Tag: Barack Obama

The Ripples of 9/11

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by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

After the radical Islamist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the foiled effort to ram a fourth jet into the Capitol in Washington, no one envisioned that there would follow eleven years without another major attack. Since September 11, 2001, over 45 terrorist plots have been uncovered and foiled in the United States; al Qaeda, as a terrorist threat, seems regionalized and without the ability to inflict mayhem on a similarly large scale on the Western world; bin Laden is no more; and the Arab Islamic world itself is divided and torn by the conflicting currents of theocracy, democracy, and dictatorship. Continue reading “The Ripples of 9/11” →

Everyone’s a White Male–But Me

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by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

When 40%, not 97%, Is Illiberal

One of the legacies of the Obama presidency is that “white male” as a term of embarrassment has now transcended the hothouse of the campus and gone mainstream. We are lectured by media figures, celebrities, and politicians ad nauseam that the November election is really about a new America of diverse minority groups, gays, feminists, and green pitted against a dying and shrinking number of old white guys. Sometimes that narrative requires absurd assumptions. Continue reading “Everyone’s a White Male–But Me” →

Storming Embassies, Killing Ambassadors, and ‘Smart’ Diplomacy

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by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

The attacks on the US embassy yesterday in Cairo and the storming of the American consulate in Libya, where the US ambassador was murdered along with three staff members — and the initial official American reaction to the mayhem — are all reprehensible, each in their own way. Let us sort out this terrible chain of events. Continue reading “Storming Embassies, Killing Ambassadors, and ‘Smart’ Diplomacy” →

Why Is Obama Still Likable?

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by Bruce Thornton

Frontpage Magazine

The Democrats’ convention was the public coming-out bash for the party whose political clock stopped in 1972. Every speaker and speech celebrated the musty left-wing ideology and smug arrogance of those who idolize big government because it gives them the power to tell everybody else what to do and how to live — exactly what most Americans say they don’t like and don’t want. Then why are Obama’s poll numbers still so high? Continue reading “Why Is Obama Still Likable?” →

Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise

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by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop’s classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls — only to fall back to about even as the attention fades. Continue reading “Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise” →

The Terrifying New Normal

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by Victor Davis Hanson

PJMedia

The World We Don’t Question

I’ve witnessed two of the most radical developments in my lifetime the last four years — changes far greater than those brought on by the massive new increases in the national debt, the soaring gas costs, the radical decrease in average family income, the insolvent Medicare and Social Security trajectories, or the flat housing market. Continue reading “The Terrifying New Normal” →

The New Reactionaries

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by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Starting in the 1930s and continuing after the war, the Democrats offered a liberal critique of, or perhaps enhancement to, the Republican vision of rugged individualism. A modern American state now had the capital and the moral ambition to smooth the rougher edges of capitalism by insisting on unemployment and disability insurance, a 40-hour week, overtime pay, and what we now associate with the social safety net. Such entitlements, along with a rapidly growing economy, redefined poverty — so much so that whereas in 1930 malnourishment was endemic among the poor, by 2000 obesity was far more injurious to the nation’s collective health. Continue reading “The New Reactionaries” →

The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East

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by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

The United States is backing off from the Middle East — and the Middle East from the United States. Continue reading “The Humpty-Dumpty Middle East” →

Liberal Chickens

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by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

It could not last — the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches calling for hard-core progressivism as evidence of a no-more-red-state-blue-state conciliation. And in fact the disconnect did not last, and Barack Obama finds himself dealing with assorted chickens coming home to roost. Continue reading “Liberal Chickens” →

Eating America’s Seed Corn

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by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

As gas prices climb back toward $4 a gallon, the Obama administration — facing a tough re-election campaign and rising Middle East tensions — is once again considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. For years, administrations have bought and stored oil for emergencies, in fear of a cutoff of imported oil, as happened during the Arab embargo of 1973-74. Continue reading “Eating America’s Seed Corn” →