Conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson told Megyn Kelly what he thinks happened in the 2022 midterms, as he explained that President Joe Biden&#8217;s &#8220;dark Brandon&#8221; speech attacking Republicans &#8220;actually worked.&#8221;
During the Sirius XM &#8220;The Megyn Kelly Show&#8221; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocjvqe8RF8w">podcast</a> on Monday, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/megyn-kelly">the host</a> read an analysis from Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics that, &#8220;independents went for the incumbent party by two points.&#8221; She also read that Democrats did vote &#8220;partisan lines and the GOP did too, but the Dems did it a little bit more.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/victor-davis-hanson">Hanson</a> listed several things he thought was the cause for why the Republicans failed to not only take over the Senate but are projected to barely eke out a victory in the House despite rising crime and inflation. One big take away the conservative commentator noted was that the youth vote was successfully pandered to by Biden.
&#8220;So, in the last 60 days, the youth of America was said, &#8216;I&#8217;m going to cancel a lot of your student loans,'&#8221; Hanson shared noting Biden&#8217;s promise. &#8220;We thought, &#8216;ah that&#8217;s just pandering. Nobody would believe that.'&#8221;
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&#8220;Then they [Biden] said &#8216;we&#8217;re going to give you amnesty for marijuana conviction,'&#8221; he added. &#8216;Oh, who cares about that it won&#8217;t effect that many people.&#8217; Or &#8216;these people are going to take abortion away from you.&#8217; And those issues for that rubric and they&#8217;re galvanized on the campuses &#8230; they just were overwhelmingly deleterious the Republican cause.&#8221;
Hanson told <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/no-one-will-miss-her-megyn-kelly-political-commentators-react-to-msnbc-host-being-dropped">Kelly</a> that even the president&#8217;s move before the election by &#8220;draining the strategic petroleum reserve,&#8221; which he said probably brought gas prices down about ten cents a gallon, &#8220;apparently might&#8217;ve worked.&#8221;
&#8220;So what we consider pandering and demagoguery,&#8221; the political commentator added. &#8220;Or whoever believed that &#8216;Phantom of the Opera&#8217; speech that Biden gave that was so obnoxious and repellent, that actually worked.&#8221;
Hanson stopped short of repeating the idea that the only way to win in 2024 is to get rid of former President Donald Trump and said that Biden pushed his &#8220;effective propaganda&#8221; that Trump or those that support the former president were &#8220;un-American&#8221; or an &#8220;election denialist&#8221; or &#8220;semi-fascist.&#8221;
&#8220;And you are on the other side saying Joe Biden is &#8216;non compos mentis&#8230;and it&#8217;s all an attack on Biden,&#8221; Hanson added. &#8220;And they&#8217;re saying &#8216;these people attack, they attack&#8217;, then it becomes even more important to have a positive message&#8230;They [GOP] thought by attacking Joe Biden in negative terms, all justified and all true, they were going to reduce him into a caricature of a caricture. But what it did was it amplified the Democrat message that &#8216;these people are shrill and they are angry. And they disrupt elections.'&#8221;
He also said the party really needs someone like late-President Ronald Reagan that will appeal to all Republicans, noting that the person will have to appeal to not just those who came on board and supported people like late-Sen. John McCain or Sen. Mitt Romney but also those that joined the GOP because of Trump.

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‘Actually Worked’: Victor Davis Hanson Tells Megyn Kelly What Happened In The Midterms

'Actually Worked': Victor Davis Hanson Tells Megyn Kelly What Happened In The Midterms

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Students regularly ask me for a summer reading list of my favorite books to help them continue their nascent reading habits. I’m always hard-pressed to come up with a list because, as I will explain, my favorite books are those that I have recently finished, am reading, or am about to start. However, I do manage to give them a few suggestions, trying to avoid anyone they might know and trying to provide a diverse list of genres—history, memoir, and poetry, for instance. The idea of reading poetry always raises a few eyebrows.
I know they won’t read all of the books, or even most of them, but summer is the quintessential time for reading. Notice how many publications publish lists of books to read, with brief synopses of each one, from The Wall Street Journal to the local newspaper.
I’ve always wanted to weigh in with my own list, avoiding the beach-read, chick-lit recommendation. I only have one reason for this avoidance: I don’t know anything about them, not that I think they are unworthy. What follows in my list, rather, is an eclectic collection of books from numerous genres — from economics to biography to fiction to memoir to poetry. In short, there is something for everyone—or so I intend. I’ve also tried to avoid writers whose books I felt were already familiar enough and didn’t need any more advertising. Some of these writers include: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ben Franklin, and Neil Gorsuch. What I can tell you is that I have read several (if not all) of the books of each person I have included in the list below.
I also had another decision to make: to recommend a particular book or simply the writer. Unless I had a compelling reason to mention a specific book, I decided to let the writers stand on their own. All are so good that no one can go wrong choosing anything in their canon.
Finally, I made the decision to include writers who speak to our failing Republic or to current, contentious issues, but such writers are not in the majority. In other words, this isn’t a collection of books on current events, despite there being writers included who speak in large and important ways to the political, moral, and philosophical issues of our day. It is, as I said, an eclectic list of writers, in no particular order, who have challenged, entertained, or taken my breath away, over and over, through the years.
<h4>Introducing the Writers</h4>
<ol>
<li>Bradley Thompson, historian of our country’s founding. He writes with love and passion, especially in his most recent book, “America’s Revolutionary Mind.”</li>
<li>Thomas Sowell, economist and long-time member of the Hoover Institute. Sowell is known for his data-driven research, and “Intellectuals and Society” is no exception. Of note here is his work on gun control, which is the reason why I mention this specific title among his forty-some books.</li>
<li>Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dutch-American political activist, commentator, and colleague of Sowell at the Hoover Institute. She is originally from Somalia. Her first two books, memoirs, inspire young and old readers alike.</li>
<li>Victor Davis Hanson, another member of the Hoover Institute, who writes military and classical history and contemporary political commentary like no other.</li>
<li>Markus Zusak, a children’s book writer, best-known for “The Book Thief,” set during World War II.</li>
<li>Chaim Potok, late American Jewish novelist, Zionist, and painter.</li>
<li>Andrew Roberts, British historian, whose recent one-volume biography of Winston Churchill is the best in or out of print.</li>
<li>Dorothy L. Sayers, British mystery writer and inventor of the iconic sleuth Lord Peter Whimsey. Several contemporary mystery writers, such as P. D. James and Elizabeth George, owe her a debt of gratitude for elevating mystery to literary fiction.</li>
<li>A.S. Byatt, British winner of the Booker prize for “Possession.” She is also an accomplished short-story writer; her sister is the novelist Margaret Drabble.</li>
<li>Charles Williams, a member of the Oxford literary group known as the Inklings during World War II, an editor with the Oxford University Press, and a writer of spiritual thrillers.</li>
<li>Flannery O’Connor, Catholic, Southern gothic short-story writer.</li>
<li>Reynolds Price, fellow Southern novelist, poet, essayist, and previous member of the Duke University English department.</li>
<li>Andre Dubus, the late American short-story writer.</li>
<li>Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer, who writes about contemporary agricultural issues and is also a novelist, essayist, and poet. His Sabbath Poems deserve to be read aloud to another person, as I did on a hiking trip to the Chianti Valley, Tuscany before my husband’s death. </li>
<li>Billy Collins, American poet; I think of him as bread and butter.</li>
<li>Wislawa Szymborska, was a Polish Nobel Laureate poet. Even in translation, her grammatical and intellectual power comes striking through.</li>
<li>Annie Proulx, American novelist and short-story writer. I am particularly fond of the hard-scrabble collection, “Wyoming Stories.”</li>
<li>Alexandre Dumas, nineteenth-century novelist. When students ask me for my favorite book, I have an answer: “The Count of Monte Cristo.”</li>
<li>Naomi Wolfe, journalist and political commentator, who has become something of an expert in Covid matters.</li>
<li>Antonin Scalia, the late conservative Supreme Court Justice, whose legal opinions, besides being brilliant, are hilarious. If only we had more like him.</li>
</ol>
Choose one, two, or more and dive in this summer. Choose a genre you have never read and read it aloud to a friend or loved one. Share these writers. Reading can never be just a solitary occupation, an isolated pleasure. What you read changes you and will spill out of you, willy-nilly. There is no other activity like it. Just ask Dr. Ben Carson who credits reading as the root of his success. Let it be yours.
Cheryl Forbes is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She is the author of eight books on theology, philosophy, science, and memoir.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Forbes – Summertime And The Reading Is Easy

Summertime And The Reading Is Easy: 20 Writers Worth Diving Into

Antonin Scalia

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Earlier this month, a group of Stanford University professors presented and published a memo accusing Hoover Institute fellows of being conservative, which they are, but argued they needed to be censured because the majority of the Stanford community disagreed with their views.
It appears the professors’ attempt to silence the Hoover fellows has failed, <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/01/stanford-mobs-attempt-to-cancel-hoover-institution-scholars-fails/">according to The Federalist</a>.
“Despite a months-long campaign of demonization directed at Victor Davis Hanson, Niall Ferguson, and Scott Atlas — amplified with support from The Stanford Daily — the assault ended without condemnation of the trio or Hoover,” the outlet reported.
As the three fellows <a href="https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/">wrote</a> last week, Stanford’s president, provost, and former provost defended the think tank and academic freedom in general.
Instead of the public condemnation and silencing demanded by the Stanford professors, Provost Persis Drell and Hoover Institute director Condoleezza Rice were asked to “to present a report to the body later this year about ‘increasing interaction’ between the university and the think tank,” The Federalist reported.
This is far from the “faculty-controlled committee” the professor’s wanted to “investigate Hoover” and its fellows.
As The Federalist noted, this “isn’t a victory for academic freedom over the forces of groupthink repression.”
“Rather, it’s a demonstration of the vulnerability of the vast majority of scholars who dissent from leftist orthodoxy and aren’t ensconced in a well-funded independent institution,” the outlet wrote.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/stanford-university-is-trying-to-silence-a-conservative-think-tank-because-the-liberal-community-disagrees-with-their-opinions">reported</a>, the professors’ accusations were able to malign the three Hoover fellows. It is also not the first time Stanford has attempted to cut ties with Hoover, a public policy think tank <a href="https://www.hoover.org/">focused on</a> “promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom”:
<blockquote>In February 2019, for example, the university’s faculty senate heavily criticized Hoover for being conservative, calling its ideological adherence to conservative principles “intellectually bankrupt.” This month, the student-run newspaper Stanford Daily attacked Hoover fellows “without contacting them and giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond, in contravention of the paper’s own <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/our-policies-and-standards/">“Policies and Standards,”</a> the fellows wrote. In November, the paper’s editorial board <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/11/23/its-time-for-stanford-to-separate-itself-from-hoover/">called</a> on Stanford “to separate itself from Hoover.”
In addition to the public attacks, the fellows wrote, they are also excluded from Stanford’s Academic Council even though they are also fellows at Stanford. Hoover fellows are also not represented on the faculty senate “unless they hold a joint appointment with a Stanford department” and are therefore not able to defend themselves from faculty attacks.</blockquote>
The professors accused Atlas of violating “the American Medical Association’s standards for ethical medical conduct” while serving as an adviser to President Donald Trump and accused him of being helping to cause the deaths of “tens of thousands of Americans.”
They accused Hanson of writing articles that “formed the backdrop to an insurrection that cost 5 lives and threatened the lives of Representatives, Congressional staff, and the Vice President, as well as our constitutional democracy.” Those articles actually pointed out issues with mail-in and early voting and changes to state voting laws — problems they say were also acknowledged by scholars at Stanford University Law School. Hanson, they wrote, never questioned the legitimacy of the election and condemned the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
Finally, they accused Ferguson of “conspire[ing] with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on a Stanford undergraduate.” The fellows note that the conspiracy never happened and the research was never conducted.

Stanford University

Stanford University Tries, Fails To Silence A Conservative Think Tank

Cancel Culture

Condoleezza Rice

Niall Ferguson

Scott Atlas

A group of Stanford University professors is trying to silence fellows of its Hoover Institution simply for being conservative.
Hoover Institute fellows Scott Atlas, Niall Ferguson, and Victor Davis Hanson <a href="https://stanfordreview.org/atlas-ferguson-hanson-stanford-free-speech/">wrote</a> of the attempt in The Stanford Review, the university’s independent newspaper:
<blockquote>In a recent meeting of the Stanford Faculty Senate, four professors (Joshua Landy, Stephen Monismith, David Palumbo-Liu and David Spiegel) presented and then subsequently <a href="https://www.activatestanford.org/actions/report-on-the-hoover-institution-and-stanford-university">published</a> a farrago of falsehoods directed against various fellows of the Hoover Institution. Their complaint was, first, that the Hoover fellows’ views were unapologetically conservative and, second, that they appeared antithetical to the majority of those of the Stanford community—and were therefore properly subject to some sort of institutional and personal censure.</blockquote>
The three fellows wrote that the professors wanted to create a “faculty-controlled committee to investigate Hoover” in an attempt to intimidate the institute into silence. Thankfully for the Hoover Institution, Stanford’s president, provost, and former provost defended the think tank and academic freedom in general.
Damage was still done, however, as the faculty members were able to manage “maligning” the three fellows “as individuals.” The president, they wrote, left the impression that the fellows had “behaved inappropriately” or “spoken untruths.”
As the fellows wrote, this is not the first time Stanford has tried to cut ties with Hoover, a public policy think tank <a href="https://www.hoover.org/">focused on</a> “promoting the principles of individual, economic, and political freedom.” In February 2019, for example, the university’s faculty senate heavily criticized Hoover for being conservative, calling its ideological adherence to conservative principles “intellectually bankrupt.” This month, the student-run newspaper Stanford Daily attacked Hoover fellows “without contacting them and giving them a reasonable amount of time to respond, in contravention of the paper’s own <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/our-policies-and-standards/">“Policies and Standards,”</a> the fellows wrote. In November, the paper’s editorial board <a href="https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/11/23/its-time-for-stanford-to-separate-itself-from-hoover/">called</a> on Stanford “to separate itself from Hoover.”
In addition to the public attacks, the fellows wrote, they are also excluded from Stanford’s Academic Council even though they are also fellows at Stanford. Hoover fellows are also not represented on the faculty senate “unless they hold a joint appointment with a Stanford department” and are therefore not able to defend themselves from faculty attacks.
“The accusations against us three last week were as various as they were untrue. And all were presented regardless of clear and published evidence to the contrary,” the fellows wrote.
The faculty members accused Atlas of violating “the American Medical Association’s standards for ethical medical conduct” while serving as an adviser to President Donald Trump and accused him of being helping to cause the deaths of “tens of thousands of Americans.”
“Those serious charges were based on straw-man arguments and gross distortions of Atlas’s words, as pointed out by <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/atlas-mugged/">others</a>. In misrepresenting Atlas’s statements, Stanford faculty members intended to delegitimize him and his analysis,” the fellows wrote.
The faculty members accused Hanson of writing articles that “formed the backdrop to an insurrection that cost 5 lives and threatened the lives of Representatives, Congressional staff, and the Vice President, as well as our constitutional democracy.” Those articles actually pointed out issues with mail-in and early voting and changes to state voting laws &#8212; problems they say were also acknowledged by scholars at Stanford University Law School. Hanson, they wrote, never questioned the legitimacy of the election and condemned the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
Ferguson was accused of “conspire[ing] with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on a Stanford undergraduate.” The fellows note that the conspiracy never happened and the research was never conducted.
Some of the faculty members who launched the latest attacks against them, the fellows wrote, have previously advocated for free speech and diversity of viewpoints.

Stanford University Is Trying To Silence A Conservative Think Tank Because The Liberal Community Disagrees With Their Opinions

Censorship

Free Speech

As Americans feel the full effect of COVID-19 strangling the economy, many have put their focus on the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the role it played in the global pandemic. Speaking with Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday, Hoover Institution Fellow Victor Davis Hanson argued that the country “ruined their international brand.&#8217;
“[China] knew that that virus was not only epidemic but infectious and could be deadly to older people. They didn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell us. In fact, they did something far worse — they accused us of causing it and then they threatened to cut off supplies of medical needs and pharmaceuticals,” Hanson said, as reported by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/victor-davis-hanson-china-handling-coronavirus">Fox News</a>.
Going forward, Hanson said that companies in countries like Italy or Switzerland will think twice before tying up business in China.
&#8220;You think if you’re Italy or Switzerland or Germany or Australia, you really want to have your antibiotics produced in China when this is all over?&#8221; said Hanson. &#8220;If you’re a tourist and you went to China and somebody said there’s a virus contained but don’t worry, it’s contained — would you believe that?”
“Anybody in their right mind would know that the existential threat is China,&#8221; he added.
In recent days, reports have increasingly shown how the Chinese government&#8217;s response to the outbreak in Wuhan has helped create a global crisis, which included <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblowers-speak-out-vanish-2020-2">aggressively tamping down</a> on whistleblowers trying to raise awareness about the COVID-19 outbreak. Beyond that, the Chinese government&#8217;s hands-off approach to the so-called “wet market” animal trade has also come under severe scrutiny. From <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-ban-illegal-animal-trade-tighten-supervision-on-wet-markets-2020-2">Business Insider</a>:
<blockquote>The Wuhan coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, is likely to have started in a wet market in Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei. The markets are known for selling both live and dead animals, often in poorly regulated conditions.
The Wuhan coronavirus is a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-sars-bats-animals-to-humans-2020-1" data-analytics-module="body_link" data-analytics-post-depth="60">zoonotic disease</a>, meaning that it originated in animals. Some experts have suggested the novel coronavirus spread from bats, to snakes, to people, though many others say snakes are a highly unlikely intermediary species (a mammal is more probable). China initially imposed a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-virus-china-bans-food-markets-selling-live-animals-wolves-2020-1" data-analytics-module="body_link" data-analytics-post-depth="60">ban on live animal sales</a> in the city of Wuhan in light of the outbreak.</blockquote>
Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, told the <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/18/china-knew-years-bats-caused-disease-yet-left-wild/">Washington Times</a> that “criminal negligence and incompetence&#8221; created the crisis Americans are enduring now.
“Criminal negligence and incompetence by China’s communist regime,” Fleitz said. “It withheld information about this disease for weeks and refused to cooperate with international health officials.&#8221;
“Beijing also failed to close its border or limit travel. And the government refused to close the animal wet markets, which are a known source of serious diseases that spread to humans,” he added. “And now this corrupt regime is trying to blame the United States for its criminal negligence and incompetence.”
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-coronavirus-outbreak-could-have-been-reduced-by-95-if-china-acted-sooner">reported</a> by The Daily Wire Wednesday, a recent report from Southampton University found that the COVID-19 pandemic could have been curtailed by 95% if the Chinese government had acted earlier.
“[I]f interventions in [China] could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent respectively — significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease,&#8221; the university&#8217;s study concluded.
In the midst of this, President Trump has taken heat for referring to COVID-19 as the &#8220;China Virus,&#8221; with critics denouncing the term as &#8220;racist.&#8221; The president rebuked that assertion during a press conference on Wednesday.
“It’s from China. It’s not racist at all, no. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate,&#8221; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-reporter-asks-if-chinese-virus-is-racist-trump-has-the-perfect-response">said the president</a>. “I have great love for all of the people from our country, but as you know China tried to say at one point … that it was caused by American soldiers. That can’t happen, it’s not gonna happen, not as long as I’m president. It comes from China.”

In this photo illustration the People’s Republic of China

Victor Davis Hanson: China ‘Ruined Their International Brand’ With COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID