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 […]
China Boomeranging
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Sometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously […]
Remembering Who Is Keeping Us Alive
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review I tried an experiment yesterday. I went to four large supermarkets in Fresno County, the nation’s largest and most diverse food-producing county, and looked at both checkouts and shelf space. The two big sellers seemed to be cleansers of all sorts (bleach wipes were all sold out, for example) […]
America In a New Upside-Down World
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The world is changing at a pace not seen in years, and it is no time to become captives of fear despite the real and immediate dangers we face. The coronavirus and the ensuing panic, at least for a few more weeks, have stagnated the economy and scared global […]
The Great Coronavirus War Is upon Us
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Try this thought experiment. Envision the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as a living, breathing enemy — which, of course, is exactly what it is. But imagine for a moment that we are in real war with a cognizant, thinking, and clever enemy whose sole reason to live is to […]
The Portentous Biden Blowup
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Joe Biden lost it again on the campaign trail at an auto plant being built in Detroit, and in a now familiar script. His blowup had all his characteristic theatrics of prior such encounters. There were the shouting at blue-collar workers, the he-man, corn-pop-like braggadocio, the ad hominem expletives […]
Iran Doesn’t Understand ‘Maximum Pressure’
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Iran has misjudged not only the toxic effects of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions on the regime but also the entire psychology of U.S. policy toward Iran. The result is that Iranian unemployment is soaring, its gross domestic product is tanking, inflation is raging, oil prices are crashing, and […]
California Is a Cruel Medieval State
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance—gender or race—has returned to the premodern values of […]
What We Don’t Know about the Coronavirus Is What Scares Us
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The recent spread of the coronavirus is causing a global panic. Our shared terror arises not so much from the death toll of the new flu-like disease — more than 3,000 people have died worldwide — but from what we don’t know about it. Experts at least agree that the […]
Globalization Bleeding
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review By the early 21st century, cosmopolitans were gushing that high-tech, instant communications, transnational agencies and agreements, free-flowing capital, international corporations, and a new eerily uniform global elite had, finally, made nationalism, borders, and even the nation-state itself all irrelevant. Nationalism was apparently relegated to dustbin of history, as we hit […]
New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person. Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid—even amid his worst scandals and dangerous policies. […]
Angry Reader 02-28-20
From An Angry Reader: Subject: Gray Matter Your articles are so offensively lacking in context, thoughtfulness, and reflection on history–basically simpleminded attack ads– that I am going to erase the National Review’s bookmark from my browser. And there is no case for Trump any more than there was a case for Mussolini. ———————————————————————————————————— Dear Angry […]
Trump’s Chances for Reelection Are Looking Better and Better
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Donald Trump has at least five strong historical arguments for his reelection. One, he is an incumbent. Incumbent presidents have won 14 of 19 reelection bids since 1900. The few who lost did not enjoy positive approval ratings. In a Gallup poll from earlier this month, Trump enjoyed his highest […]