Filed under: Bureaucracy, Domestic Policy, Education, History, Politics, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: American Universities, Victor Davis Hanson, Why We Need History
Just a short 12 minutes, but Dr. Hanson thoroughly eviscerates the university in particular, and the Left as well. Great fun.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, History, Law, Politics, Pop Culture, Progressives, Taxes, Technology, The United States, Unemployment | Tags: California, Victor Davis Hanson, What's Gone Haywire
California is becoming the most watched state in the union. The worst-managed state. threatening secession, or division, insisting on whatever the rest of the country is doing, they will go in another direction. And Washington State is trying to follow in their wake,
Here’s Victor Davis Hanson trying to explain what’s gone wrong and why. Our most populous state, a sanctuary state, broke, and people and businesses are fleeing the state for anywhere where taxes are lower and housing costs are sane. People are living in motor homes, sheds, turning a single apartment into a dormitory. Facebook and Google are apparently building a new town to house their workers.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: The Second World Wars, Victor Davis Hanson, Wars with an 'S'
Here’s the second interview with Victor Davis Hanson on his new history of “The Second World Wars.” The first is here. That “S” on Wars is quite deliberate. The men fighting on Guadalcanal had little in common with the tankers at el- Alamein or those in Burma or in the hedgerows of Normandy. A great gift for any military man or history buff. And even some women have actually enjoyed studying history.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Education, History, Intelligence, Politics, The United States | Tags: American Universities, The Hypocrisy of the Left, Victor Davis Hanson
Well, professors at our universities have long seethed with not just envy but anger at CEOs in American industry. After all, you can read what their salaries are in the financial pages or in annual reports. Professors prefer to pretend that their concern is at the diversity of the salaries of the ordinary working stiff and the CEO. What really lights their fuses is that they, the professors, have Doctorates! PhDs! They are the scholars of the nation, the recognized elite.
Of course they do not recognize that CEOs are awarded their salaries by the corporate Board of Directors, in recognition of the profitability of the corporation itself, and in relation to the economy.
What if the elite professors in our nation’s universities had to demonstrate what their students have learned at the end of four years, in order to justify their salaries.” I rest my case.
Filed under: Freedom, History, Japan, Military, National Security, The United States, World War II | Tags: Congressman Carl Vinson, Pearl Harbor Day, Victor Davis Hanson

U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer’s Mate Third Class Dusty Howell
Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Seventy-six years ago, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and suddenly we were full participants in the war that had been raging in Europe and China. Those who were old enough to experience the war are dying off, and soon there will be no one who remembers. From the current state of our colleges and universities, they seem to be turning out students who know nothing about history at all.
Seventy-six years ago on December 7, 1941, carrier planes from the Imperial Japanese fleet attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in a surprise attack on the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It was followed a few days later by an attack on the Philippines.
The surprise attack on the fleet killed 2,402 Americans, sank or submerged 19 ships, including eight battleships damaged or destroyed. Just four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
Victor Davis Hanson writes today of the contribution of one Democratic Congressman from Georgia, Carl Vinson. Do read the whole thing.
The Japanese fleet had missed the three absent American carriers of the Pacific Fleet. Nonetheless, Japanese admirals were certain that the United States was so crippled after the attack that it would not be able to go on the offensive against the Japanese Pacific empire for years, if at all. Surely the wounded Americans would sue for peace, or at least concentrate on Europe and keep out of the Japanese-held Pacific.
That was a fatal miscalculation.
The Japanese warlords had known little of the tireless efforts of one Democratic congressman from Georgia, Carl Vinson.
For nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, Vinson had schemed and politicked in brilliant fashion to ensure that America was building a two-ocean navy larger than all the major navies of the world combined.
If you have a history buff on your gift list, get them a copy of Dr. Hanson’s brilliant new book: The Second Word Wars. If you’re feeling generous, add With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge.
The photograph is of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Crime, Economy, Education, Immigration, National Security, Politics, Taxes, The United States | Tags: The 2016 Election, Today's Excess, Victor Davis Hanson
What really happened in the election and why, and why the Democrats are in such trouble today. I hope you have time for this, because it’s very important. A lot has happened since, and Dr. Hanson explains it. I posted this a while back, but it bears repeating. It’s hard to find time for anything that lasts more than 15 minutes, I thought you’d have more time on the weekend.The president’s poll numbers may be down, but the economy is up, consumer confidence is up—the highest level since December of 2000. So why are Trump’s poll levels down? Depends on just who they are polling.
We’re in a poorly understood battle today. The Democrats seem to have gone insane, but they are only firmly out of power, except at the municipal level. We have some remarkably bad mayors out there. Democrats are determined to bring down this president, because they have nothing else. Obama left their party in ruins, and now Hillary’s emails are being released by the FBI, and it may yet be revealed what she was up to. They want her to go away quietly, but the eternal book tour continues.
This video again explains what happened and why — and why we must recognize the Left’s efforts to bring disgrace or impeach this president for disagreeing with them and their agenda.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Clarification, Constructive Chaos, Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson has a column at the Hoover Institution’s online journal Defining Ideas, about Donald Trump’s “Constructive Chaos” that is very worth your time, in this era when the slightest move by the Trump administration is dissected and analyzed for potential impeachment content. We don’t hear much about what he accomplishing, only about his racism, sexism, fascism and whatever else they manage to come up with.
Almost daily, President Trump manages to incense the media, alarm the world abroad, and enrage his Democratic opposition. Not since Ronald Reagan’s first year in office has change and disruption come so fast from the White House.
Let’s consider foreign affairs first. In response to North Korea’s nuclear threats to hit the American West coast, Trump promised Kim Jung-un utter destruction. And for sport he ridicules him as “rocket man.” ISIS is now on the run. The terrorist group has given up on its once-promised caliphate—in part because Trump changed the rules of engagement and allowed American generals at the front to use their own judgment and discretion on how best to destroy their enemies. Trump has bowed out from certifying a continuation of the Iranian deal and sent it back to Congress for reform, rejection, or ratification. In the case of the Paris climate accord, he simply pulled the United States out completely, reminding its adherents that the use of natural gas has allowed America to reduce carbon emissions far more dramatically than have most of its critics. As in the case of the Iran deal, the Obama administration never sent the Paris agreement to the Senate for a treaty vote.
Domestically, too, Trump has not been afraid to make major changes. In terms of the so-called Dreamers—children who were brought into the United States illegally by their parents and protected by the DACA executive orders of Barack Obama—for now Trump has sent the matter back to the Congress for proper legislative review. On Obamacare, Trump has issued executive orders to free up the health market and remove subsidies and monopolistic regulations on how health plans are structured and sold. His reasoning was that the Obama executive orders on health care were illegal, so revising them was necessary and legal rather than inflammatory.
There are objections, even from Republicans, because Trump is using executive orders to accomplish these ends, but Trump is simply using Obama’s own tools to reverse what Obama had wrought.
The Paris Climate agreement and the Iran Deal were clearly treaties and should have been turned over to the Senate for ratification. Obama knew ratification was impossible, so he simply called them presidential protocols, signed them, and declared that they were legally binding agreements.
Trump is following the law by turning them over to the Senate for debate, but also following his own political instincts by assuming that both of these deals are badly flawed and put the United States at a disadvantage, which they do. But those who wanted these illegal treaties can blame the Senate, not Trump, or at least not entirely. ISIS, which Obama called the JV team, and said was impossible to control, has been defeated in a matter of months by changing the rules of engagement.
Do read the whole thing. It’s a good clarification of what is actually going on, rather than what CNN reports.