Historian’s Corner

Victor Davis Hanson For the first 50 years of my rural existence, I don’t think I encountered more than 10 trespassing cars parked in the orchards or vineyards (one a decade)—aside from the intoxicated drivers who left the main road, veered off the pavement, destroyed several trees or vines, and abandoned their automobiles or trucks […]

Victor Davis Hanson Given the radical shift to 70 percent of the electorate not voting on Election Day as the traditional ballot rejection rate dived by a magnitude, given the billions of dollars that will be pledged to stop Donald Trump, and given the use of lawfare to restrict his availability on the campaign trail,

Victor Davis Hanson Nonetheless, here we are in mid-March 2024, some eight years after Trump entered the political scene and Trump has arisen from the political deceased. How many epitaphs have been written and will be written about Trump? And yet he is now leading an incumbent president in almost all the polls, with minorities

Victor Davis Hanson Almost every effort the Left has employed to destroy Trump has not—at least yet—succeeded. And there remains only one Trump opponent left—Trump himself. Let me explain. In 2016, the Clinton campaign, the DNC, the Perkins Coie law firm, Fusion GPS, and Christopher Steele, all with help from the DOJ, CIA, and FBI,

Victor Davis Hanson The final catalyst that led to our collective implosion was the election year 2020 and the accelerating Trump Derangement Syndrome. As the cities burned, unbelievable madness followed in efforts to ensure the incumbent president would not be reelected. Suddenly, congressional officials, mayors, and governors all refused to keep the peace by requesting

Victor Davis Hanson The third catalyst that fueled our sudden madness and melted down the country was the aftermath of the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The eight-time felon was reportedly arrested after trying to pass counterfeit bills. He resisted arrest, was likely under the influence of recent (or very recent) fentanyl

Victor Davis Hanson Our nation’s change into something unrecognizable just four years ago had a few precursors and catalysts. The first was the Obama administration’s redefining of American norms. Before Obama, “racial relations” were largely defined as the historical 12 percent black/88 percent “non-black” dichotomy, in the context of dealing with the sins of southern

Victor Davis Hanson Presidents—Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden—have either been doubling the national debt in their four- or eight-year tenures or added several trillion to it. We all know that adding a trillion dollars in debt to what we collectively owe every 100 days is unsustainable. But then again, we all know that to stop the

Victor Davis Hanson The Myth of the Oppressed Palestinians There are lots of refugees in the world with much longer claims of displacement than the Palestinians, and also some with much more recent suffering. And yet we hear nothing about them. Does anyone challenge Turkish president Erdogan for his ongoing threats to send missiles into

Victor Davis Hanson The Myth of “Proportionality” As a general rule, in the long history of war, victory is found only by being disproportionate in the use of force. That is a truism so banal as to need little elaboration. When both sides are “proportionate” in their ability to harm their opponents, the result is