Bret Devereaux

Jonathan V. Last on Victor Davis Hanson: "Oh, come on, that guy's been a clown for 20 years." "VDH is the least serious serious person in all of intellectual public life." "A fool and a clown when he was cheering the Iraq War from his vineyard."

*when he wasn’t writing lauded academic and popular books or teaching relatively underprivileged students at a state school.

Hoplites is well regarded. His Western Way of War stuff is seen as interesting but wrong.

Just a point of clarification: Western Way of War is his hoplite book, and though the title is unfortunate, still represents the 'orthodox' position on hoplite battle (in contrast to H. van Wees' Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities, the heterodox position).

He actually makes an argument about a western way of war stretching from Greece to the present in a different book, Carnage and Culture, which is much less well regarded.

It's not ephemeral, though. It's central to VDH's public persona and he himself connects his scholarship to his support of Bush and then Trump.