|
|
New Commentary
|
May 12, 2008
Presidential Pariah
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
|
Advertisement
|
 A rare collection of al Qaeda writings.
Islam according to Islamists.
Many never before translated into English.
|
We are in one of the longest presidential campaigns in modern memory — and haven't even started focusing on the general election.
It's been enough to drive most of us mad, but if there's one person in particular suffering the most, it may be President Bush.
More "Presidential Pariah"
|
May 9, 2008
More Blaming the Messenger
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
|
Advertisement
|
 |
Andrew Sullivan has devolved into one of those fringe, and by now hysterical, voices that almost no one on their own initiative quotes or refers to for enlightenment — but ends up on occasion replying to, since his stock and trade methods of gaining exposure are reduced to constant venom and unfounded falsities. I’ve corrected him twice in the past on his accusations (once in front of a Columbia audience he dishonestly claimed that I was on record supporting torture). And his latest is more of the same.
More "More Blaming the Messenger"
|
May 8, 2008
How Oil Lubricates Our Enemies
by Victor Davis Hanson
The American Enterprise
|
Advertisement
|
Bruce Thornton's Decline and Fall is a sobering analysis of a doomed EUtopia.
|
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism was discredited as an unworkable — and often murderous — alternative to consumer capitalism. Eastern Europe was freed and began to prosper in a manner unimaginable just a decade earlier. China and India jettisoned statism, and found prosperity by emulating Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. South America was democratizing and began to liberalize its economies (with mixed success).
More "How Oil Lubricated Our Enemies"
|
May 6, 2008
The New Learning That Failed
by Victor Davis Hanson
The New Criterion
Ten years ago John Heath and I wrote a lament for the decline of classical learning in the university — Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. We sounded three simple themes. First, that the study of Western civilization and the appreciation of its literature, art, values, and ideas hinge on acknowledging the singular contributions of the classical Greeks and Romans.
|
May 5, 2008
The Half-Won, Half-Lost War
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
The gloomy election-year refrain is that America is mired in Iraq, took its eye off Afghanistan, empowered Iran and is losing the war on terror. But how accurate is that pessimistic diagnosis?
First, the good news. For all the talk of a recent Tet-like offensive in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suffered an ignominious setback when his gunmen were routed from their enclaves.
More "The Half-Won, Half-Lost War"
|
May 3, 2008
Darwin & Co., Ltd.
Just how limited?
by
Terry Scambray
Private Papers
A review of Michael Behe's The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. (The Free Press, 2007) which appeared in the Fall 2007 edition of Faith & Reason.
“Buy low and sell high,” is the proverbial path to wealth. But have you ever thought of an opposite pathway? “Buy high; sell low — Make it up on volume!”
In the short run, of course, losses may appear to be gains as the cash rolls into your account as you sell off shares of that once high flying tech stock. But after awhile the appearance of gain is reversed when you run out of stock to peddle.
|
May 1, 2008
No Country for Old Liberals
by
Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
According to liberals, they are tolerant, open-minded, sensitive to complexity and nuance, and wary of simplistic explanations. So why is a column by the liberal Michael Hirsh, in the liberal newsweekly Newsweek, so intolerant, close-minded, simplistic and bigoted?
More "No Country for Old Liberals"
|
April 29, 2008
Orwellian Times
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
The Scary Legacy of the 2008 Democratic Primary
One of the strangest things about the NAACP Wright pseudo-scientific speech on learning, and its enthusiastic CNN coverage and analysis, was the abject racialism of Wright. It was sort of an inverse Bell-Curve presentation, based on assumed DNA differences.
|
April 28, 2008
A New Environmentalism
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
Tuesday was Earth Day, and it reminded us how environmentalism has helped to preserve the natural habitat of the United States — reducing the manmade pollution of our soils, air and water that is a byproduct of comfortable modern industrial life.
|
April 26, 2008
The Will to Reason
Can we expect rational man from tribal society?
by Bruce Thornton
The New Individualist
A review of Lee Harris, The Suicide of Reason. Radical Islam’s Threat to the West (New York: Basic Books, 2007)
Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
|
April 25, 2008
Jihad Studies as Trivia
by Raymond Ibrahim
Private Papers
This article was first published in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.
A new article by Thomas Hegghammer in the Times Literary Supplement, entitled “Jihadi studies: the obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better,” lives up to its title — not so much by delineating what these obstacles are, but rather by being representative of them. Regrettably, the author evokes the same old mantras prevalent in modern academia’s study of jihad and jihadists.
|
April 24, 2008
The Second Coming of McGovern
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO The Corner
Hillary won just enough to show that it is ludicrous to oust a 10-point winner at this late junction, but not quite the blow-out that might cause a stampede to her in the next few states.
|
April 22, 2008
That Old Isolationist Tug
by Victor Davis Hanson
The America (March Issue)
Americans are growing world-weary. But they may regret isolationism and protectionism tomorrow.
|
April 21, 2008
Casualties of the Campaign
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
It is only four months into 2008, but the presidential campaign — already too long and nasty — is still a long way from over. And the casualties are mounting.
|
April 19, 2008
The Portrait
The long campaign season slowly paints true character.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers
The following article appeared in several entries of NRO’s The Corner
What Went Wrong?
What happened to the Obama and Clinton we watched all last summer?
|
April 17, 2008
Leaving the New Episcopal Church
by Craig Bernthal
Private Papers
Most Christians in America probably don’t know much about what is happening in the Episcopal Church (TEC).
|
April 15, 2008
Islam’s Public Enemy #1
Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire.
by Raymond Ibrahim
National Review Online
Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world.
|
April 14, 2008
Where Have All the Liberals Gone?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
These days Democrats are not sounding very liberal. Classic liberals, after all, would support free markets, internationalism and the universal desire for constitutional government, while downplaying racial affinity.
|
April 13, 2008
Why Orwell Matters
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
Here is what Sen. Obama said:
|
April 11, 2008
Back to the Good Ole Days Before Dubya?
How Obama will restore America's standing in the world.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
We know the critique of present American foreign policy under George W. Bush ...
|
April 7, 2008
The Year That Wasn’t
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
2008 was supposed to have been an ideal year for the Democratic Party.
|
April 4, 2008
Nothing Succeeds Like Success
by Victor Davis Hanson
Commentary (April 2008)
Americans have regularly changed their minds in the midst of their ongoing wars — and not just once, but often.
|
April 3, 2008
Treat Breast Cancer?
Not in My Backyard.
by Linda Halderman, M.D., FACS
Private Papers
In November 2007, the Canadian NRU nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario shut down for five days of routine maintenance.
|
April 2, 2008
Real Talk?
The Saudi king ought to stop killing non-Muslims first.
by Raymond Ibrahim
National Review Online
According to the Associated Press, Saudi King Abdullah, in an unprecedented move last week, “made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews” — going so far as to refer to the latter two as “our brothers.” The Jerusalem Post states that such talks would be geared to developing “respect among religions.”
|
April 1, 2008
Spitzer’s Comic Fall
To understand the disgraced governor, brush up your Aristophanes.
by Bruce S. Thornton
City Journal
Commentators are already calling the rise and fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer “tragic.”
|
March 31, 2008
A Speech Sen. Obama Could Have Given
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
Had Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., just said the following words last week in his speech on race in America, his problems with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, would probably now be over:
|
March 30, 2008
Campaign Season 10
Liberal identity politics snares Democrats.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers
These excerpts are taken from this week’s entries on NRO’s The Corner.
Confused
Not to beat a dead horse, but one of the unanswered questions of this campaign still baffles:
|
March 28, 2008
Ten Things a Candidate Might Promise
What we want to hear.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajama’s Media
1. Surplus! Talk of the notion of surplus, rather than mere budget-balancing. Deficits, and national and foreign debt, are matters of more than statistics.
|
March 27, 2008
Radical Thoughts
Dr. Tawfik Hamid reveals life as an Islamicist.
by Raymond R. Ibrahim
Private Papers
This review of Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam by Dr. Tawfik Hamid (Top Executive Media, 2006) was originally published at ASMEA as “An Insider’s Thoughts on Radical Islam.”
Several singular reasons make Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam by Dr. Tawfik Hamid a welcome contribution to the otherwise growing lore on radical Islam.
|
March 25, 2008
The Obama Crash and Burn
If he acts as if the Wright controversy is behind him, it's over for Obama.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The latest polls reflecting Obama’s near-collapse should serve as a morality tale of John Edwards’s two Americas — the political obtuseness of the intellectual elite juxtaposed to the common sense of the working classes.
|
March 24, 2008
Hope and Change Amid Despair
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services
"I think the magic is over." That's what French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner recently said about the United States' global reputation.
|
March 21, 2008
The Old Script
Does Obama really think he settles racism with relativism?
by Bruce Thornton
Private Papers
Barack Obama’s attempt to defuse the crisis in his presidential campaign caused by videos of his “spiritual mentor’s” bigoted sermons has been spun as “the most significant public discussion of race in decades,” as The New York Times gushed.
|
March 20, 2008
The Speech
Did Obama give us a dream or a nightmare?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers
These exerts were taken from previous postings on NRO’s The Corner.
Obama the Magician
I think the speech has wowed Obama’s base, yet after its mesmerizing delivery wears off, it will perhaps raise more questions with most others.
|
March 19, 2008
An Elegant Farce
Obama’s ‘conversation’ about moral equivalence.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Barack Obama’s Tuesday sermon was a well-crafted, well-delivered, postmodern review of race that had little to do with the poor judgment revealed in Obama’s relationship with the hateful Rev. Wright, much less the damage that he does both to African Americans and to the country in general.
|
|
Books & Things
|
February 21, 2008
The Alchemist
Brother Tariq can’t turn his Muslim to Western.
by Bruce S. Thornton
Private Papers
A review of Brother Tariq. The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, by Caroline Fourest, trans. by Joana Wieder and John Atherton (Encounter Books, 2008)
The moderate Muslim leader is the theologico-political philosopher’s stone that many in the West believe can reconcile Islam with modernity and thus transmute disaffected Muslims, ripe for jihadist recruitment, into tolerant liberal democrats.
|
January 29, 2008
Twilight of the Nation-State
European transnationalism is a utopian dream, Pierre Manent warns.
Bruce S. Thornton
City Journal
A review of Democracy Without Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in Europe by Pierre Manent, translated by Paul Seaton (Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 130 pp.)
The European Union’s grand project rests on the belief that nationalism is passé, indeed pernicious.
|
|
Pajama's Media Blog
|
August 25, 2007
Answering Back...
Every once in a while, one must attend to business and reply to published critics. So here goes....
August 21, 2007
The Old Wisdom
Bush, Bush everywhere…
This summer — in between weekly encounters on radio and in print exchanges with those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome — I tried to get away, by climbing as many peaks in the Kaiser Wilderness as possible, and marveled over the relative emptiness of that part of the central Sierra.
August 12, 2007
Our Silly Modern World
Why Study Dead Greeks?
Someone just asked me that at a reception the other night, wondering why anyone would prefer to write a book on the Peloponnesian War rather than something more modern and readable.
August 6, 2007
High Noon for General Will Kane
In the classic Western High Noon, desperate Marshall Will Kane, played by Gary Cooper, tries to rally the fickle townspeople, his deputies — and his own wife. They have to stand up to...
|
|
Angry Reader
Editor's Note: In this section we entertain letters from the critics. Some readers are angry, some are not so angry, and others merely frustrated. |
February 19, 2007
VDH replies to this letter in bold letters after each paragraph or more.
Dr. Hanson,
Let me please start by saying that while I certainly respect you, I disagree with you on many issues. I am a fiscally conservative libertarian who absolutely despises the Bush administration, and the damage they have done to this country. I know you disagree with that stance, but it is an earned stance, in my humble opinion. I actually voted for Bush in 2000, but hated my decision soon after No Child Left Behind was passed, and it only got worse with the nonsensical invasion of Iraq. But none of this is the point of this email.
You posted on NRO that Democrats leading the country would lead to "unilateral surrender." Do you actually believe that Obama would just throw up a white flag and let radical Muslims take the U.S. over? That he would just walk away from Iraq without first taking full stock of the situation? These are all just ridiculous GOP propaganda talking points. Obama and Clinton are still Americans, and love this country as much as you and I. Just because their politics differ from yours (and mine, for that matter) doesn't mean that they are traitors and "want America to lose," as O'Reilly so succinctly puts it. Taxes will have to go up if we are to rid ourselves of the fiscal mess Bush has left us in. Bush has also given us unnecessary programs in his 7 years. Spending is way up under his leadership, yet I have never once heard you get on him for that. You never once criticized his total lack of military leadership. In fact, the only reason he changed directions is because of the sound thrashing that occurred in November 2006.
It makes me think you are now nothing more than a GOP mouthpiece, and I am sorry for that. George W. Bush is no more a conservative than many of the "Tax and Spend" liberals, and yet there is never a hint of criticism directed at him. That only serves to make matters in the GOP worse, not better. Just because the man pinned a medal on you doesn't mean you owe him. He deserves all the same criticism that you level at the democrats, yet he gets none. Is that the price of having a medal pinned on your chest?
I'm angry at the GOP. I'm angry at the partisan nature of this country. It's GOP before America now, and that is not what I served in the military to protect. It is, however, the reason that I am a registered independent now, and no longer a registered Republican.
Hanson:
Your angry letter is completely disingenuous.
1) The posting you refer to was hyper-critical of Bush I, St. Reagan, and Bush II, for all running up deficits and various lapses from national security to poor selections of Supreme Court Justices. No one has been more critical of Bush than I about deficit spending and aggregate debt. In the article you refer to that's why I liked McCain's points about an end to reckless spending. Did you see the title of the piece? It was called the "Current Mess" and talked about Republican scandal, deficits, tentative strategies in Iraq in 2004-6, and de facto support for open borders?
2) When we are in the middle of a war in Iraq, and both Democratic candidates announce that they are going to set a timetable and withdraw troops regardless of the battlefield situation — what would that be other than a surrender? And what about Ms. Clinton's charge that the senior ground commander in Iraq was essentially lying under oath ("suspension of disbelief"), or the endorsement of Moveon.org ("General Betray-US) of Sen Obama?
3) I was very critical of Bush on deficits, the pull-back from Fallujah, and other half-measures in Iraq, the comprehensive immigration proposals, and agricultural subsidies, as well as excessive spending like No Child Left Behind and the Prescription Drug Bill. That the Democrats wished more spending, an exit from Iraq, open borders, and more pork is no excuse.
4) Sadly, in this age of angry, shoot-from-the-hip commentary, your accusations are typical of one who reads something quickly and is confused, becomes enraged, and then levels charges without checking facts. But in your case it is even worse — since you seem unable to read: criticizing an essay critical to Republicans as not critical to Republicans.
| |
