California: I Have Found it!

California is approaching bankruptcy. Its leftist legislature seems quite happy to welcome the welfare class while driving the middle class away.  And the state's ribbon of wealthy citizens from San Francisco to San Diego don't seem to mind.  Any freshman who has endured Econ 101 knows that such circumstances cannot last for long. The great pendulum of reality, driven by the California magic, will soon swing toward balance. Victor Davis Hanson has a new article in City Journal that focuses on this theme. He has a vested interest in the state as a fourth generation farmer - he does a tad more as well - in the San Joaquin Valley near Selma.

OTR is pleased to see some enthusiasm for California. If he had to choose a favorite state, it would unquestionably be the Golden State.

The Nation's Bellwether State Meets The Dark Ages

As a farmer, scholar, and writer grounded in reason and history, Victor Davis Hanson is one of our most significant interpreters of the contemporary American experience. His most recent essay appearing in National Review Online is a combination of beautiful, descriptive prose and urgent politics. The story involves Selma, California, and elsewhere in the Central Valley where  modern-day Vandals are destroying civility while the powers in the city-states on the coast sustain the policies that will surely undermine what gold is left in the Golden State.  California has been a reliable trend-setter for the nation over the last sixty years. That we have no reason to think this role will end makes Hanson's words important for the rest of us.

Election Fallout

The 2010 election brought a satisfactory feeling to most conservatives. About 70 new right-thinking faces will soon be on Capitol Hill. Beyond the Washington Beltway, there will be more republican governors and almost 700 new state legislators who will influence the reshaping of congressional districts. The Tea Party movement enlivened an already energized election and won many contests of national interest. At the same time, the party ideology, vested in some less than stellar candidates--O'Donnell, Angle, and Buck-- snatched defeat from the hands of easy victory, at least in Delaware and Nevada.

One would expect the socialist-democrat bloodbath on Tuesday to be of some concern at the White House. After all, a brief analysis of the outcome showed a broad rejection of candidates who embraced legislation and policy touted by Barack Obama. That did not seem to register with the president at his Wednesday Presser. Although he looked extremely uncomfortable, Obama danced with the probing questions for almost an hour before admitting that, yes, there could be more to the rejection than the peoples' discontent with the economy. OTR thinks this is very telling, a forecast of what to expect for the next two years as the electorate holds the blame for not recognizing deity when it is manifest.

As for the recent election, the experts will be dissecting it for weeks and readers will be able to enjoy their fruits at every turn. Readers may not be so fortunate seeking guidance of the mind engine at work in the White House. For that story, OTR suggests his readers have another session with Dr. Sanity and her link to a Victor Davis Hanson analysis.

Oh Man, Beware, And Look Toward The End Of Things That Be

The classicist and military historian, Victor Davis Hanson, has written another superb piece on human character. He reaches deep into Greek theater at the dawn of Western civilization and links ancient tragedy to the disaster unfolding every day in the Obama White House. Hanson is a remarkable observer of time past and time present. I have described him previously as a real, live Tralfamadorean, an alien character from the mind of Kurt Vonnegut. Tralfamadoreans had the ability to see all time as a single moment, a temporal landscape as an image much like what we would see looking at the Rocky Mountains. Oh that we could all have such perception of worlds past and present. I could go on from several perspectives, but I'll leave you to read the article and ponder the wisdom of the Greeks that lives within our own time.

Title: from the final chorus of Sophocles's Oedipus, King of Thebes, warning us that we cannot judge until the story ends.

Thoughts From The Recession

Here is a choice example of the value of participant-observers in helping us understand the American experience. As much as we might long for stability and permanence, our reality is one of uncertainty and change, a social construct with vital, yet delicate, linkages.

I am reminded again of this line from Fritz Lang's monumental film, Metropolis (1927):

Between the mind that plans and the hand that builds there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart.

Be sure to read the comments following the post. I think you will agree that Hanson's effort touched the heart of many of his readers.

War And History

This week, the Hoover Institution's video series, Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson, features Victor Davis Hanson discussing his new book, Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. Hanson is an outstanding scholar who sees the American experience the same way Kurt Vonnegut's alien Tralfamadorians saw time: like viewing the Rocky Mountains. Few historians have such a holistic grasp of the context of western civilization and what it means to be in this great national experiment we call the United States. Here's your link.

Hanson Ascendant

David Hogberg, writing at investors.com, acknowledges that Victor Davis Hanson seems very good at contemporary political analysis. Pretty good historian, too.

Source: Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

Tune Out, Turn Off, Drop Out

Victor Davis Hanson tell his readers why he is a cultural dropout in this new post in his Works and Days series. Source: Big Hollywood

Iran's Surprise

National Review Online has Victor Davis Hanson's comments on the latest news on Iran's "other" nuclear project. As always, he is spot on analyzing this dangerous situation. Read it.

Deconstructing The "Whup Ass"

Victor Davis Hanson dissects the Van Jones mess in this Works and Days post on Pajamas Media. I hear echoes of Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers bouncing everywhere off the edges of Hanson's column. If you're unfamiliar with Wolfe's 1970 classic about the nexus of white liberal guilt and black rage, get your hands on a copy today and prepare to laugh.

This Tragedy Has No Deus Ex Machina

Victor Davis Hanson reaches deep into Greek thought to define debt as a fate from which the United States has no easy escape. Reminds me of time present and time past in time future.

Victor Davis Hanson On Things To Come

Victor Davis Hanson recently returned from one of his many extended lecture and study tours in Europe. Over the past four decades, he has observed the slow and steady growth of socialism on that continent. His latest Works and Days column has some thoughts on socialism and its application to the American experience. Most readers aren't going to enjoy what they read in this column, but Hanson's style and wisps of humor always help the medicine go down. In my humble opinion, he is to the contemporary American political scene what Richard Feynman was to physics.

John Ford According To Victor Davis Hanson

Leave it to classicist Victor Davis Hanson to put John Ford, the master of the Western in cinema, in proper perspective. I think it's an admirable perspective and one that Ford would quietly admire. This is Hanson at his best writing in National Review Online.

Blame, Justice, And The Damnation Of Memory

Why is the investigation of past national policy a bad idea? Victor Davis Hanson provides answers in his post at National Review Online.