Barack Obama, Empire Builder
Not since the 1930s and early 1940s have we seen so many malevolent empires on the rise. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Empires can rise and fall quickly. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires abruptly collapsed amid military defeat, rising nationalism, and revolution. Yet on the eve […]
The Dangers of Obama’s Cognitive Dissonance
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine There are many moments from the past 6 years that demonstrate the criminal incompetence of this president and his administration. But for me, Obama’s interview with GloZell––whose claim to YouTube fame comes from eating Cheerios in a bathtub filled with milk––represents best the essential emptiness, triviality, and sheer […]
The Last Lion Remembered
Winston Churchill never once flinched in the face of the Third Reich. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Fifty years ago this Saturday, former British prime minister Winston Churchill died at age 90. Churchill is remembered for his multiple nonstop careers as a statesman, cabinet minister, politician, journalist, Nobel laureate historian, and combat […]
Snipers, Correct and Incorrect
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner Were a confused Michael Moore and others faulting American Sniper on the argument that Chris Kyle was a sniper per se, or that he was an American sniper? I don’t remember Michael Moore or any other Hollywood grandees objecting much to the 2001 war film Enemy at the Gates, which […]
Untrue Truisms in the War on Terror
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media In the current tensions with the Islamic World, pundits bandy about received wisdom that in fact is often ignorance. Here are a few examples. 1) The solution of radical Islam must come from within Islam. Perhaps it could. It would be nice to see the advice of General […]
Muslims and Islamists
How do extremists relate to the population in which they live? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The terrorism in Paris is yet another bad chapter in an ongoing Western debate over a seeming paradox. Almost all recent global terrorism is attributable to Islamic-inspired violence — much of it directed against Muslims. And […]
Western Sleepwalkers and the Paris Massacre
After all the brave words and feel-good marches, what significant action will be taken? by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The jihadist murderers are dead, after killing five more Parisians, but many Westerners, long drugged by bad ideas and received wisdom, continue to sleepwalk through the war against jihadism. This means that after all […]
Can the West Stand Up for Free Speech?
False moral equivalence and blatant cowardice threaten our tradition of free expression. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring […]
The Real Scandals of the Paris March
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Commentators on both the left and the right are slamming President Obama for missing the march in Paris last Sunday. Even a stalwart courtier like CNN’s Jake Tapper sniffed that he was “ashamed” that the U.S. was represented by an ambassador––one, by the way, who got her appointment […]
Book Review: Prime Directive- Check Out Sci Phi Journal
Prime Directive: Check Out Sci Phi Journal by Craig Bernthal The shelves of drugstores and news stands used to be crowded with “pulp” science fiction magazines: Fantastic Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Fantasy and Science Fiction, all of which sold for very little and provided a lot of entertainment. Many of […]
Glorified Bastards
For Western elites, Ahmadinejad is preferable to Hirsi Ali, the Castros to Cuban dissidents. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online For a number of years into the Cold War, American presidents were occasionally troubled by the paradox that a democratic United States was supporting right-wing anti-Communist dictatorships abroad. Either Harry Truman, John Kennedy, […]
Summit on Violent Extremism—Laugh or Cry?
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO-The Corner It was just announced that the White House, in the wake of the mass murders in France, plans to reactivate an old idea of convening a “Summit on Countering Violent Extremism.” Is this an accurate news account or some sort of cruel satire? Is there something about the […]
Multicultural Suicide
Fueling the Western paralysis in dealing with radical Islam is the late 20th century doctrine of multiculturalism. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Multiculturalism is one of those buzzwords that does not mean what it should. The ancient and generic Western study of many cultures is not multiculturalism. Rather, the trendy term promotes non-Western […]
The Progressive Racial Narrative and Its Beneficiaries
Debunking the lies about race in America. by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reveals that nearly 6 in 10 people believe race relations are bad, with 23% saying they are “very bad.” The causes of these perceptions are many, including nationally publicized police killings of two black men, […]
The Party of Snobbish Elites
A gentrified cocoon of progressive privilege has cost Democrats the middle class. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Democrats for over a century were associated with the American middle class. Working-class voters once believed that Democratic-inspired intervention into the economy — minimum-wage laws, overtime pay, Social Security, Medicare, workers’ compensation — protected their […]
Obama, a One-Man Revolution
In his “fourth quarter,” he feels free to ignore popular opinion, the rule of law, and Congress. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to alter American life from the […]
The Timid Generation
Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan caving in to North Korea. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Aristotle thought courage the preeminent virtue. Without it, there could be no morality. Virtue becomes a mere abstraction, a high-sounding platitude that is easy to live by in one’s sleep. The present generation may […]
Autopilot Nation
Conservatives lament, and liberals brag, that Obama has fundamentally transformed America. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Six years of slumber later, a surging America finally is transcending even the effects of hope and change. For the last few years, most Americans have tuned out their president’s no-time-to-profit rhetoric. They just kept slogging […]
Fantasyland, U.S.A.
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia One way of reinventing reality is to warp the meaning of words. No president in memory has waged such a war on the English language as has Barack Obama — changing the meaning of vocabulary to hide what he fears might otherwise be unpopular.
The Seductions of Appeasement
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Before World War II appeasement was a good word, reflecting a supposedly wise policy of understanding an enemy’s predicaments. Sober Western democracies would grant tolerable concessions to aggressive dictators in Germany, Italy, and Japan to satiate their appetites for more. With such magnanimity everyone would avoid a nightmare […]