A Bright and Shining Libyan Lie
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue.
The Stakes in Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Foreign policy, the topic of tonight’s debate, was suddenly thrust into the voters’ consciousness by the murder of 4 Americans, including our ambassador, in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11. Intensifying the fallout of this event has been the Obama administration’s incoherent, clumsy, duplicitous, and rapidly unraveling attempt to blame […]
VDH UltraThe Return of the Angry Reader
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers In response to a column on Libya one reader wrote: But Hanson’s argument here is much bigger than the embassy killings. Except, I’m not entirely clear what the thesis is. Is he saying it was a mistake to go into Libya? Is he saying it was right that we […]
The Nobel Committee and Its Orwellian Peace Prize
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Norway’s Nobel Committee added yet another absurd pick to its long list of politicized and shameful Peace Prize awards. Giving the prize to the disintegrating European Union is not as despicable as giving it to the bloodstained terrorist Yasser Arafat, or as laughably naive as bestowing it on the communist […]
The Game Changes
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama’s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama lost?
A Presidency Squandered
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Obama narrative is that he inherited the worst mess in memory and has been stymied ever since by a partisan Congress — while everything from new ATM technology to the Japanese tsunami conspired against him. But how true are those claims?
The Obama Breaking Point
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Was it the blame-gaming — “Bush did it!,” ATMs are at fault, tsunamis are the culprit, no other administration has had such challenges, the euro meltdown is to blame, earthquakes shook our confidence — that finally turned the country off of Obama?
Silenced Partner: Two Books on Alfred Wallace
by Terry Scambray Touchstone A review of: Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s Theory of Life Challenged Darwinism by Michael A. Flannery (Erasmus Press, 2008. 216 pp.) Includes an abridged version of Wallace’s The World of Life, with an Introduction by Flannery and a Forward by William A. Dembski.
One Nation, Under God?
by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas The role of religion in American social and political life is an ever-present element in our civic conversation. The recent controversy over the contraception mandate ignited a smoldering conflict over just this issue.
Bankrupt California
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online I thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas — and had to wait in line to get it. The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom. I mentioned to […]
The Ever-Stranger Case of a Murdered US Ambassador
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner In the past — in Sudan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc. — the murder of an American ambassador sparked immediate debates over security lapses, but in the Libyan case the media seems to be doing its best not to investigate the circumstances around the murders.
The First Amendment vs. Multiculturalism
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured — correctly — that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we […]
Anatomy of a Disastrous Debate Performance
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Romney-Obama debate was bizarre for so many reasons. Usually spin masters needle the media immediately to “prove” that their so-so candidate won. But after this debate, almost no one made the argument that Obama was close to winning — so great was the risk for even a toadying […]
The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate
by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night’s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited government, individual rights and freedom, […]
The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better intellectual artillery to deliver it. […]
The Neurotic Middle East
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Let us confess it: Many of the things that are bothersome in the world today originate in the Middle East. Billions of air passengers each year take off their belts and shoes at the airport, not because of fears of terrorism from the slums of Johannesburg or because […]
Election Could Mirror 1980 Race
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There was only one presidential debate in 1980 between challenger Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter. Just two days before the Oct. 28 debate, Carter was eight points ahead in the Gallup poll. A week after the debate, he lost to Reagan by nearly ten percentage points.
‘Religious Defamation’ Laws Would Ban Islam
by Raymond Ibrahim Frontpage Magazine As the Islamic world, in the guise of the 57-member state Organization of Islamic Cooperation, continues to push for the enforcement of “religious defamation” laws in the international arena — theoretically developed to protect all religions from insult, but in reality made for Islam — one great irony is lost, […]
The Fantasy House
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media It All Failed? By Fantasy House I do not mean — or rather only mean — Barack Obama’s La-La land in which Austrians speak Austrian, Hawaii is in Asia, Afghans speak Arabic, the Maldives lie off Argentina, there are seven additional states, servicemen are zombie corpse-men, and Kansas twisters […]
President Ethelred
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Like old King Ethelred the Unready, who either had no counsel or had no sense, or both, and often paid the Danegeld rather than attempt to deter the Norsemen, so Barack Obama and his lieutenants still believe that they can both appease radical Islam and convince others that […]