Victor Davis Hanson

Not to be confused with Victor M. Hansen.
Victor Davis Hanson
Born (1953-09-05) September 5, 1953
Fowler, California, U.S.
Occupation Writer, Historian, Farmer
Nationality American
Subject Military history, Classics

Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets. He was a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.[1] Hanson is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.

Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush.[2] Hanson is a blogger on current affairs, particularly regarding the U.S. in the Middle East and the U.S.-Mexico situation, and is also a fifth-generation farmer, growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California, and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism.

Early life, education and today

Hanson, who is of Swedish descent, grew up on a family farm at Selma, California in the San Joaquin Valley. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975[3] and his PhD in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian.[4]

Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Fellow in California Studies at the Claremont Institute, and professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno,[5] where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution.

In 1991 Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association's Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded to undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.[5] He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), as well as holding the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03).

Hanson writes a weekly column syndicated by Tribune Media Services, and has been published in The New York Times, American Heritage, and The New Criterion, among other publications. In 2006, he started blogging at PJ Media. In 2007, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.[5]

Writing

Hanson cites the Theban general and statesman Epaminondas, Winston Churchill, and the US generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton as his heroes. In the field of military history, Hanson cites John Keegan as being influential, and shares a mutual admiration with fellow classicist Donald Kagan and the historian Steven Ozment.

Carnage and Culture

Hanson is perhaps best known for his 2001 book, Carnage and Culture, published in some nations such as the UK and Australia, as Why the West Has Won, in which he argued that the military dominance of Western Civilization, beginning with the ancient Greeks, is the result of certain fundamental aspects of Western culture, such as consensual government and individualism. Hanson rejects racial explanations for this military preeminence and disagrees as well with environmental or geographical explanations such as those put forth by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel.[6]

According to Hanson, Western values such as political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate form an especially lethal combination when applied to warfare. Non-Western societies can win the occasional victory when warring against a society with these Western values, writes Hanson, but the "Western way of war" will prevail in the long run. Hanson emphasizes that Western warfare is not necessarily more (or less) moral than war as practiced by other cultures; his argument is simply that the "Western way of war" is unequalled in its devastation and decisiveness.

Carnage and Culture examines nine battles throughout history, each of which is used to illustrate a particular aspect of Western culture that Hanson believes contributes to the dominance of Western warfare. The battles or campaigns recounted (with themes in parenthesis) are the Battle of Salamis (480 BC; free citizens), the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC; the decisive battle of annihilation), the Battle of Cannae (216 BC; civic militarism), the Battle of Tours/Poitiers (732; infantry), the Battle of Tenochtitlan (1521; technology and reason), the Battle of Lepanto (1571; capitalism), the Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879; discipline), the Battle of Midway (1942; individualism), and the Tet Offensive (1968; dissent).

Though Carnage and Culture appeared before the September 11, 2001 attacks, its message that the "Western way of war" will ultimately prevail made the book a best-seller in the wake of those events. Immediately after 9/11, Carnage and Culture was re-issued with a new afterword by Hanson in which he explicitly stated that the United States government would win its "War on Terror" for the reasons stated in the book.

United States education and classical studies

Hanson co-authored the book Who Killed Homer? with John Heath. This book explores the issue of how classical education has declined in the US and what might be done to restore it to its former place. This is important, according to Hanson and Heath, because knowledge of the classical Greeks and Romans is necessary to fully understand Western culture. To begin a discussion along these lines the authors state, "The answer to why the world is becoming Westernized goes all the way back to the wisdom of the Greeks—reason enough why we must not abandon the study of our heritage".[7]

Hanson and Heath blame the academic classicists themselves for the decline, accusing them of becoming so infected with political correctness and postmodern thinking, not to mention egoism and money-grubbing (grants, visiting professorships, conference-hopping, promotion based on unreadable publications), that they have lost sight of what Hanson and Heath feel the classics truly represent. They say it this way, "the study of Greek in the last twenty years became a profession, a tiny world—but a world of sorts nonetheless—of jets, conferences, publicity, jargon, and perks".[8]

Political views

Hanson is a registered member of the Democratic Party but also a conservative who voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections.[9]

Hanson also writes a weekly column, for the National Review and has been published in Townhall.com, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary,, City Journal, The American Spectator, Policy Review, the Claremont Review of Books, and The Weekly Standard. Hanson was awarded the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the $250,000 Bradley prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008.[10]

He has been described as a neoconservative by some commentators,[11][12] and has stated, "I came to support neocon approaches first in the wars against the Taliban and Saddam, largely because I saw little alternative."[13] Hanson writes, "The Democratic Party reminds me of the Republicans circa 1965 or so – impotent, shrill, no ideas, conspiratorial, reactive, out-of-touch with most Americans, isolationist, and full of embarrassing spokesmen."[14]

Hanson was a strong defender of George W. Bush and his policies,[15] especially the Iraq war.[16] He was also a vocal supporter of Bush's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Hanson wrote of Rumsfeld that he was: "a rare sort of secretary of the caliber of George Marshall" and a "proud and honest-speaking visionary" whose "hard work and insight are bringing us ever closer to victory".[17]

On the issues pertaining to the constant political turmoil in the Middle East, Hanson emphasises the lack of individual and political freedom in many Middle Eastern nations as a major factor retarding economic, technological and cultural progress. He further relates the root cause of radical Islamic terrorism to insecurities and a need to regain honor and pride.[18]

Iraq War

Hanson believed that the Iraq War was a good and worthwhile undertaking and was, on the whole, a laudable success. However, he stated in 2008 that he "disagreed with many of the decisions made about the Iraq war," such as the dissolution of the old Iraqi army.[13]

Israeli–Arab conflict

In his article Israel did it, Hanson asked why Israel was being blamed for responding to attacks by Hezbollah.[19]

Confrontation with Iran

Hanson has argued that the US should take a much more confrontational stance towards Iran, advocating unilateral responses to the country. On the Hugh Hewitt show in August 2007, Hanson stated, "We really need to start doing some things beyond talking, and if that is going into Iranian airspace, or buzzing Iranians, or even starting to forget where the border is and taking out some of these training camps, we need to do that and send a message, because they’re a paper tiger. They really are."[20]

Works

References

  1. ↑ "Works and Days: Back to the Future?" by Victor Davis Hanson, PajamasMedia.org, August 29, 2006Archived November 7, 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ 2007 National Humanities Medal winners at the National Endowment for the Humanities' website
  3. ↑ "VDH Private Papers" Victor Davis Hanson website, accessed August 8, 2010Archived January 25, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ↑ "Do We Want Mexifornia?", Victor Davis Hanson, City Journal, Spring 2002
  5. 1 2 3 "Classical Studies Program", California State University, Fresno
  6. ↑ Decline And Fall: A review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Magazine, May 20, 2005
  7. ↑ Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), 28.
  8. ↑ Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001), 157.
  9. ↑ Interview, Proceedings, March 2003
  10. ↑ 2008 Bradley Prize Winners at The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation's websiteArchived August 29, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Bush pulls neocons out of the shadows Los Angeles Times, January 22, 2005
  12. ↑ The end of the neo-cons? BBC News, February 9, 2009
  13. 1 2 The Neocon Slur, Victor Davis Hanson, July 12, 2008 (originally posted at Hanson's Works and Days blog)Archived February 13, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ↑ Question Log on Hanson's website, February 2005Archived March 7, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ↑ On Loathing Bush – It’s not about what he does, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, August 13, 2004Archived July 24, 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ↑ Myth or Reality – Will Iraq work? That’s up to us, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, April 23, 2004Archived July 24, 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ Leave Rumsfeld Be – He is not to blame for our difficulties, Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, December 23, 2004Archived July 13, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  18. ↑ It's not just about land by Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review, August 3, 2006
  19. ↑ Victor Davis Hanson (December 15, 2006). "Israel did it!". National Review.
  20. ↑ Hugh Hewitt Show transcript, August 13, 2007 Archived August 31, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  21. ↑ Fredric Smoler "Study of the War on Terrorism: The View from 400 B.C.," American Heritage, Nov./Dec. 2006.

External links


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