The Highways To Orlando
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas We know what the recent terrorist attack in Orlando was not. Forty-nine people were killed and fifty-three wounded not due to the violent outburst of a right-wing zealot. The shooter, Omar Mateen, was a second-generation Afghan-American, a registered Democrat, and a fierce critic of American politics and culture. Nor […]
A Long Trump Summer
When have voters faced a choice between two such unpalatable, unprincipled candidates? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Before summer is over, we may see things now scarcely imagined that will make Brexit seem anticlimactic. Trump’s Attack Mode I think the following is an accurate statement: No major public figure has ever before […]
Ideologues Make for Dangerous Politicians
Opportunists are at least attuned to public opinion, unlike ideologues. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria, and […]
The Trump Nuclear Bomb
Other public figures won’t admit they agree with him — but they often quietly adopt his ideas. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Donald Trump has a frightening habit of uttering things that many people apparently think, but would never express. And he blusters in such an off-putting and sloppy fashion that he […]
America In Free Fall
By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Before the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), where Philip II of Macedon prevailed over a common Greek alliance, the city-states had been weakened by years of social and economic turmoil. To read the classical speeches in the Athenian assembly is to learn of the democracy’s constant struggles […]
Politics, Not Personalities, Will Likely Determine the Presidential Election
The candidates may be unconventional, but their political agendas fall along a conventional divide. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online At first glance, 2016 sizes up as no other election year in American history. For more than 30 years, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been high-profile and controversial celebrities. Both have […]
Election 2016: Knowns and Unknowns
We still have five more months of Trump vs. Hillary. Then four or eight years of — what? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Disaffected. Will stay-home so-called establishment Republicans outnumber renewed Reagan Democrats, Tea Partiers, and conservative independents, some of whom likely sat out 2008 and 2012, but who now are […]
Same Old, Same Old Horror
The Orlando massacre brings up familiar lessons that we never quite learn. By Victor Davis Hanson // City Journal The aftermath of Islamist Afghan-American Omar Mateen’s murderous rampage against American gays seems disturbingly familiar, an echo of past themes that never stop playing—and lessons that never get learned. The post-911 debate over “why do they […]
ISIS and ‘Domestic’ Terrorism
In reacting to terrorism, Obama cannot bring himself to say the words ‘radical Islam.’ By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online There are many threads to the horror in Orlando. Most disturbing is the serial inability of the Obama administration — in this case as after the attacks at Fort Hood and in Boston […]
America: History’s Exception
We should seek to preserve the ideals that made America successful. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity. Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious, and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered a liability, not a strength. […]
Journalism, R. I. P.
By definition, progressives cannot be guilty of bias. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, most of those who work in the media are progressives. They believe that government must undertake to fix an array of social maladies, such as income inequality, perceived racial and gender […]
Remembering D-Day
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in history since King Xerxes’ 480 bc combined sea and land descent into Greece. The Americans, especially General George Marshall, had wanted to invade France as early as spring 1943, still confident from their World War I experience that they […]
Walls and Immigration — Ancient and Modern
The Roman empire faced a challenge similar to what the EU faces. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online When standing today at Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides. It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian […]
Class, Trump, and the Election
If the ‘high IQs’ of the establishment have let America down, where is a voter to turn? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Donald Trump seems to have offended almost every possible identity group. But the New York billionaire still also seems to appeal to the working classes (in part no doubt […]
A Year After the Iranian Deal
By Victor Davis Hanson // Strategika Image credit: Poster Collection, IR 180, Hoover Institution Archives. The July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit Iranian nuclear proliferation is now nearly a year old. Until recently, the urgency to complete the “Iran deal” had been explained by the Obama administration as an effort to […]
President Obama Is Visiting Hiroshima. Why Not Pearl Harbor?
On the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, what lessons does the U.S. need to relearn? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online This year marks the 75th anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. President Obama is visiting Hiroshima this week, the site […]
Why Republicans Will Vote For Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas If Donald Trump manages to curb most of his more outrageous outbursts by November, most Republicans who would have preferred that he did not receive the nomination will probably hold their noses and vote for him. How could that be when a profane Trump has boasted that he […]
Hillary’s Sputtering Campaign
Facing a free-wheeling Trump, she is weighted down by tons of baggage. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, […]
How Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy De-Stabilized the World
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier warned Adolf Hitler that if the Third Reich invaded Poland, a European war would follow. Both leaders insisted that they meant it. But Hitler thought that after getting away with militarizing the Rhineland, annexing […]
The Pajama Boy White House
Meet the 30-somethings who are running our federal government. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online “Cleverness is not wisdom.” — Euripides, Bacchae What exactly has birthed the Pajama Boy aristocracy — our overclass of pretentious, inexperienced, and smug 30-something masters of the universe? Prolonged adolescence? Affluence? The disappearance of physical chores and […]