Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine. In response, the Biden Administration’s climate-change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet owning John Kerry, laments that Russian president Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming. “You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. […]
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Irredentism—the romance of reclaiming “unredeemed” old lands—is a symptom of messianic presidents and premiers, and national paranoia and insecurity. Leaders demagogue about the recovery of ancient territories that previously had weakened the nation’s imperial grandeur and power. Supposedly long-scattered and oppressed peoples with common linguistic, religious, and cultural affinities are
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms. This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.” But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries?
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness For all his caginess, dissimulation, and opportunism, Vladimir Putin is more or less predictable. Putin’s aims? The Russian president’s two-decade dilemma has been how to reclaim the prestige and power of the former Soviet Union—but with only 75 percent of his country’s former territory and 140 million fewer people. When
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Canada is now governed by absurdism, and it is symptomatic of an ailing Western elite. Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week invoked martial law to arrest and financially destroy truckers on the charge that their largely peaceful protests are “dismantling the Canadian economy” that had already been dismantled
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Hillary Clinton’s never-ending shenanigans in 2015-2016 could be summarized as an attempted slow-motion coup. Four years of national hysteria, a divided nation, and dangerous new tensions with Russia were some of the wages of Clinton’s machinations. Clinton hired a British national and ex-spy, Christopher Steele, to compile dirt on her
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Medieval alchemists sought to turn base metals into precious metals like gold. The more the alchemists bumped into the reality that gold was an element, the more desperately they sought to find fantastic ways to fabricate the rare element out of nothing. Joe Biden operates on the same alchemist principles.
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness What ultimately destroyed the evil empires of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were bankrupt dogmas. Crackpot ideology destroyed free expression. It ruined meritocracy and ensured unequal application of the laws—and so paved the way for far worse. The Nazi idea of a superior Aryan race adjudicated everything from physics to
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness An elite is always variously defined. The ideal elites, as ancient philosophers argued, were a “natural elite” due to their exemplary character, aptitude, and work ethic. Understandably, a towering few ascended from all walks of life to positions of power, influence, and occasional wealth. But such a natural meritocracy, for