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.

One Ford Narrative Too Many

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

In the end, the Christine Blasey Ford accusations collapsed. With them went the last effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court.

After thousands of hours of internal Senate and FBI investigations of Kavanaugh, as well as public discussions, open questioning, and media sensationalism, Ford remained unable to identify a single witness who might substantiate any of her narratives of an alleged sexual assault of nearly four decades past.

To substantiate her claim, the country was asked to jettison the idea of innocent until proven guilty, the need for corroborating testimony, witnesses, and physical evidence, the inadmissibility of hearsay, the need for reasonable statutes of limitations, considerations of motive, and the right of the accused to conduct vigorous cross-examination. That leap proved too much, especially when located in a larger progressive landscape of street theater antics, including Senate disruptions, walkouts, and sandbagging senators in hallways and elevators.

At the end of all things, Ford remained scarcely knowledgeable about the location and time of the assault than she was months earlier in her original anonymous complaint. Nor could she yet describe how she arrived at or left the party that may or may not have taken place in 1982. That Ford retained a crystal-clear account of having consumed just one beer and that Kavanaugh played the Hollywood role of a cruel, smirking, drunken, and privileged preppy groper were sensational accusations but not supportable.

Read the full article here.

Angry Reader 10-04-2018

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From An Angry Reader:

it is painful to see or read your columns.

I usually ignore them;today’s on Nunes was pathetic.

Mr. Hanson,you are a fraud and in a just world you’d be condemned

to occupy a spot in that special place down below where it’s always hot…

Delusional is a good word to describe what you must think of yourself;

another apt term is:traitor.

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Dear Angry Reader Peter Cornell,

Unfortunately, Mr. Cornell, you exhibit most of the all-too-common pathologies of the Angry Reader—heat but no light, ad hominem attacks, incoherent arguments (how can you at the same time find my columns “painful” and yet “usually ignore them”?), and poor grammar. Again, try to demonstrate where and how the column on Nunes was either not factual or was illogical rather than just say that I belong in Hell or have betrayed my country.

If you are angry at something, please logically explain why and that way perhaps I can help you lessen your angst.

Sincerely,

Victor Davis Hanson

The Campus Comes to Congress

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

The polarizing atmosphere of the university has now spread to Congress.

During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we witnessed how college values have become the norms of the Senate. On campus, constitutional due process vanishes when accusations of sexual harassment arise. America saw that when false charges were lodged against the Duke University lacrosse players and during Rolling Stone magazine’s concocted smear of a University of Virginia fraternity.

Americans may disagree about the relative credibility of either Kavanaugh or his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. But they all witnessed how the asymmetry of the campus governed the hearings.

Ford’s veracity hinged on empathy and perceived believability. There was little requirement of corroborating testimonies, witnesses and what used to be called physical evidence. In contrast, Kavanaugh was considered guilty from the start. He had to prove his innocence.

One belief of the university is the postmodern idea of relativist truth.

Read the full article here.

America’s New Jacobins

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Victor Davis Hanson // Hoover Institution

Maximilien Robespierre and his Jacobin “Committee of Public Safety’ highjacked the late 18th-century French Revolution. As supposedly more authentically radical revolutionaries, Jacobins did away with their supposedly less radical first-generation Girondists, who themselves had helped to liquidate the French monarchy and many of the Ancient Régime.

What followed Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror” were cycles of revolution until the appearance of Napoleon’s military autocracy. The United States, mutatis mutandis, currently seems on the verge of a new cycle of such leftwing radicalism in spirit and substance—as the old Democrat Party appears to be withering away and a new Socialist Democrat Party assumes its place.

We can see the changes in Washington. Emboldened leftwing protestors recently disrupted the Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. A bewildered Majority Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley vainly tried to restore order by insisting on decorum and custom.

Yet it proved hard for an overwhelmed Grassley to distinguish the shouting in the gallery from the even more disruptive antics of the Democrat senators at his side who were vying with the protestors to authenticate their leftwing fides.

Read the full article here.

Mattis Is More Valuable Than Ever

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Michael O’Hanlon presented recently a persuasive argument why Defense Secretary James Mattis should stay on the job for at least the duration of Trump’s first term in order to finish his current initiatives — apparently in response to unsubstantiated rumors that Mattis’s reputation has grown among some anti-Trump establishment circles as the “adult in the room” who can redirect Trump into proper lanes, or in reaction to the unsourced assertions of Bob Woodward (all denied by Mattis) that the secretary had deprecated Trump in his absence.

In truth, Mattis has never been more important to Trump. His reputation as a no-nonsense advocate of deterrence gains more resonance as we seem to be returning to more conventional, traditional, and big-power challenges from Russia, China, and Iran in the Persian Gulf. That increased deterrence is largely as a result of Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, tough talk on trade, Chinese provocativeness in the South China Sea, and stepped-up sanctions against Russia, including efforts to corral Vladimir Putin.

For all the talk of disruption and chaos in foreign policy, at the close of the administration’s second year, there is emerging a new strategic clarity that reflects the efforts of a superb foreign-policy team of Pompeo, Bolton, Mattis, Haley, etc.

Read the full article here.

Fallout from the Kavanaugh Hearings: A Permanent Cloud?

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Conventional wisdom suggests that, if confirmed, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh forever will be “smeared” and stained by past frenzied unfounded allegations of sexual assault.

Yet the opposite just as well may be true. As a Supreme Court justice, Kavanaugh would have withstood every imaginable smear and slander and yet stayed defiant in defending his character and past, proof of both his determination and principles. His near-solitary rebuttal to his Senate accusers may suggest that Kavanaugh could prove to be among the most fearless justices on the Court.

Indeed, the only lasting effect, if any, of the serial smears lodged against him might be that in the future, as in the case of Justice Thomas, Kavanaugh would be essentially immune from progressive media attacks. What he went through likely has inoculated him from the Georgetown-party-circuit syndrome of conservative Supreme Court judges’ eventually becoming more liberal by the insidious socialization within the larger D.C. progressive media, political, and cultural landscape.

Incidentally, contrary to popular opinion, Clarence Thomas hardly remains under a permanent cloud after his ordeal. What stopped further Robert Borking for a while was the resistance and pushback of Clarence Thomas. Far from being ruined by unproven charges, he resisted the mob, got confirmed, and thereby established a precedent that innuendo, ipso facto, would not derail a nominee. For three decades, Thomas has not been regarded as suspect by most Americans but is seen as inspirational for his courage in facing down character assassination.

Read the full article here.

Angry Reader 10-02-2018

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From An Angry Reader:

Dear Dr. Hanson,

I am an angry reader.

I am angry because my two candidates for Senator from the state of California are both evil and/or just plain stupid.

Who should I vote for? Or should I sit that choice out? I’m leaning to the latter.

Yours,

Dave Payton

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Dear Angry Reader Dave Payton,

You refer to the choice between our 85-year old, multibillionaire, 26-years in the Senate, Diane Feinstein, a progressive social justice warrior, and current resident of a $20 million Pacific Heights mansion.

She has a bad habit of delayed revelations, such as informing the public only now that 5 years ago she was apprised by the FBI that for the prior 20 years her chauffeur and go-fer was a Chinese spy (and who was allowed to be exempt from espionage charges), at a time when she was often voting to liberalize Chinese-American relations (“I sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese”), and when her husband was conducting quite large business deals with the Chinese. Sen. Feinstein most recently kept from the Senate Judiciary Committee for 6 weeks a letter from an alleged victim of sexual assault. Then in extremis, Feinstein released the accuser’s name leading to the present second chapter of the melodrama. She is on record that she does not know whether the accusations and character assassination that she leaked at the 11th hour are even true.

VS.

Kevin Alexander Leon, now known as Kevin de León—a sometimes, and sometimes not, champion of sexual harassment whistleblower legislation, and former roommate of expelled State Senator Tony Mendoza, the alleged serial sexual harasser.

I leave that choice to you, whether to send a message to Sen. Feinstein that she should not have run for reelection given her quite shameful conduct in attempting to delude members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, or whether to send a message to Kevin Leon that his past antics and identity politics cynicism are exactly what California no longer needs.

Yours,

Victor Davis Hanson

Epitaph for a Dying Culture

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and their endless sequelae have ended up as an epitaph for a spent culture for which its remedies are felt to be worse than its diseases. Think 338 B.C., A.D. 476, 1453, or 1939.

The coordinated effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court required the systematic refutation of the entire notion of Western jurisprudence by senators and much of the American legal establishment. And there was no hesitation in doing just that on the part of Senate Democrats, the #MeToo movement, and the press. And I write this at a moment in which conservatives and Republicans still control the majority of governorships, state legislatures, the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court and the presidency—a reminder that culture so often is far more powerful than politics.

So, here we were to be left with a new legal and cultural standard in adjudicating future disagreements and disputes, an utterly anti-Western standard quite befitting for our new relativist age:

  1. The veracity of accusations will hinge on the particular identity, emotions, and ideology of the accuser;
  2. Evidence, or lack of it, will be tangential, given the supposed unimpeachable motives of the ideologically correct accuser;
  3. The burden of proof and evidence will rest with the accused to disprove the preordained assumption of guilt;

Read the full article here.

Kavanaugh’s Testimony Was His Joseph N. Welch Moment

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Christina Ford’s testimony did not alter, positively or negatively, the facts of her allegations. She still cannot adduce where or when the alleged assault of 36 years prior occurred, or how she arrived at, or departed from, the alleged, but unnamed, location of the assault, or how many people and of which gender were present at the alleged assault. Nor did she name a single witness that could corroborate her narrative. Nor could she refute any of the named witnesses who contradicted her accounts.

Read the full article here.

The Truths Behind Our Current Political Turmoil

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Are there any guiding principles that can make sense of the sensational news that now overwhelms the senses seemingly every hour?

What is common to blaring headlines about the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings, an anti-Trump “resistance” buried deep in the permanent bureaucracy, and the improper behavior by top officials of the Obama administration, FBI, and Department of Justice?

There are a few subtexts to all these spectacles, scandals, and melodramas.

First, those in power had never imagined that Donald Trump either could or should win the 2016 election.

That reality emboldened federal employees to take risks and step over the line in efforts to ensure that Trump would be humiliated at the polls. Officials assumed that incoming President Hillary Clinton would either overlook or reward their zealotry.

FBI kingpins such as James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok either broke the law or made a mockery of the FBI’s ethical guidelines. They acted as if Clinton would win, or should have won, the election.

Read the full article here.