About Those Press Conferences
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review President Trump seems increasingly ambivalent about the utility of the daily and sometime marathon press conferences. He should be — and for reasons besides just their length and frequency. First, Trump gets bogged down into long, back-and-forth jousts with the touché Washington press corps. His impromptu skills, honed both as […]
Our ‘Corona Project’
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Whatever we eventually call it, there is a coronavirus “project.” ChemotherapyIt’s a race to identify the origins, nature, and danger of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the best way to treat, vaccinate against, and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 disease — all without destroying America to save it. However the […]
Our Virus Is a Violent Teacher
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Before this virus has passed, those of the New York Symphony, like the defeated Redcoats at proverbial Yorktown, will be playing the real “The World Turned Upside Down”: And then strange motions will abound.Yet let’s be content, and the times lament,you see the world turn’d upside down. Before the […]
Pandemic Is but One of America’s Security Concerns
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The world was a dangerous place before — and will be after — the coronavirus pandemic. While Americans debate the proper ongoing response to the virus and argue over the infection’s origins, nature, and trajectory, they may have tuned out other, often just as scary, news. Many Americans are irate […]
‘It’s a Free Country, Brother’
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In this current crisis, the longest if not the first complete shutdown in U.S. history, the freedoms of American democracy are being tested in ways we scarcely ever imagined. Out of nowhere little Napoleonic governors arise to enact decrees prohibiting gardening or strolling on an empty beach — decrees that […]
An Informed Public Will Always Decide on the Virus
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review A number of NRO writers have offered today some valuable cautionary data about antibody testing and herd immunity. Certainly, one cannot yet anticipate what ongoing and planned antibody testing in particular areas might reveal. Perhaps based on anecdotal new reports and a few samplings from abroad, we might expect […]
A Little More Light in a Vast Sea of Viral Darkness?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Almost every day, more studies, strange data, anecdotal reporting, and theories emerge about the virus, many of which could change existing conventional wisdom. In discussions about the nature of any existing seroprevalence in California, and about how even apparently small percentages of those already infected in the population could radically alter rates […]
Suppression of Expression Obscures the Truth About the Virus
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Americans are acquainted with predictable but ultimately failed progressive efforts to suppress free expression by preemptive invective and politically correct finger-pointing. To believe that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers revealed too many contradictions, too many lacunae, too many episodes of timely amnesia, and too many unsubstantiated accusations […]
Angry Reader 04-20-2020
From An Angry Reader: Professor Hanson, I am not really angry. I apologize for the subject line but I guessed that it would get my email read. My primary complaint….. Your last “angry reader” entry is 2/28/20. I know you are busy, but some of us would love it (and buy it) if you had […]
Our New Post-Virus Lexicon
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Antibody badges = surely a German import Antibody tests = It seems that nobody tests. AOC = See, emissions went down during shelter in place. Best and Brightest = being wrong on modeling, human infectiousness, test-kit availability, travel bans, masks, and anti-malarial drugs, without ever having to say your’re sorry […]
Yes, California Remains Mysterious — Despite the Weaponization of the Debate
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review California is touchy, and yet still remains confused, about incomplete data showing that the 40-million-person state, as of Sunday, April 12, reportedly had 23,777 cases of residents who have tested posted for the COVID-19 illness. The number of infected by the 12th includes 674 deaths, resulting in a fatality rate […]
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 […]