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.

The Home of Intellectual Populism Could Use Your Help

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by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner

I have written for National Review since the third bleak day after September 11, 2001, and have not missed a column since. I live and work on the West Coast, but the editors and writers at NR in New York over the years have seemed like a family, with long traditions back to, and reverence for, William F. Buckley’s original vision of a conservative voice in the wilderness of growing liberal chaos.

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Why the Next President Will Face a Dangerous Predicament Abroad

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

pic_giant_052815_SM_Iraqi-Army-GFor a time, reset, concessions, and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm, and face down enemies.

That gets dangerous. The shocked aggressors cannot quite believe that their targets are suddenly serious and willing to punch back. Usually, the bullies foolishly press aggression, and war breaks out.

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Disasters at Home and Abroad

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From ISIS at Ramadi to riots at home, nothing is going right.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Win McNamee/Getty; NRO)
(Win McNamee/Getty; NRO)

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”        – W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Things are starting to collapse, abroad and at home. We all sense it, even as we bicker over who caused it and why.

ISIS took Ramadi last week. That city once was a Bastogne to the brave Americans who surged to save it in 2007 and 2008. ISIS, once known at the White House as the “Jayvees,” were certainly “on the run” — right into the middle of that strategically important city.

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Obama and Hillary Are All Too Happy to Coerce Acceptance of Their Agendas

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

What happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders? Usually, the answer for those leaders is to seek more coercion and less liberty to force people to think progressively.

Here at home, President Barack Obama came into power in 2009 with a Democratic Congress, a sympathetic press, and allies in Hollywood, academia, unions, and philanthropic and activist foundations.

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We’re Still Dumbing Down the Iraq War

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The truth about the danger of Saddam Hussein and why we went into Iraq.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

Jeb Bush tangled himself up recently when he tried to answer a dumb question on the intelligence failures about Iraq’s WMDs and their role in going to war with Saddam Hussein in 2003. I’m not interested in the media’s usual pointless chatter about the incident, or in the other Republican hopefuls who circled to plunge a spear in Jeb like the Greeks jabbing the dead Hector. More troubling is the continuing dumbing down of the context and circumstances that surrounded the decision to go to war.

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Were We Right to Take Out Saddam?

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Public opinion veers with every change in current conditions in Iraq.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Marine Corps armor in Nasiriyah, March 2003. (Joe Raedle/Getty)
Marine Corps armor in Nasiriyah, March 2003. (Joe Raedle/Getty)

Probable Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush got himself into trouble by sort of, sort of not, answering the question whether he would have supported going into Iraq in 2003 — had he known then what we know now.

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Pathei Mathos: What I Relearned the Last 12 Months

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What doesn’t kill me, makes me sadder.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

Photo via PJMedia
Photo via PJMedia

Greek tragedy often ends with a succession of personal disasters that doom an Oedipus or Ajax — apparently part of a divinely inspired nemesis (retribution) to pay back personal hubris (overweening pride).

The latter flaw seems to grow and grow until fate strikes the arrogant at the most opportune but still unlikely moment: a Nixon sweeping to a landslide victory in 1972, only to self-destruct over the cover-up of a two-bit, needless burglary. It apparently at last brought out his long-held character shortcoming (hamartia), theretofore seemingly either not too serious or at least adroitly managed.

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George Stephanopoulos’s Clinton Foundation Hypocrisy Is Staggering

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by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO-The Corner

Photo via NRI
Photo via NRO

The problem with George Stephanopoulos’s Clinton-gate mess is that his own words prove him to be both a bully and a hypocrite, as well as abjectly unethical.

Set aside the fact that — if not outed — he would likely never have informed his viewership about his contributions to the Clinton Foundation (and presumably would have continued to grill authors like Peter Schweizer for attacking the pay-for-play Clinton culture).

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Lying Inc.

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Lying is insidious. When it becomes institutionalized at the top, cynicism and lawlessness follow below.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

Photo via PJMedia
Photo via PJMedia

Heroic quarterback Tom Brady was apparently caught lying about his involvement in deflating footballs. One assumes that such prevarication counts for little in the larger scheme of football and Tom Brady’s own career trajectory. His defense is that he did not need to use underinflated footballs to win, so what did a lie or two matter?

Were he a second-string quarterback on a losing team, he might be roundly denounced and suffer real consequences rather than a likely brief suspension. No one ever quite believed Lance Armstrong when he swore that he was not using enhancement drugs; they assumed he certainly was doping, but preferred to see him excel and set records first, and then only later get caught and fess up. When he was no longer in the news, then his lying caught up with him.

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Hillary Can’t Win. Or Can She?

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Can a person with no experience, no achievements, and no likability fool a majority of voters?

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

Hillary Clinton has formally announced she is running for president. Thus begins one of the most interesting and consequential political experiments in American history, one that will unfold over the next year and a half. We are going to see if a candidate for president with no real-world experience, no notable achievements, and no charisma or likability can fool 62 million voters into making her president.

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