Words Matter

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-

Víctor Davis Hanson  Professors say they work hard. Some surely do. So do lawyers and media people. I can remember driving 30 miles home from CSU, Fresno after teaching four semester classes, all with separate preps. And that was after spending another four hours in independent studies and office hours, only to enter the house,

Víctor Davis Hanson As an academic, I remember the “Words Matter” controversies of the 1990s when euphemisms soon became Orwellian speech and ushered in the age of microaggressions and safe spaces, as “African American” became “black” that in turn became “Black.” Words, then, we were told affect realities. And they do. Certainly, the stereotypes of

Victor Davis Hanson The worst crime I witnessed was not necessarily a crime but was surely amoral. One of the best mechanics in the class (his father was a master mechanic as well) had dropped a Chevy 454 into his 1955 four-speed and had what was considered the fastest car among many. One night he

Victor Davis Hanson The second occasion of witnessing a crime was more disturbing. A poor guy pulled into a 99 station about 1AM with transmission trouble. He asked if he could park the car there for a few hours, while he hitchhiked to Fresno to get a ride. Odd request? The locals assented because he