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.

Who’s Really Winning the North Korea Standoff?

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

There have been wild reports that the United States is considering a “bloody nose” preemptive attack of some sort on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. Such rumors are unlikely to prove true. Preemptive attacks usually are based on the idea that things will so worsen that hitting first is the only chance to decapitate a regime before it can do greater damage.

But in the struggle between Pyongyang and Washington, who really has gotten the upper hand?

With its false happy face in the current Winter Olympics, North Korea thinks it is winning the war of nerves. Yet its new nuclear-missile strategy is pretty transparent. It wants to separate South Korea’s strategic interests from those of the United States, with boasts — backed by occasional nuclear-missile tests — that it can take out West Coast cities.

Continue reading “Who’s Really Winning the North Korea Standoff?” →

02/14/2018 Angry Reader

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From An Angry Reader

From SM:

Your article sucks. What if CNN didn’t hate FDR? You can’t debate a hypothetical situation.

Trump is probably going to prison. Have fun.

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Dear Angry Reader SM,

1) Define “sucks.”

2) It is called counter-factual history and offers food, however unwished, for thought.

3) Trump is not likely to be going to prison, because key Democratic Senators such as Diane Feinstein, Obama-appointed intelligence officers such as James Comey and James Clapper, and private FBI correspondence such as the texts of the Page-Strzok archive, all conceded that there is no evidence of Russian collusion, a conclusion borne out by the pivot in the Mueller investigation away from its original mandate. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton might face legal consequences, given her destruction of subpoenaed material, her use of an illegal private server, her quid pro quo relations with foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation, and her present likely permanent distance from power.

4) I always try to have fun.

From VH

02/12/18 Angry Reader

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From An Angry Reader:

I was surprised this morning. Usually when I read your column I want to throw up. But today’s column was absolutely brilliant

Nice job

Mike Benbrook

Oakhurst CA

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Dear Reforming Angry Reader Mike Benbrook,

Vomiting is not healthy. If I were to do so each time I receive a reader’s ad hominem rant, I would be bulimic by now. Still, I appreciate your ability to find a diamond now and then floating otherwise in a sea of vomit.

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

02/09/18 Angry Reader

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From An Angry(?) Reader:

Greetings Professor Hanson!

For many years now, I have followed you on talk radio, TV interviews, YouTube videos, books and published articles. I greatly appreciate your commitment to truth, accurate history and the application of those two principles to current events. Your reasoning and observations are always clear, astute and logical. Good job!

However, I consider myself one of your angry readers, because you either show no interest in or have utterly failed to create 7,969 clones of yourself and get them elected to public office (1 President, 535 Congressmen and Senators, 50 Governors and 7,383 state legislators). I know there is a big drawback to all this, but your wisdom, knowledge and understanding more than make up for your willingness to live amongst the heathen there in California.

Since cloning yourself doesn’t seem to be a priority for you, could you do one other thing for me? Seriously, would you shoot me a “short” list of your favorite classical literature dealing with the nature of man, war, religion and government? I would love to read them.

Continue reading “02/09/18 Angry Reader” →

02/08/18 Angry Reader

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From An Angry Reader:

I initially became interested in your work after your podcast interview with Dan Carlin many years ago. The need to engage in a priori reasoning is an important lesson. It is disappointing that you have forgotten this lesson in your many defenses of Trump and your unhinged criticisms of Barack Obama. Most telling is how you criticized Obama (multiple times in print) of once pronouncing corpsman wrong while Trump is given a pass for savaging a gold star family and criticizing prisoners of war as losers who got caught. Let us hope you can regain your senses.

Rajdeep Kandola

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Dear Angry Reader Rajdeep Kandola,

Continue reading “02/08/18 Angry Reader” →

Scandal, Corruption, Lawbreaking — And So What?

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The FISA-gate, Clinton emails, and Uranium One scandals are sort of reaching a consensus. Many things quite wrong and illegal were done by both Hillary Clinton and her entourage and members of the Obama agencies and administration — both the acts themselves and the cover-ups and omissions that ensued.

Remember, in the FISA-gate scandal such likely widespread criminal behavior was predicated on two premises: 1) certainty of an easy Clinton victory, after which the miscreants would be not only excused but probably rewarded for their zeal; 2) progressive hubris in which our supposedly moral betters felt it their right, indeed their duty, to use unethical and even unlawful means for the “greater good” — to achieve their self-described moral ends of stopping the crude and reactionary Trump.

The wrongdoing probably includes attempting to warp a U.S. election, Russian collusion, repeatedly misleading and lying before the FISA courts, improperly surveilling American citizens, unmasking the names of citizens swept up in unlawful surveillance and then illegally leaking them to the press, disseminating and authenticating opposition smears during a political campaign, lying under oath to Congress, obstructing ongoing investigations, using federal funds to purchase ad hominem gossip against a presidential candidate, blatant conflicts of interests, weaponizing federal investigations, trafficking in and leaking classified information . . . The list goes on and on.

Continue reading “Scandal, Corruption, Lawbreaking — And So What?” →

Republican Embarrassments

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

Free-marketers are right that tax cuts stimulate economic growth that in turn lead to expanding production and eventually more federal tax revenue.

But the problem traditionally has been that to obtain tax reductions, Republicans also have had to sign on reluctantly to larger expenditures. Or, worse, they willingly believed they could spend more, simply because more money poured into the federal treasuries.

George W. Bush doubled the national debt. After running against Bush profligacy (remember the Chinese credit card trope), Barack Obama doubled it again by doubling Bush’s levels of borrowing. Conservatives blasted Obama for his even greater lack of thrift. The Tea Party movement emerged in reaction to reckless expenditures and borrowing to fund Obamacare.

Now Donald Trump is caught in the same old matrix. His deregulation, tax cuts, and energy expansion will likely increase federal revenue. But his various budget concessions and his own proposed increases in defense spending and infrastructure would likely bleed the budget at a far greater rate than the growing federal revenue.

Once again, new spending will discredit conservative vows of budget prudence and supply-side economics. (Budget-wise, what good does it do to expand the economy if the political price is acquiescence to ever greater and costlier government?) Continue reading “Republican Embarrassments” →

Counterfeit Elitism

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

Those damn dairy farmers. Why do they insist on trying to govern? Or, put another way:

Why are Republicans trusting Devin Nunes to be their oracle of truth!? A former dairy farmer who House intel staffers refer to as Secret Agent Man because he has no idea what’s going on.

Thus spoke MSNBC panelist, Yale graduate, former Republican “strategist,” and Bush administration speechwriter Elise Jordan.

Jordan likely knows little about San Joaquin Valley family dairy farmers and little notion of the sort of skills, savvy, and work ethic necessary to survive in an increasingly corporate-dominated industry. Whereas dairy farmer Nunes has excelled in politics, it would be hard to imagine Jordan running a family dairy farm, at least given the evidence of her televised skill sets and sobriety.

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Swamp Things?

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

No doubt people talk indiscreetly when they believe their communications are private; perhaps those in an illicit affair may posture and brag about their self-importance and exaggerate. All that said, when reading through the latest release of the Page-Strzok archive, one is struck not just that the two who eventually were to investigate Donald Trump did not like Trump, but rather that they utterly loathed him, given their banter back and forth included: “God trump is a loathsome human.” Or “And wow, Donald Trump is an enormous d**che.” Or “And Trump should go f himself.” Or “I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot.”

It is hard to imagine how the Mueller investigation was not tainted by such venom — or perhaps the hate is better understood as proof that both were uniquely qualified to serve on the Mueller team doing the holy work deemed necessary to save the progressive project.

And perhaps the two had even more disdain for the supposed white working class who supported this “loathsome human”: e.g., cf., “from buttf*** Texas . . . ” Or “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support . . . ” Or “Loudon is being gentrified, but it’s still largely ignorant hillbillys [sic].”

Anyone trying to chronicle the supposed pretensions and arrogance of a deep-state, deplorables/irredeemables/clingers/dairy-farmer–hating elite could not make all this up, especially the idea that a Trump supporter gives off a unique odor, real or metaphorical.

Of course, if two FBI amorous agents/attorneys in 2008 were investigating candidate or president-elect Obama and their correspondence was later revealed to be anything like the above about him or his constituents, they would have long ago been fired, no questions asked.

FISA-Gate is Scarier than Watergate

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The Watergate scandal of 1972–74 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration’s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though illegal, political break-in.

In the Iran-Contra affair of 1985–87, the media and liberal activists uncovered wrongdoing by some rogue members of the Reagan government. They warned of government overreach and of using the “Deep State” to subvert the law for political purposes.

We are now in the middle of a third great modern scandal. Members of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice sought court approval for the surveillance of Carter Page, allegedly for colluding with Russian interests, and extended the surveillance three times.

But none of these government officials told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the warrant requests were based on an unverified dossier that had originated as a hit piece funded in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign to smear Donald Trump during the current 2016 campaign.

Continue reading “FISA-Gate is Scarier than Watergate” →