VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Lessons in Munich Agreement for Iran Deal

The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938 Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia, backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II. All of that is true. But there was much more that caused the Munich debacle than simple Western naivete. The full tragedy of that ill-fated agreement…

Victor Davis Hanson: What Went Wrong
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: Piling up debt, gaffes, and hypocrisy, Obama & Co. are sinking.

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, other than the usual hubris of the party in power?

First, voters had legitimate worries about health care, global warming, immigration, energy, and inefficient government. But it turns out that they are more anxious about the new radical remedies than the old nagging problems. They wanted federal support for wind and solar, but not at the expense of neglecting new sources of gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power. They were worried about high-cost health care, the uninsured, redundant procedures, and tort reform, but not ready for socialized medicine. They wanted better government, not bigger, DMV-style government. There is a growing realization that Obama enticed voters last summer with the flashy lure of discontent. But now that they are hooked, he is reeling them in to an entirely different — and, for many a frightening — agenda. Nothing is worse for a president than a growing belief among the public that it has been had.

Second, Americans were at first merely scared about the growing collective debt. But by June they became outraged that Obama has quadrupled the annual deficit in proposing all sorts of new federal programs at a time when most finally had acknowledged that the U.S. has lived beyond its means for years. They elected Obama, in part, out of anger at George W. Bush for multi-billion dollar shortfalls — and yet as a remedy for that red ink got Obama’s novel multi-trillion-dollar deficits.

Third, many voters really believed in the “no more red/blue state America” healing rhetoric. Instead, polls show they got the most polarizing president in recent history — both in his radical programs and in the manner in which he has demonized the opposition to ram them through without bipartisan support. “Punch back harder” has replaced “Yes, we can.” Fourth... >>> Vitor Davis Hanson | Monday, August 17, 2009

An Extract - Victor Davis Hanson: The West Has Warped Immigration Laws
…Like the U.S., Europe is currently subject to a strong immigration wave - although not Hispanic but Muslim in origin. Based on your research into what has been happening in the U.S., do you have any advice to offer to Europeans?

Curb the numbers. Jettison multicultural mish-mash, and instead insist on assimilation and integration. Show pride in your culture that newcomers, after all, have voted by their very presence to accept. Distinguish legal from illegal immigration and don't let tribalists and illiberals masquerade as progressives as they demonize the very sanctuary they flee to. Most immigrants who are unhappy and bite the hand that feeds them learn their venom from disaffected Western elites.

And leading on from this, why do you think European countries are allowing this to happen? What consequences will we have to expect?

At first it was economics, the desire for cheap labor; but then the multiculturalism encouraged the "other" to come without conditions and to recreate the landscape of their abandoned and mostly failed home countries. Now you have the worst of postindustrial West: too few jobs for a growing population of illegal immigrants, even as enabling elites assure them that their problems and pathologies are all the fault of the host. A bad combination by any means.

Do you see any appreciable differences between the way the U.S. is dealing with immigration issues, and Europe's response to similar problems?

We will stop the influx soon and through our powers of assimilation and popular culture absorb those here; you may well not and thus are already seeing a tiny elite on top mouthing utopian leftwing bromides while a radical rightwing movement on bottom will grow, demanding xenophobic solutions.

I am not confident in an easy solution for Europe, given its 20th-century past - whether confronting the specter of a Muslim Eurabia, or the counter-rightwing backlash that could get very ugly. You in Europe have little facility - socially, culturally, and politically - to absorb immigrants into full-fledged Europeans. We do (as Europe's historic critiques of America as a mongrel nation attest) - if the numbers of new arrivals are reasonable, of diverse backgrounds, and of legal status.

Officially Europe sounds more utopian, while in reality Europeans are clannish and reluctant to integrate and embrace; America sounds strident and angry, while Americans in their personal lives integrate, assimilate, and marry Mexican nationals who come here illegally - the tragedy being that if we just cut the numbers of new arrivals of illegals, the existing cohort would soon disappear through assimilation. Read It All - Africa: The West Has Warped Immigration Laws >>> By Atang Izang | April 28, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)

Victor Davis Hanson* on the Teddy Bear Affair
TOWNHALL.COM: Here we go again. Thousands of Sudanese Muslims took to the street last week to threaten death to a British schoolteacher in Khartoum.

Her crime? She inadvertently committed the felony of allowing her class to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.”

The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, has been pardoned by Sudan’s president (after initially being sentenced to 15 days in prison) and sent home to England. Yet that happy ending doesn’t erase the reaction in the streets of Khartoum. The tired story behind irrational anger in much of the Muslim world remains the same.

Watch out if Westerners somewhere are judged blasphemous to Islam when they draw a cartoon, write a novel, make a movie or discuss history.

In their furious reaction, thin-skinned Muslims may issue death threats. And they expect apologies. Sometimes the offense — like the reporting of a Koran flushed down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay — turns out to be false but still causes riots and murdering thousands of miles away.

Likewise, the reaction to this madness is now stereotyped. Often apologies — not condemnation — follow from contrite Westerners. To prevent a recurrence, Western writers, filmmakers, teachers and religious figures quietly edit their work and restrict their speech — but only when Islam is involved. Of Teddy Bears and Cartoons >>>

*Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Mark Alexander (Paperback)