The Death of the Humanities
A liberal arts education was once a gateway to wisdom; now it can breed ignorance and arrogance. by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas The humanities are in their latest periodic crisis. Though the causes of the ongoing decline may be debated, everyone accepts the dismal news about eroding university enrollments, ever fewer new faculty positions,
Kerry Boasts of ‘Pluralistic’ Syria Once Assad Gone
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, was recently interviewed about Syria. While many of his assertions can be debated, one especially requires a response. Throughout the interview, he repeatedly insisted that, if Bashar Assad would only leave power, everything would go well — especially for all of Syria’s minorities. In his words: “I
Fight the Next War, Not the Last One
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Tuesday night President Obama will deliver another campaign speech, this one marketed as the State of the Union address. As such, we can expect to hear, through the usual white noise of “I,” “me,” and “my,” vacuous bromides like “moving America forward,” and empty promises “to grow the economy, strengthen the middle class, and empower all who
Governing by Pen and Phone
Obama used to sigh that he was not a dictator who could act unilaterally. No more. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Lately a weakened President Obama has fashioned a new attitude about consensual government: “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the
Eating Our Young
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media It is popular now to talk of race, class, and gender oppression. But left out of this focus on supposed victim groups is the one truly targeted cohort — the young. Despite the Obama-era hype, we are not suffering new outbreaks of racism. Wendy Davis is not the poster
‘Duty,’ and the Taint of the Tell-All
Robert Gates’s insider memoir is the latest in a dishonorable genre. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online For all the hysteria over former defense secretary Robert Gates’s new insider memoir of his tenure during the Bush and Obama administrations, the disclosures are more breaches of trust than earth-shattering revelations. Much of Duty: Memoirs of a
The Eternal Darkness of the Progressive Mind
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine The attacks on Lone Survivor, the movie about 4 Navy Seals caught in an operation gone lethally wrong in Afghanistan, illustrate once again the fossilized orthodoxy of the left. The L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson called the movie a “jingoistic snuff film” that “bleeds blood red, bone-fracture white, and bruise blue”