Is Trump Really Crazy?
By Victor Davis Hanson| January 8, 2018 American Greatness Michael Wolff’s sensational exposé of the supposed chaos of the Trump White House is no doubt largely a mix of fantasy, exaggeration, and some accidental truth. The postmodernist author even admits that his own methodologies defy verification, and so leave it up to the reader to […]
Criticisms of Comey and Mueller Aren’t ‘Character Assassination’
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In his efforts to refute Charles Cooke’s recent exposé of Jennifer Rubin, I was surprised to see David Frum, in passing, attack my Hoover colleague, legal scholar Peter Berkowitz (a “Sean Hannity–style character assassination of James Comey and Special Counsel Robert […]
The Great Experiment
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review We’ve gone from hard left, under Obama, to hard right, under Trump. Judge the ideologies by their results. Most new administrations do not really completely overturn their predecessors’ policies to enact often-promised ideologically driven change. The 18-year span of Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower to John […]
A New Year’s Toast To The Old Breed
by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas The late World War II combat veteran and memoirist E. B. Sledge enshrined his generation of fellow Marines as “The Old Breed” in his gripping account of the hellish battle of Okinawa. Now, most of those who fought in World War II are either dead or in their nineties. […]
Civilization’s ‘Darkest Hour’ Hits the Silver Screen
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review A masterful new film shows how Churchill saved the world from Nazi Germany in May of 1940. The new film Darkest Hour offers the diplomatic side to the recent action movie Dunkirk. The story unfolds with the drama of British prime minister Winston Churchill’s assuming power during […]
Nagging Questions for the Special Counselors
The Corner The one and only By Victor Davis Hanson//National Review 1) If the FISA Court orders to explore the purported Trump-Russian collusion were predicated on phony Steele/Fusion GPS documents and suppositions that prove largely untrue (Comey himself testified under oath that he could not verify their contents), then are subsequent transcripts of court-approved […]
The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review To everything, there is a season. 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 […]
A New History of the Second World War
The New Yorker Book Review By Joshua Rothman December 23, 2017 Photograph by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty Victor Davis Hanson’s “The Second World Wars” is not a chronological retelling of the conflict but a high-altitude, statistics-saturated overview of the dynamics and constraints that shaped it. In 1936, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Berlin to […]
Christmas Lessons from California
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California. Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people. In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways […]
The Internet Executioner
by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Image credit: Barbara Kelley In the pre-Internet age, newspaper and television reporters would need clearance from their nosy managing editors to investigate a breaking scandal or firing. Additional journalists then would go to work uncovering facts and details. There were, to be sure, feeding frenzies and misinformation in the […]
VDH Ultra
From Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland So…after one year in office, Trump’s biggest (AND ONLY!) accomplishment is that he is King of Twitter? You must be very proud. By the way, how’s that Trumpcare thing workin’ out for ya? Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Idiot. Moron. Buffoon. Simpleton. Test Tube Baby! ______________________________________________________________________________ Dear Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland, […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: Dear Mr. Hanson, I just finished your article about Trump’s tweets and it has moved me to ask a question. I was wondering if quite possibly, you’ve lost your mind? You write as if his tweets are harmless and of no consequence when they have caused the North Korean situation to […]
Is Trump an Island?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides. No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . . And […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: Victor David Hanson, you’d sweep the table. Your post-tweet Presidency column entry tops all possible contenders in its unique blend of so-bad-its-good upending suspension of logic and unearned laudatory excess that the academy is bereft of adequate means of expression to honor its achievements. Perhaps its heaps and heaps of praises […]
The War of Wars Analyzed to the Third Decimal Place
Santa’s Book Bag By Larry Thornberry // The American Spectator A magnificent contribution from Victor Davis Hanson. The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won By Victor Davis Hanson (Basic Books, 652 pages, $40) Yes, Virginia, after thousands of books, lectures, debates, veteran memoirs, and documentaries, there is still something […]
Disruptive Politics in the Trump Era: Yuval Levin or Victor Davis Hanson?
By John Fonte| December 15, 2017 American Greatness The crucial question for the American Right today, as it has been for at least 60 years, is: What is the nature of its confrontation with modern liberalism? Is it a policy argument over how to achieve the common goals of liberal democracy? Are we working to […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: It’s a good thing I’m 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away from you. You can take that any way you want. Daniel Weir Washington, DC ___________________________________________ Dear Angry Reader Daniel Weir, Making personal threats against someone with whom you disagree is not good for the soul. […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: You live in an alternate universe, silly clown, silly institute, silly magazine. But the article was funny so congrats. Sincerely, Bruce Patten ___________________________________________ Dear Angry Reader Bruce Patten, I congratulate you on your succinctness and your use of anaphora (“silly”…”silly”…”silly”) but otherwise your note is simply personal invective and […]
Why Trump Should Consider a Post-Twitter Presidency
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review By now, the president’s record has transcended his social-media idiosyncrasies. Almost every supposedly informed prediction about President Donald Trump’s compulsive Twitter addiction has so far proved wrong. He did not tweet his way out of the Republican nomination. Spontaneous social-media messaging did not lose Trump the […]
One Mueller-Investigation Coincidence Too Many
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review Stacking the deck with anti-Trump staffers is proving to be a really bad idea. Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work — and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists, who are without the innate […]