Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner Whether the Athenian pandemic that destroyed a quarter of the Attic population in 430-29 B.C. and made it nearly impossible for Athens to win the Peloponnesian War, or the outbreaks of Yersinia pestis (A.D. 541–49) that ended the Byzantine emperor Justinian’s grand idea of a reunified Rome headquartered in the East, […]
Victor Davis Hanson Words Matter cis—fancy Latin preposition used by those who know no Latin class—a now taboo word that died around 2020 cultural appropriation—not dying your hair blond dark money—never used again since it is now all leftwing diversity—segregation revival equality—far worse than “inequality” equity—capitalism for me, Marxism for you fragility—a slur used by
Here we are in the closing months of 2021, experiencing the most disastrous presidency since that of James Buchanan. Do we even remember life before COVID-19, when the Jacobinism of the Left was so looney, so venomous that its very contradictions and toxicity once upon a long time ago helped to keep it bay? Then
Tribalism—and the fear to speak out against such racial, ethnic, or religious chauvinism—can at times prove deadly. During the late 2019 geneses of the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government initially suppressed all critical information about the virus’s severity. It destroyed key evidence of its likely birth, by insisting the virus first appeared in an open
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner “Chinese investment in the United States helps support jobs across our country. We partner to address global challenges, whether it’s promoting nuclear security, combating piracy off the Horn of Africa, encouraging development and reconciliation in Afghanistan, and helping to end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. …So, greater prosperity and greater
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner As the 2020 election season began, the New York Times, promised its readers a recalibration of American history called “The 1619 Project.” The ensuing series of essays and media kits had a twofold agenda. One was to rewrite the origins of American history as the four-century foreign intrusion into a pristine
Were There Really Two Opposing Alliances? As we noted, from June 25, 1940, to December 7, 1941, there were not formal “Allies.” The British-Western European alliance, such as it had been, disappeared with the fall of France in June 1940 and the appeasement or absorption of all of Western Europe. True, Britain encouraged and aided
Was Britain Really the Weak Allied Partner? Wars are not always just conflicts of men and materiel; will and principles weigh in as well. In this context, the moral leadership of Britain during World War II proved invaluable to the Allied cause, even if it was often guided at times by imperial concerns. Britain was
One-Dimensional Versus Global War If in 1939–41, Moscow had sent Nazi Germany huge deliveries of cereals, wheat, soybeans, 100,000 tons of cotton, nearly a million tons of oil and ores and minerals essential to German industry, it would be unable to divert some of such aid to its new friends in its new fight against
Did the Soviet Union Really “win” the war? There is something amoral in even posing such a question given the horrendous loss of Russian life resisting Nazi aggression. Superlatives are exhausted when describing the four-year-long Eastern Front between June 22, 1941 and the surrender of Nazi forces to the Soviets on May 9, 1945. While