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.
There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare.
Will we force doctors to treat the millions of new Medicaid patients who are signing up for services that can be only partially reimbursed? How exactly will the IRS collect penalties from millions of off-the-books youth who choose not to buy coverage? Continue reading “The Obamacare Generation”→
The Republicans are feeling confident these days. The slow-motion debacle of Obamacare promises to keep that albatross around the necks of the Democrats at least through next year’s midterm elections. The IRS, NSA, and Benghazi scandals are still simmering, and any day new information may emerge that puts them back on the front page. Obama’s disapproval rating is at 53.4%, according to the RealClearPoliticsaverage of 11 polls. The Republican Party’s approval numbers are still lower than Democrats’, but they are trending up while the Dems are moving down. Continue reading “The Progressive Reality Is Here”→
We are fast approaching what promises to be the year of “comprehensive immigration reform.” In the manner of the “Affordable Care Act,” it will not be comprehensive nor will it reform immigration.
All sorts of new trends have emerged in the American Southwest to address the fact that federal immigration law does not really apply to those who arrived here illegally from Mexico or Latin America. In-state tuition discounts at public universities are now customarily extended to those without citizenship — in effect, privileging the foreign national over the U.S.-citizen student from out of state who helps subsidize the cost. Cities establish sanctuary zones that protect illegal immigrants from the enforcement of federal immigration laws — and the taxpayer picks up the additional tab in social services. Imagine what might happen should a city declare in similar fashion that it was exempt from enforcing federal gun-control laws.
Another trend is the effort to end penalties for past use of multiple Social Security numbers. Many who crossed the border illegally adopted various — and thus fraudulent — identities and acquired numerous Social Security numbers. When they later obtained green cards or citizenship, their poly-personas were found out. But isn’t it discriminatory to count such illegal behavior against the job applicant, if such criteria apply disproportionately to a particular ethnic group?
In other words, there is an effort to make the idea of immigration law per se mostly irrelevant, and instead to focus only on the immigrant in terms of his ethnic makeup and place of origin. Continue reading “Resisting Immigration Reform”→
“Infidels,” or non-Muslims, or the wrong kinds of Muslims (Alawites and Shia for example) are often seen as the natural recipients of Islamic violence, or jihad, as prescribed by Islamic law, the Sharia.
Why was Ronald Thomas Smith II, an American teaching at Benghazi’s International School, shot to death last Thursday in Libya, even as he “was looking forward to his first Christmas in
Ronald Smith with wife and child
the United States with his wife and toddler son”?
Most Western media and analysts dismiss the killing as a random act of violence incited by a recent al-Qaeda video.
However, by connecting the dots and looking at precedence, it appears that Smith’s Christianity, specifically his talking about it among Muslims, was the motive behind the slaying.
A video recently appeared of an Islamic Sunni cleric in Syria inciting Muslim schoolboys, most of whom appear to be between the ages of five-twelve, to hate and kill Christians and others.
According to a reportin Arabic (scroll down for video), among other things, the sheikh calls on the children to “slaughter all Christians for being infidels” and that he boasted that “the Christians of Syria are under continuous attack and their churches and monasteries subject to violence.”
In the video, the sheikh first talks of Islam’s egalitarianism—that it does not consider the race, nationality, or language of people, only whether they have submitted to Islam by becoming Muslims or not—adding, “because the entire world is for Allah.”
He then tells the children that “Islam uplifts the Muslims and debases the non-Muslims,” while raising one hand, symbolic of Islam, and lowering the other, symbolic of all non-Islam, to drive the point home to his young audience.
Next the sheikh asked the children, “Now, the crusaders, that is, the Christians, are they Muslims or infidels?” A few boys answer, “infidels.”
He agreed, pointing out that various Koran verses say that whoever says Jesus is the son of God (that is, Allah) or that he is God is an infidel (see Koran 5:73 and 5:17).
To clarify the point to those children unable to understand all this “theological” talk, the cleric made the sign of the cross, saying “Christians are they who do this.”
He then moved on to the Alawites, the Shia sect of President Bashar Assad, and called on the children to slaughter anyone belonging to them—making a knife-slitting motion with his hand across his neck—because they too are infidels.
The sheikh further told the children in attendance that what they are being taught in schools—
RaymondIbrahim.com
that Christians and Alawites are their “brothers” and they are all one nation—is false and a lie against Islam. This would be a reference to the highly divisive Islamic doctrine of loyalty and enmity, which commands Muslims to hate all non-Muslims—even if they are married to them.
In the old postwar, pre-Obama world, the United States accepted a 65-year burden of defeating Soviet communism. It led the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. The American fleet and overseas bases ensured that global commerce, communications, and travel were largely free and uninterrupted. Globalization was a sort of synonym for Americanization. Continue reading “Obama’s Ironic Foreign Policy”→
The gangster state of North Korea became a nuclear power in 2006–07, despite lots of foreign aid aimed at precluding just such proliferation — help usually not otherwise accorded such a loony dictatorship. Apparently the civilized world rightly suspected that, if nuclear, Pyongyang would either export nuclear material and expertise to other unstable countries, or bully its successful but non-nuclear neighbors — or both.
The United States has given billions of dollars in foreign aid to Pakistan, whose Islamist gangs have spearheaded radical anti-American terrorism. Ever since a corrupt Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, it has been able to extort such foreign-aid payouts — on fears that one of its nukes might end up in the hands of terrorists.
By any measure of economic success or political stability, without nuclear weapons Pakistan would not warrant either the cash or the attention it wins.
An observant Iran appreciates three laws of current nuclear gangbanging:
1. Nuclear weapons earn a reputation.
2. The more loco a nuclear nation sounds, the more likely it is that civilized states will fear that it is not subject to nuclear deterrence, and so the more likely that they will pay bribes for it to behave. Gangbangers always claim they have nothing to lose; their more responsible intended targets have everything to lose.
3. As of yet there are no 100 percent effective nuclear-defense systems that can guarantee non-nuclear powers absolute safety from a sudden attack. The nuclear gangbanger, not the global police, currently has Continue reading “Nuclear Gangbangers”→
immigration.
material and expertise to other unstable countries, or bully its successful but non-nuclear neighbors — or both.