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.

Finding the Great Republican Hope

March 3, 2015 victorhanson

The GOP can’t win in 2016 by thinking inside the box.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

The usual criteria for political success — plenty of New York and Washington IOUs, youthful vigor, good looks, glibness, access to lots of money — aren’t sufficient any longer to galvanize the Republican party or get out the conservative vote. Instead, the next Republican nominee should meet four criteria that are rarely mentioned.

MEDIA OGRE
Being liked by the media is no plus. In the 2008 primaries the media preferred John McCain as a reasonable moderate, at least compared with the primary alternatives, and in 2012 they preferred Mitt Romney. Once the primaries were over, both candidates reverted to their prior demonic status among journalists.

Continue reading “Finding the Great Republican Hope” →

The Liberal Circus

March 2, 2015 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

This Nov. 28, 2012 file photo shows then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton listening as President Barack Obama speaks in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Lately liberalism has gone from psychodrama to farce.

Take Barack Obama. He has gone from mild displeasure with Israel to downright antipathy. Suddenly we are in a surreal world where off-the-record slurs from the administration against Benjamin Netanyahu as a coward and chickensh-t have gone to full-fledged attacks from John Kerry and Susan Rice, to efforts of former Obama political operatives to defeat the Israeli prime minister at the polls, to concessions to Iran and to indifference about the attacks on Jews in Paris. Who would have believed that Iranian leaders who just ordered bombing runs on a mock U.S. carrier could be treated with more deference than the prime minister of Israel? What started out six years as pressure on Israel to dismantle so-called settlements has ended up with a full-fledged vendetta ^[1] against a foreign head of state.

Continue reading “The Liberal Circus” →

Make the ISIS Caliphate a Jihadist Kill Zone

February 27, 2015February 25, 2015 victorhanson

by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine

President Obama’s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS comes at a time when Iran and ISIS are fomenting disorder and destruction throughout the Middle East. Despite the enmity between these two species of jihadism, both pose serious threats to our interests and security and those of our allies in the region. The president’s stubborn refusal to strengthen his dubious negotiations with Iran by approving Congress’s more punishing sanctions, along with his pledge not to use force against the mullahs, is guaranteed to make Iran a nuclear power that will dominate the region. And nothing in the AUMF will achieve his alleged “core objective” to destroy ISIS. Quite the contrary–– it will squander an opportunity to concentrate and eliminate tens of thousands of jihadists.

Continue reading “Make the ISIS Caliphate a Jihadist Kill Zone” →

Our Illiberal Immigration Policy Leads to Chaos

February 26, 2015 victorhanson

We need a meritocratic, ethnically blind system — the opposite of the status quo.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Immigration protest in Murrieta, Calif. (David McNew/Getty)

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Obama’s executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos.

It is a good time to remember that there are more than just two types of immigration — legal and illegal. There also exist liberal and illiberal approaches to immigration.

Take liberal immigration. It is governed by laws passed by Congress and signed and executed by the president. Nearly all Americans accept that no individual can pick and choose which federal statute he chooses to obey, depending on his own perceived self-interest.

Continue reading “Our Illiberal Immigration Policy Leads to Chaos” →

Obama Derangement Syndrome?

February 25, 2015 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner

Some, like Ezra Klein, have posited that Rudy Giuliani’s suggestion that Obama may not be patriotic and Scott Walker’s hesitation to assert that Obama is a Christian illustrate a sort of unhinged Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Aside from the fact that Obama himself characterized President George W. Bush as “unpatriotic” (for overseeing deficits at about half the size of the debt that Obama will bestow on us in his tenure), and aside from Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s chronic tendency to smear their conservative critics as “un-American,” there should be an easy standard to identify the point at which criticism becomes clinically deranged.

Continue reading “Obama Derangement Syndrome?” →

How to Empower Violent Extremism

February 24, 2015 victorhanson

Every time Obama “contextualizes,” Putin and ISIS grow bolder.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Not too long ago, most Russians were reportedly unhappy with Vladimir Putin. His crackdown on freedom and his kleptocratic economy were hardly popular. Most likely, given theirdruthers, Russians were not all that interested in Putin’s risky and costly dream of gobbling up former Soviet Republics to create some grander version of Russia’s mess.

But now? As the ruble crashes, as Russia’s oil income dives, and as sanctions start biting the man in the street, Putin, in counterintuitive fashion, is apparently more popular than ever.

Continue reading “How to Empower Violent Extremism” →

The Administration’s Adolescent Rants about ISIS

February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO- The Corner

Sack cartoon: Obama's Islamic State strategy — Sack cartoon: Obama’s Islamic State strategy

It is disheartening to listen to Obama and his administration voices childishly reiterating that ISIS has nothing to do with Islam because it does not represent the majority of Muslims or what Westerners perceive as normative values distilled from the Koran.

No radical ideology, religious or otherwise, starts out coherently, much less representing the majority; but it eventually can if appeased and left unchallenged.

Continue reading “The Administration’s Adolescent Rants about ISIS” →

President Franklin Delano Obama Addresses the Threat of 1930s Violent Extremism

February 23, 2015 victorhanson

Imagine Obama as an American president in 1939.

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

“The United States has made significant gains ^[2] in our struggle against violent extremism in Europe. We are watching carefully aggressions in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and in Eastern Europe. My diplomatic team has made it very clear that aggression against neighbors is inappropriate and unacceptable. We live in the 20^th century, where the 19^th century practice ^[3] of changing borders by the use of force has no place in the present era.

“Let me be perfectly clear: Mr. Hitler is playing to a domestic audience. He adopts a sort of macho shtick, as a cut-up in the back of the class who appeals to disaffected countrymen. Our task is to demonstrate to Mr. Hitler that his current behavior is not really in his own interest, and brings neither security nor profit to Germany.

Continue reading “President Franklin Delano Obama Addresses the Threat of 1930s Violent Extremism” →

Class, Race, And Illegal Immigration

February 20, 2015February 18, 2015 victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // Peregrine

The driving forces behind three decades of de facto non-enforcement of federal immigration law were largely the interests of elites across the political spectrum.

Employers in agriculture, construction, the hospitality industry, landscaping, and food processing wanted access to cheap, industrious foreign national laborers. So do the well-off households of the American Southwest, whose current aristocratic reliance on immigrant nannies, housekeepers, gardeners, and handymen rivals something out of Downton Abbey. Such facts were why Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers were known once to have patrolled the border to keep out illegal aliens and thus not depress wages of American workers and thereby ruin their own efforts at unionization. Large employers like open borders; entry-level and poor American workers obviously do not.

Continue reading “Class, Race, And Illegal Immigration” →

Our Dangerous Historical Moment

February 19, 2015 victorhanson

Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it?

The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and the Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors.

Yet World War II could have been prevented had Western Europe united to deter Germany. Instead, France, Britain, and the smaller European democracies appeased Hitler.

Continue reading “Our Dangerous Historical Moment” →

Author: victorhanson

Finding the Great Republican Hope

The GOP can’t win in 2016 by thinking inside the box.

Like this:

The Liberal Circus

Like this:

Make the ISIS Caliphate a Jihadist Kill Zone

Like this:

Our Illiberal Immigration Policy Leads to Chaos

We need a meritocratic, ethnically blind system — the opposite of the status quo.

Like this:

Obama Derangement Syndrome?

Like this:

How to Empower Violent Extremism

Every time Obama “contextualizes,” Putin and ISIS grow bolder.

Like this:

The Administration’s Adolescent Rants about ISIS

Like this:

President Franklin Delano Obama Addresses the Threat of 1930s Violent Extremism

Like this:

Class, Race, And Illegal Immigration

Like this:

Our Dangerous Historical Moment

Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors.

Like this:

The GOP can’t win in 2016 by thinking inside the box.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

We need a meritocratic, ethnically blind system — the opposite of the status quo.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Every time Obama “contextualizes,” Putin and ISIS grow bolder.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Obama and European leaders are repeating the mistakes of their 1930s predecessors.

Share this:

Like this: