Pearl Harbor and the Legacy of Carl Vinson

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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” →

Nation V. Tribe

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by Victor Davis Hanson
 
Tribalism is one of history’s great destroyers. Once racial, religious, ethnic, or clan ties trump all considerations of merit and loyalty to the larger commonwealth, then factionalism leads to violence, violence to chaos, and chaos to the end of the state itself.

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” →

Cruelty and Sexual Harassment

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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” →

C-SPAN: Military Historian Victor Davis Hanson Recounts The Key Battles Of World War II

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Victor Davis Hanson joins National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry to recount the key battles of World War II. Airing Sunday, Dec 03 12:15am EST on C-SPAN2

Watch the full interview here

 

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From an Angry Reader:

So, let me get this this right; you have the freedom to express your First Amendment Rights (your opinion article), the neo-nazi can express their first amendment rights (as they did this weekend in Charlottesville), but “multimillionaire young players, mostly in their 20s” cannot. If this country still had the draft, those 20-somethings would be at war, TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS YOURSELF! What a phony you are!

Besides, you know the original protest WAS NOT ABOUT THE EMBLEM OF THE COUNTRY. What a hypocrite you are; and you call yourself an historian, not to even mention at Stanford. What a FAKE!!!! It’s your fake opinion that is diminishing, and don’t you forget it!!!! 

  1. Harris Jones, MSW

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop,” —Rumi

___________________________________________

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear L. Harris Jones, MSW

Calm down Mr/s. Jones. You confirmed the Angry Reader rule: anyone who resorts to capital letters and exclamation points in succession usually does so in absence of anything to say.

For the nth time: the players do have a First Amendment right to free expression; and their employers equally have a right, as the courts have long held, to fire them if they wish—in the manner that the airlines would fire a steward who insisted on wearing a “Make America Great” cap while on board that might offend customers, or UPS can fire drivers who wear FED-EX T-shirts to work on grounds that it is a bad business practice.

That the owners do not fire or fine the players—for now—is their own business decision that they would lose less money doing so by ignoring their own rules than enforcing them—a wager that may well change. If I were to decide to wear a logo on my T-shirt to work that offended co-workers (in the manner of Kaepernick’s police as pigs socks), and to take a knee during a meeting of my colleagues, I think I would learn that such “First Amendment” rights would collide with codes of behavior I have previously agreed to.

So like all of us, the players are employees and are subject to certain contractual codes of behavior that their employers can or cannot choose to enforce. Mr/s. Jones, do not confuse private space and the workplace: the players can choose to sit or kneel anywhere anytime they hear the National Anthem, as fans themselves or at a graduation or during a funeral. But in the workplace as paid employees they have contractually agreed to a code of conduct that they are currently violating. Why not, then, have the players go on strike to demand that standing for the National Anthem not be a part of their contracted behavior?

Your use of “If” can apply to anything; but if you find the characterization of NFL players as multimillionaires in their twenties somehow mistaken please explain how. Are they instead mostly in their thirties and making less than $100,000 per annum? Is it the reality or my identification of the reality that upsets you so?

I am confused about your statement that I “know” that “the origin of the protest was not about the emblem of the country”?

In fact, I did not know that and still do not know what the subsequent protests were about. Police shootings that supposedly statistically fall disportionately on unarmed black youth in relation to their encounters with law enforcement? Is that accurate?

Ferguson? That Eric Holder’s Justice Department really did not find that the shooting of Michael Brown was not an example of inordinate or illegal police force, and that “hands up, don’t shoot” had no basis in fact?

Twenty-million a year, Colin Kaepernick, of mixed ancestry and raised in a middle-class white household and facing a career downturn, previously cited by the NFL after referee and player allegations for using the N-word, and now dating a hard-left DJ, suddenly reinvents himself and decides that his country is unfair and racist and thus not deserving of respect? Was that the origin of kneeling we are supposed to take seriously?

Or is the anger that the meritocratic NFL is not racially diverse enough, or does not proportionally reflect the ethnic and racial and gender diversity of the nation and thus should be subject to disproportionate impact rulings?

So like millions of NFL fans, I am not sure what the particular existential gripe is that drives the protest. Has it now become Donald Trump’s unnecessary and crude use of the SOB slur? That regrettable transgression was analogous to Barack Obama’s more vulgar and widespread characterization of the entire Tea Party movement of tens of millions as “tea-baggers”—a homophobic slur suggesting a type of male-on-male sex act that was equally not befitting the office of the president but apparently drew no protests in response.

I’m not sure what your psycho-dramatic imperative “and don’t you forget it” with no less than four exclamation marks is supposed to mean: that I am not to forget that L. Harris Jones, MSW has announced me unfit to be at Stanford or to be a historian and therefore that indictment is to be seared in my memory—or worse?

In the end, Mr/s. Harris, I think you will agree that like most entertainment in America, the market adjudicates the NFL.

If 10-30% of the fans stop watching or attending games, the resulting drop in revenue will demand changes in NFL teams’ budgets and will shortly affect player contracts.

At that point, you will see the kneeling during the National Anthem stop and all talk such as yours of the First Amendment will cease, as the players tacitly agree that their employers have a Constitutional right to enforce their own published codes of behavior and that such enforcement is in their own financial interest.

If NFL patronage, however, is not affected by the continual kneeling during the Anthem, then it will continue—along with self-righteous talk of the First Amendment, the shifting rationales for the protests, and the loud support on ESPN and other progressive venues.

  1. Davis Hanson, PhD

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” —John Donne

Who Watches the Watchmen?

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by Victor Davis Hanson

Originally published in the National Review. Read the original article here. 

History shows that special counsels almost inevitably overstep their mandates.

Former FBI director Robert Mueller was supposed to run a narrow investigation into accusations of collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government. But so far, Mueller’s work has been plagued by almost daily improper leaks (e.g., “sources report,” “it emerged,” “some say”) about investigations that seem to have little to do with his original mandate.

Now, there are leaks claiming that Mueller is going after former national-security adviser Michael Flynn for his business practices before he entered the Trump administration. Specifically, Mueller is reportedly investigating Flynn’s security assessment and intelligence work for the Turkish government and other Turkish interests. Yet possible unethical lobbying on behalf of a NATO ally was not the reason Mueller was appointed.

The Roman satirist Juvenal famously once asked how one could guard against marital infidelity when the moral guardians were themselves immoral. His famous quip, translated roughly as “Who will police the police?” is applicable to all supposedly saintly investigators. Continue reading “Who Watches the Watchmen?” →

Trump’s Fate

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by Victor Davis Hanson

Originally published at the National Review. Read the original article here. 

Plenty of people in ‘flyover’ country like not only Trump’s message — and actions — but also Trump, the loudmouth messenger.

The political verdict seems out on Trump’s current political future.

His supporters have won four special congressional elections. Yet, more recently, Republicans lost more local and state offices. Pundits argue about the degree to which these surrogate campaigns are referenda on Trump’s future.

Trump still polls between 39 percent and 42 percent approval, occasionally higher in supposed outlier surveys. Yet most concede that such polls did not in the past, and do not in the present, fully account for the “Trump Embarrassment Factor.” That is the strange phenomenon of a sizable minority of Trump voters — including Democrats and independents — proving reluctant to express support even to anonymous pollsters. Ask independent or moderate Republican voters whether they really voted for Trump: If they hesitate for more than three seconds before they answer, they probably did.

Registering dissatisfaction with Trump, the person, is also not the same as stating a preference for Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris in a two-way presidential poll. Trump may be off the ballot in 2018, but in 2020 he will be opposed one-on-one by a real, progressive candidate.

Trump’s fate in the 2018 midterms — aside from the fact that first-term presidents always seem to lose congressional seats after about two years of exposure — and his reelection in 2020 supposedly hinge on whether Trump’s popular message trumps the unpopular messenger (more on that below).

If the economy grows at over 3 percent or even more from the last quarter of 2017 to November 2018, if unemployment dips below 4 percent, if the stock market holds at its record levels, if business, consumer, and corporate confidence keeps soaring, if illegal immigration continues to plummet, if construction and manufacturing stay on the upswing, if Trump’s national-security team brings a new deterrence to foreign policy without a war with North Korea or Iran, and if energy production reaches ever-record levels, then voters will put up with a lot of Trump’s downsides. Continue reading “Trump’s Fate” →

Uncommon Knowledge Part I: The Second World Wars with Victor Davis Hanson

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How were the Axis powers able to instigate the most lethal conflict in human history? Find out in part one of this episode as Victor Davis Hanson, joins Peter Robinson on Uncommon Knowledge to discuss his latest book, The Second World Wars.

Victor Davis Hanson explains how World War II initially began in 1939 as a multitude of isolated border blitzkriegs that Germany continued to win. In 1941, everything changed when Germany invaded their ally, the Soviet Union, and brought Japan into the war. He argues that because of the disparate nature of World War II, it’s much harder to think about as a monolithic conflict.

World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history with approximately sixty million people killed. Victor Davis Hanson argues that World War II and the many lives lost was preventable, but due to a series of missteps by the Allied forces, Germany believed they were stronger and their enemies weaker than the reality. He argues “it took Soviet collusion, American indifference or isolation, and British or French appeasement in the 30s” to convince Germany that they had the military capabilities to invade western Europe. In the aftermath of World War I, the allies believed the cost of the Great War had been too high, while Germany bragged about their defeat as no enemy soldiers had set foot on German soil.  Great Britain and France both chose appeasement over deterrence, which encouraged rather than discouraged Hitler and Germany from moving forward with their plans.

This video was originally published by the Hoover Institution. Click here to learn more about this episode.

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11/27/2017

From an Angry Reader:

 

Rarely have I read such infuriating nonsense as intellectual outlier Victor Davis Hanson spouts in his thoroughly delusional commentary about Trump. I know he’s been a blind Trumpeter since the con artist’s campaign began, and he remains steadfast in defending the indefensible. His pack of fraudulent claims, gross exaggerations, evasions and bizarre compliments should make us wonder what kind of mind is needed to get into a “think tank” these days. A mind with the ability to think clearly, marshal cogent arguments and use critical faculties would be excluded, I take it.

 

Even the part about Trump having superior “bare-knuckle” skills is laughable both in fact and in analogy. I guess what he means is the narcissistic blowhard and rank vulgarian has become adept over the years at using crude forms of bullying, belligerence, intimidation and insults in an attempt to cow the opponent. We see how much good those professed negotiating skills have been for him. No significant legislative accomplishments in his first year, despite him bragging that he’d do many big things quickly and all by himself.

 

What he has supported in the way of legislation was almost entirely devoid of the content he promised—healthcare that would cover everyone for less and be “easy” to accomplish–and he clearly didn’t know a thing about the bills a Republican congress fashioned to fulfill Trump’s exaggerated boasts. The man is an ignorant, incompetent, reckless and deranged demagogue, but Hanson remains a rube on the bandwagon sucking dry turnips. Such is the blissful state of “winners”.

 

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader TR Jahns,

 

On a scale of angry reader absurdities, yours ranks a 9 out of 10. The key to criticism is the avoidance of emotional jargon (nonsense, laughable, gross, delusional, etc.) that always appears in lieu of an argument. And imagery and metaphors must be consistent, not incoherent and mixed: what exactly does a “rube on a bandwagon sucking dry turnips” mean exactly?

 

Nonetheless here goes the refutation of your meltdown. Continue reading →