The Endless Ironies of Donald J. Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Pandemonium can be a revivifying purgative. Here are the ironies of Donald Trump as president. 1) For the Left (both Political and Media) The Left was mostly untroubled for eight years about the often unconstitutional abuses of Barack Obama — given that they saw their shared noble aims as […]
Mr. Nunes Went to Washington
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Devin Nunes is subpoenaing former Obama administration officials who may have played a role in inappropriate monitoring of the Trump transition team. Representative Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), the now-controversial chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is a bit different from what Washington expects in its politicians. He grew up […]
Remembering D-Day
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review’s “The Corner” D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in history since King Xerxes’ 480 BC combined sea and land descent into Greece. The Americans, especially General George Marshall, had wanted to invade France as early as spring 1943, still confident from their World War I experience that they could […]
It’s the Hypocrisy, Stupid
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Progressives go the full Jimmy Swaggart. Some concerned Democrats are worried that their party may have lost the key blue-wall states because of its elitism, manifested as disdain for Americans between the coasts. Perhaps emblematic of their worry is the strange metamorphosis of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns. In […]
VDH Ultra
06/06/17 From an Angry Reader: Dear Mr Hanson I am an independent who voted for John McCain as a write in Your op ed entitled Regime Change by Any Other Name is disappointing. POTUS has been involved in more demonstrable falsehoods than any President since Nixon He undermines the warnings that President Regan gave us […]
VDH Ultra
06/05/17 From an Angry Reader: From: Goofomatic Dear Sir, You may be a “classicist” and historian but you are clearly not a logician. Your reductive, simplistic polarizing nonsense may appeal to those disaffected and disenchanted by change but to others, like me, it reeks of divisive, defeatist drivel. Globalization is merely the hobgoblin you need […]
Trump… Our Claudius
By Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas The Roman Emperor Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54 AD, was never supposed to be emperor. He came to office at age 50, an old man in Roman times. Claudius succeeded the charismatic, youthful heartthrob Caligula—son of the beloved Germanicus and the “little boot” who turned out to […]
The Old German Problem
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review Germany’s negative attitude toward the U.S. long predates the rise of Trump. Berlin — Germans do not seem too friendly to Americans these days. According to a recent Harvard Kennedy School study of global media, 98 percent of German public television news portrays President Donald Trump negatively, making it […]
The Fusion Party
By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The Democrats are following the lead of the progressive media — together, they now form the anti-Trump brigade. Is there a Democratic-party alternative to President Trump’s tax plan? Is there a Democratic congressional proposal to stop the hemorrhaging and impending implosion of Obamacare? Do Democrats have some sort of […]
The Nightmares and the Realities of Never Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely in the last half-century have so many elite conservatives and intellectuals been so estranged both from a Republican administration and from those who voted for it—neither have they become so animated in their antipathy and disgust for a sitting president. During the 2016 election, and the current Trump […]
The Obamas and the Clinton Road to Perdition
By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Hillary and Bill Clinton were a proud, progressive power couple who came into big-time state politics on promises of promoting “fairness” and “equality.” It did not matter much that very little in their previous personal lives had matched such elevated rhetoric with concrete action. And so the ironies and […]
Has Globalism Gone Off the Rails?
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review The cult of multiculturalism is a paradox. Prague — The West that birthed globalization is now in an open revolt over its own offspring, from here in Eastern Europe to southern Ohio. About half of the population in Europe and the United States seems to want to go back to […]
What We Remember on Memorial Day
The obligation to honor the war dead has often conflicted with the need to make distinctions among them and their causes. By Victor Davis Hanson// Wall Street Journal A few years ago I was honored to serve briefly on the American Battle Monuments Commission, whose chief duty is the custodianship of American military cemeteries abroad. […]
VDH UltraAngry Reader
From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson, Normally, I would find a credentialed resume such as yours quite impressive and interesting, however, the deluded and incredulous nonsense I witnessed you spouting on FOX News with Tucker Carlson, that Russian involvement with the Trump campaign exists only as a ‘trumped up’ Dem Big Lie to destroy a […]
Regime Change by Any Other Name?
by Victor Davis Hanson Truth or consequences? Obama skated for far worse misdeeds. Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin […]
Challenges And Opportunities Facing The Trump Administration’s China Policy
by Miles Maochun Yu Strategika In general, America profoundly lacks interest in communist ideology, a phenomenon Karl Marx would have called “the poverty of ideology.” As a result, our China policy by and large has failed to take into sufficient consideration the primal forces that motivate Chinese communist leadership in foreign and domestic affairs. This […]
An Optimistic U.S. Foreign Policy
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas History teaches us that during war and international crises, just when things were looking most grim, they were oftentimes already getting better. Consider the dark days of World War II. Seventy-five years ago, 1942 started out as an awful year. The United States and the British were still […]
A China Policy That Works—For America
by Gordon G. Chang Image credit: Poster Collection, CC 111, Hoover Institution Archives. Last March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson attempted to set American policy toward China for the next 50 years. Washington in its dealings with the Chinese state, he said, would be guided by the principles of “non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and […]
VDH UltraFrom an Angry Reader
DR HANSON. TRUMP TRAITOR IS A RUSSIAN SPY. I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HIM IN JAIL WITH THE ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION. THE TRUMP JOKE PRESIDENCY IS GOING DOWN IN FLAMES. TRUMP FIRED COMEY TO CONCEAL HIS RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS. DEMOCRATS WILL BE IN POWER FOR 30 YEARS AFTER THE TRUMP DEBACLE. -HEIN Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply: Dear […]
Lessons from the Battle of Midway
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review America’s culture of spontaneity, flexibility, and improvisation helped win the battle. Seventy-five years ago (June 4-7, 1942), the astonishing American victory at the Battle of Midway changed the course of the Pacific War. Just six months after the catastrophic Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. crushed the […]