Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Minnesota did not wake up one morning and suddenly become a hub for fraud.

What Americans are witnessing—large-scale welfare and child care fraud, weak enforcement, political paralysis, and rising public anger—is not random. It is the predictable downstream result of decades of policies made by people who would never have to live with the consequences and who faced few personal costs for getting it wrong.

To address this moment honestly, several truths must be held at the same time, without flinching and without allowing the conversation to be deliberately mischaracterized.

First, the fraud is real.

Millions of taxpayer dollars were stolen. Oversight failed. Warnings were ignored. Accountability has been slow, evasive, or nonexistent. Individuals who committed fraud should be prosecuted. And when offenders are not U.S. citizens, deportation is not cruelty; rather, it’s the lawful consequence of violating the terms under which residency was granted.

Second, the public anger is real and rational.

Anxiety Rooted in Reality

Americans are not imagining their fears.

They are anxious about artificial intelligence displacing jobs, the expansion of H-1B visas amid stagnant wages, declining educational outcomes, extensive wars, and a cost of living that continues to rise. They are frustrated by leaders who campaign on reform yet deliver very little, even when they control the White House, Congress, and key agencies.

When citizens who work hard, pay taxes, and follow the rules see millions of dollars siphoned off through fraud, and then watch political leaders stall, evade responsibility, or gaslight the public, anger is inevitable.

During the recent Iran–Israel war, the US used up to 20% of its global stockpile of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile interceptors, each costing over $18 million. THAAD isn't effective against hypersonic missiles, which both Iran and even Yemen's Houthis now possess.

War, in the long run, is a matter of economics. If you can't afford to fight a war, you'll lose the war. Missiles are now the preferred weapon for taking out enemy targets, and the only effective counter is anti-missile missiles. The problem is that both are brutally expensive. Can the costs be kept down, so war is more… affordable?

Generals, politicians, and "defense" contractors, however, love expensive high-tech toys. But if you're going to afford a war, the most cost-effective weapon is an ignorant teenage boy—something the Third World, especially the Muslim world, is awash in. They're cheap and stealthy delivery systems, far more effective than multi-million-dollar missiles. There's an endless supply of them, and they can be employed in a myriad of ways. From an economic point of view, it makes no sense for technologically advanced countries (like the US) to use ultra-expensive weapons to attack primitive countries, as we've done for the last 75 years.

Regardless of the weapons used, the thing to remember is that war amounts to setting wealth on fire. Missiles are about taking real goods, manufactured at great expense, and using them to blow up other real wealth; there can be a perverse logic to it. However, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, I'm not sure governments are too concerned about lots of young men dying. A surplus of unemployed young males is destabilizing, especially in poor countries.

El ethos es el conjunto de rasgos y comportamientos relacionados con el carácter o identidad de un individuo o grupo. La Real Academia Española (RAE) lo define, entre otras cosas, como “costumbre, hábito; modos de ser, pensar o sentir; o como conducta, carácter, temperamento y moral”. El ethos es la clave para entender la ética y la moral individual o colectiva.

El historiador estadounidense Víctor Davis Hanson (1953) asegura que existe un ethos en las guerras occidentales heredado de la Grecia antigua y que sigue presente en el mundo actual. Esta idea se refleja en su obra en títulos como: La Guerra y la Agricultura en la Grecia Clásica (1983), Las Guerras de los Antiguos Griegos y la Invención de la Cultura Militar Occidental (1999), Entre la Guerra y la Paz: Lecciones de Afganistán e Irak (2004), y su novela histórica El Fin de Esparta (2011).

El historiador francés Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau considera que las tesis y obra de V.D. Hanson son instrumentales en las ciencias sociales.

El profesor y sus estudiantes

Víctor Davis Hanson, inició su enseñanza de la historia clásica con un curso de introducción a las Humanidades en la Universidad Estatal de California en 1984. Sus modelos eran La Ilíada y La Odisea de Homero, Edipo Rey de Sófocles, Bacantes de Eurípides, Orestía de Esquilo, y selecciones de Tucídides y Heródoto. El primer semestre finalizaba con la Apología de Platón y Crito.

The controversy that President Trump is provoking with his statements proclaiming that he will take possession of Greenland  is a monumental blunder that places the United States in direct rivalry with its NATO allies. It demonstrates a profound diplomatic incapacity in its approach to an issue that should have been handled in private meetings, leading to a mutually beneficial and mutually acceptable agreement for both parties.

It is incomprehensible that Trump and his cabinet might be so blind as not to realize that the defense of Greenland can be resolved through NATO with the significant and powerful participation of the United States; that, in addition, other military bases of his country can be negotiated on the gigantic and icy island and, In addition, agreements on the exploitation of natural resources could easily be reached by showing both natives and Danes the enormous financial and technical capacity that would make this possible. 

It is also important to emphasize that international law has evolved over the centuries, shifting from land-grabbing colonial powers to modern treaties that honour borders and sovereignty, largely developed after World War II. There is, therefore, a high degree of respect for the sovereignty of others in today’s world, especially when it comes to friends or allies.