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 Strange Case of Modern Immigration

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The West is too cowed by guilt to look honestly at immigration.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

JUCHITAN, MEXICO - AUGUST 06: Central American immigrants ride north on top of a freight train on August 6, 2013 near Juchitan, Mexico. Thousands of Central American migrants ride the trains, known as 'la bestia', or the beast, during their long and perilous journey through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Some of the immigrants are robbed and assaulted by gangs who control the train tops, while others fall asleep and tumble down, losing limbs or perishing under the wheels of the trains. Only a fraction of the immigrants who start the journey in Central America will traverse Mexico completely unscathed - and all this before illegally entering the United States and facing the considerable U.S. border security apparatus designed to track, detain and deport them. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
JUCHITAN, MEXICO – AUGUST 06: Central American immigrants ride north on top of a freight train on August 6, 2013 near Juchitan, Mexico. Thousands of Central American migrants ride the trains, known as ‘la bestia’, or the beast, during their long and perilous journey through Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Some of the immigrants are robbed and assaulted by gangs who control the train tops, while others fall asleep and tumble down, losing limbs or perishing under the wheels of the trains. Only a fraction of the immigrants who start the journey in Central America will traverse Mexico completely unscathed – and all this before illegally entering the United States and facing the considerable U.S. border security apparatus designed to track, detain and deport them. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Is immigrating from less-developed countries to the West a good or a bad thing, for host and guest? Is the immigrant angry at, or nostalgic for, the country he left? Is he thankful to or resentful of the country he has come to? Does the Westerner know why the other seeks him out or why he himself chooses not to emigrate to the non-West? These questions and dozens like them are not so much never answered as never even asked. The result is chaos.

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The Fall of the House of Clinton

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Boys and girls, Count Victor presents a berrry, berrry scarrrrrry tale of political corruption run amok.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

via PJ Media
via PJ Media

Hillary Clinton will probably survive her latest ethical disaster. James Carville — of “if you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find” fame  — is back again to pronounce the Clinton Foundation scandal as “diddly-squat.”   He may be right in the political sense. After all, we know the standard Clinton rescue plan from the past: her aging point-men like Carville, Lanny Davis, and Paul Begala flood the airways, yelling “prove it!” at their television hosts and declaring:

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Do Hillary’s Fair-Pay Talking Points Apply to Her Own Family?

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by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

pic_giant_042215_SM_Hillary-Clinton-GHillary Clinton apparently plans to base her presidential campaign on the noble goals of greater fairness and shared sacrifice.

She has already lambasted vast differences in compensation. “The average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes,” Clinton warned.

She is right — but can best appreciate that fact from her own career and family.

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Don’t Worry, Be Happy

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by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

downloadIn his 1988 presidential race, George H.W. Bush was trashed by the left for selecting the Bobby McFerrin hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” as his campaign song. Maybe Bush thought he needed a lighthearted optimistic echo of Reagan’s 1984 mantra, “It’s morning in America.” [1]But the Left thought the ditty confirmed the image of a callous and vacuous Bush who didn’t “worry” enough about the poor and minorities. The liberal McFerrin was outraged that Bush sought to play his own song at rallies. Shortly afterwards, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was quietly dropped by the Bush team.

Perhaps no other slogan better characterizes the Obama tenure.

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Moral Schizophrenics

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On campus, on the campaign trail.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Andrew Burton/Getty)
(Andrew Burton/Getty)

Hillary Clinton in recent months has done the following:

She charged UCLA somewhere around $300,000 for reciting some platitudes. That works out to  over $165 a second for her 30 minutes on stage — meaning that she made more in one minute than a student barista does in a year.

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A Foreign Policy Primer for Obama––and Rand Paul

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by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

The president who thinks there’s such a thing as an “Austrian” language is advising Rand Paul to “bone up on foreign policy.” It’s now official: the Obama administration has become a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live.

This is the same Barack Obama who became president after 2 indifferent years in the Senate, which were preceded by stints as a state legislator, a part-time teacher of law, and a community organizer. In the Senate his scanty foreign policy experience and knowledge manifested itself in his 2007 opposition to the “surge” of forces in Iraq, which he called a “mistake” and a “reckless escalation,” comments followed up by the introduction of legislation to remove all forces by the end of March 2008 no matter what.

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L. Ron Obama and the Church of Progressivism

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by Bruce S.Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

Photo via FrontPage Magazine
Photo via FrontPage Magazine

The HBO documentary about Scientology, “Going Clear,” is a must-see. Not so much because it exposes Scientology as a moneymaking, totalitarian cult, something most people already have known for 50 years. More useful is the film’s description of Scientology’s ideas, techniques, and tactics, for they bear an eerie resemblance to contemporary Progressive belief and practice.

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Is Race Following Gender in Becoming a ‘Fluid’ Identity Construct?

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Among many careerists and politicians, tweaking one’s ethnic identity is becoming increasingly widespread.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

images (8)Not long ago, the New York Times uncovered the artifact that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush had once listed himself as “Hispanic” on a Florida voter-registration form.

Bush is married to a Mexican American. He lived for a number of years in South America and speaks Spanish fluently.

Maybe he has consciously assumed a Hispanic identity. Or perhaps he did not think there was much of a difference between “white” and “Hispanic.” Or, as he said, he simply checked the wrong box by accident.

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Obama and Revolutionary Romance

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His foreign-policy errors result not from incompetence but from a conscious agenda.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Bill Pugliano/Getty)
(Bill Pugliano/Getty)

Lots of questions arise about the muddled foreign policy of the Obama administration. Critics suggest that America’s friends have now become enemies, and enemies friends. Others cite incompetence and naïveté rather than deliberate agendas as the cause of American decline, and of growing global chaos from Libya to Ukraine.

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Why Is Hillary Clinton Even Running?

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Hillary has no resume to run on. Is America ready for her to dial up the culture war to 11? 

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Photo via PJ
Photo via PJ

That is not as stupid a question as it first sounds. Ostensibly we know her four ready answers.

I. Who Else?

One, there is no other credible Democrat who could run for presidency. The senior party leadership — Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein — is shrill and buffoonish. They all have either tried before and failed, or are ossified has-beens — or both. There are no up-and-coming governors with distinguished records of executive success. There are no young charismatic Democratic senators — other than the well-preserved, 65-year-old Harvard populist Elizabeth Warren — out to make a name, who can speak well and mirror image a Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or Mario Rubio. Congressional-district gerrymandering that encourages ethnic chauvinism and hard-left polarization has almost ensured that there will not be another minority star, like Barack Obama, who can win crossover votes and statewide office as a springboard to the White House.

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