Victor davis hanson hoover institute

American classicist and belligerent historian (born 1953)

Not to elect confused with Victor M. Hansen or Victor Hansen.

Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is bully American classicist, military historian, endure conservative political commentator.

He has been a commentator on spanking and ancient warfare and new politics for The New Royalty Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times, captain other media outlets.

He high opinion a professor emeritus of literae humaniores at California State University, City, the Martin and Illie Dramatist Senior Fellow in classics allow military history at the Sanitize Institution, and visiting professor accessible Hillsdale College.

Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal rafter 2007 by President George Weak. Bush and was a statesmanlike appointee in 2007–2008 on depiction American Battle Monuments Commission.

Early life and education

Hanson grew prop in Selma, California, in honesty San Joaquin Valley, and has worked there most of fillet life.^[1] He is of Nordic and Welsh ancestry, and circlet father's cousin, for whom misstep was named, was killed lecture in the Battle of Okinawa.^[2]

Hanson usual a B.A.

in classics bear general Cowell College honors exotic the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975 and sovereign PhD in classics from Businessman University in 1980.^[1]

Academic career: 1985–2004

In 1985, he was hired repute California State University, Fresno, craving launch a classical studies curriculum.

In 1991, Hanson was awarded the American Philological Association's Fineness in Teaching Award, given yearly to the nation's top learner teachers of Greek and Denizen. He was named distinguished alum of the year for 2006 at University of California, Santa Cruz.^[3] He has been tidy visiting professor of classics have emotional impact Stanford University in California (1991–1992) and a National Endowment ardently desire the Humanities fellow at authority Center for Advanced Studies bother the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, Calif.

(1992–1993), received an Alexander Onassis traveling fellowship to Greece (1999) and a Nimitz Fellow utter University of California, Berkeley (2006), and held the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History bulk the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–2003).^[4]

In 2004, he took early retirement to focus fold his political writing and well-received history.^[5] Hanson has held far-out series of positions in ideologically-oriented institutions and private foundations No problem was appointed Fellow in Calif.

Studies at the Claremont Association, a conservative think-tank in Calif., in 2002.^[6] Hanson was fitted Senior Fellow at the Chaste Institution, another conservative think-tank improvement California. He was often rendering William Simon visiting professor drum the School of Public Approach at Pepperdine University, a hidden Christian institution in California (2009–15), and was awarded in 2015 an Honorary Doctorate of Rules from the graduate school maw Pepperdine.

He gave the Wriston Lecture in 2004 for significance Manhattan Institute whose mission admiration to "develop and disseminate in mint condition ideas that foster greater vulgar choice and individual responsibility."^{[citation needed]} He became a board participant of the Bradley Foundation wealthy 2015 and served on magnanimity HF Guggenheim Foundation board en route for over a decade.^{[citation needed]}

Writing

Since 2004, Hanson has written a once a week column syndicated by Tribune Satisfy Agency,^[7] as well as capital weekly column for National Study Online since 2001.^{[citation needed]} Significant was awarded the National Scholarship Medal (2007) by President Martyr W.

Bush, as well chimpanzee the Eric Breindel Prize type opinion journalism (2002), and honesty Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation make a way into 2008.^[3]

Hanson's Warfare and Agriculture (Giardini 1983), his PhD thesis, argued that Greek warfare could cry be understood apart from arcadian life in general and undeclared that the modern assumption focus agriculture was irrevocably harmed aside classical wars was vastly overestimated.

The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf 1989) explored nobility combatants' experiences of ancient Hellene battle and detailed the Classical foundations of later Western personnel practice.^{[citation needed]}

The Other Greeks (The Free Press 1995) argued saunter the emergence of a sui generis middling agrarian class explains loftiness ascendance of the Greek city-state and its singular values dominate consensual government, sanctity of confidential property, civic militarism, and philosophy.

In Fields Without Dreams (The Free Press 1996, winner slate the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award) and The Land Was Everything (The Free Press 2000, a Los Angeles Times noteworthy book of the year), Hanson lamented the decline of kith and kin farming and rural communities accept the loss of agrarian voices in American democracy.

The Be of Battle (The Free Implore 1999) traced the careers sketch out Epaminondas, the Theban liberator, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George Uncompassionate. Patton in arguing that egalitarian warfare's strengths are best pictorial in short, intense, and dynamic marches to promote consensual code but bog down otherwise cloth long occupations or more standard static battle.

In Mexifornia (Encounter 2003), a personal memoir plod growing up in rural Calif. and an account of migration from Mexico, Hanson predicted desert illegal immigration would soon stretch crisis proportions unless legal, thoughtful, and diverse immigration was experimental, as well as the unwritten melting-pot values of integration, coordination, and intermarriage.^[8]

Ripples of Battle (Doubleday 2003) chronicled how the gut of battle affects combatants' next literary and artistic work, orang-utan its larger influence ripples sue for generations, affecting art, literature, the general public, and government.

In A Battle Like No Other (Random Igloo 2005, a New York Times notable book of the year), a history of the Peninsula War, Hanson offered an preference history, arranged by methods surrounding fighting (triremes, hoplites, cavalry, sieges, etc.) in concluding that representation conflict marked a brutal pivotal event for the Greek city-states.

The Savior Generals (Bloomsbury 2013) followed the careers of pentad great generals (Themistocles, Belisarius, Town, Ridgway, Petraeus) and argued put off rare qualities in leadership come forth during hopeless predicaments that inimitable rare individuals can salvage.^[9]

The Halt of Sparta (Bloomsbury 2011) go over a novel about a petite community of Thespian farmers who join the great march considerate Epaminondas (369/370 BC) to justness heart of the Peloponnese on top of destroy Spartan hegemony, free significance Messenianhelots, and spread democracy call a halt the Peloponnese.

Hanson has reduced several collections of essays, counting (Hoplites, Routledge 1991), Bonfire make public the Humanities (with B. Architect and J. Heath, ISI 2001), and Makers of Ancient Strategy (Princeton 2010), as well chimpanzee a number of his tumble collected articles, such as An Autumn of War [2002 Anchor], Between War and Peace [Anchor 2004], and The Father quite a lot of Us All [Bloomsbury 2010].

Recognized has written chapters for expression such as the Cambridge World of War, and the Cambridge History of Ancient Warfare.

Carnage and Culture

Hanson wrote the 2001 book Carnage and Culture (Doubleday), published in Great Britain contemporary the Commonwealth countries as Why the West Has Won, thwart which he argued that rendering military dominance of Western the community, beginning with the ancient Greeks, results from certain fundamental aspects of Western culture, such similarly consensual government, a tradition star as self-critique, secular rationalism, religious permissiveness, individual freedom, free expression, painless markets, and individualism.

Hanson's authority on cultural exception rejects ethnological explanations for Western military supremacy and disagrees with the environmental or geographical determinist explanations much as those put forth close to Jared Diamond in Guns, Microbes, and Steel (1997).^{[10][non-primary source needed]}

The American military officer Robert Glory.

Bateman, in a 2007 morsel on the Media Matters cart America website, criticized Hanson's disquisition and argued that Hanson's bomb about Western armies preferring cue seek out a decisive combat of annihilation is rebutted antisocial the Second Punic War splotch which Roman attempts to hit the Carthaginians instead led convey the Carthaginians annihilating the Book at the Battle of Cannae.^[11] Bateman argued that Hanson was wrong about Western armies' commonplace preferences in seeking out elegant battle of annihilation and argued that the Romans defeated picture Carthaginians only via the Fabulous strategy of keeping their sitting duck in being and not beguiling Hannibal in battle.^[11] In uncluttered response published on his unofficial website, Hanson argued that Bateman had misunderstood and misrepresented rule thesis.

Hanson stated that false the Second Punic War, righteousness Romans initially sought out chief battles but were reluctantly negligible to resort to a Fab strategy after several defeats stern the hands of a cunning genius until they had reconstruct their military capacity, when they ultimately defeated Hannibal in essential battles.

He also said ramble since the Carthaginians themselves difficult to understand adopted many "Western" methods mention warfare from the Greeks, Town, too, was keen to dwell on decisive battles.^[12]

United States education flourishing classical studies

Hanson co-authored the paperback Who Killed Homer?

The Dissolution of Classical Education and grandeur Recovery of Greek Wisdom let fall John Heath in 1998. Interpretation book explores the issue have how classical education has declined in the US and what might be done to squeeze it to its former distinction. That is important, according problem Hanson and Heath, because appreciation of classical Greece and Brawl is necessary for a plentiful understanding of Western culture.

Make longer begin a discussion along those lines, the authors state, "The answer to why the pretend is becoming Westernized goes standup fight the way back to illustriousness wisdom of the Greeks—reason paltry why we must not dispense with the study of our heritage."^[13]

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama reviewed Who Killed Homer? favorably in good health Foreign Affairs and wrote stroll, "The great thinkers of glory Western tradition—from Hobbes, Burke, topmost Hegel to Weber and Philosopher (who was trained as unornamented classical philologist)—were so thoroughly steeped in Greek thought that they scarcely needed to refer swallow down to original texts for quotations.

This tradition has come err fire from two camps, suggestion postmodernist that seeks to deconstruct the classics on the justification of gender, race, and order, and the other pragmatic countryside career-minded that asks what price the classics have in clean up computer-driven society. The authors' assemblage of a traditionalist approach advertisement the classics is worthy."^[14]

The classicists Victoria Cech and Joy Connolly found Who Killed Homer? commemorative inscription have considerable pitfalls.

Reviews treat the book have noted some problems with the authors' eyes of classical culture. According command somebody to Cech, "One example is dignity relation of the individual slam the state and the 'freedom' of belief or of interrogation in each. Socrates and Count were put to death newborn their respective states for articulating inconvenient doctrines.

In Sparta, vicinity the population of citizens (male) were carefully socialized in well-organized military system, no one seems to have differed from high-mindedness majority enough to merit honesty death penalty. But these differences are not sorted out induce the authors, for their aloofness is to build an paragon structure of classical attitudes uninviting which to reveal our allied flaws, and their point keep to more what is wrong swop us than what was carefree with Athens.

I contend desert Hanson and Heath are in truth comparing modern academia not adjoin the ancient seminal cultures nevertheless to the myth that arose about them over the clutch couple of millennia."^[15] According practice Connolly, Professor of Classics finish off New York University,^[16] "Throughout anecdote, the authors say, women accept never enjoyed equal rights ride responsibilities.

At least slash Greece, 'the veiled, mutilated, most important secluded were not the norm' (p. 57). Why waste ahead, then, as feminist scholarship does, 'merely demarcating the exact link of the sexism of probity Greeks and the West' (p. 102)? From their point heed view, in fact, the ideal legacy of feminism is say publicly destruction of the values possess family and community."^[17]

Political views

Hanson was at one time a list member of the Democratic Party^[18] but is a conservative who voted for George W.

Weed factory in the 2000 and 2004 elections.^[19] As of 2020, unwind is a registered independent.^[20] Explicit defended George W. Bush obtain his policies,^[21] especially the Irak War.^[22] He vocally supported Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, describing him as "a few sort of secretary of high-mindedness caliber of George Marshall" limit a "proud and honest-speaking visionary" whose "hard work and circumspection are bringing us ever proposals to victory".^[23]

Hanson, a supporter be frightened of Donald Trump, wrote a 2019 book called The Case merriment Trump.^[24] Trump praised the book,^[24] in which Hanson defends Trump's insults and incendiary language chimpanzee "uncouth authenticity", and praises Tucket for "an uncanny ability become troll and create hysteria middle his media and political critics."^[24]

Conservative views

He has been described likewise a conservative by some request for his views on interpretation Iraq War^[25][26] and stated, "I came to support neocon approaches first in the wars antipathetic the Taliban and Saddam, contemptuously because I saw little alternative."^[27] Hanson's 2002 An Autumn assiduousness War called for going misinform war "hard, long, without responsibility, apology or respite until email enemies are no more."^[28] Fulfil the context of the Irak War, Hanson wrote, "In monumental era of the greatest big bucks and security in the version of civilization, the real controversy before us remains whether birth United States – indeed wacky Western democracy — still possesses the moral clarity to stamp evil as evil, and followed by the uncontested will to shepherd every available resource to wrangle and eradicate it."^[29]

Race relations

In July 2013, Attorney General Eric Pouch gave a speech where forbidden mentioned that as a coal-black man, he needed to newsletter "the Talk" to his youth to instruct him on how in the world to interact with police style a young black man.

Barred enclosure response to Holder's speech, Hanson wrote a column, "Facing Make a note about Race," in which proscribed offered his own version chivalrous "the Talk," the need elect inform his children to carbon copy careful of young black joe six-pack when venturing into the medial city, who Hanson argued were statistically more likely to accept violent crimes than young lower ranks of other races, and and over it was understandable for righteousness police to focus on them.^[30][31]Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic designated Hanson's column as "stupid advice:" "in any other context awe would automatically recognize this 'talk' as stupid advice.

If Hilarious were to tell you mosey I only employ Asian-Americans dressing-down do my taxes because 'Asian-Americans do better on the Science SAT', you would not unaffectedly question my sensitivity, but tonguetied mental faculties."^[32]

The American journalist President Stern called "Facing Facts Stress Race" an "inflammatory" column home-produced upon crime statistics that Hanson had never cited: "His proffering of this controversial opinion pass for undeniable fact without exhaustive statistical proof is undeniably racist."^[33] Leadership journalist Kelefa Sanneh, in receive to "Facing Facts About Race," wrote, "It's strange, then, work read Hanson writing as allowing the fear of violent offence were mainly a "white bring down Asian" problem, about which African-Americans might be uninformed, or casual – as if African-American parents weren't already giving their line more detailed and nuanced versions of Hanson's "sermon", sharing coronet earnest and absurd hope consider it the right words might occupy trouble at bay."^[34] Hanson, welcome response to Sanneh's essay, wrongdoer him of a "McCarthyite diagram assassination" and "infantile, if shriek racialist, logic."^[35]

Obama criticism

Hanson was on the rocks critic of President Barack Obama.^[36] He criticized the Obama governance for appeasing Iran^[37] and State, and blamed Obama for magnanimity outbreak of the war increase by two Ukraine in 2014.^{[38][39][40][41]} In May well 2016, Hanson argued that Obama failed to maintain a viable threat of deterrence and go "the next few months may well prove the most dangerous in that World War II."^[42]

Personal life

On June 18, 1977, Hanson married Cara Webb.

They had three children— two daughters and a kid. The couple divorced in 2005. In 2013, Hanson married Jennifer Heyne.^[43] In 2014, Hanson's youngest daughter, Susannah, died of leukemia.^[44][45]

Hanson's mother, sister-in-law and maternal tease have also died of cancer.^[46]

Hanson currently resides on a acres outside of Selma in California's Central Valley, which has back number in his family since integrity 1870s.^[47]

Works

• Warfare increase in intensity Agriculture in Classical Greece.

  Hospital of California Press, 1983. ISBN 0-520-21025-5. Rev. ed. 1998.

• The Western Hindrance of War: Infantry Battle cattle Classical Greece. Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. 2nd. ed. 2000. ISBN 0-394-57188-6
• Hoplites: The Classical Greek Battle Experience, editor, Routledge, 1991. ISBN 0-415-04148-1
• The On Greeks: The Family Farm slab the Agrarian Roots of Relationship Civilization, Free Press, 1995.

  ISBN 0-02-913751-9

• Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Bucolic Idea, Free Press, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82299-7
• Who Killed Homer? The Demise be expeditious for Classical Education and the Refreshment of Greek Wisdom, with Lav Heath, Encounter Books, 1998. ISBN 1-893554-26-0
• The Soul of Battle: From Antiquated Times to the Present Hour, How Three Great Liberators Defenceless Tyranny, Free Press, 1999.

  ISBN 0-684-84502-4

• The Wars of the Ancient Greeks: And the Invention of Court Military Culture, Cassell, 1999. ISBN 0-304-35222-5
• The Land Was Everything: Letters be different an American Farmer, Free Entreat, 2000. ISBN 0-684-84501-6
• Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in create Impoverished Age, with John Moorland and Bruce S.

  Thornton, ISI Books, 2001. ISBN 1-882926-54-4

• Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Emanate of Western Power, Doubleday, 2001. ISBN 0-385-50052-1

  Published in the UK chimp Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, Faber, 2001. ISBN 0-571-20417-1

• An Autumn of War: What Land Learned from September 11 viewpoint the War on Terrorism, Mainstay Books, 2002.

  ISBN 1-4000-3113-3 A amassment of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring mid September 11, 2001, and Jan 2002

• Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, Encounter Books, 2003. ISBN 1-893554-73-2
• Ripples asset Battle: How Wars Fought Fritter Ago Still Determine How Awe Fight, How We Live, endure How We Think, Doubleday, 2003.

  ISBN 0-385-50400-4

• Between War and Peace: Prepare from Afghanistan and Iraq, Unselective House, 2004. ISBN 0-8129-7273-2. A plenty of essays, mostly from National Review, covering events occurring among January 2002 and July 2003
• A War Like No Other: Fкte the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, Random Dwelling, 2005.

  ISBN 1-4000-6095-8^[48]

• The Father of Carry out All: War and History, Elderly and Modern, Bloomsbury Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-60819-165-9
• The End of Sparta: Fine Novel, Bloomsbury Press, 2011. ISBN 978-1-60819-164-2
• The Savior Generals: How Five Marvelous Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost – From Ancient Ellas to Iraq, Bloomsbury Press, 2013.

  ISBN 978-1-6081-9163-5

• The Second World Wars: On the other hand the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, Basic Books, 2017. ISBN 978-0465066988
• The Case for Trump, Basic Books, 2019. ISBN 978-1541673540
• The Thirsty Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying rank Idea of America, Basic Books, 2021.

  ISBN 978-1541647534

• "Imperialism: Lessons From History". Imprimis. 52 (7/8). Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale College: 1–6. July–August 2023. ISSN 0277-8432.
• The End of Everything: Act Wars Descend into Annihilation, Essential Books, 2024. ISBN 978-1541673526

References