Obama, Heed Thyself
He used to know some important things. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending, and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama, tempers might cool. And had […]
Barack Obama and the Bad Ideas of Progressivism
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Barack Obama’s serial gross incompetence has elicited all sorts of explanatory theories. He’s a closet socialist, an Alinskyite radical, a secret Muslim, or an anti-American internationalist. Though some of Obama’s words and deeds give support to all these speculations, I prefer a simpler explanation. Obama is a Progressive––not a […]
Jihad vs Terrorism: Listen to What Islam’s Authorities Say
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com A recent Arabic article appearing in Egypt’s Al Ahram newspaper titled “Is Terrorism Jihad?” written by Islamic law expert Dr. Abdul Fatah Idris offers important lessons—from the fact that jihad does involve subjugating non-Muslims to why the Western mentality is still incapable of acknowledging it.
The Failure of American Leadership
Obama’s foreign policy of appeasement has created a dangerous void in the international order. by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas The standard critique of President Obama’s foreign policy is now generally well-known—mercurial, paradoxical, and passive. “Leading from behind” seems at odds with the traditional American commitment to ensure—preferably with allies or, if need be, alone—the […]
America Is Intervened Out
Our security interests have changed, along with out sense that we can make a difference. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online n the immediate future, I do not think the United States will be intervening abroad on the ground — not in the Middle East or, for that matter, many places in other parts […]
Sort of True, Sort of Not
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner The problem with negotiating with President Obama is not necessarily that he sometimes makes things up, but that he always sort of makes things up. Take a single recent October 8 press. All at once, the president used a weird assortment of similes and allusions to brand ad […]
What Are They Fighting Over?
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner The deficit this year may fall to below $700 billion, but that is still huge at a time of a record near $17 trillion in debt, and comes despite a supposedly recovering economy and more revenue, despite recent sequestration cuts, despite dramatic gains in U.S. domestic energy production, […]
Reading Among the Ruins
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media I have been reading both new and classic books this week among the ruins (see photos below). Martin Anderson, now almost in his 90th year, has written a fascinating memoir about fashioning a cattle and big-game preservation ranch in Africa: Galana: Elephant, Game Domestication, and Cattle on a Kenya Ranch. At one […]
Obama as Chaos
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama’s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute.
Netanyahu’s Necessary Crankiness
We can afford to be overly optimistic about Iran, but Israel can’t. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online So far, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani’s peace ruse is still bearing some fruit. President Obama was eager to talk with him at the United Nations — only to be reportedly rebuffed, until Obama managed to phone […]
VDH on The John Batchelor Show
Tuesday 8 October 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re: Silicon Valley on the ACA website: CoverCalifornia, the state site, says that 16,000 household apps are moving through the system; The thousands of phone calls had a 30-minute wait. Cal has highest poverty rate in the nation – one-third of our […]
Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney
Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013 · Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a research fellow at the Hoover […]
Surreal and Suicidal: Modern Western Histories of Islam
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com The full magnitude of the modern West’s ignorance of its own past recently struck me while rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe. The historical narrative being disseminated today simply bears very little resemblance to reality. Consider some facts for a moment: A mere decade after […]
Obama Will Cut a Deal Sooner Rather than Later
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner At first glance, the Republicans seemed to be losing the so-called shut-down impasse, inasmuch as Obamacare, as the president termed it, was “settled law” and the Republicans did not have the congressional clout to overturn it. No one likes, after all, to be turned away from Yosemite on […]
Medieval Liberals
Unlike classical liberals, the liberals of today hew to doctrine in the face of the evidence. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online A classical liberal was characteristically guided by disinterested logic and reason. He was open to gradual changes in society that were frowned upon by traditionalists in lockstep adherence to custom and protocol. The […]
Prestige and Power in Statecraft
History teaches us that nations must always respond vigorously to an enemy’s challenge, a lesson the U.S. should remember in Syria. by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas President Obama, responding to widespread criticisms that his handling of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis was clumsy and ad hoc, said, “I’m less concerned about style points, I’m […]
Foreign Policy Magazine Covers Up Syrian Sex Jihad
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com Foreign Policy magazine recently demonstrated why U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, is a disaster: because the establishment has a hard time factoring the foreign in their policies (more’s the irony). Put differently, whatever information doesn’t comport with modern Western epistemology—our subjective worldviews—must simply be false, unreal, to be discarded from […]
‘Game Changers’
by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services When — not if — is the only mystery about an Iranian nuclear bomb. All the warning signs are there. ‘Game changers’ In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama on two occasions went out of his way to warn the Iranians that the development of a nuclear weapon “would be a […]