How to Weaken an Economy
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media It is not easy to ruin the American economy; doing nothing[1] usually means it repairs itself[2] and soon is healthier than before a recession.
Obama’s Non-Triangulation
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online After the election, dozens of op-eds — I wrote one myself — cautioned the president about second-term overreach, focusing on how either hubris or simple fate has seemed to do in most modern second presidential terms.
The California Mordida
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California now works on the principle of the mordida, or “bite.” Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state.
Journalists as Ring Wraiths
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Today’s Washington journalists are like J. R. R. Tolkien’s ring wraiths, petty lords who wanted a few shiny golden Obama rings — only to end up as shrunken slaves to the One.
Explaining the Inexplicable
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Almost daily we witness things that make no sense. A few examples, from the profound to the trivial.
American Recessional
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for impending cuts to the defense budget brought about by sequestration.
Beautifully Medieval California
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Gates Close at Dusk At about dusk, I close two large metal gates to my driveways. The security lights come on, and I enjoy intramural life.
Gilded Class Warriors
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha’s Vineyard and the nation’s most exclusive golf courses.
Brave New World
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Revolutions We Missed Sometimes societies just plod along, oblivious that the world is being reinvented right under their noses. In 2000, one never saw pedestrians bumping into themselves as they glued their noses to iPhones.
Why Do Societies Give Up?
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline? Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France.
The Tangled Web of Race
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online A number of commentators have openly sympathized with multi-murderer Christopher Dorner, who shot seven innocent people, killing four of them. Apparently, the late Dorner was a voice in the wilderness crying out against the racist injustice of the “system.”
The Face of Things to Come
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Campaign Rhetoric The campaign contour is pretty clear: The Obama reelection team will not make the case for the advantages and popularity of Obamacare, for the Chuian advantages of $4-a-gallon gas, for the dynamism of a 1.7 percent GDP growth rate, for the stimulatory effects of adding $5 trillion […]
The Super Bowl Farmers
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Chrysler’s Super Bowl Ram Truck commercial praising the American farmer was an unexpected big hit and is still being replayed around the country on talk radio. Rich Lowry[1] and Peggy Noonan[2] both contrasted the authenticity of that commercial fantasy with the falsity of the real event.
Obama’s Hypocritic Oath
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning straw men “them” who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides — and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore were ruining the country.
Brennan’s Testimony and Waterboarding Misinformation
by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage The Senate Intelligence Committee last week grilled Obama’s pick to head the CIA, John Brennan, on all sorts of issues. Democrats worked him over about the CIA’s interrogation, detention, and droning of terrorist suspects, while Republicans were concerned about leaks of classified information.
Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a “reset” policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration’s inability to finesse “soft power” had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy.
It’s a Mad, Mad World
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Dorner Debacle It is hard to remember worse coverage of a catastrophe than what we are given about the ex-cop Christopher Dorner’s murdering rampage. Some reprehensible pundits, ever so easily, fall into blaming LAPD and its “history of racism,” in a sorta, kinda contextualizing of Dorner’s brutal killing of […]
Incoherent Immigration Reform
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Nothing about illegal immigration quite adds up.
Diplomacy: What Not To Do
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner 1980 Redux We are in scary times. The horrific photos of Ambassador Stevens bring to mind memories of Mogadishu or Fallujah, and make us ask why were there not dozens, if not vastly more, Marines around him in his hour of need. By preemptively caving into radical Islam and […]
Messengers, Messages, and Voters: Part 2
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage At their retreat in Williamsburg a few weeks ago House Republicans continued the post-mortem of November’s debacle. A big topic was how to better market the Republican brand. A Domino’s Pizza executive gave “a well-received talk about selling a damaged brand to a modern audience,” asNational Review Online reported.