By Victor Davis Hanson// San Francisco Chronicle Photo: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg Voters living in 85 percent of the country preferred Donald Trump, but he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Not long ago on a farm south of Fresno, I watched a poorly paid mechanic in silence repair a gate’s hydraulic ram as easily […]
by Victor Davis Hanson//via Defining Ideas (Hoover Institution) Image credit: Barbara Kelley Who are we? asked the liberal social scientist Samuel Huntington over a decade ago in a well-reasoned but controversial book. Huntington feared the institutionalization of what Theodore Roosevelt a century earlier had called “hyphenated Americans.” A “hyphenated American,” Roosevelt scoffed, “is not
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
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trump’s often unorthodox style shouldn’t be confused with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda. By 2008, America was politically split nearly 50/50 as it had been in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats took a gamble and nominated Barack Obama, who became the first young, Northern, liberal president since
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Ignoring the symptoms, misdiagnosing the malady, skipping the treatment If progressives were to become empiricists, they would look at the symptoms of the last election and come up with disinterested diagnoses, therapies, and prognoses. Although their hard-left candidate won the popular vote, even that benchmark was somewhat deceiving —
by Victor Davis Hanson//Defining Ideas After the election, Democrats could not explain the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton, who would be, they thought, the shoo-in winner in November. Over the next three months until Inauguration Day, progressives floated a variety of explanations for the Trump win—none of them, though, mentioned that the Clinton campaign had
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review Let’s hope that the era of ‘lead from behind’ and violated red lines is over. For eight years, the Obama administration misjudged Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as it misjudged most of the Middle East, China, and the rest of the world as well. Obama got wise to Russia only when Putin
by Victor Davis Hanson// Defining Ideas In its remaining days in power, the Obama administration suddenly punished Vladimir Putin’s Russia for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election. It claimed that Russian or Russian-hired hackers tapped into the records of the Democratic National Committee as well as the correspondence of John Podesta, a Clinton advisor.But
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Nations are collections of human beings, and human nature has not changed, despite Obama’s pleadings. For the last eight years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice have sought to rewrite the traditional approach to foreign policy. In various ways, they have warned
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review He grasped that what voters cared about were the very issues politicos were disdainfully ignoring. The American middle classes, the Chinese, and Vladimir Putin have never been convinced that Ivy League degrees, vast Washington experience, and cultural sophistication necessarily translate into national wisdom. Trump instead relies more on instinct