https://pjmedia.com/author/victor-davis-hanson/feedPJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usSat, 04 Apr 2026 06:30:08 -0400<![CDATA[The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative.Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump's latest policy.Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor. Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation.Take foreign policy.Democratic senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suddenly flew to the White House.]]>Fri, 22 Aug 2025 17:52:28 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/08/22/what-is-the-democratic-alternative-to-trump-n4942924<![CDATA["Destroying democracy" -- the latest theme of the left -- can be defined in many different ways.How about attempting to destroy constitutional, ancient, and hallowed institutions simply to suit short-term political gains?So, who in 2020, and now once again, has boasted about packing the 156-year-old, nine-justice Supreme Court?Who talks frequently about destroying the 187-year-old Senate filibuster--though only when they hold a Senate majority?Who wants to bring in an insolvent left-wing Puerto Rico and redefine the 235-year-old District of Columbia -- by altering the Constitution -- as two new states solely to obtain four additional liberal senators?Who is trying to destroy the constitutionally mandated 235-year Electoral College by circumventing it with the surrogate "The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact?"Does destroying democracy also entail weaponizing federal bureaucracies, turning them into rogue partisan arms of a president?So who ordered the CIA to concoct bogus charges of "collusion" to sabotage Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, the 2016-2017 transition, and the first 22 months of Trump's first term?Who prompted a cabal of "51 former intelligence officials" to lie to the American people on the eve of the last debate of the 2020 election that the FBI-authenticated Hunter Biden laptop was instead the work of a "Russian intelligence operation?"Who ordered the FBI to connive and partner with social media conglomerates to censor accurate news deemed unhelpful to the 2020 Biden campaign?Who pulled off the greatest presidential coup in history by using surrogates in the shadows to run the cognitively debilitated Biden presidency, then by fiat canceled his reelection effort, and finally anointed as his replacement the new nominee Kamala Harris, who had never won a single primary delegate?Who ordered FBI SWAT teams to invade the home of a former president because of a classification dispute over 102 files out of some 13,000 stored there?Who tried to remove an ex-president and leader of his party from at least 25 state ballots to deprive millions of Americans of the opportunity to vote for or against him?Who coordinated four local, state, and federal prosecutors to destroy a former and future president by charging him with fantasy crimes that were never before, and will never again be, lodged against anyone else?Who appointed a federal prosecutor to go after the ex-president, who arranged for a high-ranking Justice Department official to step down to join a New York prosecutor's efforts to destroy an ex-president, and who met in the White House with a Georgia county prosecutor seeking to destroy an ex-president -- &nbsp;all on the same day -- a mere 72 hours after Trump announced his 2024 reelection bid?Who but the current Democrats ever impeached a president twice?Has any party ever tried an ex-president in the Senate when he was out of office and a mere private citizen?When have there ever been two near-miss assassination attempts on a major party presidential candidate during a single presidential campaign?Who destroyed the southern border and broke federal law to allow in, without criminal or health background audits, some 10-12 million illegal aliens?Who created 600 "sanctuary jurisdictions" for the sole purpose of nullifying federal immigration law, in the eerie spirit of the renegade old Confederacy?Who allowed tens of thousands of rioters, arsonists, and violent protestors over four months in 2020 to destroy over $2 billion in property, kill some 35 people, injure 1,500 police officers, and torch a federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church -- all with de facto legal impunity?How do the purported destroyers of democracy find themselves winning 60-70 percent approval on most of the key issues of our times, while the supposed saviors of democracy are on the losing side of popular opinion?How does a president "destroy democracy" by his party winning the White House by both the popular and Electoral College vote, winning majorities in both the Senate and House by popular votes, and enjoying a 6-3 edge in the Supreme Court through judges appointed by popularly elected presidents?So what is behind these absurd charges?Three catalysts: one, the new anguished elitist Democratic Party alienated the middle classes through its Jacobin agenda and therefore lost the Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, and now has no federal political power.Two, the Democratic Party is polling at record lows and yet remains hellbent on alienating the traditional sources of its power -- minorities, youth, and Independents.Three, Democrats cannot find any issues that the people support, nor any leaders to convince the people to embrace them.So it is no surprise that the panicked Democrats bark at the shadows -- given that they know their revolutionary, neo-socialist agenda is destroying them. And yet, like all addicts, they choose destruction over abandoning their self-destructive fixations.]]>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 19:00:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Democrat Party]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/08/15/who-has-been-busy-destroying-democracy-n4942721<![CDATA[President Donald Trump's executive orders banning Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI)-related racial and gender preferencing have ostensibly doomed the DEI industry.But DEI was already on its last legs. Half of all Americans no longer approve of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences.DEI had enjoyed a surge following the death of George Floyd and the subsequent 120 days of nonstop rioting, arson, assaults, killings, and attacks on law enforcement during the summer of 2020.In those chaotic years, DEI was seen as the answer to racial tensions.DEI had insidiously replaced the old notion of affirmative action -- a 1960s-era government remedy for historical prejudices against black Americans, from the legacy of slavery to Jim Crow segregation.But during the Obama era, "diversity" superseded affirmative action by offering preferences to many groups well beyond black Americans.Quite abruptly, Americans began talking in Marxist binaries.On one side were the supposed 65-70 percent white majority "oppressors" and "victimizers" -- often stereotyped as exuding "white privilege," "white supremacy," or even "white rage."They were juxtaposed to the 25-30% of "diverse" Americans, the so-called "oppressed" and "victimized."Yet almost immediately, contradictions and hypocrisies undermined DEI.First, how does one define "diverse" in an increasingly multiracial, intermarried, assimilated, and integrated society?DNA badges?The old one-drop rule of the antebellum South?Superficial appearance?To establish racial or ethnic proof of being one-sixteenth, one-fourth, or one-half "non-white," employers, corporations, and universities would have to become racially obsessed genealogists.Yet refusing to become racial auditors also would allow racial and ethnic fraudsters -- like Senator Elizabeth Warren and would-be new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani -- to go unchecked.Warren falsely claimed Native American heritage to leverage a Harvard professorship. Mamdani, an immigrant son of wealthy Indian immigrants from Uganda, tried to game his way into college by claiming he was an African-American.Second, in 21st-century America, class became increasingly divergent from race.Mamdani, who promised to tax "affluent" and "whiter" neighborhoods at higher rates, is himself the child of Indian immigrants, the most affluent ethnic group in America.Why would the children of Barack Obama, Joy Reid, or LeBron James need any special preferences, given the multimillionaire status of their parents?In other words, one's superficial appearance no longer necessarily determines one's income or wealth, nor defines their "privilege" or lack thereof.Third, DEI is often tied to questions of "reparations." The current white majority supposedly owes other particular groups financial or entitlement compensation for the sins of the past.Yet in today's multiracial and multiethnic society, in which over 50 million residents were not born in the U.S. and many have only recently arrived, what are the particular historical or past grievances that would earn anyone special treatment?What injustices can recent arrivals from southern Mexico, South Korea, or Chad claim, as they would know little about, and have experienced firsthand nothing prior from Americans, the United States, or its history?Is the DEI logic that when a Guatemalan steps one foot across the southern border, she is suddenly classified as a victim of white oppression and therefore entitled to preferences in hiring or employment as someone diverse or victimized?Fourth, does the word "minority" still carry any currency?In today's California, the demography breaks down as 40% Latino, 34% White, 16% Asian American or Pacific Islander, 6% Black, and 3% Other -- with no significant majority and whites fewer than the Latino "minority."Are Latinos the new de facto "majority" and "whites" just one of the four other "minorities?"Do the other minorities, then, have grievances against Latinos, given that they are the dominant population in the state?Fifth, when does DEI "proportional representation" apply, and when does it not?Are whites "overrepresented" among the nation's university faculties that are reportedly 75% white, when they comprise only about 70% of the population?Or, are whites "underrepresented" as making up only 55% of all college students and thus in need of DEI action to bump up their numbers?Black athletes are vastly overrepresented in lucrative and prestigious professional sports. To correct such asymmetries, should Asians and Hispanics be given mandated quotas for quarterback or point guard positions to ensure proper athletic "diversity, equity, and inclusion?"Sixth, DEI determines good and bad prejudices, as well as correct and incorrect biases. "Affinity" segregationist graduations -- black, Hispanic, Asian, and gay -- are considered "affirming."But would a similar affinity graduation ceremony for European-Americans or Jews be considered "racist?"Is a Latino-themed house on a California campus -- that is de facto segregated -- considered "enlightened," while a European-American dorm would be condemned as incendiary?In truth, DEI had long ago become corrupt.It is falling apart under the weight of its own paradoxes and hypocrisies.It is a perniciously divisive idea -- unable to define who qualifies for preference or why, who is overrepresented or not, or when bias is acceptable or unjust.And it is past time that it goes away.]]>Fri, 08 Aug 2025 17:51:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/08/08/why-dei-was-already-dying-n4942507<![CDATA[Recently, a large group of black youths began pummeling several white adults in downtown Cincinnati.The original altercation apparently broke out between a black and white male in he-said/he-said fashion. But that dispute soon turned into a virtual free-for-all.Numerous male and female black youths sucker-punched a middle-aged woman and a man. Others continued to kick or body slam the victims, who were sprawled on their backs and seemingly unconscious.There were many disturbing aspects to the beat-downs.One, the violence broke out along racial and age fault lines. After the initial one-on-one dispute, groups of black youths swarmed solitary older white bystanders to pound them.Two, the surrounding assembled group of black youths not only failed to intervene to restrain the bullies. They also recorded the beatings for social media and were heard cheering on the one-sided violence.Three, there was neither a police presence nor any timely Good Samaritan interventions.Instead, what ended the attacks was simply the fact that at least two of the targets appeared nearly comatose. So their assailants apparently concluded that their agenda of beating whites into unconsciousness was mostly complete.Four, oddly few of the usual black spokespeople who habitually comment on interracial violence were to be seen.During the fake Jussie Smollett attack, self-appointed leaders from Al Sharpton to Kamala Harris immediately issued warnings about so-called systemic white racism that had reared its ugly head to victimize Smollett.Yet when it was revealed Smollett had concocted the entire charade -- and even hired his own assaulters -- there were few if any retractions from those once so eager to shout "racist!"Such demagoguery is a well-known pattern dating back to the days of the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, the Duke Lacrosse charade, the Covington kids ruse, the Michael Ford "Hands-up-Don't Shoot" fabrication, the "pseudo-transformation of George Zimmerman into a 'white Hispanic,'" or the NASCAR noose fable.Racialists too often concoct white racist attackers and go silent when the evidence proves fabricated -- only to be primed to manipulate the next hoax.Five, the media and authorities did their best to either hide or play down the violence.City leaders, the chief of police, and the media variously blamed the mass black-on-white violence on 1) social media, 2) the original one-on-one dispute, 3) alcohol, 4) the lack of civilian intervention to stop the violence, and 5) a festival atmosphere -- anything except endemic racial hatred shown toward whites from the crowd of black youths.Six, had a gang of white toughs beat middle-aged African-Americans senseless, recorded it, and cheered on the violence, there would have been immediate national outrage.Nor did anyone wish to raise the taboo topic of inordinate black crime rates, disproportionate to respective demographic realities. In rare interracial violent crimes, the asymmetrical ratio of black-on-white versus white-on-black assaults ranges from three to five times greater.Seven, the quiet of the left-wing media to the reprehensible violence stands in marked contrast with their usual rush-to-judgment racialism in two near-simultaneous incidents.When a shooter of mixed African-American heritage recently entered a New York City corporate headquarters and executed four innocents, CNN falsely raised the speculation that a "white male" was perhaps responsible -- despite the photograph of the suspect, who was as clearly male as he was not white.Media and municipal officials jumped to explain the violence as due to the killer's alleged past traumatic brain injury or because of his access to a semi-automatic weapon -- or anything other than his hate-filled plan to murder an NFL executive.Actress and model Sydney Sweeney just cut a jeans commercial in front of a poster that said, "Sydney Sweeney has great genes"--with "genes" crossed out and replaced with "jeans." The left then exploded, alleging the ad was a supposed Hitlerian reference to white eugenics.Yet the eugenics movement in America was mostly a product of left-wing progressives, from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to Democrat president Woodrow Wilson.And the ad's sponsor, American Eagle, had previously used all sorts of models from all racial backgrounds. All might agree that the ad simply shows both tight, sexy jeans and a naturally attractive wearer -- period.The country is descending into a tribal morass of double standards and racial fixations.The diversity/equity/inclusion industry, the defund-the-police madness, and the perpetual left-wing hunt for "white racism/white privilege/white rage" -- from the prior Pentagon hierarchy to the lunatic fringe of Jasmine Crockett, Joy Reid, and Zohran Mamdani -- have all legitimized double standards while lowering the bar of the once unacceptable.When our careerist left-wing elites seek to divide us by race and make it essential, not incidental, to our identities, that tribalist message filters throughout communities.The ensuing signal is that "payback" violence is OK -- on the expectation that there are no consequences for interracial violence -- as long as the victim is white and the assaulter is not.]]>Fri, 01 Aug 2025 19:08:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/08/01/the-cincinnati-cop-outs-n4942297<![CDATA[Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow.]]>Fri, 25 Jul 2025 18:45:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/07/25/revenge-or-justice-n4942078<![CDATA[In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo.]]>Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:00:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/07/18/the-world-woke-up-n4941859<![CDATA[Across the political left, from orthodox Democrats to Antifa in the streets, the opposition to President Donald Trump has lost its collective mind.]]>Fri, 11 Jul 2025 16:39:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/07/11/the-roots-of-leftist-rage-n4941646<![CDATA[The first six months of the Trump administration have not been kind to the experts and the degree-holding classes.Almost daily during the tariff hysterias of March, we were told by university economists and most of the PhDs employed in investment and finance that the U.S. was headed toward a downward, if not recessionary, spiral.Most economists lectured that trade deficits did not really matter. Or they insisted that the cures to reduce them were worse than the $1.1 trillion deficit itself.They reminded us that free, rather than fair, trade alone ensured prosperity.So, the result of Trump's foolhardy tariff talk would be an impending recession. America would soon suffer rising joblessness, inflation--or rather a return to stagflation--and likely little, if any, increase in tariff revenue as trade volume declined.Instead, recent data show increases in tariff revenue. Personal real income and savings were up. Job creation exceeded prognoses. There was no surge in inflation. The supposedly "crashed" stock market reached historic highs.Common-sense Americans might not have been surprised. The prior stock market frenzy was predicated on what was, in theory, supposed to have happened rather than what was likely to occur. After all, if tariffs were so toxic and surpluses irrelevant, why did our affluent European and Asian trading rivals insist on both surpluses and protective tariffs?Most Americans recalled that the mere threat of tariffs and Trump's jawboning had led to several trillion dollars in promised foreign investment and at least some plans to relocate manufacturing and assembly back to the United States. Would that change in direction not lead to business optimism and eventually more jobs? Would countries purposely running up huge surpluses through asymmetrical trade practices not have far more to lose in negotiations than those suffering gargantuan deficits?Were Trump's art-of-the-deal threats of prohibitive tariffs not mere starting points in negotiations that would eventually lead to likely agreements more favorable to the U.S. than in the past and moderate rather than punitive tariffs?Would not the value of the huge American consumer market mean that our trade partners, who were racking up substantial surpluses, would agree they could afford modest tariffs and trim their substantial profit margins rather than suicidally price themselves out of a lucrative market entirely?Economists and bureaucrats were equally wrong on the border.We were told for four years that only "comprehensive immigration reform" would stop illegal immigration. In fact, most Americans differed. They knew firsthand that we had more than enough immigration laws, but had elected as President Joe Biden, who deliberately destroyed borders and had no intention of enforcing existing laws.When Trump promised that he would ensure that, instead of 10,000 foreign nationals entering illegally each day, within a month, no one would, our experts scoffed. But if the border patrol went from ignoring or even aiding illegal immigrants to stopping them right at the border, why would such a prediction be wrong?Those favoring a reduction in illegal immigration and deportations also argued that crime would fall, and citizen job opportunities would increase, given an estimated 500,000 aliens with criminal records had entered illegally during the Biden administration, while millions of other illegal aliens were working off the books, for cash, and often at reduced wages.]]>Fri, 04 Jul 2025 14:42:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/07/04/the-decline-and-fall-of-our-so-called-degreed-experts-n4941426<![CDATA[It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East.]]>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 22:00:34 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Iran]]><![CDATA[Israel]]><![CDATA[Terrorism]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/06/27/in-the-end-everyone-hated-the-iranian-theocracy-n4941209<![CDATA[California Senator Alex Padilla recently crashed a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He deliberately wore no identification. He gave no advance warning that he would disrupt her briefing.]]>Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:11:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Alex Padilla]]><![CDATA[Democrat Party]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]><![CDATA[Illegal Alien]]><![CDATA[Los Angeles]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/06/20/can-the-left-ever-stop-its-craziness-n4940985<![CDATA[The entire career of race-baiter Al Sharpton was founded on falsehoods about the Tawana Brawley scam. Nearly everything the left told us about the Trayvon Martin fight was false. The "hands up, don't shoot" Ferguson fable and the Covington Kids myth were quickly exposed.]]>Fri, 13 Jun 2025 20:08:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Gavin Newsom]]><![CDATA[Illegal Alien]]><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]><![CDATA[Riots]]><![CDATA[Trump Administration]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/06/13/the-rogues-new-gallery-of-left-wing-scoundrels-n4940771<![CDATA[The spiteful open-borders legacy of Joe Biden will plague America for generations to come, long after the former president is a fading bad memory.Somewhere between 10-12 million foreign nationals are believed to have entered the U.S. illegally under his watch, to add to the existing 12-20 million illegal aliens.Almost all were unaudited.They stormed the border for four years without background checks of the sort that American citizens must undergo to purchase a firearm or take out a loan.At a time when citizens were expelled from the military for not submitting to the experimental mRNA COVID inoculations, millions of foreign nationals, with the Biden administration's encouragement, crossed the southern border, exempt from any vaccination requirement or medical examination.When Americans were required to present multiple forms of identification to apply for a mandatory "real ID" to fly in 2025, millions of illegal entrants were flown across the country, often stealthily and under the cover of night, without any valid ID at all.On some days, the Trump administration has managed to deport 800 of Biden's illegal aliens.But ten times that many entered illegally each day under Biden.Trump's border patrol would have to deport over 8,000 people every day of his four-year tenure just to undo what Biden wrought by his dismantling of federal immigration law.Some 500,000 illegal entrants are believed to have criminal records -- a number greater than the population of Oakland, California.Indeed, new reports relate almost every day that another illegal alien has murdered, raped, or assaulted an American citizen.The culpable left often champions violent illegal alien criminals facing deportation. Their apparent assumption is that hurting Trump politically justifies hurting Americans even more by protecting violent illegal alien criminals instead of sending them home.Thousands of these unknown criminals are deadly land mines waiting to explode.Yet the Biden effort to destroy or subvert immigration law transcends just demolishing the southern border.There are nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals in American universities, the vast majority admitted without serious background checks.They are welcomed by elite campuses because they pay the full cost and at a premium, with few questions asked about why exactly they came or what they are doing.No wonder, then, that in the last decade, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government is reported to have trained and graduated hundreds of Chinese nationals who were either Communist Party members or the children of prominent Chinese communist apparatchiks.In other words, at a time when the U.S. is locked in an escalating Cold War with the People's Republic of China, our universities find great profit in enrolling and educating the communist elite who threaten Taiwan, imprison and oppress the Uyghurs, jail Hong Kong dissidents, and send both bio- and agro-terrorists into the U.S.Not a day went by during the last two years without Middle Eastern, pro-Hamas visa students on some campus swarming students in libraries, assaulting and bullying Jews, trashing iconic buildings, illegally camping out in student quads, and screaming to bring the intifada home to the U.S.Neither the Biden administration nor spineless college presidents took any action, despite such flagrant violations of both the terms and spirit of student visas.Most recently, Yunqing Jian, a 33-year-old Chinese national with ties to the University of Michigan, was arrested as an "agro-terrorist."The mission of Jian, along with his girlfriend, was to seed toxic fungus into Midwestern farmland as a way of destroying the American food supply and thereby starve his hosts.Sometimes the baleful Biden immigration inheritance was simply a matter of allowing "tourists" and "visitors" to stay far after their visas had expired -- without consequences.So, for example, Egyptian national and terrorist, Mohammed Sabry Soliman, along with his entire family, deliberately overstayed their visas. They were all residing here illegally when Soliman firebombed Jews, crying out "Free Palestine" as he tried to burn them up.Americans overwhelmingly polled against this Biden border nihilism. Indeed, the House impeached his henchman, Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security.Yet Biden, or his handlers in the shadows, would not stop destroying the borders and immigration law.So why would a president deliberately cause such mayhem that will cost hundreds of lives and billions of dollars in the years to come?Was the reason Biden's characteristic incompetence or dementia?Or did Biden simply want to alter the demography to find a constituency for his otherwise unpopular agendas?Did he wish to grow the welfare state?Was Biden hoping to expand the DEI agenda by bringing in the poor and supposedly oppressed as new fodder in the Left's Marxist binary of victimized versus victimizer?No one knows why Biden did it, only that he did -- and we will suffer his nihilist legacy for years to come.]]>Fri, 06 Jun 2025 17:33:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/06/06/bidens-border-nihilism-will-live-long-after-he-is-gone-n4940503<![CDATA[Pundits are confused about what to make of the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.]]>Fri, 16 May 2025 20:53:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/05/16/the-real-first-100-days-n4939842<![CDATA[Somewhere between 10 and 12 million illegal aliens were invited into the United States by the Biden administration.]]>Fri, 09 May 2025 19:03:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/05/09/would-the-left-finally-explain-the-inexplicable-n4939615<![CDATA[Despite the media hysteria, President Donald Trump's counterrevolution remains on course.]]>Fri, 02 May 2025 19:54:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/05/02/the-trump-counterrevolution-and-the-moral-ledger-n4939428<![CDATA[One reason why the public turned on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was its insistence that roughly 70 percent of the country was stereotyped as victimizers by virtue of their skin color.In contrast, the other "diverse" 30% were de facto considered the victimized.In such absurd binaries, the left returned to the old "one-drop" rule of the antebellum South, suggesting that anyone with any nonwhite ancestry was a minority victim.And once that Marxist-inspired dichotomy was institutionalized, a corollary was established that the self-declared racially oppressed cannot themselves be racist oppressors.But human nature is universal and transcends race.One lamentable characteristic of our species is that we are all prone to excess and crudity if not deterred, especially once civilizational restraint is lost.We are now witnessing examples of what follows when anti-white stereotyping and racism are given a pass -- as long as the purveyors can claim their victimhood entitles them to bias.Recently, WNBA basketball stars Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark got into one of their now-characteristic on-court rivalries. But this time around, Reese mocked Clark as a "White gyal (sic) running from the fade."Reese assumes that her status as a Black star grants her immunity from backlash -- a privilege unlikely to be extended if the roles were reversed.Or is her crassness a simple reflection that 60 years after the Civil Rights movement, it is deemed cool or deservedly acceptable to use the word "white" derogatorily?After all, loose-cannon Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-TX, in one of her accustomed racialist rants, recently went after her party's big Democratic donors, who raised a record amount of money for Kamala Harris's short-lived campaign.Crockett played the race card when claiming that Democratic insiders were already backing the next party nominee as the "safest white boy."Her racist irritation is puzzling. After all, two out of the last four Democratic presidential nominees have been African-Americans.Yet it is certainly easy to see why Crockett, who endlessly spouts off about race in congressional sessions, used the pejorative "white boy." She knows that there are no repercussions given her race and, to a lesser extent, her gender and left-wing ideology.Recently, a past 2018 slur resurfaced from another House Democrat, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN. She had falsely claimed, "I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths in this country."Omar's stereotyped smear was not only racist but also factually incorrect.The FBI's 2018 data on perpetrators of murder, when the race of the offender was known, reveals that 54.9% of the nation's murderers that year were African-American, who constitute about 13% of the population.And when the race of the murderer in rare interracial killings was known, blacks were more than twice as likely to murder whites as whites were to kill blacks.During recent controversies over leaks at the Pentagon, former UN Ambassador Susan Rice, during the Obama administration, injected race by smearing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. She leveled a trifecta race/gender/sexual orientation slur -- all irrelevant to the issue at hand: "Well, if you're a white male Christian cisgender macho MAGA man, you can be as dumb as a rock and be deemed qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense."Rice still chafes that as a sometimes-official Obama administration spokeswoman, she serially and deliberately misled the country about the fatal 2012 terrorist attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi.In all these cases, there was no fallout from racial categorization and demonization. Again, we apparently accept the pernicious idea that those identifying as an oppressed group cannot themselves voice illiberal stereotypes.But while our political elites and celebrities seem fixated on using racial putdowns for career advantage and personal notoriety, the people increasingly ignore their entrenched and off-putting racism.For example, in a recent Rasmussen poll surveying public attitudes toward Trump's first 100 days in office, 62% of Hispanics voiced approval (higher than the 49% of whites). And 39% of blacks agreed.One result of the 2024 campaign was that while Democrats seemed fixated on racial stereotypes, the public had moved on.Voters increasingly see class considerations transcending race. That fact may explain why exasperated and flailing Democrats and leftists desperately seek to resurrect racial polarization instead of finding a popular middle-class agenda.Historically, tribalism erodes a multiracial democracy.It did when white leaders in the past expressed racist attitudes toward blacks. And it will again if black elites simply flip the paradigm and do the same.]]>Fri, 02 May 2025 19:18:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Leftists]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/05/02/are-some-racist-slurs-ok-n4940076<![CDATA[A few Democratic officeholders, activists, and pundits are finally coming to their senses that their brand is toxic to a majority of the American people.The Biden administration killed what was left of it in a number of ways.First, it serially lied to Americans about the cognitive decline and cancerous condition of President Joe Biden, both while in and after office.Only when caught did the complicit media fess up that the Biden inner circle serially misled the American people about Biden's inability to fulfill the duties of the presidency.Second, left-wing politicos used Biden as a waxen effigy. His job was to pose as a "moderate" cover to push through the most radical and unpopular agenda in the last half century.Only that way could "Old Joe Biden from Scranton" and his backroom handlers ram down the throat of the American people unpopular policies that nearly wrecked the country: hyperinflation and $7 trillion in new debt, weaponization of the government, and partisan lawfare, an open border and 12 million illegal aliens, a racialist DEI commissariat, a crackpot Green New Deal, defunding the police, biological men competing in girls' sports, and two theater-wide wars abroad.Third, without either a functional president or viable initiatives, the new hard-left Democrats sought to brand Donald Trump as "Hitler" and half the country who supported him as "fascists."For nearly nine years, the Democrats launched one failed hoax after another on the American people: "Russian collusion," "laptop disinformation," and the lying so-called "51 intelligence authorities." They proved quite willing to undermine the rule of law by manipulating the court system in efforts to destroy their bogeyman, Trump.Never had the American people seen a political party engineer 93 bogus indictments of a rival candidate and ex-president. Two dozen states tried to take Trump off their presidential ballots. And the Biden Department of Justice sicced an FBI SWAT team to barge into Trump's home.The people finally got tired of all the potty-mouthed Democrat videos, the congressional stunts and meltdowns, the pampered rich kids rioting on elite campuses, the knee-jerk obsessions with racial slurs, the firebombing of Tesla dealerships, the romanticization of left-wing political murderers -- and always the adolescent tantrums over Trump.The Democrats had mostly given up on democracy some 13 years ago. That was the last time they transparently and democratically nominated Barack Obama a second time as their presidential candidate.Ever since, their nominations have been rigged.In 2020, party insiders -- terrified of the left-wing crazy primary field -- forced out all the leading contenders.Then they coronated the debilitated but still supposedly useful moderate Biden as their COVID-era candidate. Biden then bragged that he would pick his vice president on the basis of race and gender.What followed was the most bizarre campaign in history.Biden stayed put in his basement and outsourced his candidacy to the partisan media.Party activists changed long-standing voting laws in the key swing states. For the first time in American history, 70 percent of Americans did not vote in person on Election Day -- the majority of them by design Democrats.Next, in 2024, they forced the now no longer useful Biden off the ticket, nullifying his 14 million primary voters.Then, without a vote, they rammed in inept Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. As a failed candidate in 2020, she had never won a single delegate.Some in the party now concede it must roust out its radicals.But Democrats will not.AOC and her Squad, the unhinged Jasmine Crockets of the party, and the ossified socialist Bernie Bros would demonize any Democrat who offered a sane reboot.A few fossils in the party may think they know how to save it. But they are terrified that the medicine would be considered far worse than the illness that prompted it.Would Democrats consider embracing measured and legal-only immigration?No -- the crazy base would scream "xenophobe!"A return to meritocracy and the Martin Luther King notion of race as incidental, not essential, to who we are?Again, that would be called "racist!"Maybe reforms to fix failed schools with vouchers, school choice, and charter schools?Again, "racist!"How about developing gas and oil reserves and nuclear power to lower energy costs for the struggling middle class?That would be condemned as "destroying the planet!"Restore police forces, end critical race and legal theory, and deter criminals with tough sentencing?Again, "racist!"How about ceasing the whiny fixations with "white privilege" and "white rage?" Or quit seeing a "white supremacist" under every bed?Again, "racist!"The left created DEI -- the use of race to adjudicate every political issue.And like any addictive, toxic drug, they now can neither survive with DEI -- nor without it.]]>Fri, 02 May 2025 18:33:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Woke]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/05/02/democrats-and-their-dei-albatrosses-n4940283<![CDATA[Since 2021, the left has waged a veritable war against the American legal system in a variety of ways.]]>Fri, 25 Apr 2025 20:37:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/04/25/what-is-democratic-legality-n4939218<![CDATA[Harvard University has rejected various demands of a presidential commission on antisemitism.]]>Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:25:37 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Universities]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/04/18/will-harvard-go-full-hillsdale-n4939005<![CDATA[1. President Donald Trump's so-called "trade war."]]>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 18:00:00 -0400<![CDATA[Victor Davis Hanson]]><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]>https://pjmedia.com/victor-davis-hanson/2025/04/11/ten-tariff-questions-never-asked-n4938791