From An Angry Reader: Dear Daniel Longo Mr Hanson, we can only thank you for the correct verbosity and non overuse of the word anemic, as any student of creative writing or freshman English would appreciate the lesson in your overly wordy presentation; problem is, and this seems frequently to escape your need to be […]
Columbus Day: Melodrama or Tragedy?
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Campuses and Western critics in the last half-century have turned a once risk-taking and heroic Christopher Columbus into an evil emissary of disease and destruction. History is now seen as one-dimensional melodrama in which our contemporary duty is to pick sinners and […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson, I read your opinion piece in Newsweek and wanted to respond. I wish you’d included numbers, information on programs and systems, budget levels, and other trends, rather than just a few quotes. Funding within the DoD always fluctuates, given whatever is the shiny new toy of the moment (it […]
The Glass House of the NFL
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The league’s national significance is rapidly diminishing, due to hypocrisy and hyper-politicization in a once-loved American establishment. The National Football League is a glass house that was cracking well before Donald Trump’s criticism of players who refuse to stand during the national anthem. The NFL earned […]
Read this new essay by my colleague Dr Paul Gregory. http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/353834-for-now-trump-dossier-creates-more-questions-than-answers#bottom-story-socials
Are Wars Caused by Accidents?
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review History shows that a lack of deterrence, not loose rhetoric, spurs aggression. As tensions mount with North Korea, fears arise that President Trump’s tit-for-tat bellicose rhetoric with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un might lead to miscalculations — and thus an accidental war that could have been prevented. […]
How Silicon Valley Turned Off the Left and Right
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review After years of regulation immunity and radical profiteering, Silicon Valley mega-corporations are alienating their friends on both sides of the political aisle. When Left and Right finally agree on something, watch out: The unthinkable becomes normal. So it is with changing attitudes toward Silicon Valley. […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: Dear Mr. Hanson, I’m a black Ivy-League educated liberal raised in NC and something in me snapped last week. Have no fear, I’m still in the liberal camp, but it perturbs me greatly to see all the hoopla over Confederate memorials. This is so not important on the list of what […]
VDH Ultra
From An Angry Reader: Dear Professor Hanson, You are a hypocrite. You endlessly, in your writings and talks, decry people who say ‘if it ain’t perfect it ain’t good’, and yet you constantly moan about Obama just because he ‘wasn’t perfect’ and did some crooked things. You, sir, are a hypocrite. You could at least […]
Two First Quarter Cheers For Trump’s Principled Realism
by Robert G. Kaufman//Strategika Image credit: Poster Collection, US 05889, Hoover Institution Archives. The content and trajectory of Donald Trump’s foreign policy have defied the expectations of many of his supporters as well as his critics across the political spectrum. The President has moved a long way from his campaign positions of denigrating the […]
The Need For Missile Defense
by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas America’s great advantage when it entered world affairs after the Civil War was that its distance from Europe and Asia ensured that it was virtually immune from large sea-borne invasions. The Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans proved far better barriers than even the forests and mountain ranges of […]
Of Allies And Adversaries: Donald Trump’s Principled Realism
By Josef Joffe I. U.S. Doctrines from Washington to Obama Foreign policy doctrines are as American as apple pie, and as old as the Republic. Start with George Washington’s Farewell Address: The “great rule” in dealing with other nations was to extend “our commercial relations” and “to have with them as little political connection as […]
A Lying Quartet
By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Rarely has an intelligence apparatus engaged in systematic lying—and chronic deceit about its lying—both during and even after its tenure. Yet the Obama Administration’s four top security and intelligence officials time and again engaged in untruth, as if peddling lies was part of their job descriptions. So far none […]
The Progressive Octopus
Politics lost, culture won. By Victor Davis Hanson National Review It is the best and worst of times for progressives and liberals. Politically, their obsessions with identity politics and various racial and gender -isms and -ologies have emasculated the Democratic party: loss of governorships, state legislatures, the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme […]
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 […]