It’s Hard to Screw Up California–But We Try Our Best
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner There is a sort of upbeat New York Timesarticle arguing that California — in part, thanks to passing the highest sales and income taxes in the nation — might be coming back, a sort of recovery that can guide the rest of the US to a renewed faith in the Obama/EU/blue-state […]
Race Matters, Actually
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Lots of public officials and Washington, DC, insiders do not want UN Ambassador Susan Rice to be nominated as secretary of state. Most of these critics think she irrevocably lost credibility by going on five Sunday-morning television shows on September 16 to deny any connection between radical Islamic […]
A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss
by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The on-going negotiations over avoiding the tax hikes and spending cuts we call the “fiscal cliff” are simply the latest act in a farce of self-serving political denial. For decades now both parties have overseen and nurtured the expansion of the entitlement state all the while ignoring the slow-motion economic […]
War’s Paradoxes: From Pearl Harbor to the Russian Front to the 38th Parallel
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media From time to time, I take a break from opinion writing here at Works and Days [1] and turn to history — on this occasion, I am prompted by the 71st anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Here are a few of the most common questions that I have […]
Democracy Promotion or Islamist Promotion?
by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine The hope that democracy would bloom in Egypt following our collusion in removing Hosni Mubarak looks more and more delusional every day. Even our foreign policy wishful thinkers are no longer peddling the canard that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood is “secular” and “moderate,” thus proving that Muslims devoted to the […]
The Kingdom of Fairness
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back.
VDH UltraAngry Reader #5
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Angry Reader #5 wrote: Don’t mean to troll here, but for the nth time, what is it about Obama or his agenda that wasn’t conservative mainstream thought even a few years ago?? He’s lowered taxes, been tough on defense, adopted a healthcare plan proposed by the Heritage Foundation
The All-Knowing, All-Powerful UN
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner If the UN now has the right and duty to intervene, in a morally relative manner, in territorial disputes between various groups and grant de factosovereignty, then the sky is the limit. Why go through the motions of two-party discussions at all?
The Rise of Faux Diversity
by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas In Fisher vs. University of Texas, the Supreme Court heard legal challenges to the University of Texas’s admissions policies, which allow consideration of an applicant’s race in order to promote “diversity” among the school’s students. Such racial preferences are widespread in university admissions. In 80 percent of elite schools, they amount […]
Winning the Latino Vote
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Over the last three weeks, I think I have read most of the post-election op-eds written on the Latino vote. I have studied exit polling, read sophisticated demographic analyses, and talked to as many Latinos in my hometown as I could. The result is that I would not […]
The Confessions of a Confused Misfit
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Rich I confess I never admired John Edwards — and used to argue with the late Christopher Hitchens[1] about the blow-dried lawyer’s suitability for president. I didn’t think much of Al Gore or John Kerry, well before the “he lied!” vein-bulging fits and the wind-surfing spoofs. I was not […]
T-Ball War in the Middle East
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Classical explanations of conventional wars run something like this: An aggressor state seeks political advantage through military force. It has a hunch that the threatened target will likely either make concessions to avoid losing a war, or, if war breaks out, the resulting political gains will be worth […]
The Ghosts of 1938 Still Haunt Our Foreign Policy
by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine In a story describing President Obama’s six conversations with Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi that led to the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the New York Times summarized Obama’s estimation of Morsi. Obama told his aides “he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence.
Let Obama Be Obama
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services After his party’s devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous […]
VDH UltraAngry Reader #4
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Angry Reader #4 wrote: You know, I remember, before Pajamas media, when I respected some of the writers that are now here (such as VDH) — but they’ve all turned into crazy cranks.
The Ahistorical Krugman
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Paul Krugman weaves a fantasy tale of how high taxes, big unions, and government regulations created a booming 1950s economy — the implication being that in reactionary fashion we can now in a second term return to our heyday under Obama’s envisioned union support, growth in government, tax hikes, and […]
Learning from the Election
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1. Populism The Republicans have only won the popular vote since Ronald Reagan’s presidency on two occasions: 1988 and 2004. In both instances, even the patrician Bushes were able to paint their liberal opponents as out-of-touch Massachusetts magnificoes. Lee Atwater turned Michael Dukakis, the helmeted tank driver, into a bumbling […]
The Absurdity of Treating a Terrorist Gang Like a State
by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The currently suspended missile duel between Israel and Hamas exposes yet again the surreal absurdity of the way the international community handles this conflict between a democratic state and a terrorist gang. Yesterday’s cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas is another example of the folly of treating a bunch of […]
Oh, We Forgot to Tell You . . .
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, etc.) wins re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years — mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency and Hurricane […]
Oh What a Tangled Web
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Supporters of President Obama have dubbed those who question administration statements about Libya as either partisans or conspiracy theorists, on the premise that the administration had no reason to dissimulate. But in fact, it had plenty of political reasons not to be candid, as the following questions make […]