Venezuela on the Potomac
Somehow, having an Enemies List is all right if you’re Barack Obama and not Richard Nixon. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online It has become an iffy idea to cross Barack Obama. After seven years, the president has created a Hugo Chávez–like deterrent landscape, intended to remind friends and enemies alike that he […]
Speak Loudly And Carry A Twig
By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Nations in the Middle East that once aligned with America are now indifferent. Interests who opposed the United States grow defiant. Fence-sitting countries that calibrated their policies to the perception of U.S. strength are leaning toward our adversaries. Chaos is the result. The recent splashdown in the Straits […]
Hillary Clinton’s Dead-End Campaign
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJ Media Hillary Clinton may yet win the Democratic nomination—if she is not indicted. After all, it is hard for a New England spread-the-wealth socialist like rival Bernie Sanders to appeal to working-class southern whites, minorities, or the wealthy Democratic establishment. It is still likely that […]
In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy
Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent. More than 90 million able-bodied […]
America’s Balkan Values
White liberals and black careerists vigorously reject the MLK ideal of a color-blind society. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The racial spoils industry survives on several requisites. One, Americans must be readily identifiable as being non-white or white. Two, once non-white claimants pass the racial litmus test, they must think and speak […]
Hillary and the Suspension of Disbelief
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJMedia In a September 2007 congressional inquiry about the ongoing surge in Iraq, then Senator Hillary Clinton all but called Gen. David Petraeus a liar. After Petraeus gave a cautiously optimistic—and prescient—appraisal of the growing quiet in Iraq, Clinton curtly dismissed him with the literary term […]
The Regrettable Decline of Higher Learning
By Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning? American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else. Colleges still wear the […]
Lessons From California’s Drought
By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Image credit: Barbara Kelley By the end of 2015, it had begun raining and snowing throughout California after fifty months of drought. Meteorologists had long forecasted that the cyclical return of the so-called El Niño Southern Oscillation—the episodic rise in temperature of a band of ocean water that develops in […]
California of the Dark Ages
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJ Media I recently took a few road trips longitudinally and latitudinally across California. The state bears little to no resemblance to what I was born into. In a word, it is now a medieval place of lords and peasants—and few in between. Or rather, as […]
Forget Trump but Not the Trumpsters
Memo to RNC: Stop ridiculing Trump and look at what voters see in him. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online A disclaimer: Trump is not my preferred candidate. I hope he does not win the Republican nomination. But I understand why millions seem to be mesmerized by his rhetoric. I certainly wish that […]
Either Carry a Big Stick—Or Shut Up!
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJMedia Western culture is deservedly exceptional. No other tradition has given the individual such security, freedom, and prosperity. The Athens-Jerusalem mixture of Christian humility (and guilt) and the classical Socratic introspection combined in the West to make it a particularly self-reflective and self-critical society, in a […]
Obama Administration Needs to Abandon Its Petraeus Obsession
Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or “Trotskyized,” all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect. The Obama administration seems […]
The New Segregationism
The Oscar nominations have brought a corrosive racial politics to the fore. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online One of the stranger demands of various campus affiliates of Black Lives Matter was the call for “safe spaces.” That is a euphemism for designated racially segregated areas. In such zones, particular minority groups are […]
Still Polarizing after All These Years
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days hosted by PJMedia Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him. Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization? […]
The Many Contradictions of Hillary
By Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services Hillary Clinton recently said she would go after offshore tax “schemes” in the Caribbean. That is a worthy endeavor, given the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. tax revenue. Yet her husband, Bill Clinton, reportedly made $10 million as an advisor and an occasional partner in […]
The Enigma of Germany
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online What to fear in Germany — an ideologically driven leader who unilaterally is changing the demographics of the nation without public support, or an angry populist counter-movement that vows to keep Germans safe by any means necessary when the government won’t? Both, or neither? Is Germany postmodern […]
Obama’s Failings among the Reasons for Trump’s Rise
By Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services Three truths fuel Donald Trump. One, Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster. If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck the Democratic Party while turning […]
One Left-Wing Ring to Rule Them All
Proper liberal credentials trump all the usual forms of identity politics. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In the 21st century, doctrinaire liberalism is synonymous with hypocrisy. Or maybe it is better seen as career insurance, providing exemption from all the many paradoxes of a leftist worldview. The rich supporter of affirmative action […]
Reflections on Wise and Suicidal Immigration
By Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Legal immigration has historically been classically liberal and a great boon for the United States. Immigrants often bring in energy and fresh ideas. In the past, newcomers from around the world were eager for a second start in the United States. They nearly all worked hard, reminding American-born […]
Rendezvous with Reality in 2016
By Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services Changes of administrations usually mark dicey times in American foreign policy. But transitional hazards will never be greater than in 2016. Over a span of just a few months in mid-1945, new president Harry Truman lost all trust in Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin — in a […]