by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
Why do once-successful societies ossify and decline?
Hundreds of reasons have been adduced for the fall of Rome and the end of the Old Regime in 18th-century France. Continue reading “Why Do Societies Give Up?”
by Victor Davis Hanson
PJ Media
A rule of the modern age: all confident, reelected presidents trip up in the second term. LBJ was sunk by Vietnam. Reagan faced Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton had his comeuppance with Monica. George W. Bush was overwhelmed with the Iraqi insurgency and Katrina. And Obama will have his as well, obsequious media or not.
Continue reading “Second Term Reckonings”
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
George W. Bush left office in January 2009 with one of the lowest job-approval ratings for a president (34 percent) since Gallup started compiling them — as compared to Harry Truman’s low of 32 percent, Richard Nixon’s of 24 percent, and Jimmy Carter’s of 34 percent — and to the general derision of the media.
Continue reading “Bush Reconsidered”
by Bruce Thornton
Frontpage Magazine
The on-going negotiations over avoiding the tax hikes and spending cuts we call the “fiscal cliff” are simply the latest act in a farce of self-serving political denial. For decades now both parties have overseen and nurtured the expansion of the entitlement state all the while ignoring the slow-motion economic implosion whose predictable end can be seen today in a bankrupt Greece currently surviving on EU handouts. Continue reading “A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back. Continue reading “The Kingdom of Fairness”
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
Tribune Media Services
Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama’s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama lost? Continue reading “The Game Changes”
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
The theme of the president’s 2012 re-election campaign is that George W. Bush left such a terrible mess that Barack Obama could hardly be expected to clean it up in four years. Continue reading “Let Bush Be”
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”
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”