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.

Why America Was Indispensable to the Allies’ Winning World War II

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Arsenal of Democracy: B-24 Liberator plant in Fort Worth, Texas. (U.S. Air Force)
Arsenal of Democracy: B-24 Liberator plant in Fort Worth, Texas. (U.S. Air Force)

May 8 marked the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago — a horrific conflict that is still fought over by historians.

More than 60 million people perished — some 50 million of them in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China.

The pre-war Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s had killed perhaps 20 million of its own citizens in purges, exiles, collectivizations, forced famines, and show trials. Then it lost an estimated 25 million soldiers and civilians to the German army on the Eastern Front. Hitler’s Germany by late 1942 had occupied almost 1 million square miles of Soviet ground.

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The First — and a Half — Amendment

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire or traditionalists who produce beloved movies like The Sound of Music.

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The Failed Tactic of Flattering Islam Won’t Go Away

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Why admiring the Muslim world won’t stop the bloodshed.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

The recent attack in Texas against a “draw Mohammed” event ended up with two dead jihadis and widespread criticism of event organizer Pamela Geller for “inciting” or “provoking” the assault on our First Amendment right to free speech. The hypocrisies and ignorance behind such criticism have been amply documented [2], including by some on the left [3]. But there’s another argument against actions and events like Geller’s that needs dismantling. This is the received wisdom that we should avoid criticizing Islamic doctrine or Mohammed because it will alienate moderate Muslims who otherwise would help us against the so-called “extremist” jihadists.

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America’s Politicized Tax Enforcement Is a Harbinger of Decline

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Everett Collection/Dreamstime)
(Everett Collection/Dreamstime)

Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece?

The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them.

What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption.

Americans currently deal with all those symptoms. But two more fundamental causes for decline are even more frightening: an unwillingness to pay taxes and the end of the rule of law.

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Baltimore and the Betrayal of Black Dignity

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The real losers in the Freddie Gray riots.

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Image #: 36434158 Baltimore firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at Gay and Chester Streets on Monday, April 27, 2015, in Baltimore. It was unclear whether it was related to ongoing riots. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun/TNS)
Image #: 36434158 Baltimore firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at Gay and Chester Streets on Monday, April 27, 2015, in Baltimore. It was unclear whether it was related to ongoing riots. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun/TNS)

[1]Baltimore is the latest American city to become a stage for the farce that is our national racial discourse. The swift, politicized indictment of 6 police officers for the death of Freddie Gray––which brought down, for now, the curtain on this performance by abandoning all the canons of procedural justice–– is a fitting end to this sorry spectacle.

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Remember When the Left Welcomed Exposés of the Clintons?

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by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner
Photo: President Clinton is sworn in during the Inauguration Ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (January 20, 1997)
Photo: President Clinton is sworn in during the Inauguration Ceremony at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (January 20, 1997)

In July 2008 Todd Purdum wrote a devastating and controversial take-down of Bill Clinton for Vanity Fair, outlining the sort of ethical and personal lapses that are back in the news seven years later. The Left largely welcomed the exposé because it came at the expense of a tiring Hillary Clinton primary campaign — and to the benefit of an ascendant Barack Obama. Indeed, the essay at the time was felt to have repelled a number of Democrats. Now, of course, Peter Schweitzer’s similar assessment wins no such accolades, since there is no one comparable to Obama as a preferable alternative to Hillary. Still, Purdue’s insights today read uncannily prescient, and raised issues that were never addressed and quickly forgotten once Hillary faded from the primaries — and so went unanswered over the next few years, almost if the Clintons assumed the one-time mention of them was synonymous with their resolution.

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The Westernized Anti-Westerner

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What accounts for hatred of the West by people who voluntarily spent years here?

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
American-educated Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif
American-educated Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif

One of the stranger things about East–West relations these days is the schizophrenic attraction to, and hatred of, Western culture that characterizes many foreign leaders and celebrities.

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Decoding the Rules of Baltimore

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For the left, rioting is an effective political tool.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

NBC’s Al Sharpton shakes hands with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake as she prepares to speak at a summit to address issues surrounding the death of Freddie Gray and its aftermath at New Shiloh Baptist Church, Thursday, April 30, 2015, in Baltimore. Note the “No Justice, No Peace” slogan behind them. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
NBC’s Al Sharpton shakes hands with Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake as she prepares to speak at a summit to address issues surrounding the death of Freddie Gray and its aftermath at New Shiloh Baptist Church, Thursday, April 30, 2015, in Baltimore. Note the “No Justice, No Peace” slogan behind them. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

No one knows what exactly happened to the deceased Freddie Gray, except that it should not have happened. Between what is outlined in the indictments and what will be proven in court is an unknown abyss. But the more dramatic the short-term exuberance over the sweeping indictments, the more likely the long-term fury when the charges are likely to be substantially reduced or unproven in court.

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Republican Senators and the Battered Wife Syndrome

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What the confirmation of Loretta Lynch really means.

by Bruce S. Thornton // Front PageMagazine

via FrontPage Magazine
via FrontPage Magazine

[1]For 6 years Barack Obama in word and deed has battered the Constitution and slapped around the Republicans. Abetted by his Luca Brasi, Harry Reid, he has run roughshod over the separation of powers and his own oath to the highest law in the land. He has responded to Republicans’ complaints about his executive arrogance and unlawful policies with naked contempt and partisan calumny. With his minions in the press and the Democratic Party, he has vilified conservatives as racist warmongers and plutocrats indifferent to the plight of the poor. But instead of fighting back in kind, some Republicans have bent over backwards just to get along, a capitulation disguised as “bipartisanship.”

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Why California’s Drought Was Completely Preventable

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Almaden Reservoir in San Jose, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Almaden Reservoir in San Jose, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)

The present four-year California drought is not novel — even if President Barack Obama and California governor Jerry Brown have blamed it on man-made climate change.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, California droughts are both age-old and common. Predictable California dry spells — like those of 1929–34, 1976–77, and 1987–92 — are more likely result from poorly understood but temporary changes in atmospheric pressures and ocean temperatures.

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