Why Is Hillary Clinton Even Running?

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Hillary has no resume to run on. Is America ready for her to dial up the culture war to 11? 

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Photo via PJ
Photo via PJ

That is not as stupid a question as it first sounds. Ostensibly we know her four ready answers.

I. Who Else?

One, there is no other credible Democrat who could run for presidency. The senior party leadership — Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein — is shrill and buffoonish. They all have either tried before and failed, or are ossified has-beens — or both. There are no up-and-coming governors with distinguished records of executive success. There are no young charismatic Democratic senators — other than the well-preserved, 65-year-old Harvard populist Elizabeth Warren — out to make a name, who can speak well and mirror image a Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or Mario Rubio. Congressional-district gerrymandering that encourages ethnic chauvinism and hard-left polarization has almost ensured that there will not be another minority star, like Barack Obama, who can win crossover votes and statewide office as a springboard to the White House.

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The Modern University Is Failing Students in Every Respect

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From cost to employment prospects, the state of American higher education is dismal for students.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Mario Tama/Getty)
(Mario Tama/Getty)

Modern American universities used to assume four goals.

First, their general education core taught students how to reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, “Medea” and “King Lear,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and astronomy and Euclidean geometry.

Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression — and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties.

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The Burdens of Thought Policing

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From gay weddings to Iran’s muscle-flexing, PC enforcers have a big job.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via NRO
Photo via NRO

It is not easy being a contemporary thought policeman.

No sooner had the radical gay Left demonized the owners of an Indiana pizza parlor, which does not cater weddings, for suggesting that in theory they might not wish to cater a gay wedding than all sorts of stories surfaced saying that lots of Muslim eateries professed that they too would not cater gay weddings. What can the thought bullies do if one victim should victimize another?

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The Drought: California Apocalypto

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by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Gov. Jerry Brown, center, answers a question concerning the executive order he signed requiring the state water board to implement measures in cities and towns to cut water usage by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels, at Echo Summit, Calif., Wednesday, April 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Gov. Jerry Brown, center, answers a question concerning the executive order he signed requiring the state water board to implement measures in cities and towns to cut water usage by 25 percent compared with 2013 levels, at Echo Summit, Calif., Wednesday, April 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The proverbial thin veneer of civilization has never been thinner in California, as if nature has conspired to create even greater chaos than what man here has already wrought. What follows below was a fairly typical seven-day period in the land of the highest sales, fuel, and income taxes that have led to the nearly worst freeways, schools, and general infrastructure in the nation.

I recently came home from an out-of-state trip. Something was wrong: I noticed off in the distance a strange geyser at the top of the hill. Vandals had apparently earlier taken sledgehammers to the pump’s four-inch plastic fittings — all to scavenge two brass valves (recycle value of about $20).

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The Shadow of Munich Haunts the Iran Negotiations

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Once again our leaders are needlessly appeasing a hostile state that shows them nothing but contempt.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Neville Chamberlain (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty)
Neville Chamberlain (Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty)

The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938 Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia, backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II.

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Obama’s Chicago Presidency

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What you can do if you don’t care what anybody says.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
(Pool Image/Getty)
(Pool Image/Getty)

Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) was a vocal critic both of President Obama’s executive-action opening to Cuba and his nuclear non-proliferation talks with Iran. In the midst of his loud opposition, he found himself suddenly the target of renewed federal charges that had aired much earlier without consequence. I think the message was not that the administration was worried over appearances, but rather that it wished to remind all of Washington that it actually welcomed the appearance of not being worried over the idea of federal prosecutorial power being used for tit-for-tat vendettas. Malice is a valuable political tool for Barack Obama.

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The Rules of Racialists—Part Two

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by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at Holder’s portrait unveiling ceremony, Department of Justice, Washington DC—Feb. 27, 2015 (Rex Features via AP Images)
Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at Holder’s portrait unveiling ceremony, Department of Justice, Washington DC—Feb. 27, 2015 (Rex Features via AP Images)

Last week I reviewed some rules to navigate [1] in our race-obsessed culture. Here are three final statutes.

3) Class Is Irrelevant

In our racialist society, race always trumps class. In that sense, we do live in a classless society — at least as far as racial matters are concerned.

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Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero

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Despite the value of his open letter, he will become Obama’s scapegoat when the Iran negotiations inevitably fail.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

images (1)The snarky quip attributed to 19th-century French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand — “It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder” — has recently been making the rounds to deride a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and signed by 46 other senators.

They wrote to the Iranian theocracy that any agreement on nuclear proliferation negotiated with President Obama will not constitutionally bind the next administration — unless it is properly ratified by Congress.

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The Rules of Racialists — Part One

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by  Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media

On a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, a barista at a Seattle Starbucks store writes on a cup for an iced drink as she wears a “Race Together” sticker. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
On a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, a barista at a Seattle Starbucks store writes on a cup for an iced drink as she wears a “Race Together” sticker. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Never should racial relations be better. Intermarriage between various ethnic, religious, and racial groups has become commonplace. Every family that I know can no longer be termed white or Latino or black, despite the efforts of government and academic clerks to insist on such.

Cousins, nephews, grandkids, spouses, and in-laws now all look quite different from each other. Walk downtown Palo Alto, and couples of the same racial appearance are not the norm. The president, the attorney general, the national security advisor, the chief presidential advisor, the director of Homeland Security, the director of NASA, and the former EPA head are black. To watch television commercials is to see all races hawking shared products — quite unlike in the rest of the world, where they would be more likely killing each other.

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The Putin Way

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Putin is following a blueprint that dates back to Philip of Macedon.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Putin: Sean Gallup/Getty
Putin: Sean Gallup/Getty

Nothing that Vladimir Putin has done in gobbling up territories of the former Soviet Union is new. In fact, he simply apes every tyrant’s time-honored four-step plan of aggression.

INVADE, WAIT — AND INVADE
From Philip of Macedon to Napoleon, aggressors did not necessarily have a grand timetable for creating an empire. Instead, they went at it ad hoc. They took as much as they could at any given time; then backed away for a bit, if they sensed strong opposition was building — only to go back on the offensive when vigilance waned.

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