Victor Davis Hanson: Why the Ancient Greeks Are Important

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The Two Californias

I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Victor Davis Hanson has a very descriptive piece at NRO about conditions in and around his home in Selma, CA which is very near Fresno. A lot of the three pages is just matter of fact narrative that describes the physical and socio-cultural and economic conditions in the area. I lived three years in Bakersfield, just one hundred miles south of this area during the time I was in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Then I spent the three and a half years I was in high school just about sixty miles south west of Hanson’s home. I graduated from Coalinga High School in 1966. In those days this was a vibrant area. Most of the fields were planted in cotton back then. There was also plenty of cattle farming as well as many, many oil wells. I found it depressing to read Hanson’s description since the area plainly gone to hell in a hand basket. VDH seems to feel that illegal immigration has been a scourge to the area. He does not blame the immigrants. It is more that it is diagnostic of what has gone wrong with California. Liberal PC, ‘nonjudgmental’ nanny state foolishness asks too little of itself and everyone else. So little responsible behavior is expected and received of anyone that everything slowly comes apart from its own weight. It is unfortunate since the area was once beautiful and productive.
I feel the need to quote these two paragraphs entire since they are pregnant with meaning about both the course of the last forty plus years and the DREAM Act.

"I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.
"So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?" 

Victor Davis Hanson Questions Obama's Political Past

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Victor Davis Hanson Political Correctness - A God That Failed?

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Victor Davis Hanson Questions Obama's Political Past

This is from almost a year ago. The MSM continues to feign ignorance and these basic questions have not been faced by most Americans.

A Discussion with Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson

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This is an excellent podcast. It starts out a little slow with discussion of health care legislation. But there is also discussion of when or if we can expect taxes to stop increasing. There's a little primer on how to read a NYT editorial. A bit on the condescension or the Obamabots. Steyn shares that national health services employees in Canada and the UK do not talk to you about your physical problem but will rather give you explanations of how or wether you fit the bureauacracy's needs. There is the unsettling fact that as is always the case with socialist health care there will be a two tier system in which the politically privileged will have no rules or quotas applied to their care and everyone else will slowly have covered servises decreasing to save cash. There are also passing observations from VDH on the never ending farm subsidy rip off.
Here's a link to the site, Ricochet podcasts. There is also one with John Yoo on this page. I have not listened to it yet. But I am looking forward to it.

Victor Davis Hanson on the Latest Leftie Hypocrisy

Two quotes from Hanson today at NRO:

"The subtext is really one of class — right-wing radio talk-show hosts, Glenn Beck idiots, and crass tea-party yokels are foaming at the mouth and dangerous to progressives. In contrast, write a book in which you muse about killing George Bush, and its Knopf imprint proves it is merely sophisticated literary speculation; do a docudrama about killing George Bush, and it will win a Toronto film prize for its artistic value rather than shock from the liberal community about over-the-top discourse."
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"So here we are with the age-old problem that once one destroys decorum for the sake of short-term expediency, it is very hard to restore it in any credible fashion on grounds of principle when the proverbial shoe is on the other foot. A modest suggestion: If the liberal community wishes to be more credible in its concern about contemporary extremist anti-administration rhetoric, then they might try the following: “Please, let us avoid extremism and do not fall into the same trap as Baker, Chait, Keillor, Gore, Moore, or Range when they either expressed open hatred toward their president, or speculated about the assassination of their president, or compared their president to a fascist. We must disown such extremism, past and present.""

Barack Obama As Tragic Hero Who Can Never Understand What he Most Needs To Understand Before It Is Too Late

This is from Victor Davis Hanson's most recent piece at Pajamas Media. I was tipped to this by reading Pundit and Pundette. The whole thing is worth the time. I will reproduce below a few of the best paragraphs.

"We shall never hear it, but there are hundreds of Democratic operatives who even now are concluding that Obama blew it: with ratings near 70%, with large majorities in Congress, with conservatives in disarray, all he had to do was show a modicum of fiscal sanity, do a bipartisan showy health care fix, praise Bush for the surge or keeping us safe for 7 years, and in general cease talking about himself, giving nonstop interviews, apologizing, and sermonizing. Had he done all that, he could have been as successful as Reagan or Clinton in neutralizing the opposition.
"But in tragedy most recognition comes after, not before, the fall.
"In other words, Democrats are starting to get wise to what Obama has wrought — and many fear not merely that he has the ability to take them down with him, but in fact doesn’t much care about them if he does.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"If in the past “hope and change” rhetoric bedazzled a college dean or philanthropist, why would he cease now since he believes that both the electorate and the world at large are as gullible to his charms as the university/community-organizing crowd was in the past?
"In short, he can no more stop than could all-knowing Oedipus."

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*************** U P D A T E S **************************

Doctor Zero at HotAir.com's Green Room has a quick review of the facts about Obama that are new to you if you have stuck by the MSM but which would have been well know to you if you freequent talk radio, the internet and Fox News.

John F. Gaski has a piece at American Thinker called 'Understanding the Democrats' Scheme' that lays out some of the scary moves we might be seeing in the near future from Obama and company.

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama's MegaProblem

This is from NRO Thursday, March 20, 2008

Obama's Mega-problem by Victor Davis Hanson

Whence Obama's problems? It is not that he believes in the venom of Rev. Wright, or that when he says something stupid like a "typical white person" he means to imply a stereotyped distasteful race. He doesn't.

The problem is instead the environment that he heretofore has navigated in — prep school, the Ivy League, the regional identity politics of Chicago, or Illinois liberalism — is hardly representative of his own country. So what he can say among sympathizers and friends will not be excused or contextualized by average others who don't know him and won't give him the latitude he is accustomed to and apparently has counted on.

He and Michelle have no doubt rebuked sympathetic elite white audiences, and by both their presence and purse have let it be known that they consider the Rev. Wright's rhetoric tolerable, but they have no idea that the vast majority of Americans that they heretofore have rarely come into contact with are a far different audience, and find the Obamas both more privileged than themselves and undeserving of any more of a pass than any others.

The irony is that like proverbial rarified whites, who have voiced racialist remarks beyond the club, and who have rightly caught hell for the perceived bias, the Obamas suffer from that same blinkered existence and narrow associations that make the extreme seem accustomed and normal.

When he praises Rev. Wright he sounds like he is from Mars — but hasn't a clue that he does. And so like a deer in the headlights Obama keeps waiting for a black precinct captain or a Columbia professor to come to the rescue and explain — ever more clueless that even if they did, it wouldn't matter a bit.

Jane Q. Moonbat Can Never Forgive Sarah Palin for Being 'Inelegant'

"And if you are to have scandals in your trailer-park family, let them be elegant ones — cf. Ted Kennedy, Ted, Kennedy, Jr., Michael Kennedy, William Kennedy Smith, David Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and their assorted sins such as drug convictions, drug overdoses, serial sexual predations, loss of life, etc. — At least sin and quote Niebuhr, or discuss alleviation of the sin in Palm Beach or Hyannis Port."
Victor Davis Hanson might say that Sarah Palin will not be forgiven by the lefties just because of her lifestyle. It is social class profiling. They don't really care if SP makes mistakes. But they cannot forgive her for looking for moral guidance in the Bible instead of Reinhold Niebuhr. It's OK to dispose of all the inconvenient lovers you want but be sure to do the deed at Chappaquiddick and do it with class.

h/t: Pundit and Pundette sent me to the piece by VDH

V. D. Hanson-- In Defense of Liberty (3 of 6)-- Utopian Pacifism and the Dangers of Leisure

Victor Davis Hanson - In Defense Of Liberty (1 of 6)

Victor Davis Hanson: Where the University Went Wrong

Some of the reasons why universities are often called socialist reservations. And he makes a great case for an old fashioned liberal arts education, which wins my heart every time.

Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens Discuss World War II

Fine program that explores the moral and strategic choices of WWII and the lead up to it. It also examines the wisdom of the US involvement in Yugoslavia in the '90s as well as the invasion of Iraq.

Victor Davis Hanson: A War Like No Other *** Plus Comments on Elitism and Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin, Victim of Elitism? - Victor Davis Hanson

Victor David Hanson ** Discusses His Life and History

I was fascinated by his stories of his youth. I went to high school sixty miles from his high school. He is about fifteen years younger and much better educated than I am.
At about 35 minutes there are some observations on suicide bombers based on his researches about the battle of Okinawa.

What Victor Davis Hanson Said About Obama

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Obama's Mega-problem by Victor Davis Hanson

Whence Obama's problems? It is not that he believes in the venom of Rev. Wright, or that when he says something stupid like a "typical white person" he means to imply a stereotyped distasteful race. He doesn't.

The problem is instead the environment that he heretofore has navigated in — prep school, the Ivy League, the regional identity politics of Chicago, or Illinois liberalism — is hardly representative of his own country. So what he can say among sympathizers and friends will not be excused or contextualized by average others who don't know him and won't give him the latitude he is accustomed to and apparently has counted on.

He and Michelle have no doubt rebuked sympathetic elite white audiences, and by both their presence and purse have let it be known that they consider the Rev. Wright's rhetoric tolerable, but they have no idea that the vast majority of Americans that they heretofore have rarely come into contact with are a far different audience, and find the Obamas both more privileged than themselves and undeserving of any more of a pass than any others.

The irony is that like proverbial rarified whites, who have voiced racialist remarks beyond the club, and who have rightly caught hell for the perceived bias, the Obamas suffer from that same blinkered existence and narrow associations that make the extreme seem accustomed and normal.

When he praises Rev. Wright he sounds like he is from Mars — but hasn't a clue that he does. And so like a deer in the headlights Obama keeps waiting for a black precinct captain or a Columbia professor to come to the rescue and explain — ever more clueless that even if they did, it wouldn't matter a bit.




I got this from National Review Online   http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTYwMDkzZDUxZGExN2VmMzI5ZmQ3MmNlZTA3ZGM1NmY    where I was sent 
via a link from Hot Air.
I had posted something along those lines in the comments on Hot Air.  But I didn't say it so well.  VDH is always worth reading.
Obama has not yet been willing to submit to questioning from anyone who does not worship him and his ethnic specialness.  To become president he is going to have prove that he can talk to someone in a setting he doesn't control.  Can he do so  successfully?  All we know at this point is that he doesn't want to.   But if he can't handle Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity we can't trust him to deal with Putin, 
Ahmadinejad or other world leaders who 
will take his Ivy League sense of entitlement and manipulate the hell out of him.