Victor Davis Hanson

One of my personal heroes (and someone whose intellect I could only hope to someday approach) is Victor Davis Hanson. His post-election essay is, as is the norm for his writing, spot-on.

Much of the world — in Europe, among the dictatorships and autocracies of the Middle East, and indeed among the terrorists themselves — realized that the presidential election was a referendum on America's will in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So be it. Thus the president's victory is a strong message to the Arab League that democracy is coming to the Middle East as it did earlier to Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan, and a message to the terrorists that their beheadings, their sick infomercials, and their deified mass murderers will only earn a rendezvous with defeat if not annihilation. The farmers of Utah, the plant workers of Ohio, and the immigrants of Florida are not the same folk as those of Spain. America saw the election-eve face of bin Laden, heard his pathetic rant — and shrugged that he, not it, was going down.

VDH is one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Visit his own web site, too, and you'll likely agree with me.