07/07/2020

From An Angry Reader:

Subject: Fox News appearance

Hi, As I watched you on McCallum’s show sort of hesitantly and with some confusion discuss your claims about Biden’s cognitive state, my mom’s dementia came to mind. I recommend you take the usual battery of tests to determine where you are on the spectrum…and perhaps refrain from discussing this topic (just in terms of low credibility). Good luck! CVS.

Cathy Scott

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Dear Angry Reader Cathy Scott,

You need to quantify evidence of my dementia—with wrong referents, incorrect data, or inability to answer a question.

If I sounded hesitant on that interview it might be because I was scheduled to debate a Biden supporter and after my opening statement, his connection he said went dead and we waited for his response that did not come—a hiatus which in turn prompted the host to reset the interview and, after a pause, have me go on with another answer.

But again, my argument was not based on my own perceptions.

As I pointed out, I simply echoed what 20 percent of Democratic voters have expressed in polls, what Democratic handlers take for granted when they urge Biden to stay right where he is in his basement and do only occasional scripted interviews, why Democrats view the Vice Presidential nomination as a de facto presidential nomination and a way to advance a leftist candidate into the White House who would have otherwise never have advanced through the primary elections, or as the formal head of the ticket in a general election, and the now large corpus of bizarre Bidenisms that range from strange stories about Corn-Pop to moments of dead silence, to confusion as to where he is and to whom he is speaking, etc. Had the other debater’s sound connection not belatedly resumed, I would have finished by noting that Biden also has a long-chronicled habit of touching, squeezing, and blowing on the hair of women, some pre-teen, violating their personal space, and in general earning the ire of a number of women who resent his creepy omnipresence—a topic that for some reason is taboo in his case. VDH.

Victor Hanson

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07/06/2020

From An Angry Reader:

Professor Hanson:

In your recent article Class, Not Race, Divides America, you said:

Whatever Trump was, he talked to blacks just as he talked to everyone else—same accent, same mannerism, same vocabulary. He was not going to feign a black patois and pander in the Joe Biden style of “Put y’all back in chains” or “You ain’t black,” or reinvent himself in Hillary Clinton fashion as a civil rights veteran possessed of a phony drawl, “I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far . . . ” Think of the logic driving these white liberal elites: “Blacks cannot understand my good English, so I will descend into their poor grammar, diction, and syntax to feign ‘y’all’ and ‘ain’t’ and ‘no ways tired.’”

I think maybe you are right, and probably you are more right than wrong. But it could be that the way Hillary, Biden, and Obama spoke were just efforts to blend, or to connect with their audiences, and there is nothing wrong with that. Trump used twitter and street language or layman terms, or even behaved and acted like one of the labor, low-income class when speaking as though he himself is a citizen, not a president, is another way to connect to his audiences.

Both ways are ok in my opinion, and the emphasis should be how genuinely one speaks. Trump in your eye is genuine even if crude, but who knows if he is a talented actor who went further by standing in with the crowd when in fact he is just an arrogant racist.

To be honest, I agree with you more than with the other medias (who provide too much criticisms without sound analysis) in many matters including Trump’s character. Writing to a well-known professor like you is very uncomfortable, you can guess, but I dare saying my thought because I am inspired by your articles and I am encouraged by your answers to other angry readers that you don’t mind if one has a point to discuss.

Thank you for reading my letter. I wish you well.

Nghia Vu

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Dear Calm and Thoughtful Angry Reader Nghia Vu,

I give you only a 1 (the lower the score, the more professional the angry reader letter), given your letter does not contain the usual three-dot ellipses, capitalizations, exclamation points, profanity, threats, and general incoherence. It reflects a calmer and more thoughtful “angry” reader.

I agree that all politicians pander to a degree, but my point was that Trump does not seem to modulate his accent and mannerisms to fit the sociology and race/ethnicity of particular crowds, at least in the manner that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and, yes, even Barack Obama did. From what we know, Trump’s accent, grammar, and vocabulary are not contingent on his audience, as his critics note in their disparagement.

I confess I lose your train of thought with “but who knows if he is a talented actor who went further by standing in with the crowd when in fact he is just an arrogant racist.” If you mean Trump tries to disguise his tough talk on sensitive issues, I suggest that he does not. His critics go ballistic precisely because he says anything to anyone, anywhere, and anytime, without filters, euphemisms, or equivocation. His enemies are shocked at his directness; he handlers worried that he needlessly is so explicit.

I don’t mind at all discussing your points. A final one: I agree with those who judge one’s temperament and ideology on what one does rather than what one is interpreted as saying. Take two examples: Trump’s supposed “racism,” and his “Russian collusion.”

Trump’s policies lowered minority unemployment to record levels. He sought to reduce prison-terms for felony drug crimes that he said fell inordinately upon blacks; he championed inner-city charter schools, as well as tax-exempt enterprise zones; he has pardoned, paroled, or commuted the sentences of a number of African-Americans whom he felt were inordinately sentenced beyond what their convictions warranted.

On collusion, Trump has said many wild things about the Russians—most infamously joking that perhaps they could help find Hillary’s deleted emails.

But what he has done far exceeds anything punitive from the “reset” Obama administration: he upped sanctions on Russia, he got out of an asymmetrical agreement with Russia on short-range missiles, he sold weapons to Ukraine, he jawboned against the Germany-Russia natural gas deal, he killed Russian mercenaries in Syria, he crashed world oil and natural gas prices, the essence of the Russian economy, by green lighting horizontal drilling and fracking, and he upped the U.S. defense budget and pressed NATO members to keep their promises—all to the chagrin of Vladimir Putin.

Trump says all sorts of things in his art-of-the-deal manner, and the media often report things he didn’t say as if he did. What Trump actually does is what counts, and he has done more for the African-American community than most prior presidents.

Thank you for your letter.

Victor Hanson

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04/20/2020

From An Angry Reader:

Professor Hanson,

I am not really angry. I apologize for the subject line but I guessed that it would get my email read.

My primary complaint…..

Your last “angry reader” entry is 2/28/20.

I know you are busy, but some of us would love it (and buy it) if you had a book form of telling us about your responses to the people who didn’t think very much before they wrote to complain at you (or, just put more responses up regularly). I actually printed years of your responses to share.

My father (US Army in the Philippines) and my father-in-law served in WW2. Melinda’s (my wife’s) father earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart for his service (Ken was on the USS Trout before it was sunk). Your book, which I have passed on to another, explained the magnitude and importance of the service they gave and amplified the meaning of their service for us. Thank you so much for that.

As an average American, living all my life in the Bay Area, I truly wish there were people like you, with their brain on fire, who would give their time to guide the masses through their mazes (which is what I perceive that you do anyway), as “politicians” dedicated to improving the lives of the people who pay their wages. What our country needs is intelligent leadership. And now, it seems, that even Birx, Fauci, and certainly Trump, read your columns or pieces and respond as if they thought what you said. You have to appreciate that! And they all know where the thinking came from.

Please help them and us all in the process. Your columns are absolutely great but you should have a cabinet post or advisory position where they could absorb reality more frequently, I think. I bet that Trump is smart enough to do that (if he hasn’t already).

Chris Almeida

Newark, CA

p.s. While looking at stuff to write this and not sound too stupid, I found that I could take online classes at Hillsdale and I will do that.

Thanks again!

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Dear Not at All Angry Reader,

Thank you for your kind words and the service of your family in the country’s defense. One must discover where one’s talents can help and where they would not. In my small case, I accept I would be a poor politician and a worse public official, but, in terms of commentary rather than historical work, had some role to play as a skeptic of the current progressive agenda.

It took about 6 days to weaponize the entire virus disaster to the point where Trump is now veritably running against the virus and presented with a political paradox that if he lockdowns the country much longer, he becomes Herbert Hoover who intentionally destroyed the economy; and yet if he opens it up, he is a murderer with blood on his hands. Stranger still, such politicization of the epidemic is so hotly denied by those who did it in order to project their culpability on others who call them out.

In the old days, conservatism and liberalism were sort of bookends; the former reflecting human nature, the latter a naive confidence that with enough money and kindness we could change human nature. Not now. Liberalism is dead, progressivism killed it and the hard left of the 1960s is in control. It is intolerant and has nursed an entire new generation on the campuses who are abjectly ignorant but strangely arrogant in such vacuity.

The epidemic brought this out, both the left’s intolerance of debate and dissent, and its inability to accept that science is a constantly changing and evolving discipline as more data correct, modify, adapt, prove, and reject prior theories, and is not a tool of supposedly sophisticated and university credentialed elite.

We should believe PhDs and MDs much of the time, but when they tell us that anti-viral masks are superfluous and drain resources from the medical professionals, then the masks are sort of helpful, and then that they should be worn by all, we can legitimately conclude that their certainty about the virus is misplaced.

Sincerely, Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

02/28/2020

From An Angry Reader:

Subject: Gray Matter

Your articles are so offensively lacking in context, thoughtfulness, and reflection on history–basically simpleminded attack ads– that I am going to erase the National Review’s bookmark from my browser. And there is no case for Trump any more than there was a case for Mussolini.

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Dear Angry Reader “Red Harmony”

At least your letter is free of the usual Angry Reader capital letters, profanity, and slurs, although you make accusations about a recent essay I wrote on elite disparagement of so-called average Americans (“ ‘Gray Matter’–Deficient Americans”) without citing a single fact, quotation, or particular name to ground your accusations.

And, of course, also in Angry Reader fashion, you resort to the usual reductio ad fascism (e.g., “a case for Mussolini”). Trump, unlike Mussolini, is in constitutional fashion up for reelection, and his agenda has to be ratified by a Congress, while he is subject to constant judicial review.

In terms of fascist anti-Semitism, Trump is the most pro-Israel, and perhaps pro-Jewish president in memory. He has a decided distaste for optional or preemptory wars, and does not wear uniforms, give 4-hour speeches, or form “pacts of steel” with fascist nations.

Currently, he has taken on communist China on trade, is far tougher on authoritarian Russia than was the “reset” Obama administration, and broke off the Obama Iran Deal with a theocratic and murderous Iranian government. So again, you should supply some evidence to support what are otherwise incoherent assertions.

Erasing your bookmark to National Review I suggest is a superb idea and could spare you further heartache and angst of the sort you demonstrate here.

01/09/2020

From An Angry Reader:

Subject: The Dangers of…YOU

Mr. Hanson,

It appears that they let just about anyone submit an opinion even a Stanford grad. I guess you didn’t have what it takes to get into Harvard. You are obviously a Republican and that is not a good thing right now. Republicans right now are deaf, blind and stupid! It is the ignorant and uneducated schmucks like you that have all the Republican believing that party is more important than country. You may have a degree but far from being educated. Educate yourself on the facts and stop spinning the truth to make yourself look relevant. Talk about misleading your audience. Like all Republicans, you are blind to what Trump has done to your country. I’m not saying he hasn’t done anything. I mean Mexico did pay for wall right? You are an embarrassment and a traitor. You love your bullshit party over your country! I say you are a fraud. Better start to learn Russian.

You have a great future at Fox and Friends.

Howard Selcer

Howard Selcer & Associates

302 Briston Private

Ottawa, ON K1G 5R1

Ottawa/Montreal/Toronto/Vancouver/Las Vegas/Chicago

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Dear Angry Reader Howard Selcer,

You hit almost all the Angry Reader buttons: personal invective and ad hominem attacks (e.g., “traitor,” “ignorant and uneducated schmucks like you,” etc.), potty language (“bullshit”), personal arrogance (the pretentious titles and affiliations that remind us that you and your “associates” are pan-North-American and that a Harvard or Stanford pedigree equates with authority), the puerile grammatical incoherence (“that have all the Republican (sic) believing”; “You may have a degree but far from being (sic) educated”), the absence of a single example or fact to support your invective, and general ignorance about the target of your rant: I have never been a registered Republican, but currently am an Independent—after over thirty years of being a registered Democrat. Like most angry readers, you seem to deplore disunity even as your own harangues are clear evidence of why it exists.

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson & Associates

The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, National Review, American Greatness, Tribune Publishing Company, Hillsdale College

Stanford/New York/Chicago/Hillsdale/Selma

01/08/2020

From An Angry Reader:

You are doing the same thing you claim Maddow is doing. Aren’t you an elite grouper, just on the other side of Maddow? You left out many facts in your article. You need to look in the mirror. You are old enough to know better. America needs to unite, what are you thinking? How are you making things better?

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Dear Angry Reader Dr. Stady,

If you would just list one example in which I have erred about the dossier or the impeachment melodrama, you might be more believable. When I have appeared on television, I have tried to provide examples and facts to support what I have said, and I have done so without ad hominem attacks. Rachel Maddow, in contrast, invested her credibility in the Steele dossier for months; during that period a variety of disinterested journalists and observers had pointed out that Steele’s main contentions, from Mr. Cohen going to Prague to Carter Page being promised a huge multimillion payoff from the Russians, were simply false, well aside from the salacious fables. But Maddow and others continued to peddle such fantasies because they found them useful to their larger agendas of removing Trump. Don’t believe me, simply read the current series in the liberal Washington Post about the unprofessionalism of the media in its use of the dossier and the “collusion” fabrications.

Again, when you accuse me of omitting facts, and yet cannot produce a single example, then you fall into the same fallacy as all the others who refuse to look at unpleasant realities. As far as uniting the country, I think you need to look at the Left for the present acrimony. I opposed most of Obama’s policies, but I never would consider calling for violence against him, as is now a common Hollywood trope in the case of Trump. Obama used the DOJ to go after journalists, the IRS to hound political opponents, and allowed the FBI and CIA to surveil a political opponent in his last year in office. He bypassed the Senate to ram through the disastrous Iran treaty, and empowered Vladimir Putin with 5 years of disastrous reset appeasement, which included a hot mic quid pro quo deal with the Russians about dismantling US missile defense in Europe in exchange for Putin’s good behavior during his own reelection. All that was reprehensible and yet I don’t think impeachable—at least I never called for Obama’s impeachment or censure, even when by executive fiat he simply granted amnesties and stopped enforcing immigration laws—in a manner he had earlier warned was either illegal or unethical.

The country is disunited. But the venom came from those who called the middle classes, deplorables, irredeemables, crazies, and dregs. And thus I suggest you redirect your concerns to the Left and ask them to turn down the heat and simply seek to persuade Americans of their cause in November 2020, rather than engage in the current celebrity assassination chic, the psychodramas of invoking the 25th Amendment, the Mueller circus, and now the suspended-in-animation impeachment.

Victor Davis Hanson

07/31/2019

From An Angry Reader:

I have known hypocrite God mocking scum like you my entire life. Your cynical article mocking the suffering of the BRAVE German people and glorifying the demonic scum jew who CAUSED are are personally offensive to me and every informed TRUTH loving man woman and child on EARTH! I knew the German people FAR better than you. When I commanded a Special Forces A-team 55 years ago – my operations Sgt. had been a German national and remembered the horrors inflicted on him and his family by war criminal scum like the jew psychopath Eisenhower.

Hitler and the then prosperous German people NEVER EVER wanted a war and YOU KNOW THAT! I have forgotten more about the TRUTHS of that jew incited needless war than you will ever know. Most of my wisdom was by way of REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES – not just texbooks.

You evil conduct and ease with which you twist TRUTHS to deceive naive people is disgusting. Since you are probably not a brain dead moron – the only other possibility for your obvious to twist history are that you are either and or a jew loving leftist ( YOU were raised in the people’s republic of California) or you are just plain criminally EVIL!

While you were learning your ABCs I was commanding a company of 225 American youths to prepare them if need be – to DEFEND OUR COUNTRY against a REAL enemy – not a created one as you have attempted to do for your jew masters. You and YOUR FILTHY ILK are the REAL reason this nation remains CRIMINALLY ignorant of any REAL World War history.

Your use of the jew created slur “NAZI” betrays your ignorance or your loyalty to IsraHELL. I’ll wager you will not refer to blacks – collectively as ‘ NIGGERS” And for your information I too, am a historian having gathered much of my knowledge BOOTS ON THE GROUND in over 30 nations over as many years. I have also published several books dealing with the TRUTHS – as in GOD”S HONEST TRUTH about ALL of the evils of the murderous jews and their evil allies in this once great now degenerate lost nation.

And yes I have investigated jew LIES about the Hollohoax ON SIGHT. And YES I have investigated IDF war crimes in IsraHELL and in Palestine – including cold-blooded murder of defenseless orphan children with the CIA and top intel people – so please no lectures from the peanut gallery. I don’t deal in opinions gossip or lies. ALL my information is truth repeatable to the face of GOD! Even the jew guides at Dachau openly admitted that no jews had ever been “gassed to death in gas chambers”.

You Sir – do not have a clue as to the TRUTH in these areas – so just please keep you mouth shut should you mock/anger God even MORE!

If there is indeed a just God and a place for evil doers – you will go there. And spare me the insults/ lies intended for your useful idiot readers

STOP THE DECEIT!

Joe Cortina – Veteran – father – author – patriot – elite paratroop commander – aerospace physicist – foreign vice-consul – commercial pilot and independent investigative analyst.

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Angry Reader Joe Cortina,

There is no need for the Angry Reader menu of multiple titles, capital letters, the exclamation marks, the personal attacks (“scum”), or the implied threats. Your argument speaks for itself, in that it cites no real data, but lots of anti-Semitic invective.

I think the first 100 pages of The Second World Wars offers a good rebuttal to your allegations. While thousands died of starvation and mistreatment at the concentration/internment camp at Dachau, the main extermination camps that saw the majority of roughly six million Jews gassed or otherwise slaughtered were located, by design, in German-controlled territory of what had once been an independent Poland—both to ensure that the camps were too far away from the reach of most Allied bombing raids, out of sight from the German public, and near the greatest concentrations of prewar European Jewry.

We have Nazi documents and data, physical remains of the eastern death camps, and the testimonies of both Jewish prisoners who survived and the concurrence of German guards and overseers. So the evidence for the Holocaust has always been overwhelming.

I have no insults for you, just a sort of sadness that you are so consumed with hatred.

Victor Hanson

07/30/2019

From An Angry Reader:

Dont worry , no silly greetings for you. Ha ha ha , reading your opinion in Albuquerque Journal made me laugh out loud. Fortunately, I rarely read such Bull Shit. Such crap is beyond belief.

Thanks for the Laugh ,

Darrell Little

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Dear Angry Reader Darrell Little,

I have some admiration for you scoring so high on the Angry Reader scale in a mere three sentences: incorrect grammar, check; dirty words, check; lack of any detail or reference, check; strange rules of capitalization and punctuation, check; ad hominem, sort of check.

What is the logic of “rarely read such…” juxtaposed to taking the trouble to write to the website to offer this tiny little rant? One might think that in fact you read such “Bull S—t” quite often?

Since you have no referent other than anger, I cannot reply to any particular criticism of a column or essay, since you cite nothing other than the gibberish above.

Thanks for the whatever it is,

Victor Hanson

04/04/2019

From An Angry Reader:

Sir:

I thought you were supposed to be an intellectual. Hoover Institution and all that. Then you go off on an illegal immigrant killing an American. That’s Rush Limbaugh turf. (the 2 semester and out fellow) I guess you’re just another partisan propagandist after all. Sorry.

Gary Christian

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Dear Angry Reader Gary Christian,

Your attitude explains precisely why Trump was elected—an unearned and unwarranted sense of intellectual superiority and presumed authority.

Try hosting a radio show for 3 hours, 5 days a week, and see how long you in your brilliance can hold the attention of audience—over 30 years. Your email reflects no such imagination or talent.

In your arrogance of dismissing a “2-semester and out fellow” I suppose you also wrote off the Truman presidency because Harry Truman only finished 1 semester (of business school).

In contrast, did the Yale education of Bill Clinton translate into moral authority? Did Barack Obama’s Harvard Law Review imprimatur ensure that he would not state “You can keep your doctor and insurance plan” during the Obamacare debate or lead to annualized 3 percent economic growth?

I live 20 miles from where, in December, a twice-deported illegal alien, with a long rap sheet, murdered three innocents and injured more—and at about the same time and about 100 miles from where another twice-deported felonious illegal alien murdered a law-enforcement officer, and yet again about 90 miles from where a homemaker was slaughtered by yet another illegal alien previously deported and with a criminal record.

I suppose tragedies like that are jest to your “Rush Limbaugh turf” bombast, but that is only likely because you never experience, as do millions, the real consequences of abstract progressive ideology.

To stifle debate you virtue signal “another partisan propagandist” to substitute for an argument. Such ad hominem smears only reflect your own absence of thinking and poverty of logic. Sorry.

Victor Hanson

04/03/2019

From An Angry Reader:

Well, a quick scan of your website revealed you actually have a whole section dedicated to “Angry Reader” mail. One would think, a man of your so-called intellect, would perhaps have a small moment of introspection and realize the true damage Donald Trump and the current Republican Party are doing to our nation. YOUR angry rantings about “liberals” betray your own bias and lack of critical thinking. YOU buy into stereotypical tropes and pass along non-information and hate-speech inspired Right-wing agenda – then, when reasonable people react negatively to you, you adopt a repulsive, belittling, self-righteous condescension.

Frankly, sir, you are a big part of the problem. As John Stewart once so graciously asked Tucker Carlson on his own show: Please, sir, just stop. You are hurting our country.

So, I don’t need a response from you. I didn’t use any profanity, and only used capital letters for desired emphasis. So maybe this doesn’t score very high on your Angry Meter – but don’t be fooled, I despise you and everyone like you.

Hope you have a good life – there are many others who do not live as well as you, may their misery weigh on your soul.

Jeff Hennefeld

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Dear Very Angry Reader Mr. Hennefeld,

Please Mr. Hennefeld,

You may “not need a response” from me, but your angry-reader venom perhaps deserves one. First, please, take a deep breath and cease your typical angry reader rant.

Such vitriol is precisely what is hurting the country. You don’t need capital scare letters to make points, even if you acknowledge your addiction to them. You do not need to rave without citing a single example to support your argument. You do not, in angry reader 10 fashion, need to sink to ad hominem hate language, “I despise you and everyone like you.”

Is it a requisite of the progressive mindset that as soon as one asks for healing and to stop replying negatively to hate letters, he then follows up with the Sermon on the Mount expression “I despise you”? The scam of apophasis is ancient but claiming that you do not do something does not excuse you when you do it.

If only you could detail exactly what Trump has done that has so upset you. Make the argument that GDP is too weak; minority unemployment too high; energy production too anemic; judges unqualified; or that the Iran Deal was a brilliant arrangement, and there should be no worry about China. We need just a single argument in lieu of virtue signaling your hatred by the quite shameful invocation of the poor and your concern for them—an unfortunate sort of mask for such unhinged venom and hatred.

As far as misery is concerned, I think I know of it first hand as well as anyone, and where I live, with whom I associate, and whom I like I think reflects a likely far broader empathy with those without means than might be true of you.

I do hope you have a good life—and without your sort of qualifications added.

Vic Hanson

06/11/2018

From An Angry Reader:

Subject: 1972 REDUX….The carnivores of civil liberties.

“You talk like a man with a paper ass”. Someone needs to enlighten you about the need to cite examples.

How did you ever get your job at Stanford?

Gary Seager

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Dear Angry Reader Gary Seager,

In such a brief note, you still warrant an Angry Reader score of 2—given vulgarity and ad hominem attack in lieu of an idea or argument.

How odd you demand “examples” in a 750 word syndicated column nevertheless full of examples of officials such as Brennan, Clapper, and Comey who have all three, as I wrote, lied to Congress; Clapper and Brennan have admitted to such and apologized. I noted the FISA court and the flawed email investigations. What examples in fact are you citing for your crude assertions?

As to your last inquiry about how one gets a job at Stanford:

One gets a job at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, by both outside audit and internal review of one’s publications, teaching, public commentary, and prior conduct as a professor and academic, all a matter of record. Anyone is welcome to apply, you included.

So simply send an application to the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305. Be sure to include a vita with your education and terminal degree, teaching record, list of scholarly books and articles, public op-eds, and list of scholars in your field willing to offer candid and confidential assessments.

Then your application with be examined by:

1) the director,

2) a select committee of Hoover senior fellows,

3) a vote by all the senior fellows,

4) the relevant academic department in which you would teach if a full professor at Stanford,

5) an outside assessment conducted by that department, based on evaluations of your work by those in your field at other universities,

6) and a final decision by the provost at Stanford whether you meet Stanford University tenure and promotion standards for full professor.

The entire process can take only a year or so, is professionally conducted, and I certainly urge you to apply if interested.

Sincerely, Victor Hanson

05/02/2018

From An Angry Reader:

Fake Claims. WE HAVE A CONGENITAL LIAR AS A PRESIDENT. HE HAS SCAMMED THE US WITH TAXES AND BANKRUPTCY. HE IS A SERIAL ADULTERER AND SEXUAL PREDATOR. EVEN AS I TEXT HIS BUSINESSES ARE PROFITING FROM MY HARD EARNED AND MEAGER INCOME. HE IS A NARCISSIST AND EGOTIST. AND YOU CRITICIZE MUELLER???? CLEAN UP YOUR OWN (to quote the president) “SHIT HOUSE” FIRST. THEN START ON MULLER- IF YOU HAVE ANY TIME LEFT.

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Dear Angry Reader Louise Roam,

I will give you a “9” on the angry reader OUTRAGE scale. You hit almost all the right buttons:

All capital letters? Check.

Obscenity? Check.

Strings of ad hominem slurs instead of an argument? Check.

Misspelled words and incoherent grammar and syntax? Check.

How exactly are the President’s businesses profiting from Louise Roam’s hard-earned but “meager” income? All presidents are egotists and narcissists; do you remember Obama’s various boasts that he would cool the planet and lower the seas, or that he was more adroit in his various fields of political expertise than were each of his various advisors and aides? Do you remember the faux-Greek columns, or the first-person pronoun monotony?

“Muller” (sic) is federal special counsel. If he cannot appoint disinterested attorneys to his team, or follow the mandate for which he was appointed, or stop deliberate leaks from his staff, or control the amorous passions and wild communications of his various subordinates, then he is not deserving of respect due simply to his appointment.

It is hard to calibrate whether Trump’s crudity is unusual for a president or amplified by the biases of the media and our current 24/7 social media culture. Certainly, he has not jailed video makers, surveilled Associated Press reporters, weaponized the IRS to hound his political appointments, or warped the FISA courts to monitor U.S. citizens and unmask their names for the purposes of harming a political opponent. I am waiting for proof of Trump-Putin collusion; but in the meantime, I do not think there is any doubt that the Hillary Clinton campaign hired a foreign national (Christopher Steele) to find dirt on her opponent. Steele in turn likely purchased gossip and dirt from operatives of the Russian government, and then he used contacts in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and State Department to ensure such unsubstantiated smears were leaked to the media before the November 2016 election, in hopes of either altering it or at least providing “insurance” for the Clinton campaign.

When you write an angry letter, please try to be logical and rational. If any of the above seems unsubstantiated to you, please explain where and how. Meanwhile, ranting with capital letters and foaming about are no substitutes for an argument.

Victor Hanson

03/28/2018

From An Angry Reader:

Mr. Hanson,

About 15 or 20 years ago, I used to read your articles voraciously. I sent them to fellow graduate students—nearly all of whom were overwhelmingly liberal—in order to give them a jolting shot of truth.

That was then, this is now.

I recently took a peek at some of your recent writing. Oh, how different it is!

I expected a man of your background and intellect to be a fierce critic of the current President of the United States. Ancient history is chock full of bombastic demagogues. You know them well. The lessons of history are ripe for the plucking.

However, I have looked over your recent words with profound sadness. I am reminded of the sci-fi thriller, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It is as if your essence has been sucked into a pod and replaced by an alien being hell-bent on the destruction of our country and our world.

Sincerely,

Jeffery Sult

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Dear Angry Reader Jeffery Sult,

I have used the body snatcher image as well in the past for both Trump supporters and his critics, so, as you know, the metaphor works both ways: previously normal sober and judicious minds have become unhinged at the very thought of Donald Trump as president. As a result, they have become obsessive and nearly renounced all their prior positions as if contaminated by Trump’s fingerprints upon them: their minds snatched mysteriously as it were by some mysterious alien force.

You mysteriously write, “Perhaps one day you will return to the side of freedom, democracy, and traditional Western values”—a charge which is mystifying. Where have you been the last eight years? Freedom? Obama rejected democratic Israel and reached out to undemocratic Cuba, Nicaragua, and Iran? Do you have any concept of what the IRS, FBI, NSA, FISA courts, and DOJ have been doing? Democracy? Hillary Clinton rigged the DNC nominating process, and perhaps as well the primary debates, and hired a hit dossier with unverified Russian sources, which, with the help of the FBI, DOJ, and FISA courts, was leaked before the election. Western values? Have you read the transcript of Obama’s Cairo speech? Do you know the anti-Westernism of the university campus which unfortunately has become the mother’s milk of the progressive movement? Are you “shocked” as it were in Casablanca style that a smiling Obama photo turns up with the racist, anti-Semitic and very un-Western Louis Farrakhan, a cosponsor of rallies with today’s progressive luminaries?

We do not live in a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm world, but rather on Election Day a Manichean one of sometimes bad and worse choices. I voted for the alternative to the Clinton syndicate and deep state, and on the side of the deplorables, irredeemables, and the out of work forgotten people in hopes of low unemployment, robust GDP, secure borders, deterrent foreign policy, a strong market, fair trade, and accountability for roguish globalized companies such as those in Silicon Valley that make the 19th-century trusts look tame in comparison. Despite Trump’s melodramas, there has been progress on most of those issues. A Sophoclean Ajax, LeMay, or John Ford’s Ethan Edwards were not necessarily nice people, but then again what they were up against was not nice either, and they were able to address crises that the other more “moral” and “ethnical” retreated from. Life is tragedy, not melodrama. As a professor you should appreciate that. Reread Paradise Lost or the classic Achilles scenes in the Iliad or War As I Knew It to note ambiguity that is central to human nature.

I have written of Trump’s chemotherapeutic nature as well as the cancer it was designed to combat, and the side effects of the therapy upon the public. Try to avoid snap judgements in which someone who agrees with you is saintly and then satanic when they do not.

I too am profoundly sad about your change of heart, but hope that you return to disinterested and empirical thinking because history is full of surprises, in which supposedly tainted messengers have needed messages, and flawed tragic heroes accomplish things that the Achaean hierarchy, the Western town council, or the Joint Chiefs cannot—and often at great cost to themselves.

Sincerely,

Victor Hanson

03/13/2018

From An Angry Reader:

You might have had that intolerable delay because of my son and I (sic). We’re (sic) you the old guy with the nasty glare? We are use (sic) to people like you. Did you ever hear the phrase, “liberty for all” or “equality for all?” You are a Trumpite, which means your (sic) special…How’s that working out for you? I love the Neo-Nazis, the draft deferments, porn stars, staff loyalty, the overt incompetency and overt racism. As a father of a son who is alive because of embryonic stem cell research and would sit in a pre-existing death care policy if you (sic) nutters had your way. By the way, science is real, empirical and not swayed by greed, racism or ignorance. The last three terms apply to you. You are a terrible historian, (sic) you are a Reactionary. And sorry you had to wait, asshole. Dos Vidanya, Stormy

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Dear Angry Reader Owen Hall,

When you write an angry reader letter at least try to be coherent and identify the source of your wrath. The above letter is just stream of consciousness blather, full of half-written thoughts that are almost impossible to fathom. In any case, here is an effort to address your harangue:

1) I do not need your lectures about the disabled. Had you read the column that I think you are referring to, my precise point was concern for special needs people by critiquing those who use special parking permits and who demand wheel chairs going into the plane, but mysteriously sprint off after landing. Meanwhile, those who need special assistance are often ill-served by drivers taking their spots or passengers using their wheelchairs who are not in real need.

2) I am old (64) but do not glare, much less nastily so. Projection and paranoias are not healthy for one’s soul. I have a disabled granddaughter and know all too well about glares, but I do not invent dragons to slay them and thereby virtue signal.

3) I do not know what a “Trumpite” is and I do not think you do either, unless you mean 46% of the country who voted for him as preferable to Hillary Clinton. I do not think those who voted for Hillary are “Clintonites.” Life is more complex that your simplistic us/them dichotomy.

4) When I read your first sentence, I assumed three or four angry reader talking points would inevitably follow. Instead, you managed six(!): 1) the Nazi slur (check), 2) the terrible grammar and near illiterate expression (check), 3) the victimized self-referencing (check), 4) the profanity, (check), 5) the personal slurs (check), and 6) the lame attempts at sarcasm and snark (check). All that was missing were the emphatic capital letters (only a quarter-check) and the veiled threats. I would still give you an 8 on the Angry Reader unhinged scale.

5) Science is indeed real and timeless. But some scientists are unfortunately throughout 2,500 years of civilized research and empiricism often swayed by “greed, racism or ignorance.” Money is often one incentive for non-empirical advocacy masking as disinterested science. Ask yourself how exactly “Earth in the Balance” Al Gore became a near billionaire, and mysteriously dropped his opposition to carbon-fuel profiteering when the anti-Semitic, oil-funded Qatari autocracy offered him many millions for his failed cable Current TV outlet (sold in haste to Qatari-funded Al Jazeera to beat new capital gains taxes that he supported).

6) Mr. Hall, try to calm down, and see the world as it is rather than as the way your dark impulses are terrified it is. Donald Trump was created not by haters, but by an often hateful contempt displayed to half the country. Please reference Hillary Clinton’s latest red-state slurs that update her deplorables and irredeemable invective.

02/16/2018

From An Angry Reader:

Sir, Your piece on political scandals is totally skewed of facts. The only so-called FISA-gate has been created by Trump’s lacky Nunes. Your writing of lies and inaccuracies only fuels the clueless base of this president. I don’t need to tell you what the real information about the Carter Page investigation reveals. The vomit you write is just total fantasy building up an immoral and totally unfit president. Hopefully you’ll come to your senses when all of these scumbags are thrown out of our White House. Kelly is on his way out along with two staffers. Forty plus other staffers still have no security clearances after more than a year. Nunes will be brought forth for obstruction of justice, not following his charge to investigate Russian interference, but trying to set up the Justice Department to eventually get rid of Dept. Attorney General Rosenstein. Your column was disgusting at best and a total disgrace to factual journalism. Jack Sweeney

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Dear Quite Angry Reader Jack Sweeney,

Please calm down. I don’t think in my article I let emotions run wild as did you. Why so angry?

Let me address your outrages in the order you rant:

1) If you believe my analysis is devoid of facts, then by all means present factual refutation of the article. I am always eager to hear more information and will stand corrected.

2) FISA-gate was not created by Rep. Devin Nunes, who years ago warned the Obama Administration about the dangers of Russian hacking and cyber-warfare. Do you seriously believe that Nunes paid Fusion/GPS to collect fantasies about Donald Trump during the campaign, or he peddled such information to the FBI, or used it without full acknowledgment of its nature to spy on an American citizen with permission from a FISA court, or requested surveillance transcripts, unmasked the names, and leaked them to the press? Did he fire top FBI people or force them to retire or be reassigned, or force the same among Obama-holdovers at the DOJ?

3) Again, what is your purpose to allege “lies” and “inaccuracies” without citing facts and details?

4) An argument does not need hyped adjectives and nouns such as lackey, lies, clueless, vomit, scumbags, etc. They are poor substitutions for analysis.

5) There certainly have been departures of Trump political appointees from the White House reflecting the lack of prior political experience and a general amateurishness, but what is the excuse for the string of similar resignations, firings, and reassignments at the FBI and DOJ of permanent and professional lawyers and analysts?

6) Nunes was referred to the House Ethics Committees by leftwing groups for political purposes and to delay the investigation into Obama Administration wrongdoing. He was cleared of all charges by a bipartisan membership. Do you dispute that? He will likely be seen as one of the few who was willing to challenge the FBI, CIA, and DOJ. And without his efforts to subpoena and obtain repressed documents, we likely would never have known who paid for the Steele dossier or that it was used to spy on citizens and leak their names to the press, in efforts to thwart a campaign for president.

7) Nunes has expressed no animosity toward Rosenstein—and no desire, even if it were in his power, to see him removed. But that said, we still wish to know why Rosenstein signed a DOJ FISA request using a document whose origins and authorship were never fully disclosed to the court, and which was not used to demonstrate collusion but to leak supposedly incriminating details to the press to affect an election and presidential transition.

8) When I read invective like yours (disgusting, disgrace, etc.) in lieu of a rational argument, I conclude my analysis hit home and required adolescent slurs rather than reasoned analysis. Try to calm down a bit, look at things in perspective, imagine counter-arguments, and don’t work yourself into a self-induced mania. Time will tell, and eventually all the facts will emerge and we will separate the guilty chaff from the innocent wheat. If it turns out that Mueller finds indictable evidence that President Trump made deals with the Russians, quid pro quo style, to defeat Hillary Clinton in exchange for concession, and Trump is convicted by a jury of his peers, and that there is nothing to Clinton/GPS Fusion/Steel collusion with Russian sources to derail the Trump campaign, as well as improper communications and actions by the Obama White House, then I will be the first to offer a correction.

Victor Hanson

02/14/2018

From An Angry Reader

From SM:

Your article sucks. What if CNN didn’t hate FDR? You can’t debate a hypothetical situation.

Trump is probably going to prison. Have fun.

_________________________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader SM,

1) Define “sucks.”

2) It is called counter-factual history and offers food, however unwished, for thought.

3) Trump is not likely to be going to prison, because key Democratic Senators such as Diane Feinstein, Obama-appointed intelligence officers such as James Comey and James Clapper, and private FBI correspondence such as the texts of the Page-Strzok archive, all conceded that there is no evidence of Russian collusion, a conclusion borne out by the pivot in the Mueller investigation away from its original mandate. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton might face legal consequences, given her destruction of subpoenaed material, her use of an illegal private server, her quid pro quo relations with foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation, and her present likely permanent distance from power.

4) I always try to have fun.

From VH

02/12/2018

From An Angry Reader:

I was surprised this morning. Usually when I read your column I want to throw up. But today’s column was absolutely brilliant

Nice job

Mike Benbrook

Oakhurst CA

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Dear Reforming Angry Reader Mike Benbrook,

Vomiting is not healthy. If I were to do so each time I receive a reader’s ad hominem rant, I would be bulimic by now. Still, I appreciate your ability to find a diamond now and then floating otherwise in a sea of vomit.

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

02/09/2018

From An Angry(?) Reader:

Greetings Professor Hanson!

For many years now, I have followed you on talk radio, TV interviews, YouTube videos, books and published articles. I greatly appreciate your commitment to truth, accurate history and the application of those two principles to current events. Your reasoning and observations are always clear, astute and logical. Good job!

However, I consider myself one of your angry readers, because you either show no interest in or have utterly failed to create 7,969 clones of yourself and get them elected to public office (1 President, 535 Congressmen and Senators, 50 Governors and 7,383 state legislators). I know there is a big drawback to all this, but your wisdom, knowledge and understanding more than make up for your willingness to live amongst the heathen there in California.

Since cloning yourself doesn’t seem to be a priority for you, could you do one other thing for me? Seriously, would you shoot me a “short” list of your favorite classical literature dealing with the nature of man, war, religion and government? I would love to read them.

All kidding aside, thank you for allowing the rest of [us] to benefit from all your hard work. Wherever they are, your folks must be very proud of you.

God bless,

JHL

____________________

John H. Lester

Attorney at Law

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Dear Not Angry Reader at All John Lester,

For your list: Thucydides, the so-called Old Oligarch, Plato, Apology, Aristotle, Politics, Sophocles Antigone, Euripides Bacchae, Virgil Eclogues and Aeneid, Tacitus Annals, Petronius Satyricon, Horace Odes I-III.

Everyone must know his limitations; mine are being somewhat of a duskolos and recluse out on the farm. I would be a terrible politician, largely because they must have unusual patience, be on call 24/7, know how to dress well and appear professional, possess superhuman energy and health, consort with the media, and enjoy city life—but most importantly they so often have sacrificed precious time to read and write and think, given the demands put upon them. And, of course, their families cannot quite come first given their time away from home. I say all that partly in admiration of their sacrifices.

Victor Hanson

02/08/2018

From An Angry Reader:

I initially became interested in your work after your podcast interview with Dan Carlin many years ago. The need to engage in a priori reasoning is an important lesson. It is disappointing that you have forgotten this lesson in your many defenses of Trump and your unhinged criticisms of Barack Obama. Most telling is how you criticized Obama (multiple times in print) of once pronouncing corpsman wrong while Trump is given a pass for savaging a gold star family and criticizing prisoners of war as losers who got caught. Let us hope you can regain your senses.

Rajdeep Kandola

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Dear Angry Reader Rajdeep Kandola,

“Unhinged”? “Prescient” is a better adjective for my summations of Obama’s tenure. Aside from never achieving 3% GDP annualized growth, eroding deterrence abroad, doubling the national debt, creating a dysfunctional health care system, the tragic Libyan misadventure, the Iran deal, the sudden appearance of North Korean nuclear-tipped intercontinental missiles, and the alphabet scandals (GSA, IRS, DOJ, VA, etc.), we now learn that the Obama DOJ and FBI (Comey, McCabe, Miller, Ohr, Page, Strzok, etc.) for political purposes likely peddled a bought Clinton hit piece, dressed it up with administration authentication, lied to FISA judges to use it as a means to spy on the Trump campaign to alter an election, and then had top security officials (Rice, Brennan, Rhodes, Power, etc.) requesting FISA transcripts, unmasking names, and leaking them to the press—again, all to warp an election and then to undermine a new presidency. “Unhinged” is apt for those not bothered by that—and far more to come.

I think if you really read what I have written about Trump, I have stated often that he can be cruel, crass, and buffoonish. But he made no claims otherwise; Obama, remember, alleged that he had the powers to lower the oceans and cool the planet, that he was smarter in each field than his subordinates, and was called a “god” by the press, often on the basis of his pants’ crease or tingling-inspired fits. The question is not whether I have criticized Trump, but rather have you been bothered by Obama’s jokes about the Special Olympics, or his boast to “get in their faces” and to “punish our enemies”? Trump the supposedly callous moron has helped lower black unemployment to its lowest levels in a mere year; Obama the mellifluous and caring social justice warrior saw middle-class income erode and the economy stall, with disastrous results for those in-between the two globalized coasts.

So you miss the point: Trump is a Manhattan real estate developer without political experience. Voters entrusted him with the presidency for two reasons: 1) they felt Hillary was far more dangerous (born out by subsequent post-election revelations), and Trump’s can-do business experience and conservative agenda outweighed his pathologies (in the way Lincoln overlooked Grant’s embarrassing drinking on the job given his ability to win battles, or, to liberal insiders, JFK’s serial and callous womanizing did not detract from his Camelot presidency). But with Obama, there were pretensions of a legal scholar (who bypassed Congress to issue executive orders that he once said were improper, bypassed the Senate to cut de facto treaties with Iran, and had aides all but destroy the FISA process). With a booming economy and superb national security appointees, voters could put up with Trump’s not knowing details, but when the scholar Obama does not know where the Maldives are or how to pronounce “corpsmen,” then he suffers the additional wage of hypocritical pretension and is without the redeeming accomplishment of a strong economy and a strong deterrent foreign policy. In other words, when I see a pretentious and pedantic professor quote Greek wrongly, I am bothered; I am not so bothered by the skillful truck-driver who knows no Greek at all even if he would claim otherwise.

Victor Hanson

12/20/2017

From Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland

So…after one year in office, Trump’s biggest (AND ONLY!) accomplishment is that he is King of Twitter? You must be very proud. By the way, how’s that Trumpcare thing workin’ out for ya?

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Idiot. Moron. Buffoon. Simpleton. Test Tube Baby!

______________________________________________________________________________

Dear Angry Reader Jeffrey Rowland,

You have many of the characteristics of the classic unhinged angry reader: the proverbial capital letters, the exclamation mark, the personal slurs, and the slang, but deserve credit for a new wrinkle—the onomatopoetic scream. So you score a 10 on the Angry Reader scale of inanity. Did you read the essay or simply write to slur? The defeat of ISIS, the new NSS document, a new principled realism policy promulgated by superb foreign policy appointments like Mattis and McMaster, coupled with tax reform, deregulation, record energy production, 4% fourth quarter GDP growth, record stock market levels, as well as increased consumer and business confidence, and new lows in unemployment, in some cases record low minority unemployment—all point to undeniable accomplishment (in addition to superb judicial appointments and radical drops in illegal crossings of the southern border).

A final suggestion: even slurs and smears deserver coherence; what does “test tube baby” as a finale to “idiot,” “moron,” “buffoon,” and “simpleton” actually mean?

Victor Hanson

12/19/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Mr. Hanson,

I just finished your article about Trump’s tweets and it has moved me to ask a question. I was wondering if quite possibly, you’ve lost your mind? You write as if his tweets are harmless and of no consequence when they have caused the North Korean situation to become even more alarming. Furthermore, he insults people left and right for nothing more than disagreeing with him. His actions have not only caused hatred and division in the country but have fractured the Republican party.

Then there is the tax plan. In the past when corporations have benefited it has rarely been passed down to the working people and the division between the top earners and the average person has gotten wider over the years. Also, as a center-right, I’ve always believed that you need regulations, but the minimum necessary to do the job, not get rid of them completely. So, congratulations, you and the people that feel as you do have convinced me to do what George Will did and declare myself an independent.

Good work,

Benjamin Hudgins

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Dear Angry Reader Benjamin Hudgins,

What column are your reading?

I think being an Independent is wise. Congratulations!

The whole point of the essay was to point out that tweeting is a powerful tool, often in Trump’s hands effective, but also volatile and now often counter-productive. Do you really believe that in 2017 knowing that the North Koreans for some time have had thermonuclear weapons and the ability to send them into the U.S., and taking all sorts of efforts to stop them, is more dangerous than from 2009-16 simply ignoring what they were doing, or, in the words of former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, believing we could live with North Korean nuclear missiles pointed at us—the official position apparently of the Obama administration? I will prefer loud deterrence any day to judicious appeasement.

Trump certainly is a divider, but he is also a follower—in this case an adherent to “get in their faces,” “punish our enemies,” and “take a gun to a knife fight” us/them rhetoric of Barack “you didn’t earn that!” Obama, whose executive orders became a model for Trump as well as his commentaries on ongoing court cases.

Don’t become a captive of groupthink news: The top professional earners are the most likely to pay more taxes under the new plan. Almost half the country now pays no income tax at all; and the middling brackets who do will pay less. Trump is undoing for the most part the vast regulatory additions of Obama; he could cut thousands of needless regulations and yet the administrative deep state of today would still be vastly bigger than of just 20 years ago. Trump is mostly slowing down the growth of government, not dismantling it, however shrill his opposition.

Consider the role of irony and paradox in affairs and relax: Trump’s agenda is far more conservative than those “conservatives” who despise him; and while we deplore his often ad hominem attacks, he has shown an empathy for the working classes not displayed by more sober and judicious Republican candidates of the past.

Watch out for mellifluous inanity: Obama seemed a president out of central casting—but one who crudely brought a rapper to the White House whose latest cover celebrated rappers toasting a dead judge’s corpse (with eyes x-ed out) pictured on the White House lawn, and whose lyrics celebrated violence against the police. Did you object to that crudity or do you find tweets more jarring?

Or did you object that Obama stealthily exempted the terrorists of Hezbollah from sanctions to push through the Iran Deal, whose side agreements are only now coming to light? If you are worried about presidential excesses, recall the Obama administration’s surveilling of U.S. citizens on the likely basis of the fraudulent Steele dossier or the AP reporters or Fox’s James Rosen, or jailing a minor video maker to serve as a scapegoat for the Benghazi tragedy.

Do not confuse images with reality and consensus with truth.

Good work,

Victor Hanson

12/18/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Victor David Hanson, you’d sweep the table. Your post-tweet Presidency column entry tops all possible contenders in its unique blend of so-bad-its-good upending suspension of logic and unearned laudatory excess that the academy is bereft of adequate means of expression to honor its achievements.

Perhaps its heaps and heaps of praises could be stacked in a pyre with the rest of your journalistic output in the same vein, your reputation placed on top, and the whole saccharine malodorous pile set ablaze.

That guy with your name who writes those sober and sane books and historical studies must daily be abashed at being confused for you.

Paul Freedman

Vienna, VA

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Dear Angry Reader Paul Freedman,

Davis not David—not a good start. Whoa—slow down: your vocabulary and syntax of outrage have stampeded.

To write an effective Angry Reader letter, you must be specific and give examples, rather than start out with “you’d sweep the table” boilerplate. What then follows is mostly generic hyperbole without references or examples.

I made a simple argument: 1) Trump so far had defied expert opinion in using Twitter, sometimes crudely, for political advantage; 2) But after 10 months in office he has achievements (good economy, recalibrated foreign policy, likely tax reform, good appointments [especially judicial], soaring energy production, and deregulation; 3) Consequently, while Twitter is effective in reaching millions to convey his messages, he need not joust one-on-one with individual journalists and celebrities, but rather let his record and improving economy speak for itself and not be impaired by rhetoric distractions.

What, then, exactly is under dispute?—Has the stock market tanked, GDP fallen to past levels, consumer and business confidence crashed, unemployment risen? What exactly did you feel was not accurate and could be refuted with your own evidence?

But instead of rational rebuttal, you offer cumbersome and incoherent metaphors of rage (e.g., what exactly is the image conveyed of “journalistic output” and “my reputation” consisting of some sort of “pile” that in turn is “saccharine” (artificially sweet) but also “malodorous” (stinks) and yet combustible to boot? What a mess of a metaphor. And why as an adult do you descend to incoherent fiery imagery of burning up something (or someone?) with whom you disagree?

The article that you object to is actually constructive (but perhaps unwelcome) advice to Trump to cease ad hominem twittering.

In political commentary, I try to ensure three things that you apparently are oblivious about: offer examples to support an assertion, be clear rather than incoherent, and avoid ad hominem invective.

And as a historian and philologist I try to be inductive, not start with a preconceived notion, even if empiricism results in praising those with whose politics I might disagree or criticizing figures I otherwise admire (e.g., an often duplicitous and neo-socialist FDR was a brilliant wartime leader; good men like Omar Bradley and Mark Clark often made disastrous decisions; a sober and judicious George Marshall’s idea of a cross-Channel invasion in 1943 would have been an utter disaster; a rude and often arrogant Alan Brooke, chief of the British Imperial Staff, often offered wise if unwelcome strategic advice to his more polite and generous American counterparts, etc.).

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

12/15/17

From An Angry Reader:

It’s a good thing I’m 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) away from you.

You can take that any way you want.

Daniel Weir

Washington, DC

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Dear Angry Reader Daniel Weir,

Making personal threats against someone with whom you disagree is not good for the soul.

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

From An Angry Reader:

You live in an alternate universe, silly clown, silly institute, silly magazine. But the article was funny so congrats.

Sincerely,

Bruce Patten

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Dear Angry Reader Bruce Patten,

I congratulate you on your succinctness and your use of anaphora (“silly”…”silly”…”silly”) but otherwise your note is simply personal invective and underwhelming satire that is applicable to anything—and thus unfortunately nothing.

Sincerely,

Victor Hanson

11/30/2017

From An Angry Reader:

So, let me get this this right; you have the freedom to express your First Amendment Rights (your opinion article), the neo-nazi can express their first amendment rights (as they did this weekend in Charlottesville), but “multimillionaire young players, mostly in their 20s” cannot. If this country still had the draft, those 20-somethings would be at war, TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS YOURSELF! What a phony you are!

Besides, you know the original protest WAS NOT ABOUT THE EMBLEM OF THE COUNTRY. What a hypocrite you are; and you call yourself an historian, not to even mention at Stanford. What a FAKE!!!! It’s your fake opinion that is diminishing, and don’t you forget it!!!!

Harris Jones, MSW

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop,” —Rumi

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear L. Harris Jones, MSW

Calm down Mr/s. Jones. You confirmed the Angry Reader rule: anyone who resorts to capital letters and exclamation points in succession usually does so in absence of anything to say.

For the nth time: the players do have a First Amendment right to free expression; and their employers equally have a right, as the courts have long held, to fire them if they wish—in the manner that the airlines would fire a steward who insisted on wearing a “Make America Great” cap while on board that might offend customers, or UPS can fire drivers who wear FED-EX T-shirts to work on grounds that it is a bad business practice.

That the owners do not fire or fine the players—for now—is their own business decision that they would lose less money doing so by ignoring their own rules than enforcing them—a wager that may well change. If I were to decide to wear a logo on my T-shirt to work that offended co-workers (in the manner of Kaepernick’s police as pigs socks), and to take a knee during a meeting of my colleagues, I think I would learn that such “First Amendment” rights would collide with codes of behavior I have previously agreed to.

So like all of us, the players are employees and are subject to certain contractual codes of behavior that their employers can or cannot choose to enforce. Mr/s. Jones, do not confuse private space and the workplace: the players can choose to sit or kneel anywhere anytime they hear the National Anthem, as fans themselves or at a graduation or during a funeral. But in the workplace as paid employees they have contractually agreed to a code of conduct that they are currently violating. Why not, then, have the players go on strike to demand that standing for the National Anthem not be a part of their contracted behavior?

Your use of “If” can apply to anything; but if you find the characterization of NFL players as multimillionaires in their twenties somehow mistaken please explain how. Are they instead mostly in their thirties and making less than $100,000 per annum? Is it the reality or my identification of the reality that upsets you so?

I am confused about your statement that I “know” that “the origin of the protest was not about the emblem of the country”?

In fact, I did not know that and still do not know what the subsequent protests were about. Police shootings that supposedly statistically fall disportionately on unarmed black youth in relation to their encounters with law enforcement? Is that accurate?

Ferguson? That Eric Holder’s Justice Department really did not find that the shooting of Michael Brown was not an example of inordinate or illegal police force, and that “hands up, don’t shoot” had no basis in fact?

Twenty-million a year, Colin Kaepernick, of mixed ancestry and raised in a middle-class white household and facing a career downturn, previously cited by the NFL after referee and player allegations for using the N-word, and now dating a hard-left DJ, suddenly reinvents himself and decides that his country is unfair and racist and thus not deserving of respect? Was that the origin of kneeling we are supposed to take seriously?

Or is the anger that the meritocratic NFL is not racially diverse enough, or does not proportionally reflect the ethnic and racial and gender diversity of the nation and thus should be subject to disproportionate impact rulings?

So like millions of NFL fans, I am not sure what the particular existential gripe is that drives the protest. Has it now become Donald Trump’s unnecessary and crude use of the SOB slur? That regrettable transgression was analogous to Barack Obama’s more vulgar and widespread characterization of the entire Tea Party movement of tens of millions as “tea-baggers”—a homophobic slur suggesting a type of male-on-male sex act that was equally not befitting the office of the president but apparently drew no protests in response.

I’m not sure what your psycho-dramatic imperative “and don’t you forget it” with no less than four exclamation marks is supposed to mean: that I am not to forget that L. Harris Jones, MSW has announced me unfit to be at Stanford or to be a historian and therefore that indictment is to be seared in my memory—or worse?

In the end, Mr/s. Harris, I think you will agree that like most entertainment in America, the market adjudicates the NFL.

If 10-30% of the fans stop watching or attending games, the resulting drop in revenue will demand changes in NFL teams’ budgets and will shortly affect player contracts.

At that point, you will see the kneeling during the National Anthem stop and all talk such as yours of the First Amendment will cease, as the players tacitly agree that their employers have a Constitutional right to enforce their own published codes of behavior and that such enforcement is in their own financial interest.

If NFL patronage, however, is not affected by the continual kneeling during the Anthem, then it will continue—along with self-righteous talk of the First Amendment, the shifting rationales for the protests, and the loud support on ESPN and other progressive venues.

Davis Hanson, PhD

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” —John Donne

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11/27/2017

From an Angry Reader:

Rarely have I read such infuriating nonsense as intellectual outlier Victor Davis Hanson spouts in his thoroughly delusional commentary about Trump. I know he’s been a blind Trumpeter since the con artist’s campaign began, and he remains steadfast in defending the indefensible. His pack of fraudulent claims, gross exaggerations, evasions and bizarre compliments should make us wonder what kind of mind is needed to get into a “think tank” these days. A mind with the ability to think clearly, marshal cogent arguments and use critical faculties would be excluded, I take it.

Even the part about Trump having superior “bare-knuckle” skills is laughable both in fact and in analogy. I guess what he means is the narcissistic blowhard and rank vulgarian has become adept over the years at using crude forms of bullying, belligerence, intimidation and insults in an attempt to cow the opponent. We see how much good those professed negotiating skills have been for him. No significant legislative accomplishments in his first year, despite him bragging that he’d do many big things quickly and all by himself.

What he has supported in the way of legislation was almost entirely devoid of the content he promised—healthcare that would cover everyone for less and be “easy” to accomplish–and he clearly didn’t know a thing about the bills a Republican congress fashioned to fulfill Trump’s exaggerated boasts. The man is an ignorant, incompetent, reckless and deranged demagogue, but Hanson remains a rube on the bandwagon sucking dry turnips. Such is the blissful state of “winners”.

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader TR Jahns,

On a scale of angry reader absurdities, yours ranks a 9 out of 10. The key to criticism is the avoidance of emotional jargon (nonsense, laughable, gross, delusional, etc.) that always appears in lieu of an argument. And imagery and metaphors must be consistent, not incoherent and mixed: what exactly does a “rube on a bandwagon sucking dry turnips” mean exactly?

Nonetheless here goes the refutation of your meltdown.

1) I was not a “blind Trumpeter” since the time Trump ran for office; check the record before making unsubstantiated accusations. In fact, I opposed Trump in the early primaries.

2) Instead of citations, you use inflated phraseology like “fraudulent claims, gross exaggerations, evasions and bizarre compliments”; specify rather than allege what bothers you about Trump; e.g., Is he more divisive than was Obama? Does he comment too much about ongoing court cases? Is he without basic knowledge such as the number of states or the correct pronunciation of corpsman? Are his IRS, GSA, VA, Secret Service, and EPA riddled with scandal? We need detail, not redundant exclamations.

3) You equate “first-class mind” with anti-Trump fervor, but then fail to demonstrate (rather than rail about) why this is so.

4) I was empirical and thus not always laudatory about Trump’s skills; yet he dismantled a quite qualified field of 16 more experienced and sometimes better funded Republican rivals, and often outdebated those with far more experience and rhetorical training. To deny that is to let emotions get the better of logic.

5) In fact, Trump’s team has passed lots of legislation, even as we hear only of stalled Obamacare and tax reform. At six months Trump had signed over 50 legislative bills, comparable to or greater than the record of the first half year of previous presidents.

Given the Obama precedent, he also issued a flurry of executive orders that, like it or not, have redefined energy production, regulations, immigration, and the administrative state. The furor at Trump from the Left is not that he is stalled and impotent, but that he is in a variety of ways reversing the Obama legacy. Does your anger arise because as a supposed incompetent Trump has done nothing and is merely idling on the job? Or that as a liberal partisan, you are furious that in breakneck fashion he is reversing the Obama agenda, from illegal immigration to deterrence abroad to EPA regulations at home?

6) Trump cannot be faulted for failing to enact health care or tax reform—given that his proposals are still stalled before the Congress and await either congressional ratification or recalibration or rejection. He still may get both tax and health care reform by the end of 2018.

7) You misrepresent, of course, what I wrote. My argument in the Los Angeles Times was that despite his often-alienating tweets and controversies, Trump remains about as popular as he was on Election Day (46% approval in the November 13th Rasmussen poll). And I noted that his success hinges on avoiding what are seen as costly optional wars and restoring economic growth. Should he do either he will be reelected; if not, he won’t.

8) I think part of your anger is not because Trump has failed (you wish him, after all, to fail), but because in some ways he is succeeding to your chagrin—record stock market levels, 6 months of 3% GDP growth, low unemployment, improving labor participation, near record consumer and business confidence, record coal/gas/oil production, upswings in manufacturing and service industries, etc.

In terms of foreign policy, Haley, Mattis, McMaster, Pompeo, and Tillerson are slowly restoring deterrence and reassuring allies in the Middle East that Iran, and in Asia, that North Korea and China, are not the predestined new hegemonies.

9) If a writer is to ascend from letter-to-the editor harangues to analytical commentary, then the key is to avoid hyperbole, remain capable of detecting the mistakes of friends and successes of enemies, and try to cite examples rather than offer bluster.

Unfortunately, you fail on all these counts and thus cannot be taken too seriously. Again, you score 9.0/10.0 on our newly inaugurated Angry Reader Emotional Harangue scale.

V.D. Hanson

From an Angry Reader:

Dear Professor Hanson,

I read your article on Stalingrad and I wanted to respond.

The German 6th army in Stalingrad had Slovakian and Croatian units in the city. On the flanks of the 6th army was the Italian 8th army which played a huge role in Russia and was successful in Russia and was a revere[d] force. The Italians committed many troops for army group south and by the way this is coming from a Greek. I would also stress the importance of the Hungarians and Romanians.

You write, “It marked the turning point of World War II.” I would say that R.H.S Stolfi has argued that Kursk was the turning point, because a counter attacked at Kharkov won a major battle that regained the stability on the eastern front, in his book Hitler’s Panzers East. I would also add that my view is that operation Bagration was more a turning point in 1944 because it destroyed Army group Center and annihilated whatever remained of the German infantry forces which had been severely weakened and its allies like the Hungarians and the foreign SS units. Operation Bagration also moved soviet forces closer to Hungary and Romania and pushed army group north to be closed off to Germany. I would call that a greater victory then Stalingrad. However your view on Stalingrad as the turning point is conservative which is somewhat true. Also the soviets overextended, still was losing battles even in 1944, and the Germans captured more troops before Stalingrad, which had destroyed the red army, and half of the USSR’s industry and agriculture was captured. The Germans fixed the inept railroad systems. The Soviets were able to gain ground because the Germans were exhausted, but German units were murdering Soviet divisions.

Sincerely, Angelo

Ευχαριστώ Πολύ (Thank You)

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Sort of Angry Reader Angelo,

Patton’s Third Army included the 2nd French Division as well; so are we then wrong to call it an “American army”? The Sixth Army was overwhelmingly German and to call it such is just fine and does not deprecate the sacrifices of other Axis armies. The invasion of the Soviet Union was one of the most multinational efforts in military history, involving eventually Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Italians, Spaniards, Finns, and Western and Eastern European volunteers.

After Stalingrad, the Germans could not complete Hitler’s original agenda of controlling Russia to the Volga River. The later “tie” at Kursk and even a German victory there would have made no ultimate difference, given the increasingly lethal Anglo-American bombing that was siphoning off huge artillery assets, even before D-Day, and successive open German wounds in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy—as well as vast diversions of Luftwaffe and artillery assets to offset Allied bombing.

Bagration came much later than Stalingrad when Soviet numerical and logistical superiority was unquestioned. In contrast, at Stalingrad the forces were much more evenly matched, and thus it was a turning point after which things went downhill for the Germans. Bragration was a continuation of what happened at Stalingrad to the nth degree, given far greater resources at the Red Army’s disposal.

Do not define German superiority in terms of killing ratios (anywhere from 3 to 7 / 1) or the German ability to destroy more tanks than it lost. There were no finer soldiers than those of the Wehrmacht but it eventually mattered little against a 12.5 million man-military, which received 20 percent of its supplies under Lend-Lease, at a time Germany was bombed 24/7 and under assault after June 1944 in Europe and Italy without much help militarily in Europe from its Italian and Japanese allies.

Sincerely, Victor

11/16/2017

From an Angry Reader:

Victor Victor Victor…

Come on lad … With your education I really thought that you would know that “nuclear” is pronounced nu-cle-ar, NOT nuc-u-ler. That is the way “dub-ya” pronounced it and he could get away with it because he is an idiot. You are not! Please fix that …

H.C. Southern

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear H.C. Southern,

I get about 5 emails a day like yours on diction (careless), dress (tasteless), and even baldness, wrinkles, and facial scars (unfixable), and many of such citations perhaps have merit. I will put yours in the “I’ll get to it someday” file with the others.

Dubya is not an idiot, unless Gore (the “crazed sex poodle” who invented the Internet) and Kerry (“Actually, I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against the $87 billion.”) were too, whose GPA records and test scores were no higher—or Obama, who apparently believed there were “57 states,” thought the Malvinas were the Maldives, Austrians spoke “Austrian”—and assumed corpsmen was pronounced “corpse-men.”

V.D. Hanson

11/15/2017

From an Angry Reader:

Read your article in the NR.

Bad research, poorly written, some facts and a lot of your very biased opinions.

In short it is mostly drivel.

I hope your other work has good foundation and is better researched.

You should take the trouble to visit the so called “rogue states” so that you can opine with a balanced and, more importantly, informed view.

Best Wishes

Farhan.

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Farhan,

It is not wise to allege bias and “bad research” and then not cite a single example of error to support your wild claims. Otherwise the impression is that you are emotionally invested rather than empirically guided. I have visited many of the rogue states of the world and my opinion of them was not changed by visits there—except in most cases to have become even more pessimistic. There is a reason why many from Iran and Pakistan seek entry into the U.S.; but rarely do U.S.-born citizens seek to become citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran. The nuclear technology of both countries is derivative of Western science and technology; both have violated international accords on non-proliferation; and both while called republics are not true consensual societies, given their theocratic natures.

Best Wishes

Victor.

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11/06/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Professor Davis,

In your recent article “The Method to Trump’s Madness”, you claim Trump’s insults are retaliation to those who have said things against him. Even if that is (partially) true, that does not justify Trump’s immaturity and cruelty.

In many instances, Trump’s name-calling was unprovoked. During the early primaries, Ted Cruz was going out of his way to be nice to Trump. Despite this, Trump called Cruz a liar (without indicating what his lies were), cast Heidi Cruz as unattractive (by showing a photo where she had an angry expression) and claimed Cruz’s father was complicit in the JFK assassination (!).

Further, Trump insulted Carly Fiorina’s looks, Marco Rubin’s stature, Jeb Bush’s perceived lack of energy, the list goes on. And I haven’t yet mentioned Trumps mocking the disabled reporter.

Even if these people disagreed with Trump on an issue or criticized his (abysmal) behavior, poking fun at others physical features is never justified.

I was shocked at your attempt to justify this unacceptable juvenile behavior on the part of a now president.

I much preferred your writing during the primaries when you saw Trump for the swamp creature he was (and continues to be) and urged your readers not to vote for him in the primaries.

I realize that in the general election there was no choice. Despite major misgivings I voted for Trump over Hillary and am glad that he and not she is president. However to defend behavior that is indefensible is far beneath you.

Sincerely,

Arlene Ross

New York, NY

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Arlene Ross,

The title of my essay was “the method to” not “approval of” Trump’s Madness. It sought to explain why Trump’s madness so far has worked; it did not condone it as ethically admirable. In other words, I reviewed the logic of his outbursts and tweets and why so far that they have not eroded his base of support. Try to read more carefully so as not to confuse efficacy and utility with morality.

You write that you were “shocked” that I tried to “justify” Trump’s behavior? But after listing all of his sins in the primary, you yourself voted for him in the general election? Do you seek medieval exemption by confession and penance to justify your help in seeing someone so crude elected?

More likely, I fear you again were confused in reading why Trump has not turned off 40% of the electorate by his tweets and jibes—and unfortunately conflated my analysis of his effectiveness with a desire on your part for me to damn it as unethical or improper—perhaps a topic for another column. Again, I wrote about utility, not morality.

In sum, Arlene, your own statements are illogical: you praise me for suggesting that we shouldn’t have voted for Trump as long as we had viable alternatives to Hillary Clinton, but then fault me for urging conservatives to vote in the general election for Trump when we had no other alternative to the Obama-Clinton 16-year regnum—and then confess that you did exactly the same thing as did I! Furthermore, you, like I, so far are still glad that he is president and not Clinton.

So I suppose your position by default is: “I finally voted for Trump but I didn’t enjoy doing so given his comportment”—which was the very topic of my column: why did voters like Arlene support (and perhaps still do [you use the present tense “I am glad”]?) Trump despite his often outrageous behavior.

A more interesting philosophical question is why someone so outwardly outrageous is pushing through a far more conservative and needed agenda than prior Republican presidents, who were more sober and judicious. And why did Trump at least profess to care about workers, miners, vets, farmers, and the unemployed in a manner his better informed and experienced rivals did not? That is a tricky moral question that no one has yet answered (other than scream “demagogue!”). Trump did not write off half the electorate as deplorables nor did he, as Romney, a far more ethical man, write off 47% of Americans as dependents. Nor did he as John McCain write off Trump voters as “crazies.” There was a callousness and insensitivity to voters in other candidates that the otherwise insensitive Trump at least did not display about voters.

Sincerely,

Professor Davis (Hanson)

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10/18/2017

From An Angry Reader:

You created this Frankenstein.

You have a lot to answer for.

G-d is looking down on you, and He is not smiling.

You all are in your 80s. That’s the good thing in all this. Nobody lives forever and you all are a helluva lot closer to the “final reward” than I am.

It will be wonderful living in a world bereft of you.

“Not a threat, just a thought.”

Daniel Weir

Washington, DC

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader,

Actually if (a) Trump is Frankenstein, then (b) Obama created him by polarizing the country, ignoring the red states in-between the coasts, institutionalizing executive orders, commenting on ongoing criminal cases, allowing his administration to be plagued by scandals (IRS, GSA, VA, etc.), not investigating the Russian collusions of the Clinton Foundation (see the recent articles in The Hill), and bringing popular culture (cf. GloZell) into the presidential orbit.

Actually, I am 16 years from my “80s” and if there is to be a “final reward” as I think there is, then the end is not to be feared or what is left behind to be lamented.

Victor Hanson

Selma, CA

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10/11/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Daniel Longo

Mr Hanson, we can only thank you for the correct verbosity and non overuse of the word anemic, as any student of creative writing or freshman English would appreciate the lesson in your overly wordy presentation; problem is, and this seems frequently to escape your need to be correct, whereas my Colbert may be vulgar in his choice of words, your vulgarity resides in your heart. I’ll choose the profanity every time; so, go f–k yourself and your filthy ideals.

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

D ear Angry Reader Daniel Longo,

Your first sentence is incoherent. Your argument is that while Colbert is explicitly obscene and crude, I am implicitly vulgar in my heart. But whereas I quoted Colbert’s vulgarity as proof, you provided no examples to support your unhinged assertion. You, like Colbert, are repetitive: after exclaiming that you prefer profanity, there was no need to elaborate with profanity. I have no idea what “filthy ideals” means nor do I imagine you do either.

Victor Hanson

10/05/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Mr. Hanson,

I read your opinion piece in Newsweek and wanted to respond.

I wish you’d included numbers, information on programs and systems, budget levels, and other trends, rather than just a few quotes. Funding within the DoD always fluctuates, given whatever is the shiny new toy of the moment (it was drones for a few years, for instance), but missile defense has always gotten plenty of money.

While there were plenty of detractors, missile defense was still given more priority than a lot of other programs before the never-ending war on terror began in the early 2000s. That’s when the DoD’s focus and funding shifted to aviation (drones, helicopters, etc.), ground vehicles, networks, and other systems that needed improvements, innovation, maintenance, etc.—because those are the capabilities needed for the current conflicts. One could say that’s shortsighted, but the U.S. got here by getting into a war with no predefined strategy or exit criteria (very shortsighted), so we all have to play the hand we’re dealt.

There is simply not enough money to go around. It’s not because of Congressional budget levels (and I’m not sure I understand the finger-pointing at “liberals,” given that Republicans have controlled fiscal spending for at least half of the past 30+ years). It’s because there is literally not enough money in America’s coffers to pay for the kind of military expenditure the country seems to expect. Wars are expensive, and long wars are basically black holes sucking in all resources that get anywhere close.

Building and testing missile defense systems is, likewise, extremely expensive. Defense contractors charge the Government ungodly amounts of money for systems that repeatedly fail to work as promised. And yes, that’s a systemic problem that needs to be addressed, but reining in free-market capitalism in the military-industrial complex takes a lot of time and requires political backing to put regulations in place. Contractors don’t like to have their hands tied, and they have well-paid lobbyists, so…we know how this story ends.

Also, to be fair, it is unbelievably freaking hard to develop a missile interceptor, especially one that’s effective in the midcourse phase. There’s a reason why we have the lower tier (PATRIOT) and upper tier (THAAD) fairly well covered with proven missile defense, but not midcourse yet. And those systems that work take years, if not decades, of development and testing to reach full operational capability. PATRIOT, which of course made its battleground debut in Desert Storm, was being developed under the program name SAM-D in the late 1960s.

Plus, I feel like people operate under the delusion that, even if we did have a fully operational midcourse missile defense system, it would be 100% effective. An intercept rate of about 70% or more is considered really successful. This is, in fact, rocket science. Actually, it’s more difficult than your everyday rocket science.

There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to this issue. I think it’s unfair, incorrect, and misleading to say or imply that past administrations, Congresses, and the DoD have somehow ignored missile defense, and that the reason we don’t currently have a reliable “missile shield” is because no one cared enough to fund it.

Respectfully,

Whitney Hedges

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Whitney Hedges,

All of what you say—missile defense is expensive, often without surety of hitting the target, and embedded in opportunistic politics—has elements of truth. But in comparison to what?

For a variety of avoidable decisions, we are now on the eve of a North Korean nuclear-tipped missile capability of reaching the West Coast. I simply quoted in my essay past statements, whether Walter Mondale’s dismissal of missile defense as a “hoax,” or Clinton Defense Secretary Perry’s belief that it was not necessary to provide missile defense against a someday nuclear North Korea, or Barack Obama’s hot mic promise to Russian President Medvedev to be “flexible” on Eastern European missile defense agendas (cancelled by Obama)—if Putin would give him “space” during his reelection efforts in 2012.

Is your argument that those quotations are wrong? Or that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush likewise had no interest in pursuing missile defense?

Note that in my piece I did not suggest missile defense was ever a sure thing. But when faced with North Korea, and the specter of losing a U.S. city, all sorts of things that in the past were considered “problematic” become preferable to the alternatives.

A costly system that offers only a 60% likelihood of knocking down an incoming nuclear missile is preferable to nothing, and I confess also preferable to spending commensurate funds on further entitlements, which will be unnecessary if we are hit by enemy nuclear missiles.

Respectfully,

Victor Hanson

10/03/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Mr. Hanson,

I’m a black Ivy-League educated liberal raised in NC and something in me snapped last week.

Have no fear, I’m still in the liberal camp, but it perturbs me greatly to see all the hoopla over Confederate memorials.

This is so not important on the list of what my community needs or wants. I dare say that this is not even the focus of the blacks of Black Lives Matter. It’s more white liberals looking for a convenient way to make them not racist. How dare they! Charleston was different. THAT CITY was looking to heal after a horrific event and the removal of statues there seemed justified. But let’s face it, a white liberal hates nothing more than to be called racist and after Trump’s crazy remarks last week, they were looking for an easy scapegoat.

I’m a progressive and want better education and health care for all, state-sponsored.

My cheeky idea of dangerous white nationalism is the playground of the PUBLiC school on Greenwich Avenue in NYC, where only white kids play at lunchtime. Imagine, in the most liberal of liberal cities, an all white elementary school.

Cheers,

Warner

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Not Really Angry Reader Warner,

You do not sound like a “black” liberal, but a thoughtful empiricist person for whom race is a second or tertiary consideration. Be careful, once the liberal facade cracks, like Humpty Dumpty it cannot be put back together again. You are on your way to the Enlightenment of judging the world in the manner you see and hear it.

I take it you object to liberal virtue signaling and prefer to judge actions, not rhetoric.

If so, I sympathize with you, because the liberal elite mindset is about symbolic, not real action. It is easy to decapitate statues, not so easy to be a DC grandee politician or reporter and put your children in the public schools rather than in private and often mostly exclusive academies, easy to be Mark Zuckerberg demagoguing a border fence, not so easy to leave his estates unwalled; easy to “celebrate diversity,” but apparently not so easy to prefer living with the “other” of less economic means. So yes, I get your point that kindred liberals are hypocritical.

But erasing the past was not the fault just of “white liberals.” Black liberals were at the forefront too; those calling for the poor USC mascot to be renamed were mostly African-American students. Perhaps the general explanation is that white privileged liberals, whose lives are mostly apartheid in nature, feel guilty, but not so guilty to live the lives they advocate for others. So to assuage guilt and to justify their continued privilege they blame distant, poorer whites for “white privilege” as if minorities at their workplace or at the university will deem them “correct whites” and leave them alone or even praise them.

In general, class is a far better bellwether in 2017. Privilege is predicated on opportunity: a black Ivy League professional has far more opportunities than does a white working-class tire changer in southern Ohio; just as an inner-city African-American lacks the chances of a white or Asian Google techie.

It is past time to forget statue smashing and race mongering and get back to judging people on the basis of character content.

Cheers,

Victor

09/29/2017

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Professor Hanson,

You are a hypocrite.

You endlessly, in your writings and talks, decry people who say ‘if it ain’t perfect it ain’t good’, and yet you constantly moan about Obama just because he ‘wasn’t perfect’ and did some crooked things. You, sir, are a hypocrite. You could at least admit that both parties stink and that all politicians are liars.

By the way, you need to stop moaning about how ‘the elite’ should do more ‘hands-on’ work (I will soon start calling you Victor ‘Hands-on’ to reflect your obsession). Have you ever thought that maybe nobody wants to do those grueling back-breaking jobs for a dollar an hour, and that maybe some people want to get away from that life? Do you really think Donald J Trump, your hero, ever did a single day of hard basically unpaid work like that? Who would want that life if they could get a decent wage—or better rich—without breaking their back? Do you really expect kids to aspire to be fruit-pickers when they could be lawyers earning 200k a year working 5 days a week? I call BS.

Maybe you’re right in principle, but nobody is as principled as you who could or would want to do that. Also, lots of people in inner cities want to do that kind of manual labor or farm-work, but have no access or ability to do it because unlike you they don’t have a farm of their own. How the h*ll can they do what you want them to do when they don’t even have the social mobility to have access to the countryside? Heck, most people struggle just to pay the rent in the inner cities nowadays; most people are slaves to the state. I would rather be a real slave than have the fake urban ‘freedom’ (i.e. prison) that modern scum politicians have created for us.

Dan Smith,

Miami

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Dan Smith,

Calm down; your anger clouds all reason. Most politicians, but not all, are liars. While I agree that both parties lie, at this particular juncture in American history, nevertheless the two parties are not morally equivalent.

Instead they represent vastly different world views: identity politics versus the melting pot; illegal massive immigration vs. legal, measured, diverse, and meritocratic immigration; more taxes and larger government vs. lower taxes and less government; a th