International Relations

The Case for Trump

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Conservatives should vote for the Republican nominee. Donald Trump needs a unified Republican party in the homestretch if he is to have any chance left of catching Hillary Clinton — along with winning higher percentages of the college-educated and women than currently support him. But even before the […]

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America’s Civilizational Paralysis

by Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Idea   Image credit:Barbara Kelley The Greek city-states in the fourth-century BC, fifth-century AD Rome, and the Western European democracies after World War I all knew they could not continue as usual with their fiscal, social, political, and economic behavior. But all these states and societies feared far more

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Is Trump Admiral Bull Halsey or Captain Queeg?

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In debate No. 2, Trump owes it to the ‘deplorables’ to focus on the issues and exert some self-control. In the first debate, Hillary stuck out her jaw on cybersecurity, the treatment of women, sermons on the need for restrained language, and talk about the shenanigans of the

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Is Deference Really Safer than Deterrence?

Beware international affairs the next five months, a dangerous period for America. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review online Deterrence is a nation’s ability to discourage aggressors by instilling in them a credible fear of punishment far greater than any perceived gain that could be achieved by an attack. Deterrence is quite different from

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Where’s The Letter From Democratic Security Officials Opposing Hillary?

By Victor Davis Hanson//Town Hall A group of 50 conservative foreign policy elites and veteran national security officials of prior Republican administrations recently wrote an open letter denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They cited especially his lack of character and moral authority — and his “little understanding of America’s national interests.” Particularly bothersome, they

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A Convention of the Absurd

The Democratic Convention was an exercise in absurdist theater. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Donald Trump, to the degree he is coherent, wants Americans to think the following of the Obama administration, the Clinton candidacy, and the entire progressive enterprise. His three-part writ could be summed up as follows: 1) Obama has

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Trump and the Politics of Moral Outrage

We are very far from a politics of ideological purity and high character.   By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Many have weighed in on whether Donald Trump’s agendas — to the extent that they are different from what are now ratified Republican policies — are crackpot, unworkable, or radical: e.g., building a

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America In Free Fall

By Victor Davis Hanson // Defining Ideas   Before the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), where Philip II of Macedon prevailed over a common Greek alliance, the city-states had been weakened by years of social and economic turmoil. To read the classical speeches in the Athenian assembly is to learn of the democracy’s constant struggles

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ISIS and ‘Domestic’ Terrorism

In reacting to terrorism, Obama cannot bring himself to say the words ‘radical Islam.’ By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online There are many threads to the horror in Orlando. Most disturbing is the serial inability of the Obama administration — in this case as after the attacks at Fort Hood and in Boston

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Walls and Immigration — Ancient and Modern

The Roman empire faced a challenge similar to what the EU faces. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online When standing today at Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides. It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian

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