The Death of the Humanities
A liberal arts education was once a gateway to wisdom; now it can breed ignorance and arrogance. by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas The humanities are in their latest periodic crisis. Though the causes of the ongoing decline may be debated, everyone accepts the dismal news about eroding university enrollments, ever fewer new faculty positions, […]
Kerry Boasts of ‘Pluralistic’ Syria Once Assad Gone
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, was recently interviewed about Syria. While many of his assertions can be debated, one especially requires a response. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly insisted that, if Bashar Assad would only leave power, everything would go well — especially for all of Syria’s minorities. In his words: “I […]
Fight the Next War, Not the Last One
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Tuesday night President Obama will deliver another campaign speech, this one marketed as the State of the Union address. As such, we can expect to hear, through the usual white noise of “I,” “me,” and “my,” vacuous bromides like “moving America forward,” and empty promises “to grow the economy, strengthen the middle class, and empower all who […]
Governing by Pen and Phone
Obama used to sigh that he was not a dictator who could act unilaterally. No more. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Lately a weakened President Obama has fashioned a new attitude about consensual government: “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the […]
Eating Our Young
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media It is popular now to talk of race, class, and gender oppression. But left out of this focus on supposed victim groups is the one truly targeted cohort — the young. Despite the Obama-era hype, we are not suffering new outbreaks of racism. Wendy Davis is not the poster […]
‘Duty,’ and the Taint of the Tell-All
Robert Gates’s insider memoir is the latest in a dishonorable genre. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online For all the hysteria over former defense secretary Robert Gates’s new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of Duty: Memoirs of a […]
The Eternal Darkness of the Progressive Mind
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The attacks on Lone Survivor, the movie about 4 Navy Seals caught in an operation gone lethally wrong in Afghanistan, illustrate once again the fossilized orthodoxy of the left. The L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson called the movie a “jingoistic snuff film” that “bleeds blood red, bone-fracture white, and bruise blue” […]
The Existential Elephant in the ‘Christian Persecution’ Room
by Raymond Ibrahim // CBN News Open Doors USA recently released its widely cited 2014 World Watch List—a report that highlights and ranks the 50 worst nations around the globe persecuting Christians.
Obama’s Recessional
There is nothing accidental about the president’s apparent foreign-policy blunders. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Does Barack Obama have a strategy? He is often criticized for being adrift. Nonetheless, while Obama has never articulated strategic aims in the manner of Ronald Reagan or the two Bushes, it is not therefore true that there […]
The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Had the Greeks lost at Salamis, Western civilization might easily have been strangled in its adolescence. Had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, the European democracies would have probably remained overwhelmed. And had the Japanese just sidestepped the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, as they gobbled up the orphaned Pacific […]
Gen. Sisi: ‘Religious Discourse Greatest Challenge Facing Egypt’
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com According to Egyptian media, during his recent speech at the Dept. of Moral Affairs for the Armed Forces, Gen. Abdul Fateh al-Sisi—the man who ousted former President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in response to the
The Israel Double Standard
The prejudice against Israel in diplomatic matters is as troubling as more cruse bigotry agains Jews. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. The self-appointed moralists were purportedly outraged over the […]
The Idol of Equality
To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online “There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but […]
Armenian Christians Pressured to Convert to Islam
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com Arabic language websites reported earlier this week that the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—which, throughout the course of the war against the Assad government has committed any number of atrocities, from decapitating “infidels” to burning churches—has successfully “forced” two Armenian Christian families to convert to Islam.
The Rural Way
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Hard physical work is still a requisite for a sound outlook on an ever more crazy world. I ride a bike; but such exercise is not quite the same, given that the achievement of doing 35 miles is therapeutic for the body and mind, but does not lead to […]
What Is It about Hubris Politicians Don’t Get?
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner Have any of them taken two hours to read one Sophoclean play? A reelected and proudly iconoclastic Christie in recent months relished in his swagger, braggadocio, media celebrity, and often picked fights, apparently assuming that his first-persona laced speeches and gestures were immune from the sort of nemesis […]
Is China copying the old imperial Japan
by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media In the 1920s, Japan began to translate its growing economic might — after a prior 50-year crash course in Western capitalism and industrialization — into formidable military power.