Opportunists are at least attuned to public opinion, unlike ideologues. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria, and […]
Other public figures won’t admit they agree with him — but they often quietly adopt his ideas. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Donald Trump has a frightening habit of uttering things that many people apparently think, but would never express. And he blusters in such an off-putting and sloppy fashion that he
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
The candidates may be unconventional, but their political agendas fall along a conventional divide. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online At first glance, 2016 sizes up as no other election year in American history. For more than 30 years, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been high-profile and controversial celebrities. Both have
We still have five more months of Trump vs. Hillary. Then four or eight years of — what? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The Disaffected. Will stay-home so-called establishment Republicans outnumber renewed Reagan Democrats, Tea Partiers, and conservative independents, some of whom likely sat out 2008 and 2012, but who now are
The Orlando massacre brings up familiar lessons that we never quite learn. By Victor Davis Hanson // City Journal The aftermath of Islamist Afghan-American Omar Mateen’s murderous rampage against American gays seems disturbingly familiar, an echo of past themes that never stop playing—and lessons that never get learned. The post-911 debate over “why do they
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
By definition, progressives cannot be guilty of bias. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, most of those who work in the media are progressives. They believe that government must undertake to fix an array of social maladies, such as income inequality, perceived racial and gender
If the ‘high IQs’ of the establishment have let America down, where is a voter to turn? By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Donald Trump seems to have offended almost every possible identity group. But the New York billionaire still also seems to appeal to the working classes (in part no doubt
By Victor Davis Hanson // Strategika Image credit: Poster Collection, IR 180, Hoover Institution Archives. The July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit Iranian nuclear proliferation is now nearly a year old. Until recently, the urgency to complete the “Iran deal” had been explained by the Obama administration as an effort to