Living Out Critical Legal Theory
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner It may not have been the aim of Missouri Highway Patrol captain Ron Johnson to outsource security responsibilities to someone affiliated with the New Black Panthers and a legal activist group, but that is the impression that one receives from listening to his exchange with and praise of Malik […]
Revolutionary Justice
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO-The Corner Certainly any time in America that an unarmed suspect is fatally shot by a policeman of the opposite race, there is a need for concern and a quick and full inquiry of the circumstances leading to such a deadly use of force. That said, there is something disturbing […]
Our ‘Face in the Crowd’
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowd [2] is a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation as a phony populist [3] who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways — confident that he should never be held to […]
SMALL LATIN, AND LESS GREEK
Thornton reviews the book Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations, by Mary Beard. New York: Liverwright, 2013, 320 pp., $28.95 hardbound. by Bruce S. Thornton // NAS This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of Academic Questions (Volume 27, Number 3). Once the heart of liberal education, the study of Greek and Latin languages and literatures has unfortunately […]
On Cyprus, the World Is Silent
Because Turkey is not Israel. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Limassol, Cyprus — Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island — the most fertile and formerly the richest portion. Some 200,000 Greek refugees never […]
A Quiet Mediterranean?
An unusual calm for history’s constant cauldron. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online From the deck of a ship on the Mediterranean, the islands that pass by appear as calm as the weather. Huge yachts, not warships, are docked in island ports. I haven’t seen a naval officer in ten days. But it […]
The Un-Midas Touch
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Everything that Barack Obama touches seems to turn to dross. Think of it for a minute. He inherited a quiet Iraq [1] (no American combat deaths at all in December 2009 [2]). Joe Biden bragged of the calm that it would be the administration’s“greatest achievement.” [3] But by pulling out all U.S. peacekeepers — mostly for a […]
Democracies Like Military Cuts
by Bruce S. Thorton // FrontPage Magazine President Obama has been rightly chastised for his proposed cuts to our military budget. Critics have gone after his Quadrennial Defense Review and its plan to shrink the armed forces, not to mention the clumsy optics of issuing pink slips to thousands of officers still serving in Afghanistan. […]
The Failure of the E.U.
by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas The European Union has long excited American progressives, who want the United States to model itself after the European body. As each year passes, it has become difficult to understand this admiration. These days the E.U. acts more and more like a bloated bureaucracy staffed with elites armed […]
The End of NATO?
Major existential problems mean the organization may soon unravel. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Istanbul — April marked the 65th birthday of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed at the height of the Cold War to stop the huge post-war Red Army from overrunning Western Europe. NATO in 1949 had only twelve members, […]
Sherman at 150
by Victor Davis Hanson // Ricochet One hundred and fifty years ago this September 2, William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta after a brilliant campaign through the woods of northern Georgia. While Grant slogged it out against Lee in northern Virginia all through the late spring and summer of 1864—the names of those battles still send […]
A Stronger Israel?
Elite opinion believes Israel will lose “long-term” whatever happens in the next weeks. Not necessarily. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In postmodern wars, we are told, there is no victory, no defeat, no aggressors, no defenders, just a tragedy of conflicting agendas. But in such a mindless and amoral landscape, Israel in […]
1984 Redux: Orwellian Illegal Immigration
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia When Everything Is a Lie Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible. Fleeing to an Oppressive Society? Most of the advocates for open borders agitate from a […]
Obama and the U.N.’s Alternate Universe
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Barack Obama has managed to push American foreign policy into an alternate universe in which everything the human race has learned over the past 2500 years about human nature, aggression, and its deterrence has been stood on its head. He is not solely to blame for this. For 150 […]
The Cost of American Indifference
By continually taking the path of least short-term trouble, the U.S. ensures long-term hardship. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Obama administration often either denies any responsibility for the current global chaos or claims that it erupted spontaneously. Yet most of the mess was caused by, or made worse by, growing U.S. […]
Our Russia Experts
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner One of the more depressing things in watching Vladimir Putin is the manner in which Russian “experts” at home have for years now all but cheered him on. In the latest Nation magazine, Stephen Cohen has written one of the most embarrassing apologies of Putin’s imperialistic […]
Winning a Lose/Lose War
How to lose battles and gain sympathizers. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Once again neighboring enemies are warring in diametrically opposite ways. Hamas sees the death of its civilians as an advantage; Israel sees the death of its civilians as a disaster. Defensive missiles explode to save civilians in Israel; in Gaza, civilians are […]
Why Is the World Becoming Such a Nasty Place?
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Border Disorders Central American parents send their unescorted children northward in hopes of remittances and eventual anchor amnesty for themselves. Our friend Mexico facilitates the exodus through its own sovereign territory (hoping that no one stops along the transit, and happy that the border is further shredded). Central American […]
From ‘My People’ to ‘Our People’ — What Next?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner Representative Luis Gutierrez addressed the National Council of La Raza in hyper tones, calling not only for more amnesties but also for the crowd to “punish” their adversaries who would oppose them. Apparently, Eric Holder’s prior separatist reference to “my people” when talking of […]
George Patton’s Summer of 1944
Nearly 70 years ago, the lieutenant general began his advance toward the German border. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of the American Third Army in France. For the next 30 days they rolled straight toward the German […]