Free Republic

August 20, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Divine Debt Trumps AllThe U.S. is broke and its ability to borrow ever more trillions of dollars is ending. By Victor Davis Hanson In Greek mythology, even Olympian gods and heroes were subject to a higher divine power known loosely as “fate� — an allotted moira, or destiny, that could not be changed even by thunderbolt-throwing Zeus. In modern America, debt — whether national, state, or trade — now plays the same overarching role as the ancient Greek notion of fate. And the president, Congress, and the states for all their various agendas are...

We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack Obama was to be the new FDR and his radical agenda an even better New Deal. What happened,...

What Went Wrong Piling up debt, gaffes, and hypocrisy, Obama & Co. are sinking. By Victor Davis Hanson We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack...

We are witnessing one of the more rapid turnabouts in recent American political history. President Obama’s popularity has plummeted to 50 percent and lower in some polls, while the public expresses even less confidence in the Democratic-led Congress and the direction of the country at large. Yet, just eight months ago, liberals were talking in Rovian style about a new generation to come of progressive politics — and the end of both the Republican party and the legacy of Reaganism itself. Barack Obama was to be the new FDR and his radical agenda an even better New Deal. What happened,...

Ironies abound in the health-care debate. Bush was pilloried by the Obamanians for (1) not planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq; and (2) not being able to articulate the ends and means of the administration’s war. Yet in the hubris of high ratings, Obama apparently felt that he neither had to present a comprehensive finished blueprint of health-care reform, nor that he or his associates should have to sum it up succinctly and clearly. The result is that most Americans not only do not know what the administration plan is, but sense that their president does not either. Health...

In George Orwell’s allegorical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the picture of “Big Brother” appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The “Ministry of Truth” swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania. In Orwell’s Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers “Newspeak” — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. “Doublethink” means you can believe at the same time...

In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania. In Orwell's Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers "Newspeak" — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. "Doublethink" means you can believe at the same time...

After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different their form of socialism is, and yet how closely it resembles the model that Obama seeks for America. The vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower (The government taxes you to pay for things like “free” college, so you won’t have much to spend on antisocial things like your Wal-Mart plastic Christmas Tree or your second K-Mart plasma TV.) Mass transit is frequent and cheap, but often crowded...

In George Orwell’s allegorical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the picture of “Big Brother” appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The “Ministry of Truth” swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania. In Orwell’s Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers “Newspeak” — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. “Doublethink” means you can believe at the same time...

The more Europe professes to be egalitarian, the more cynical and conniving the people have become. After concluding another 16 days in Europe. I am again reminded how different their form of socialism  is, and yet how closely it resembles the model that Obama seeks for America. The vast majority of citizens lives in apartments, even in smaller towns and villages. Cars are tiny. Prices are higher than in the states; income is lower (The government taxes you to pay for things like “free” college, so you won’t have much to spend on antisocial things like your Wal-Mart plastic...

Why does President Obama want to implement all at once radical changes in American foreign policy, environmental policy, education, health care and the tax code? The answer is easy: If he does not achieve these initiatives soon, he never will. Almost none of Obama's proposed policies any longer enjoy majority support among voters — and many of them were not clearly outlined to voters during the campaign. Current polls show more Americans are against than in favor of his version of health care reform. Nearly seven in 10 are wary of government takeovers of the economy, like the bank and...

I confess that when I first read Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, first learned in depth about Trinity Church and its tirades about “black middle classness”, first studied the modus operandi of Obama’s state legislative campaigns and the mysterious implosions of both his primary and general election senatorial foes—all this belatedly in late 2006 and early 2007—I had little hope that he would prove to be anything other than the fossilized angry liberal that he is sadly proving to be. But I erred in one key regard: I assumed his prepped oratory, youth and “cool”, transracial...

Why does President Obama want to implement all at once radical changes in American foreign policy, environmental policy, education, health care and the tax code? The answer is easy: If he does not achieve these initiatives soon, he never will. Almost none of Obama's proposed policies any longer enjoy majority support among voters -- and many of them were not clearly outlined to voters during the campaign. Current polls show more Americans are against than in favor of his version of health-care reform. Nearly seven in 10 are wary of government takeovers of the economy, like the bank and car...

Why does President Obama want to implement radical changes in American foreign policy, environmental policy, education, health care, and the tax code all at once? The answer is easy: If he does not achieve these initiatives soon, he never will. Almost none of Obama’s proposed policies any longer enjoy majority support among voters — and many of them were not clearly outlined to voters during the campaign. Current polls show more Americans are against than in favor of his version of health-care reform. Nearly seven in ten are wary of government takeovers of the economy, like the bank and car...

Bullying Israel By: Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, August 06, 2009   Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at Stanford University"s Hoover Institution.   FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.  I’d like to talk to you today about the Obama administration’s Middle East policy. A recent piece in the Washington Post noted that the only country in the world with which the U.S. has worse relations since Obama took office is Israel.  An American administration is soft on butchers that rule Iran and desperately seeks dialogue with them, yet it is giving our friend and ally, and the only democracy in the Middle East,...

Suddenly, a RevolutionWhy public disagreement with the Obama administration rapidly became fury. The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling...

Why does President Obama want to implement all at once radical changes in American foreign policy, environmental policy, education, health care and the tax code? The answer is easy: If he does not achieve these initiatives soon, he never will. Almost none of Obama's proposed policies any longer enjoy majority support among voters -- and many of them were not clearly outlined to voters during the campaign. Current polls show more Americans are against than in favor of his version of health-care reform. Nearly seven in 10 are wary of government takeovers of the economy, like the bank and car...

Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists. Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former Vice President Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions -- or face planetary destruction. Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Mr. Gore hops on a private jet - and purchases "carbon offsets" penances for the privilege. His mansion not...

With our national debt at $11 trillion and climbing at a projected rate of $1 to $2 trillion a year, examine the brilliant manner in which Americans justify borrowing much of this money from abroad, particularly from the Chinese. Precise figures on how much the United States owes China are hard to come by. China is secretive about where it invests its vast surpluses, and even about how gargantuan they have become. Perhaps they are afraid that if such data become widely known, Chinese reformers will start questioning state financial policy — and specifically how, why, and where such national...

We are bickering over how to spend some $3.5 trillion ($2 trillion in borrow money)—millions for the Palestinians, billions to conduct two wars, trillions to redistribute in new social programs. But meanwhile other states are saving, investing, and improving their educational systems. The notion that the average American youth—20 hrs a week before the video game or TV console, a product of a therapeutic education that seeks to ensure that he is sensitive rather than educated—will inherit the lifestyle of his fathers seems to me dubious. Our Tenth Hour Our great wealth in the 20th century was in part predicated...

Italy…I have been traveling as a lecturer on a Hillsdale College Byzantium Cruise (from Venice to Athens, with several stops in the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Aegean) for the last few days, and here are some eccentric reflections on civilizations of the past. VeniceI spent yesterday in Venice—hot, humid, and crowded, as I had never quite seen it before. So much for the global recession that has supposedly curtailed world tourism.Venice was not a classical city, and one can see why. It was malarial, without natural harbors or any readily identifiable deep ports or surrounding cliffs. It is instead a conglomeration of...

Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists. Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former vice president Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions — or face planetary destruction. Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Al Gore hops on a private jet — and purchases “carbon offsets” as penances for the privilege. His mansion...

  Obama has unwittingly made his real beliefs clear. From time to time, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas have naturally talked about growing up African-American under far less tolerant conditions than those we take for granted today. Yet their biggest contributions to American race relations have been their admirable abilities to transcend such racial intolerance — to make being black incidental, not essential, at least in public, to their sterling characters and impressive achievements. They all paid a price for emphasizing individuality rather than adhering to identity politics. Those on the left often criticized them as somehow inauthentic,...

Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street-inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health care system. And it aims to tax how energy in the U.S. is used to monitor carbon use. But wait! Recent financial rescue and stimulus plans, together with other new government initiatives, have already led to the largest dollar deficits in American history, projected to be near $2 trillion at fiscal year's end. Before some of these new proposals are even enacted,...

Imagine not that in his first six months Obama had acted like a conservative (he could not since he won on a liberal agenda), but simply as a more moderate Clinton-like Democrat, albeit with more humility and skepticism: 1) Financial. Barack Obama rallies the nation in January to hang tough and await the natural upswing after the bust that followed an unusual boom period of a near decade. There is no wasted stimulus. There is no $2 trillion deficit. Instead, he promises to hold spending to an annual rise of 2%, and reassures the country that balanced budgets are on...

What Might Have HappenedRemember Obama’s initial signature speech (e.g., “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America”), and all the subsequent conciliatory talk of no blue state, no red state America? Obama won, of course, because he captivated the tiny, but influential left, registered vast numbers of new minority voters, raised a billion dollars, and reconstituted the liberal base. But the key margin that got him from 45 to 53% were the independents and old Reagan Democrats. And what put them on board was not just their weariness with George...

July 23, 2009, 0:00 a.m. Big-Government MedicineEven after the financial meltdown, history is still running against collectivism. By Victor Davis Hanson Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street–inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health-care system. And it aims to tax energy use in the United States to reduce production of carbon dioxide. But wait! Recent financial rescue and stimulus plans, together with other new government initiatives, have already led to the largest dollar deficits...

Big new taxes. Big new spending. Big new government. This seems to be the proposed cure for the Wall Street-inspired recession. The government now runs major banks and companies, and plans to take control of the American health-care system. And it aims to tax how energy in the United States is used to monitor carbon use. But wait! Recent financial rescue and stimulus plans, together with other new government initiatives, have already led to the largest dollar deficits in American history, projected to be near $2 trillion at fiscal year's end. Before some of these new proposals are even enacted,...

Right now various members of the Obama team promiscuously toss out ideas like lifting the income caps on payroll FICA tax, or adjusting the brackets up to nearly 40 percent, or adding a 2-4 percent surcharge on the “wealthy” — all on top of increases recently in state income and sales taxes. Do the math — as are small businesses that are putting off hiring and purchasing in fear that they may well be subject to an aggregate state and federal rate of nearly 70 percent on their income. Obama acts as if business has nowhere else to go, as...

Debt MattersOver the last two decades it became an article of popular faith that budget deficits did not matter that much. Conservatives began to talk of annual red-ink in vague terms of percentages of the gross domestic product rather than in real billions of dollars — as in “Don’t worry about the 2004 shortfall of $605 billion; it’s still only 5.3 percent of GDP.”Ronald Reagan ran large deficits; so for a while did Bill Clinton. Both Bushes did every year. And Barack Obama, who admittedly came to office amid a liquidity crisis that called for fiscal stimulus, trumped them all...

You don’t produce wool by skinning the sheep. But that seems to be the present strategy to get small businesses to begin hiring, buying, and expanding. There is apparent surprise among Obamians that unemployment has soared the last six months. The much-anticipated stimulus sputtered, and there is a sense of bewilderment in the administration about why joblessness and economic growth are stagnant after the government injected trillions of dollars into the system. Perhaps the Obama administration needs to remember the psychology of business. After the shock of the September meltdowns, the natural reaction of anyone whose livelihood relied directly on...

Stimulus, stimulus and not a drop…A “stimulus” of nearly a trillion dollars was proposed, without which we were told, unemployment would skyrocket and credit would tighten further. Six months later — unemployment having risen even higher than the administration’s forecast of what would have been the case had their stimulus package not been implemented — now the same proponents of massive borrowing demand a second stimulus to accomplish what the first ’successful’ borrowing apparently did not. If you fail, then try the same thing to fail even bigger the second time — while calling for more success to follow the...

July 06, 2009, 4:00 a.m. A Thug’s PrimerHow to win liberal friends and oppress your people. By Victor Davis Hanson How strange that our rather nondescript, sober friends abroad do not garner attention from the current administration, yet overt enemies in Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Venezuela, and the West Bank most certainly do. Is there some covert code of conduct known to these dictators that allows them to win a pass from supposedly liberal Americans, who profess to value human rights, religious tolerance, and consensual government? Here’s a tutorial for up-and-coming thugs abroad, who wish to ingratiate themselves with Western...

July 10, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Growing Worries about Our Pied PiperAmericans are catching on to Obama’s fiscal sins and rhetorical devices. By Victor Davis Hanson Recent news that President Obama’s approval ratings are beginning to slip is understandable. Even popular leaders lose appeal once they have to govern, and therefore offend, rather than merely promise and please. And so far, these fairly modest declines in popularity are not resulting in much Republican traction. Few opposition leaders have presented systematic, clear alternatives to the Obama agenda, and even fewer have been knowledgeable and charismatic in voicing them. All that being...

hey Say/We Say The debate over Palin is sort of ossified. The Left continues to ridicule her accent, family, and middling roots. The Right enjoys such authenticity-but enjoys even more the hysteria it incurs in liberals. Will it Be Politics or Money? But lost in all of this is whether she is up to national politics, or simply wishes to capitalize (an Oprah-like talk show?) on her sizable financial potential. On the one hand, Palin is obviously bright. Few could raise a family without capital in Wasilla, and within a decade end up as Governor of a large state-whose protocols...

Much has been said about Maureen “I wanted to weave the idea into my column” Dowd’s latest take-down of Sarah Palin (“Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy.”) Her hit-piece is a self-parody. Instead, of seriously critiquing the wisdom or folly of Palin’s controversial decision to step down from the governorship, we get child-like sentences on spec like this: "On the shore of Lake Lucille, with wild fowl honking and the First Dude smiling, with Piper in the foreground and their Piper Cub in the background, the woman who took the Republican Party by storm only 10 months ago gave an...

Conventional wisdom suggests that short-term the Palin decision was unwise — e.g., "quitter," unpredictable, sulking, etc. But what else are her critics really going to say? It's not like a Letterman can trump laughing at her on late-night television as he puns that a Yankees star had sex in a dugout with her 14-year old daughter. Can Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic website go beyond his slurs that she did not deliver her own child? How much more cleverly can N.Y. feminist pundits tsk-tsk her that she's a Wasilla trailer-park retread? In other words, it doesn't matter that much what...

Obama’s policy is a lose/lose proposition that will please neither side Last month, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest a rigged presidential election. Our president was extremely cautious in his initial criticism of the Iranian government’s fierce crackdown against the protestors. At first, President Obama said that the United States — given our history in Iran — should not be “meddling” in the country’s internal affairs. Obama suggested that the leading opposition candidate, the reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi, might not be that different from the entrenched theocracy’s choice, the incumbent (and declared winner of the...

The Usual ApologyI think the standard explanation of the trashing accorded the foolish Gov. Mark Sanford (who in embarrassing fashion confessed, and confessed, and confessed to an affair with an Argentinean girlfriend) and the tsk-tsk treatment of former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards -who fathered a child with his mistress, lied about it on serial occasion while he tried to gain political mileage from his ill wife, all as he concocted an alibi that his aide, not he, had really impregnated Rielle Hunter-is that Sanford suffered from the addition wage of hypocrisy. That is, self-proclaimed moralists like the late...

Such a Prudishly Crass SocietyI was watching cable television about 5 PM on a Friday night, channel surfing between commercials on the Western station. Sandwiched between regular cinema programming were about several channels with what could legitimately be called light porn motifs. I then surfed through a confessional about phallic enhancement and a couple talking about herbal remedies for impotence.Once I got out of that channel cluster, and went into the 200s, here and there came up infomercials on everything from how to buy foreclosures with no money down, how to get out of credit card debt, how to avoid...

For much of the Bush administration, the media splashed stories of neoconservative conspiracies and cabals. Exposés about mostly Jewish liberals-turned-conservatives charged that they were adherents of the philosopher Leo Strauss and embraced the Platonic notion of the “noble lie.” In his Republic, Plato outlined an elaborate, ranked utopia, a good city (“Kallipolis”) run by a sort of benign natural selection. The philosopher-kings sat atop hierarchies in which occupations were assigned for the citizenry. To justify arbitrary selections, the rulers would make up “noble lies” about divine edicts, making clear that the occupations chosen for lesser folk were god-given. Once the...

From today's news: "Reacting to Obama's comment Tuesday that he is 'appalled and outraged' by crackdowns in Iran, Ahmadinejad said, 'Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things . . . our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously Bush used to say.'" This revelation of theocratic hurt, surprise, and hubris actually explains a lot: Iran — given the six months (or longer?) of Obama's both backdoor and overt efforts to normalize relations — believes (a) that it has an understanding now with the Obama administration that normal relations with the U.S. trump all...

Pres. Barack Obama came into office apparently believing that his non-traditional background, charisma, and good intentions could placate dictators hostile to America and ease global tensions. In these first six months, the new administration has made clear to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and other strongmen like them that Barack Obama is not a mean-talking George Bush. A kinder, gentler United States has promised to push the “reset” button. In the interest of peace, an American president will finally be listening rather than lecturing, and willing to talk to authoritarian bullies without preconditions....

Recollections On a New Age BegunThink of the hope and change of just the last six months that have changed all our lives. It was, I remember, around the beginning of February when the understandable liberal angst about the Bush deficit simply disappeared. Gone. Vanished. No more haranguing about red ink and shorting our grandchildren.For the last eight years, I had some admiration-albeit along with plenty of bewilderment-at the newly fiscally mature Congressional Democrats and their impassioned attacks on Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility.But then suddenly their principled opposition paid off. Deficits disappeared-at least the multibillion species. Yes, borrowing was replaced by...

Let Me Count the Ways Why Obama Should at Last Speak Out ( — I write this at around noon on Saturday, and suspect the pressure of public outrage will soon get to Obama, and he soon will recant and start sounding Reaganesque) (As in something like this:“Hundreds of thousands of gallant Iranians are now engaged in a non-violent moral struggle against tyranny in Iran-one of the great examples of bravery in our times. All free peoples of the world watch their ordeal, and can only wish them success, while owing them a great deal of gratitude for risking their...

Let Me Count the Ways Why Obama Should at Last Speak Out ( —I write this at around noon on Saturday, and suspect the pressure of public outrage will soon get to Obama, and he soon will recant and start sounding Reaganesque) (As in something like this: “Hundreds of thousands of gallant Iranians are now engaged in a non-violent moral struggle against tyranny in Iran-one of the great examples of bravery in our times. All free peoples of the world watch their ordeal, and can only wish them success, while owing them a great deal of gratitude for risking their...

Who’s Victor Davis Hanson and what does he know? President’s spokesman puts money on Obama speechwriters © 2009 WorldNetDaily Robert Gibbs, the spokesman for President Barack Obama, today questioned who is Victor Davis Hanson and what does he know, when WND correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Gibbs about “mistakes” Hanson has pointed out in Obama’s speeches. Hanson, a nationally syndicated columnist and historian, wrote just one day earlier about “Our Historically Challenged President.” He noted Obama’s reference during the presidential campaign to when his great-uncle “helped liberate Auschwitz, and that his grandfather knew fellow American troops that had entered Auschwitz and...

<p>I think the Europeans, who, remember, caught Obamania quite early, thought they were going to get more of the bipartisan American security shield, albeit with a charismatic multicultural veneer that would resonate with their citizens: no more Texas. No more Christianity. No more twang. No more nuclur. No more Iraq. But same old NATO. Same old bad cop to their good cop. Same old wide open Ami economy. Same old chance for triangulation.  And?</p>

We use Orwell, Orwellian, and Orwellianism loosely a lot these days, but what is going on in the Obama administration is beginning to get a little creepy and resembles a lot of things Orwell wrote about in 1984. When in, Soviet fashion, a critical overseer is dismissed as being "confused" and suffering mental problems in carrying out the law, as Gerald Walpin probably did in uncovering waste and possible fraud in connection with the mayor of Sacramento; or when the government begins to create new words like "overseas contingency operations" and "man-made catastrophes"; or when Justice Sotomayor says that a Latina is...

President Obama has largely drawn praise for his tepid response to the mass uprisings in Iran challenging the reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In general, Obama has offered three justifications for his tentativeness — and they have strangely been accepted by his supporters, who almost immediately evolved in lockstep from liberal Wilsonians to hardcore realists. Here are Obama’s three justifications: 1. Given the historical record of U.S. intervention in Iran, we do not wish either to perpetuate that shameful record, or to hang on the necks of the dissidents the smelly albatross of U.S. support. 2. We don’t know which side...