The Year That Changed History

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by Victor Davis Hanson
Defining Ideas

Sometimes, just a few months can change the course of civilization. That’s what happened in 1942 when a series of decisive events changed the trajectory of World War II.

Before that turning point, Germany seemed destined for victory. In 1939 and 1940, Hitler’s army had won a series of border wars, giving the Fuhrer control over ten conquered European countries. By the autumn of 1940, Britain was the sole European power standing against Hitler—and it was being mercilessly bombed by the Luftwaffe. At the same time, Russia was colluding with Germany, and America remained isolationist. Hitler and his allies, who reigned over an area larger than the present European Union, believed that the European wars were over, for all purposes—and decisively won.

But suddenly in 1941, Hitler’s calm march to victory ended and the global inferno of what we now call World War II began. The surprise German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941), the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Singapore (December 7-8, 1941), and the declaration of war by Germany and Italy on the United States (December 11, 1941) precipitated a level of violence and destruction never before seen in world history. Because of the global expansion of the dormant European border wars, the conflict became the deadliest event in human history, with about 27,000 soldiers and civilians lost each day of the six-year conflict, leading to a total of 60 million deaths.

Until late 1942, the three Axis powers believed that they could quickly win their war against the new global alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States—despite being vastly outmatched in both population and industrial capacity. But the Axis seemed invincible. The new Third Reich extended from the English Channel to the Volga River and from the Arctic Circle to the North African desert. The war had been afoot since the mid-1930s and the Nazis were among the most battle-hardened soldiers in the world. Japan has expanded its even larger so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from the Indian Ocean to Alaska and from the Mongolian border to Wake Island. The Japanese had been at war in China even longer than Germany had in Europe. Continue reading “The Year That Changed History” →

California, the Rhetoric of Illegal Immigration, and the Perils of Ignoring Thucydides’s Warning

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By Victor Davis Hanson // Eureka

Vocabulary changes always reflect the agendas of a political debate.

The fight over illegal immigration plays out by altering words and their meanings. Take the traditional rubric “illegal alien.” The English has been clear and exact for nearly a century: illegal alien (cf. Latin alienus) was a descriptive term for any foreigner who crossed the US border without coming through customs to obtain proper legal sanction.

Illegal alien, then, was a politically neutral, exact, and descriptive term: one used by both the Supreme Court and Internal Revenue Service.

But open-borders advocates did not like the adjective and noun because they accurately emphasized both illegality and the foreignness of those arriving into the United States from another country.

What followed was a slow Orwellian devolution. Illegal alien initially was reinvented as “undocumented alien,” as if the violation became one of simply forgetting (rather than never having) one’s supposed legal documents at home. But the noun “alien” still implied arrivals were somehow separate from US citizens by virtue of their illegal resident status. So next the noun changed to immigrant, as if undocumented immigrant gave the impression that forgetful visitors had just strayed innocently across the border.

But why need a discriminating adjective at all?

So a mere immigrant has sometimes replaced an undocumented immigrant, as if there were now no real difference between coming into the United States legally or illegally. Being against illegal immigration was now seen as being against lawful immigration itself.

Finally, why prejudice the immigrant by suggesting that he or she came from another place into the United States–as if this individual were some sort of intruder who thought America was somehow preferable to Yucatan or Guatemala?

As a result, migrant is now used without any -in or -ex prefix denoting direction: 11–15 million illegal immigrants were perhaps just migrants who often came and went in both nonjudgmental directions in the manner of other travelers.

The deliberate inference is that the impediments of laws, borders, and walls were unnatural and illegal, not the travelers themselves who passed to and fro between. The fault then belongs to the host, who wrongly felt that his home was his own and guests subject to his invitation. Continue reading “California, the Rhetoric of Illegal Immigration, and the Perils of Ignoring Thucydides’s Warning” →

Don’t Forget Middle East Madness

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

Thanks to the Iran deal, the mullahs can buy nearly all the weapons they need.

 

There is currently a real Asian pivot as the president completes one of the longest presidential tours of Asia in memory. Three carrier battle groups are in the West Pacific.

 

America at home is in one of its periodic frenzies — did Ben Affleck grab the behinds of actresses, and is Kevin Spacey a pedophile or a pederast, or both? — as it snores through existential crises such as $20 trillion in debt, or the sale to the Russians of 20 percent of its quite limited domestic uranium reserves.

 

In contrast, Americans lately have gladly almost forgotten about the Middle East, except for occasional updates on the systematic destruction of the once “jayvee” ISIS.

 

They are certainly relieved that Fallujah is no longer in the news much. It is a relief that no one catches any more Al Jazeera clips of ISIS cowards burning, drowning, decapitating, blowing up, and hanging women and children. More likely, ISIS jihadists are bedraggled, soiled, and drifting about asking for clemency from their betters.

 

There is no more official American talking head assuring us that the jihad is a personal journey, that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular, that the red line took care of all of Assad’s WMD, that terrorism is mostly a right-wing, returning-American-vet thing, that man-caused disasters and workplace violence are scarier than a young mass murderer from the Middle East screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he runs down, shoots, or stabs unarmed Westerners. Continue reading “Don’t Forget Middle East Madness” →

Whatever doesn’t kill Trump only makes him stronger

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Los Angeles Times

Victor Davis Hanson
 
Former FBI Director James B. Comey attends a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in Washington on June 8. (Brendan Smialowsk / AFP/Getty Images)Former FBI Director James B. Comey attends a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in Washington on June 8. (Brendan Smialowsk / AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump presides as he campaigned. He is proving a Nietzschean figure in the sense that “what does not kill him makes him stronger.”

Each time the media, Republican enemies and the Democratic opposition seem to have Trump on the ropes, the president emerges far less wounded than his critics. The list of felled detractors includes: the National Football League, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Kathy Griffin and John Podesta.

Former FBI Director and Trump critic James B. Comey has imploded his career. In “Alice in Wonderland” fashion, the president’s sloppy tweet about having his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower “by Obama” eventually may prove true in the sense that Obama administration officials swept up Trump and others on the pretext of investigating purported collusion.

Hillary Clinton, who a year later insists that Russian collusion helped lose her the election, is now, in Greek tragic fashion, vulnerable to similar charges. (See the “Uranium One” scandal.)

In late 2016, news celebrities informed the American people that the so-called Steele/Fusion GPS dossier was fatal to Trump. In fact, its unproven smears are beginning to boomerang on those who in highly partisan fashion once insisted that they were accurate.

Each time the media, Republican enemies and the Democratic opposition seem to have Trump on the ropes, the president emerges far less wounded than his critics.

Continue reading “Whatever doesn’t kill Trump only makes him stronger” →

Who Gets to Have Nuclear Weapons — and Why?

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By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

The rules used to be controlled by two big powers, but not anymore.

 

Given North Korea’s nuclear lunacy, what exactly are the rules, formal or implicit, about which nations may have nuclear weapons and which may not?

 

It is complicated.

 

In the free-for-all environment of the 1940s and 1950s, the original nuclear club included only those countries with the technological know-how, size, and money to build nukes. Those realities meant that up until the early 1960s, only Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States had nuclear capabilities.

 

Members of this small club did not worry that many other nations would make such weapons, because it seemed far too expensive and difficult for most.

 

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States adhered to an unspoken rule that their losing Axis enemies of World War II — Germany, Italy, and Japan — should not have nuclear weapons. Despite their financial and scientific ability to obtain them, all three former Axis powers had too much recent historical baggage to be allowed weapons of mass destruction. That tacit agreement apparently still remains. Continue reading “Who Gets to Have Nuclear Weapons — and Why?” →

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11/06/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Professor Davis,

 

In your recent article “The Method to Trump’s Madness”, you claim Trump’s insults are retaliation to those who have said things against him. Even if that is (partially) true, that does not justify Trump’s immaturity and cruelty.

 

In many instances, Trump’s name-calling was unprovoked. During the early primaries, Ted Cruz was going out of his way to be nice to Trump. Despite this, Trump called Cruz a liar (without indicating what his lies were), cast Heidi Cruz as unattractive (by showing a photo where she had an angry expression) and claimed Cruz’s father was complicit in the JFK assassination (!).

 

Further, Trump insulted Carly Fiorina’s looks, Marco Rubin’s stature, Jeb Bush’s perceived lack of energy, the list goes on. And I haven’t yet mentioned Trumps mocking the disabled reporter.

 

Even if these people disagreed with Trump on an issue or criticized his (abysmal) behavior, poking fun at others physical features is never justified.

 

I was shocked at your attempt to justify this unacceptable juvenile behavior on the part of a now president.

 

I much preferred your writing during the primaries when you saw Trump for the swamp creature he was (and continues to be) and urged your readers not to vote for him in the primaries.

 

I realize that in the general election there was no choice. Despite major misgivings I voted for Trump over Hillary and am glad that he and not she is president. However to defend behavior that is indefensible is far beneath you.

 

Sincerely,

 

Arlene Ross

New York, NY

 

___________________________________________

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Arlene Ross,

 

The title of my essay was “the method to” not “approval of” Trump’s Madness. It sought to explain why Trump’s madness so far has worked; it did not condone it as ethically admirable. In other words, I reviewed the logic of his outbursts and tweets and why so far that they have not eroded his base of support. Try to read more carefully so as not to confuse efficacy and utility with morality.

 

You write that you were “shocked” that I tried to “justify” Trump’s behavior? But after listing all of his sins in the primary, you yourself voted for him in the general election? Do you seek medieval exemption by confession and penance to justify your help in seeing someone so crude elected?

 

More likely, I fear you again were confused in reading why Trump has not turned off 40% of the electorate by his tweets and jibes—and unfortunately conflated my analysis of his effectiveness with a desire on your part for me to damn it as unethical or improper—perhaps a topic for another column. Again, I wrote about utility, not morality.

 

In sum, Arlene, your own statements are illogical: you praise me for suggesting that we shouldn’t have voted for Trump as long as we had viable alternatives to Hillary Clinton, but then fault me for urging conservatives to vote in the general election for Trump when we had no other alternative to the Obama-Clinton 16-year regnum—and then confess that you did exactly the same thing as did I! Furthermore, you, like I, so far are still glad that he is president and not Clinton.

 

So I suppose your position by default is: “I finally voted for Trump but I didn’t enjoy doing so given his comportment”—which was the very topic of my column: why did voters like Arlene support (and perhaps still do [you use the present tense “I am glad”]?) Trump despite his often outrageous behavior.

 

A more interesting philosophical question is why someone so outwardly outrageous is pushing through a far more conservative and needed agenda than prior Republican presidents, who were more sober and judicious. And why did Trump at least profess to care about workers, miners, vets, farmers, and the unemployed in a manner his better informed and experienced rivals did not? That is a tricky moral question that no one has yet answered (other than scream “demagogue!”). Trump did not write off half the electorate as deplorables nor did he, as Romney, a far more ethical man, write off 47% of Americans as dependents. Nor did he as John McCain write off Trump voters as “crazies.” There was a callousness and insensitivity to voters in other candidates that the otherwise insensitive Trump at least did not display about voters.

 

Sincerely,

 

Professor Davis (Hanson)

Interviews With VDH On His New Book, The Second World Wars

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Check out the latest interviews with Victor Davis Hanson on his new book, The Second World Wars.

Listen to The Classicist: Part I The Second World Wars

 

Listen to The Classicist: Part II Behind the Book: The Second World Wars

 

Listen to Victor Davis Hanson speak about this book on the podcast, Public Morality, with the host Byron Williams.

 

Listen to Victor Davis Hanson discuss his new book, The Second World Wars, on the podcast, Dangerous Thinkers, with the host Teri O’Brien.

http://teriobrien.com/military-historianauthor-victor-davis-hanson-show-notes-dangerous-thinkers-009/

 

 

NATO For the 21st Century: Ensuring Liberal Democracy In Europe

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NATO was originally founded after World War II to ensure that liberal democracy survived in Europe. While the fall of the Soviet Union may have led many to question whether NATO was still necessary, its mission remains vital and relevant. NATO should resist the temptation to expand its geographic focus.

For more information related to NATO and this video, please visit the Policyed website.

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Steele dossier farce shows why Trump relies on Twitter

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The Hill

By Paul R. Gregory, opinion contributor — 10/27/17

The media refrain on the Trump dossier has been that “considerable amounts of it have been proven.” No one had explained exactly what has been proven, however, until The Washington Post decided to answer the question itself.

Per the Post, the Trump dossier must be evaluated as a guide to the overarching claim that Russian government officials allied with Trump employees and campaign aides to help his election.

Yes, the Post is still interested in the Russian collusion story: that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee financed the dossier does not mean that its claims are automatically false.

As someone who follows Russia closely, my own first reaction to the Christopher Steele dossier back in January was incredulity. How could anyone take this combination of gossip and trash talk seriously?

The dossier claims to provide a breath-taking peek into the highest echelons of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. Dossier informants are presented as having first-hand knowledge of the most significant events within the highest levels of the Kremlin:

To read more: http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/357498-steele-dossier-farce-shows-why-trump-relies-on-twitter