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Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.

Victor Davis Hanson

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Victor Davis Hanson
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: September 5
Classical Scholar
Historian
Journalist
University Teacher
Fowler
California
Rather
Perceived
War
Fuel
Fear
Perception
Often
Starting
Pretexts
Self
Honor
Shortages
Real
Food
Pretext
Like
Land
Shortage
Interest
Perceptions

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Westernization, coupled with globalization, has created an affluent and leisured elite that now gravitates to universities, the media, bureaucracies, and world organizations, all places where wealth is not created, but analyzed, critiqued, and lavishly spent.
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Stop seeing socialists and anti-Americans as Democrats. When a Michael Moore compares beheaders to our own Minutemen and laments that too many Democrats were in the World Trade Center, he deserves no platform alongside Wesley Clark or a seat next to Jimmy Carter or praise for his pseudo-dramas from high Democrats.
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Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.
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We're in a very Orwellian situation where when we - we've slashed defense. And we've raised taxes. And we consider $600 billion annual deficit success because it's not $1 trillion.
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A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks - no, acts - like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream.
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We may casually talk of all sorts of new programs and 'stimulus,' but the vast trillion-dollar collective national debt and rising annual deficits will insidiously hamstring almost everything we plan to do.
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In the case of [Donald] Trump, he was able to tell people that elites live in gated communities, where they have walls around their home.
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The columnist like myself or people at Stanford University don't wake up in the morning and see their job outsourced. Yet we promote free markets. But we're not sensitive to what that does to other people who don't have our privilege.
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In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources.
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Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world.
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Behind every American soldier, dozens of their countrymen tonight sleep soundly — and hundreds more in their shadow abroad will wake up alive and safe.
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It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom...never .
Victor Davis Hanson
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Cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.
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Behind every liberal philanthropist fortune is a huge capitalist score. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford now to be liberal - an expensive indulgence - because in their early incarnations they were no-holds-barred capitalists who made lots of enemies conducting business without mercy and in search of pure profit.
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The wisdom and spirit of Churchill not only saved Britain from the Third Reich but saved Western civilization from a Nazi Dark Ages when no other nation was willing to take up that defense. Churchill was the greatest military, political and spiritual leader of the 20th century.
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There's just no - nothing like this country, which is the only, really, multiracial country that's tried to share in a common culture in the history of civilization that's pulled it off. A lot of the times, we want perfection. If we're not perfect, we're not good.
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Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009.
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Any time the Western way of war can be unleashed on an enemy stupid enough to enter its arena, victory is assured.
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I'm kind of old-fashioned because I was born and live in the same house for six generations.
Victor Davis Hanson
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The shutdown may have temporarily sidetracked the Republicans, yet Obamacare threatens much worse for the Democrats. By 2014 the former will be ancient history, while the latter will be an ongoing mess.
Victor Davis Hanson