by Bruce Thornton
FrontPage Magazine
The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans’ defeat, from the “woman problem” and the “Hispanic problem,” as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney’s fat cat persona and his inept campaign. But there’s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient Athens — Obama and the Democrats promised voters more free stuff. Continue reading “Explaining the Democrats’ Success”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
Barack Obama won a moderately close victory over Mitt Romney on Tuesday. But oddly, nothing much has changed. The country is still split nearly 50/50. There is still a Democratic president, and an almost identically Democratic Senate at war with an identically Republican House, in a Groundhog Day America. Continue reading “Groundhog Day in America”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
“Gonna be some hard times coming down.”
—Kris Kristofferson, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
One way of making sense out of nonsense in this new age is simply to believe the opposite of what you read. I have been doing that and it often works. Continue reading “Anatomies of Electoral Madness”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
What separated the great Athenian tragedian Sophocles from dozens of his contemporaries — now mere names attached to fragments and quotations — were his unmatched characters, an Ajax, Antigone, or Oedipus whose proverbially fatal flaws ultimately led to their own self-destruction. Continue reading “Sophocles in Benghazi”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
Note that Barack Obama is running not on his liberal record, but as a challenger against incumbent Mitt Romney who has done all sorts of terrible things like causing the 2008 meltdown and outsourcing jobs to China. In Obama’s view, given the supposedly tranquil world abroad, we must try nation building at home, and thus concentrate on bold new initiatives like stimulus, infrastructure, green jobs, and federalized healthcare — none of which have been envisioned before, much less funded. And to the extent Obama has a concrete example, he points to efforts of the private oil sector to find more gas and oil despite, rather than because of, his own efforts. Conclusion? Continue reading “Why Liberals Think What They Do”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
In 2008, Barack “No Drama” Obama was the coolest presidential candidate America had ever seen — young, hip, Ivy League, mellifluous and black, with a melodic and exotic name. Rock stars vied to perform at his massive rallies, where Obama often began his hope-and-change sermons by reminding the teary-eyed audience what to do in case of mass fainting. Continue reading “The Uncool President”
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
We have had ambassadors murdered abroad before, but we have never seen anything quite like the tragic fate of Chris Stevens. Amid all the controversy over Libya, we have lost sight of the human — and often horrific — story of Benghazi: a US ambassador attacked, cut off and killed alone, after being abused by frenzied terrorists, and a Continue reading “The Wages of Libya”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
Our Age of Disbelief
We live in an age of disbelief, in which citizens increasingly do not believe what their government says or, for that matter, what is accepted as true by popular culture. Continue reading “Do We Believe Anymore?”
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
A tourist mecca like Venice now boasts that it dreams of breaking away from an insolvent Italy. Similarly Barcelona, and perhaps the Basques and the Catalonians in general, claim they want no part of a bankrupt Spain. Scotland fantasizes about becoming separate from Great Britain. The Greek Right dreams of a 19th-century Greece without Asian and African immigrants who do not look Greek. Continue reading “Are We Becoming Medieval?”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue. Continue reading “A Bright and Shining Libyan Lie”