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 […]
By Victor Davis Hanson // Town Hall | The Greeks gave us tragedy — the idea that life is never fair. Terrible stuff for no reason tragically falls on good people. Life’s choices are sometimes only between the bad and the far worse. In the plays of the ancient dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, heroism
From Greek tragedy to American therapy Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson Defining Ideas The United States and Europe are seeing a surge in populist anger toward the so-called elites. The German public, for example, is furious at Chancellor Angela Merkel for her position on immigration from the Middle East. British voters have forsaken the postmodern European Union. And working class Americans have
Who Are Those Darned “Elites”? Read More »
Technology hasn’t changed the core of who we are, and history proves it. By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In today’s technically sophisticated and globally connected world, we assume life has been completely reinvented. In truth, it has not changed all that much. Facebook and Google may have recalibrated our lifestyles, but human
The More Things Change, the More They Actually Don’t Read More »
By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online In future presidential editorialization about the shooting deaths of police officers, perhaps the president himself might first offer a few “words matter” gestures that would reassure law enforcement, to use another Obama phrase, that he “has their back.” Here are just three low-bar proposals for how
Three Modest Propositions Read More »
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 »
Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services Last week, French President Francois Hollande met President Obama in Washington to discuss joint strategies for stopping the sort of radical Islamic terrorists who have killed dozens of innocents in Brussels, Paris and San Bernardino in recent months. Hollande at one point explicitly referred to the violence as
The Politicization of the English Language Read More »
By Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services University students across the country — at Amherst, Georgetown, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UC Berkeley and dozens of other campuses — are caught up in yet another new fad. This time, the latest college craze is a frenzied attempt to rename campus buildings and streets. Apparently some of
The Hypocrisy Behind the Student Renaming Craze Read More »
Exploring the many reasons why the slogan “Black Lives Matter” will be gone within a year. What will replace it? by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media In the post-civil rights era of the last half-century, a number of black triumphalist slogans and movements have come and gone. “Black is beautiful” was an informal self-help
‘Black Lives Matter’—a Year From Now Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Brandon Marshall, the New York Jets wide receiver and occasional sports commentator, charges that the National Football League is racist [1]. He alleges that the league favors white players over black athletes like him, especially white marquee quarterbacks. Aside from the fact that Marshall recently signed a three-year
The Weariness of the Whiners Read More »