Victor Davis Hanson Here is what we do not understand about the January 6th Committee—if it truly was intended to appear as a disinterested investigatory body. 1. Why for the first time in memory did Speaker Pelosi forbid the House Minority Leader’s pro forma nominees to a special House committee? Fairly or not, the result […]
Victor Davis Hanson “Election Denialism” I don’t listen much to the leftwing charge of “election denialism.” Why? Not because Republicans who had problems with the 2020 election did not deny its validity. Many did, perhaps because, in a first, in many key states nearly 70 percent of the balloting was not done on Election Day—even
Victor Davis Hanson Country Living I have lived most of my life in the country, save for three academic years in Santa Cruz, four in Palo Alto, and two in Athens. Like many of you born outside of cities, I get restless in town—too crowded, too loud, too many strangers. I am used to being
Victor Davis Hanson As one nears 70 years old, already arrived at Solon’s ebb tide and last age of man, all the old, ingrained habits begin to become burdensome. What once was pleasurable Hesiodic “work upon work upon work” becomes a swollen knee for a week, a sore shoulder for three days, a burning muscle
Victor Davis Hanson I turn on my computer and often receive from two universities all sorts of the latest campus news. But the news is different than it was pre-Covid/George Floyd riots. “The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act” is now some 32 years old. And it is increasingly
Victor Davis Hanson In reading and listening this holiday week I encountered nothing really other than outright lies. I was sitting on a farm buffeted before Christmas by near record cold temperatures and after Christmas by near record precipitation. Yet almost weekly we receive stories about California’s “permanent drought” of hot/dry weather and an environmental
Victor Davis Hanson What have the American armed forces often failed at? Democracies and consensual societies grow large bureaucracies for several reasons. And often stasis sets in, and ossified clerks and calcified careerists resent the talented outsider and the maverick, not-by-the-book loudmouth. And a result, brilliance is resented and smothered, and America is no exception
Victor Davis Hanson In sum, American war production was characterized by mass quantities, reliability, pragmatism, and affordability. What good did it do Panther tanks that they could blow apart Shermans at great distances if their hours of maintenance to hours of deployment were the inverse of Shermans? So what if the Tiger or Tiger II
Victor Davis Hanson Innovation It is no accident that the big-ticket, new weapons systems in World War II were American-made, or ironclads designed from the hull up with powerful guns, like the Monitor and its two state-of-the-art 11-inch Dahlgren turret guns, first appeared in the U.S. That is not to say friends and foes did
Victor Davis Hanson In reviewing America’s long wartime record, what does the United States do well, and what not—and what can we learn from both successes and failures? Production and Mobilization If America is often lax in maintaining deterrence during peace—cf. the disarmed era between 1870–1914 or 1920–1940—it is phenomenal at the 11th hour in