Historian’s Corner

Victor Davis Hanson Was San Francisco the crown jewel, the logical result of the progressive project, our inheritance from the politicking of Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer, and Diane Feinstein? Where now are all the multimillionaire leftists who were never subject to the realities of their own disastrous ideology? Do any of […]

Victor Davis Hanson While Britain was fighting for its empire in out-of-the-way places like Afghanistan (1839–42; 1878–80; 1919), the inner core of London was Dickensian—crime ridden and impoverished. I thought of Dickens’s Oliver Twist and David Copperfield juxtaposed to the horrendous end to the First Afghan War (1842), in which an entire army and retinue

Victor Davis Hanson The January 6th “Insurrection” Continued Most people deplored the entrance into the Capitol of rioters who desecrated their government’s place of business. But many equally rejected the contortion of that day by the Left, as it strained to manufacture a complete Reichstag-like fantasy for political purposes. No one inside the Capitol was

Victor Davis Hanson Here is what we do not understand about the January 6th Committee—if it truly was intended to appear as a disinterested investigatory body. 1. Why for the first time in memory did Speaker Pelosi forbid the House Minority Leader’s pro forma nominees to a special House committee? Fairly or not, the result

Victor Davis Hanson Country Living I have lived most of my life in the country, save for three academic years in Santa Cruz, four in Palo Alto, and two in Athens. Like many of you born outside of cities, I get restless in town—too crowded, too loud, too many strangers. I am used to being

Victor Davis Hanson As one nears 70 years old, already arrived at Solon’s ebb tide and last age of man, all the old, ingrained habits begin to become burdensome. What once was pleasurable Hesiodic “work upon work upon work” becomes a swollen knee for a week, a sore shoulder for three days, a burning muscle

Victor Davis Hanson What have the American armed forces often failed at? Democracies and consensual societies grow large bureaucracies for several reasons. And often stasis sets in, and ossified clerks and calcified careerists resent the talented outsider and the maverick, not-by-the-book loudmouth. And a result, brilliance is resented and smothered, and America is no exception

Victor Davis Hanson In sum, American war production was characterized by mass quantities, reliability, pragmatism, and affordability. What good did it do Panther tanks that they could blow apart Shermans at great distances if their hours of maintenance to hours of deployment were the inverse of Shermans? So what if the Tiger or Tiger II

Victor Davis Hanson Innovation It is no accident that the big-ticket, new weapons systems in World War II were American-made, or ironclads designed from the hull up with powerful guns, like the Monitor and its two state-of-the-art 11-inch Dahlgren turret guns, first appeared in the U.S. That is not to say friends and foes did

Victor Davis Hanson In reviewing America’s long wartime record, what does the United States do well, and what not—and what can we learn from both successes and failures? Production and Mobilization If America is often lax in maintaining deterrence during peace—cf. the disarmed era between 1870–1914 or 1920–1940—it is phenomenal at the 11th hour in