Victor Davis Hanson The history of nations is a story of borders. Most wars break out over a nation’s private space, essential to create and maintain a unique culture. I once studied why Greek states fought three out of four years in the fifth century B.C. The answer was easy: disputed borderlands. Democratic Athens was …
VDH UltraCivilizational Killers. Part Three. Borders and Security Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Debt and its twin inflation destroy civilizations. Ancient coins were sometimes called “redheads” as the raised impressed silhouettes of grandees stamped on “silver” coins were the first to have their silver veneers worn away revealing the “red” bronze beneath. Our paper money is similarly becoming less and less valuable, the more we …
VDH UltraCivilizational Killers. Part Two. Debt and Inflation Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson No civilization can continue if its bedrock values and institutions are eroding—especially if the effort to save them is considered worse than their destruction. When we look to the civilizational decline of the Greek polis, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, or of Europe in the 1930s we learn that erosion is …
VDH UltraCivilizational Killers. Part One. Perversion of the Law Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany divided up Poland. Germany invaded first from the north, west, and south, the Soviet Union subsequently from the east. By early October the war was over. A victorious Germany concluded that while its forces had learned much about …
VDH UltraWokism and History. Part Three: “The Commissariat” Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson One characteristic of wokism is the promotion of the mediocre on the basis of ideological correctness—a formula to attract incompetent careerists and toady opportunists. One characteristic of National Socialism that we rarely emphasize was its destruction of merit. “Jewish physics” translated into the expulsion of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in Nazi …
VDH UltraWokism and History. Part Two: “Correct Physics” Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson The outbreak of ideological madness is not new to the 21st century. The historian Thucydides in the third book of his history (written sometime from ca. 420–390 B.C.) paused from his general account of the war to chronicle a cycle of ideological-driven violence on the island of Corcyra (modern Corfu) during the …
VDH UltraWokism and History. Part One: “Correct Vocabulary” Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson What caused a near septuagenarian to have a near death experience with a ridiculous bee (or wasp?), one who had been suffering from “Covid euphoria”—the syndrome of finally getting over long Covid and feeling invincible while exaggerating normal health into a sort of divine deliverance and jubilance—suddenly to return to square one? …
VDH UltraThe Unpredictable, Unforeseen, and Simply Strange. Part Five Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson I drifted out a bit again and woke up, maybe a minute later (so it felt like, psychodramatically, but I wager it was only a few seconds). Five minutes later, I crawled to the door to meet the paramedics and made it outside to the steps. An especially calm and polite woman …
VDH UltraThe Unpredictable, Unforeseen, and Simply Strange. Part Four Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Why worry about bees? I kept thinking that as I got dizzier. Out on the farm, the greater worries are as follows: sneaky coyote packs trying to lure the dogs into their ambushes by feigning limps; flicker woodpeckers destroying the sidings on all the buildings; ground squirrels burrowing under the barn foundation; …
VDH UltraThe Unpredictable, Unforeseen, and Simply Strange. Part Three Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson I was out early in the yard, picking up debris after our now routine violent California rainstorms. (So much for Gavin Newsom’s “permanent drought.”) Everything was soaked and the winds knocked over lots of umbrella stands. A wet outdoor carpet had blown off the deck onto the lawn. I bent over, put …
VDH UltraThe Unpredictable, Unforeseen, and Simply Strange. Part Two Read More »