By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Trump seems radical only to the radicals who aim to take America far, far left.
There have been roughly two sorts of Democratic presidents over the last century. A few were revolutionaries who sought to take the country leftward with them. They were masters of “never letting a serious crisis go to waste” transformations and came to power after the chaos of national crises and near collapse. Continue reading “Journey to the Center of the Country”
The Corner: The one and only
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
When the feeding frenzy abates and moves on to the next target, among the flotsam and jetsam we may learn two things from the Nunes affair: One, intelligence-committee chairmen in the past have routinely gone over to various executive-branch locations, such as in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, to confirm information by evaluating secured raw data, and have also communicated with and met with NSC staffers to assist them to do that. Continue reading “Nunes etc.”
By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
American intervention saved Western Europe in World War I, but the result was a failed armistice.
One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I. The ongoing conflict ended just 19 months later with an Allied victory.
The United States did not win the war alone, given the far earlier and greater sacrifices of Great Britain, France, Italy, and czarist Russia.
But America’s late arrival, with some 2 million doughboys who landed in France less than three years after the start of the war, saved the teetering Allied cause.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
The beleaguered Intelligence Committee chairman is the latest target in a partisan smear campaign. He must not step down.
Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) will not step down from the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. He is the new target in an already long line of those targeted by the media for forced resignations — Stephen Bannon, the purported anti-Semite; Sebastian Gorka, the alleged closet Nazi; Jeff Sessions, the supposed Russian patsy; and now Devin Nunes, the purported partisan naïf.
Nor should he resign — especially given the wider and bewildering landscape of the politicization and corruption of the intelligence community over the last months and the dangerous state in which we all find ourselves vis-à-vis the intelligence agencies and the transition of presidential power.
03/29/17
Do you mean educated people who worked hard to better themselves? Let’s all just stay in the old steel mill towns and coal mining towns gripping about how unfair the world is to us. You know, the good old days when blacks knew their place and we didn’t have no Mexicans around. You are right I guess they were ready for a Trump and the left was unprepared but it does not make them correct. Carol Hoyt, Big Lake Ak. And Las Vegas Nv.
Dear Angry Reader Carol Hoyt,
How you managed to cram such a stream of confusion into just four sentences is in a way impressive.
Sentence one: I did not conflate elites with educated people, but rather with a subset of urban, powerful people in politics, academia, the media, and entertainment who exercise influence and power without any discernible display of competence. These are not neurosurgeons or engineers but the architects of $20 trillion in debt, stereotyped and dull Hollywood movies, and inaccurate and undependable news accounts of the Dan Rather/Brian Williams sort. Continue reading
The arguments for ignoring illegal immigration are as well-known as the self-interested motives that drive it.
In the abstract, open-borders advocates argue that in a globalized culture, borders are becoming reactionary and artificial constructs. They should not interrupt more natural ebbs and flows of migrant populations.
More concretely, an array of vested interests sees advantage in dismantling the border: employers in hospitality, construction, food processing, and agriculture prefer hard-working low-wage immigrants, whose social needs are often subsidized by the government and who are reluctant to organize for higher wages.
The Democratic Party welcomes in impoverished immigrants from Latin America and Mexico. It hopes to provide generous social welfare assistance and thereby shepherd new arrivals and their offspring into the salad bowl of victimization and identity politics—and thereby change the electoral map of key states from red to blue.
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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Remember when Obama and Hillary cozied up to Putin? And recall when the media rejoiced at surveillance leaks about Team Trump?
The American Left used to lecture the nation about its supposedly paranoid suspicions of Russia. The World War II alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had led many leftists to envision a continuing post-war friendship with Russia.
During the subsequent Cold War, American liberals felt that the Right had unnecessarily become paranoid about Soviet Russia, logically culminating in the career of the demagogic Senator Joe McCarthy. Later, in movies such as Seven Days in May, Doctor Strangelove, and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Hollywood focused on American neuroses as much as Russian hostility for strained relations.
03/27/17
Victor,
As a fine historian (but poor political scientist) you know quite well that Andrew Jackson was a national hero with a distinguished military career. The Donald is a former casino owner and reality TV show star. It is a long stretch to compare them. Further, a column replete with disjointed and frankly random comments about California infrastructure and Obama, while cryptically arguing against a mysterious and undefinable elite, would surely earn you poor marks. Stunned they published that dribble. You wrote “A War Like No Other”—I expect much better. In any event, and more importantly, the real issues facing America are the undermining of Pax Americana—our world, our institutions, and created for our benefit. These are being threatened by a reckless President who fails to understand that he destroying the West from within (unless, and even more disturbingly, he does). That is the geopolitical column that needs to be written. I hope you do. Thanks in advance. Steve
Angry Reader Steve Fardy
Steve,
Do you understand how proper adjectives like “Jacksonian” work?
To say Trump is Freudian would not mean his life mirror imaged Sigmund Freud, any more than to describe one as Churchillian or Reaganesque demands perfect correlations. Trump is an outsider like Jackson; and also like him, Trump appeals to working-classes aggrieved at a political class, largely on issues of economic and cultural nationalism. All that is Jacksonian, whatever the disconnect between the actual lives of Trump and Jackson. Trump did not kill someone in a duel, commit bigamy, implement the Trail of Tears, or dare the Chief Justice to enforce his ruling—does that disconnect with Jackson bother you as well? Continue reading
Russia’s political hierarchy and official press greeted Trump’s Inauguration with unreserved glee. An old order had crumbled and, with it, an impediment to Putin’s ambitions. “In 1917, armed supporters of Lenin stormed the Winter Palace and arrested capitalist ministers and overthrew the social political order,” the lead article in the daily Moskovski Komsomolets read. “On January 20, 2017, nobody in Washington planned to storm Congress or the White House and hang prominent members of the old regime from lampposts, but the feeling of the American political élite, especially the liberal part of it, is not different from that of the Russian bourgeoisie one hundred years ago.” Sound familiar? Why not check out the March issue The New Yorker article on Trump-Putin-and-the New Cold War. You may live in the cocooned atmosphere of CA? (I’m assuming from your position at Stanford University), but you oversimplify the matter. Take for instance where I live in a tiny hamlet in NE Texas—listed recently in a state medical guide as the “unhealthiest region of Texas.” My town of approx. 25,000 is 9th out of the 10 most crime-ridden areas of Texas. Texarkana, another city within the NE region of Texas, came in 4th, I believe. I’m surrounded by the white uneducated male and guilt-tripped white uneducated female- with hopefully a few more brain cells than teeth in their head, who repeatedly and loyally vote against themselves in GOP primaries election after election. They deny themselves access to health care, vote in public education budget cuts, (along with the public school teachers who can’t seem to connect the dots to why their work is not rewarded with better pay), and vote in tax breaks for the “elite” corporate/oil and gas CEO’s- while fracking and other forms of pollution wreak havoc across Texas. Just a few examples of how stupid it was for the Rust Belt states to go the way “of Texas.” Rest assured, they cannot afford health care for their chronic medical conditions, but repeatedly vote against it for fear of “socialism.” Why? Long-standing, systemic racial bias that is played out in gerrymandering and voter ID laws, and lack of basic education. So, I doubt sir the general voting population of my state could pronounce “Elitism” much less understand or take the time to pick up a newspaper and read about it. You give them far too much credit, and given the current whoopla over the current administration and its obvious entanglement with Russia, they will gleefully support Trump choosing to remain blind to the bitter end—an end I fear we’re all about to face.
Sherry Scott MD
Dear Sort of Angry Reader Sherry Scott, MD
You letter is sadly full of inaccuracies. Please get your facts straight before ranting. Continue reading
And anarchy follows.
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review
In the 1934 romantic movie Death Takes a Holiday, Death assumes human form for three days, and the world turns chaotic.
The same thing happens when the law goes on a vacation. Rules are unenforced or politicized. Citizens quickly lose faith in the legal system. Anarchy follows — ensuring that there can be neither prosperity nor security.
The United States is descending into such an abyss, as politics now seem to govern whether existing laws are enforced.
Sociologists in the 1980s found out that when even minor infractions were ignored — such as the breaking of windows, or vendors walking into the street to hawk wares to motorists in a traffic jam — misdemeanors then spiraled into felonies as lawbreakers become emboldened. Continue reading “Law Takes a Holiday”