By Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas The Roman Emperor Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54 AD, was never supposed to be emperor. He came to office at age 50, an old man in Roman times. Claudius succeeded the charismatic, youthful heartthrob Caligula—son of the beloved Germanicus and the “little boot” who turned out to …
The obligation to honor the war dead has often conflicted with the need to make distinctions among them and their causes. By Victor Davis Hanson// Wall Street Journal A few years ago I was honored to serve briefly on the American Battle Monuments Commission, whose chief duty is the custodianship of American military cemeteries abroad. …
by Victor Davis Hanson//American Greatness Struggling rural America proved disenchanted with the country’s trajectory into something like a continental version of Belgium or the Netherlands: borderless, with a global rather than national sense of self; identity politics in lieu of unity and assimilation; a statist and ossified economy with a few winners moralizing to lots …
How a lifelong New Yorker became tribune of the rustics and deplorables By Victor Davis Hanson//City Journal Winter 2017 At 7 AM in California’s rural Central Valley, not long before the recent presidential election, I stopped to talk with an elderly irrigator on the shared border alleyway of my farm. His face was a wrinkled …
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Coastal elites set rules for others, exempt themselves, and tolerate rampant lawlessness from illegal aliens. One reason for the emergence of outsider Donald Trump is the old outrage that elites seldom experience the consequences of their own ideologically driven agendas. Hypocrisy, when coupled with sanctimoniousness, grates people like few …
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review New commandments replace the old ones on the barn wall. The socialist essayist and novelist George Orwell by 1944 grew depressed that as a cost for the defeat of the Axis Powers the Allies had empowered an equally nightmarish monster in the Soviet Union. Since his days fighting for …
By Victor Davis Hanson // Town Hall Pessimists often compare today’s troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison. The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if haphazard, human achievement — along …
We should seek to preserve the ideals that made America successful. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity. Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious, and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered a liability, not a strength. …
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days by PJ Media I grew up listening to stories of turn-of-the-century rural Central California from my grandfather Rees Alonzo Davis (1890-1976). He was the third generation of the Davis family to have lived in my present house—great nephew of Daniel Rhoades, who had walked into the High …
21st Century California Reverts Back to the Wild West Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Content Agency No place on the planet is as beautiful and as naturally rich as California. And few places have become as absurd. Currently, three California state senators are either under felony indictment or already have been convicted. State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) made a political career out of demanding harsher state gun-control laws. …