Pathei Mathos: What I Relearned the Last 12 Months
What doesn’t kill me, makes me sadder. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Greek tragedy often ends with a succession of personal disasters that doom an Oedipus or Ajax — apparently part of a divinely inspired nemesis (retribution) to pay back personal hubris (overweening pride). The latter flaw seems to grow and grow until fate […]
George Stephanopoulos’s Clinton Foundation Hypocrisy Is Staggering
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO-The Corner The problem with George Stephanopoulos’s Clinton-gate mess is that his own words prove him to be both a bully and a hypocrite, as well as abjectly unethical. Set aside the fact that — if not outed — he would likely never have informed his viewership about his contributions […]
Lying Inc.
Lying is insidious. When it becomes institutionalized at the top, cynicism and lawlessness follow below. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Heroic quarterback Tom Brady was apparently caught lying about his involvement in deflating footballs. One assumes that such prevarication counts for little in the larger scheme of football and Tom Brady’s own career trajectory. […]
Hillary Can’t Win. Or Can She?
Can a person with no experience, no achievements, and no likability fool a majority of voters? by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Hillary Clinton has formally announced she is running for president. Thus begins one of the most interesting and consequential political experiments in American history, one that will unfold over the next year […]
Why America Was Indispensable to the Allies’ Winning World War II
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online May 8 marked the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago — a horrific conflict that is still fought over by historians. More than 60 million people perished — some 50 million of them in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. The pre-war […]
The First — and a Half — Amendment
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved […]
The Failed Tactic of Flattering Islam Won’t Go Away
Why admiring the Muslim world won’t stop the bloodshed. by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The recent attack in Texas against a “draw Mohammed” event ended up with two dead jihadis and widespread criticism of event organizer Pamela Geller for “inciting” or “provoking” the assault on our First Amendment right to free speech. The […]
America’s Politicized Tax Enforcement Is a Harbinger of Decline
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece? The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them. What ruins societies is well known: too much […]
Baltimore and the Betrayal of Black Dignity
The real losers in the Freddie Gray riots. by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine [1]Baltimore is the latest American city to become a stage for the farce that is our national racial discourse. The swift, politicized indictment of 6 police officers for the death of Freddie Gray––which brought down, for now, the curtain on […]
Remember When the Left Welcomed Exposés of the Clintons?
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner In July 2008 Todd Purdum wrote a devastating and controversial take-down of Bill Clinton for Vanity Fair, outlining the sort of ethical and personal lapses that are back in the news seven years later. The Left largely welcomed the exposé because it came at the expense of a […]
The Westernized Anti-Westerner
What accounts for hatred of the West by people who voluntarily spent years here? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online One of the stranger things about East–West relations these days is the schizophrenic attraction to, and hatred of, Western culture that characterizes many foreign leaders and celebrities.
Decoding the Rules of Baltimore
For the left, rioting is an effective political tool. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media No one knows what exactly happened to the deceased Freddie Gray, except that it should not have happened. Between what is outlined in the indictments and what will be proven in court is an unknown abyss. But the more […]
Republican Senators and the Battered Wife Syndrome
What the confirmation of Loretta Lynch really means. by Bruce S. Thornton // Front PageMagazine [1]For 6 years Barack Obama in word and deed has battered the Constitution and slapped around the Republicans. Abetted by his Luca Brasi, Harry Reid, he has run roughshod over the separation of powers and his own oath to the […]
Why California’s Drought Was Completely Preventable
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The present four-year California drought is not novel — even if President Barack Obama and California governor Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells — like those […]
The Strange Case of Modern Immigration
The West is too cowed by guilt to look honestly at immigration. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Is immigrating from less-developed countries to the West a good or a bad thing, for host and guest? Is the immigrant angry at, or nostalgic for, the country he left? Is he thankful to or […]
The Fall of the House of Clinton
Boys and girls, Count Victor presents a berrry, berrry scarrrrrry tale of political corruption run amok. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Hillary Clinton will probably survive her latest ethical disaster. James Carville — of “if you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find” fame — […]
Do Hillary’s Fair-Pay Talking Points Apply to Her Own Family?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Hillary Clinton apparently plans to base her presidential campaign on the noble goals of greater fairness and shared sacrifice. She has already lambasted vast differences in compensation. “The average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes,” Clinton warned. She is right — but can best […]
Don’t Worry, Be Happy
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media In his 1988 presidential race, George H.W. Bush was trashed by the left for selecting the Bobby McFerrin hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” as his campaign song. Maybe Bush thought he needed a lighthearted optimistic echo of Reagan’s 1984 mantra, “It’s morning in America.” [1]But the Left thought […]
Moral Schizophrenics
On campus, on the campaign trail. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Hillary Clinton in recent months has done the following: She charged UCLA somewhere around $300,000 for reciting some platitudes. That works out to over $165 a second for her 30 minutes on stage — meaning that she made more in one minute […]
A Foreign Policy Primer for Obama––and Rand Paul
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The president who thinks there’s such a thing as an “Austrian” language is advising Rand Paul to “bone up on foreign policy.” It’s now official: the Obama administration has become a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live. This is the same Barack Obama who became president after 2 […]