Historian’s Corner

Victor Davis Hanson The syllabus I taught in a “Humanities of the Western World” class in 1985 at CSU Fresno was far out of reach of the students by my last year in 2004. The Old Guard faculty in their sixties, whom I met at age 30 in 1984, whom in my arrogance I thought […]

Victor Davis Hanson I took a drive this week from rural Central California to the Stanford Campus, in a manner I have done for 50 years since my student days. In the over three-hour drive, I remembered what the state was like in 1975 compared to 2025. It was not a pretty contrast, despite the

There was never in truth any evidence that the Iranian military was competent. Tehran knew and hid that truth when it began arming terrorist surrogates like Hezbollah and Hamas to do its own dirty work. Again, Iran performed pathetically (but bravely nihilist) in the Iran-Iraq War. When its ships buzzed American naval vessels in the

Victor Davis Hanson For nearly half a century the West has feared the lunatic theocracy in Iran. Jimmy Carter helped create the phantasma of a dangerous, unpredictable, and venomous regime. But how did such an image become entrenched in the West? Carter was humiliated in 1979–80 by his continued refusal to warn the Iranian revolutionary

Victor Davis Hanson Mexico seems clueless about the current asymmetries and the huge benefits it has been accruing at U.S. expense, as if these benefits are somehow its birthright. Currently, some $63 billion in remittances are sent to Mexico from mostly Mexican immigrants, the majority believed to be here illegally. And many of that cohort

Victor Davis Hanson When riots broke out in Los Angeles after ICE tried to serve warrants on a variety of illegal aliens, most of whom were believed to be either criminals or engaged in criminal activity, mobs assumed that we were all back to the “summer of love” that exempted violence of 2020. But, of

Victor Davis Hanson If Putin really is grinding down Ukraine and if it cannot through drones either stop him or prevent a theater-wide escalation, Ukraine might look back to history for guidance—and thus remember that the thriving Finland of today exists today only because of one man, the heroic but realistic leader Marshal Carl Gustaf

Victor Davis Hanson Ukraine has recently pulled off some spectacular successes, such as the attack that damaged the key Kerch bridge linking Crimea to Russia. If permanently derailed, the loss may curtail one key Russian supply line and cost a considerable amount of time and investment to restore it—but only to be hit again by

Victor Davis Hanson The coastal elites gave us sanctuary cities and a sanctuary state. They oppose deportations (remember the campaign videos of Kamala Harris chanting and demonstrating to stop federal deportations of illegal aliens from California). They virtue signal their liberality and then are shocked that a 13.3% income tax rate will still not bring