VDH Ultra
02/23/17 From an Angry Reader: Prof. Hanson: First, as an aggressive moderate, I believe any talk of California secession is simply a waste of time and idiotic. But saying “California” supports secession is equally absurd. One third of the population reflects nothing close to a majority, not to mention the small poll sampling, and it […]
Trump’s Team of Sort of Rivals
The Corner The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The selection of the multitalented and independent thinker Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster as national-security adviser is inspired and reifies Trump’s past statements that he likes outspoken and independent advisers. McMaster is best known for his counterinsurgency work in Iraq, but prior to […]
VDH Ultra
02/22/17 From an Angry Reader: VDH, Read your piece LA Times this a.m., then another in National Review. Big, sweeping rhetorical claims and attendant slamming- mostly about progressives trajectory. Your type of policy wonk rap is common and toothless. Evidence specific? Not. Easy to see why you’re just a fellow. DeToqueville…read his work recently? CRD […]
Seven Days in February
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trumps’ critics, left and right, aim to bring about the cataclysm they predicted. A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Something far less […]
VDH Ultra
02/21/17 From an Angry Reader: Victor David Hanson’s latest rant, “Obama left the president with monstrous mess (2/17),” is in its unmitigated slam at our “last president” not the least bit surprising, both in its orientation as well as in its patent bias. While it’s a fool’s errand to try to defend much of Obama’s efforts in foreign affairs, […]
The End Of Identity Politics
by Victor Davis Hanson//via Defining Ideas (Hoover Institution) Image credit: Barbara Kelley Who are we? asked the liberal social scientist Samuel Huntington over a decade ago in a well-reasoned but controversial book. Huntington feared the institutionalization of what Theodore Roosevelt a century earlier had called “hyphenated Americans.” A “hyphenated American,” Roosevelt scoffed, “is not […]
The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration’s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle East. What makes the Middle […]
The Deplorables Shout Back
by Victor Davis Hanson//American Greatness Struggling rural America proved disenchanted with the country’s trajectory into something like a continental version of Belgium or the Netherlands: borderless, with a global rather than national sense of self; identity politics in lieu of unity and assimilation; a statist and ossified economy with a few winners moralizing to lots […]
Tear down this dam?
By Victor Davis Hanson // The Hill Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure. Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of […]
The Oroville Dam disaster is yet another example of California’s decline
By Victor Davis Hanson// Los Angeles Times A year ago, politicians and experts were predicting a near-permanent statewide drought, a “new normal” desert climate. The most vivid example of how wrong they were is that California’s majestic Oroville Dam is currently in danger of spillway failure in a season of record snow and rainfall. That […]
The Uses of Populism
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The economy, academia, immigration, and the environment could benefit from Trump’s unorthodox approach. Populism of the center (as opposed to Bernie Sanders’s socialist populism) has received a bad media rap — given that it was stained in the past by xenophobic and chauvinistic currents. Who wishes to emulate all […]
California Goes Confederate
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Threatening secession is far from the only thing that the Golden State has in common with the Old South. Over 60 percent of California voters went for Hillary Clinton — a margin of more than 4 million votes over Donald Trump. Since Clinton’s defeat, the state seems to have […]
Make Haste — Deliberately
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review If Trump shows that his actions are a reaction to past extremes, his changes will win public support. The emperor Augustus who oversaw the transition from the nonstop civil war of a collapsing republic to the Principate — with all the good and bad that such a transition entailed […]
California’s Polarization
by Richard Sousa Monday, February 6, 2017 With all due respect, I believe my colleague Sam Abrams has it all wrong. He argues that when examining California voter registration data at the county level, the polarization along party lines and the partisanship in the state are not as deep as commonly portrayed. He is, however, […]
Things to Watch?
The Corner The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trump by intent has ignited the Left. But diverse criteria will determine to what degree it can do him damage: 1) Will his reforms kick-start the economy? If Trump reaches even 3 percent real GDP growth over a year — Obama was the […]
VDH UltraPostmodernism by Another Name
02/03/17 From an Angry Reader: Re: Fake News: Postmodernism By Another Name While I thought the article was well written and cited several good specific examples. I find is a bit disingenuous that only the progressive movement is called out. Perhaps it would be worth mentioning the “Swift Boat” stories that were promulgated against John […]
VDH Ultra
02/02/17 From an Angry Reader: Dear Victor: I have long been a reader of your essays. I am befuddled by your steady defense – or at least by your stayed hand of criticism – of Donald Trump. I sense – and share – your glee about the comeuppance that the Democrats received in this past […]
When Normalcy Is Revolution
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trump’s often unorthodox style shouldn’t be confused with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda. By 2008, America was politically split nearly 50/50 as it had been in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats took a gamble and nominated Barack Obama, who became the first young, Northern, liberal president since […]
Our Game of Thrones
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The Trump administration’s flurry of reversing the earlier flurry of Obama executive orders and the Left’s hysterical response is proving a sort of strategic Game of Thrones. Trump’s opponents believe that they are bleeding him from a thousand nicks. Without the requisite political […]
The Democrat Patient
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Ignoring the symptoms, misdiagnosing the malady, skipping the treatment If progressives were to become empiricists, they would look at the symptoms of the last election and come up with disinterested diagnoses, therapies, and prognoses. Although their hard-left candidate won the popular vote, even that benchmark was somewhat deceiving — […]