Author: Victor Davis Hanson

World War II broke out when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. A once preventable war had become inevitable — and would soon become global — due to three fatal decisions. Most infamously, the Western European democracies had appeased Hitler during the late 1930s in hopes that he would quit gobbling up his […]

The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent. More than 90 million able-bodied adults are either not currently in the […]

What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning? American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else. Colleges still wear the ancient clothes of higher learning. Latin mottos, caps […]

In politically driven moods, the ancient Romans often wiped from history all mention of a prior hero or celebrity. They called such erasures damnatio memoriae. The Soviet Union likewise airbrushed away, or “Trotskyized,” all the images of any past kingpin who became politically incorrect. The Obama administration seems obsessed with doing the same to retired […]

Hillary Clinton recently said she would go after offshore tax “schemes” in the Caribbean. That is a worthy endeavor, given the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. tax revenue. Yet her husband, Bill Clinton, reportedly made $10 million as an advisor and an occasional partner in the Yucaipa Global Partnership, a fund registered in […]

Three truths fuel Donald Trump. One, Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster. If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck the Democratic Party while turning off 52 percent of the country, then many […]

Changes of administrations usually mark dicey times in American foreign policy. But transitional hazards will never be greater than in 2016. Over a span of just a few months in mid-1945, new president Harry Truman lost all trust in Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin — in a way that Truman’s predecessor, the ailing Franklin Delano […]

California has given us three new truths about government. One, the higher that taxes rise, the worst state services become. Two, the worse a natural disaster hits, the more the state contributes to its havoc. And three, the more existential the problem, the more the state ignores it. California somehow has managed to have the […]

The Roman philosopher and statesman Cicero insisted that gratitude was “the parent of all the other virtues.” Cicero did not define gratitude as Mafia-like loyalty or mutual back-scratching. He was not referring to a pop socialism where all supposedly owe their successes to the government. Instead, gratitude is proof of humility and offers perspective. It […]

The more analysts try to figure out Donald Trump’s appeal, the more they sound baffled. Pundits cite Trump’s verbal sloppiness and ridiculousness as proof that he must soon implode. But Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more […]

The recent wave of student protests is aimed at liberal professors and administrators. Current student anger eerily fits the pattern of most left-wing unrest, from the cycles of the French Revolution to the campus riots of the 1960s. First, protests gradually grow more extreme. Venom is directed at fellow leftists who are deemed insufficiently radical. […]

Earlier this month, premier Fox newsman Bill O’Reilly became unhinged on live television. A red-faced O’Reilly loudly and repeatedly called his invited guest, Washington Post columnist and fellow conservative Fox News journalist George Will, a “hack” and accused him of lying. It was a surreal moment, with stunned viewers no doubt muttering to themselves, “Is […]

We live in a weary age of fable. The latest Hollywood mythology is entitled “Truth.” But the film is actually a fictionalized story about how CBS News super-anchor Dan Rather and his “60 Minutes” producer supposedly were railroaded by corporate and right-wing interests into resigning. In reality, an internal investigation by CBS found that Rather […]

The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths. For years, the conventional lament was that the “wrong” Bush had run for president in 2000. George W. Bush was supposedly tongue-tied. He was said to be polarizing. He was derided as too much the twangy, conservative Texas Christian. If only his younger, softer-spoken […]

Germany’s political stability and economic sway have until recently earned Chancellor Angela Merkel unprecedented global influence and power. Postwar Germany has become the financial powerhouse of Europe and a model nation. Give credit to German hard work and competency for the country’s continuing economic miracle. Less appreciated is how Germany also brilliantly exploited the lucrative […]

There are now 340 sanctuary cities — and the list is growing. All of them choose to ignore federal immigration law by refusing to report detained undocumented immigrants to federal authorities under most circumstances. Partly as a result, deportations of those who entered the U.S. illegally are at a 10-year low — even according to […]

Contrary to the principles of American foreign policy of the last 70 years, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry tacitly invited Russia to “help” monitor things in the Middle East. Now they are learning that there are lots of Middle East scenarios far worse than the relative quiet Iraq that the Obama […]

Unpopular though it may be to say so, I, for one, grew exhausted by the nonstop pronouncements/commentaries of Pope Francis. The spiritual leader of 1 billion Catholics — roughly half of the world’s Christians — Francis just completed a high-profile, endlessly publicized visit to the United States. But unlike past visiting pontiffs, the Argentine-born Francis […]

The bailed-out Greeks are still broke. Now their islands are flooded with a horde of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Spain, Portugal and Italy are almost in the same boat. Their shared Mediterranean traditions — and vulnerabilities — are far different from those of northern Europe’s more affluent nations. Given the triad of […]

There is a tragic monotony to the latest massive human migration, this one involving Syrians fleeing their war-torn country. Whether the migrants are from Mexico, the Islamic world or elsewhere, it is always the same: Migrants flock to the West. Mexicans who elect to leave their country do not hop trains to Guatemala. Fleeing Libyans […]

Do you remember Lewis “Scooter” Libby? In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Yet Plame may not have been a covert undercover agent, based on the formal government definition of […]

Hillary Clinton’s second race for the presidency is only about a quarter through, but she already seems to be causing general fatigue. The lurid revelations about the Clinton Foundation proved that it was not so much a charity as a huge laundering operation. Quid pro quo donations from the global rich and powerful fueled the […]

In the present postmodern world, we are told that there is no such thing as a biologically distinct gender. Instead, gender is now socially constructed. It can be defined by the individual in almost any way he or she sees fit. In the old days, many clinical psychologists would have believed that Caitlyn Jenner — […]

Social observers from Aristotle and Juvenal to James Madison and George Orwell have all warned of the dangers of out-of-control government. Lately, we have seen plenty of proof that they were frighteningly correct. The Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado. The stinky […]

Some Democratic Party groups are renouncing their once-egalitarian idols, the renaissance genius Thomas Jefferson and the populist Andrew Jackson. Both presidents, some two centuries ago, owned slaves. Consequently, the two men have been suddenly deemed unworthy of further liberal reverence. In Connecticut, for instance, the state Democratic Party has removed the two presidents’ names from […]

Can we be honest about illegal immigration? It is a common challenge to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations. American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former wanted greater profits from cheaper labor, the latter wished more political clout […]

The now-concluded Iran nuclear negotiations predictably reflect ancient truths of appeasement. While members of the Obama administration are high-fiving each other over a deal with the Iranian theocracy, they should remember unchanging laws that will surely haunt the U.S. later on. First, appeasement always brings short-term jubilation at the expense of long-term security. British Prime […]

California keeps reminding us what has gone astray with America in recent years. The state is in the midst of a crippling four-year-old drought. Yet California has built almost no major northern or central mountain reservoirs since the New Melones Dam of 1979. That added nearly 3 million acre-feet to the state’s storage reserves — […]

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler’s new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, […]

Seventy-one years ago, the British, Canadians and Americans landed on the Normandy beaches to open a second ground front against Nazi Germany. Operation Overlord — the Allied invasion of Western Europe — proved the largest amphibious operation in military history, dwarfing even Xerxes’ Persian invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. Brilliant planning, overwhelming naval support, […]