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A New York Times bestseller, "The Dying Citizen is essential
reading for any American who cares about the fate of our nation"
(Mark R. Levin)Human history is full of the stories of peasants,
subjects, and tribes. Yet the concept of the "citizen" is
historically rare-and was among America's most valued ideals for
over two centuries. But without shock treatment, warns Victor Davis
Hanson, American citizenship may soon vanish.In The Dying Citizen,
Hanson outlines the forces that led to this crisis. The
evisceration of the middle class has made many Americans dependent
on the federal government. Open borders have undermined allegiance
to a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our
collective sense of self. And a top-heavy state has endangered
personal liberty.With a new epilogue that assesses how the events
of 2021 have further diminished the meaning of American
citizenship, The Dying Citizen is a clarion call to rebuild our
collective national identity.
Human history is full of the stories of peasants, subjects, and
tribes. Yet the concept of the "citizen" is historically rare-and
was among America's most valued ideals for over two centuries. But
without shock treatment, warns historian Victor Davis Hanson,
American citizenship as we have known it may soon vanish. In The
Dying Citizen, Hanson outlines the historical forces that led to
this crisis. The evisceration of the middle class over the last
fifty years has made many Americans dependent on the federal
government. Open borders have undermined the idea of allegiance to
a particular place. Identity politics have eradicated our
collective civic sense of self. And a top-heavy administrative
state has endangered personal liberty, along with formal efforts to
weaken the Constitution. As in the revolutionary years of 1848,
1917, and 1968, 2020 ripped away our complacency about the future.
But in the aftermath, we as Americans can rebuild and recover what
we have lost. The choice is ours.
World War II sent the youth of the world across the globe in odd
alliances against each other. Never before had a conflict been
fought simultaneously in so many diverse landscapes on premises
that often seemed unrelated. Never before had a conflict been
fought in so many different ways - from rocket attacks on London to
jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. It was only in
time that these battles coalesced into one war. In The Second World
Wars, esteemed military historian Victor Davis Hanson examines how
and why this happened, focusing in detail on how the war was fought
in the air, at sea, and on land-and thus where, when, and why the
Allies won. Throughout, Hanson also situates World War II squarely
within the history of war in the West over the past 2,500 years. In
profound ways, World War II was unique: the most lethal event in
human history, with 50 million dead, the vast majority of them
civilians. But, as Hanson demonstrates, the war's origins were not
entirely novel; it was reformulations of ancient ideas of racial
and cultural superiority that fueled the global bloodbath.
The West and Islam--the sword and the scimitar--have clashed since
the mid-seventh century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the
Byzantine emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon
Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long
jihad on Christendom. Sword and Scimitar chronicles the significant
battles that arose from this ages-old Islamic jihad, beginning with
the first major Islamic attack on Christian land in 636, through
the occupation of the Middle East that prompted the Crusades and
the far-flung conquests of the Ottoman Turks, to the European
colonization of the Muslim world in the 1800s, when Islam largely
went on the retreat--until its reemergence in recent times. Using
original sources in Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Turkish, preeminent
historian Raymond Ibrahim describes each battle in vivid detail and
explains the effect the outcome had on larger historical currents
of the age and how the military lessons of the battle reflect the
cultural faultlines between Islam and the West. The majority of
these landmark battles are now forgotten or considered
inconsequential. Yet today, as the West faces a resurgence of this
enduring Islamic jihad, Sword and Scimitar provides the needed
historical context to understand the current relationship between
the West and the Islamic world, and why the Islamic State is merely
the latest chapter of an old history.
Donald J. Trump triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican
rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a
hostile media and Washington establishment to become President of
the United States -- and an extremely successful one at that.
Award-winning historian Victor Davis Hanson sets Trump in his broad
political and social context to explain his ongoing appeal to
American voters. Hanson is not naive about Trump's behavior, but
ultimately sees him as a tragic political character from a
Sophocles play or an American Western. His accomplishments are a
direct result of his personal excesses, and his bold decisiveness
has brought long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy.
While Hanson acknowledges that we could not survive a series of
Trump presidencies, half the population "wanted some outsider, even
with a dubious past, to ride in and do things that most normal
politicians not only would not but could not do -- before exiting
stage left or riding off into the sunset." The paperback is updated
with new material covering Trump's presidency since the midterm
elections, where the hardcover edition left off.
In The Case for Trump, acclaimed historian and political
commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity
businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over
sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a
quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and
Washington establishment to become President of the United
States--and an extremely successful president at that. Hanson sets
Trump in his broad political and social context to explain Trump's
and ongoing political appeal to a broad swath of American voters.
Growing anger at globalization, a stalled economy, immigration,
costly and unfruitful overseas interventions, perceived poor trade
deals, and political correctness meant by 2016 that if there were
not a loud Trump outsider, he would likely have had to be invented.
Trump and Trump alone saw a political opening in defending the
forgotten working classes of the interior, who were alienated not
only by Democrats but by elite republican candidates. (In 2012, one
Republican taxi driver explained his decision to sit out the
election altogether: "Geez, Romney came to Michigan wearing his
wing-tips with starched jeans!") And despite the apocalyptic
imaginings of both the Left and the Never Trump Right, one year
into his presidency Trump boasts an impressive record of
achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president.
Trump has realized economic and foreign policy results not seen in
a generation, cutting through stasis and dismantling a corrupt old
order. Hanson is not naive about Trump's self-destructive behavior
(the relentless tweeting, the threats to fire Mueller and so on)
but ultimately sees him as a kind of tragic political hero,
something out a Sophocles play or an American Western. His
accomplishments are a direct result of his personal excesses--the
fact that he is not traditionally presidential has enabled him to
bring long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy. We could
not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump's, Hanson
acknowledges. But "given the direction of the country over the last
16 years, half the population, the proverbial townspeople of the
western, wanted some outsider, even with a dubious past, to ride in
and do things that most normal politicians not only would not but
could not do -- before exiting stage left or riding off into the
sunset."
The West and Islam--the sword and the scimitar--have clashed since
the mid-seventh century, when, according to Muslim tradition, the
Byzantine emperor rejected Prophet Muhammad's order to abandon
Christianity and convert to Islam, unleashing a centuries-long
jihad on Christendom. Sword and Scimitar chronicles the significant
battles that arose from this ages-old Islamic jihad, beginning with
the first major Islamic attack on Christian land in 636, through
the occupation of the Middle East that prompted the Crusades and
the far-flung conquests of the Ottoman Turks, to the European
colonization of the Muslim world in the 1800s, when Islam largely
went on the retreat--until its reemergence in recent times. Using
original sources in Arabic, Greek, Latin, and Turkish, preeminent
historian Raymond Ibrahim describes each battle in vivid detail and
explains the effect the outcome had on larger historical currents
of the age and how the military lessons of the battle reflect the
cultural faultlines between Islam and the West. The majority of
these landmark battles are now forgotten or considered
inconsequential. Yet today, as the West faces a resurgence of this
enduring Islamic jihad, Sword and Scimitar provides the needed
historical context to understand the current relationship between
the West and the Islamic world, and why the Islamic State is merely
the latest chapter of an old history.
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