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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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Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world.
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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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I think people are beating each other up in the halls of Congress, as they did in the late 1850s.
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Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.
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The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory.
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Can-do Americans courageously go about their duty in Iraq - mostly unafraid that a culture of 2,000 years, the reality of geography, the sheer forces of language and religion, the propaganda of state-run Arab media and the cynicism of the liberal West are all stacked against them.
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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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Cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.
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Racial inequality has gotten worse in the last years because any time you have a moribund economy, the people who historically have had more problems getting jobs have suffered. And that, I think, is triggering a lot of the animosity.
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Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want.
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Western elites - the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism - are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all.
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States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.
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After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama's faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record.
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War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.
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I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke.
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Even Hollywood millionaires are now clamoring for legal protections for their illegal-alien nannies and gardeners, though such elites would hardly countenance a similar legal laxity that would allow foreign film technicians, screenwriters, and actors to flood southern California to work in their industry for a fourth of their own pay.
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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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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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The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.
Victor Davis Hanson