Historian’s Corner

Victor Davis Hanson America is facing a number of existential crises—an open border, 30 million illegal immigrants, $36 trillion in debt, borrowing at the rate of $1 billion every 100 days, a suicidal war on gas, oil, and coal production, a recrudescence of premodern racial and ethnic tribalism, the destruction of deterrence abroad, blue state […]

Victor Davis Hanson A third component of the street and campus madness is the destruction of all deterrence abroad and at home by the Biden administration. The Middle East has concluded that the U.S. is in escalating decline. Biden is seen as decrepit and terrified of losing power and thus will do anything to prevent, (1) Middle-East tensions that will disrupt

The epidemic of Diversity/Equity/Inclusion ideology fuels much of the current violence on campus and in the street, and for two reasons. One, we are now in our third year of reparatory admissions. That is, the SAT/ACT required admission exams have been absent on elite campuses for two or even three years. Racial quotas have severely

Victor Davis Hanson After seven months of pro-Hamas chaos, a good question arises over what exactly the anti-Semitic demonstrators won’t do? Crash Easter services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral? Interrupt Christmas celebrations? Deface the White House wall, the Lincoln Memorial, and veterans’ cemeteries? Shut down commuter traffic on freeways and block cars on key bridges such

Victor Davis Hanson As one resident told me, when I asked what was going on in his compounds, “It’s like our home in Oaxaca, only better.” Once, the former Fox Nation reporter Lara Logan brought a film crew out here to film the illegal alien environs. She told me that she had found the entire environment quite

Victor Davis Hanson What explains the general breakdown in civilization and the law, in a region where once no one had a key to their front farmhouse door and children free-ranged at age six or seven among their fields and orchards? One reason, of course, is the open border. Millions have illegally entered the U.S.,

Victor Davis Hanson 8. The Garbage Baggers. Sometimes the encounters are surreal to the point of being comedic, yet always instructional about the oddities of rural existence. And after all, one must retain a sense of humor amidst the 21st-century’s absurdities, and sometimes things just don’t add up. Last year I walked along the alleyway and

Victor Davis Hanson 6. The fornicators. I’ll be brief. Recently, I have stumbled upon a growing number of fornicators, if I may use such a term of disparagement—in cars, on blankets on the ground, on mattresses even. As the town grows closer, so the farm seems ideal for trysts. I am no Puritan, but I resent

Victor Davis Hanson 4. The Shooter. Two years ago, during record rainfall and snow melt, the ponds were full, the grass was lush, and the once-ossified cottonwood trees abruptly came back to life as they always do after the end of a drought. Ducks and geese were everywhere. Herons flew in regularly. Bullfrogs croaked all night.

Victor Davis Hanson Here are my top ten encounters of a strange kind over the last decade in what used to be the safest, most wonderful rural space in the world. 1. The Tragic Dead. Two years ago, I came upon a parked abandoned Volkswagen with a deceased person in it. This was a real tragedy