By Victor Davis Hanson// San Francisco Chronicle Photo: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg Voters living in 85 percent of the country preferred Donald Trump, but he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Not long ago on a farm south of Fresno, I watched a poorly paid mechanic in silence repair a gate’s hydraulic ram as easily […]
Why the Central Valley votes more conservative Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Navigating self-interest, ideals, and public opinion in the debate about illegal immigration. Activists portray illegal immigration solely as a human story of the desperately poor from south of the border fleeing misery to start new, productive lives in the U.S. — despite exploitation and America’s nativist immigration laws. But
The Labyrinth of Illegal Immigration Read More »
The Corner The one and only. By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The selection of the multitalented and independent thinker Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster as national-security adviser is inspired and reifies Trump’s past statements that he likes outspoken and independent advisers. McMaster is best known for his counterinsurgency work in Iraq, but prior to
Trump’s Team of Sort of Rivals Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trumps’ critics, left and right, aim to bring about the cataclysm they predicted. A 1964 political melodrama, Seven Days in May, envisioned a futuristic (1970s) failed military cabal that sought to sideline the president of the United States over his proposed nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Something far less
Seven Days in February Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson//via Defining Ideas (Hoover Institution) Image credit: Barbara Kelley Who are we? asked the liberal social scientist Samuel Huntington over a decade ago in a well-reasoned but controversial book. Huntington feared the institutionalization of what Theodore Roosevelt a century earlier had called “hyphenated Americans.” A “hyphenated American,” Roosevelt scoffed, “is not
The End Of Identity Politics Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration’s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle East. What makes the Middle
The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson//American Greatness Struggling rural America proved disenchanted with the country’s trajectory into something like a continental version of Belgium or the Netherlands: borderless, with a global rather than national sense of self; identity politics in lieu of unity and assimilation; a statist and ossified economy with a few winners moralizing to lots
The Deplorables Shout Back Read More »
By Victor Davis Hanson // The Hill Oroville dam, the tallest in the nation, is currently in danger of structural failure. Thousands living downstream from its desperate cascading water releases are evacuating their homes in Hollywood disaster-film fashion. Something premodern and apocalyptic like this was not supposed to have happened in a postmodern California of
Tear down this dam? Read More »
By Victor Davis Hanson// Los Angeles Times A year ago, politicians and experts were predicting a near-permanent statewide drought, a “new normal” desert climate. The most vivid example of how wrong they were is that California’s majestic Oroville Dam is currently in danger of spillway failure in a season of record snow and rainfall. That
The Oroville Dam disaster is yet another example of California’s decline Read More »
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review The economy, academia, immigration, and the environment could benefit from Trump’s unorthodox approach. Populism of the center (as opposed to Bernie Sanders’s socialist populism) has received a bad media rap — given that it was stained in the past by xenophobic and chauvinistic currents. Who wishes to emulate all
The Uses of Populism Read More »