Archive for the ‘Victor Davis Hanson’ Category
Sunday, May 3rd, 2020
Past vs. Present
Victor Davis Hanson column: Members of previous generations now seem like giants
Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forbearers’ monumental palaces that were still standing around. As illiterates, they were curious about occasional clay tablets they plowed up in their fields with incomprehensible ancient Linear B inscriptions.
We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.
Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?
Californians tried to build a high-speed rail line. But after more than a decade of government incompetence, lawsuits, cost overruns and constant bureaucratic squabbling, they have all but given up.
The result is a half-built overpass over the skyline of Fresno — and not yet a foot of track laid.
Who were those giants of the 1960s responsible for building our interstate highway system?
California’s roads now are mostly the same as we inherited them, although the state population has tripled. We have added little to our freeway network, either because we forgot how to build good roads or would prefer to spend the money on redistributive entitlements.
When California had to replace a quarter section of the earthquake-damaged San Francisco Bay Bridge, it turned into a near-disaster, with 11 years of acrimony, fighting, cost overruns — and a commentary on our decline into Dark Ages primitivism. Yet 82 years ago, our ancestors built four times the length of our single replacement span in less than four years.
It took them just two years to design the entire Bay Bridge and award the contracts.
Our generation required five years just to plan to replace a single section. In inflation-adjusted dollars, we spent six times the money on a quarter of the length of the bridge and required 13 agencies to grant approval. In 1936, just one agency oversaw the entire bridge project.
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Posted in American Exceptionalism, American History, Big Government, California, Environmental Issues, Environmental Protection Agency-, Government Regulation, Government Waste and Fraud, History, Lobbyists, Political Corruption, Regulations, Social Media, Space Exploration, Sustainability, Victor Davis Hanson, WW II | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020
Thanks to Victor Davis Hanson for reminding us of all the illegal and corrupt actions taken by Obama during his presidency. Just makes your blood boil that he got away with it all ! Would love to see him do a similar article on Hillary. He certainly would have plenty of material to work with !!! Nancy
Do not insult our collective intelligence by suggesting that Donald J. Trump abused the Constitution and the office of president in a way that would have been unthinkable to Barack Obama.
Obama was not impeached not because he did not do things that Donald Trump did, but because his opposition in the House did not do what Democrats later most willingly did: attempt a coup to remove a president without cause
By Victor Davis Hanson March 1, 2020
New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama
March 2, 2020
Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person.
Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid—even amid his worst scandals and dangerous policies. But we are now in a new age, whose protocols might have made it impossible for the Obama Administration to have finished two terms.
Remember, his administration ran some 2,000 guns to Mexican cartels in some hare-brained scheme to monitor violence spilling into the United States. Under the new customs, he should have been impeached for instructing Attorney General Eric Holder to refuse to testify to Congress about Fast and Furious, or at least for not handing over subpoenaed documents. Imagine a Trump gun-walking scheme in Mexico.
It was bad enough that Holder was the first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress, well aside from the embarrassment of his unhinged outbursts about “my people” (hint: his “my” did not mean Americans of all races and creeds). We all remember Holder’s lunatic dismissals of his own country as “a nation of cowards.” (Imagine Bill Barr referring to “my people” or calling Americans cowards)
Fine—politicians and bureaucrats misspeak. It is no surprise that radical progressives like Holder are both partisans and tribalists or that they don’t always have positive thoughts about America, past or present. But Obama won the election. So voters had ample warning from his past that he would likely put as many leftists as he wished into government. He had the legal right and political rationale to do so, without his opponents inventing crimes to remove them.
At least he did before the Trump hysteria.
Criminalizing Politics
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Posted in American History, Benghazi Terrorist Attack, Chuck Schumer, CIA, Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Congress, Constitution, Corporate Cronyism, Corruption/Crime, Deep State, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2012, Election 2016, Election 2020, Eric Holder, FBI, FBI Director, Foreign Policy, Government Regulation, Healthcare, Iran Nuclear Deal, IRS, Israel, James Comey, John Brennan, Justice Department, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Middle East, Military, Missle Defense, National Defense, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Obamacare, Osama Bin Laden, Pelosi, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Putin, Radical Left, Resistance, Russia, Russian Reset, Sanctuary Cities, Saudi Arabia, Transparency, Ukraine, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 25th, 2020
NEWLY RELEASED BOOK
AMERICAN INGRATE: ILHAN OMAR
I met up with the Federalist’s Ben Weingarten in Minneapolis this past fall when he was in the process of finishing American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party. With a foreword by Andrew McCarthy, the book is published in paperback today by Bombardier Books; it is available on Amazon at the link.
Ben sent me and a few other students of Omar a copy of the book in galley last month. At my request, Ben forwarded the blurbs his early readers offered to recommend the book. With Ben’s permission, I am posting them below in lieu of a formal review of the book this morning:
Victor Davis Hanson: “Benjamin Weingarten professionally and thoroughly dissects the strange case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and demonstrates that much about the congresswoman is an enigma at best and a fraud at worst. We do not know, and authorities are apparently not interested in, her strange marriage…her tax avoidance, her violations of campaign financing laws, and her apparent disgust with a country that she…sought out and presently finds profitable. Weingarten’s case study of Omar serves as a larger indictment of the therapeutic mindset, which Omar manipulated so well on her way to notoriety and power. Weingarten suggests that if Omar had not existed, she would have had to be invented, given that she is a metaphor for a larger American pathology of progressive virtue-signaling and, ultimately, self-loathing.” – Victor Davis Hanson, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Dennis Prager: “American Ingrate is a serious, deeply researched work that makes the compelling case Rep. Ilhan Omar is the new face of the Democratic Party, and delves deeply into her background and beliefs. It compellingly sets forth the argument that she not only personifies but leads a Progressive-Islamist alliance held together by the glue of hatred of America, of Judeo-Christian values, of Western civilization, and of Israel. Read it and weep. Or better, read it and fight back. This is a manual in that fight.” – Dennis Prager, nationally radio talk show host and columnist, co-founder of PragerU, and New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including, most recently, the first two volumes of The Rational Bible, a five-volume commentary on the Torah
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Posted in Anti Semitism, Anti-Capitalists, Big Government, Book Reviews, CAIR, Caliphate, Deep State, Democrats, Dennis Prager, Donald Trump, Election 2018, Election 2020, Foreign Policy, Globalists, Identity Politics, Intelligence, Israel, Jihad, Liberalism, Linda Sansour, Marxism, Middle East, Minority Candidates, Multiculturalism, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, Newt Gingrich, Open Borders, Palestine, Political Correctness, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Social Justice, Socialism, Totalitarian, Transparency, Victor Davis Hanson, Women Candidates | No Comments »
Friday, February 21st, 2020
REAL CLEAR POLITICS
Is Trump’s Unorthodoxy Becoming Orthodox?
By Victor Davis Hanson
February 2020
When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.
Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.
The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.
Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.
China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.
Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.
Last week, Trump nonchalantly offered the Palestinians a take-it-or-leave-it independent state on the West Bank, but without believing that a West Bank settlement was the key to peace in the entire Middle East.
Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, in particular, was met with international outrage. More global anger followed after the targeted killing of Iranian terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
In short, Trump’s Middle East recalibrations won few supporters among the bipartisan establishment.
But recently, Europeans have privately started to agree that more sanctions are needed on Iran, that the world is better off with Soleimani gone, and that the West Bank is not central to regional peace.
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Posted in Asia, Big Government, China, Coronavirus, Council of Foreign Relations, Deep State, Dept of Defense, Dictators, Donald Trump, Election 2020, Elitism, EU ( European Union), Europe, Foreign Policy, Germany, Globalists, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel, Israeli Prime Minister, Liberalism, Middle East, Military, National Defense, NATO, Netanyahu, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Palestine, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Resistance, Saudi Arabia, State Department, Terrorism, Totalitarian, Trade Agreements, U.S. Presidents, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Sunday, January 26th, 2020
Because of Germany’s delusional green policies, it now finds itself in a self made box of being dependent for its energy from totalitarian and unreliable energy sources from Russia and the Middle East. Thankfully, the United States is now energy independent because of our common sense energy policies. For many years, the oil money flowing into the Middle East has fueled terrorism around the world. How wonderful it is not to have to depend on the Middle East for our energy needs anymore . Drill baby drill !!!! Nancy
Energy Paradoxes Put Europe in a Precarious Position
By Victor Davis Hanson January 26, 2020
Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas.
Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it.
Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible.
The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern, and African sources of energy.
The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe — and for understandable reasons.
The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf.
Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet — a synonym for the U.S. Navy.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia supplies an estimated 30 percent of Europe’s oil needs. In times of crisis, Putin could exercise de facto control over the European economy.
In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.
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Posted in Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, Dictators, Energy, Environmental Issues, EU ( European Union), Europe, Foreign Policy, Fracking, Germany, Global Warming, Globalists, Government Regulation, International Affairs, Iran, Iran Nuclear Deal, Liberalism, Middle East, Military, National Defense, Nationalism, NATO, Political Correctness, Progressive Movement, Radical Islam, Radical Left, Russia, Technology, Totalitarian, UN Agenda 2030, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Saturday, December 28th, 2019
IMPRIMIS
The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.
Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.
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Posted in 2010 Census, 2020 Census, A Force for Good in the World, American Exceptionalism, American History, Big Business, Big Government, Border Security, California, Class Warfare, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Demographics, Diversity, Donald Trump, Economy, Education, Founding Fathers, Illegal Immigration, Indoctrination of students, Legal Immigration, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, Open Borders, Political Correctness, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Sanctuary Cities, Social Justice, Sovereignty, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 5th, 2019
Great America
Our Bankrupt Nomenklatura
Take all the signature brand names that the Baby Boomers inherited from prior generations—Harvard, Yale, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Oscars, the NFL, the NBA, the FBI, the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and a host of others. And then ask whether they enhanced or diminished such inheritances?
Donald Trump is now in the midst of another coup frenzy that has the Left accusing him of being crazy. But he already took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It was a simple cognitive exam and he aced it, as would most people. The Left, remember, had called in a Yale psychiatrist to testify that Trump was demented, during the lulls between the first impeachment, the serial “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the emoluments clause psychodrama and Robert Mueller’s “walls-are-closing-in,” “turning-point,” and “bombshell” investigation.
Perhaps the wrong public figures took the test.
At times, former Vice President Joe Biden is unaware of which town, indeed which state, he is in. He slurs his words often. Biden strings together unconnected thoughts that result in utter incoherence—not alleviated by his near shouting emphatics or fits of pique at reporters.
Sometimes, Biden forgets names, and referents, and appears befuddled generally. His biography is mythical. He cannot address Ukraine and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, because, after all, what would a truthful person say? That the vice president of the United States allowed his wastrel son to become a multimillionaire by leveraging his father’s office with foreign corrupt governments? And was Biden’s moral lapse atypical, or rather reflective of prior ethical laxities that destroyed his two earlier presidential bids when he variously lied about his bio, plagiarized, and used a variety of racially insensitive remarks of the sort that would have characterized most others as racists.
Shouldn’t Hillary Clinton also take the MoCa Test? At times she seems completely delusional—or is she a bit unhinged?
In one of the strangest paradoxes in American history, Clinton apparently does not accept or cannot remember that she hired Christopher Steele, a foreign national, through the use of three deceptive firewalls—the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS—in order to smear candidate Trump from bought Russian sources. She also simply will not admit that other campaign aides in 2016 were working to get dirt on Trump as well from disgruntled Ukrainians.
While fleeing from this reality, she had concocted a fantasy that Donald Trump won the Electoral College not because her hare-brained campaign team sent her southward to win a “mandate” by flipping unflippable red-states Georgia and Arizona, while neglecting a supposedly secure blue wall in the north.
Now she apparently believes an erstwhile, post-election ally, third-candidate leftist Jill Stein, was a Russian “asset” used by Moscow to draw votes from her candidacy, while current Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard likewise is in the de facto service of the Russians. Who knew that outsiders Trump, Stein, and Gabbard were all Russian moles variously working against Hillary’s interests?
And all this from Hillary Clinton, who inaugurated the 2009 disastrous Russian appeasement scheme known as “reset” by pushing a red plastic Jacuzzi button in Geneva, and who was instrumental in green-lighting North American uranium sales to Russian interests, which interests through third parties had donated to her foundation and indirectly paid Russians to interfere in the 2016 election to destroy her opponent?
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Posted in American History, Big Government, China, CIA, Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Congress, Corporate Cronyism, Corruption/Crime, Deep State, Democrats, Donald Trump, Education, Election 2016, Election 2020, Elitism, FBI, FBI Director, Globalists, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Jihad, Joe Biden, John Brennan, Justice Department, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Media, Mitt Romney, Mueller, Muslim Brotherhood, National Defense, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Open Borders, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Resistance, Russia, Russian Reset, Transparency, Tyranny, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
Friday, August 16th, 2019
A great recap (with a little humor thrown in) by Victor Davis Hanson of the Collusion Implosion. Nancy
The Dream Team Loses to the Nobodies
by Victor Davis Hanson
August 5, 2019
Posted in Administrative State, American History, Clinton, Clinton Foundation, Corruption/Crime, Deep State, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2016, FBI, FBI Director, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Media, Mueller, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Rudy Giuliani, Russia, Transparency, Victor Davis Hanson, Women Candidates | No Comments »
Saturday, June 22nd, 2019
REAL CLEAR POLITICS
WHY ARE THE WESTERN MIDDLE CLASSES SO ANGRY ?
By Victor Davis Hanson June 13, 2019
What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s election and the “yellow vests” protests in France? What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment? What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?
Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies and propagandistic journalists.
What are the popular gripes against them?
One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.
Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).
Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.
Four, the new global media reached billions and indoctrinated rather than reported.
Five, academia became politicized as a shrill agent of cultural transformation rather than focusing on education — while charging more for less learning.
Six, utopian social planning increased housing, energy and transportation costs.
One common gripe framed all these diverse issues: The wealthy had the means and influence not to be bothered by higher taxes and fees or to avoid them altogether. Not so much the middle classes, who lacked the clout of the virtue-signaling rich and the romance of the distant poor.
In other words, elites never suffered the firsthand consequences of their own ideological fiats.
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Posted in Administrative State, Big Government, Border Security, Brexit, Deep State, Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Education, Election 2020, Elitism, England, France, Free Trade, George Soros, Germany, Global Warming, Globalists, Globalization, Identity Politics, Indoctrination of students, Liberalism, Nationalism, Obama Administraiton and Policy, One World Government, Open Borders, Patriotic, Political Correctness, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Protestors, Racism, Radical Left, Resistance, Sanctuary Cities, Social Justice, Socialism, Totalitarian, Transparency, Victor Davis Hanson, Women's Issues | No Comments »
Friday, May 31st, 2019
REAL CLEAR POLITICS
Trump Has Become the Democrats’ Great White Whale
By Victor Davis Hanson May 30, 2019
One way of envisioning the Democratic obsessions with Donald Trump is as an addiction. We have seen the initial impeachment efforts; the attempt to get him under the emoluments clause, the Logan Act and the 25th Amendment; the Russian collusion hoax; the Mueller investigation; the demand for his tax returns; and the psychodramas involving Michael Avenatti, Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels. Relentless progressives have needed a new Get Trump fix about every two months.
More practically, their fixation also substitutes for a collective poverty of ideas. The Democratic Party has no plan to secure the borders other than to be against whatever Trump is for. They would not build a wall, deport illegal entrants, end sanctuary cities, fine employers or do much of anything but allow almost anyone to enter the U.S.
The homeless crisis is reaching epidemic proportions in our cities, almost all of them run by progressive mayors and city councils. None have any workable plan to clean the sidewalks of needles and human excrement. None know what do with the hundreds of thousands who have camped out in public spaces, endangering their own health and everyone around them due to drug addiction and inadequate sanitation and waste removal.
On abortion, the new Democratic position seems to be that the unborn can be aborted at any time the mother chooses, up to and including the moment of birth.
The Green New Deal has been endorsed by most of the current Democratic primary candidates, even though they privately know its utopian fantasies would shut down the U.S. economy and destroy the present prosperity fueled by record energy production, deregulation, and tax reform and reduction.
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Posted in Big Government, Deep State, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Foreign Policy, Globalists, GOP, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Media, Mueller, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Resistance, Transparency, Victor Davis Hanson | No Comments »
