{"id":11124,"date":"2018-04-03T11:45:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T18:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11124"},"modified":"2018-04-03T11:45:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T18:45:05","slug":"the-new-last-refuge-of-scoundrels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-last-refuge-of-scoundrels\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Last Refuge Of Scoundrels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n<p>Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Samuel Johnson famously used that line in an attack on William Pitt for supposedly advancing his agenda under warped pretenses. During the McCarthy era and the 1960s anti-war movement against Vietnam, when leftists were called unpatriotic, they offered Johnson\u2019s line as a riposte, quoting it ad nauseam, not as a serious counter-argument but as an accusation that the conservative establishment was smearing them.<\/p>\n<p>When Harvey Weinstein was caught coercing female subordinates, assaulting actresses, and offering quid pro quo perks for quickie sex, he thought, in medieval fashion, that he could preserve his fortune and power by making politically correct offsets.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2018\/04\/political-correctness-progressive-sexual-harassment-homophobia\/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&amp;utm_campaign=96b8cecd1a-HDR&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-96b8cecd1a-73437989\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.\u201d Samuel Johnson famously used that line in an attack on William Pitt for supposedly advancing his agenda under warped pretenses. During the McCarthy era and the 1960s anti-war movement against Vietnam, when leftists were called unpatriotic, they offered Johnson\u2019s line as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1116,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2Tq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1221,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-patriotism-is-indispensable-for-democracies\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":0},"title":"Why Patriotism Is Indispensable for Democracies","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com From its beginnings in ancient Athens, democracy has been bedeviled by weaknesses that paradoxically arise from its defining genius. Political freedom was created and nurtured by replacing coercion and violence with public speech, laws, offices, and elections. Through these innovations, the citizenry now used codified\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Bruce S. Thornton&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13425,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-does-the-left-hate-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":1},"title":"Why Does the Left Hate Israel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war.\u00a0 It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-does-the-left-hate-israel\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11156,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/respect-unearned\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":2},"title":"Respect Unearned","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Washington\u2019s self-righteous establishmentarians talk of professionalism when they act unprofessionally. They refer at length to their intellectual and professional pedigrees when they prove incompetent. And they cite their morality and ethics when they possess neither. And then, adding insult to injury, when the public\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;CIA&quot;","block_context":{"text":"CIA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/cia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4820,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/loyalty-how-quaint\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":3},"title":"Loyalty, How Quaint","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 24, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"The timeless importance of an old quality by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Vol. 55, Iss. 22 Even in our postmodern age 19th-century ideas like patriotism, loyalty, and treason still cause controversy. The recent news that some Arab-American and Islamic translators and chaplains at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;November 2003&quot;","block_context":{"text":"November 2003","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2003\/november-2003\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11531,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mad-mad-meditations-of-monsieur-macron\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":4},"title":"The Mad, Mad Meditations of Monsieur Macron","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Almost everything French president Emmanuel Macron has said recently on the topic of foreign affairs, the United States, and nationalism and patriotism is silly. He implicitly rebukes Donald Trump for praising the idea of nationalism as a creed in which citizens of sovereign nations\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;France&quot;","block_context":{"text":"France","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/france\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11402,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-refuge-of-scoundrels\/","url_meta":{"origin":11124,"position":5},"title":"The New Refuge of Scoundrels","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Just when observers had concluded the desperate progressive opposition to Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court could not stoop much lower, it most certainly did. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in the news recently for somehow unknowingly employing a Chinese spy as her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Supreme Court&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Supreme Court","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/supreme-court\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11125,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11124\/revisions\/11125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}