
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Imagine . . . If in early 2015, some White House staffers transcribing confidential presidential calls were disturbed about one conversation that President Obama had with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. The two allegedly had confidentially discussed the staggered release of some $1.7 billion in withheld U.S. dollars to Iran […]
The Strategies of Targeting Trump
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness There is no logical Democratic explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democratic Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project. After failing with the voting machine gambit, the Logan […]
Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review What do the Kavanaugh hearings, Jussie Smollett, the Covington kids, the Mueller investigation, and now the Trump phone call all have in common? Staged melodrama, media collusion hysteria, progressive demands that justice be served immediately, promises of walls-are-closing-in blockbuster revelations from new witnesses, supposed surprise revelatory documents, fusions between […]
The Madness of Progressive Projection
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Strangest among all the many melodramas of the last two weeks were the blaring headlines that President Trump had dared to talk with the Australian Prime Minister—and referenced the role of foreign governments and in particular Australia in U.S. electoral politics in 2016. Given the hue and cry of […]
Keep It Steady and Cool with Iran, America
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Expect more desperate Iranian efforts to prompt a U.S. military response in the Persian Gulf. Trump’s sanctions have cut off 90 percent of Iran’s oil revenues. Soon Tehran’s shattered economy will be followed by more pent-up domestic unrest of the sort that Barack Obama ignored in 2009, when he […]
Impeachment Coup Analytics
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Aside from the emotional issue that Democrats, NeverTrumpers, and celebrities loathe Donald Trump, recently Representative Al Green (D-Texas) reminded us why the Democrats are trying to impeach the president rather than just defeat him in the 2020 general election. “To defeat him at the polls would do history a […]
Why the Impeachment Frenzy May Only Strengthen Trump
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Contrary to suggestions by some, most Trump supporters are not automatons or blind supporters. What bothers them, and should bother others, about the latest Ukraine hysterias is the familiar monotony of this latest scripted psychodrama. The whistleblower admits to hearsay (“I was not a direct witness to most of […]
The Death of American Citizenship
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The American Founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government, with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. These contracts outlined the rare privileges and responsibilities of new American citizens. Yet the concept of citizenship is being assaulted on the premodern side by the legal […]
Book Review: Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West by Raymond Ibrahim. Da Capo Press, 2018. Pp. 297
Please read this book review from my colleague Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West by Raymond Ibrahim. Da Capo Press, 2018. Pp. 297 We judge individuals by what they say and what they do. We judge cults, religions and ideologies the same way; that is, by their doctrines and […]
Our Privileged Scolds
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review One theme of the Democratic debates is collective furor — at whom or what is not always clear, other than at Americans who voted for Trump. Or perhaps at America itself for failing the expectations of our moral betters? Yet such rage is so deeply embedded in hypocrisy that […]
09-25-2019 Angry Reader
From An Angry Reader: Subject: Inciting ignorant violence “Ignorance is bliss” until your/his followers are inspired to act violently due to to your/ his misinformation/lies Hiding your vitriol hate behind well written words does not excuse from inciting/ propagating hate and discord John Lowery –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Dear Angry Reader John Lowery, For such a short angry […]
The Madcap Adventures of ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ Biden
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Sometime-Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden was at it again, voicing his brand of tough-guy boasts that he can “beat Trump like a drum.” A 1980s sci-fi cult film about a weirdo, Buckaroo Banzai, who travels through time dimensions in many manifestations battling evil and saving good guys reminds us of the […]
Victor Davis Hanson: Trump wages war on progressive culture – Dems respond with Trump Derangement Syndrome
Victor Davis Hanson // Fox News President Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a “Kulturkampf.” As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time […]
CNN: Everything but the News
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review For a while, we thought MSNBC had temporarily usurped CNN as the font of fake news — although both networks had tied for the most negative coverage (93 percent of all their news reports) of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. A cynic would argue that CNN had […]
Trumped Out?
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The new post-Mueller media narrative is “weariness” and “exhaustion” with President Trump’s tweets, his cul de sac Sharpie controversy, his ideas about buying Greenland, his unorthodox art-of-the-deal foreign policy that resulted in a plan to talk to Taliban leaders in the United States, and his firing of arch-conservative John […]
Is England Still Part of Europe?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review British prime minister Boris Johnson is desperate to translate the British public’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union into a concrete Brexit. But the real issue is far older and more important than whether 52 percent of Britain finally became understandably aggrieved by the increasingly anti-democratic and […]
All in the Comey Family
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review By his own admission, the recently fired FBI director James Comey leaked at least four memos of private presidential conversations — at least one of them containing some classified secret material — variously to his lawyers and through liaisons to the press. In both phone calls and personal meetings, […]
Biden or Bust?
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Pundits and politicos play the current parlor game of counting Joe Biden’s daily bloopers, signs of debility, or embarrassments. Unlike former “Apprentice” host Donald Trump’s exaggerations and narcissisms, Biden’s fantasies are not baked into an outsider candidacy that by intent offers as a radical change of policy, a tough […]