A Study in Contrasts: Trump Sanity, Left Insanity, and Losing Cred Fast

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show

Episode Title: A Study in Contrasts: Trump Sanity, Left Insanity, and Losing Cred Fast
Release Date: November 21, 2024
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler

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1. Introduction

The episode kicks off with co-host Jack Fowler welcoming listeners to The Victor Davis Hanson Show. Jack outlines the diverse range of topics that will be covered, including political maneuvers, cultural shifts, and recent controversial events. Victor Davis Hanson shares a personal anecdote about his upbringing on a farm, setting the stage for discussions on societal changes and cultural values.

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2. The LA Leche League and Transgender Issues

Discussion Points:

• LA Leche League's Evolution:
  Jack Fowler introduces the LA Leche League, highlighting its historical role in supporting breastfeeding mothers and its recent controversial changes allowing transgender men to participate. This shift has sparked debate among long-standing members and critics.

• Transgender Women and Breastfeeding:
  Victor delves into the complexities of transgender women attempting to breastfeed, questioning the practicality and biological feasibility. He raises concerns about artificial breast devices used by transgender women and the implications for genuine breastfeeding practices.

Notable Quotes:

• Jack Fowler [07:45]: “This is now expanded into men can participate because men can chest feed, can't they?”
• Victor Davis Hansen [09:35]: “If you're a transgender female, I suppose your partner is male. Are you a gay trans man? I can't get into it.”

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3. Cultural Shifts: The End of Free-Range Childhoods

Discussion Points:

• Free-Ranging Children:
  Victor reminisces about his childhood freedom on a farm, a stark contrast to today's restrictive environment where children are often confined and monitored. He stresses the importance of independence and self-reliance developed through such upbringing.

• Modern Parenting and Surveillance:
  Jack shares a disturbing incident where a mother was arrested for allowing her child to walk alone in a small town, illustrating the overreach and paranoia prevalent in contemporary society regarding child safety.

Notable Quotes:

• Victor Davis Hansen [17:17]: “The left created a word for it which I have no problem called free ranging. Free range.”
• Jack Fowler [16:00]: “What's happened to America that a kid can't be outside. And absolutely.”

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4. Donald Trump’s Warrior Board Proposal

Discussion Points:

• Proposal Overview:
  The hosts discuss President Trump's suggestion to establish a Warrior Board to assess the competence and focus of military generals, particularly criticizing those perceived as being influenced by "woke" ideology over military efficacy.

• Impact on the Military:
  Victor outlines potential repercussions, including the politicization of military assessments and the undermining of meritocracy. He emphasizes the need for military leaders to prioritize utility and effectiveness over ideological conformity.

Notable Quotes:

• Victor Davis Hansen [29:01]: “If it's an internal, it doesn't have to be purge and all this and out, out. And, you know, I don't...”
• Jack Fowler [30:02]: “Generals are more obsessed with WOKE than they are with what the damn military exists.”

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5. Higher Education and Accreditation Reform

Discussion Points:

• Trump’s Critique of Accrediting Agencies:
  Jack brings up Trump's intention to challenge and potentially dismantle existing college accrediting bodies, accusing them of enforcing left-wing ideologies rather than maintaining educational standards.

• Victor’s Perspective on Academia:
  Victor argues that accrediting agencies have transformed into partisan entities that mandate ideological conformity. He advocates for returning to nonpartisan, academically rigorous standards, citing Hillsdale College as a model.

Notable Quotes:

• Jack Fowler [52:55]: “When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”
• Victor Davis Hansen [57:33]: “They are left wing advocacy groups that try to enforce an ideological straitjacket on educators.”

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6. Military Academies and Ideological Indoctrination

Discussion Points:

• Instability in Military Education:
  Victor recounts an experience teaching at the Naval Academy, where he encountered cadets who misrepresented historical military campaigns through an ideological lens. This reflects his concerns about the erosion of objective military training.

• Appointment of Ideologically Aligned Experts:
  The hosts discuss the importance of appointing knowledgeable and principled individuals to military and governmental positions to counteract ideological biases and ensure effective leadership.

Notable Quotes:

• Victor Davis Hansen [43:29]: “I was introduced to my billet. I was a professor of history, military history for a year...”
• Jack Fowler [77:08]: “Scott Atlas was a truth in the face of bureaucracy.”

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7. Cultural Commentary: Whoopi Goldberg and Social Media Outrage

Discussion Points:

• Whoopi Goldberg’s Controversial Incident:
  The hosts analyze an incident where Whoopi Goldberg criticized a Staten Island bakery over a cake order, accusing them of racism. They argue that her actions were driven by a misguided sense of political correctness rather than genuine concern.

• Implications of Celebrity Activism:
  Victor and Jack discuss how such actions contribute to a culture of public shaming and divisiveness, undermining small businesses and fostering unnecessary conflicts based on perceived biases.

Notable Quotes:

• Jack Fowler [65:47]: “She wants a cake from a Staten island bakery... tried to make herself to be a victim... because she's black.”
• Victor Davis Hansen [66:57]: “She said things that are anti-Semitic about the Holocaust...”

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8. Listener Feedback and Closing Remarks

Discussion Points:

• Listener Testimonial:
  Jack reads a heartfelt comment from Mark in Hilo, Hawaii, who expresses frustration with the ongoing political turmoil and lauds the show for addressing critical issues affecting veterans and the Constitution.

• Promotion of Additional Resources:
  Both hosts encourage listeners to engage with Victor’s additional platforms, including his website, email newsletter (Civil Thoughts), and social media channels for further insights and updates.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark from Hilo, Hawaii:
  “They have continued to do is destroying this country and is unarguably criminal. They must be held accountable. God bless you, sir, and God bless the United States of America.”

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Conclusion

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler offer a critical examination of current societal and political trends, emphasizing the consequences of ideological enforcement in both military and educational institutions. They advocate for a return to meritocracy, independent thought, and nonpartisan standards to preserve the effectiveness and integrity of key American institutions. Through personal anecdotes, listener feedback, and incisive commentary, the hosts underscore the importance of defending traditional values against what they perceive as overreaching leftist agendas.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Victor Davis Hansen Website: victorhanson.com
• Civil Thoughts Newsletter: civilthoughts.com
• The Blade of Perseus: Subscription-based resource for in-depth essays and articles by Victor Davis Hanson.

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Note: The timestamps in the notable quotes correspond to their positions within the transcript provided.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Time is our most precious commodity and we've heard from so many listeners who have asked for advice about how they can spend it wisely to improve themselves and the people around them. That's why we're so excited that Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's online courses, all available for free. That's right, for free. We recommend you sign up for Athens and Sparta. In this course you'll hear from Victor Davis Hansen and Paul A. Rey, distinguished professors of history, as they discuss the history, culture and government of each city, the ill fated Peloponnesian War and its consequences, and examine what is necessary in order for a democracy to flourish and endure, how best to form free and self governing citizens, and how to resist tyranny from without and from within. Start your free course, Athens and Sparta today. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's hillsdale.edu vdhtoregister hillsdale edu slash vdh.

[Jack Fowler]

Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You are here to listen to the wisdom of Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College and the possessor of a website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com is the address. You should be going there. You should be subscribing to it. And later in the podcast I will tell you why we are recording on Saturday 16th November. This episode should be up, I think on the 20 Thursday the 21st. Our last, by the way, between now and when we are actually recording and when this is out, I am sure there'll be lots of more political news. So stay tuned every, you know, Friday and Saturday as the great Sammy Wink and Victor pick up the happenings in the political happenings. During the week we have a number of cultural things to talk about, Victor. I put it under here as women's stuff. And we've never talked about the La Leche League on the Victor Davis Hansen show, but we're going to about a woman being arrested because her kid went outside and I don't know, we got Whoopi Goldberg to talk about Warrior board. The president wanting a warrior board to assess generals a new issue of strategica, which is the online journal that you oversee for Hoover. So lots of great stuff to get to and we'll start getting to it right after these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, I don't think we should spend all that much time on it because it's so nuts. But there is this organization that's been around for 70 years, the LA Leche League, and it's about breastfeeding and it helped. One of the roles is my wife was a member of this.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I mean it's new mothers to.

[Jack Fowler]

Help them learn, you know, breast how to best methods etc. Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It was responsible for allowing women who were working to have prices of privacy to feed their children if they brought them to places of work sometimes and airports and things like that. It was all my, all my children were breastfed. I wasn't in my generation. We were told in the 1950s they said it's an unnatural. You need to have new Improved formula. I think I had about 20 strep throats when I was a kid. Sorry, everybody. I'm selling like Robert Kennedy. But there is, as far as your immune system, it's much superior to being.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So it's a, it was a good, the only thing I was always curious of, you know. Yeah, I remember it was because I, I did know a little bit about my, my kids were small. It was founded by so called white women of the Midwest, but they adopted this Spanish term for milk. La leche.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And I think it has something to do with Catholicism that there was a, not the saint of milk leche, but there's a church somewhere.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And you know what? I, and they, they honored it. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, okay. I, I never.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It had something to do with it that the, the foundational saint or matron of that particular diocese was a protector of women who were, you know, nursing. Yes, yes, and that and that. And then I think also there was the idea. If you said we're a national foundation for breastfeeding in English, it sounded jarring in the early 60s. So it was better to have a.

[Jack Fowler]

Foreign word, a word that cannot be uttered on television.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes.

[Jack Fowler]

I want, I want to note this is the first time in four or five years of doing these podcasts that Victor has out Catholic me.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So I'm, I may be wrong, you better check me. But I, I, I remember, I remember that. And then the. So the point of Europe is that, is that they've been hijacked by non binary men, right?

[Jack Fowler]

Correct. This is now expanded into men can participate because men can chest feed, can't they? And the founder of, the surviving founder of the league, she's 94, Marion Thompson, she was still on the board, tried to fight this lunacy which has been going on for a couple of years and she resigns. Enough. This is, this, this is nuts. That's not what she actually said.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

No, this came up. This came up. I had a conversation with, I was at the air. Somehow it came up. I don't know if it was on. I saw it online or I saw somebody mentioned that there is a device for men that are trans into women that they wear fake breast, but they're not just silicon or fabric, but they actually have, you know, a capsule in there that they fill with mouth. Yes. And then they have cleavage. And so when they go out in public with their, with the child they did not bear, and I don't think, contrary to trans orthodoxy, they are not able to bear children. But the point is that then they have. And this is the question. I don't know. So the idea of leche was to have natural milk. So if you're a transgendered woman, I think that's what you say, woman, and you're biologically. You were born biologically male and you and your partner have a child, and let's say you're. If you're transgendered female, your partner, what is that? Male or female? I don't know. But if you're now a transgender female, I suppose your partner is male. Are you a gay trans man?

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I can't get into it. But the point is, what do you fill your artificial reservoir full of natural milk that somebody else has given you, or do you put formula in it? And then aren't you kind of defeating the purpose if it's formula?

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Victor, what's disturbing of just the weirdness of this is again, you know, I find feminists sitting on the sidelines protecting what are clearly exclusively women's organizations, like women's sports. Right. I mean, I think that's exclusively women. It isn't anymore, but it's really discouraged to see them, you know, sit out. The hypocrisy of. Of the feminist movement in America is this kind of.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I think it's coming to an end. I think people have collectively sighed and said, you know, I don't think they know the percentages. I didn't until I looked at it. But they're basically saying this. If you Translate it. Throughout history, 0.0001 of the population suffered from something called gender dysphoria. In other words, the mental makeup of a person did not match their physical body. So they were of one sex inside the body of another sex. And they understood that. And that manifested itself in gradations of sexual ambiguity. There was transvestism, where people just wanted to wear the opposite sex clothing for satisfaction or comfort. There were people who actually then became homosexual and excessive degree. In other words, a very masculine lesbian or a very feminine male. And then there were people who physically wanted to. And this is a poem of Catullus called the Attis poem, where he's a devotee of the foreign goddess Cybele and a feat of ecstasy. Attis a t t I s cuts off the pondera ilia, I think it's in Latin, the weight of his groin. And then he wakes up out of his ecstasy and he's very angry at this eastern cult that has so called brainwashed him. That was written about somewhere around 40 BC, and it's in around 65 AD and Petronius Satyricon. There is all sorts of gender dysphoria. So my point is that everybody understood that this was a rare manifestation and they were willing just to know what I mean. But somehow in the post civil rights movement, I mean post civil rights in the sense that you don't have active, violent, massive demonstration for equality under the law like the 60s after the, before the passage of the civil. They think this is the next frontier. So they took a very rare biological phenomenon and they tried to tell us through I don't know what we would call it, press, media, popular culture that this affected somewhere like was it Brown university, Jack, that 30% of the incoming class or the student body said they would consider transient transitioning. But it got to a phenomenal ahistorical number. And then we were told that with Hillary Clinton, that was the first politician in a national campaign when she said I want to talk to the gay and the feminine, all these communities, the black, Latin and the lgbtq, you commended. And I thought what? Okay, lesbian B by G, I guess gay, lgbt, what is T? Transgender. And that's when it started to get mainstreamed. And then it became almost. It went from a rare biological manifestation that most people were either unaware of or indifferent to to we have been here and we're queer or we're trans and we're proud. And we're not going to take alleged racism and give us protect. Okay, fine. We didn't, we were insensitive to you. We didn't understand what you were suffering. We understand to we are a third sex. And if you don't understand that. And that's where people that, that's where they lost the public.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Said nope, we're not going to do that. I'm sorry, you bullied us enough. You're not going to go in there and a volleyball down my daughter's head and you're not going to show your genitalia to my 15 year old girl on the swim team in the locker room. And there was just another case, I guess it was San Jose State where one of the captain of the team objected to one of the transgendered players and he tried, he, she, I don't know what the proper address is. Tried to suggest that other players not defend that critic of his so that the other team could slam a ball down her head.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. And so I caught Riley Gaines this morning, Saturday morning on Fox and Friends, the very end of an appearance. But another case of teammates, women on a team being told by the administration to shut up. You know.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. And I think that's. That cost them. I think that cost them two or three points. There were a lot of people that did not like that the idea that their children were going to be. It was another. It fit the narrative of people on the bicoastal league talking down to people as if they were unenlightened under educated Neanderthal medieval. And these superior moral and intellectual uber mention knew better. Better for what was good for them. And they said nope, not this pig. That was it. That was it. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, my headset went out there a little bit. Victor, I apologize, but I think I.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Thought you were shocked. I thought, I thought. I thought wow. When you've lost Jack. When you've lost Jack Fowler, you've lost the argument.

[Jack Fowler]

Sorry. Well, let's say I haven't. These are different. Different. They deal with women. Totally different reasons. And let me raise the second. It's a cultural issue. Also maddening. One, a mother from Georgia. I forget the town now. And this happened just the other day. Her son, 10 years old, 11 years old, went for a walk, walked downtown. It's a smallish town about I guess maybe a mile. And someone, some Karen saw this kid walking on a dangerous road. I don't know what's dangerous anymore by some people's qualifications. And they called the cops. The sheriff. Sheriff, what are you doing here? Kid showed up, brought the kid home. Then came back a few hours later and arrested the mother for, you know, being reckless in the care of her child. I mean Victor, I.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

We.

[Jack Fowler]

You. I know you're going to talk about when you were probably three years old, you were riding horses down the main street to Selma. But you know what's, what's. What has become of America that a kid can't be outside. And absolutely.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I mean we're not talking about, you know, downtown New York. You live in a high rise and you let your 10 year old cross the street at 7 at night. We're talking about a rural town and a rural atmosphere and people, you know, and a community, you know. And we the left created a word for it which I have no problem called free ranging. Free range. Mean you're not cooped up. They use it for chickens and cows. But basically it means there used to be an agrarian experience where a child on a farm was let go at 8 or 9 or 10. I was free ranged and I lived on one corner of this farm from which I'm now speaking in an 800 square foot home. There were five of us in it. My father moved it From. He bought it at an auction, an old farmhouse and he fixed it kind of up. And then I would be free range and I'm sitting in my grandparents house now and it was 135 acres. And so basically on a Saturday morning we would all be around and we would say can we go down to the pond and catch pollywogs and bullfrog? We had a one acre pond. Yeah, yeah, just be careful. And. And then my mom might call up my grand, her mother and say the boys are going to be on the ranch. Tell Manuel George, he was a guy from the Azores, watch out for the kids. Or Joe Kerry. He was from the Navajo Indian reservation in Oklahoma. They were, lived on it. They live right next to us. They shared the, they shared everything with us. And just Joe's out there. And so I would be eight or nine and I would be walking down an alleyway looking at red tail hawks. And I remember I wrote about this. I'm speaking it because I'm writing, I'm writing a book right now on farming, childhood farming. The experience of a child. What has been lost. And I remember it was great. I would walk out and I'd run over to manual and I'd see him on a tractor. I said, I think that big red tail is going to pick me up. And he said Victor, Victor, Victor, you only weigh, you weigh 60 pounds. That poor bird couldn't carry a pound. And then I'd see Joe. And Joe would come over here and say, hey Victor, what are you doing today now? I said I'm looking for the weasel mound. The weasel mound? I got a better thing for you to do. I got to go furrow out five acres, but come over here, I'm going to tell you the story of the hoop snakes. I go what's a hoop snake, Joe? And he said well look at those little tracks on the, on the ground. I said joe, those are my bicycle. I wrote it yesterday. No, no, no, Victor, that's the hoop snake. Well Joe, what's the hoop snake? Well, in Oklahoma you see on the reservation that the snake grabbed its tail in its mouth and he made a hoop and he rolled around. And that's what we have here. I said no, no. I would run out to my grandfather and said, Joe told me there's hoop snakes. And he started laughing. He said, joe, don't tease poor Victor. And it was like heaven growing up there. And then you know, one day I said to Manuel, there's weasels here. There's weasel. And I'd see my crippled Aunt who had been bedridden since seven. She was wonderful, Lila, I'd say she was about 40 and she could hardly move. And she. She lived in the living room where I live now. And she'd say, victor, I want to know if there's a weasel or not. Can you go find a weasel? And I'd go around a whole farm. I found a weasel. And then one day, Joe came up to. I came off, think of this. I got out of a country school. If you missed the bus. Sometimes I would stay and talk to my music teacher, Ms. Yardunian. She was trying to interest me. Music. My brother, twin brother and I. And we'd walk home, Jack, at 10, nine. And it was two miles, right, and through rural vineyards. And we cut across and we get home and there we were. And I'd say to Manual, he was kind of gruff. I said, manuel, I want to go see. I want to go see the weasel mount. And he'd say, victor, I don't want to tell you this. There is no more weasel mount. I said, there is a weasel mount. He said, no. The neighbor thought, you know, he was going to level his place. I said, well, what did he do? Well, he had a little hill and he scooped it and he dumped it on our place. And I said, well, where did he dump it? He said, he dumped it on your weasel burrow. I said, well, where are my weasel weasels? And he said, they're under 10ft of dirt. And I said, can they live? And he said, I don't think so. Those little boogers can't get out. So I ran over there and I dug and I couldn't save the weasels. But that was every day is what I'm trying to say. That experience. And then I'd be on a ford Jubilee. Ford 9N didn't have overhead valves, Jack. It was 35 horsepower Ford. And then all of a sudden he said, I'm going to teach you how to drive without your. Your hands. You do your feet on the connector rod. So I would drive this little 9 in and then an 8 in. And then one day Joe my George came out. It's about time you boys, you got in the big leagues and drove the big Jubilee. That was the. The first Ford tractor that had a PTO shaft. Oh, no. 9 in did too, but it had a PTO shaft and it was about 40 horsepower with overhead valves. And, man, I got on that thing with a little six foot disc and I was disking down the vineyard. That was.

[Jack Fowler]

How old were you when you started.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Doing that 10, 10 hours.

[Jack Fowler]

Wow, wow, wow.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But my point is that it was like. I can't even describe it compared to today. I had a grandfather and a grandmother who. It was just like heaven. And I had a crippled aunt on one side of the firearm. Then I had a hired man that was from. He was Portuguese, but he was gruff. He told me about the world stuff, what tobacco was. If I ever see you, Victor, with snuff in your mouth, I'm going to grab it right out of your gums. And then I'd see all these Indian guy who was Navajo Indian. I really loved him, Joe and his wife. And they lived right next to us and gosh, we were just. It was like a natural world. I can remember one day I ran into my aunt Lila and I said, this big, big bird. He had a little tortoise or something. He dropped it on the cement and it cracked its shell. And she, she had been very educated. She was crippled her whole life. My grandfather mortgages farm so his daughters could go to Stanford University. Can you imagine that? He didn't even know what Stanford was. He just thought that was a good place. So 1939, 40, 40 what? They were undergraduates. And then my mom actually had to get two BAs because she went to University of Pacific. And then he made her. Well, she went over and got BA and then she got a law degree. And then my aunt got a BA and poor Lila wanted to do that, but she was so crippled that they sent her to the San Jose Industrial School, San Jose State Industrial Arts, so she could have a. A trade if they died. You know, they thought she could. She learned how to use a loom, but she couldn't. And she said, now I want to explain to you, Victor, there are things called predators and the red talk. Red tail hawk is a very efficient predator. So what you thought was mean was a way for that. And that wasn't a tortoise, that was a small little turtle, no doubt. And it picked it up and it flew over and it's very canny. And it dropped it on the pavement of the main road between our two halves of the farm. And it broke the shell. And that made it possible for him to pick out the flesh. I thought, wow, my. And that was like, God, it was heaven. And then. Yeah, well, that was free ranging, Jack. And that gave me a lot of independence. And so when I went into the big, big world of the bicoasto elite, I said to myself, this guy made fun of me in my Greek composition class. And he said that he'd been studying Greek since he was 4, but he still didn't know it. But I can tell. I would say to him, you don't know how to drive a Massey 265 or 4.9N. You do you and I do. So it gave. It gives a person confidence is what I'm trying to say.

[Jack Fowler]

I agree.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, self reliance. I don't think any of the kids I grew up that were free range. And by the way, they all were farm kids. I don't think any of them when Donald Trump lost, wanted milk and cookies and a petting zoo and a furry animal.

[Jack Fowler]

Listen, even in the Bronx, once upon a time, things were free range. You know, we should close this out because we have some other topics to talk about. But you know, once you just showed up at your friend's house. So let's go play ball at the field, et cetera. Now if you did that, how dare you not call ahead and schedule an appointment. Something just radically different from the way children were part of our civil society two generations ago than today.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So.

[Jack Fowler]

Hey Victor, you may have heard that President Trump would like there to be a warrior board to assess America's generals. And we're going to get your thoughts on that when we come back from these important messages.

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Oh Victor before we get to the Warrior Board. Aren't you so upset, so sad. Don Lemon, also known as. This podcast, is done.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Wait, did you say Lemon?

[Jack Fowler]

I did.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That is one of the most sensitive. Okay. It's Le Man Lemon.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. He's leaving. X. So many others leave.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Oh, my God. It's going to shut down the whole platform if he leaves.

[Jack Fowler]

No. Gosh, I wish they would just go away. Totally. But back on the Warrior Board. Yeah. Donald Trump wants an assembly of military. Military officials to assess America's military leaders. And I guess one of your favorite people, General Milley and others are. Are not on. Not too thrilled with this. Your thoughts?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Well, when you say Warrior Board, that is the key, isn't it? And so is this going to be a Pentagon? When I heard about this, I read it. I think I don't know where it was. Christ. The Christian Science Monitor, and they said something like white nationalist Pete Hexath was talking about a Warrior Board. Remember, he is the one with the tattoo who was deemed a white nationalist by his fellow warriors. That kind of. It's that bad publicity. But nobody really knows how this would work. But if it's an internal, it doesn't have to be purge and all this and out, out. And, you know, I don't. I don't know well enough, let's say.

[Jack Fowler]

You know, to find who. What Generals are more obsessed with WOKE than they are with what the damn military exists.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. The thing is, though, I agree with the WOKE board, but people that I respect, like we have an officer, a former officer. He was chief of staff for Petraeus. Peter Pete Mansour. He runs the military history program in Ohio State. He's very good, very bright, highest integrity. And I think he was quoted saying he had no problem with study, but he wanted to go after the people in the civilian sector that put those conditions on the military officers. So what the other side says, well, yes, they put them on, but there were opportunistic people who rode that way for their own career advancement at the expense of military efficacy of the. And that's both true. But it. I'm not sure it came from within the military. You know, I'm saying, yeah, I think it came from senators and House members and their staffers and the Biden administration and the Obama administration said, you want a promotion? I want you. I. I don't care how many people landed on your carrier on the first attempt. I want to know how many people of this race and that gender and that sexual orientation, you promote it. And that's where the Problem is. And so how do you. So my point is, are they this internal board when they go audit who was the opport oppur tunist that really were for this and didn't need a nudge? Or who the people were grudgingly forced to do it? Or who were the people who stoutly refused and suffered for it? And those gradations have to be acknowledged. But it's pernicious because as I said before, it's a commissar system. It's anytime you have an ideological imprint or requirement on any anything and it's not based on utility or meritocracy, it suffers. So all these DEI people, they, they sin from commission and omission. You have to pay for a large number of people who are not productive. They're not create. The Pentagon is not building more tanks with these people. It is not honing the artillery skills of these people. These people are not instructing people how to use drones to the best effect. They are monitoring people. That is the omission. You're wasting labor and capital. The CO mission is they're not just monitoring people, they're impeding people. They're wasting the time of officers in the field. They are contradicting their mission statement by saying you think that your artillery unit hitting the target is the only thing that matters. But we think the person, the color or the gender of the person shooting the. The artillery shell is just as important. And that's where they have. It has to stop. So they're going to demonize it all. But, and then it's a good idea. Officers are going. The, the military people who suffered on it are going to be for it. The majority is going to be for it. But they have to, they have to have the right PR and the right PR for it is you start off by saying the military didn't ask for this. They were shoved down their throats by the Biden and earlier Obama administration and nobody's going to do this again to them. But there were people within that military that, that used this to demagogue it. And the people who demagogued it and destroyed the careers of people who objected. We're going to not promote or we're going to ask them to leave if they demagogue this issue. And maybe you can, you can do it because that's what they're doing. And I've had so many letters from people who said, you know, there's no way I'm going to ever get to Col. No way, given what I've said. And I Think everybody understood that. And the other thing is Jack, very quickly, for all the critics of this, does anybody think that we even be having this discussion? Had the US Military simply defeated the Taliban and turned over the country and said to the diplomats it's, it's secure, or if Iraq right now. There was the, after the surge was over, I mean, I think it was almost Obama pulled everybody out or that they said that was the most brilliant bombing campaign I've ever seen in Libya. In other words, had they done to Libya or whatever, I don't think they knew what they were doing in Libya. But except for Trump's destruction of isis, I can't think of any military operation of a large scale that you could argue was effective long term.

[Jack Fowler]

Or Victor, just adding it's not comparable, but turning over the control of the vital Red Sea to the Houthis while we are allegedly the biggest.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So yeah, so. And I know military officers are going to say, well Victor, that wasn't our decision. We were hamstrung. Yes, but there were method, there were methodologies and strategies and tactics that were not followed. And there were limitations putting on, put on people in prior wars and they still won. And there was a lot of, there was a lot of restraints put on Matthew Ridgeway and he came in, in an utter disaster in December of 1950 and there was no way in the world he could save soul. But when Seoul was taken by the communists, he took it back. And in five months he was on the other side of the 38th parallel. So my point is that if the military had had a impeccable record of success, then no one would be complaining. But when they do not, they want to find reasons why they do not. And I think the general, and I'm not trying to be prejudicial to the military, I'm a big advocate of the military. But I think the criticisms of the military fall roughly very quickly into three categories. One, DEI and the commissariat have put ideology among above military utility. Number two, there's something wrong with the procurement, the almost billion dollar budget. We're not getting the type of weaponry in the numbers we need. We're not building enough ships, we're not building enough drones, we're not building enough inexpensive but plentiful weapons platforms. We're short artillery shells. We're trying to go after the exotic. And that may be because we have an ethos where four star, three star people who retire with very generous pensions nevertheless feel that they are among the corporate elite or the elite and they go into the private sector and they make an enormous. I don't have any problem going into any private sector. But if you go into procurement and you work for a defense contractor or you're a defense lobbyist, then the assumption is that you're using your former influence over subordinates to push a particular product that might not be in the interest of the Pentagon, given your particular career enhancement from that particular product. I'm not suggesting that is always true, but that's, that's intolerable. So we've got to have a revolving door hiatus. So you go in to the Pentagon. If you come from a defense track contractor, it has to be five years earlier. If you go out, you got to wait five years just so you can clear out all the people you knew that are in procurement. So that is the other thing. And then we have a problem with the politicalization of the military. And you mentioned Millie and Austin. The military should not wade into very controversial topics like Professor Kendi or trans transgenderism or they should. Millie has no knowledge. Millie does not know what he's talking about. He thinks he has a prince in degrees. So he starts telling people about Professor Kendi. He has nothing. He has no clue about critical race studies. He has no idea about the whole dei, what was formed, what it does, what its effects for him to be in a position to start recommending things. And you have something wrong with the military. When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs calls in theater commanders and contrary to his legal and statutory authorities, tells them to report to him and not through the chain of command on up through the Secretary of Defense. That's not right. That's not legal. And you don't have a secretary of defense nor especially the chairman of joint Chief under any circumstances. Any circumstances. Opening a back door channel of communications with your military counterpart in the Chinese Communist Party's People Liberation Army.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Especially on the shared notion that your own commander in chief is disparage. You're disparaging him to the enemy and they are the enemy. And finally, and, and similar to this top, this third area where we have something wrong with our commanding officers, you do not flagrantly violate Article 88 of the Uniform Code. If you do Uniform Code of Military justice, it says you shall not publicly discredit, disparage the commander in chief and high ranking civilian officials. That doesn't mean just Obama. That doesn't mean just Biden. Gotta Remember when Stanley McChrystal said Joe bite me. Remember that? Yeah. He was said that to a rolling stone. He didn't Say it in public. He didn't say it in public.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He said it to a media person who reported that and that got him fired. And because of that statute, okay, Stanley McChrystal, when he retired, he's still subject to the stats, to the Uniform Code. He called the President of the United States publicly a liar and there were no consequences. Everybody knows that. If he had called Joe Biden a liar and retirement. If Michael Hayden, the retired Air Force officer, had said Joe Biden is like the architects of Auschwitz with these cages here at the border, or if General McCaffrey had said Joe Biden is a Mussolini like character, or if Admiral McRaven had said, who's a very distinguished officer, have only the highest regard for him. But if he had written an op ed that said Joe Biden is not able to do the job. He has to be removed sooner than later. Forget the elections, I. E. You didn't write that. But that was the inference. If any of them had have done that on, in association with Biden, they would have been reprimanded if not disciplined. But with Trump, they thought they had a free hand because they thought the media hated Trump and they could get away with anything. So they made a mockery of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They did. And they argued that, you know, a higher allegiance and they're so this body is trying to stop all that. And by the way, the people who are criticizing didn't say a word when there was a simultaneous news report, Jack. That there was a group informally in the Pentagon trying to ascertain when and when they would obey a presidential order.

[Jack Fowler]

Lawful, Lawful.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Lawful. Lawful. They, they, they, they are Supreme Court justice caliber doctors of jurisprudence. So these generals and colonels, they know exactly when an order from Donald Trump is illegal and therefore they have a right to do that. And you can argue that, you could argue almost anything like that.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. So I would hope there'd be one other area victor for consideration and that has nothing necessarily to do with this warrior board, but with our military academies. And as you've discussed in the past, your own experience teaching the Naval Academy for a year, what, 20 years ago or so it was 20, 22 years ago. Yeah. I mean, things were not rosy then. Can only imagine how much DEI and woke is part and parcel of the education our future military leaders are getting today. So let's see an assessment there.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Well, you know, just as an anecdote, I was introduced to my billet. I was a professor of history, military history for a year. The Shiffrin Visiting. I won't mention names, many of the people involved, but I went to my first lecture was a Marine captain gave a lecture, and he said that the Iwo Jima campaign was unnecessary and it was really taken to punish the Japanese, and it was driven by systemic racism. This is a Marine captain. So I politely said, you don't know what you're talking about. And the question and answers, because the Iwo Jima campaign, as bloody as it was and as terrible as it was, did provide a halfway point for B29 crews to stop. And he said, well, that was all. Those figures were not accurate. 25,000. They counted a plane twice. And some of that may have been true, but they really did. I said, no, it's not true what you just said. I said, my own father landed three times there, three times. And he felt that each time they would have never made it back to Tenyon had it not been for Iwo Jima. And I can tell you that my father's first cousin that they basically adopted, who was my uncle in that sense, was. And I'm named after him, was killed on Okinawa. And that was not a racist campaign that was considered necessary to get close enough to Okinawa to stop what the Japanese army was doing. And they were killing 15 million people in China, 4 million people total in the Pacific, including 8, probably somewhere between 400 and 800,000 Commonwealth and American troops in the Pacific theater.

[Jack Fowler]

They killed more civilians than any army.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes, close. There were 20. 28. Yeah, I think you're right. About 28 million Russians died. And I think 10 of them to 12 of them were in the Red army, and the rest were civilians that were starved or they were sent to the death camps. But they killed over 15 million the Japanese in China alone. And they probably killed in places such as Malaysia or the Philippines or Burma, another 4 million. And the point is, everybody doesn't talk about Japan in the same ways that they talk about Germany. But if you actually look at the number of German soldiers that were lost versus the number of civilians and soldiers they killed, and you compare that to Japan, the most lethal killing machine in World War II was the Japanese Imperial Military. They killed more people versus what they lost than any other military.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And that includes the American military. And they were just merciless to Chinese. They were merciless to Burmese, they were merciless to Filipino, they were merciless to Malaysians. Butchered them. And so, yeah, it's. That's what I was introduced to at the Naval Academy by this captain. I won't mention his name. And I said, you don't know what you're talking about. And then you know what happened? I was in a hostile group. I felt my newfound colleagues were. It was very tense because it was right on the lead up to the Iraq war in the fall 2002. And then this one professor, he, he stood up and he said in a very noticeable Chinese American accent, he said, I am fluent in Chinese and I can read Japanese. And I've read the archival history. And what Victor said about the number of Chinese deaths is absolutely true, if not underreported. And what he said about the Japanese aims in Iwo Jima and what the Americans aims were is absolutely correct. And with that, I'm done with you and Victor's done with you. And we're going to go have a hamburger at the neighborhood. And his name was Miles Yu.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, Miles Yu. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. Who turned out to be one of our most astute critics of the appeasement of Communist China and had a wonderful career and does have a wonderful career and was the Chinese expert attached to Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State. He has, he broadcasts for Voice of America and God help us if he. I hope that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio will point him to a high position in the Pentagon at the State Department because he is sorely needed. Miles, you Mr. Mr. Rubio.

[Jack Fowler]

Rubio, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He will be your, he will be your most patriotic, astute and expert China hand that you could imagine of. And if that's not going to happen, the State Department, then Pete Hegseth get him in the Pentagon.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, moving from since we're sort of talking about the academy here at the end of this Warriors Board, I think I'd like to next get your thoughts, Victor, on some comments Donald Trump has made about, about the academy and about accreditation agencies. And we'll get to that. And maybe if we have any time left, Whoopi Goldberg will do that when we come back from these final important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We'Re back with the Victor Davis Hansen show again. We're recording on Saturday 16th November and this episode should be out on Thursday the 21st. Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus the web address is victorhansen.com is a place you as a fan of Victor Davis Hansen, as somebody who not only likes to hear what he has to say, but want to read what he has written, you should be going to his website and you will find a free and accessible all the time. His most recent, actually not most recent. All of his essays that he does weekly for American Greatness and his weekly syndicated columns. You'll find links to these podcasts. Again if you're new to this podcast, relatively new, the archives are available on the website, links to Victor's other appearances and then the three ultra articles he writes every week. These are pieces exclusively written for the blade of Perseus. 5 bucks to subscribe monthly. $50 gets you discounted for the for the full year. So do do check it out. You can also sign up there for for a weekly Victor email. Oh yes, Trump Accreditation Agency so I saw something. I think it was actually a Victor a policy video recorded sometime, maybe even last year. But it's been making the rounds again on X and social media and very pointed comments by Donald Trump about how to break the crazy Marxism. I can't find my notes here on it, but the rhetoric he uses, very, very tough. But he said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to go after these college accrediting agencies and we are going to he didn't say break them, but essentially we're going to break them and get new ones and we're going to end the woke madness. And Victor is somebody who has many thoughts of reform for higher education. I wonder what your thoughts on Trump going after the accrediting agencies.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Everybody has to remember this is the, this is left wing hysteria. So when you say he's going after the accredited agencies, he's trying to interfere in the disinterested pursuit of Knowledge. No, that's not what's happening. The accrediting agencies are not accrediting, trust me. They are left wing advocacy groups that try to enforce an ideological straitjacket on educators. It's just like the Pentagon and dei. These people are not revolutionaries that are trying to stop this. They are returned to normalcy. When Trump is looking at accreditation or he talks about taxing the endowment on these mega university endowments of 30 to 60 billion dollars, or he's talking about cutting off federal funds to people in the university who do not honor the Civil Rights Acts, that is, they allow students to go around and beat up Jews or chase them into a library with impunity. He's talking about going back to normalcy. What we have now is abnormal. What the left does is saying that our abnormal is so crazy that we have said it is normal. So if you object to it, then you are revolutionaries, not us. That's what they're, that's the premise. So these are not nonpartisan colleges anymore. They're partisan and they take federal money and they advocate for political causes with their tax exempt status that we all pay for. And most importantly, they don't honor the Bill of Rights. If you are a professor and you give a lecture on the, if you historical advantages of Christianity or you would be so naive to say that given your research, you have discovered that the British Empire all in all might have been more positive for world civilization than negative, you're going to be in big trouble. Big trouble. Or if you're a professor of, I don't know, sexuality, and you say that transgenderism, a transgendered male has, a female has an innate advantage in sports because of their muscular skeletal formation or something, you're going to be in big trouble. Or if some, if you're a male and you say you went on a date and a girl touched her leg versus you say you went in, you went on a date and you touched the girl's leg, there's going to be an asymmetrical treatment of how the universe responds to you. You're not going to be given fourth fifth Amendment civil rights under inquiry. So all he's saying is we're going to treat the universities the way a normal person would treat them. They're not indoctrination centers. And those who indoctrinate people are free to do it, but not on our dime. And we don't have to accredit you and we don't have to give you tax exempt status. As we mentioned Hillsdale. Go back and be like Hillsdale. Hillsdale says we kind of are center right and we represent conservative values. And you keep threatening us because you consider that proselytizing. So you know what? We're not going to take any money from you. And we can do what we want. If we don't take any money and they harass Hillsdale, they harass and they can't stop them. But I think that Claudine Gay at Harvard should have said that and Stanford's president in the past, they should have said, you know what we were, we're happy to be centered left. That's our view of utopia. And we don't want federal funds and that endowment we want to pay. Take your stupid nonpartisan idea and stuff it. We're going to take our four or five billion dollars a year income and we're going to pay taxes. We're going to give the federal government half of it because we're not non partisan. But they don't do that. And Trump is saying, pick, you choose, not me, you choose what you want to do. You can be biased and do it on your own. You can just say, I'm the private, I'm the university of left wing bias. And fine, go to it, but do not claim that you are disinterested and tax exempt and your only mission is education.

[Jack Fowler]

You know Trump's actual. I found the note, the transcript of what he said, and here's just one sentence. When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. I love.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So everybody, everybody got to remember one thing. And this, this proves true for everything he says. The left has this notion that if they speak in a particular dialect and a particular vocabulary and syntax with particular credentials associated with their title or degrees, then they can get away with murder. They can get. So it goes like this. I'm Professor Hanson. I have a PhD in classical languages from Stanford and I'm a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, author of many books. And according to my research, I've come to the conclusion that it's absolutely essential that all the bathrooms at your high school must have tampons for the psychological viability of your student body. So there will be tampon machines in your male and female bathrooms. And this was the generally held feeling by experts from the Stanford Medical Harvard Medical School establishment. Then you can say almost that is the one of the most radical thing, right? But if you say, I'm going to put up with these crazy maniacs that are going to put these crazy tampon dispensers and males, because no males menstruate. Come on. They're biological. Even if they're women who say they're men, they can. I mean, I guess if they're still menstruating, they're biological women. So if they want to go into a male bathroom, they. We're not going to do this. It's too confusing. We did it for 100 years. Okay, then you're a nut. You know, so Trump. And he knows that.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Everybody thinks he doesn't know that. He knows that. So when he says these crazy maniacs and lunatics, he is saying academia. Everybody walks around in academia with a little red button on their forehead that sets them off. So I'm going to go into that environment and everybody I see is going to push that button and make their heads explode. And that's what he does. And he does it. And why does he do it? Because he wants to show everybody what they do when they explode. They go crazy. They're mean spirited, they're biased. And number two, he's telling Jose Lopez and Fresno and he's telling Lavon Smith in Inner Chicago and he's telling Jilly Joe, Billy Bob Hansen in Texas, I am your redeemer. Yeah. You have suffered from these people's insolence and arrogance. And I'm going to push that red button and make their heads explode in front of you and you'll see what they're really like. And that's what he is. And you would think, you would think they'd say this. I'm Dr. Hansen with a PhD in classical languages and I am not going to fall for that trick of being trolled and having my head explode just because he's says, you know what I mean? They know what he's doing and they can't stop themselves.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. The bait has to be taken. I have to. Victor, our last podcast episode, we talked a little about Bill Buckley. I injected Bill in the first issue of National Review what he thought was important to the conservative movement. But I just have to read this. In his what he called the magazine's credenda, Bill wrote the largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques, which in education as well as the arts are out to impose upon the nation their modish, modish fads and fallacies and have nearly succeeded in doing so. That's just really another way of what Donald Trump was saying here, just in a more Buckley esque way and proof. Again, I think that, that people who think that Donald Trump is harming conservatism are themselves out of sync.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Hey, have you been reading about the effect of all this on foreign countries.

[Jack Fowler]

Who snap to attention immediately?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Well, this morning you and I have talked about how much we like the guys that Power Line John.

[Jack Fowler]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Hender Acre and Scott Johnson and Steve Hayward.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I just, I spent a couple weeks ago with Steve Hayward. I really like him. He's very intelligent and well spoken and he's got a very great sense of humor. Trolling. Happy warrior trolling sense of humor, too.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But they have posted there the effect of Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and people like that on Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And basically it's like, well, don't them, doesn't Trump know the protocols of America? And we hate you and we call you all sorts of names, but you're supposed to pick people who say that we're sober and judicious and this is something for the utmost concern. And these are, these matters are taken very seriously. And they're, and what North Korea said is inappropriate. And, and they're not supposed to say things like we're at war with China or, you know what I mean, they're not supposed to be telling the truth. So who, what is going on in the United States? Where did, when, since when do they say their people get to speak the truth? They're really mad at John Radcliffe, who. One of the things they think he's crazy is because he actually believes, Jack, that the Wuhan lab was just conveniently located next to where the first case of COVID broke out. And the guy that kind of was going to point that out mysteriously disappeared. And then the Chinese didn't tell us anything about the genome genetic imprint. And he actually thought that the lab had a connection with COVID And yet he's a, he's the CIA director. What's wrong with these Americans?

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, can't wait for Rand Paul to take over that committee to look into all this and give that topic.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It's not a topic. And you know, another thing is just very quickly, they're all trying to. And I think that article pointed out they are going crazy to cook the books and show that they made the Europeans our NATO partners, that they have all paid their 2% of GDP and military investments because they are, they are terrified of Donald Trump because they see that he was right, that they should have armed and they've had four year, two, three years after Putin, what he did in Ukraine, and they still haven't met their 2%. And he's going to say, you know what? You're in an existential situation. And I warned you four years ago and I got some compliance, but some of you just wouldn't do it. You didn't think I was serious, that we were going to spend blood and treasure, or at least treasure from the United States to subsidize your what, your laxity. And I'm not, I'm not going to do it anymore. So he will. And I think they're going to I think in the next 90 days you're going to see that almost every NATO partner has budgeted for the next year 2% of GDP for defense.

[Jack Fowler]

Let us pray. Victor, we got have a little time left here and let's end it up with your thoughts on this darling of American culture, Whoopi Goldberg. So here's the story. I'm sure our listeners.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Why are you torturing me?

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, because it's just a big fat pitch down the middle of the plate. Maybe that's why she this is boy, oh boy, is this played out nationally. But very much so in, say, the New York Post where this is happening. She wants a cake from a Staten island bakery. She calls up to order it. The ovens are out. The lady says, I can't do I don't know that I can do it because my, you know, the electricity's out or whatever. And then, well, that ends that. Well, the problem is fixed and the lady goes back to, you know, her business is baking these sponge cakes and somebody Whoopi finds out that, wow, they are available and on the View tried to embarrass this business in Staten island and turned out trying to, of course, make herself to be a victim, give the impression that it was has to do with racism because guess who lives on Staten Island, Vic there all these Republicans. Italians.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. She said it was biased and she said political bias, but the subtext was it was racist. I think you're right about that. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

And actually, you know, the folks have come out and, and they like this. This is not how what happened, A and B, they're being flooded with orders from people who want to stand by them and give the middle finger to the whoopie. Does that should we give a rat spat anymore what Whoopi Goldberg says or does?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She said so many things. She said things that are anti Semitic about the Holocaust. She said that she and that group talk about women that are white, that are suburban in racial terms. And it brings up this larger question. You have to be very Careful how you articulate this. But I think people are understanding, especially from the last election, that class is a much more distinguishing criterion of who is oppressed and who is not. And race is no longer associated with class status. So you have these high profile situations and Jack, you and I have talked about a lot of them. One of them was this multi millionaire LA luxury denizen Hill, Whoopi Goldberg attacking this bakery because they can't afford modern boilers or 150 years plus and they have archaic and they're not used to large orders. And they don't just drop everything because Whoopi Goldberg called up, just like they wouldn't if Julia Roberts called up, just like they wouldn't if any of these left wing people called up. But they, it wasn't biased. They actually didn't have the capacity. So then of course she thinks she's going to go dox them and shame them on national tv and they happen to be white working class people and that's okay because she's black. It's kind of like the Oberlin story. Remember the Oberlin store? Right next to Oberlin.

[Jack Fowler]

People love bakeries.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, they do. And they were. But they were such a loyal supplier for students, they overlooked a lot of stuff. But they had a problem with shoplifting and one of the perpetrators was African American. So they tried to destroy that group. The elites did. The elites did. And the same thing with Michelle Obama. She said she was at a Target, remember? And this was a sign of racism because a shorter working class white woman obviously asked this tall black woman to pick up a package that she couldn't reach to help her. And of course I'm Michelle Obama, I'm the person. And this was a sign of insidious racing. Just like the same. I could go on and on, but it's the same thing. Oprah goes into some Swiss chalet store that nobody in their right mind would ever go in and pay and there's some little clerk there and she's says there was a $37,000 alligator purse and I asked her to look at and she's a racist. This stupid. And this woman just. I didn't know who she was. We don't, I'm not, I'm not allowed basically to take $37,000 things that are kept away from people because of shoplifting and hand it to anybody, black, white, anybody. I'm sorry, I didn't know who she was. But again, it's the idea that if you're black then you are oppressed when that may have been true 50 years ago. But this is a very rapidly metamorphosizing society. And as I said on one podcast, we have 17 ethnic groups that have higher per capita income than so called whites. And African American women are not that far away from the average per capita income. I think that African American women are almost at or higher than white middle class white American males. So my point is this, that these are archaic ideas that you can just go in there and insult the whole productivity and livelihood of a, of a middle class white group and then get away with it because you're black. It's not going to happen anymore, anymore. And it's good because I think most black people don't want it to happen anymore. And that for them it's a class thing. And they've looked at the One Eyed Jack, they flipped the card over and they've seen that these people like Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey and Camilla Harris, they don't have their interests any more than Dr. Jill or any of the, you know, Mike Bloomberg or Bill Gates has your interest. If you're a white truck driver, they don't, won't.

[Jack Fowler]

Dr. Jill, she probably voted for Trump.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Okay, that's very funny because I, everybody's been remarking, as you listeners know, that Joe can't stop smiling and he's very happy and they probably are wearing MAGA hats right now. So.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay, well, Victor, you've, you've been great today. We're right at the end here of our lot. I do want to read one of the lovely comments that have been left on Apple and people can go to Apple if they listen on that platform and whatever platform you listen to the Victor Davis Hansen show on. Thank you very much. And you can rate the show 0 to 5 stars. 4.9 plus is the average Victor has gotten from over thousands of people who have taken the time to rate the show. And some people actually take further time to leave comments. There's a very long comment and I'm not going to read the entirety of it, but here's the end of one and it says, in closing, I must apologize for ranting, but I'm so overwhelmed with what has transpired in this country over the last eight years because I can't even begin to express how deeply I'm affected. We just celebrated Veterans Day. I'm a veteran. My three brothers are veterans. My father was a veteran. My father's two brothers were veterans. My mother's father was a veteran. We all swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What the Democrats and the left have done are continuing to do is destroying this country and is unarguably criminal. They must be held accountable. God bless you, sir, and God bless the United States of America. Respectfully yours, Mark from Hilo, Hawaii. And we thank you, Mark, for taking the time to write that. Folks, we read all the comments and I read all the comments also, also on Victor's website. I just want to end by saying thanks for those who write me to say thanks for Civil Thoughts, which is the free weekly email newsletter I write every week for the center for Civil Society, comes out every Friday. And I find 14 worthwhile articles I've come across the previous week that I think you as an intelligent American would want to read. There's no cost. We're not selling the list of names. So it's just, it's purely out of the goodness of my heart that we do this. But I think you'll enjoy it. Go to civil thoughts.com and sign up again. The Blade of Perseus for Victor. That's VictorHansen.com well, I should mention two other things. Twitter, it's Dhansen. That's Victor's handle. And on Facebook, there's the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. Some really good people. You were going to say something, Victor, as we head out the door?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I, I was going to give a plug. You know, I was just thinking, I was watching this morning when I came into my former garage or actually it was a horse manger, my grandfather, when he's a little boy. And I turned it into where I'm broadcasting. But I was listening to all the pros and cons on Robert Kennedy, you know, on the hell health. Sure. And people are worried that he might bring in Dennis Kinich and people like that or Vax. And I was thinking, I have this colleague and everybody knows him, Scott Atlas. He was a tough talking, blunt guy, but he was, he's a marvelous health expert. Not. And he's gone.

[Jack Fowler]

Only we had listened to him.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. And we went way and he, he, he set. He had no reason to buck the entire Stanford faculty who said that you had to shut down all the schools, no matter whether children are, you had to shut down the economy. And he, he was very brave and he got very little support. And he's gone way beyond his expertise of which he was one of the world's greatest neuroradiologists. And so my point is that if they would point a guy like that, that if Bobby Kennedy and Say, you know what for? Let's take one of the most renowned of all the agencies in nature. It's really the Institute of Health, the national institute, the NIH.

[Jack Fowler]

NIH, right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That's the one with the $50 billion. If you had him there, you would have a craftsman, an expert, but more importantly, you would have a strong Trump supporter, but would come to his support from Trump, from his credentialed medical career and say, you know what? Trump knew instinctively what he should be doing according to what the science really is. And he would have a supporter of the Trump agenda and it would protect Bobby Kennedy a lot. And he needs somebody like Scott to be able to call up and say, scott, I'm very skeptical of vaccinations, however, give me the history of the measles vaccination. Well, and he could do it and he could do all of that. And that's, I'm just using him as an example of the type of appointments at the sub cabinet. But high, very. These, these agencies are huge.

[Jack Fowler]

And he like Fauci, right?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. And like Pete Hexeth, you know, I mentioned Miles Yu as a guy. If he would point a guy like that, they were in tune with him politically. But you know, Miles, he's got a PhD in history, not that I, you know, and he's taught at the naval. He's got all of these expertise. And I mentioned ambassadors. You know, we talk about all the ambassadors are going to get this and that. And I mentioned Max Nikias, the former president of usc. A guy like that, if you put, he was conservative, he stood up for principles, he was attacked, he wet weathered the MeToo, he was sabotaged. He did, he went through all of that and he, he remained true. He's a very strong conservative. He would be. If you put him in somewhere where he grew up in Cyprus, as the ambassador, people say, oh my gosh, look at Trump does. He looks at people who have expertise, not that they're going to be prejudicial to an ethnic affinity from where they were born or where they live. But more importantly, they're staunch American patriots. They're America first. I can trust them. And these are very critical parts of the world. Cyprus is now because of the Russian oligarchs, the money transfers, the natural gas, the Turkey threat. It is crucial. If you had a person with that, with that linguistic expertise, fluent, and you made maybe 10 of those Max Nikias types appointments, and you made three or four Jay Bacharya, John Yannidis, people like that, and Scott Atlas, it would just do so much for Donald Trump. Not that he's in. Somebody was going to say, well, Victor, well, they have credentials. No, I'm not talking about their credential. I'm talking about their wisdom.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And their, and their candor and their conservative tradition.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Especially they don't. I've been around them. They don't put up with crap.

[Jack Fowler]

And back to Scott Atlas. That's what he was. He was truth in the face of bureaucracy.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Isn't that out in a different way? So was Jay. He was outspoken. Max got in trouble at usc, was outspoken and he didn't back down. And those are the people that these controversial appointments that I support with almost, with some exceptions, but I support them. And I think, Pete, I hope that to God he gets a point confirmed. I think he will and I support. I met Tulsi. I really like her. I admire her. I think that whatever she doesn't know at the intricacy, she's so smart and she's so politically savvy, she will pick up very quickly. But those people need subordinates that will not undermine them or diminish the Trump MAGA effort. And so they need these second tier. They're not even second tier. They're very important types of appointments. And there's a lot of people that are conservative, that have superior that the left is afraid of. Not because these people are antithetical politically, but because they're so good and they can't, they can't impugn them and they know that these people will be very, very effective in carrying out the Trump agenda.

[Jack Fowler]

A little hurt, Victor. You didn't mention me as ambassador to the Vatican.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I had thought, I thought you would be a very good, you would be a very good. But I think I read. Yeah. Isn't Kista genre going to continue or resume or something?

[Jack Fowler]

I don't know. She was long serving there. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He would be an excellent ambassador. I know that one person who would be completely unfit for an ambassador or any presidential appointment is Victor D. Hansen. No, no, no, no, no.

[Jack Fowler]

You were, you were on. Listen, listen, let me say something here then because I've seen stories about this and you were on the 1776 Commission.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Very truncated. And Mike.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, it, unfortunately, it, it was the people established very late in the administration.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

The people who really did the yeoman heavy lifting were Larry Arn and people around him at Hillsdale College.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Matt Spalding.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. Matt Spalding did a superb job. So did, so did Larry Ar. Aren't.

[Jack Fowler]

But it had broader. I mean that it did it had.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It had a lot of people in it. But my, I mean, I didn't have time to really participate. So I didn't go back there to Washington and I participated only by zoom and editing things.

[Jack Fowler]

I dig.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I don't, I don't, I don't think maybe reestablish. I hope it is what I hear. Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

And I think it has a broader view of America. Not just talk, you know, just to Mark. You know, actually I think part of its purpose was to, to be a counter to the 1619 Project.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But in it, Trump had A man's gotta know. A man's got to know his limitations. All right, well, Clint was right about that. And I'm kind of grounded on this farm in the middle of nowhere. A very famous person once said to me, victor, when are you going to join the big leagues? Get out of it. I won't mention who told me that, but he was very high ranking. Funny. It was a joke, but it's true. Anyway, I.

[Jack Fowler]

Let's just scroll.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I don't have very much influence, but if I really feel passionately that all of these controversial, and I don't think they should be controversial appointees, it's very important that the second tier, they bring in this class of experts, if I could say, not just by their credentials, but by their character and their knowledge and they're proven excellence. And you bring them in, you staff them and they are the people who will be doing the nuts and bolts work for the high profile appointees. And so a person like Scott Atlas or Jay Bhattarya or Max Nakias is the ideal. All those people are absolutely essential. And I hope that people, if there's anybody listening that has any degree of influence, that they consider that you can't just make political appointments or donor appointments. You've got to get people that will reflect, that will be able to carry out the Trump agenda. They have to be experts. And these people are. And they know they're experts because they fulfill one requirement. Also, they've been on the receiving end of the woke.

[Jack Fowler]

They've got the warriors. Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

They've got the wounds and they paid a high price for their integrity.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay, well, I'll, I will not bring up the topic of you as ambassador to Sweden.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That's the way. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Yes, I am qualified to be the ambassador to Sweden for two reasons. I've never been to Sweden and I don't know more than one word of Swedish, but. And I'm broke. So I don't think I qualify.

[Jack Fowler]

All right. Volvo?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes, I drive a. I drive a Volvo 544.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, you've been to. You've been terrific, Victor. Folks who listen, especially those who are new, thank you very much and we will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Bye. Thank you, everyone.