History

Surreal and Suicidal: Modern Western Histories of Islam

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com  The full magnitude of the modern West’s ignorance of its own past recently struck me while rereading some early history books concerning the centuries-long jihad on Europe.   The historical narrative being disseminated today simply bears very little resemblance to reality. Consider some facts for a moment: A mere decade after […]

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Prestige and Power in Statecraft

History teaches us that nations must always respond vigorously to an enemy’s challenge, a lesson the U.S. should remember in Syria. by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas President Obama, responding to widespread criticisms that his handling of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis was clumsy and ad hoc, said, “I’m less concerned about style points, I’m

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“The End of Sparta” — A Review

A classicist’s exemplary historical novel. by Albert Louis Zambone // BooksandCulture.com Classicists should infuriate other humanists, in the way that the handsome scholar-athlete who volunteers to help dyslexic children and is a genuinely nice guy should infuriate the guy who just made it onto the football team and has a hard time keeping up his

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What Is the Syria Plan?

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner We are on the verge of a war with Syria. Yet I don’t think the administration has as of yet articulated what its aims are and thus is confused about the means of obtaining them. Is the point of the impending military action to remove Assad, engage his

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Our Contrary President

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Remember the “contrary” Sioux warrior from Little Big Man? He did everything backwards––said “hello” for “goodbye,” washed in sand instead of water. Our president is the foreign policy contrary. He has gotten backwards every maxim of proven wisdom for dealing with the rest of the world. Teddy Roosevelt counseled, “Speak

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Needed: A Tragic Hero

In good times, the larger-than-life figure is an affront; in crisis, he is necessary. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Tragic heroes — from Sophocles’ Ajax and Antigone to the Western films’ Shane and Woodrow Call — can be defined in a variety of ways. But the common archetype is a larger-than-life figure. He

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Back to our 20th-century future

by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services We may be in the era of Facebook and fracking. But 2013 is still beginning to look a lot like the cataclysmic century we just left behind. More people probably died from the wars of the 20th century than from the battles of the prior 2,500 years combined. The bloodiest

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Same old warfare?

by Victor Davis Hanson // TLS A Review of three books: Saltpeter: The mother of gunpowder by David Cressy (Oxford University Press, 237pp) Napalm by Robert M. Neer (Belknap Press, 310pp) Warrior Geeks: How twenty-first-century technology is changing the way we fight and think about war by Christopher Coker (US: Columbia University Press, 330pp) Share This

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