A gang of college students at Arizona State University (ASU) committed to “social justice” as redefined by leftists are trying to get Kyle Rittenhouse kicked out of ASU’s online nursing school, calling him a “bloodthirsty murderer” who makes the campus “unsafe.” They want to “abate” the “danger” posed by Rittenhouse’s virtual presence in an online nursing class. In the real world, where many of us still live and move and have our being, this is called cancelling or industrial-strength bullying.

In addition to demanding the administration “withdraw” Rittenhouse from the school, the four oppressive, tyrannical, exclusionary, leftwing organizations—MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlán), Students for Socialism, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition—are demanding that the school issue a public statement against the “racist murderer Kyle Rittenhouse.”

Rittenhouse is the teen who was recently unanimously acquitted of two homicide charges, one count of attempted homicide, and two counts of reckless endangerment. One count of unlawful possession of a firearm and one count of curfew violation were dismissed by the judge. There was no evidence provided during the trial proving Rittenhouse was guilty of any crime or suggesting he was motivated by racism. In fact, even the prosecution’s witnesses undermined the fantastical tale that Rittenhouse is a racist, bloodthirsty murderer, hell-bent on vigilantism. And yet, the self-identifying “social justice” warriors want Rittenhouse punished.

Their actions are worse than those of vigilantes—of which Rittenhouse is not one. Their libelous attacks against Rittenhouse and their demands that Rittenhouse—who has been found innocent of all charges—be refused entrance to a state university are the actions of vengeful criminals and petty tyrants with big egos and cultural power wielded in support of gross injustice.

The lack of awareness of their own ignorance, hypocrisy, and control-freakish impulses is not a poison affecting only leftist millennials. They’ve drunk deeply from the cup of arsenic prepared for them by leftist boomers who took control of all cultural institutions decades ago and are desperately gripping those institutions as they feel their grubby fingers being pried loose.

One of those boomers is the politically immortal harpy Hillary Clinton, who in a recent interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, said this:

[W]hat we’ve seen sadly in the last several years is not new … but it is, unfortunately, turbo-charged by the combination of demagogues, social media that is more interested, frankly, in profitability than the rule of law or unity, that feeds disinformation in a way that strips people to the core of their insecurities and their fears. …

I think we’re really on the precipice … of seeing people, particularly in the Republican Party, but not only there, who truly just want power, power to impose their views, power to exploit financial advantage, power to implement a religious point of view. …

[B]ecause of the way we are getting our information today and because of the lack of gatekeepers and people who have a historic perspective, who can help us understand what we are seeing, there is a real vulnerability in the electorate to the kind of demagoguery and disinformation that, unfortunately, the other side is really good at exploiting.

Who exactly are the “demagogues” who are more interested in “profitability than the rule of law or unity”?

Are these “demagogues” the climate alarmists who profit from frightening children? Are they the race-baiting entrepreneurs who profit from keeping hate and fear alive and then sell their snake oil seminars to government schools and corporate America to end hate and fear?

Who is least interested in the “rule of law”?

Is it those who support election integrity, border security, anti-theft laws, and the Second Amendment or those who seek to make voter fraud, illegal immigration, and looting easier and who want to jettison the Second Amendment?

Is it primarily Republicans who seek power to impose their views?

Who denies Americans the ability to choose how, where, and what their children are taught? Who insists that their sexuality beliefs and theirs alone be taught in our “inclusive” government schools? Who allows teachers to call those who disagree names like “transphobe” and “homophobe”? Who wants to teach all children the racist fiction that all white people are oppressors? Who demands all teachers use incorrect pronouns in the service of the “trans” superstition or be fired? Who is demanding an 18-year-old found innocent in a court of law be punished?

Hillary Clinton doesn’t fear that Republicans seek “power to implement a religious point of view.” She and other leftists fear that theologically orthodox Christians may remain free to exercise their religion. And she and her ideological allies seek to disseminate their divisive, bigoted, anti-Christian, anti-constitutional views all across the nation.

Clinton claims in her own special unifying and non-ironic way that “the other side” is “really good at exploiting demagoguery and disinformation.” Oh, really?

Which side created and promoted the fake Russian Collusion scam and spent $38 million dollars of taxpayer money to promote, “investigate,” and prosecute the scam?

Which side claimed in fake dudgeon that Hunter Biden’s computer was not Hunter Biden’s computer?

Which side had a New York Post story about Biden’s computer with all its unseemly content about sexual perversion and influence-peddling buried until after the 2020 Election?

Which side promoted a fantastical tale about former President Trump watching prostitutes urinate, while burying a true story about Hunter Biden frolicking naked with two prostitutes?

Who wrote endless stories about the Trump children’s legitimate businesses while saying nothing about nouvel artiste Hunter Biden earning millions on the sale of his “art” to anonymous customers?

Which side calls the Jan. 6 riot a violent armed insurrection even though no guns were fired by the “violent armed insurrectionists,” while calling months of rioting, looting, and arson during which government property and police were attacked—which is the definition of “insurrection”—”mostly peaceful protests”?

Clinton’s solution to the problems she outlined? She wants more “gatekeepers” to censor the alleged “demagoguery and disinformation” that “the other side is really good at exploiting” and more people who have a “historic perspective.” Maybe Clinton doesn’t know the difference between “historic” and “historical.” While Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project could possibly be deemed “historic” in its inanity and in helping to fan the flames of righteous indignation under the “other side,” it certainly lacks “historical perspective.”

If Clinton wants more people who have a historical perspective, I recommend Victor Davis Hanson.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Rittenhouse-and-Justice-in-a-Leftwing-Dystopia.mp3

At the most recent School District 200 Board Meeting in Wheaton, Illinois, new school board member and cunning rhetorician, Mary Yeboah, Director of Graduate Student Life at Wheaton College, posed six questions to the board,  beginning with a prefatory statement that let the woke cat out of the bag:

I would like to ask six rhetorical questions regarding the proposed October 10th, 2022 and October 9th, 2023 no-school all-grades Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day in relation to district purposes outlined in the mission of School District 200, Vision 2022, and the portrait of a graduate work. To be very clear, these are not questions that I expect you to answer right now. I am asking them for the benefit of reflective thinking for the district, especially in the month leading up to the approval of these calendars.

One, does the District 200 administration recognize the impact of holidays, statues, and other memorials on shaping school culture, which in turn shapes student experiences and outcomes?

Two, does the District 200 administration consider celebrating extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization to be in line with the study of social science to help students develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the benefit of the global society in which they live?

Three, does the District 200 administration affirm the accurate telling of history and recognize the impossibility of “discovering” land already inhabited?

Four, does the District 200 administration take into consideration the perspectives of Indigenous people regarding this particular calendar event?

Five, could maintaining this District 200 calendar event unintentionally support a myth of U.S. exceptionalism that could undermine district efforts to create diverse, inclusive schools for all children?

Lastly, does this calendar event advance the vision and mission of District 200 goals? And if it does not, must it remain despite state-level support?

It was so considerate of Yeboah to make very clear that she didn’t expect her six loaded questions to be answered immediately. It was also odd in that she had declared these were rhetorical questions, which are questions intended to make a point—not to be answered.

After some reflective thinking, I have some reflective thoughts and questions on Yeboah’s questions.

1.) Does Yeboah recognize the impact of using a leftist lens through which to view, socially construct, revise, and impose a particular interpretation of the meaning of holidays, statues, and other memorials, which in turn shapes student experiences, beliefs, and outcomes—including outcomes like the 2020 riots?

2.) Yeboah’s second question presumes an astonishing premise that she doesn’t even attempt to prove: She presumes that Columbus Day is a celebration of “extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization.” That is akin to saying Martin Luther King Day is a celebration of plagiarism, marital infidelity, and the exploitation of women.

What school has ever used Columbus Day to celebrate extreme violence, theft, genocide, or dehumanization?

Historian Victor Davis Hanson offers a relevant critique of the impulse that animates Yeboah:

Campuses and Western critics in the last half-century have turned a once risk-taking and heroic Christopher Columbus into an evil emissary of disease and destruction. History is now seen as one-dimensional melodrama in which our contemporary duty is to pick sinners and saints of the past based on our own modern (quite imperfect) perceptions of morality and then judge them worthy of either hagiography or banishment from memory.

And Hanson shares a fact inconvenient to the narrative of those who love to hate America:

[K]nocking down images of Columbus will not change the fact that millions of indigenous people in Central America and Mexico are currently abandoning their ancestral homelands and emigrating northward to quite different landscapes that reflect European and American traditions and political, economic, and cultural values.

3.) Does Yeboah affirm the accurate telling of history? Does Yeboah believe children at every age should be alerted to every serious foible, sin, or moral failing of every human involved in significant historical events or achievements? Should children of every age be taught about MLK Jr.’s significant moral failings? Should children of every age be taught the sordid stories of the abuse of women by John F. Kennedy and his lady-killer brother Ted Kennedy? Should kindergartners be taught that Harvey Milk was a homosexual ephebophile who acted on his sexual interest in teenage boys?

Regarding Yeboah’s concern about the impossibility of “discovering” an already inhabited land: Good teachers should and do explain that “discover” means “to obtain knowledge of something through observation, search, or study.” Benjamin Franklin “discovered” electricity in this sense. James Wilson Marshall “discovered” gold at Sutter’s Mill in this sense. The gold was always there in the ground. Erasmus Jacobs, son of a poor Boer farmer in South Africa “discovered” diamonds along the banks of the Orange River—diamonds that had always been there.

4.) Does Yeboah consider the perspectives of indigenous people about celebrating their histories of extreme violence, theft, genocide, and dehumanization on Indigenous People’s Day?

5.) In her fifth point, Yeboah again presumes a premise she doesn’t attempt to prove: In her fifth rhetorical question, she presumes that American exceptionalism is a myth. But is it? What objective standards or criteria has Yeboah applied to conclude that America is not exceptional?

6.) Yeboah implies that honoring Christopher Columbus’ exploratory achievement and how it transformed the world violates the vision and mission of District 200, which are here set forth:

Our vision is to be an exemplary, student-focused school district that is highly regarded for the competence and character of our students and people, programs, and learning environment.

Our mission is to inspire, encourage, and challenge, and to support all students to reach their highest level of learning and personal development.

Yeboah has yet to make her case that honoring a history-making explorer undermines the development of competence and character, or how it undermines the mission to inspire, encourage, and challenge students to reach their highest level of learning and personal development. Do District 200 taxpayers even know how District 200 distinguishes between good character and bad?

Yeboah’s reference to the vision and mission of District 200 raises other questions:

• How does the sexual integration of restrooms and locker rooms support all students to reach their highest level of personal development and character?

• How does the wildly obscene  (*WARNING*) graphic novel/memoir Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, which is available in both District 200 high school libraries, foster character and personal development?

• How was the invitation to lesbian activist Robin Stevenson, who promotes cultural approval of both the “LGBT” ideology and the legalized slaughter of the unborn, to speak to 8-11-year-olds at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton supposed to foster character and personal development?

• How did the offensive student drawings defacing the walls of Monroe Middle School through positive portrayals of homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation, some accompanied by ignorant and troubling captions, contribute to character development?

In a Facebook post, Yeboah announced she’s all in for “anti-racism,” which everyone should know by now is a euphemism for anti-white racism.

In an upcoming “Table Talk” at Wheaton College, “Topics for White students” include “Invisible Racism” with guest speaker Mary Yeboah.

Yeboah is also a promoter of the  controversial “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” that garnered nationwide condemnation, including by National Review.

In a Feb. 7, 2021 Facebook post, Yeboah admits that one of her “favorite scholars” is Tyrone Howard who wrote the book All Students Must Thrive. Howard’s publisher writes that Howard’s book “brings together three frameworks relevant for equity in schools–wellness, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory.”

If there’s any doubt about Yeboah’s “progressive” bona fides, this should dispel it: In 2020, as BLM was destroying cities across the country, Yeboah was part of a “white moms” group in Wheaton that created signs to encourage support–including financial support–for the Black Lives Matter organization, which is hell-bent on destroying the nuclear family and normalizing homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation.

And Yeboah worries that Columbus Day will undermine character development in children? Sheesh

Public schools are no longer places that foster character development or provide the highest level of learning. Get your kids out now.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Wheaton-Illinois-School-Districts-Wokest-Board-Member.mp3

“Creative destruction” is a common phrase used in economics. One simple example that’s in the news a lot lately, is the phenomenon of Amazon.com. Since it launched in 1994, countless small books stores have been put out of business, and at least one large chain, Borders, has closed. That’s the destruction part. The creative part is the locating of new distribution centers all over the country — Illinois has been trying to land one as this article gets posted. The benefit to consumers is that within minutes, customers can find the book (or whatever) they want online and have it shipped in days.

When the American textile industry was decimated a few decades ago, the jobs were sent overseas due to free trade policies. Clothing prices dropped, but not without many Americans losing good paying jobs.

One common argument from the pro “free” traders is that trade, unrestricted by tariffs, raises the standard of living. For example, the middle, lower middle class, and the poor can afford things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. I have no doubt that’s true. For example, the last time I was in a Walmart I was shocked at just how inexpensive those foreign-made massive flat screen TVs are these days.

Of course, it’s not just clothes and TVs that are less expensive with free trade, but computers, furniture, clothes, and food (though evidently not meat).

Maybe there is someone out there who supports fairer trade who wants Americans to be priced out of necessities of life basics. If there is, I haven’t met them.

But is it just me or is the storage unit business a growing industry? Maybe I didn’t notice many of the Public Storage, Self Storage, and U-Haul Storage facilities when I was younger. I have noticed many new ones being opened, however.

It’s reasonable to surmise that what fills up many of that storage space is furniture and other items that could be afforded because of “free” trade. It’s also not unfair, it seems to me, to wonder about the impact on the average standard of living by having so much affordable stuff that a person winds up paying monthly storage fees.

That said, my assumption over the years has been that “free” trade is to be preferred. Only in recent years have I begun to read articles from serious men and women who are not pro-big government or economic isolationists making the case for a fairer trade.

While “creative destruction” leads to innovation, my concern is that the creative part doesn’t keep up with the destruction part. Factories close, towns die, and a lot of men and women who earned a good living working in manufacturing cannot find work that will allow them to maintain a decent standard of living.

It has been widely noted that Hillary Clinton lost states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan in no smart part due to their concentration on identity politics and their ignoring the economic challenges of the working class.

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon refers to a lot of what has been taking place concerning working class jobs as “economic hate crimes.” Bannon calls Washington, D.C. a “business model,” in that those on the inside always prosper. The think tank culture is also, no doubt, a “business model,” as big donors that benefit from “free” trade write big checks to defend current policies. There aren’t a lot of big donors in those dying towns across America.

Recently, townhall’s Kurt  Schlichter was tough on the “free” traders in an article:

Conservativism forgot about the real world conservatives we expected to line up behind us. While we were talking about free trade, we were ignoring that GOP voter who fought in Fallujah, came home, got a job building air conditioners, raised a family, and then one day watched the video of the oh-so-sorry CEO. . . sadly informing his beloved employees that their jobs were getting shipped to Oaxaca. And our response to the 58-year old Republican voter who asked us how he was going to keep paying for his mortgage and his kid in college? Pretty much, “Well, that’s how free enterprise works. Read some Milton Freidman and go learn coding.”

That’s not a response, not for a political party that requires people to actually vote for it. That’s an abdication…

Last year, Victor Davis Hanson also weighed in on the topic during an interview with Laura Ingraham: (see here starting at about the 8-minute mark).

I saw a whole generation of people in agriculture completely wiped out by unfair trade with the European Union. And Every time I would write about it I was told that I didn’t understand free market economics. And the same thing with China, and the same thing with outsourcing.

I grew up in a small town where everybody had a good job at a manufacturing plant. Now it’s 16 percent unemployment and I’m supposed to say this is creative destruction.

And I read in [National Review], that I’m affiliated — that this is good. That people lose jobs. They have to move. You just abandon your family your house, everybody, your community, and you just get in the car and follow the job.

And then I think to myself, I get up every morning at the Hoover Institution — I don’t worry that somebody from the Punjab is gonna walk in my office and say I’ll write that column for 40 percent of what you’re doing.

. . .

I know people in Silicon Valley that are being outsourced right now by people coming in on Visas. The elite has never suffered the consequences of their own ideology.

It’s not just conservative commentators who are not experts in economics. Economist Stephen Moore, no Trumpian protectionist, recently wrote about how NAFTA needs to be improved, and cites unfair practices of our trading partners.

Another expert is John Westberg who we mentioned in part two. His solution is innovative and deserving of attention and study — you can read more about it here ADD LINK.

As I noted at the outset of this 4-part series, this is a huge topic worthy of an ongoing debate. The need for a healthy middle class is obvious — and impossible without enough good paying jobs. Just looking at the employment/unemployment numbers isn’t enough. We must look at the actual human impact on the ground — that is how we will measure how well trade is working for working Americans.

This isn’t a matter of feelings and emotions but of dollars and cents. American policy should be aimed at benefiting Americans, even if we wind up paying more for goods, and less on storage units.

Up next: ‘Trillions of dollars are at stake’: It is a battle over ‘the future wealth of the United States.’

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Last time we covered two recent articles from Public Discourse — here are brief excerpts from three more.

The first is from Ryan T. Anderson — note the important introduction following the title:

How to Think About Discrimination: Race, Sex, and SOGI
Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) antidiscrimination laws are unjustified, but if other policies are adopted to address the mistreatment of people who identify as LGBT, they must leave people free to engage in legitimate actions based on the conviction that we are created male and female and that male and female are created for each other.

Here is Anderson’s first paragraph:

In a new report for the Heritage Foundation, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” I argue that current proposals to create new LGBT protections with varying types of religious exemptions will not result in what advocates claim is “Fairness for All.” Instead, they will penalize many Americans who believe that we are created male and female and that male and female are created for each other—convictions that the Supreme Court of the United States, in Obergefell v. Hodges, recognized are held “in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.”

Mr. Anderson is a talent and conservatives benefit greatly from his work. However, like Victor Davis Hanson yesterday, I’m not sure he grasps how far “identity politics” goes. This series shows that it extends far beyond the relatively narrow “LGBT.” In fact, there is almost no end to the number of letters that can follow the “T.”

Here is the next article from Public Discourse — this one is by Scott Beauchamp. For the sake of space I’ll only list the title and its introductory sentence which says a lot:

The Kids Aren’t All Right: What the Gender-Identity Revolution Has in Common with 1960s’ Drug Culture
The LSD consciousness-expansion movement of the late sixties and today’s gender-identity fixation are both counterfeit revolutions. The two might initially appear very different, but they share similar intellectual assumptions and make analogous mistakes.

And lastly, from Emily Zinos:

Biology Isn’t Bigotry: Christians, Lesbians, and Radical Feminists Unite to Fight Gender Ideology
Public schools have a duty to serve all children, but a school cannot serve children and a totalitarian ideology all at once. For the sake of children’s well-being, Christian mothers are uniting with their radical feminist and lesbian sisters to reject the idea of “gender identity.”

Just three sentences from the article:

The belief that one’s internal sense of self determines maleness or femaleness and that subjective feelings take precedence over an objective physical reality constitutes a severing of mind from body. Our sex is who we are: it can’t be amputated from our body like a limb. But the true believers in gender ideology are hard at work, pulling in converts to this gnostic worldview that shuns the material that we humans are made of: the body.

I realize many readers are terribly anxious to learn about today’s paraphilia so let’s get to it. (Oh, and I’m sorry, TheOnion.com, you can’t have this one since it’s real and not satire.)

Once again we’re going to rely on trusty Wikipedia. As an aside, just so you know, I am fully aware of the problems with Wikipedia. If you’re not sure what I’m referring to, check out here how they duplicate the Oprah Winfrey “pregnant man” lunacy (spoiler alert: “Thomas,” formerly Tracey, was born a girl).(Would it be disrespectful at this point to include the letters ‘LOL’?)

So…here’s Wikipedia:

Autassassinophilia is a paraphilia in which a person is sexually aroused by the risk of being killed. The fetish may overlap with some other fetishes that risk one’s life, such as those involving drowning or choking. This does not necessarily mean the person must actually be in a life-threatening situation, for many are aroused from dreams and fantasies of such.

Be sure to click on this link to learn more — because you need to be ready when Nintendo bows to pressure and creates a video game which includes autassassinophilias. Your kids might need it explained — that is, if they haven’t gotten to that chapter in the diversity textbook at school.

Up next we’ll take a look at another example of the ways people experience “intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, or individuals.” If America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sexcentric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

All Americans should watch the 2015 film “Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Victory and Betrayal.” It’s one of the most unusual movies I’ve ever seen — the creativity of the pacing, the writing, and the beautiful filming always kept me off balance — I never knew what was going to happen next.

Weaving present day interviews with reenactments of actual events staring actual Vietnamese refugees, the movie tells a story that needs to keep being told. The film is based on the book by Richard Bodkin, and you may not have heard about either the book or the film because they don’t fit the mainstream press’ or Hollywood’s narrative. Why? Because they tell the truth about the Vietnam War.

Since it’s an amazing and unusual film, and since I rarely give public movie reviews (I give plenty to friends and family), I’m going to let two other writers tell the story of the war. If you think the media has been horrible during the 2016 election year, well, it’s not new — the media has leaned politically left for many decades.

Two of my favorite writers, historians Bruce Thornton and Victor Davis Hanson have written about the Vietnam War, and their words tell the tale better than I could. Here’s Thornton in his terrific 2011 book The Wages of Appeasement:

It should be remembered that the debacle in Southeast Asia was not a consequence of military defeat, but of a political failure of nerve. Under the leadership of General Creighton Abrams, after 1968 American and South Vietnamese forces had rocked the communist North back on its heels and thwarted its subsequent offensives with huge losses of men and material. By 1972, as both U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam Ellsworth Bunker and British adviser Sir Robert Thompson said, the war was as good as won: the guerrillas in the South had been neutralized, the countryside was stable, U.S. Troops were going home, and the South Vietnamese were in a position to hold their own as long as they continued to have American air support and military resources.

Oh, you’ve never heard that? I’m not surprised. Thornton continued:

When in August 1973 the Democratic-controlled Congress cut off that support and drastically reduced military aid, a North Vietnam armed and backed by the Soviet Union and China overran the South. The cost of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory was of course most grievous for the South Vietnamese: In addition to the 750,000 killed during the war, a million “boat people” fled their so-called liberators, 65,000 political enemies were executed, and another 250,000 died in “reeducation” camps.

Many readers might be in shock, thinking they’re reading revisionist history. No, the revisionist history was taking place back then — and I was a young kid being influenced by it like most Americans were at the time.

One more passage from Bruce Thornton:

The debacle in Vietnam, moreover, seemingly validated the self-loathing, Marxist narrative of America’s role in the world that increasingly had come to dominate the media, universities, popular culture, and many in Congress.

Yep, it’s not new.

Which begs the question, why the heck didn’t Republicans and conservatives learn from that and be ready to combat the lies regarding the Iraq War? If the GOP and the conservative opinion leaders had the first clue about the information war, maybe Obama wouldn’t have been able to pull the troops out of Iraq — just as his party’s congressional leaders had stopped aid to South Vietnam 30-plus years earlier.

Now to Victor Davis Hanson’s writing. Like Thornton’s The Wages of Appeasement, Hanson’s book from a decade earlier, Carnage and Culture, is a terrific read. The book outlines the “Western way of war” by outlining nine battles from history: The battles of Salamis, Gaugamela, Cannae, Poitiers, Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rorke’s Drift, Midway, and the major battles of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.

Older Americans like me remember learning of Midway and Tet, but the rest of those battles, well, buy the book and read it. You’ll enjoy Hanson’s prose and story telling ability.

Regarding Tet, Hanson writes, there was (again, does this sound familiar?), “complete hysteria of much of the American media” regarding the war. The United States was “winning battles and losing the public relations war” back home.

Why? Hanson explains that there was “the growth of a vocal, influential, and highly sophisticated minority of critics—activists who cared much more deeply about ending American involvement than did the majority of supporters in maintaining it.”

The film touches on the failures of America’s political leaders when it came to how to fight the war – here’s Hanson:

There was an absolute and unquestioned prohibition on invading North Vietnam. Urban power plants and supply depots that provided the energy to unload war supplies were off limits for years.

As the film points out, Vietnam wasn’t World War Two, where the American military had its mission clear: go to Berlin and take down Hitler. The problem in Vietnam, Hanson writes, wasn’t a lack of “American power, but will.”

Victor Hanson’s chapter on Tet is worth the price of the book. Hanson cites veteran reporter Peter Braestrup’s book Big Story, which “devoted a massive two-volume work to exposing the deception and sometimes outright lies that were promulgated by Western media about the Tet Offensive”:

In his view the story of a hard-fought American victory, characterized by remarkable American bravery, did not fit well either the sensationalism that built journalistic careers or the general antiwar sentiments of the reporters themselves.

Yes, the Tet Offensive was an American victory. If you’re shocked, you’re not alone. I didn’t learn that until I read Hanson’s book back in 2008. Tet was misreported then like so many other things are now. Here’s the South Vietnamese ambassador to the United States writing years later: “Tet was the time when U.S. public opinion and misconception snatched defeat from the jaws of potential victory.”

Just two more things. First, Hanson writes that after South Vietnam fell:

Perhaps the greatest moral crime of the American dissidents was their later near unanimous silence about the Cambodian holocaust—truly one of the most horrible and inhumane events of the twentieth century.

Hanson also cites veteran American reporter Keyes Beach, who “put the coverage of the war in some perspective a decade after the American defeat”:

The media helped lose the war. Oh yes, they did, not because of any massive conspiracy but because of the way the war was reported. What often seems to be forgotten is that the war was lost in the U.S., not in Vietnam. American troops never lost a battle, but they never won the war.”

Buy and read Bruce Thornton’s The Wages of Appeasement and Victor Davis Hanson’s Carnage and Culture, but before you do that, watch Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Victory and Betrayal.

You’ll learn more about that war than most Americans know today — the heroism (ever hear of Ripley’s Raiders?) and sacrifice and suffering — and most importantly — the truth.

Here is the official trailer:

You can read a review of Richard Botkin’s book here, reviews of the movie here, and learn much more about the movie and the book, as well as watch the preview and listen to interviews at the movie’s website.