The Strange Case of Confederate Cool
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Leftists love Johnnie Reb in movies and songs. But statues? Not so much. How exactly did the Left romanticize the Lost Cause Confederacy, and by extension its secession and efforts to preserve slavery? To use a shopworn phrase, “It’s complicated.”
The NFL House of Cards
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The Corner The problem with the NFL is not just Donald Trump, but the greater dilemma that the league’s reason to be has become predicated on a labyrinth of lies. The majority of the viewing audience is not young, hip, and loyal as hyped, but, even if fading, still […]
Allegations of Foreign Election Tampering Have Always Rung Hollow
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Blaming foreign influence on an election loss has become a habitual practice for unsuccessful presidential candidates, but such allegations have never rung true. On her current book tour, Hillary Clinton is still blaming the Russians (among others) for her unexpected defeat in last year’s presidential election. She remains sold […]
From an Angry Reader: Dear VDH, I faithfully read and enjoy your many commentaries on current events. But surely, as a historian, you should realize that Dred Scott was rightly decided, as I thought even in my youth. Even my reliably left-leaning constitutional-law professor colleague, who was shocked by my condemnation of Wickard v. Filburn, […]
What If South Korea Acted Like North Korea?
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review If it threatened to destroy its neighbor — China — the neighbor would act. Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down. Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953.
Diversity Can Spell Trouble
By Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas America is experiencing a diversity and inclusion conundrum—which, in historical terms, has not necessarily been a good thing. Communities are tearing themselves apart over the statues of long-dead Confederate generals. Controversy rages over which slogan—“Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”—is truly racist. Antifa street thugs clash with white […]
Beware of Narratives and Misinformation
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Narratives surrounding the DNC hack & Antifa reveal media bias and government bureaucracy at their worst. U.S. intelligence agencies said Russia was responsible for hacking Democratic National Committee e-mail accounts, leading to the publication of about 20,000 stolen e-mails on WikiLeaks. But that finding was reportedly […]
A Little DACA Honesty
The Corner- The one and only. // National Review By Victor Davis Hanson It is surreal to look at more than a dozen clips of Barack Obama in non-campaign mode prior to 2012 assuring the country (“I am not king”) that he simply could not usurp the power of the Congress and by fiat illegally […]
VDH Ultra
09/15/2017 From An Angry Reader: Angry Reader Sam Davidson Victor, I enjoy reading your articles in the National Review. I never understood why this country has statues that honor people that took up arms against the United States. I do not think there are any statues honoring Lord Cornwallis, General Santa Ana, Ludendorf, Tojo, or […]
VDH Ultra
09/14/2017 From An Angry Reader: Angry Reader Wes Bridgeman Dear Mr. Hanson, My father, Lt. Col. William Bridgeman (Retired), sent me the attached links and quotes that I would like to bring to your attention. This features the words of the figures themselves (Forrest and Lincoln), and I will let them speak for themselves. Please […]
Throwing Away the Russian Card
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The love-hate relation with Putin, from the Obama-era red reset button to the current collusion hysteria, has been a disaster. “They [the North Koreans] will eat grass but will not stop their program as long as they do not feel safe.”— Vladimir Putin, Beijing, China, September 5, 2017 China […]
VDH Ultra
09/13/17 From An Angry Reader: Angry Reader Rich Laughlin Mr. Hanson, please try using sentences with less words. Most recently, I read one of your articles that had a sentence with 44 words. Other sentences in the same article were almost as bad. Really. You are loosing me with those lengthy paragraphs that contain […]
VDH Ultra
09/12/17 From An Angry Reader: Angry Reader Bob McCarthy For one who loves to cast aspersions on political incorrectness in the use of words, maybe you should ‘splain to your readers your use of the term “Mexifornia” in decrying the Mexican “takeover” of California, as racist a piece as I’ve ever read. I find it […]
Virtual Virtue
By Victor Davis Hanson//American Greatness It is not healthy for a society to live two lives that are antithetical, as America has been doing in recent decades. Disillusionment with government and popular culture arises at anger over two entirely different realities. One truth is politically correct and voiced on the news and by the government. […]
Two Resistances
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The quiet resistance — the one without black masks and clubs — is the more revolutionary force, and it transcends race, class, and gender. After the election of Donald Trump, there arose a self-described “Resistance.” It apparently posed as a decentralized network of progressive activist groups dedicated to derailing […]
Linguistic McCarthyism
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Most Americans recoil from the statue-smashers and name-changers. ‘The Bard,” William Shakespeare, had a healthy distrust of the sort of mob hysteria typified by our current epidemics of statue-busting and name-changing. In Shakespeare’s tragedy Julius Caesar — a story adopted from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives — a frenzied Roman mob, […]
Calculating The Risk Of Preventive War
by Max Boot Strategika The issue of “preemptive” war is more in the news now than at any time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The impetus, of course, is the rapid development of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, which will soon give Pyongyang the capability to hit any American city with a […]
Preemptive Strikes and Preventive Wars: A Historian’s Perspective
By Barry Strauss Strategika Preventive wars and preemptive strikes are both risky business. A preventive war is a military, diplomatic, and strategic endeavor, aimed at an enemy whom one expects to grow so strong that delay would cause defeat. A preemptive strike is a military operation or series of operations to preempt an enemy’s ability […]
Preemptive Strike Or Preventive War?
by Williamson Murray // Strategika Image credit:Poster Collection, US 1696, Hoover Institution Archives. With the troubles bubbling over on the Korean Peninsula, as the North Korean regime approaches possession of nuclear weapons and missiles capable of striking the United States, two words, preemptive and preventive, have gained increasing currency. While similar in meaning, their […]
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Partisan conflict is not new, nor is GOP internal dissent. What’s new is in-fighting among the elites. The Left-Wing Trump Haters About a third of the Democratic party (15–20 percent perhaps of the electorate?) loathes Trump, from reasons of the trivial to the fundamental. The hard-leftist […]