VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.

Popular culture is simply a reflection of what the majority seems to want.

Any time the Western way of war can be unleashed on an enemy stupid enough to enter its arena, victory is assured.

War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.

History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.

Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.

Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.

In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources.

The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense.

This bloody past suggests to us that enemies cease hostilities only when they are battered enough to acknowledge that there is no hope in victory - and thus that further resistance means only useless sacrifice.

Even in its third century, America is still the most meritocratic nation in the world.

The fact is, beneath the hype, Iraqis will soon appreciate American help and idealism far more than French perfidy. It is never wrong to be on the side of freedom - never.

Throughout history, powers that did not have a strong navy, even though they were impressive on land, usually failed in all-out war

Censorship only accelerates. It is dressed up in multicultural gobbledygook about hurtfulness and insensitivity, when the real issue is whether we in the West are going to be blown up or beheaded if we dare come out and support the right of an artist or newspaper to be occasionally crass. The radical Islamists are our generation's book burners who search for secular Galileos and Newtons. They are the new Nazi censors who sniff out anything favorable to the Jews. These fundamentalists are akin to the Soviet commissars who once decreed all art must serve political struggle — or else.

Coups usually follow national humiliation.

Many people in the UN vote and then go home where nobody votes.

The more we spend on social spending the more we create an appetite for more social spending.

The American public, not the timeless nature of war, has changed. We no longer easily accept human imperfections. We care less about correcting problems, than in assessing blame. In post-modern America it is defeat that has a thousand fathers and the notion of victory is an orphan.

Democracies are actually war-prone, owing to their very moral conceit—their confidence in the superiority of their culture and the system of their government—and the ease by which a simple majority vote of their legislatures can instantaneously mobilize an entire society for war.

War is never a choice between a good choice and a bad choice. It is a choice between a bad choice and a worse choice.

Illegal immigration is praised only by those who benefit directly from it, whether in the familial sense of inexpensive nannies, cooks, or gardeners; or in the corporate interest of cheap labor in the hospitality industries, agriculture, and construction; or in the political sense of new liberal constituents; or in the tribal sense of expanding the so-called La Raza base. But the vast majority of Americans accept that when federal law is ignored, chaos ensues.

Obama's immigration legacy will be the juxtaposition of his serial insistence that he was not a king or an emperor, and could not contravene the Constitution by granting a blanket amnesty, with his efforts to do just that when it was no longer politically inexpedient. I don't think a president has ever quite so habitually warned the country of the dangers that would soon emanate from himself.

Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009.

Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.

Cheap anti-Americanism will eventually have consequences.