Trump’s Constructive Chaos
by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Almost daily, President Trump manages to incense the media, alarm the world abroad, and enrage his Democratic opposition. Not since Ronald Reagan’s first year in office has change and disruption come so fast from the White House. Let’s consider foreign affairs first. In response to North Korea’s nuclear threats […]
The Deadly Cost of Mutual Misunderstanding
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Hitler went to war without an accurate conception of the Allies’ strength. The Allies did the same without an accurate conception of Hitler’s ambition. Unprecedented bloodshed ensued. Editor’s Note: The following is the third in a series of excerpts adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The Second […]
Status Quo Blues
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The public is turning away from the institutions that used to unite Americans — the NFL, mainstream news, late-night TV, movies . . . The familiar cultural order of the last half-century is crumbling — partly because of larger forces beyond its control, partly from self-inflicted wounds, […]
In Defense of ‘the Generals’
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Recently there have been a number of quite different critiques from all political sides of Trump’s generals (Kelly/McMaster/Mattis), and also from a variety of angles (too narrow experience, an unhealthy overdose of military thinking, a “sellout” for working for the likes of […]
The Axis Was Outmatched from the Start
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Hitler and his Axis cohorts couldn’t match their enemies’ resources to begin with. That they learned all the wrong lessons from military history while the Allies learned all the right ones doomed them. Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of excerpts adapted from […]
The Method to Trump’s ‘Madness’
By Victor Davis Hanson| American Greatness The Democratic Party, as it did after Hubert Humphrey’s close loss in 1968, seems still to be misdiagnosing its 2016 defeat. Democrats see too little identity politics rather than too much as their trouble, and thus are redoubling on what has been slowly shrinking the party into coastal enclaves. […]
It’s 1968 All Over Again
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The United States and the world appear to be reliving the language, politics, and global instability of 1968. Almost a half-century ago, in 1968, the United States seemed to be falling apart. The Vietnam War, a bitter and close presidential election, antiwar protests, racial riots, […]
From An Angry Reader: Dear Daniel Longo Mr Hanson, we can only thank you for the correct verbosity and non overuse of the word anemic, as any student of creative writing or freshman English would appreciate the lesson in your overly wordy presentation; problem is, and this seems frequently to escape your need to be […]
Columbus Day: Melodrama or Tragedy?
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Campuses and Western critics in the last half-century have turned a once risk-taking and heroic Christopher Columbus into an evil emissary of disease and destruction. History is now seen as one-dimensional melodrama in which our contemporary duty is to pick sinners and […]
The Glass House of the NFL
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The league’s national significance is rapidly diminishing, due to hypocrisy and hyper-politicization in a once-loved American establishment. The National Football League is a glass house that was cracking well before Donald Trump’s criticism of players who refuse to stand during the national anthem. The NFL earned […]
Read this new essay by my colleague Dr Paul Gregory. http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/353834-for-now-trump-dossier-creates-more-questions-than-answers#bottom-story-socials
Are Wars Caused by Accidents?
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review History shows that a lack of deterrence, not loose rhetoric, spurs aggression. As tensions mount with North Korea, fears arise that President Trump’s tit-for-tat bellicose rhetoric with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un might lead to miscalculations — and thus an accidental war that could have been prevented. […]
How Silicon Valley Turned Off the Left and Right
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review After years of regulation immunity and radical profiteering, Silicon Valley mega-corporations are alienating their friends on both sides of the political aisle. When Left and Right finally agree on something, watch out: The unthinkable becomes normal. So it is with changing attitudes toward Silicon Valley. […]
Two First Quarter Cheers For Trump’s Principled Realism
by Robert G. Kaufman//Strategika Image credit: Poster Collection, US 05889, Hoover Institution Archives. The content and trajectory of Donald Trump’s foreign policy have defied the expectations of many of his supporters as well as his critics across the political spectrum. The President has moved a long way from his campaign positions of denigrating the […]
The Need For Missile Defense
by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas America’s great advantage when it entered world affairs after the Civil War was that its distance from Europe and Asia ensured that it was virtually immune from large sea-borne invasions. The Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans proved far better barriers than even the forests and mountain ranges of […]
Of Allies And Adversaries: Donald Trump’s Principled Realism
By Josef Joffe I. U.S. Doctrines from Washington to Obama Foreign policy doctrines are as American as apple pie, and as old as the Republic. Start with George Washington’s Farewell Address: The “great rule” in dealing with other nations was to extend “our commercial relations” and “to have with them as little political connection as […]
A Lying Quartet
By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely has an intelligence apparatus engaged in systematic lying—and chronic deceit about its lying—both during and even after its tenure. Yet the Obama Administration’s four top security and intelligence officials time and again engaged in untruth, as if peddling lies was part of their job descriptions. So far none […]
The Progressive Octopus
Politics lost, culture won. By Victor Davis Hanson National Review It is the best and worst of times for progressives and liberals. Politically, their obsessions with identity politics and various racial and gender -isms and -ologies have emasculated the Democratic party: loss of governorships, state legislatures, the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme […]
The Strange Case of Confederate Cool
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Leftists love Johnnie Reb in movies and songs. But statues? Not so much. How exactly did the Left romanticize the Lost Cause Confederacy, and by extension its secession and efforts to preserve slavery? To use a shopworn phrase, “It’s complicated.”