Victor Davis Hanson Historian’s Corner Unfortunately, the pandemic and quarantine were only the first of the many recent stress tests of citizenship. In May and June 2020, such questions were no longer theoretical, but reappeared as all too real. When African American George Floyd died on May 25, 2020, while in the custody of arresting […]
Historian’s Corner I think we have forgotten just how much the idea of a national quarantine in 2020 was seen as a way to “fundamentally transform” the United States. I say that not as a conspiracist, but one who remembers well what was said by those giddy precisely because they discovered a lever to move
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner Whether the Athenian pandemic that destroyed a quarter of the Attic population in 430-29 B.C. and made it nearly impossible for Athens to win the Peloponnesian War, or the outbreaks of Yersinia pestis (A.D. 541–49) that ended the Byzantine emperor Justinian’s grand idea of a reunified Rome headquartered in the East,
Victor Davis Hanson Words Matter cis—fancy Latin preposition used by those who know no Latin class—a now taboo word that died around 2020 cultural appropriation—not dying your hair blond dark money—never used again since it is now all leftwing diversity—segregation revival equality—far worse than “inequality” equity—capitalism for me, Marxism for you fragility—a slur used by
Here we are in the closing months of 2021, experiencing the most disastrous presidency since that of James Buchanan. Do we even remember life before COVID-19, when the Jacobinism of the Left was so looney, so venomous that its very contradictions and toxicity once upon a long time ago helped to keep it bay? Then
Tribalism—and the fear to speak out against such racial, ethnic, or religious chauvinism—can at times prove deadly. During the late 2019 geneses of the coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government initially suppressed all critical information about the virus’s severity. It destroyed key evidence of its likely birth, by insisting the virus first appeared in an open
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner “Chinese investment in the United States helps support jobs across our country. We partner to address global challenges, whether it’s promoting nuclear security, combating piracy off the Horn of Africa, encouraging development and reconciliation in Afghanistan, and helping to end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. …So, greater prosperity and greater
How did China become so sophisticated in its messaging to the Western world? Why was it so shameless in accusing the U.S. of the very sort of racism that it routinely had institutionalized? Apart from crass propaganda and the projectionist tactic of fobbing its own culpability for the pandemic onto the United States, China intuitively
Victor Davis HansonHistorian’s Corner As the 2020 election season began, the New York Times, promised its readers a recalibration of American history called “The 1619 Project.” The ensuing series of essays and media kits had a twofold agenda. One was to rewrite the origins of American history as the four-century foreign intrusion into a pristine
Victor Davis Hanson Eeyore’s Cabinet By August 2020, the protests, demonstrations, riots, looting, and arson that followed from the national outrage over the killing of George Floyd had spread to most of America’s cities. But the furor over Floyd’s death was not the only catalyst of the protests. The previously instituted national quarantine—roughly from March