The Great German Meltdown
Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling. Germans feel aggrieved. Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes. And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism. Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939—and increasingly in […]
U.S. Has Leverage in Dealings with Iran and North Korea
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review America and our allies have several ways to deter the rogue nations. There has been a lot of misinformation about both getting out of the so-called Iran deal and getting into a new North Korean agreement. The two situations may be connected, but not in the way we are […]
The Trump Rationale
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review His voters knew what they were getting, and most support him still. Why exactly did nearly half the country vote for Donald Trump? Why also did the arguments of Never Trump Republicans and conservatives have marginal effect on voters? Despite vehement denunciations of the Trump candidacy from many pundits on […]
How Democracies End: A Bureaucratic Whimper
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness One strange trait of the die hard NeverTrump Republicans and progressives is their charge that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Trump, as is his wont, says a lot of outrageous and weird things. But it is hard in his 16 months of rule to find any proof that […]
The Miraculous Image Rehabilitation of Former Republican Presidents
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review It’s an evergreen media strategy for disparaging the sitting GOP executive. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, many in the media considered him a dangerous extremist. Some reporters warned that Reagan courted nuclear war and would tank the economy. He certainly was not like the gentleman Republican […]
The Nature of Progressive Insensitivity
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Why do so many famous social-justice crusaders turn out to be racist and sexist? Former vice president Joe Biden is back in the news yet again. For a second time, he seems surprised that poor residents of the inner city are capable of doing sophisticated jobs: We don’t […]
Why Trump Is A President Like No Other
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Conrad Black’s erudite biography of Donald J. Trump is different from the usual in mediis rebus accounts of first-year presidents. He avoids the Bob Woodward fly-on-the-wall unattributed anecdote, and “they say” gossip mongering. Nor is the book a rush-to-publish product from former insiders of the Trump campaign or administration. Instead, Black, a prolific […]
5-09-18 Angry Reader
From An Angry Reader: Wow. You are a moron. How is it, that Comey’s memos, which were his that he wrote, as an FBI agent, which were still his, once he was fired from his FBI job, by an obstructing president, “leaking of classified material”?? How can the man’s own memos, that he wrote, which […]
America The Weird
Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution On first glance, America does not seem that exceptional. Like China and Russia, it is a superpower. And, also like those countries, it is huge territorially. It shares many affinities with Europe. And, like China, Japan and Germany, the United States is an economic powerhouse. And yet, it is […]
The Trump Land Mine
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency. Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the […]
05-02-18 Angry Reader
From An Angry Reader: Fake Claims. WE HAVE A CONGENITAL LIAR AS A PRESIDENT. HE HAS SCAMMED THE US WITH TAXES AND BANKRUPTCY. HE IS A SERIAL ADULTERER AND SEXUAL PREDATOR. EVEN AS I TEXT HIS BUSINESSES ARE PROFITING FROM MY HARD EARNED AND MEAGER INCOME. HE IS A NARCISSIST AND EGOTIST. AND YOU CRITICIZE […]
If Only Hillary Had Won . . .
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Leakers and lawbreakers rewarded with Clinton-administration jobs — and the American public none the wiser about deep-state corruption There are lots of possible counterfactuals to think about had Hillary Clinton won the presidency as all the experts had predicted. The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic […]
The Double Standards of the Mueller Investigation
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The more Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he ignores the actual lawbreakers. The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck. In one direction, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that President Donald Trump’s campaign team might have done wrong […]
Strategika Issue 50: Pakistan’s Partnership with the United States
The United States and Pakistan: Frenemies on the Brink Please read a new essay by my colleague from the Military History Working Group, Peter R. Mansoor in Strategika. For much of its short seventy-year history, Pakistan has managed to thoroughly mismanage its strategic relationships with great power patrons, regional competitors, and non-state clients. It has […]
Rough Riders
Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution America has always enjoyed two antithetical traditions in its political and military heroes. The preferred style is the reticent, sober, and competent executive planner as president or general, from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter. George Marshall remains the epitome of understated and quiet competence. The alternative and more controversial sorts are the loud, often reckless and […]
What Randa Jarrar Teaches
The following piece is by my colleague, Craig Bernthal. Since Randa Jarrar fired off her disgusting tweet about “the witch,” Barbara Bush, being a racist, I, like other members of the Fresno State English Department, have received about a dozen emails asking, alternatively, how we could have participated in hiring her, and then, what we would […]
Revolution and Worse to Come
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Resistance wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block. On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer confidence, and in some, Trump […]
Respect Unearned
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Washington’s self-righteous establishmentarians talk of professionalism when they act unprofessionally. They refer at length to their intellectual and professional pedigrees when they prove incompetent. And they cite their morality and ethics when they possess neither. And then, adding insult to injury, when the public expresses abhorrence at their behavior, […]
When to Wage War, and How to Win: A Guide
Victor Davis Hanson // New York Times What is “grand strategy” as opposed to simple strategy? The term is mostly an academic one. It denotes encompassing all the resources that a state can focus — military, economic, political and cultural — to further its own interests in a global landscape. “On Grand Strategy,” by John Lewis […]
Trump Seeks Middle Ground in Foreign-Policy Balancing Act
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The best course is to use overwhelming military force only when the interests or credibility of America and its allies are on the line. Was the latest round of airstrikes in Syria a one-time hit to restore deterrence and stop the future use of chemical weapons, or was it […]