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 […]
Equal by Catastrophe
By Victor Davis Hanson//Inference Review The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel Princeton University Press, 528 pp., USD$35. In his new book, Walter Scheidel offers a simple, though jarring, story of how past societies struggled with inequality. The Great Leveler is a […]
The Fire And Fury Of Presidents
by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Image credit:Barbara Kelley “We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals.” —Barack Obama, April 2016 The media recently went ballistic over President Trump’s impromptu promises of “fire and fury” in reply to the latest North Korean threats—and even more so when he later doubled down under […]
The Double Standard in the Progressive War against the Dead
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Will Progressives erase the history of their racist heroes, or only their racist enemies? Much of the country has demanded the elimination of references to, and images of, people of the past — from Christopher Columbus to Robert E. Lee — who do not meet our evolving […]
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From An Angry Reader: Angry Reader Southern Poverty Law Center: Cf: (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/08/22/american-freedom-alliance-event-blames-immigrants-california’s-destruction) “They keynote speaker for the event was Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institute (sic) fellow and author of Mexifornia, a book that romanticizes the California of old, when whites were a large majority of the state’s population. Davis Hanson (sic) talked about […]
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From An Angry Reader: Dear Prof. Hanson, I read your analysis of Trump’s electoral prospects with some interest: https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/14/anti-trump-bourbons-learning-forgetting-nothing-time-2020/ Since I’m a centrist Democrat, I will emulate your advice about Trump’s tweets – namely, I will ignore the barb-filled bromides you level against Democrats. (Which may greatly satisfy you and/or your audience emotionally, but […]
Our War against Memory
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The new abolitio memoriae Back to the Future Romans emperors were often a bad lot — but usually confirmed as such only in retrospect. Monsters such as Nero, of the first-century A.D. Julio-Claudian dynasty, or the later psychopaths Commodus and Caracalla, were flattered by toadies when alive […]
The Silliest Generation
By Victor Davis Hanson| American Greatness Every generation, in its modesty, used to think the prior one was far better. Tom Brokaw coined “The Greatest Generation” to remind Americans of what our fathers endured during the Depression and World War II—with the implicit message that we might not have been able to do what they […]
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From An Angry Reader: I have heard your act numerous times, mostly on the John Bachelor show, and I find it tiresome. You really need to spend more time on your “idyllic” farm and not venture out into reality. Times change, places change, and people change, but you will not change or cause […]
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From An Angry Reader: If you publish my letter on your website, it may best be placed in the “Angry Reader” category. I only agree with you 10 percent of the time, but I’m not angry. You are one of the two or three best conservative commentators, in my view. Three questions and one observation: […]
Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Progressives forget their history of breaking up mega-corporations as they lionize tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook. Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 […]
The Anti-Trump Bourbons: Learning and Forgetting Nothing in Time for 2020
By Victor Davis Hanson| American Greatness Just seven months into Donald Trump’s administration we are already bombarded with political angling and speculations about the 2020 presidential race. No one knows in the next three years what can happen to a volatile Trump presidency or his psychotic enemies, but for now such pronouncements of doom seem […]
Is There Still a Conservative Foreign Policy?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Trump did not create the divide in the GOP policy world — he exposed it. The Trump victory and the Republican establishment’s mostly negative reaction to it have in matters of foreign policy called into question who is conservative, who not — and whether the old ideological rubrics […]
North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with NeverTrumpers
Victor Davis Hanson on the North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with Never-Trumpers By The Editors August 11, 2017 American Greatness Victor Davis Hanson returned to the “Seth and Chris Show” to discuss how North Korea became a crisis, what China’s role is, how the United States can reassert itself in Asia, and why […]
Is California Cracking Up?
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review With poor education, a budget deficit, and crumbling infrastructure, Californians shouldn’t be focused on idealistic social programs. Corporate profits at California-based transnational corporations such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are hitting record highs. California housing prices from La Jolla to Berkeley along the Pacific Coast can […]