Sherman at 150
by Victor Davis Hanson // Ricochet One hundred and fifty years ago this September 2, William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta after a brilliant campaign through the woods of northern Georgia. While Grant slogged it out against Lee in northern Virginia all through the late spring and summer of 1864—the names of those battles still send […]
A Stronger Israel?
Elite opinion believes Israel will lose “long-term” whatever happens in the next weeks. Not necessarily. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In postmodern wars, we are told, there is no victory, no defeat, no aggressors, no defenders, just a tragedy of conflicting agendas. But in such a mindless and amoral landscape, Israel in […]
1984 Redux: Orwellian Illegal Immigration
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia When Everything Is a Lie Everything we are told about illegal immigration is mostly a lie, and a self-serving one at that. Remember that fact, and the current debate over the border becomes comprehensible. Fleeing to an Oppressive Society? Most of the advocates for open borders agitate from a […]
Obama and the U.N.’s Alternate Universe
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Barack Obama has managed to push American foreign policy into an alternate universe in which everything the human race has learned over the past 2500 years about human nature, aggression, and its deterrence has been stood on its head. He is not solely to blame for this. For 150 […]
The Cost of American Indifference
By continually taking the path of least short-term trouble, the U.S. ensures long-term hardship. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Obama administration often either denies any responsibility for the current global chaos or claims that it erupted spontaneously. Yet most of the mess was caused by, or made worse by, growing U.S. […]
Our Russia Experts
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner One of the more depressing things in watching Vladimir Putin is the manner in which Russian “experts” at home have for years now all but cheered him on. In the latest Nation magazine, Stephen Cohen has written one of the most embarrassing apologies of Putin’s imperialistic […]
Winning a Lose/Lose War
How to lose battles and gain sympathizers. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Once again neighboring enemies are warring in diametrically opposite ways. Hamas sees the death of its civilians as an advantage; Israel sees the death of its civilians as a disaster. Defensive missiles explode to save civilians in Israel; in Gaza, civilians are […]
Why Is the World Becoming Such a Nasty Place?
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Border Disorders Central American parents send their unescorted children northward in hopes of remittances and eventual anchor amnesty for themselves. Our friend Mexico facilitates the exodus through its own sovereign territory (hoping that no one stops along the transit, and happy that the border is further shredded). Central American […]
From ‘My People’ to ‘Our People’ — What Next?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner Representative Luis Gutierrez addressed the National Council of La Raza in hyper tones, calling not only for more amnesties but also for the crowd to “punish” their adversaries who would oppose them. Apparently, Eric Holder’s prior separatist reference to “my people” when talking of […]
George Patton’s Summer of 1944
Nearly 70 years ago, the lieutenant general began his advance toward the German border. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of the American Third Army in France. For the next 30 days they rolled straight toward the German […]
The Amoral Nature of the Pawn Strategy
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online – The Corner The humanitarian crisis on the border derived from four callous parties who used illegal immigrants as pawns for their own self-interested agendas: (a) Central American governments wanted to export “excess” population, in hopes of soothing domestic social tensions and gaining remittances from loyal expatriates […]
The Incoherent Excuses for Hating Israel
by Bruce S. Thorton // FrontPage Magazine Israel’s military operation to degrade Hamas’ ability to rain rockets down on Israeli cities has stirred up the usual noisy and nasty protests in Europe. We need not dwell on demonstrations by Muslim immigrants, whose genocidal Jew-hatred has been an Islamic tradition for 14 centuries. More revealing is […]
The Valley of the Shadow
How mansion-dwelling, carbon-spewing cutthroat capitalists can still be politically correct. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Silicon Valley is an American success story. At a time of supposed American decline, a gifted group of young entrepreneurs invented, merchandized, and institutionalized everything from smartphones and eBay to Google and Facebook. The collective genius within a […]
Obama’s Tranquility
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Barack Obama’s team recently took credit for improving the “tranquility of the global community,” and the president made it clear just what a calm place the world has become during his tenure. But this summer Obama’s tranquil world [1] has descended into medieval barbarism in a way scarcely seen in decades. In […]
Inventing Freedom. How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World
by Bruce Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The fundamental incoherence of multiculturalism comes from its cultural relativism that posits no one way of life is better than another, but then singles out the West as a uniquely oppressive global villain. Even more contradictory, at the same time that multiculturalists slander the West for its alleged crimes, […]
2014: Obama’s America
Scandals now come so fast that each new mess makes us forget the previous one. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The summer of 2014 will go down in history as the season when America fell apart. Let’s take a tour of the disasters. Germany in 2008 enthusiastically hosted candidate Barack Obama for […]
Illiberal Immigration ‘Reform’
People who call for “comprehensive immigration reform” seldom mean it. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The last thing a liberal proponent of immigration reform wants is liberal immigration reform. Remember that paradox, and the insanity at the border makes some sense. Each day a worried politician or pundit, with creased brow and […]
All Clintoned Out
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Barack Obama did not blow apart Hillary Clinton’s huge lead during the 2008 Democratic primaries just because he was a landmark African-American candidate, new to the scene, and a skilled campaigner. Even Democrats were all Clintoned out [1]. By such weariness, I don’t suggest that either of the Clintons is unpopular. […]
The Moral Crisis on Our Southern Border
A perfect storm of special interests have hijacked U.S. immigration law. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals — most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens — are streaming across America’s southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial […]
Are Obama’s Advisers Unhinged?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Surely reports that President Obama is going down to Texas at the height of the Katrina-like border debacle to raise money at the home of the popular but often polarizing filmmaker and Quentin Tarantino–collaborator Robert Rodriguez are the stuff of right-wing mythology? No one could be so politically […]