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 […]
VDH UltraAngry Reader 02-04-2019
From An Angry Reader: Are your fake-right fellows at NRO going to issue a grovelling apology to the CHILDREN they attacked at Covington Catholic High School? They were so eager to attack white children that they didn’t even bother watching the video before condemning them. This is why we hate you. ____________________________________________________________________ Dear Very Angry […]
Stalin Gets Another Hollywood Pass
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in Defining Ideas The December 17 Oscar short-listing of Marianna Yarovskaya’s Women of the Gulag in the documentary-short category created a stir in the world-wide Russian intellectual community. Yarovskaya, a dual citizen and a graduate of both Moscow University and USC, is the first Russian woman to be […]
Trump and the Latino Vote
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Trump would not have to change his policies to capture 40 to 50 percent of the Latino vote (which is quite different from “Latino” spokespeople on television and the Jorge Ramos crowd), as opposed to simply articulating them: 1) The “new” Democratic party not only show signs of a […]
Angry Reader 02-01-2019
From An Angry Reader: Dear Dr. Hanson, I am most definitely an “angry” reader, but in no way angry with your writing! I respect and value what you have to say, and read virtually everything you post on the Internet. Thank you for all you do. I address you because you always have a view […]
Much Has Changed for the Better Since 2016—Not That Trump Will Get Credit
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The news obsesses over the recent government shutdown, the latest Robert Mueller arrest and, of course, fake news—from the BuzzFeed Michael Cohen non-story to the smears of the Covington Catholic High School students. But aside from the weekly hysterias, the world has dramatically changed since 2016 in ways we […]
On Assimilation
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The idea of rapid assimilation, integration, intermarriage, and Americanization was once melting-pot clear. Immigrants arrived in the U.S. eager to find something better (whether economically, politically, culturally, or socially) than what they left behind. So they accepted the premise that the general core of American customs, traditions, and protocols, […]