Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.
victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

I have heard your act numerous times, mostly on the John Bachelor show, and I find it tiresome.

 

You really need to spend more time on your “idyllic” farm and not venture out into reality.

 

Times change, places change, and people change, but you will not change or cause change.

 

I am a California native, born in San Francisco and raised in Los Altos, so I have seen, firsthand,

 

the decline in California and especially the Bay Area during my 66 years.

 

I cannot argue with many of your observations, but much of what you say is not unique to

 

California.

 

The opioid crisis is but a symptom of a much larger national problem.

 

That problem being that many capable, working age persons have given up on working and are

 

merely leading lives of ignorant dissipation at increasing rates.

 

They have fundamentally given up on life and are just marking time until their sad lives end.

 

The worst part of this death spiral is that there is no end or improvement in sight.

 

No government leaders can come up with a solution to this problem.

 

The U.S. is headed down the road to second class status in the World and there appears no

 

solution or national will to reverse things.

 

Nothing said by you and your ilk will change this. The toothpaste has simply left the tube.

 

Maybe you would do better to adopt my philosophy.

 

That is that I grew up during a golden time in both California and the Bay Area and that no one can

 

take my fond memories away from me.

 

Let the newcomers squabble over the crumbs while I am looking beyond California and what it has become.

 

They will never know what you and I know having grown up in one of the best areas on Earth.

 

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

 

Dear Angry Reader Kevin Curtin,

 

You need to define what you mean by “you and your ilk.” And if you find “it tiresome,” there is no penalty in turning the channel. Otherwise, I find your angry reader note not so angry, but somewhat incoherent. Is your criticism that I fault present leadership, suggest changes, and lament the trajectory of California downward—when I should just accept it and lament the consequences?

 

In a nutshell, massive amounts of unprecedented wealth in a few coastal enclaves—the result of globalization and high-tech Silicon Valley—and epidemic interior poverty (the result of massive illegal immigration and flight of the middle classes out of state) have created two states that are ungovernable as one.

 

Otherwise, I agree we can retreat to the monastery of the mind to remember a lost California that once worked.

 

Victor Davis Hanson

Questions

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From An Angry Reader:

If you publish my letter on your website, it may best be placed in the “Angry Reader” category. I only agree with you 10 percent of the time, but I’m not angry. You are one of the two or three best conservative commentators, in my view.

Three questions and one observation:

1) Who is the currently serving U.S. Representative, Senator or Governor that you most admire?

2) Who is the left-wing writer or commentator that you most respect? (The lefty VDH, if you will.) Continue reading “Questions” →

Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons

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by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Progressives forget their history of breaking up mega-corporations as they lionize tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook.

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers.

During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal “outsourcer-in-chief” for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Continue reading “Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons” →

The Anti-Trump Bourbons: Learning and Forgetting Nothing in Time for 2020

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By | American Greatness

Just seven months into Donald Trump’s administration we are already bombarded with political angling and speculations about the 2020 presidential race. No one knows in the next three years what can happen to a volatile Trump presidency or his psychotic enemies, but for now such pronouncements of doom seem amnesiac if not absurd.

Things are supposedly not going well politically with Donald Trump lately, after a series of administration firings, internecine White House warring, and controversial tweets. A Gallup Poll has him at only a 34 percent positive rating, and losing some support even among Republicans (down to 79 percent)—although contrarily a recent Rasmussen survey shows him improving to the mid-forties in popularity. Nonetheless, we are warned that even if Trump is lucky enough not to be impeached, if he is not removed under the 25th Amendment or the Emoluments Clause, if he does not resign in shame, even if he has the stamina to continue under such chaos, even if he seeks reelection and thus even more punishment, he simply cannot win in 2020.

In answer to such assumed expertise, one could answer with Talleyrand’s purported quip about our modern-day Bourbons that “They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

Namely, Trump’s enraged critics still do not grasp that he is a reflection of, not a catalyst for, widespread anger and unhappiness with globalization, interventionist foreign policy, Orwellian political correctness, identity politics, tribalism, open borders, and a Deep State that lectures and condemns but never lives the consequences of its own sermonizing.

In particular, the current conundrum and prognostications ignore several constants. Continue reading “The Anti-Trump Bourbons: Learning and Forgetting Nothing in Time for 2020” →

Is There Still a Conservative Foreign Policy?

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North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with NeverTrumpers

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Victor Davis Hanson on the North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with Never-Trumpers

By The Editors
August 11, 2017
American Greatness

Victor Davis Hanson returned to the “Seth and Chris Show” to discuss how North Korea became a crisis, what China’s role is, how the United States can reassert itself in Asia, and why so many movement conservatives have become estranged from each other over President Trump. The complete transcript is below.

Seth Leibsohn: We are delighted to welcome back to the show Professor Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow in residence in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, contributor to American Greatness, and military historian. Nonpareil Professor Hanson, thank you for joining us again.

Victor Davis Hanson:Thank you for having me. Continue reading “North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with NeverTrumpers” →

Is California Cracking Up?

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

With poor education, a budget deficit, and crumbling infrastructure, Californians shouldn’t be focused on idealistic social programs.

 

Corporate profits at California-based transnational corporations such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are hitting record highs.

 

California housing prices from La Jolla to Berkeley along the Pacific Coast can top $1,000 a square foot.

 

It seems as if all of China is willing to pay premium prices to get their children degreed at Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, or USC.

 

Yet California — after raising its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent and receiving record revenues — is still facing a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. There is a much more foreboding state crisis of unfunded liabilities and pension obligations of nearly $1 trillion.
Continue reading “Is California Cracking Up?” →

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

To: Prof. Victor Davis Hanson

 

At the end of your interview with Scott Simon on 8 July 2017 I heard this: “And look how they took a good man like George Bush and turned him into a monster”. It caught my attention.

 

One of the few things I agree with Donald J Trump about is what he had to say on the campaign trail about George W Bush, his administration, 911, and the Iraq war. I don’t think I need to remind you but: The Bush Administration was informed repeatedly by the outgoing Clinton administration that Osama Bin Laden was determined to attack the US on its own soil. So the Bush Administration failed to act on the real intelligence it had. Donald J Trump said as much. Donald J Trump thought that the George W Bush and his Administration lied to congress and the American people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He said so. Now I don’t believe this is true because Trump said so, I believe it because I used the same straight up news reporting to come to my conclusions Trump did. Reporting by people with years of credibility at major news organizations brought me the following:

 

  1. The ‘Yellowcake from Nigeria’ paper is a phony. With real yellowcake, billions of dollars, the right people, and a couple of years perhaps you have a deliverable weapon.
  2. Iraq had been under embargo since the first Gulf war. They didn’t even have GPS for their troops in the desert, much less centrifuges, aluminum tubes, or a way to get a nuclear weapon to the US.
  3. Hans Blixt and his team had found all but nothing that suggested a current WMD program. No program.
  4. Secretary of State Powell’s presentation at the United Nations was unconvincing. If the Bush Administration had something real to show let the public see it.
  5. All assertions of great danger to the public in the press were coming from the Bush and Blair administrations or parrots in Commons, Congress and the Right wing press.
  6. Real reporters have ways of getting information out of places like Iraq under Saddam Hussein There was silence. No intelligence is intelligence too.
  7. Finally an ‘intelligence estimate’ (which is all they had), is an estimate. Not a ‘slam dunk’.

 

On the basis of the above I believed there was little chance Iraq had wmd’s. There is no Bill Maher or Steven Colbert or any one like them leading to my conclusion that the Bush and Blair Administrations lied. If George W Bush’s reputation suffers from this so be it. I have in laws who still think of George W Bush as a “lovely Christian man” I don’t. I think “monster” is not as accurate as war criminal. He’s a war criminal along with Cheney and Rumsfeld et al. who supported this lie. My opinion of George W Bush is not based on Left wing comics and commentators and I don’t need to use foul or abusive language. I’m as angry as those who do. So no weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of lies and death. America should face up to this. I hoped to hear more when Trump brought it up. All I heard was the sound of pearls being clutched Left and Right. Let’s not let something so wrong happen again. We would be living in a different world if the SCOTUS cared about who won Florida in 2000.

 

Have a nice day.

 

Reuel Kenyon

______________

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Reuel Kenyon,

 

Bill Clinton is not a good source for bin Laden on any matter; his appeasement after terrorist attacks emboldened bin Laden, and he turned down an offer from Middle Eastern nations to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to the U.S.

 

All these issues have been adjudicated. Bush did not “lie” but relied on the intelligence of the era—from the CIA (“slam dunk”), NSA, and DIA, and from foreign intelligence services such as those in Jordan and Egypt that warned us that our troops would come under missile chemical attack while mustering in Kuwait (was that an international conspiracy, one that prompted tens of thousands of chemical mask protection kits to be issued to our troops?).

 

But more importantly, did you ever read the joint Congressional authorizations of October 2002 for the war—the official and legal basis for undertaking the war?

 

There were some 23 writs; only 3-4 concerned WMD. Most cited genocide, violation of UN accords, destruction of the Kurds and Marsh Arabs, the Clinton era liberation act, bounties for suicide bombers on the West Bank, harboring of terrorist killers from the first World Trade Center attack and other operations, attempts to kill George H.W. Bush, violations of no-fly-zones and 1991 accords, etc.

 

They were passed with sizable Democratic support—with stirring speeches from Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. Biden later suggested a stable Iraq was perhaps the Obama administration’s “greatest achievement,” a characterization echoed by Obama when he prematurely pulled out peace-keepers from a stable Iraq in late 2011—ensuring the chaos that followed.

 

Your angry letter is a calcified relic of 2006-7 and the hysteria of the Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan era. In the words of progressives—time to Move On.

 

Have a nice day,

 

Victor Hanson

Why Does the Left Suddenly Hate Russia?

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by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

After 70 years of accommodating and appeasing Russia, Democrats suddenly foment a red scare.

Russian Realism?

No one doubts that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is no ally of the U.S. But rivalry is quite a different notion than returning to the Cold War, when enemies faced each other down with arsenals of nuclear missiles. Quite strangely, the supposedly pacifist Left now seems to welcome that dangerous polarity.

In theory, the United States, in realpolitik fashion, could be playing Russia off against other rivals and enemies to our advantage — now seeking temporary shared agendas, now in keen rivalry over irreconcilable differences. Continue reading “Why Does the Left Suddenly Hate Russia?” →

McMaster and Mattis Are Rare Assets—Not Deep State Liabilities

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By Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

There is a larger context concerning the recent controversies among the architects of Trump’s national security team and agenda, and the criticism of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. Recall first that the foreign policy of Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and Hillary Clinton could be best termed “provocative appeasement,” and it logically led to the present tensions around the world.

The approach combined the most unfortunate traits of carrying a twig while speaking loudly: vociferous remonstrations about human rights, occasional bombings, and drone-targeted assassinations, lots of sermonizing and faux red lines, deadlines, and step-over lines—all without either real consequences or accountability. Continue reading “McMaster and Mattis Are Rare Assets—Not Deep State Liabilities” →

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