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"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Here is what Sen. Obama now says...

. . . Over the past four days, I asked seven or eight random (Asian, Mexican-American, and working-class white) Americans in southern California what they thought of Obama’s candidacy — and framed the question with, “Don’t you think that was a good speech?” The answers, without exception, were essentially: “Forget the speech. I would never vote for Obama after listening to Wright.” In some cases, the reaction was not mild disappointment, but unprintable outrage. . . . The sure thing of Democrats winning big in the House and Senate is now in danger of a scenario in which a would-be...

Gaza erupted in celebration last week to the news that a Palestinian had murdered Jewish religious students in Jerusalem. And almost daily terrorists send rockets from Gaza into nearby Israeli cities, hoping to kill civilians and provoke Israeli counter-responses — and perhaps start another Middle East war. This is not the way some imagined Gaza two and half years after the Israelis withdrew both civilians and soldiers from the territory in September 2005. At the time, the Palestinian Authority controlled Gaza, but in early 2007, Hamas took over in a violent civil war, claiming legitimacy after once winning a popular...

Kosovo Was Then, This Is Now... [Victor Davis Hanson] Quite apart from the undeniable merits of independence, in political terms Kosovo 2008 is not quite Kosovo of 1998. Let us count the post-9/11 ways: 1. The rise of radical Islam, especially in Europe, has made Western publics edgy about Muslim-identified states, especially inside Europe. 2. Russia is no longer a basket case, but rearming, aggressive, overflowing with petro-dollars, and eager to use oil — and more — as a weapon. 3. Milosevic is long dead. 4. For six years there has been a steady anti-American drumbeat in Europe and caricatures...

Vikings Go On Rampage At Lodge Presumedly seeking revenge against the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League for calling it quits in the middle of the season, several players with the Jamestown Vikings trashed the historic Vikings Lodge on the corner of Washington and West Fourth Street early Thursday, leaving most of the building in shambles. Trash and debris were everywhere, especially on the second and third floors where the stench of beer and rotting food was almost overpowering. Bar stools were smashed through doors, and virtually every piece of glass in the building had been shattered, the broken shards unavoidable underfoot. ‘‘They...

Last week’s U.S. National Intelligence Estimate states, with “high confidence,� that Iran quit trying to get a nuclear bomb in late 2003. That’s exactly the opposite of what the NIE reported just two years ago, when it claimed Iran’s ruling mullahs were still developing nuclear weapons. The reaction here at home to the new NIE was a good deal clearer than the often mealy-mouthed wording of the report. By an overwhelming margin, according to a Rasmussen poll conducted after the new NIE report’s findings were made public, Americans don’t buy that Iran has quit trying to go nuclear. They may...

C-SPAN2 (Book TV) airing a Manhattan Institute immigration panel featuring conservative heavy hitters Heather MacDonald, Victor Davis Hanson, and Steven Malanga, coauthors of The Immigration Solution. Panel was taped on 10/29/07 and reairs on Sunday at 2 a.m. and at noon, ET. Program is one hour.

At first glance, it would seem a straightforward thing to stop a relatively weak but volatile Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb. It would also seem to be something a concerned world community would be actively working to do. After all, the Sunni Arab states surrounding Iran don’t want a Shiite nuclear power on their borders. Europe, which isn’t all that far from Tehran and lacks a missile-defense shield, certainly doesn’t want to be in range of Iran’s missiles. Israel can’t tolerate an Iranian theocracy both promising to wipe it off the map and then brazenly obtaining the means to...

Hanson cites Bible urination as reason to stop immigration Thursday Aug 16 10:00 AEST By Hal Crawford ninemsn http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=286783 A resurgent Pauline Hanson has called for an end to Muslim immigration to Australia in a fiery television appearance peppered with references to female genital mutilation, terrorism and urinating on Bibles. Ms Hanson, the 53-year-old former One Nation leader, appeared on Nine's TODAY to promote her new Pauline's United Australia Party.

Is “ho”—the rapper slang for the slur “whore”—a bad word? Always, sometimes, or just when an obnoxious white male like Don Imus says it? But not when the equally obnoxious Snoop Dogg serially employs it? Is the Iraq war, as we are often told, the “greatest mistake” in our nation’s history? Because Israel and the United States have a bomb, is it then O.K. for theocratic Iran to have one too? Americans increasingly cannot seem to answer questions like these adequately because they are blissfully uneducated. They have not acquired a broad knowledge of language, literature, philosophy, and history. Sometime...

We’re sorry to see the lively debate on Iraq between Max Boot and Victor Davis Hanson end today. You can follow the debate’s fascinating progress below: Boot I • Hanson I • Boot II • Hanson II • Boot III • Hanson III • Boot IV • Hanson IV Click on Source for links

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ELCA) -- As the U.S. Congress debates its response to the dispatch of additional troops to Iraq, the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), sent a message Jan. 26 to ordained and professional lay leaders of the ELCA, asking them to engage ELCA congregations in dialogue on the war and to continue to pray for peace. In his letter, "A Call to Conversation on Iraq," Hanson encouraged ELCA members to engage in the national debate on the nature and direction of the Iraq war with "intentionality, seriousness and vigor." "We...

Let me start black history month a few weeks early. Barack Obama has plans of running for President of the United States, But will he be the first Black President or the 8th Black President? I know this posting will stir controversty but George Washington was not the first President of the U.S. Let's take a look at history. A "Black" Man, A Moor, John Hanson Was the First President of the United States! 1781-1782 A.D.??? George Washington was really the 8th President of the United States! George Washington was not the first President of the United States. In fact,...

December 01, 2006, 0:00 a.m. War StoriesTwo versions of what we should do next. By Victor Davis Hanson Five years after September 11, and three-and-a-half years after toppling Saddam Hussein, the U.S. is almost as angry at itself as it is at the enemy. Two quite antithetical views of the war on terror — and indeed, the entire American role in the Middle East — are now crystallizing. Ideology and political affiliation are no longer necessarily touchstones to either opinion — not at a time when The Nation and The American Conservative share the same views on Iraq and...

ELCA NEWS SERVICE November 2, 2006 ELCA Presiding Bishop, LWF President Preaches in Historic 'Black Church' 06-165-JB [Click for larger image] ELCA Presiding Bishop and LWF President Mark Hanson greets pastors and parishioners at the Black Church in Transylvania following his Reformation Day sermon. BRASOV, Transylvania (ELCA) -- Preaching in a historic Lutheran church here on Reformation Day, Oct. 31, was a "great privilege" and "very moving" experience, said the Rev. Mark S. Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and president of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), as he concluded an eight-day visit to Hungary...

I just arrived back to California after a wonderful five-week teaching stint at Hillsdale College in Michigan—to blue skies, raisins safely in the roll, the farm in good shape thanks to the renter and my son, and constant televised clips from Bill Clinton’s embarrassing, but staged rant. Why when leaving office did we hear little, if any, second guessing—much less criticism of their successors—from Gerry Ford, Ronald Reagan, or George Bush, Sr.—but lots of self-serving revisionism from Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Ford and the elder Bush, after all, were both defeated at the polls and might have voiced hurt...

But what does the newly released tape tell us? Was 9/11 a result of American support for Israel? Or the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia, or the U.N. embargo of Iraq -- the grievances that bin Laden himself in 1998 cited as grounds for murdering Americans? Not according to two of the captioned "Martyrs of the Manhattan Raid," who spoke freely in this newly released tape. Saudi nationals Hamza al-Ghamdi (who helped crash Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center) and Wail al-Shehri (who joined Mohammed Atta on Flight 11 to topple the North...

Depressing Times Oriana Fallaci, RIP, the Pope, and a Sad Age Rarely has the death of a public intellectual affected me as much as the passing of Oriana Fallaci. I never met her, and only received a brief note once from her accompanying a copy of The Rage and the Pride. The story of her career is well known, but her death, at this pivotal time, was full of paradoxes and yet instruction as well. Radical Islam is, among other things, a patriarchal movement, embedded particularly in the cult of the Middle-Eastern male, who occupies a privileged position in a...

The Bush administration should stop repeating that it is fighting the war on terror for truth, justice and the American way. Instead, the president and his staff should be blunt and explain that, since September 11, 2001, it has had to choose between options that are bad or far worse. By all means, the administration should invite critics to suggest constructive alternatives to the way it has handled this war. But it should also point out that those who have honed in on flaws in current U.S. antiterror policies have so far been bereft of other workable ideas. Take the...

They’re just as bad as we are, only worse. The prison at Guantanamo Bay was designed to interrogate terrorists and jihadists swept up from the battlefield: the idea was to keep them as prisoners of war in a war that was undeclared, and as enemy combatants without uniforms or officers. It had a no-win mandate, and will probably close soon due to international outcries about its supposed barbarity. Yet, for all the fury about its existence, not a single detainee has died there in over four years of operation. In contrast, the European Milosevic just dropped dead while under custody...

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler — such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France — given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable. Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish...

Did Joseph Wilson expose his own wife as a CIA employee months before columnist Robert Novak published that information? Fox News military analyst and retired Major General Paul E. Vallely is being threatened with a lawsuit for saying that the answer is yes, and that he was there when Wilson confirmed her CIA status. What's more, Vallely tells Accuracy in Media that he is prepared if necessary to go to court to prove it. He may have to. Wilson's attorney, Christopher Wolf, categorically rejects Vallely's claim. He tells AIM, "It never happened I can assure you that. Vallely is making...

On Sunday, October 2 at 10:45 pm A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War Victor Davis Hanson Description: Author and military historian Victor Davis Hanson speaks about his new book, "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." It chronicles the 27-year battle fought around 400 B.C. between Athens and Sparta. Mr. Hanson draws some parallels between the Greek war and the wars of today, including the present war in Iraq. The book classifies the Peloponnesian War as one consisting of enormous battles (on land and at...

Historian Victor Davis Hanson says the Arab world must realize Islam and freedom can coexist. Scholar-author Victor Davis Hanson says the Arab world is learning the hard way that Islam and freedom need not be mutually exclusive. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Victor Davis Hanson has emerged from the relative obscurity of his academic post at Fresno State University to become something akin to America’s “historian in chief.” Spurred by a legion of eager editors, Hanson has translated his expertise in classical military history to the war on terror. The result: some 300 essays – and counting – and an army...

ELCA Bishops Hear Concerns, Surplus News From Presiding Bishop 05-042-JB The Rev. Mark S. Hanson is ELCA presiding bishop and LWF president. DALLAS (ELCA) -- While expressing gratitude for leaders in the church who prepared the report and recommendations on homosexuality released Jan. 13, the presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) raised some concerns about the recommendations in his report to the ELCA Conference of Bishops. The Rev. Mark S. Hanson also told the conference that the ELCA churchwide organization finished the 2004 fiscal year with a net surplus. The ELCA Conference of Bishops is an...

President Bush supposedly charmed the Europeans, and now they purportedly don't hate us any more. But from the recent trip, it is clear that Americans can still expect two things from the European public and its leadership: deep-seeded anti-Americanism and embarrassing contradictions. In that context, let us examine all the recent Eurobabble.

Much of the recent domestic critique of American efforts in the Middle East has long roots in our own past — and little to do with the historic developments on the ground in Iraq 1. "It's America's fault." Some on the hard left sought to cite our support for Israel or general "American imperialism" in the Middle East as culpable for bin Laden's wrath on September 11. Past American efforts to save Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan counted for little. Even less thanks were earned by billions of dollars given to Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority....

Anti-Americanism continues to grow more powerful and to mutate into increasingly bizarre and pathological forms. After 9/11, masses of people from all over the world not only celebrated America’s tragedy, but even blamed the victims rather than the perpetrators for the terrorist attacks. As the Bush administration attempts to build a coalition against Saddam Hussein, it becomes evident that the American President’s efforts are frustrated by the vehement strain of anti-Americanism in the international environment. And let’s not kid ourselves: anti-Americanism is no dying force in America itself. To be sure, members of the fifth column in the U.S., led...

As the third recent Middle East election nears in Iraq, Americans are still puzzled over why well-off Islamic fundamentalists crashed planes into skyscrapers and now send mercenaries to the Sunni Triangle to slaughter us as we sponsor democracy. Yet since Sept. 11, we have grasped that Muslim fascists understood that the course of American-led world history - democracy and globalized capitalism - was leaving them behind. Thus they strike the United States before they are made irrelevant.

NRO PREVIEW [KJL] I'm just getting out of Victor Davis Hanson's piece for tomorrow--it is another "just what the doctor ordered" kinda piece. I almost always find when I'm beginning to get down--about Iraq, etc. (the election--the election was a big one)--he delivers to buck me back up. Just plan a little Hanson time, is all I'm saying. I think you already have that built into your Fridays though...

George Bush thus will get no credit for elections replacing the Taliban or for the liberation of women in Afghanistan, much less for democracy in Iraq. Instead he will be the target of constant venom for the human costs of war, with the silent proviso that he is not to cease, lest a Holland, France, or Spain become even more besieged by anti-Western jihadists emboldened by American appeasement. Indeed, Bush must endure elite European hatred, even as the majority there silently expects the United States to maintain the alliance and protect the West. But perhaps the greatest paradox is here...

After talking with some left-wing friends this weekend, I realized now more than ever that the question of whether to vote for Bush or Kerry truly boils down to another question, “A war for our lives, or a nuisance to our lifestyle?” The later question was asked on Friday by eminent historian Victor David Hanson. He answers it with honesty and erudition, but leaves out a very important point: the fear factor. Hanson correctly identifies Kerry et al’s penchant for wanting to solve our foreign policy disputes through diplomatic bureaucracy ad nauseum -- e.g., the United Nations. He hints at...

A review of: Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past by Paul Cartledge (341 pp., Macmillan. £18.99) Alexander: Destiny and Myth by Claude Mossé (244 pp., Edinburgh University Press. £49.99.) Alexander the Conqueror: The Epic Story of the Warrior King by Laura Foreman (213 pp., Da Capo. £19.99.) The Death of Alexander the Great: What – or – Who Really Killed the Young Conqueror of the Known World? by Paul Doherty (236 pp., Constable. £17.99.) The ancient world is on a Hollywood roll. First Gladiator, then Troy, and now an Alexander the Great directed by Oliver Stone, starring...

The head of the UN administration in the West Bank and Gaza admits Hamas members are on his payroll. Media outlets ignore it. Peter Hansen (pictured at right), Commissioner-General of the UN agency in Gaza and the West Bank, made a startling admission in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday (10/4): I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime... we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another. With this statement, Hansen verified what Israel has long contended ¯...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Israel is holding 25 U.N. employees in the Palestinian West Bank or Gaza but has not charged any with a crime or even told the United Nations (news - web sites) of their detention, U.N. officials said on Wednesday. The officials spoke a day after an Israeli officer in Jerusalem said Israel had arrested 13 employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and planned to indict them for "suspected links to terrorism." Israel linked the U.N. employees to "terrorism" shortly after backing away from an accusation that Palestinian militants transported a rocket to be...

UN's Hanson Admits Hamas on UNRWA Payroll October 06, 2004 UNRWA Terrorist Activity Under-Reported The top UNRWA official in Gaza, Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, admitted that Hamas terrorists are on the payroll of the supposedly neutral body - but the world media are ignoring the story. A significant news item reported by Arutz-7 yesterday has received little coverage in the international media: The top UNRWA official in Gaza admitted that Hamas terrorists are on the payroll of the supposedly neutral body. Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in Gaza, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation two days ago that...

Take a break from Kerry and the SwiftVets on Saturday, August 21 at 4:00 pm and Monday, August 23 at 12:00 am In Depth: Victor Davis Hanson for three hours. (I think this is a rerun from the March 7 program) He is usually quite interesting and worth watching. Victor Davis Hanson is the guest on Book TV's March 7 In Depth program. Mr. Hanson is the author of numerous books, including "Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece" (1983), "The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece" (1989), "Hoplites: The Ancient Greek Battle Experience" (1991), "The Other Greeks:...

For now Americans seem to be split 50-50 over the reelection of George W. Bush. Such a hotly contested election is hardly new. We saw races just as close in 1960, 1968, and 1976. Had Ross Perot not run in 1992 — and perhaps even in 1996 — Bill Clinton (who didn't receive a 50 percent majority in either of his presidential races) may well have found himself in the same predicament as Gore did in Florida, 2000 — struggling to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to George Bush Sr. There are a number of issues...

The classical Greeks were really nothing like us — at least that now seems the prevailing dogma of classical scholars of the last half-century. Perhaps due to the rise of cultural anthropology or, more recently, to a variety of postmodern schools of social construction, it is now often accepted that the lives of Socrates, Euripides, and Pericles were not similar to our own, but so far different as to be almost unfathomable. Shelley’s truism that “We are all Greeks” has now become, as we say, “inoperative.” M. I. Finley, the great historian of the ancient economy, spent a lifetime to...

Ronald Reagan's death in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election has occasioned all manner of oddities. There was John Kerry, the absolute antithesis of Ronald Reagan, making the pilgrimage to Simi Valley and monitoring his remarks to make sure not a jot of criticism of Reagan escaped his lips. The mainstream media, which once enjoyed telling us what an amiable dunce Reagan was, are now in full beatification mode, with wall-to-wall sound-bite sentimentalism redolent of Princess Di's mourn-fest. Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but Reagan's posthumous second act as media darling is proving...

In his article "A Class War" Victor Davis Hanson paints the picture that General William T. Sherman and his army were fighting a war of equality. He seems to think average "agrarian" men of the northern states, were so inspired they would lay down their tools, leave their families and join the Union army to invade the Southern States on a campaign of social equality. Hanson states Sherman's objective was "freeing the unfree and humiliating the arrogant." This is a nicely packaged version of history that reads well, though historically inaccurate.The Draft - Yankees RiotSupport for invading the South was...

As gas prices rise at home, scream that the war abroad was fought to steal Iraqi oil and get American hands on cheap petroleum. Talk about American imperialism and hegemony while the United States spends billions of dollars to implant democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. Claim that the United States has destabilized the Middle East as its troops leave Saudi Arabia, Libya gives up its WMD arsenal, Iran suddenly worries about UN inspections, and Pakistan begins to reveal its former Islamic felonies. Watch columnists and pundits who advocated war, who applauded the three-week toppling of Saddam Hussein, and were convinced...

Selma, Calif. – Pictures of American military police humiliating and, in some cases, allegedly torturing Iraqi prisoners in Saddam's old Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad now flash across the world. "The Shame!," Egyptian papers blare out at the sight of a pyramid of contorted naked males amid a smiling female GI. Various human-rights organizations in the Arab World, we are told, are about to condemn formally such barbarism. Good. These seemingly inhuman acts are indeed serious stuff. They also raise a host of dilemmas for the U.S. — from the pragmatic to the idealistic. We must insist on a higher...

Lovin’ Europe by Leavin’ It is past time for our 60-year-old European child to move out of the house and get a life. One of the most misleading fables about this present struggle is that, since 9/11, we have squandered European good will through arrogance and our "unilateral" operations in Iraq. The controversy over the U.N., the debate about Old and New Europe, the French-German anti-American axis — they are not so much reactions to what we have done as they are expressions of a pre-existing and very unhealthy relationship that was already eroding well before September 11. The envisioned...

<p>DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- With her sparkling blue eyes, wispy eyelashes and demure smile, Hertz is the center of attention wherever she goes.</p> <p>If you're lucky enough to meet her, try to ignore the tangle of wires slinking from behind her face. If you speak with her, talk slowly and loudly. And no matter what you say, don't be offended if she looks at you blankly and repeatedly asks, "What did you say?"</p>

There was a time, not so long ago, when we Americans understood that newcomers did not need to be taught in their own language in our schools. Even less did we believe that their children required special classes in ethnic pride or separate, race-based college graduation ceremonies. The very idea that a national lobbying group would call itself La Raza (The Race)—and have slogans such as: “For La Raza everything; for those outside La Raza, nothing”—would have seemed to us shocking, even chilling. We believed in American civic education for immigrants, which, combined with intermarriage, integration and popular culture, led...

There are certain predictable symptoms to watch when a widespread amorality begins to infect a postmodern society: cultural relativism, atheism, socialism, utopian pacifism. Another sign, of course, is fashionable anti-Semitism among the educated, or the idea that some imaginary cabal, or some stealthy agenda — certainly not our own weakness — is conspiring to threaten our good life. Well apart from the spooky placards (stars of David juxtaposed with swastikas, posters calling for the West Bank to be expanded to "the sea") that we are accustomed to seeing at the marches of the supposedly ethical antiwar movement, we have also...

Talk, yell, spin, flip, back peddle — so America's elite pundits endlessly regurgitate the debate over Iraq. Most are terrified that last week's gloomy prognosis will be proven foolish by this week's relative absence of bombings — only in turn to be shown prescient by next week's turmoil. Those talking heads who gushed "We are all neoconservatives now" last April now slur "Mr. Bush's War," forecasting doom and perpetual "quagmire." The only constant is that they will probably proclaim themselves to be Wilsonians a year from now when Iraq is calmed down and a consensual government established there. Yet while...

Various Syrian foreign ministers, speaking on behalf of a recognized terrorist state, recently warned Israel for fostering "instability" throughout the region by taking out the supposedly empty infrastructure of a killers' training base on Syrian soil. Eliminating such a haven is now deemed inflammatory; habitually blowing up innocent children in Haifa is accepted as pretty much normal business in the Middle East. Occupy an entire country like Lebanon and the world snores, but bomb a terrorist camp and it snarls. Still, for all the bluster on spec, the "Arab world" is not sure it wishes to send its jets to...

The objectives and methods of the terrorists and ambushers in Iraq are not hard to fathom. Their strategy is twofold. First, if each week they can kill five to six Americans, along with inflicting a few million dollars in damage, they hope to weaken public opinion here at home to such a degree that we might precipitously withdraw and leave a Lebanonized Iraq to the law of the jungle: bad for everyone else, good for them. The drop in support for the war in public-opinion polls here suggests that this is not a far-fetched premise — especially when, in an...