Victor Davis Hanson // National Review California is touchy, and yet still remains confused, about incomplete data showing that the 40-million-person state, as of Sunday, April 12, reportedly had 23,777 cases of residents who have tested posted for the COVID-19 illness. The number of infected by the 12th includes 674 deaths, resulting in a fatality rate […]
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review We are a few days away from a rendezvous with some tough conclusions about COVID-19. A number of concurrent developments are coming to a head. Most will bring light where so far there was only heat. Greater information about the virus might cause as much acrimony as conciliation. Some experts
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Almost two weeks ago I offered at NRO a few synopses of various theories about why California — which, for a variety of reasons, had seemed so ripe for a New York–style epidemic — had nonetheless strangely been exempt at least for a while from the virus’s spread. I included the
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness The virus will teach us many things, but one lesson has already been relearned by the American people: there are two, quite different, types of wisdom. One, and the most renowned, is a specialization in education that results in titled degrees and presumed authority. That ensuing prestige, in turn,
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In A. A. Milne’s classic Winne-the-Pooh children’s tales, Eeyore, the old gray donkey, is perennially pessimistic and gloomy. He always expects the worst to happen. Milne understood that Eeyore’s outbursts of depression could at first be salutatory but then become monotonous. The outlook of the pessimist (“if you think it’s
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness As the coronavirus outbreak begins to reach its zenith, it remains unclear whether the measures taken to stem its tide will prove sufficient, insufficient, or an overreaction. What is certain, however, is that a number of individuals and entities have behaved shamefully and demonstrated no capacity for leadership or
Victor Davis Hanson // National Review A current global myth alleges that America under the Trump administration is not leading the world fight against the coronavirus in its accustomed role as the post-war global leader. Yet the U.S. was the first major nation to issue a travel ban on flights from China, with Donald Trump
Victor Davis Hanson // City Journal There are two well-known themes, or topoi, in classical literature. One concerns the graphic descriptions in Thucydides, Sophocles, and Procopius of plagues—especially the human misery and despair that accompanies outbreaks that killed large numbers. The unknown plague at Athens (430–429 BC) killed one-quarter of the Athenian population during the Peloponnesian
Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness President Donald Trump has courted endless controversies for promoting nonconventional policies and entertaining contrarian views. From the outset, he oddly seemed to have believed that having navigated the jungles of the Manhattan real estate market—crooked politicians, mercurial unions, neighborhood social activists, the green lobby, leery banks, cutthroat rivals—better prepared
Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America, Daniel Okrent. Scribner, 2019. 402 pp. Daniel Okrent has marshalled a compendium of damning statements and information which demonstrates the ignominy of the eugenics movement and