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The Good Populism

Victor Davis Hanson // The New Criterion Populism is today seen both as a pejorative and positive noun. In fact, in the present age, there are two sorts of populism. Both strains originated in classical times and persisted in the West until today. One in antiquity was known as the base populism. It involved the […]

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The Scandal on the Other Foot

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness Consider the following alternate reality. Imagine that it is now summer 2024. A 78-year-old lame-duck President Trump is winding down his second term, basking in positive polls. His dutiful vice president in waiting, Mike Pence, is at last getting his chance to run for president. Imagine also that Pence

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California and Conservatism

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review I share some of the sentiments of Jay Nordlinger’s Corner post expressing confidence that some day in the future there may be hope for California conservatism. That’s why I continue to live in the house that I grew up in, despite vast changes in the nature of the rural community I

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The Post-War Order Is Over

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart. Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire. Donald Trump’s presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo. Much

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The Great German Meltdown

Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution Every 20 to 50 years in Germany, things start unraveling. Germans feel aggrieved. Ideas and movements gyrate wildly between far left and far right extremes. And the Germans finally find consensus in a sense of victimhood paradoxically expressed as national chauvinism. Germany’s neighbors in 1870, 1914, 1939—and increasingly in

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U.S. Has Leverage in Dealings with Iran and North Korea

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review America and our allies have several ways to deter the rogue nations. There has been a lot of misinformation about both getting out of the so-called Iran deal and getting into a new North Korean agreement. The two situations may be connected, but not in the way we are

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The Trump Rationale

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review His voters knew what they were getting, and most support him still. Why exactly did nearly half the country vote for Donald Trump? Why also did the arguments of Never Trump Republicans and conservatives have marginal effect on voters? Despite vehement denunciations of the Trump candidacy from many pundits on

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How Democracies End: A Bureaucratic Whimper

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness One strange trait of the die hard NeverTrump Republicans and progressives is their charge that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to democracy. Trump, as is his wont, says a lot of outrageous and weird things. But it is hard in his 16 months of rule to find any proof that

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The Miraculous Image Rehabilitation of Former Republican Presidents

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review It’s an evergreen media strategy for disparaging the sitting GOP executive. When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, many in the media considered him a dangerous extremist. Some reporters warned that Reagan courted nuclear war and would tank the economy. He certainly was not like the gentleman Republican

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The Nature of Progressive Insensitivity

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Why do so many famous social-justice crusaders turn out to be racist and sexist?   Former vice president Joe Biden is back in the news yet again. For a second time, he seems surprised that poor residents of the inner city are capable of doing sophisticated jobs: We don’t

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