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.
War’s Paradoxes II: From the Peloponnesian War to ‘Leading From Behind’
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1. Why Did Athens Lose the Peloponnesian War? It really did not in a way: Athens no more lost the war than Hitler did the Second World War between September 1939 and May 1941. Instead it was defeated in a series of wars (only later seen as elements of […]
War’s Paradoxes II: From the Peloponnesian War to ‘Leading From Behind’
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1. Why Did Athens Lose the Peloponnesian War? It really did not in a way: Athens no more lost the war than Hitler did the Second World War between September 1939 and May 1941.
Not the Message, Not the Messenger, It’s the Voter: Part I
by Bruce Thronton FrontPage Nearly 3 months after the presidential election the Republicans are still trying to fix what they think went wrong. A popular culprit is the Republicans’ alleged failure to communicate forcefully or persuasively a message that would move voters presumably receptive to conservative policies and principles.
The New Age of Falsity
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We live in an age of falsity, in which words have lost their meanings and concepts are reinvented as the situation demands. The United States is in a jobless recovery — even if that phrase largely disappeared from the American lexicon about 2004. Good news somehow must follow […]
War Is Like Rust
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm. Throughout history, we have seen that war
California at Twilight
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media We keep trying to understand the enigma of California, mostly why it still breathes for a while longer, given the efforts to destroy the sources of its success. Let’s try to navigate through its sociology and politics to grasp why something that should not survive is surviving quite well […]
The Age of Tokenism
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It is a depressing characteristic of government today to loudly enact legislation and impose regulations of little utility, while neglecting to address the root causes of truly serious problems. We do not know to what degree a Sandy Hook or a Columbine is caused by improperly treated mental […]
Wards of the State
by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas The biggest political problem the United States faces — runaway entitlement costs on track to bankrupt the treasury — is like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Even talking about it can be politically dangerous, as the Republicans learned in November and during […]
Europe’s Wishes Came True
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost a decade ago, Europeans and many progressive Americans were lamenting how the United States was going to miss out on the 21st-century paradigm symbolized by the robust European Union. Neanderthal Americans were importing ever more oil while waging a costly “war on terror” and fighting two conflicts […]
Women at the Front
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Ostensibly, there are really only two issues about the inclusion of women in combat units: one, apparently the nation believes that it will react to the future combat deaths or capture of women in ground units the same way it does to the loss of male soldiers, even […]
What Is the Future of Conservatism?
by Victor Davis Hanson Commentary Magazine First, some perspective is key. Romney’s “47 percent” remarks and Hurricane Sandy probably turned an Obama one-percent win into the three-percent margin that he attained — especially considering Republicans kept the House and are doing well with governorships.
Our Old Grand Fantasies About Radical Islam
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Most things that we read in the popular media about radical Islam are fantasies. They are promulgated in the mistaken belief that such dogmas will appease terrorists, or at least direct their ire elsewhere. But given the recent news — murdering in Algeria, war in Mali, the Syrian mess, […]
The War Between the Amendments
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the US Constitution against each other.
VDH UltraAngry Reader #7: A Response to “The Liberal Aristocracy”
Angry Reader #6 wrote: “Mr. Hanson unfolds the conservative Procrustean hide-a-bed. If a Democratic president is wealthy, he’s a hypocrite. If a Democratic president isn’t, then he’s guilt of envy and class warfare.” VDH replied: