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 […]
Are the Orcs Winning?
Fantasy versus reality by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings [1] was sometimes faulted by literary critics for caricaturing the evil orcs [2] as uniformly bad. All of them were as unpleasant to look as they were deadly to encounter. There is not a single good orc or […]
Only Deterrence Can Prevent War
Most aggressors take stupid risks only when they feel they won’t be stopped. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The world seems to be falling apart. Only lunatics from North Korea or Iran once mumbled about using nuclear weapons against their supposed enemies. Now Vladimir Putin, after gobbling up the Crimea, points to […]
The New World Disorder
To Obama, the retrenchment of the West was not only inevitable but to be welcomed. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In just the last five or six years the world has been fundamentally transformed. Instead of the old accustomed Western-inspired postwar global order, crafted and ensured by the United States and its […]
Mythologies and Pathologies of the California Drought
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia The third year of California drought has exposed all sorts of water fantasies. If in wet years they were implicit, now without rain or snow for nearly three years, they are all too explicit. Add them up. Take the Bay Area, Ground Zero of water environmentalism. From Mill Valley […]
Obama’s Hazy Sense of History
For the president, belief in historical predetermination substitutes for action. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online President Obama doesn’t know much about history. In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved. He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for […]
Nothing to Do with Islam, Part 2
by Bruce Thornton // FrontPage Magazine To read Part I, click here. In his comments on the jihad being waged by the Islamic State in northern Iraq (ISIL), President Obama recycled yet again the shopworn false knowledge about Islam that continues to compromise our response to Muslim violence: “So ISIL speaks for no religion. Their victims are […]
The Madness of 2008
A nation became unhinged by trivialities like “hope and change.” It has now awakened. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf clothes while the world burns. […]