The Limits of German Patience
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Cologne, Germany I’m still in Germany, and keep noticing a predictable, but continually interesting, pattern in talking to Germans of all walks of life — tourists, hoteliers, guides, drivers, casual bystanders, or students. When Greece comes up (or rather is brought up by Americans), there is a noticeable tension.
Culture Still Matters
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last week I led a military-history tour on the Rhine River from Basel, Switzerland, to Amsterdam. You can learn a lot about Europe’s current economic crises by ignoring the sophisticated barrage of news analysis and instead just watching, listening, and talking to people as you go down river.
Two, Three, Many Obamas
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online As the campaign heats up, one problem is that we continue to meet lots of different Barack Obamas — to such a degree that we don’t know which, if any, is really president.
The Bad/Good Idea of Removing Assad
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Who could not despise the tottering Bashar al-Assad dictatorship in Syria?
Egypt’s Presidential Elections: What’s at Stake
by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine Egypt’s long awaited and much anticipated presidential elections — the first of their kind to take place in the nation’s 7,000 year history — are here. As we await the final results — and as the Western mainstream media fixate on images of purple-stained fingers — it is well to remember that there […]
Secretaries Gone Wild
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner We’ve had some unusual cabinet secretaries in past administrations — Earl Butz, John Mitchell, and James Watt come to mind — but never anything quite like the present bunch.
Can California Be Fixed?
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Recently, I was driving down pot-holed, two-lane, non-freeway 101 near Monterey (unchanged since the 1960s) when the radio blared that on a recent science test administered to public schools, California scored 47th in the nation.
Obama’s Gay Marriage ‘Evolution’ Deception
by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In yet another act of election-year cynicism, Barack Obama has announced, “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” This statement follows similar pronouncements by Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. To hear Obama tell it, this change reflects his “evolution” away from his previously stated […]
The EU at the Abyss
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Over the last four years, almost all of the news about the shaky European Union has been financial, with some attention paid to southern Mediterranean tabloid attacks on Germany and the German media counter-stereotyping of irresponsible siesta-loving sunny Mediterraneans.
America’s Problem of Assimilation
by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas The current Supreme Court term has been dominated by the Constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare legislation better known as Obamacare.
Let Sleeping Germans Lie
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The newly elected French Socialist president, Francois Hollande, is warning Germany that Mediterranean ideas of “growth,” not Germanic “austerity,” should be the new European creed.
Obama’s Undiplomacy
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Most of the criticism of the Obama administration’s foreign policy concerns the failure of “reset diplomacy,” the inability to deal with Iran or North Korea, or the sense that we are ignoring allies and appeasing enemies.
Winning Battles, Losing Wars
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Can We Still Win Wars? Given that the United States fields the costliest, most sophisticated, and most lethal military in the history of civilization, that should be a silly question.
The Power of Cool
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online When Barack Obama two years ago joked at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner that potential suitors of his two daughters might have to deal with Predator drones (“But boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: Predator drones. You will never see it coming.”), the liberal crowd […]
Islamic Hate for a Dead Pope
by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine Inasmuch as the recent death of Coptic Pope Shenouda III exposed the humanity of some Muslims, it also exposed the inhumanity of Islamic teachings.
The Stupid Party
by Bruce S. Thronton FrontPage Magazine The presidency of Barack Obama has established once and for all that modern liberalism is now the stupid party. Very little of liberal thought these days represents anything fresh or new, but rather comprises what Lionel Trilling once reduced conservatism to: “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”
The Obama-Romney Doggy Wars
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Last week the Washington Post ran a piece on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s high-school years, in which he supposedly was cruel to a shy, perhaps gay fellow student.
Presidential Narcissism
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Former president Bill Clinton just appeared in a reelection television commercial for President Barack Obama. At one point, Clinton weighs in on the potential consequences of Obama’s decision to go ahead with the planned assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Change–and Some Hope
by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Rays of Sun Amid the Storm The Rasmussen Tracking Poll recently had Romney up 50 to 42 over Obama. At this early juncture, such polls mean nothing — except as diagnostic indices of why perhaps both candidates go up and down in popularity.
More Rubble, Less Trouble
by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas Western Warfare, as originated by the Greeks and systematized by the Romans, took various forms over the ensuing two millennia. European militaries put greater emphasis on decisive battles such as Gaugamela or Kursk. They focused on collective discipline, the importance of staying in rank, superior technology, and logistics.