Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner Gas and Oil Think back 13 months ago. Gas and diesel fuel were about half the price they are now. America was de facto energy independent, which was psychologically reassuring to the American public. Domestically produced fuels invigorated the economy. Commuters saved collectively billions of dollars in annual fuel costs. There …
VDH UltraStability, Once Lost, is Hard to Regain. Part Two Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Deterrence Deterrence is the classical effort to scare somebody off from attacking you, or your interests—without a major conflict. It is hard to obtain and predicated on being predictable in reacting to aggression, while remaining unpredictable in the level of violence employed. Deterrence can be lost by ennui and becoming transparently passive, …
VDH UltraStability, Once Lost, is Hard to Regain. Part One Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Historian’s Corner The 1619 idea was designed to provoke, not instruct, and, of course, make Ms. Jones “controversial.” 1619 would have vanished with easy refutation—except the New York Times sponsored the ruse. And the rest is history. The powers of relativism were invoked (e.g., “who is to say that one date is …
Victor Davis Hanson Education is a zero-sum game. Every decision to read one book entails not reading another. For every language mastered, yet another is shorted. What to study is as important as studying anything at all. Ars longa, vita brevis. Woke is many things—Marxist, nihilist, cruel, incoherent, and especially careerist and grifting. But we …
Victor Davis Hanson As I said, I used to hunt at the woodpile and usually at sunset. One early evening, a huge “thing” broke out of the woodpile. I assumed it was some sort of coyote (distance was only 40 yards, but the wood pile and lengthy shadows camouflaged the target.) I shot once and …
VDH UltraA Child’s Garden of Animals. Mr. Possum and His Pecan Tree. Part Two Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson A Child’s Garden I think I was six or seven before I fully realized the farm was swarming with opossums. Given they were nocturnal creatures, I never saw one—until one day sometime around 1960, my grandfather asked us to go the henhouse near the barn and collect eggs. This time I noticed …
VDH UltraA Child’s Garden of Animals. Mr. Possum and His Pecan Tree. Part One Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Eeyore’s Cabinet Russians do not fear America. During the Obama-Biden years of Russian “reset,” the United States appeased Vladimir Putin. It dismantled missile defense in Eastern Europe and invited Russia into the Middle East. Reset ended with the Russian invasions of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. Then America went to the other extreme of …
VDH UltraThe Ukraine Scab and the Putrid Wound Beneath. Part Two Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson Eeyore’s Cabinet Americans are struggling to find a way to deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia from gobbling up Ukraine and then eyeing the Baltic States next. Most of us see Putin as a thug who will do anything to recreate the borders of the Soviet Union, unless he is deterred. But we acknowledge …
VDH UltraThe Ukraine Scab and the Putrid Wound Beneath. Part One. Read More »
The Governor of Oceania by Victor Davis Hanson Imagine you were governor of California. And the embattled and robbed Union Pacific railroad was threatening to curtail rail operations in and out of the largest port in the United States at Los Angeles and associated rail hubs. It complains that trains could not pass-through the city …
An Arrest Warrant is a “REAL” ID? by Victor Davis Hanson Apparently, the Biden administration faced a dilemma. When you let in nearly two million illegal aliens within a fiscal year, and destroy all immigration law as we know it, how do you still manage to ensure new arrivals inclusion and equity? Or more specifically, …