Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness The most recent shout-down debacle at Stanford’s law school, one of many such recent sordid episodes, prompts the question: “Who owns our universities?” The law students who are in residence for three years apparently assume they embody the university. And so, they believe they represent and speak for a score …
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Stanford was once one of the world’s great universities. It birthed Silicon Valley in its prime. And along with its nearby twin and rival, UC Berkeley, its brilliant researchers, and teachers helped fuel the mid-20th-century California miracle. That was then. But like the descent of California, now something has gone …
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome. Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, …
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness American society is facing three existential crises not unlike those that overcame the late Roman, and a millennium later, terminal Byzantine, empires. Premodern Barbarism We are suffering an epidemic of premodern barbarism. The signs unfortunately appear everywhere. Over half a million homeless people crowd our big-city downtowns. Most know the …
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness Almost everything that has followed from the woke mass hysteria gripping the nation since 2020 has proved disastrous. Wokeism destroys meritocracy in favor of forced equality of result—history’s prescription for civilizational decline. If we continue with the woke hiring of administrators, air traffic controllers, ground crews, pilots, and rail workers, …
Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness The 1960s revolution was both anarchic and nihilist. But it was waged against—not from—the establishment. Hippies and the Left either attacked institutions or, in Timothy Leary fashion, chose to “turn on, tune in, drop out” from them. The current revolution is much different—and far more dangerous—for at least three reasons. The Establishment Is …
