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.
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03/22/17

From an Angry Reader:

This was written with the notion that we can have a mutual exchange of ideas.

Thanks,

Tom:

Victor Davis Hanson (sic) commentary (I assume it is Dr. Hanson) is very quiet and unassuming along with his Rodney King, “Why can’t we just get along,” attitude coupled with, ” everybody’s opinion is valid,” is simply irksome at best.  Many people Dr. Hanson have varied skills and have worked in several job capacities.  You assume that the people in the cities are trying to impose their values on the rest of the country and you are correct, we are.

There are some things worth fighting for, worth striving for, and worth dying for–at least our fore bearers (sic) believed as much.  Dr. Hanson shows the same kind of disrespect he commenting (sic) on rather than the tolerance that he supposedly espouses.

Dr. Hanson Stanford has an International Relations department (sic) no?  This a (sic) discipline for which Trump and his team seem to have so little respect. Do you not believe in the proponents of feminism, nor a woman’s right to her own body? What about freedom of speech, the free press, and accountability? Do you know what Clinton and President Trump value? When you know that it is not unlike knowing the difference between engine oil and hydraulic fluid.

Tom Claxton, Teacher

Leask, Saskatchewan, Canada

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Tom Claxton,

Dear Tom Claxton,

I assume that you are a teacher, but your letter is almost incomprehensible; was there something wrong with your electronic submission? Words and punctuation marks seem left out to the point that your meaning is almost impossible to fathom.

Otherwise, you fulfill all the requisites to make our Angry Reader posting: ad hominem attacks; no argument or examples to support your charges; and sarcasm and snark.
Continue reading →

Monasteries of the Mind

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When everything is politicized, people retreat into mental mountaintops — dreams of the past and fantasies of the future.
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

So long, it’s been good to know ya,
So long, it’s been good to know ya,
So long, it’s been good to know ya.
This dusty old dust is a-gettin’ my home,
And I got to be driftin’ along.
—Woodie Guthrie

 
The rapper Snoop Dogg released a video shooting a mock-up of the president. Rapper Bow Wow wants to “pimp” the first lady. What a difference a few months make. Not long ago rapper Kendrick Lamar issued an album whose cover showed young rappers on the White House lawn celebrating the death of a white judge. He received an invitation to the White House (a cut from his To Pimp a Butterfly album was Barack Obama’s favorite song of the year). When Trump has lost the rapper vote, has he lost America? Continue reading “Monasteries of the Mind” →

victorhanson

03/21/17

From an Angry Reader:

Sorry so many of the stars disagree with your politics, but it is an alternative fact to state that the envelope mixup was the fault of dense celebrities. The PWC representative, who handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty, along with his PWC associate in the wings, the only other person who knew the correct winner but did not immediately stop the proceedings to remedy the matter, were at fault. PWC did accept responsibility. Not something those on the right ever dream of doing. Much easier to blame everything on lefties.
Melinda Valencia
Glastonbury CT

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Melinda Valencia,

I did not blame the disaster on “lefties.” My point was that everyone involved in the Academy Awards, from the actors and directors/producers to the managers of the ceremony itself seemed to focus on politics (http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/26/oscars-trump/), and in such excessive fashion that they forgot that their first duty was to produce a professional awards ceremony—part of the essay’s larger theme that when we cannot manage the basics we resort to pontificating about the abstract.

I don’t know what “the right” has to do with an Oscars’ ceremony. In the future, if Hollywood and its auxiliaries will focus on the procedures and protocols and less on virtue signaling to their audiences about contemporary politics, there will be less chance of a monumental and embarrassing flub. After all, it is not difficult to select a winner, type the name on a piece of paper, put it into an envelope, and hand to a presenter. High schools do it all the time without causing mayhem on the stage.

Sincerely, Victor Davis Hanson

Moving Forward: The Need For Innovations In Technology And Strategy

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by Kiron K. Skinner // Strategika

Poster Join the AAF Now
Image credit: Image credit: Poster Collection, US 2699, Hoover Institution Archives.

Two broad sets of U.S. military strategies during the second half of the twentieth century combined ideas, innovation, and technology in ways that offset Soviet conventional (and later nuclear) superiority in arms and military forces. These strategies also contributed to the overall state of cold war, as opposed to hot war, between the two superpowers. Today, the Pentagon is hard at work on a framework to achieve military dominance over a far more diverse set of adversaries. The defining features of this strategy are automation and artificial intelligence, and the core challenge is to determine whether international peace and stability are being enhanced or put at risk by them.

Read the full article here

http://www.hoover.org/research/moving-forward-need-innovations-technology-and-strategy

 

NOTE: Strategika is an online journal produced by the Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict at the Hoover Institution. Victor Davis Hanson chairs the Military History Working Group with counsel from Bruce S. Thornton and David L. Berkey, along with collaboration from the group’s distinguished scholars, military historians, analysts, journalists, and military officers.

Academy Untoward 2

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From an Angry Reader:

After reading your discombobulated thoughts on Academy Awards, Mayor Bloomberg, et al., I now know why newspapers have traditionally been used as toilet tissue.

M. Buendia

Breinigsville PA

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader M. Buendia,

Are such angry letters mass produced in some central clearing house? No argument: CHECK; typical personal smear: CHECK; incoherence: CHECK.
All I needed from you is a simple refutation that 1) the Academy Awards were not Trump Bashing and did prove incompetent in not being able to identify the best picture awardee; 2) that Mayor Bloomberg talked of utopian solutions but could not remove snow from city streets promptly after a blizzard. Instead, your argument is that the newspaper is rightly used as toilet paper, but in your case not until you (firstly I assume) read it.

Sincerely,

Victor Davis Hanson

Academy Untoward

victorhanson

03/17/17
From an Angry Reader:

Mr. Hanson. Don’t know what Acadamy awards you were watching but my husband and I watched the whole show.  There was no bashing of Mr Trump at all during the entire show.  Jimmy Kimmel did some jokes but light weight.  So please we are tired of all the lies ..

Thank you

Hallie Bosetti

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Hallie Bosetti,

As I have noted in the past, there are typical characteristics of all angry progressive letters: 1) an inability simply to tell the truth and chronic distortion; 2) a resort to ad hominem attacks without argumentation; and 3) an inability to write coherently.

You do not disappoint.

1) In fact, I watched some of the Oscars and you are quite wrong that “there was no bashing of Mr. Trump at all during the entire show.”

Below I quote the synopsis from Entertainment Weekly, a standard, nonpartisan journal that covers Hollywood.

Read carefully please their account of the Academy Awards (http://ew.com/tv/2017/02/26/oscars-trump/)  Here is a sampling following their headline “Oscars Attack Trump: Celebs Unleashed on Hollywood’s big night”

The first salvo against Donald Trump was fired only a few minutes into the Oscars — and then they just kept on coming. In what might be an unprecedented numbers of jokes, allusions, and sincere articulations inspired by a single person during an awards telecast, Hollywood’s most luminous tackled Trump and his policies during the the 89th annual Academy Awards. From host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue, to the acceptance speeches, to those blue ribbons on tuxedo lapels, there were direct and indirect references to the 45th president throughout the ceremony.

2) Why do you resort to attacks like “we are tired of all the lies” in lieu of an argument? Such desperation only undermines your modest efforts.

3) Academy is not spelled Acadamy.

Sincerely,

Victor Davis Hanson

It’s Not Just the Technology: Beyond Offset Strategies

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By Colonel Joseph (Joe) Felter (ret.) // Strategika

Image credit: Poster Collection, US 7241, Hoover Institution Archives.

A range of breakthrough technologies are emerging today that have the potential to radically change how we fight and deter threats across all conflict domains—air, land, sea, space, and cyber. Artificial intelligence, directed energy, robotics, and machine learning are just a few examples. Significantly, unlike in previous decades, defense-relevant technologies are increasingly being developed in the commercial technology base rather than in classified government R&D programs. States and non-state actors alike are now able to purchase, copy, or steal advanced technologies and exploit their military applications in unprecedented ways. This proliferation of technology is diffusing military power, and the U.S. must re-calculate the current and anticipated relative military strength and capabilities of our enemies and competitors around the world.

Read the full article here

http://www.hoover.org/research/its-not-just-technology-beyond-offset-strategies

NOTE: Strategika is an online journal produced by the Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict at the Hoover Institution. Victor Davis Hanson chairs the Military History Working Group with counsel from Bruce S. Thornton and David L. Berkey, along with collaboration from the group’s distinguished scholars, military historians, analysts, journalists, and military officers.

Deterrence and Human Nature

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By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

The dream of a therapeutic utopia without punishment for wrongdoing fails in practice.

Deterrence is the strategy of persuading someone in advance not to do something, often by raising the likelihood of punishment.

But in the 21st century, we apparently think deterrence is Neanderthal and appeals to the worst aspects of our natures. The alternative view insists that innately nice people respond better to discussion and outreach. Continue reading “Deterrence and Human Nature” →

You Say You Want A Revolution?

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By Thomas Donnelly

 

To paraphrase the Beatles: Well, you know, you’d better free your mind instead; you may want a revolution but ought to settle for some evolution.

It is an article of revealed religion among defense elites that “we live in a relentlessly changing and fiercely competitive world.” Those words were from former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, once a physicist and someone deeply imbued with the idea that technological change and competition were the elements propelling change, and that those who failed to “innovate” were doomed to defeat: “Today’s era of military competition is characterized by the additional variables of speed and agility, such that leading the race now frequently depends on who can out-innovate faster than everyone else, and even change the game.”

Read the full article here” 

http://www.hoover.org/research/you-say-you-want-revolution-2

NOTE: Strategika is an online journal produced by the Working Group on the Role of Military History in Contemporary Conflict at the Hoover Institution. Victor Davis Hanson chairs the Military History Working Group with counsel from Bruce S. Thornton and David L. Berkey, along with collaboration form the group’s distinguished scholars, military historians, analysts, journalists, and military officers.

The World on January 20, 2017

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
Red-blue tensions at home, mounting dangers abroad
Most Americans are worried about our domestic crises. Obama left office after doubling the debt to $20 trillion. Near-zero interest rates over eight years have impoverished an entire generation of seniors — and yet remain key to servicing the costs of such reckless borrowing.
Over the last eight years, GDP never grew at 3 percent annually, the first time we’ve seen such low growth since the Hoover administration. Obamacare spiked health-care premiums and deductibles while restricting access and reducing patient choices. Racial politics are at a nadir and make one nostalgic for the environment before 2009.
Red-blue tensions are at an all-time high, and suddenly there is talk of 1860s-like Confederate nullification of federal laws. It’s now the norm for prominent commentators to call for the murder, forced removal, or resignation of the current president. A New York Times columnist asked the IRS to commit a felony by sending him Trump’s tax returns, and then he boasts by providing his own address.
The Democratic party is nearly ruined, reduced to a shrill coastal party animated not by an agenda but by unhinged hatred of Donald Trump and a new religion of race, class, and gender politics.

Continue reading “The World on January 20, 2017” →