Civilization’s ‘Darkest Hour’ Hits the Silver Screen

victorhanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson//National Review

A masterful new film shows how Churchill saved the world from Nazi Germany in May of 1940.

 

The new film Darkest Hour offers the diplomatic side to the recent action movie Dunkirk.

 

The story unfolds with the drama of British prime minister Winston Churchill’s assuming power during the Nazi invasion of France in May 1940. Churchill’s predecessor, the sickly Neville Chamberlain, had lost the confidence of the English people and the British government. His appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the disastrous first nine months of World War II seemed to have all but lost Britain the war.

 

Churchill was asked to become prime minister on the very day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The armies of all three democracies — together larger than Germany’s invading forces — collapsed within days or a few weeks.

 

About a third of a million British soldiers stranded in a doomed France were miraculously saved by Churchill’s bold decision to risk evacuating them by sea from Dunkirk, France, where most of what was left of the British Expeditionary Force had retreated.
Continue reading “Civilization’s ‘Darkest Hour’ Hits the Silver Screen” →

Nagging Questions for the Special Counselors

victorhanson

The Corner

The one and only

By Victor Davis Hanson//National Review

 

1) If the FISA Court orders to explore the purported Trump-Russian collusion were predicated on phony Steele/Fusion GPS documents and suppositions that prove largely untrue (Comey himself testified under oath that he could not verify their contents), then are subsequent transcripts of court-approved surveilled conversations somewhat poisoned? And, if so, not permissible to be used in collation with later sworn FBI statements to prove inconsistencies, lying, or obstructing? Would someone like Flynn eventually have grounds to appeal his confession?

 

2) Given the overwhelming progressive consensus by summer 2016 that Trump was not going to be president and that his likely post facto blame for his defeat would fall on deaf ears (Obama before the election had both predicted that Trump would not win and that he would have no grounds to complain of outside interference in the results), why did the amateurish Clinton-created Fusion GPS dossier win such a shelf life, to be peddled around the FBI, discussed by the Obama White House, bandied about by the intelligence agencies, and worked on by the spouse of a DOJ high official?
Continue reading “Nagging Questions for the Special Counselors” →

The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership

victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

 

To everything, there is a season.

 

America has always enjoyed two antithetical traditions in its political and military heroes.

 

The preferred style is the reticent, sober, and competent executive planner as president or general, from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter.

 

George Marshall remains the epitome of understated and quiet competence.

 

The alternate and more controversial sorts are the loud, often reckless, and profane pile drivers. Think Andrew Jackson of Teddy Roosevelt. Both types have been appreciated, and at given times and in particular landscapes both profiles have proven uniquely invaluable.

 

Grant/Sherman

Both Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were military geniuses. Grant was quiet and reflective — at least in his public persona, which gave scant hint that he struggled with alcohol and often displayed poor judgement about those who surrounded him.

 

Sherman was loud. He was often petty, and certainly ready in a heartbeat to engage in frequent feuds, many of them cul de sacs and counter-productive.

 

Sherman threatened to imprison or even hang critical journalists and waged a bitter feud with the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.

 

Too few, then or now, have appreciated that the uncouth Sherman, in fact, displayed both a prescient genius and an uncanny understanding of human nature. Whereas Grant could brilliantly envision how his armies might beat the enemy along a battle line or capture a key fortress or open a river, Sherman’s insight encompassed whole regions and theaters, in calibrating how both economics and sociology might mesh with military strategy to crush an entire people.

 

For all of Grant’s purported drinking and naïveté about the scoundrels around him, his outward professional bearing, his understated appearance of steadiness and discretion, enhanced his well-earned reputation for masterful control in times of crises.

 

The volatile and loquacious nature of Sherman, in contrast, often hid and diminished appreciation of his talents — in some ways greater than Grant’s. To the stranger, Grant would have seemed the less likely to have had too much to drink and smoked too many daily cigars, Sherman the more prone to all sorts of such addictions.
Continue reading “The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership” →

A New History of the Second World War

victorhanson

The New Yorker

Book Review

By

December 23, 2017

Photograph by FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty

Victor Davis Hanson’s “The Second World Wars” is not a chronological retelling of the conflict but a high-altitude, statistics-saturated overview of the dynamics and constraints that shaped it.

 In 1936, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Berlin to inspect the Luftwaffe. The visit had been arranged by Truman Smith, an ingenious intelligence officer who knew that Herman Göring, the Nazi air marshal, would find the American aviator’s celebrity irresistible; Lindbergh flew to Berlin with his wife, Anne, as his co-pilot, and then, along with Smith and another officer, spent a few days meeting German pilots, inspecting operations, and even flying several German planes. (The group also had dinner at Göring’s house, where they met his pet lion cub, Augie.) Lindbergh was impressed by what he saw; Göring so enjoyed impressing him that Smith was able to arrange four more visits over the next few years. Drawing on them, Lindbergh sent a dire warning to General Henry (Hap) Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Air Force, in 1938. “Germany is undoubtedly the most powerful nation in the world in military aviation,” he wrote, “and her margin of leadership is increasing with each month that passes.”

Continue reading “A New History of the Second World War” →

Christmas Lessons from California

victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.

 

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people.

 

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby.

 

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund.

 

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.
Continue reading “Christmas Lessons from California” →

The Internet Executioner

victorhanson
by Victor Davis Hanson
Defining Ideas

Image credit: Barbara Kelley

 

In the pre-Internet age, newspaper and television reporters would need clearance from their nosy managing editors to investigate a breaking scandal or firing. Additional journalists then would go to work uncovering facts and details. There were, to be sure, feeding frenzies and misinformation in the zeal to get a scoop or ensure an exclusive story. But the pursuit of a scandal was braked by both professional fears about the consequences of shoddy or biased reporting, and the absence of instantaneous electronic messaging and posting.

Suggestions of wrongdoing would be digested, debated, and disseminated for days or weeks within a larger cycle of warring op-ed columns and radio and television debate and commentary. In this often deliberate process, federal or local district attorneys and/or a grand jury, then, could monitor the public story, while conducting preliminary investigations to determine whether a criminal indictment was necessary. A court trial might follow.

Not now. The Internet and social media have either compressed—or pruned away entirely—such adjudication, which once ensured to the accused some presumption of innocence and constitutional due process. Well-meant and needed efforts—from calling to account sexual harassers to stopping Russian interference in U.S. politics to questioning the commemoration of Confederate-era racist slave-holders—can accelerate quickly out of control to the point where rumor, innuendo, or frenzy replace reason, fact, and fair adjudication. How ironic—or rather predictable—it is that the more rapid the transmission of a story, the more likely it is to be inaccurate or untrue. Continue reading “The Internet Executioner” →

victorhanson

From Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland

So…after one year in office, Trump’s biggest (AND ONLY!) accomplishment is that he is King of Twitter? You must be very proud. By the way, how’s that Trumpcare thing workin’ out for ya?

 Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

 Idiot. Moron. Buffoon. Simpleton. Test Tube Baby!

______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland,

You have many of the characteristics of the classic unhinged angry reader: the proverbial capital letters, the exclamation mark, the personal slurs, and the slang, but deserve credit for a new wrinkle—the onomatopoetic scream. So you score a 10 on the Angry Reader scale of inanity. Did you read the essay or simply write to slur? The defeat of ISIS, the new NSS document, a new principled realism policy promulgated by superb foreign policy appointments like Mattis and McMaster, coupled with tax reform, deregulation, record energy production, 4% fourth quarter GDP growth, record stock market levels, as well as increased consumer and business confidence, and new lows in unemployment, in some cases record low minority unemployment—all point to undeniable accomplishment (in addition to superb judicial appointments and radical drops in illegal crossings of the southern border).

A final suggestion: even slurs and smears deserver coherence; what does “test tube baby” as a finale to “idiot,” “moron,” “buffoon,” and “simpleton” actually mean?

Victor Hanson

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Mr. Hanson,

I just finished your article about Trump’s tweets and it has moved me to ask a question. I was wondering if quite possibly, you’ve lost your mind? You write as if his tweets are harmless and of no consequence when they have caused the North Korean situation to become even more alarming. Furthermore, he insults people left and right for nothing more than disagreeing with him. His actions have not only caused hatred and division in the country but have fractured the Republican party.

 Then there is the tax plan. In the past when corporations have benefited it has rarely been passed down to the working people and the division between the top earners and the average person has gotten wider over the years. Also, as a center-right, I’ve always believed that you need regulations, but the minimum necessary to do the job, not get rid of them completely. So, congratulations, you and the people that feel as you do have convinced me to do what George Will did and declare myself an independent.

 Good work,

Benjamin Hudgins

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Dear Angry Reader Benjamin Hudgins,

What column are your reading?

I think being an Independent is wise. Congratulations!

The whole point of the essay was to point out that tweeting is a powerful tool, often in Trump’s hands effective, but also volatile and now often counter-productive. Do you really believe that in 2017 knowing that the North Koreans for some time have had thermonuclear weapons and the ability to send them into the U.S., and taking all sorts of efforts to stop them, is more dangerous than from 2009-16 simply ignoring what they were doing, or, in the words of former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, believing we could live with North Korean nuclear missiles pointed at us—the official position apparently of the Obama administration? I will prefer loud deterrence any day to judicious appeasement.

Trump certainly is a divider, but he is also a follower—in this case an adherent to “get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” and “take a gun to a knife fight” us/them rhetoric of Barack “you didn’t earn that!” Obama, whose executive orders became a model for Trump as well as his commentaries on ongoing court cases. Continue reading →

Is Trump an Island?

victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

 

If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides.

No man is an island entire of itself;

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . .

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

— John Donne

The pathological hatred of Donald Trump — from impeachment votes to the emoluments-clause suits to assassination chic to talk of invoking 25th Amendment to sexual-harassment writs — would grind down almost any 71-year-old man. Trump may be ego-driven and have a proverbially thin skin, but even a rhino would finally chafe under the 24/7 media detestation of his person, his family, and his presidency.

Someday soon now, we will look back at the Russian-collusion psychodrama, the strange transference of his transition team’s emails to Robert Mueller, the Clinton role in the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier, the destruction of journalistic integrity, and the slant of the Mueller investigation team and appreciate that we were living through an effort to swing the 2016 election and, failing that, a veritable slow-motion effort to remove an elected presidency.

The ubiquitous Lisa Bloom, we learn, was attempting to arrange payments for, or at least merchandise the testimonies of, supposed Trump harassment victims in the waning days of the 2016 campaign. Both liberal and conservative surveys of the media reveal that at least 90 percent of Trump coverage has been negative. Those who once held positions now held by Trump disown them; what they used to oppose, they now embrace — the only constant being whatever Trump is against, they are for.

Fake news will not stop. The rewards among peers and the media profession for getting a whack to Trump are felt worth the costs of largely betraying the cannons of journalism. A generation ago, a Brian Ross — twice now caught trafficking in untruths — would have been through as a journalist. Today, he is merely suspended as a temporary casualty in the noble war against Trump evil. Continue reading “Is Trump an Island?” →

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Victor David Hanson, you’d sweep the table. Your post-tweet Presidency column entry tops all possible contenders in its unique blend of so-bad-its-good upending suspension of logic and unearned laudatory excess that the academy is bereft of adequate means of expression to honor its achievements.

 Perhaps its heaps and heaps of praises could be stacked in a pyre with the rest of your journalistic output in the same vein, your reputation placed on top, and the whole saccharine malodorous pile set ablaze.

That guy with your name who writes those sober and sane books and historical studies must daily be abashed at being confused for you.

 Paul Freedman

Vienna, VA

___________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader Paul Freedman,

 

Davis not David—not a good start. Whoa—slow down: your vocabulary and syntax of outrage have stampeded.

To write an effective Angry Reader letter, you must be specific and give examples, rather than start out with “you’d sweep the table” boilerplate. What then follows is mostly generic hyperbole without references or examples.

I made a simple argument: 1) Trump so far had defied expert opinion in using Twitter, sometimes crudely, for political advantage; 2) But after 10 months in office he has achievements (good economy, recalibrated foreign policy, likely tax reform, good appointments [especially judicial], soaring energy production, and deregulation; 3) Consequently, while Twitter is effective in reaching millions to convey his messages, he need not joust one-on-one with individual journalists and celebrities, but rather let his record and improving economy speak for itself and not be impaired by rhetoric distractions. Continue reading →