Arms and the Man (about Victor Davis Hanson)

USNews.com ^ | March 8, 2003 | Andrew Curry

[WaterDragon]

SELMA, CALIF.--Victor Davis Hanson's grape farm here is 3 miles straight down Mountain View Road from the Sun-Maid raisin plant his vineyards supply. Orderly rows of Thompson grapevines, dry and bare in the chill of California winter, surround a modest, two-story gray farmhouse. Inside, black-and-white family photos stretch back five generations, evidence of a family clinging to this land since the railroad brought them from Missouri in 1872.

There is no room for nuance here. With just 135 acres of vineyards, equivocation has immediate and very real consequences. Vines are tended properly, or grapes don't grow; fields are irrigated, or orchards die; the decades-old tractor in the shed runs, or the farm fails.

Such clarity may be common in California's fertile Central Valley, but it's rare in the groves of academe--one reason the 49-year-old classicist says he feels more at home here. But in recent months Hanson has become a familiar name across the country in Washington, talking with the vice president and his advisers about the lessons history offers modern-day decision makers. His message, brought home in dozens of columns and articles since September 11, is that America shouldn't be afraid to use its power in defense of what he calls western values, and that throughout history such action has been both justified and eventually vindicated. "There are some pretty brutal lessons of history, and they would tend to confirm rather than reject what Cheney and Bush believe," he says. "There are people all throughout history that remind me of what they're trying to do right now. They take comfort in that."

Lone star. In the days after September 11, Hanson took what was then a lonely position among intellectuals. In the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review he consistently urged action, citing his belief in America's overwhelming military--and moral--strength. "Fundamentalists despise the United States for its culture and envy it for its power," he wrote in his first column for National Review. "These terrorists hate us for who we are, not what we have done.".....(snip)

For Complete Article Click HERE.

[iopscusa]

I am a fan of VDH's writings, especially about Greek military history. If he is a Democrat, maybe there is some hope for the Party of Oppression...I doubt it, the Dims may be done for soon, let's just stick a fork in them and get back to work.

[Leisler]

His best book, "The Other Greeks."

[WaterDragon]

I liked "The Other Greeks", "Who Killed Homer?" and The Soul of Battle. He writes heroically of men who preserved the security of their people as well as setting enslaved people free.