Words Matter

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 […]

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

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

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?

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

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;

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

Víctor Davis Hanson Many of us foolishly go about our daily lives oblivious to how tenuous is our grip on the here and now. Much less do we, or should we, needlessly worry how easily everything can disappear in a nanosecond. But why worry about what in most cases we cannot control? And why worry

Victor Davis Hanson The infant vineyard was beautiful by July. The next June, in only its second leaf, the canopies on the trellises were stunning. The third year we harvested our first crops. Then the table grape market crashed in the Paul Volker years of him breaking high inflation that led to the Reagan recession

Victor Davis Hanson In high school, I did the usual physical summer farm jobs for a variety of employers—worked as a swamper piling 40-pound boxes of plums and nectarines in the field on trailers or helped tie up young vines, day in and day out. Or I worked at packing houses loading and unloading semis-