Uncategorized

The Monroe Doctrine: Guide to the Future Please read a new essay by my colleague, Williamson Murray in Strategika. The Monroe Doctrine, which purports to warn other states from interfering in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere, has supposedly remained a basic principle of American foreign policy since the first half of the nineteenth century. From […]

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Most of us who came of age in the 1970s revered the university—even as it was still reeling from 1960s protests and beginning a process that resulted in its present chaos and disrepute. Americans of the G.I. Bill-era first enshrined the idea of upward mobility through the bachelor’s degree—the

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review One of the most radical changes in the labyrinth of the Middle East is the near cessation of the old formal hostility of the Arab nations to Israel. That does not mean that the destruction of the Jewish state is not still a commandment among hundreds of millions of

Victor Davis Hanson // Fox News “Socialist!” is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen – Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.; and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; –  often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Many are the hissing heads of the polycephalic Donald Trump—at least according to the progressive Left and the NeverTrump Right, who see the president of the United States as some sort of mythical nightmare. Here are a few of his supposedly monstrous manifestations. Trump, the Profiteer  Candidate Trump never really wanted

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review In traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate. In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the

Victor Davis Hanson // Claremont Review of Books n the world of ancient Greece and Rome, collective reverence for the war dead helped explain why hoplites and legionaries fought so fiercely. The great themes of classical literature are often those of battlefield commemoration. Pericles’ majestic Funeral Oration, the lyric poet Simonides’ epitaph for the fallen

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review All politicians are “flexible.” If they are in politics long enough, many reinvent themselves ideologically several times over — given the perceived volatile mood of 51 percent of their constituency. But rarely have we seen an entire primary field of candidates scrambling to renounce all their past identities and

Victor Davis Hanson // Fox News What factors usually reelect or throw out incumbent presidents? The economy counts most. Recessions, or at least chronic economic pessimism, sink incumbents. Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were tagged with sluggish growth, high unemployment and a sense of perceived stagnation — and were easily defeated. The 2008 financial crisis likely ended any chance

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness One of the weirdest characteristics of our global politicians and moral censors is their preference to voice cosmic justice rather than to address less abstract sin within their own purview or authority. These progressive virtue mongers see themselves as citizens of the world rather than of the United States