Free Republic

News accounts are spotty; emotions run high; reliable information is rare; rumor abounds. Nevertheless, what are we to make of Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan’s horrific rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, where in cold-blooded fashion he murdered 12, and wounded at least 31? I think on the one hand we will see the familiar therapeutic exegesis, in which we hear of traumatic stress syndrome, justified and principled opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars, generic mental illness, anger at being deployed overseas, or maltreatment from fellow soldiers due to his Muslim faith and various other efforts to “contextualize” the violence. (I...

Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform. Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as "un-American." And recently the Obama administration stripped the federal authority of Arizona's controversial Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, to make immigration arrests. Yet expect the public to oppose any so-called comprehensive immigration reform even more vehemently than it did George W. Bush's 2007 doomed proposals. Why? Conditions on the ground have changed drastically in the last two years. First, the nation's unemployment is now over 9%. It...

I am re-posting because I provided the incorrect URL for National Review. Sorry about that.

October 23, 2009, 4:00 a.m. America’s Obama ObsessionAnatomy of a passing hysteria. By Victor Davis Hanson For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell. But like all trances, the fit is passing, and we the patient are beginning to appreciate how the stupor came upon us, why it lifted, and what its consequences have been. HOW OBAMA WONBarack Obama was elected rather easily because, in perfect-storm fashion, five separate trends coalesced last autumn. 1) Obama was eloquent, young, charismatic...

Sorta, Kinda, Maybe Diplomacy Soon we will get everything on the official transcripts and websites scrubbed down to read: Guantanamo really will close on March 1, 2010; Iran must comply this time by June 1, 2010; all combat brigades will be out by March 2008, 2009, 2010; health care must pass by August, September, October, November. Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50. The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that. The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion. Unemployment may...

October 22, 2009, 0:00 a.m. The Kitty-Cat Who RoaredThe loud reformer Obama himself proves even emptier in his promises than Bush. By Victor Davis Hanson President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion — only later to meow like a little kitty. Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year? The clock ticks — and Guantanamo isn’t close to being shut down. It once was easy for candidate Obama to deplore George W. Bush’s supposed gulag. Now it proves harder to decide between...

I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either. Shut up and see a movie? Take Hollywood protocol—make a big movie, hype it, show it...

Saturday, October 17, 2009 Now We Know Why He Passed on the Dalai Lama   [Victor Davis Hanson] I am not a big fan of saying that officials should resign for stupid remarks. But interim White House communications director Anita Dunn's praise of Mao Zedong as a "political philosopher" is so unhinged and morally repugnant, that she should hang it up, pronto. Mao killed anywhere from 50 million to 70 million innocents in the initial cleansing of Nationalists, the scouring of the countryside, the failed Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Tibet, and the internal Chinese gulag. Dunn's praise of a...

Norway stunned the world by awarding the coveted Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama, who was nominated for the honor after being in office less than two weeks. But the award is in keeping with Europeans' behavior over these first nine months of Obama's presidency. They've gone gaga over the guy. In return, however, their crush is not quite being reciprocated. Obama did his best to avoid British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the recent G-20 summit. The tabloids in Britain still whine about the tawdry gifts the cool Obama gave Brown when he came to Washington earlier this year....

Part of the problem with the president’s agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted, rather than proven. His experts and the elites assure us of a reality that most people in their own more mundane lives have not found to be true. In short, they may find Obama personally engaging, but they no longer believe what he says. Take cap-and-trade legislation. We are asked to endanger an already-weak U.S. economy with a series of incentives and punishments to discourage the use of carbon-based fuels, with which — whether shale, natural gas, coal,...

Norway is a tiny country that was born lucky. It is weak and defenseless (and was quickly overrun in World War II [while neighboring, neutral Sweden sold the Third Reich 40% of its iron ore, that went for everything from Tiger tanks to kill Americans to the ovens at Auschwitz—with free shipping across the Baltic included as a favor]. In the late 1940s it would have been Finlandized during the Cold War, if not for American-led NATO. And the world’s largest military is still pledged to its defense, in case any of the nations, to whose icons it bestows awards,...

I think most Americans were rooting for Chicago. As I wrote on NRO’s corner, I know I was. But Rio had a really convincing hope and change/ multicultural/new guy on the block case. And consider: given the recent bad windy city publicity (You Tube beatings, state and city corruption, Blagoism, Daley ward mobsterism, rumors of pre-Olympic wheeling and dealing on land angles, administration Chicago hard-ball Rahm Emanuel/David Axelrod politics, etc.), Chicago, Illinois ,was seen abroad as less competitive, far less competitive, than the other cities. I think almost any fair-minded neutral judge could grasp how those realities were going to...

One can understand an American president’s lobbying for an American city to obtain the Olympics, but the blitz by the Obamas proved a PR nightmare. Let us count the ways: 1) Obama’s brand is trans-nationalism and an “America is not exceptional” multiculturalism. According to his worldview, it makes sense that a South American country — especially a powerful, ascendant country such as Brazil — should at last have its turn at hosting the Olympics. It did not seem consistent that a politician who had reached out to the Castros, Chávez, Morales, and Ortega, in parochial fashion, would lobby for his...

How to distill the news? After watching it far too much the past nine months, I offer five random conclusions from what I think is going on in the age of Obama.1. Disconnect. There is little semblance between how one lives and how one envisions others should live. We saw that with the cabinet nominees. Tom Daschle, cheating on the taxes on his free limousine service, was the obvious caricature of someone who likes the high life, has found a way through tribuneship to get it, and makes so much money that he easily has enough money to pay for the...

War II ThoughtsWe can learn a lot about our present dilemmas through looking at the past. This month I’m teaching an intensive class on World War II, and again reminded how history is never really history. One lesson: do not judge past decisions by present considerations or post facto wisdom from a Western point of view, but understand them given the knowledge and thinking of the times from an enemy perspective.We ridicule the disastrous Japanese decision to go to war against the American colossus on December 7, 1941. But that correct analysis enjoys the benefit of hindsight, and does not...

Where to begin with the “surprise” announcement of a second, previously undisclosed “nuclear facility”? Some thoughts: (1) This is Iran’s answer to the Obama video peace offensive. This summer we kept quiet while thousands went into the streets of Tehran to protest brutality and a rigged election — just so that Obama’s much-heralded peace offensive, planned for October, could showcase his transnational diplomatic charisma. I think all that brilliance has just been preempted by the theocracy, which quite understandably concluded that Obama not only would not support democratic dissidents in the new “reset button” era, but was increasingly desperate, as...

Bitter Harvests to Come   [Victor Davis Hanson] If one were to sum up the Obama speech, it is the same old, same old formula: "I am a uniquely post-American fresh start; the era of Bush and our dreadful past is over; and because this is our moment, you, the world, owe me attention and support for my redefining America more to your tastes."The problem with all this is endless: (1) most existing problems predated Bush and transcended him, as Obama is discovering with Iran, radical Islam in America, North Korea, Russia, etc.; (2) By separating himself from the past, Obama sends...

Nearly a quarter-million acres worth of contracted federal irrigation deliveries have been cut from the big farms of the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in central California. The water in large part is being diverted to the salty San Francisco Bay and the delta to improve marine ecology. The result of the cutbacks is that many crops in the San Joaquin Valley have gone unplanted. Farm income is down. Thousands of farm laborers are unemployed. Growers and workers are now livid at environmentalists, federal bureaucrats, and judges for worrying more about fish than about people and food growing....

Little Green What? Some bloggers sent me postings the other day about Charles Johnson’s Little Green Footballs website, and suggested that the site has changed—as in flipped sides. I have not followed the controversy, but I once rode a bike down in LA for an afternoon with Johnson and found him both a serious and bright guy with all sorts of original ideas about radical Islam and the anti-Enlightenment dangers it posed. Out of curiosity I went to the site today. All I discovered different was a change in emphasis, but not necessarily attitude. He still is strongly anti-jihad; the...

The World’s PresidentThe President’s UN* talk was more of the same, same old formula: Me, me, me / then Bush blew it / then I came /and, presto, the waters parted.There is no need to listen to these speeches anymore: Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentleman: it is my honor to address you for the first time as the forty-fourth President of the United States. I come before you humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me; mindful of the enormous challenges of our moment in history; and determined to act boldly and...

Our commander-in-chief seems to think he’s president of the University of America. ---- If you are confused by the first nine months of the Obama administration, take solace that there is at least a pattern. The president, you see, thinks America is a university and that he is our campus president. Keep that in mind, and almost everything else makes sense. Obama went to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard without much of a break, taught at the University of Chicago, and then surrounded himself with academics, first in his stint at community organizing and then when he went into politics. It...

I just read the charges of Bob Herbert, the New York Times columnist, who now swears racism fuels anger at the Obama new deal. He even cites the Kenney assassination as dire warning. But, wait—JFK was killed, as the Warren Report detailed, by a pro-Soviet, Fair Play for Cuba Marxist. Bob Hebert himself not long ago alleged on television that a McCain ad was abjectly racist because it had two supposed phallic symbols in the background: those Freudian bogeymen, the leaning tower of Pisa and the Washington Monument. The racists in the McCain campaign, Herbert swore, used subliminal imagery to...

Policies no, Obama maybe…Barack Obama is charismatic. He can charm, and has mastered the art of set cadence, pause, articulation, and voice modulation, in the manner of a JFK.  He has appeared on television far more in nine months than have prior presidents in an entire administration. But his problem is that his policies—cap and trade, nationalized health care, $2 trillion deficits, fringe-politics czars, therapeutic foreign policies, etc.—poll below 50 percent. So his advisors quite understandably  assume that by sheer magnetism Obama can still sell the public a product they doubt—sort of like GM’s top salesman thinking he can sell...

September 18, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Dr. Barack and Mr. ObamaThe backlash is sharp as voters learn that Obama is not the man they thought he was. By Victor Davis Hanson No one imagined that Barack Obama, during his first nine months in office, would be falling in the polls even faster than George W. Bush did prior to 9/11. We all knew what Obama’s weaknesses were as he came into office — a lack of experience in foreign affairs, little knowledge of how private business works, and poor judgment concerning the extremist company he had kept in the past. But...

It is strange to see Democrats and their supporters persist in their efforts — indeed, even intensify them — to equate Obama's failing legislative initiatives, his dive in the polls, and the rise of protests against him with racism. Polls reveal that it is not just a losing tactic, but an enormously self-destructive one for Democrats. To make the argument, they would have to prove three points. And so far they have not even come close: 1) Uniquely vicious? Is the anger against Obama different from what we have seen leveled against presidents in the past? Americans not only know...

In the wake of Joe Wilson's crude outburst, many network commentators (and Jimmy Carter, of course) are weighing in on the new racism that supposedly explains 1) rising opposition to Obamacare and 2) the president's sinking polls. I think this is a disastrous political move to save a health-care plan that simply has not appealed to a majority of Americans. I suspect it will result in another 5-point poll slide. To prove their charge, those who allege racism would have to show empirically that the present angry rhetoric eclipses what was said about and done to Bush. It does not...

It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.) to scream, “You lie!” at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama’s recent health-care speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn’t have an authentic U.S. birth certificate clearly come off as unhinged — much like just-resigned White House green-jobs czar Van Jones does for having signed his name to a petition stating that the Bush administration may have allowed the 9/11 murders of 3,000 people to happen. During his speech the other night, the president calmly called for a new...

urn to tennis and we see this week a pathetic Serena Williams in a profanity-ridden rant, because she is being beaten badly on the court and apparently cannot handle the self-induced humiliation, and so goes ballistic over an apparently bad call. I am sure she would have preferred, as in the past, the racist- to the profanity-card, had not the targeted umpire herself been a person of color. Of course, John McEnroe, Ilie Natase and Jimmy Connors set the present low standards in tennis. Ms. Williams is only following in their ends-justify-the-means footsteps. In about a week, her father will...

Maureen Dowd wrote another unfortunate, poorly argued, and thinly researched column yesterday. She alleges that racism is behind the growing suspicion of the Obama administration and its initiatives. But almost everything we've seen so far has a parallel with liberal attacks on George W. Bush. By 2005, Democrats were booing him openly during his State of the Union address. Rep. Pete Stark called him a liar on the House floor. In fact, the response so far to Obama is mild in comparison to what Bush endured. That does not excuse the boorishness of Joe Wilson, but his tirade is symbolic...

Our National 9/11 Schizophrenia The great debate over 9/11 and the American response — is it coming to an end? By Victor Davis Hanson Ninety-six months ago, 19 Islamic terrorists — led by Mohamed Atta, organized by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and ordered by Osama bin Laden — hijacked four American airliners. They destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and murdered 2,974 people. The al-Qaeda–planned attack was the most lethal on the American homeland in our history. In response, the United States quickly attacked and removed the Taliban government that had offered sanctuary to the killers. About 15 months...

Van Jones is the latest romantic, pseudo-revolutionary surrounding Obama to carve out a capitalist career in the field of duping liberals. New Communiqué from the Ministry of TruthAt one point, the Obama administration was bragging about bagging one Van Jones; Valerie Jarrett, in fact, even gushed that they had been scouting the erstwhile mostly unknown Jones for quite a while. The word czar was employed of his new responsibilities, and we were subsequently lectured that “over $80 million” in stimulus money was going to be under Jones’s control—given his innovative “green jobs” approach that married civil rights with radical...

Very quickly, as his subsequent career attests in a variety of “organizing” jobs, Van Jones discovered that he could tease and provoke white liberals by posing as some sort of wild (but actually quite safe) revolutionary figure who would call America an “apartheid” system, or dream of a “redistribution of wealth” or praise the advantages of social revolution through hip hop music (”I don’t believe the true power of the people can be confined to a ballot box…We need to be about the whup-ass. Somebody’s f***in up somewhere… They have names and job descriptions. You have to be creative about...

Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama — black, young, eloquent, and hip — soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. What a contrast with the tongue-tied outgoing president, George W. Bush, and his unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Presidential Candidate Obama sensed their ecstasy, and so he made two great promises: 1. Whatever Bush was, he would not be, and 2. despite the right-wing slander about his former intimacy with Bill Ayers, the Reverend Wright, Father Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, and all his other old Chicago radical friends, Obama would be a...

The Second World War — 70 Years Later Did any good come from such a monstrous bloodletting? By Victor Davis Hanson Seventy years ago this week, on Sept. 1, 1939, the Second World War broke out with the German invasion of Poland. Thousands of books have been written about the war. And by now revisionist historians of revisionist historians engage in an endless cycle of disagreement over why the war started, how it ended, and what it all meant. Here are a few more controversial thoughts on the horrific conflict that killed 60 million people, wrecked Europe, and set the...

By 1930 Verdun had been transmogrified almost into a dirty word in French schools. Throughout the late 1920s, the First World War was increasingly reinterpreted in the West as a futile bloodletting. International “Merchants of Death” and greedy capitalists, not the Kaiser’s aggressive Prussian militarism, were now seen as the true causes of that recent horrific war. A punitive Versailles Treaty — and not the failure to invade, occupy, democratize, monitor, and transform a defeated Germany — was seen as the real mistake on the part of the victors. Britain and France all but disarmed. The Maginot defensive line, England’s...

Means and Ends in the Age of Obama One of the stranger things about this eerie first eight months of the Obama administration is how brazenly its supporters have been about the noble ends justifying the disreputable means. Taxes for Thee Take taxes. I thought the mantra was that the Bush tax cuts — equal percentages of cuts to all involved, an even greater number of households excused from the tax rolls altogether — were supposed to be cruel and proof of conservative selfishness. Candidate Obama once in an interview seemed to agree that greater revenue ensued for the federal...

Means and Ends in the Age of ObamaOne of the stranger things about this eerie first eight months of the Obama administration is how brazenly its supporters have been about the noble ends justifying the disreputable means.Taxes for TheeTake taxes. I thought the mantra was that the Bush tax cuts — equal percentages of cuts to all involved, an even greater number of households excused from the tax rolls altogether — were supposed to be cruel and proof of conservative selfishness.Candidate Obama once in an interview seemed to agree that greater revenue ensued for the federal treasury, but he felt...

America will pay for Ted Kennedy's legacy.--- By now almost everyone has weighed in on the legacy of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who passed away this week after a year-long struggle with a cancerous brain tumor. Liberals eulogized that Kennedy's legislative legacy is unquestioned and has now transcended partisan bickering. In their postmortem acclamations, Kennedy was recognized as a larger-than-life senator who charmed his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle for nearly a half-century, while astutely pushing through legislation aimed at protecting the weaker, the poorer, minorities and the most vulnerable through constant expansion of federal entitlements and civil...

August 27, 2009, 0:00 a.m. War — What War?We have public confusion about both wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. By Victor Davis Hanson The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed this week to Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC’s Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Tex. Now he says, with a sigh, of her recent anti-Obama efforts, “Enough already.� The war in Iraq is scarcely in the news any longer, despite the fact that 141,000 American soldiers are still protecting...

The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed to Martha's Vineyard this week, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC's Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Texas. Now he says, with a sigh, of her recent anti-Obama efforts, "Enough already." The war in Iraq is scarcely in the news any longer, despite the fact that 141,000 American soldiers are still protecting the fragile Iraqi democracy, and 114, as of this writing, have been lost this year in that effort. But after the success of...

....We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged. Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier,...

The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed this week to Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC’s Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Tex. Now he says, with a sigh, of her recent anti-Obama efforts, “Enough already.” The war in Iraq is scarcely in the news any longer, despite the fact that 141,000 American soldiers are still protecting the fragile Iraqi democracy, and 114, as of this writing, have been lost this year in that effort. But after the success of...

Many of Obama's problems are in the future. Aside from the rendezvous he has with mega-deficits, rallying support for Afghanistan, health care, selling cap-and-trade in the Senate, etc., there is a more fundamental problem with Obama's modus operandi itself. I don't think he will any longer be able to "hope and change" his way out of tomorrow's controversies with mere rhetorical flourishes, since he has already exhausted his capital of credibility, and squandered his "this is our moment" trust. Watch the faces of the press corps and the town-hall throngs when he evades, and instead starts in with the cadences:...

August 26, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Obama and ‘Redistributive Change’Forget the recession and the “uninsured.” Obama has bigger fish to fry. By Victor Davis Hanson The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt? Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence? Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious? But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making. Take increased federal spending and the...

The Tingle is Gone? [Victor Davis Hanson] Many of Obama's problems are in the future. Aside from the rendezvous he has with mega-deficits, rallying support for Afghanistan, health care, selling cap-and-trade in the Senate, etc., there is a more fundamental problem with Obama's modus operandi itself. I don't think he will any longer be able to "hope and change" his way out of tomorrow's controversies with mere rhetorical flourishes, since he has already exhausted his capital of credibility, and squandered his "this is our moment" trust. Watch the faces of the press corps and the town-hall throngs when he evades,...

Forget the recession and the "uninsured." Obama has bigger fish to fry.If we believe that Obama is trying to end the recession or fix the health-care system, we’ll miss his real agenda. The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt? Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence? Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious? But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of...

Actions often have unforeseen consequences. Throughout the campaign and the first few months of the new administration, Barack Obama adopted a number of personas and positions that only now may be coming back to haunt him. Or in the words of the right Reverend Wright the proverbial “chickens are coming home to roost.”1. The WarsObama and the Democrats once understandably figured that the war in Afghanistan was nearly won (between 2002-5 fewer of our soldiers were dying in an entire year there than in a single bloody month in Iraq), while (to quote Harry Reid) Iraq was already “lost.” Obama,...

I don't think President Obama will stop his freefall for a while for a variety of reasons, but most telling is that the proposed medicines are worse than the raging disease. He is losing large slices of independents, moderate Republicans, and conservative Democrats who fear his polarizing attempts to transform America. At precisely the same time, his left-wing base is hectoring him to get even more self-destructively statist — as if proposed record tax hikes, corporate and bank takeovers, socialized medicine, cap and trade, race/class/gender agenda appointments, serial apologies abroad, and a $2 trillion annual deficit just didn't cut it....

HH: Joined now by Victor Davis Hanson, eminent classicist, historian and welcome guest on the Hugh Hewitt Show. You can read all of Victor’s pieces at www.victorhanson.com. Professor Hanson, welcome back, always a pleasure to have you. VDH: Thank you for having me, Hugh. HH: What do you make of the unraveling of the government plan/private option that President Obama has been selling as the centerpiece of his health care? VDH: Well, he didn’t know what it was himself, and he wasn’t able to articulate it in a concise manner. And most people felt that it had just as much...

The Obama Meltdown—Symptoms/Diagnosis/Prognosis Strange things are happening to the Obama administration and quickly so. His polls are diving and may not stop at 50/50, the most precipitous drop in approval of a first-year President since Bill Clinton in 1993 (cf. Hillary care). First, here are some of the problems the President faces: Symptoms and Diagnosis 1) Health Care. Health-care take overs and socialized medicine have terrified not just the right and conservatives, but the elderly of all persuasions who fear their shaky Medicare funds will be diverted to Obama’s new plans. In short, they believe their care will be rationed...