Victor Davis Hanson’s Magnum Opus

American Thinker.com ^ | May 14, 2022 | John Dale Dunn

[Kaslin]

Victor Davis Hanson is one of the most respected historian/intellectuals of the conservative movement; I have been an enthusiast of his work going back to my first experience with his erudition and eloquence—The Western Way of War (1989, 2nd ed. 2000), an explanation of why citizen soldiers are so effective and why Western Armies have been so lethal. Now he is past 24 books and hundreds if not thousands of essays as well as appearances regularly on TV that all provide sober, thought-provoking and insightful political commentary. Any observer of VDH cannot help but be impressed with his solid and thoughtful analysis of political and social issues, probative and measured.

I reviewed Dr. Hanson’s book on WWII at American Thinker in 2018, but I am late to the party on his latest book The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson 433 pages Kindle $17.99, Hardcover $21.37 ASIN ‏ : B08W4ZZTTP ‎ (Basic Books 2021). Two reviews have already appeared at American Thinker by Richard Baehr and Terry Scambray that are excellent, but when I read the blurb by the distinguished Roger Kimball that named Dying Citizen Hanson’s magnum opus, I was compelled to make the pitch again to readers about the importance of Hanson and his compelling argument for good citizenship as the basis for western civilization and the western ideal of elective self-governance.

Dying Citizen revisits The Western Way of War theme, the importance of the citizen in a western community/society. The importance of the citizen as opposed to the role of subjects of a regime, king, prince, emperor, chief, or khan, and the advance of society that is made when citizens govern.

[Hostage]

He’s above top shelf. Vintage Stanford, when California was a conservative battery.

[Pirate Ragnar]

“VDH obviously has changed his mind, but what he said after the inauguration ... it is what it is.”

Why did you post this about VDH when the article shows what an extraordinary and brilliant conservative and American scholar he is? What did you hope to point out - that he is a hypocrite; that he is not as smart as people think? Why?

[FLT-bird]

VDH’s ancient histories are excellent - backed up by his intimate knowledge of farming and what people back then went through as he is a farmer himself.

I agree with him about everything from about the 1930s maybe even the 1920s until now.

Yet he and I disagree about pretty much every single last thing from 1820 until the end of WWI.

[Justa]

Ukraine. The other wars were not wars of conquest to eliminate a nation.

[hardspunned]

Eliminate what nation? Stop listening to the disinfo. This is not the first step towards reconquering East Germany. Russia’s goal was to stop Ukraine’s western controlled oligarchs from joining NATO. Russia is in the process of leaving. Ukraine is still completely controlled by the oligarchs in DC. The United States’ stated goal from the president on down in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and in Ukraine was and is regime change (regime change in Moscow as clearly stated by Biden). Russia is tremendously more justified in what it is doing than we had ever been in Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Quite honestly, if you’ll recall the 2 million plus Vietnamese or the million plus Arabs who died in our twenty year rampage through the Middle East, Russia is doing it with a much lighter touch than we did.