You live in an alternate universe, silly clown, silly institute, silly magazine. But the article was funny so congrats.
Sincerely,
Bruce Patten
___________________________________________
I congratulate you on your succinctness and your use of anaphora (“silly”…”silly”…”silly”) but otherwise your note is simply personal invective and underwhelming satire that is applicable to anything—and thus unfortunately nothing.
Sincerely,
Victor Hanson
by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
By now, the president’s record has transcended his social-media idiosyncrasies.
Almost every supposedly informed prediction about President Donald Trump’s compulsive Twitter addiction has so far proved wrong.
He did not tweet his way out of the Republican nomination. Spontaneous social-media messaging did not lose Trump the general election race with Hillary Clinton. Nor has Trump tweeted his presidency into oblivion.
Instead, Trump’s tweets have not just bypassed the mostly progressive media; they’ve sent it into a tizzy. In near-suicidal fashion, networks such as CNN have melted down in hatred of Trump, goaded on by Trump’s Twitter digs.
Trump has often bragged that having a large following on social media — he has more than 44 million Twitter followers and connects with millions more via Facebook and Instagram — is “like having your own newspaper.”
He has a point. Continue reading “Why Trump Should Consider a Post-Twitter Presidency”
by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review
Stacking the deck with anti-Trump staffers is proving to be a really bad idea.
Special prosecutors, investigators, and counsels are usually a bad idea. They are admissions that constitutionally mandated institutions don’t work — and can be rescued only by supposed superhuman moralists, who are without the innate biases inherent in human nature.
The record from Lawrence Walsh to Ken Starr to Patrick Fitzgerald suggests otherwise. Originally narrow mandates inevitably expand — on the cynical theory that everyone has something embarrassing to hide. Promised “short” timelines and limited budgets are quickly forgotten. Prosecutors search for ever new crimes to justify the expense and public expectations of the special-counsel appointment. Soon the investigators need to be investigated for their own conflicts of interest, as if we need special-special or really, really special prosecutors. Special investigations often quickly turn Soviet, in the sense of “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has led what seems to be an exemplary life of public service. No doubt he believes that as a disinterested investigator he can get to the bottom of the once contentious charge of “Russian collusion” in the 2016 election. But can he? Continue reading “One Mueller-Investigation Coincidence Too Many”
By 1942, the Axis powers seemed invincible. But the course of the war soon changed in ways that offer lessons for the U.S. and its allies in today’s world, said Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution senior fellow.
In the early years of World War II, the Axis powers had the upper hand. The tide turned when the Axis leaders overreached and the Allies steered their more massive economies and populations into wartime mode.
(Image credit: narvikk/iStock)
By 1942, the Axis powers seemed invincible, but the course of the war soon changed in ways that offer lessons for the U.S. and its allies in today’s world, said Victor Davis Hanson, a Hoover Institution senior fellow.
Understanding how miscalculations by Germany and Japan led to their defeat offers lessons for world leaders today on how to avoid another major conflict, a Stanford scholar said.
“The once ascendant Axis powers were completely ill-prepared – politically, economically and militarily – to win the global war they had blundered into during 1941,” writes Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, in a new book, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.
At the start of the war, the misperception was “that the Axis powers, particularly Germany and Japan, were ferocious war makers in the global sense and that they were strategically adept and almost unstoppable,” Hanson said in a recent interview. Continue reading “Axis powers miscalculated after early advantages in World War II, Stanford scholar says”
This video was originally published by the Hoover Institution. Click here to learn more about this episode.
Could the Axis powers have won? What are the counterfactuals for World War II? Find out in part two of this episode as Victor Davis Hanson joins Peter Robinson to discuss his latest book, The Second World Wars.
Victor Davis Hanson explains the counterfactuals of World War II, the “what-ifs” that easily could have changed the outcome of the war. If Hitler had not attacked Russia or the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the USSR would have never turned on Germany and the United States would have never entered the war. Hanson argues that the leaders of the Axis powers overreached in their strategies, which ultimately caused their downfall. Hanson also explores the counterfactual surrounding the American commanders and the “what-ifs” that could have prevented American success in the war.
Victor Davis Hanson also reflects on his own family history and connections to World War II and how it shaped him as both a person and a scholar in his life today. He talks about his motivations to write his latest book, The Second World Wars, and how his family history and the current political climate inspired him to write it.
Watch both episodes to learn more about the history of World War II. You can watch the first episode here.
Seventy-six years ago, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America went to war. Listen to the latest episode of the podcast, Area 45, as Victor Davis Hanson discusses the 76th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and the lessons learned from that conflict’s successes and failures and how they apply today.
Listen to Victor Davis Hanson chat about his new book with Jay Nordlinger on his podcast, Q & A.
Victor Davis Hanson’s new book is “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” Jay asks him a slew of questions, including: What caused the war? Was Hitler dumb to declare war on America? Was Japan dumb to attack America? How was FDR as wartime leader? And Truman? Were we right to drop the A-bomb(s)? Was Yalta a crime, committed by the West? Is the Holocaust separable from the war? Who are some unsung heroes of the conflict?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
Read the original article here.
His monumental contributions to American security are largely unknown to Americans today.
Seventy-six years ago on Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese fleet surprise-attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the home port of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Japanese carrier planes killed 2,403 Americans. They sunk or submerged 19 ships (including eight battleships destroyed or disabled) and damaged or destroyed more than 300 planes.
In an amazing feat of seamanship, the huge Japanese carrier fleet had steamed nearly 3,500 miles in midwinter high seas. The armada had refueled more than 20 major ships while observing radio silence before arriving undetected about 220 miles from Hawaii.
The surprise attack started the Pacific War. It was followed a few hours later by a Japanese assault on the Philippines.
More importantly, Pearl Harbor ushered in a new phase of World War II, as the conflict expanded to the Pacific. It became truly a global war when, four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The Japanese fleet had missed the three absent American carriers of the Pacific Fleet. Nonetheless, Japanese admirals were certain that the United States was so crippled after the attack that it would not be able to go on the offensive against the Japanese Pacific empire for years, if at all. Surely the wounded Americans would sue for peace, or at least concentrate on Europe and keep out of the Japanese-held Pacific. Continue reading “Pearl Harbor and the Legacy of Carl Vinson”
The over 1,000 city-states of ancient Greece never developed a notion like that of the Roman natio, or nationhood. By contrast, many different peoples were bound by a common allegiance to Rome.
Pan-Hellenism—the idea that the city-states were united by a common language, locale, and religion—never quite trumped Greek tribalism. That factionalism is why foreign-imposed dynasties and empires eventually conquered the city-states
Most of the Middle East and Africa remain plagued by tribalism. In Iraq, a civil servant sees himself first as Shiite or Sunni rather than Iraqi, and acts accordingly. A Kenyan’s first allegiance is to his tribal first cousin rather than to an anonymous fellow Kenyan.
The result is inevitably the violence seen in places like the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Syria, or Iraq. The extreme historic remedy for tribalism is often the brutality of empire. The Ottoman, Austria-Hungary, and Soviet empires were all multiethnic, but they were also ruthless in squashing factional rebellion by seeking to suppress (or even destroy) all minority religions, languages, and identities. Continue reading “Nation V. Tribe”
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
Read the original article here.
Civilization does not cure men of malice, especially when there are no repercussions for bad behavior.
Observers look for some sort of common denominator that would make sense of the daily news blasts of nonconsensual sexual escapades of media, political, and Hollywood celebrities.
No sooner are these lists of the accused compiled than they have to be updated, hourly. Long hushed, covered-up, or even forgotten sexual IEDs suddenly go off without warning and blow up a career.
Weirder still, the now-outraged often overnight can become the outrageous.
One moment Richard Dreyfuss expressed furor when he learned that gay actor Kevin Spacey long ago had groped his own son under the table (while the three were working on a script). The next minute, Dreyfuss himself was accused of an earlier repulsive unwanted sex act or advance toward a female subordinate.
New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush condemns the bad behavior of journalist Mark Halperin — and then finds himself accused of similar coerced sexual behavior. Senator Al Franken’s often sanctimonious outrages over the Fox News harassers would soon apply just as easily to his own behavior. We forget that the original context of Juvenal’s famous quip “Who will police the police?” was the insidiousness of sex.
Note these latest scandals are different from the age-old stories of consensual adultery. They are mostly not consensual affairs in the workplace, supposedly initiated by grasping subordinates or by oppressive bosses in midlife crises. Nor are they the connivances in dating and courtship — all the sort of consenting unions gone awry that are the stuff of novels and films. Continue reading “Cruelty and Sexual Harassment”