How Did Shane End Up?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In director George Stevens’s classic 1953 Western, Shane, a mysterious stranger and gunfighter in buckskin with a violent past, rides into the middle of the late-1880s Wyoming range wars between cattle barons and homestead farmers. The community-minded farmers may have the law on their side, but the open-range cattlemen […]
The Costs of Presidential Candor
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Predictably, Donald Trump was attacked both by the establishment and the media as “crude,” “unpresidential,” and “gratuitous” for a recent series of blunt and graphic statements on a variety of current policies. Oddly, the implied charge this time around was not that Trump makes up stuff, but that he […]
Did 1968 Win the Culture War?
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Fifty years ago this year, the ’60s revolution sought to overturn American customs, traditions, ideology, and politics. The ’60s radicals eventually grew older, cut their hair, and joined the establishment. Most thought their revolution had fizzled out in the early 1970s without much effect, as Americans returned to “normal.” […]
The Mad, Mad Meditations of Monsieur Macron
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Almost everything French president Emmanuel Macron has said recently on the topic of foreign affairs, the United States, and nationalism and patriotism is silly. He implicitly rebukes Donald Trump for praising the idea of nationalism as a creed in which citizens of sovereign nations expect their leaders to put […]
Even California Cannot Defy Nature Forever
Victor Davis Hanson // City Journal California has been clouded under a blanket of smoke for weeks. Stanford University, where I work, sent students and faculty home early for Thanksgiving. The campus is more than 200 miles southwest of the 150,000-acre Camp Fire that just incinerated the Sierra Nevada foothill town of Paradise, and yet the […]
The Progressive Synopticon
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness In the post-election aftermath, Republicans are wondering about how they can capture that missing 2-5 percent of the electorate that lost them the House of Representatives. Could they pry away 40 percent of the institutionalized Democratic Latino vote on delivery of a full-employment economy of rising wages? Can they […]
Strategika Issue 55: The Structure of World Power
The Structure of the Contemporary International System Please read a new essay by my colleague, Joseph Joffe in Strategika. A monopoly obtains when one firm is free to set prices and output while keeping ambitious newcomers out of the market. The best example is Standard Oil in the late 19th century. Ruthlessly undercutting competitors, the […]
GOP failed to fight Dem’s health-care scare tactics in midterms
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in The Hill Exit polls showed that health care was the top factor in motivating voters in the 2018 election. Democrat candidates successfully stoked fears that the Republicans would end coverage of pre-existing conditions. Despite repeated assurances from President Trump that pre-existing conditions were safe, almost 60 percent of voters said they trusted the […]
Maybe We Could Use a Civic Hippocratic Oath
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness A mob of protesters associated with the radical left-wing group Antifa swarmed the private residence of Fox News host Tucker Carlson on the night of Nov. 7. They yelled, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” The mob’s apparent aim was to catch Carlson’s […]
The Present American Revolution
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The revolution of 1776 sought to turn a colony of Great Britain into a new independent republic based on constitutionally protected freedom. It succeeded with the creation of the United States. The failed revolution of 1861, by a slave-owning South declaring its independence from the Union, sought to bifurcate […]
Progressive Politics Are Not Really Progressive
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Some progressives lamented the apparent defeat of radical progressive African-American candidates such as gubernatorial nominees Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Florida’s Andrew Gillum by blaming allegedly treasonous white women. Apparently white women did not vote sufficiently en bloc in accordance with approved notions of identity politics tribalism. According to this progressive orthodoxy, being […]
The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month—100 Years Ago
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The First World War ended 100 years ago this month on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Nearly 20 million people had perished since the war began on July 28, 1914. In early 1918, it looked as if the Central Powers—Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire—would win. Czarist […]
The Issues That Tore Us Apart
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Slavery was the issue that blew up America in 1861 and led to the Civil War. But for the 85 years between the nation’s founding and that war, it had seemed that somehow America could eventually phase out the horrific institution and do so largely peacefully. But by 1861, […]
CNN’s Existential War With Trump
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness It may be unwise or monotonous for President Trump to harp on CNN as a purveyor of “fake news.” And the constant refrain “enemy of the people” should not be used of a media outlet, even one as prejudicial as CNN. Yet Trump’s obsessions with CNN are largely reactive, […]
Angry Reader 11-02-2018
From An Angry Reader: Maybe if nazi apologists weren’t threatening to lock up their political enemies, or harassing them in their columns, we might see less polarization. Hi Victor, Nice to meet you. You wrote about me in March. Care to discuss? Or are you just up for the pot shots in your column? Melinda […]
When Laws Are Not Enforced, Anarchy Follows
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness What makes citizens obey the law is not always their sterling character. Instead, fear of punishment—the shame of arrest, fines or imprisonment—more often makes us comply with laws. Law enforcement is not just a way to deal with individual violators but also a way to remind society at large […]
The Electronic Committee of Public Safety
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Celebrities, politicians, and almost anyone of influence and wealth are always an incorrect or insensitive word away from the contemporary electronic guillotine. Regardless of the circumstances of their dilemmas, the beheaded rarely win sympathy from the mob. Coliseum-like roars of approval greet their abrupt change of fortune from their […]
Caravan Contradictions
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness A“caravan”—the euphemism for a current foot-army of more than 10,000 Central Americans—of would-be border crossers has now passed into Mexico. The marchers promise they will continue 1,000 miles and more northward to the U.S. border, despite warnings from President Trump that as unauthorized immigrants they will be turned away. […]
One Person can (In)validate the Steele Dossier and No One Seems to Bother
Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory in Ricochet Christopher Steele deliberately constructed his Trump dossier to be unverifiable. As long as it remains invalidated, it hangs over the Trump administration, even though the Clinton campaign was identified as its funder and Steele refused to vouch for it under oath. Apparently he did not express such […]
New Online Course at Hillsdale College
I will be teaching a new online course on World War II at Hillsdale College. See the following tweet for more information. Purchase a copy of The Second World Wars here. We have a new course coming in December on World War II taught by Victor Davis Hanson. Get Dr. Hanson’s latest book today […]