Reasons for Political Hope
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Many Republicans are excited about the midterm elections. They see a good chance of taking over the Senate, which means they can neutralize Obama’s last few years in office. Many also are hopeful about the presidential election in 2016, though Hillary Clinton will enter that race with decided […]
Bomb, Occupy, or Neither?
Blowing apart a problem for a while is different from ending it for good. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Wars usually end only when the defeated aggressor believes it would be futile to resume the conflict. Lasting peace follows if the loser is then forced to change its political system into something […]
Iraq Was Then, Syria Is Now
Obama hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, but at least he isn’t George W. Bush. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Iraq War lies now mostly in the realm of myth. We have forgotten exactly how we got both into and out of the war. The October 2002 joint congressional authorization to […]
The Moral Failures of Eric Holder
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Eric Holder’s left many baleful legacies: being censured by the House of Representatives; withholding subpoenaed documents, proving untruthful about a failed gun-walking caper in Mexico; failing to enforce laws on the books, from immigration to the elements of the Affordable Care Act; illegally billing the government for his […]
The Incredible Lightness of Being Barack Obama
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Barack Obama’s address to the U.N. General Assembly was so insubstantial, so full of airy platitudes, and so adulterated with the gaseous clichés of bankrupt internationalism and progressive bromides that I thought at any minute he might just float away. First was the obligatory call “to renew the […]
Should We Hope to Die at 75?
Contra Ezekiel Emanuel, age is no absolute barometer for human vitality and dignity. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Normally, no one would care that in a recent Atlantic essay — “Why I Hope to Die at 75” — 57-year-old Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argued that living to be 75 years old was long […]
Confederacy of Dunces?
From the president on down, they are in resolute denial about radical Islam. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The military effort against the Islamic State hinges on a successful threefold approach involving intelligence, homeland security, and diplomacy. Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not have much past history in these areas to warrant […]
Versailles in California
Versailles or San Francisco, it’s good to be the king. by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles [1], an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry. To understand how California works — or rather does not work — drive over […]
Where Is Obama’s ‘Broad Coalition’?
Potential allies against ISIS doubt America’s commitment to being engaged abroad. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The so-called Islamic State has left destruction everywhere that it has gained ground. But as in the case of the tribal Scythians, Vandals, Huns, or Mongols of the past, sowing chaos in its wake does not […]
REAL REASON JAPANESE ATTACKED PEARL HARBOR
by Victor Davis Hanson // WND The Japanese did not see their attack on Pearl Harbor as foolish at all. What in retrospect seems suicidal did not necessarily seem so at the time. In hindsight, the wiser Japanese course would have been to absorb the orphaned colonial Far Eastern possessions of France, the Netherlands and […]
The Buckley Program Stands Up for Free Speech
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution. It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15. Hirsi Ali […]
When Activism Kills
by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas For four decades genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been vilified and caricatured as “Frankenfoods,” the abominations of mad scientists meddling with nature and putting the human race at risk. Currently, over sixty bills have been introduced in over twenty states […]
Obama’s Sort-of War
In his view, the current debacle has nothing to do with his own errors and omissions. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online How can we account for the apparent flip-flopping of the Obama administration about what we are doing, or might do further, to the Islamic State? At times the secretary of defense […]
What Exactly Is Comprehensive Immigration Reform?
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Comprehensive immigration reform — rarely has a catchphrase been so widely invoked and yet so little defined. Why? If proponents of so-called reform detailed exactly what they wanted, American voters would never support their self-interested agendas. Most Americans insist that existing federal immigration laws be enforced. They are adamant that […]
The Truth About Science and Religion
by Terry Scambray // American Thinker In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of […]
‘To Hell With the Constitution!’
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt intervened in a strike by Pennsylvania coal miners, exceeding his Constitutional authority as president. When this was pointed out to him by Republican House whip James E. Watson, Roosevelt allegedly yelled, “To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!” This outburst reflected […]
The Middle East’s Maze of Alliances
It’s increasingly difficult to navigate the web of transitory enemies and allies in the region. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Try figuring out the maze of enemies, allies, and neutrals in the Middle East. In 2012, the Obama administration was on the verge of bombing the forces of Syrian president Bashar Assad. […]
World at War
by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas Will the United States in its near future be hit again in the manner of the 9/11 attacks of thirteen years ago? The destruction of the World Trade Center, the suicide implosions of four passenger airliners, and the attack on the Pentagon unfortunately have become far-off memories. They are […]
Obama’s Foreign Policy of Empty Words
“When force threatens, talk is no good.” by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine That line from John Ford’s classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance contains wisdom everyone from peasant to king knew before our modern age and its smug illusions. Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes […]
Obama’s Untruth, Inc.
Let us count the ways: bald lies, lies of omission, mythography, amnesia, redaction . . . by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online We can usefully view the Obama administration’s chronic untruthfulness as a sort of multifaceted corporation of untruth, with all sorts of subsidiaries. THE BALD LIES OF POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY Remember the al-Qaeda-is-on-the-run […]