Pigs on Two Legs Turn on Each Other
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Tennis great Martina Navratilova until recently had long been coronated as a social justice trailblazer. She was one of the first marquee celebrity athletes to come out as gay, and then to advocate lesbian issues in and out of sports. But suddenly the icon seems out of step with […]
For Kim, his regime ‘ain’t broke’ — so why fix it?
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in The Hill The agreement that President Donald Trump is offering Kim Jong Un carries uncertain rewards and considerable risk for Kim. Trump’s offer is based on the false assumption that Kim wants a prosperous country from which he and the people of North Korea can benefit. […]
California’s Rendezvous With Reality
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Californians brag that their state is the world’s fifth-largest economy. They talk as reverentially of Silicon Valley companies Apple, Facebook and Google as the ancient Greeks did of their Olympian gods. Hollywood and universities such as Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley are cited as permanent proof of the intellectual, aesthetic […]
The Establishment Goes Trump on China
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Read recent essays on China. Visit think-tank public symposia. Hear out military analysts. Talk with academics and media pundits. Listen to Silicon Valley grandees. Watch Senate speeches and politicians interview on television. The resulting new groupspeak is surreal. If one excises the word “Trump,” what follows is a seemingly […]
From Victor Davis Hanson:
For the record, I recently spoke with @NewYorker’s @IChotiner per his request for a discussion on my recent book. The published piece was “edited and condensed for clarity”; however, the editing was done so in a way that omits the chronological accuracy of our conversation and the vast majority of what was said, which I […]
Yes, ‘This Is America, 2019’
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness There have been so far about three general reactions to the concocted Jussie Smollett psychodrama. One, and the most common, has been apprehension that Smollett’s lies will discredit future real incidents of hate crimes against gays and minorities. This could be a legitimate concern, given the tensions within a […]
Survival at the White House
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review No one in Washington called Donald J. Trump a “god” (as journalist Evan Thomas in 2009 had suggested of Obama) when he arrived in January 2017. No one felt nerve impulses in his leg when Trump talked, as journalist Chris Matthews once remarked had happened to him after hearing […]
Changing Reality With Words
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The reinvention of vocabulary can often be more effective than any social protest movement. Malarial swamps can become healthy “wetlands.” Fetid “dumps” are often rebranded as green “landfills.” Global warming was once a worry about too much heat. It implied that man-made carbon emissions had so warmed the planet […]
The New Nihilism
Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution As the 2020 election nears, there is as yet no coherent Democratic response to the Trump agenda. If Trump himself is unpopular and polarizing, his agenda is for the most part in sync with a majority of Americans who like the 3% annualized GDP growth; near-record peacetime unemployment; record […]
The Strange Paradoxes of Our Age
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Modern prophets often say one thing and do another. Worse, they often advocate in the abstract as a way of justifying their doing the opposite in the concrete. The result is that contemporary culture abounds with the inexplicable — mostly because modern progressivism makes all sorts of race, class, […]
Autopsy of a Dead Coup
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The illegal effort to destroy the 2016 Trump campaign by Hillary Clinton campaign’s use of funds to create, disseminate among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed. So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the Trump […]
Area 45: The (Second) American Civil War? With Victor Davis Hanson
On the 210th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, some have suggested that United States faces a second “civil war” – a conflict over culture, economics, and world view. Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow, contrasts the hands dealt to Abraham Lincoln and Donald Trump. Listen to the interview here.
The Mythologies of ‘Joe Being Joe’ Biden
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Some polls put 76-year-old Joe Biden as the Democratic front-runner for the 2020 presidential election. There is certainly some logic to that reckoning. Biden has far more experience than any of his likely party rivals—36 years in the Senate, eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and two past […]
Merkel Salvages Nord Stream, But Is Putin Losing Russia’s Gas Monopoly?
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in Forbes The European Union took a first step with its February 8 vote towards turning Russia’s gas monopoly, Gazprom, from an instrument of Russian power politics into a regulated utility, deprived of its monopoly power. In an odd twist, Germany, the self-proclaimed guardian of European unity, […]
Strategika Issue 56: The Defense of Europe
European Defense Please read a new essay by my colleague, Angelo M. Codevilla in Strategika. Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question—Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?—is no longer meaningful as posed, because […]
Progressives Bearing Gifts
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Donald Trump in 2016 did not only run against the planted rumors of the fake Steele dossier, 90 percent negative media coverage, his own boisterous past, and the “Access Hollywood” tape. He also was campaigning against Hillary Clinton—and the nation’s quarter-century weariness with the Clinton scandals, crimes, money-grubbing, and […]
VDH UltraAngry Reader 02-05-2019
From An Angry Reader: You, sir, are a traitor, To call the FBI and the representatives of the United States “Bolsheviks” when the POTUS you seek to defend consistently lies about contacts with GRU officials; whose chief strategist Stephen Bannon claimed to be a Leninist because he was advocating the destruction of the establishment, you […]
Remodeling America
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review By mid 1793–4, the radical Jacobins had successfully completed their hijacking of the French Revolution. Jacobinism They openly enacted agendas that might have seemed impossible in the heady days of 1787. Long gone were the pretenses of the original idealism when the revolution abolished feudalism, issued the Declaration of […]
Progressives pulling a bait-and-switch with ‘Medicare for All’
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in The Hill Politicians are known to misrepresent themselves to get elected, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is supposed to be an exception. It is said that he has remained true to his socialist convictions through thick and thin. Surely, such a dedicated socialist can truthfully explain […]
How to Make It Home in California: Rules for the Modern Odysseus
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness I drove back from San Francisco not long ago to the rural San Joaquin Valley. It is only 200 miles. But in fact, it can feel like Odysseus trying to get back home to Ithaca from Troy. Walking to the car in San Francisco was an early morning obstacle […]