The Incoherence of Western Foreign Policy
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The crisis in Ukraine is just the latest in a long series of foreign policy failures brought about by the incoherence in our thinking about foreign relations. On the one hand, we have championed ethnic-national self-determination as the highest international good, while on the other we have assumed that […]
Western Arrogance and Decline
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine For three centuries the West built up enormous economic, cultural, and military capital that dwarfs and dominates that of the rest of the world. Other countries may hate and resent Europe and the United States, but they still have to imitate, adapt, or steal the technology, financial systems, and […]
‘This Is the Last Territorial Demand I Have to Make in Europe’
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner Vladimir Putin all but said the above yesterday, after annexing the Crimea — and promising to let alone the rest of the Ukraine. If we just insert Ukraine and Russia for Czechoslovakia and Germany, the following speech could easily be Putin’s:
A New Obama Doctrine?
With his presidency in tailspin, Carter radically changed course. Will Obama do the same? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online By the beginning of 1980, Jimmy Carter was in big trouble. Almost everything he had said or done in foreign policy over the prior three years had failed — and he was running for […]
Following the Trail Nixon Blazed
Obama shows the same Orwellian disregard for the Constitution. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them? Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that of an increasingly similar Barack […]
The Chihuahua Theory of Foreign Policy
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner The new administration party line is that Putin is now weak and acting out of just that weakness by sending troops into Ukrainian territory — a sort of chihuahua who took on a pit bull because he knew he was weak. But even weak states do not typically […]
Obama: Ike Redivivus?
Obama admirers have created a complete distortion of “the Eisenhower era.” by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In critique of the George W. Bush administration, and in praise of the perceived foreign-policy restraint of Obama’s first five years in the White House, a persistent myth has arisen that Obama is reminiscent of Eisenhower — […]
Liberals and Their Uppity Enemies
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Why do liberals hate Sarah Palin? She has made far fewer gaffes than has Joe Biden, whose verbal mishaps have often been racist in nature. Is dropping your g’s worse than saying “corpse-men“? She does not believe that Canadians speak Canadian in the way the president thinks Austrians speak Austrian. Her […]
Islamic Jihad and the Doctrine of Abrogation
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in […]
The Past and the Future
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com Last November Raymond Ibrahim was interviewed by Egyptian reporter Sherif Awad. The interview appeared in several Egyptian magazines and websites, as well as American ones, such as the Westchester Guardian. The interview follows: Awad: Can you tell us about your family and their profession and how and why they decided to migrate […]
The Anti-Empirical Left
Science is ignored when it doesn’t support politically correct policy. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online President Obama entered office promising to restore the sanctity of science. Instead, a fresh war against science, statistics, and reason is being waged on behalf of politically correct politics. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, the president attempted to convert […]
A Modest Proposal on Ukraine
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s the Corner Of all the advice to Obama to reverse his brand of Carterism, the best might simply be to shut his eyes, and every time he gets angry and is about to say something about Israel, stop, and think first to substitute the reset vocabulary he has used with […]
Mr. Farrow and the Obama Syndrome
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner Young, charismatic, good-looking, hip, and glib are all superficial traits that supposedly cerebral liberal elites have a bad habit of believing trump experience, knowledge, humility, and what the Greeks called pathei mathos, learning through requisite pain. Once someone is acclaimed as a liberal prodigy by elites, stamped with the […]
How Hard Will We Be on the Post-Obama President?
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Imagine if a hard-right-wing president were to follow Barack Obama and embrace the new precedents that Obama himself has established for the presidency. Would he then be seen as an unusually polarizing figure, who abused the power of his office? Let’s call him Bucky Brewster, the new Republican President […]
Sacrificing the Military to Entitlements
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Vladimir Putin, playing geopolitical chess while our president plays tiddlywinks, has effectively taken over Crimea. Armed men, looking suspiciously like Russian military personnel, have seized both airports and established border checkpoints decorated with Kalashnikovs and Russian flags. This comes after other armed men seized two government buildings and raised […]
Obama’s Pseudo-Scientism
Too hot? Too cold? Regardless, it must be global warming. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online President Obama came to California. He saw a drought. He announced the cause to be global warming and left. How accurate was the president’s diagnosis of harmful, man-made climate change in stopping rain and snow? First, a […]
The Stepping Stones to the Ukraine Crisis
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner Each step to the present Ukrainian predicament was in and of itself hardly earth-shattering and was sort of framed by Obama’s open-mic assurance to Medvedev to tell Vladimir that he would more flexible after the election. Indeed, Obama, as is his wont, always had mellifluous and sophistic arguments […]
Why Are Christians the World’s Most Persecuted Group?
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com Why are Christians, as a new Pew report documents, the most persecuted religious group in the world? And why is their persecution occurring primarily throughout the Islamic world? (In the category on “Countries with Very High Government Restrictions on Religion,” Pew lists 24 countries—20 of which are Islamic and precisely where the overwhelming […]