Who Are Wise, Who Not?
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Insight often comes not from an Ivy League degree but by way of animal cunning, instinct, and hard work. “Cleverness is not wisdom.” — Euripides, the Bacchae At the height of the sophistic age in classical Athens, the playwright Euripides asked an eternal question in his masterpiece, the Bacchae: […]
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From an Angry Reader: She WON the popular vote!!!!! Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply: Dear Angry Reader Suzanne Williams, I got your point without the capital letters and the five exclamation marks. As a general rule the resort to exclamation is a reflection of an absence of argument. Let words speak for themselves—and in your case […]
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From an Angry Reader: To Victor Hanson: f**k all y’all motherf**king f**kers unlubed with a f**king broom handle, you elitist motherf**king uniparty pieces of sh*t. Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply: Dear Angry Anonymous Foul Reader who mailed from 4m6sm1+2ewjjnl72o2x0@guerrillamail.com, Even though in cowardly fashion you did not print your name, you did offer a more unique form […]
Trump’s Bizarre Winning Formula
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Reformulating the Republican message, Donald Trump was able to exploit political mistakes that the Democrats have made. The Democratic party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come. First, the Democrats gave Trump a […]
The Appointment Game
The Corner The one and only by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Everyone is playing the “what if” recommendation game. For what little they would be worth in an ideal world, here would be four of my slightly unorthodox recommendations: First, Larry Arnn, Hillsdale College president, for secretary of education. No one, for obvious reasons, […]
The “Deplorables” Get Their Say
By Craig Bernthal Most of the pundits I’ve been reading on the Democratic side who have decided to explain this election chalk up the Trump victory to an America which turned out to be far more racist and misogynistic than they’d ever believed. Among the most hysterical and bitter was Garrison Keillor in the […]
Carpe Diem, Mr. Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Forgive, but do not forget, and be the strong horse. While we speak, a jealous age will have fled. Seize the day! Trust as little as you can in tomorrow. The Latin poet Horace’s advice of carpe diem— to seize the day and not worry about tomorrow — […]
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Comment from an Angry Reader: I’m sure it was fun exercising your giant brain, but my surprise and I imagine most “liberals” was that enough Americans were willing to vote for what appears to be a sociopath. He disqualified himself for me when he openly espoused physical violence against those who disagree with you. Basically […]
Why Trump Won
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas Throughout the course of the 2016 election, the conventional groupthink was that the renegade Donald Trump had irrevocably torn apart the Republican Party. His base populism supposedly sandbagged more experienced and electable Republican candidates, who were bewildered that a “conservative” would dare to pander to hoi polloi by […]
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The Angry Phone-caller “Are you Mr. Hanson? F**k you! F**k Trump!” Dear (anonymous) Angry Phone-caller, I did not get a chance to say a word in answer to either your question or exclamations. But I’m always amazed about the ingenuity of people who can find one’s cell phone number—from retailers to ad men to lost […]
Braver New World — for Now
The Corner The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Given the status of the post-election state legislatures and executive offices, the Republican-controlled House and Senate, a Republican president, and a Supreme Court that will not go leftward for a generation, it is hard to see how conservatives could be anything other than […]
Surprise, surprise, the disconnected plutocrat lost
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton concedes her defeat to Republican Donald Trump in New York on Nov. 9, 2016. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press) by Victor Davis Hanson// Los Angeles Times Donald Trump’s victory confounded elite pollsters, journalists, politicians, academic experts and captains of industry. They all wrote him off as a fading gasbag. By every conventional […]
A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Biased and incompetent elites polluted the 2016 election, and they are getting what they deserved. There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves. From hacked e-mail troves we received a glimpse of […]
The Election Fables of 2016
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Clear choices on the issues in 2016 have been far more distinct than in 1960, 1968, or 1992. Most of what we read about the election of 2016 was untrue. Here are the most glaring of the election fables. Hillary would have been better off politically to come […]
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From an Angry Reader: COULD THESE REALLY BE YOUR WORDS? “When Trump shoots off his blunderbuss, is it always proof of laziness and ignorance, or is it sometimes generally aimed in the right direction to prompt anxiety and eventual necessary reconsideration?” ITS IGNORANCE AND YOU KNOW IT. HAS HE ONCE DESCRIBED DETAILS OF HOW IS […]
The Unenviable Next President
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas After a strange and divisive election season, November 8 is almost here—and it couldn’t have come soon enough. Whoever wins will be in an unenviable position. The nation is in free-fall: current foreign policy, the economy, health care, and federal borrowing are not sustainable. Yet the needed chemotherapy, […]
Has Clinton topped Nixon?
By Victor Davis Hanson// Town Hall | Another day, another Hillary Clinton bombshell disclosure. This time the scandal comes from disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer, bringing more suggestions of Clinton’s sloppy attitude about U.S. intelligence law. Meanwhile, seemingly every day WikiLeaks produces more evidence of the Clinton Foundation leveraging the Clinton State Department […]
Never Trump Republicans: Spoilers or Saviors?
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review If enough of them decide that Hillary’s corruption is too much to take, she could be finished, at last. Will there be an eleventh-hour Never/Against/No Trump Reconsideration? The question gains new relevance as a Hillary Clinton landslide, widely predicted until recently, now seems unlikely. We are back to […]
No reason to assume Hillary’s troubles are behind her
By Victor Davis Hanson // The Sumter Item Hillary Clinton was resting, running out the clock, sitting on a supposed large lead and hoping that the election was sooner than later. Now after the latest Weiner disclosures, she is crisscrossing the country, terrified of collapsing polls, and wishing that she had three more weeks […]
The Strange Silence of Bernie Sanders
The Corner The one and only. by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The core of Bernie Sanders’s maverick campaign was “not business as usual.” For a year he offered a comprehensive critique both of status quo Democratic politics and the corrupt culture of elite Washington in uncompromising fashion. In an era of Never Trump publicity, […]