Victor Davis Hanson When I was young in the late 1950s, all 5–8-year-olds customarily had a rendezvous with a surgeon or GP “to take your tonsils out,” regardless of the absence of any prior chronic sore throat or infection. (NB: I had forgotten that painful operation at six in 1959—until in 2006 I had inhaled […]
VDH UltraThe Existential Lies They Asked Us to Believe. Part Two Read More »
Victor Davis Hanson There is a narrative that half the country is paranoid, prone to conspiracy theories, and generally nuts, in the off-the-grid, January 6th sense. But in some sense why not, given the lies that have been promulgated? Here I do not mean the usual political serious and even life-changing untruths such as gas
VDH UltraThe Existential Lies They Asked Us to Believe. Part One Read More »
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 »