Articles by Victor Davis Hanson

LawCommentary

The Loss of Our Watchmen’s Moral Authority

Victor Davis Hanson | December 05, 2019

One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors. After all, when the watchmen have lost moral… Read More

LawCommentary

Are Thought Crimes Impeachable?

Victor Davis Hanson | November 26, 2019

During special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, his legal “dream team” tried to make a secondary case that Donald Trump also obstructed efforts to prove Trump-Russian… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

‘Coup’ Concerns Suddenly Don’t Seem So Far-Fetched

Victor Davis Hanson | November 21, 2019

For most of the last three years, Donald Trump’s critics have scoffed at supposed “conspiracy theories” that claimed a “deep state” of bureaucrats were aborting… Read More

SocietyCommentary

What Happened to California Republicans?

Victor Davis Hanson | November 14, 2019

From 1967 to 2019, Republicans controlled the California governorship for 31 of 52 years. So why is there currently not a single statewide Republican officeholder?… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

Liberal Policy Failures Are the Reason for Socialism’s New Appeal

Victor Davis Hanson | November 07, 2019

Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European redistribution, continue to fail. Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of genocidal communism…. Read More

SocietyCommentary

California’s Disastrous State Illustrates Limits of Progressivism

Victor Davis Hanson | October 31, 2019

More than 2 million Californians recently were left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric—which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year—preemptively… Read More

InternationalCommentary

We’re Becoming More Like China Than China Is Like Us

Victor Davis Hanson | October 17, 2019

A little over 40 years ago, Chinese communist strongman and reformer Deng Xiaoping began 15 years of sweeping economic reforms. They were designed to end… Read More

SocietyCommentary

Members of Previous Generations Now Seem Like Giants

Victor Davis Hanson | October 12, 2019

Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages. Impoverished tribes passed down oral traditions that… Read More

InternationalCommentary

How China Finally ‘Woke’ America

Victor Davis Hanson | October 03, 2019

In these times of near civil war, Americans agree on almost nothing. Yet sometime in 2019, almost all of America finally got “woke” on China…. Read More

PoliticsCommentary

The Death of American Citizenship

Victor Davis Hanson | September 26, 2019

The American Founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. These contracts outlined… Read More

SocietyCommentary

The Real Reason for Trump Derangement Syndrome

Victor Davis Hanson | September 19, 2019

Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf. As a result, not… Read More

InternationalCommentary

Britain’s Moment of Truth

Victor Davis Hanson | September 12, 2019

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is desperate to translate the British public’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union into a concrete Brexit. But… Read More

SecurityCommentary

The Ghosts of World War II

Victor Davis Hanson | September 05, 2019

World War II ended 74 years ago. But even in the 21st century, the lasting effects endure, both psychological and material. After all, the war… Read More

SocietyCommentary

Ignorance of the Past Fuels Young Americans’ Enthusiasm for Socialism

Victor Davis Hanson | September 04, 2019

“Socialist” is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity “squad” of newly elected identity politics congresswomen—Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ayanna Pressley,… Read More

InternationalCommentary

A Bad Deal Between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, 80 Years Ago

Victor Davis Hanson | August 15, 2019

Some 80 years ago, on Aug. 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, formally known as the “Treaty of nonaggression… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

Menacing Invective Against Trump Lowers the Bar for Violence

Victor Davis Hanson | August 01, 2019

Former Vice President Joe Biden has bragged on two occasions that he would like to beat up President Donald Trump. In March 2018, Biden huffed:… Read More

InternationalCommentary

The Lessons of the Versailles Treaty

Victor Davis Hanson | July 25, 2019

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919. Neither the winners nor the losers of World War I were happy… Read More

SocietyCommentary

The War Over America’s Past Is Really About the Future

Victor Davis Hanson | July 18, 2019

The summer season has ripped off the thin scab that covered an American wound, revealing a festering disagreement about the nature and origins of the… Read More

InternationalCommentary

The US Can Afford to Stay Calm With Iran

Victor Davis Hanson | June 27, 2019

President Donald Trump recently ordered and then called off a retaliatory strike against Iran for destroying a U.S. surveillance drone. The U.S. asserts that the… Read More

SocietyCommentary

Elites Have No One to Blame for Populism but Themselves

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… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

Trump Has Become the Democrats’ Great White Whale

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… Read More

LawCommentary

The Leaky Vessel of Trump-Russia Collusion Is Sinking

Victor Davis Hanson | May 23, 2019

The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always implausible. One, the Washington swamp of fixers such as Paul Manafort and John and Tony Podesta was mostly… Read More

SocietyCommentary

The Similarities Between Declining Rome and the Modern US

Victor Davis Hanson | May 20, 2019

Sometime around A.D. 60, in the age of Emperor Nero, a Roman court insider named Gaius Petronius wrote a satirical Latin novel, “The Satyricon,” about… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

The Injustice of the Left’s Fury Against Barr

Victor Davis Hanson | May 09, 2019

Democrats have grown infuriated by Attorney General William Barr’s indifference to their hysteria over the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Barr recently released a brief summary of… Read More

LawCommentary

Why Clinton Might be Fixated on Maintaining Collusion Falsehood

Victor Davis Hanson | May 02, 2019

Hillary Clinton recently editorialized about the second volume of special counsel Robert Mueller’s massive report. She concluded of the report’s assorted testimonies and inside White… Read More

PoliticsCommentary

Mueller Investigation Was Driven by Pious Hypocrisy

Victor Davis Hanson | April 25, 2019

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. Despite compiling private allegations of loud and… Read More

SocietyCommentary

The Natural Limits of Identity Politics

Victor Davis Hanson | April 18, 2019

Economist Herbert Stein’s old adage—“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”—still holds. Take illegal immigration. There are currently somewhere from 11 million to… Read More

EconomyCommentary

California’s War on Middle Class

Victor Davis Hanson | April 11, 2019

For over six years, California has had a top marginal income tax rate of 13.3%, the highest in the nation. About 150,000 households in a… Read More

LawCommentary

Left’s Proposed Voting Changes Are About Power, Not Principles

Victor Davis Hanson | March 28, 2019

Progressive candidates and new Democratic representatives have offered lots of radical new proposals lately about voting and voters. They include scrapping the 215-year-old Electoral College. Progressives… Read More

SocietyCommentary

The Lessons of Waging War Against the Dead

Victor Davis Hanson | March 15, 2019

The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue-smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the… Read More