← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
Jack Fowler
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Jack Fowler
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Victor Davis Hanson
T I V E p a t h.com c o m V I C T o R that's getnativepath.com Victor start your transformation today.
- [01:51]
Jack Fowler
Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hanson Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to listen to the star and namesake, Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He's got a website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com is the address you should be subscribing. You should be going there regularly. Later in this episode, I will tell you just why and how much it's going to cost you. It's very affordable, very reasonable. We are recording on Sunday, 19th January. Here I am in Milford, Connecticut. The skies are great. It's going to start snowing here, Victor. We're going to get about five inches. You're out there in sunny California and far from a lot of people worried. Is Victor safe? I mean, Victor's. Victor's not safe from the tax collectors and the no one's safe in California. Safe from the Palisades fires, but otherwise tormented like every other resident of that great state is. This particular episode will be up on January 23rd. So America will be in the process of being made great again. I know Victor and the great Sammy Wink will be discussing tomorrow. Their podcast will air tomorrow the openings of Donald Trump's first days, his inaugural speech, hopefully a slew of executive orders he might be issuing out of the box. So hang around till tomorrow to get Victor's take on that. But today we've got plenty of interesting things to talk about. I think we should begin Victor with looking at he may be Secretary of State now by the time we're speaking. I don't know when the confirmation vote's going to happen, but Marco Rubio, whose opening statement in his confirmation hearing I think was pretty important, and we'll get your take on that, Victor, and on, oh, I don't know, whatever else do we have here? Canada's preoccupation with euthanasia, culture wars, a piece you've written for Mosaic magazine and website, and we'll get to all that when we come back from these important messages. The New year is here. It's the time we make resolutions to do something differently this year. Make a resolution that truly matters. Join Wired to Fish Coffee in making a difference in the world. Imagine starting your day like I do with a delicious cup of their fair trade sourced Arabica coffee, knowing that each sip supports a cause you believe in like conservation and clean water or your faith. At Wired to Fish Coffee they believe one small change can lead to monumental impacts. Hence their generous give back of 25% to clean water, conservation and faith based initiatives. Start 2025 by raising your mugs to a new year filled with purpose, community and great coffee. Subscribe and save today and enjoy discounted coffee and free freight or just give this great brand a try with discount code justthenews for 10% off your first order. Head over to Wired then the number two fish coffee wiredto fishcoffee.com today and make 2025 a year you aligned your coffee with your values. Before we continue, I want to tell you about a great American company. We trust American alternative assets. Like many of you, they understand what's really happening to our nation's financial strength and they're helping patriotic Americans protect their retirement savings. As someone who studied America's history for decades, I'm concerned about what I'm seeing. For the first time ever, our great nation is spending more on interest payments than on our military. That's why I asked our friends at American Alternative Assets to share their wealth protection guide. The the guide explains why smart Americans are moving their retirement savings to precious metals IRAs. These are true patriots who understand American values. Right now they are offering our listeners up to $10,000 in free silver plus a free American made safe. They'll show you how generations of Americans have protected their wealth during uncertain times. Visit aaagold.net hansen and tell them Victor sent you. Support an American company that puts American families first. We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, I'm going to do what so many of our listeners like. Talk. Me talk. No, they don't. But folks, just, just hear this out. And Victor, then you have at it. This is Marco Rubio's statement at his confirmation hearing and I think was pretty important. At the end Of World War II, the United States was, in the words of then Secretary Acheson, tasked with creating a world order, a free half out of chaos, without blowing the whole process, without blowing the hole to pieces in the process. Rubio continues. At the end Of World War II, the United States was, in the words of then Secretary Acheson, I just read that in the decades that followed, the global order they created served us well for Americans. Incomes rose, communities flourished. Alliance emerged in Indo Pacific and Europe that led to the emergence of stability, democracy and prosperity in those regions and prevented a cataclysmic third World War. And ultimately a wall in Berlin came down and with it an evil empire. Out of the triumphalism of the end of the long Cold War emerged a bipartisan consensus that we had reached the end of history, that all the nations of the earth would become members of the democratic Western led community. That a foreign policy that served the national interest could now be replaced by one that served the liberal world order and that all mankind was now destined to abandon national identity and we would become one human family and citizens of the world. This wasn't just a fantasy, it was a dangerous delusion. So says Marco Rubio. Victor, what are your thoughts on Marco Rubio and the Rubio Doctrine? Maybe there isn't a Rubio doctrine yet. Sounds like there should be one.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, two years ago, Jack, in the last chapter of the Dying Citizen, I have a chapter on globalism that resonates that same theme. And it's expressed or reified, as everybody knows, with the International Criminal Court, with the Ferris Climate Accord. And the idea is that the collective body of nations has interest and wisdom that super seed ours. And therefore if a soldier's in, you know, Afghanistan, he calls in an airstrike. He's subject to evaluation by the International Criminal Court. So the subtext, it isn't even the subtext. The primary mission is to get rid of sovereignty and turn over each nation's decision making to a panel of experts. Sort of like the 51 intelligent experts that Phyllis Hunter's laptop was watching Disinformation or what was it, Jack? A hundred State Department officials just wrote and said Trump was dangerous. It's this idea that you, you give up your personal freedom and constitutional rights to a world body of experts. And the problem with it, to be frank, is that these people are not experts. And they're only degreed. They're certified, but they're not experts. And we've seen what people from the Ivy League have done the last four years. And then number two, these people are anti American in the sense that they don't have a constitution like ours. We got to remember that we're a multiracial democracy. There's only of our size, Brazil and India, and they don't do very well. So we're unique and they are not unique. And they're mostly blood and soil countries and even our allies. I mean, I love Japan, but Japan's having a fertility crisis. So they're looking to find Japanese expatriate communities, say in South America to come back to Japan because they define a citizen as someone who looks Japanese. Most countries in the world do. So he's absolutely right. And as the world gets more coordinated. So I can call here from this farm, somebody in Nigeria in a second or some. What somebody does in Wuhan will give me long Covid. Within, you know, a year, people make the next false step that we're already connected. So why don't we have a world body of experts and it's usually from the left and it's partly a pedigree of Marxism and collectivism, progressivism, but it's also very. It's a Cold War, Cold War, post Cold War product that all of the existential problems are over with. And so we, we can. We all agree that I guess we would call consumer market capitalist governments are the norm. I don't think everybody believes that at all. I think there are 180 nations, I think in the UN or something along that only half of them claim to be democratic anymore. Democrat. Democratic governments are losing the residence. So it doesn't work. It's never worked. And it's not new. Everybody, it was. Alexander the Great had something called the Brotherhood of Man where he was going to forcibly marry Macedonian companion Calvary to Persian women or. And we were going to make a new Hellenistic world that didn't last very long. And then after World War I, we had. We know who they come from. Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations, the Versailles Treaty. Wilson pranced in after the war in January 1990. 19, I won the war by deciding with my unsurpassed humanity to enter the war. We broke the. And I have the right to dictate to all of you people that fought it, and this is what it's going to be. And then we have the League of Nations. You know how that went, everybody. And then we did it again with the League of Nations, fdr, and it just keeps going. And then now we have Davos. So I don't think Trump's gonna go to Davos. He ever did.
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Jack Fowler
Davos may come to Mar a Lago.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It's a very dangerous concept to give up any shred of US Sovereignty. Paris climate accords, we got out. Biden put us right back in. And what did they. You know, what do they do? They let allow China, who builds two dirty coal plants a month, and we're supposed to outlaw here in California clean burning diesel engines. That won't make a bit of difference given what China does to the atmosphere. And yet they're scared to death of ever telling Chi that you, you know, you're a polluter. And they. And they're worse than that. Now they're telling the underdeveloped countries, well, please, like us, oh, you want $5 trillion in transfers because we had the Industrial Revolution and we've been polluting longer than you do Did. And so that's what they're doing now. And you want to say back to them, okay, there's more carbon emissions here in California or New York than there is, I don't know, in Mozambique, but.
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Jack Fowler
Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
You people in Mozambique use stuff that is created elsewhere, and we don't. Basically, it's from the Westernized world that builds radios and computers and cars and tires and chemicals and the Westernized world, and that requires more energy. So if we all want to be pastoral, like the Morgenthau Plan after World War II, go to it.
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Jack Fowler
Well, it's dangerous.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I'm really. I. Rubio was really gradually but sincerely transformed from us a Trump 2016 primary opponent, where they each pillared each other into a MAGA adherent. I think it's sincere. I don't say maggot on foreign policy, but a Jacksonian no better friend, no worse enemy. The United States. Don't tread on me. We will pick the time and occasion. I think people should just finally, if you go back when Charles Krutheimer was very good, but when he was at his best, he wrote after the Iraq war, they were saying that we were trying to intervene. And he wrote kind of A manifesto, if you remember. But it was a long essay where he said, the United States is not neoconservative nation building. It's not isolationist. It shall pick and choose where it intervenes based on whether it can win or what it can do in a realistic fashion. And it will fight a type of war that plays to its strengths and not to its weakness. Sometimes we didn't listen to that, but that's, I think, what Trump's foreign policy is going to be.
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Jack Fowler
Yeah, I love that Rubio is a, a foe. I think it's fair to be a foe of China and has been for quite a while. And vocals.
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Victor Davis Hanson
He can't set foot in the country. Yeah, they declared him.
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Jack Fowler
I'm glad you mentioned essentially the elites, Victor, because this was another topic I wanted to raise with you. And I'm thinking before I get to it, it was something Bill, Bill Kristol tweeted about, if we can still use tweeted as a verb. The Republicans, Liz Cheney and others, I forget how many there were about 100 back in, was it October or September? Came out and endorsed Kamala Harris. And many of these people were foreign policy types. What did they expect a Harris foreign policy was going to be? How. How did these self described conservative Republicans think the world was going to. How did they envision the world under, under her leadership?
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Victor Davis Hanson
It's sort of like warped. They believe that they're going to be kinder and gentler than anybody in the world and that magnanimity is going to be reciprocated by even greater gratitude, not by scorn and exploited as weakness to me, taken advantage of rather than to be reciprocated. So that's our idea. So that type of world view gets 13 people killed for no reason in Afghanistan the way we got out. Or it weakens Israel to such a degree and we have daylight between us that Hamas tries something stupid and thinks they'll get away with it. Hezbollah. And then you're. You have a Chinese balloon, a Chinese dressing down, Lincoln and Sullivan and Anchorage, Alaska. So I wish it wasn't that way. But human nature is unchanging. And when you get progressives empowered and they feel the world works like the academic lounge, you know what I mean? Or academic faculty meeting. And by the way, I've been to about a thousand academic faculty meetings and never have so much anger been expressed in such ruthlessness, oversold, such small stakes. But that's how they envision the world. And the antithesis to it is Teddy Roosevelt keep quiet, carry a big stick Get a Vegetas, the great Roman military writer. Anybody prepare for war to ensure peace. If you want peace, prepare for war. And that was Ronald Reagan. Peace through strength. So deterrence. I would just give credit to a very brilliant guy, Jack. His name is Jeffrey Blaney, and he's a. I think he's in his 90s now. I met him when I was toured Australia once. But he wrote a very underappreciated but brilliant book called the Causes of War. And he said he looked at all of these wars that Quincy Wright and others had looked at, and they all had these therapeutic explanations. He said, you know what war is like a laboratory experiment that finishes. So when you look at all these different players in the world, it's very important that you have information about the relative strength and intention of each one. And if you do, then you can deter them or make the necessary adjustments with alliances. However, if you're not candid about your real strength or weakness, then you can be misled. And he. So in World War II, to take his example and give you a concrete example, looking back when I finished the Second World War, one of the things I kept thinking was, what was Hitler thinking about? What was Mussolini thinking about? What was Japan thinking about? When you. There were, you know, there was 400 million people in the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain. The United States had a bigger GDP than all of the Axis put together. When the war started, what were they thinking? Well, what were they were thinking is, they were thinking, well, the United States may be big and it won World War I, but they're weak now. And they, they're socialists and they are disarmed. They'll never come in. Oh, Britain, they won World War I, too, but they're appeasing. The United States is isolationist and Britain is appeasing. And, oh, the Soviet Union, oh, they're collaborating. And no one said to Hitler or Mussolini, yes, they are. But if you get on the wrong side or you're stupid enough to attack them, they have the economic, military and mantle material to destroy you very quickly. So what Blaney would say in all of these cases, had they each of those three Allied powers said to Hitler and Tojo, don't do something stupid. We're producing a plane an hour. We are going to build. We can build 150 light and escort carriers in two years and destroy you. We can build a B29 bomber that will fly 1600 miles and reduce Tokyo to ashes. We don't want to, so don't. But we didn't give that message. So they made an ignorant decision. So it's very important right now to take that thesis and say to China, yes, we had Biden and yes, Lee was a bumbling fool and yes, we were disgraced in Afghanistan, but those are aberrations. We have this amount of nuclear weapons. We have hypersonic. We, we, we and we have to, to do that so they don't do something stupid. And the same thing with the Soviet, with Russia and Ukraine if we are much more powerful than Putin. But if you tell Putin, oh, you can go into, oh, you went into a seish under Bush, okay, oh, you took the donbas in crime under Obama, oh, it depends on whether it's a major or minor invasion, where they're going to react to it. Oh, you had cyber attacks on us. So Joe told you, knock that off, Vladimir. Oh, you suspended offensive weapons. So he got the impression out of ignorance that the United States was weak and wouldn't do anything. And now we have, you know, 101.6 million dead wounded in a war that could have been prevented had we been able to deter him.
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Jack Fowler
Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
So it's very important to be to get the information on the relative strength and intention of every possible belligerent and make the necessary calculations. And we must inform China and Russia that this is our military strength and this is what we will do and then follow it through. But we have to have the military strength to do that. And if you're spending money on DEI or you're spending money on green electric tanks or something, you're not going to be able to do that. And that's what we've been doing over five.
- [23:13]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, before we go on to talk about elites, I just want to let our listeners know that I have a great movie for you. The new heart pounding military thriller, Valiant 1 has everything you need in a movie with tensions high between north and South Korea. A US Military helicopter crashes deep in North Korean territory. With the platoon leader dead and no rescue coming, young sergeant Edward Brockman must find a way to get the survivors back to safety. He must rise to the challenge to lead his team on a daring escape through treacherous and hostile territory. With enemy soldiers in hot pursuit, only courage can bring them home. Valiant One has all the grit and explosive action you'd expect, along with the story of survival and bravery under fire that keeps you on the edge of your seat. All you need, folks, is popcorn. My case would be M M's. Don't miss this new action thriller from Briarcliffe Entertainment and Monarch Media. Valiant One featuring Chase Stokes and Lana Condor, only in theaters January 31st. And we thank the good people from Valiant One for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, I do like these Trapped behind Enemy Line movies. One of the great ones. I know this old British movie. One of our aircraft is missing. I don't know if you've ever, if you've ever seen that. It's one of the Press Burger, one of the original Archers movies and I'll send you a link to it.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Folks, remember 30 seconds over Tokyo when they crash land and they have to get back.
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Jack Fowler
Oh yeah, yeah. With Van Heflin and Van Johnson. I mean, yeah, great movie. Oh my gosh, that's a terrific movie. Hey, what were we going to talk? Oh, the elites. Yes, elites. So Victor, gosh, I, I want to ask you a million World War I, World War II questions afterwards what you just raised. Let me ask you one before you get to the elites. I mean France was the, the more powerful army than, than Germany, France, England combined. So there is something to Hitler and moving ahead. Yes, based on the, the lack of courage. But maybe if he had just stopped there. Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And maybe the initial stupidity was France had never allowed the germans more than 80 miles into French territory.
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Jack Fowler
Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
So they have a reputation for deterrence. And then they, they transmogrified and going all the way to the Swiss border. And then they didn't go unfortunately to the Atlantic because the Belgians didn't want to be walled off. But they built the national line which by the way the Germans really didn't go through. They did have army group C or D, I mean south that went through it, but that was only after the north it had fallen. But my point is this. They had a 3 million person army in world in 1940 that they went de. I think it's called Dewant Aircraft fighter was better than the 109. Even the char V tank was much better than the Mark 2 or 3 German tanks. They had a bigger army and Germany had lost almost 20,000 soldiers dead, another 30,000 wounded taking Poland. And. But my point is this. They had been part of the effort to appease Hitler at Munich. And Hitler had said of Chamberlain after Chamberlain gave him Czechoslovakia and he had said nothing about the Anschluss, the Rhineland militarization. He said, I saw them at Munich and they are worms. I'd like to take that stupid little umbrella and beat him with it. But what I'm getting at is France had conveyed the message that although we are the winners of World War I, we never want to fight again. Germany had conveyed the message, even though we were the losers, that was an aberration. We want to rectify that decision. So what that meant in actuality is although France had a huge army, they were all deployed with a defensive mentality, whether in the Maginot Line or the majority of them up near the Belgian border. They were told, we are reactive, we do not conduct offensive operations. When Germany went into Poland on September 1st of 1939, they went in it from East Prussia, Germany and the Sudetenland or occupied Czech state. And they were naked, they had almost nobody. And here he had this huge French army and they invaded, they went into the Saarland and there was nobody there. They could have gone on the way to Berlin, but they went in about 20 miles, they took a couple of prisoners, said oh my God, we're in Germany. That would be kind of provocative. Let's get out. And so if you don't want to fight and you convey that Tom Sowell if you look at some of his books, he made a good point that in the 1930s it was not allowed in a French textbook to mention the word Verdun or that famous they shall not pass slogan or motto of Verdun. And as I said earlier in the broadcast, the Dutch were trying to come up with a word other than destroyer in Dutch for their frigates.
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Jack Fowler
Really?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, because they thought all of this would be too provocative. And for Hitler it just showed signs of weaknesses and he didn't get an accurate portrayal of the ability of Britain and France. So he, yes, he was successful. He had invasion. He invaded nine countries. Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, Belgium, France, Greece, Yugoslavia. But he could not bomb Britain and that was because he had no four engine bombers. He had no idea about the capability of the Spitfire or the Hurricane at high altitude dives. He didn't understand the British people, he didn't understand strategic bombing and it was downhill from him. He could not defeat Britain even though all of the present European Union by that time was in his hands. So Britain and France just made it clear that they had the capability to stop Hitler. He would have never started.
- [29:51]
Jack Fowler
Well, when he occupied the Rhineland I think they gave him a green light. So Victor about elites kind of related to back what we were talking about before I come we Willy, Bill Crystal but on X he posted something referring to a a podcast or piece in the the Bulwark the TDS website of never really were conservatives Crystal and others. But Jonathan last has some podcasts there and obviously they. I didn't Listen to it. But I just saw this tweet where they're focusing on the elites. Of course they think they're the elites. Maybe they are by so is Anthony Fauci. But Kristol's quote, every era he's quoting, excuse me, last and whoever he was on the show with. Did the elites really fail us? Every era has both good and bad. But I'd say that the elites of the last 50 years shepherded us through an era that was at least as good and maybe substantially better than anything we've seen for almost two centuries. Victor, they just love themselves and they will always love themselves. I don't know that they will get the message that the voters sent in this recent election, but any thought on that? The elites loving the elites?
- [31:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean they have not been able to turn the operational brilliance of the rank and file American soldier into strategic resolution. So maybe you can say Korea was a victory. It was. We saved South Korea but we didn't take north. The North. We lost Vietnam. That was not because the fighting man that was. It was the best and brightest as David Halpertson, one of them even admitted and wrote a book about it. We did not when in Afghanistan or Iraq. Maybe Iraq we did some better but in the cost of benefit. And looking back, perhaps it wasn't why that. I don't know what we did in Syria and Libya and I am not sure what's going to happen in Ukraine. But all of these were ideas that were cooked up by people in the civilian sector who were mostly Ivy League degree, very impressive and repartee talking. I just came from a conference where there were the same type of very impressive people. You look at their resumes, they wow you their Ivy League degrees or European universities in some cases. But I don't think they do have a good record. So if you look at where we are right now and what they say of the 50 years, where do they see leadership as exercised by traditional elites is successful? Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins at nih, maybe Peter Desic who was just barred for five years from Echo Health from having for line and create helping to create this virus that killed 50 million people. The Pentagon do we have. I don't think we're deterring anybody. Well maybe the State Department guys like Blinken and Jake Sullivan, they've got the right degrees. Maybe Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security advisor who dreamed up the Iran policy and the deal with Obama. Obama himself, he's got, he and Michelle, they're, they've got Ivy League creds. Where and where is it? So I don't think it's the elite who's. The good life that we have for the most part is the degree to which people exercise common sense. And I'm not as you know, I met a lot of smart people at Stanford, but I met a lot smarter people farming. And so I don't know where they get that idea that they're so self congratulatory. Did they craft SpaceX? Are they Jeff Bezos who made Amazon? I mean if I look at my life and I just get empirical and I say right now what is good and what is bad? Well, I use Amazon a lot. I did. I don't think that Jeff Bezos represents the elite, the multi generational, credentialed, bicoastal elite. Not Elon Musk. I use X. I don't know. My wife has a Tesla, did that.
- [34:31]
Jack Fowler
Starlink.
- [34:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Starlink I'm doing right now on Starlink out in the middle of the country. The other access I had to the Internet was slow. I couldn't do this without Starling. So I. I'm just trying to think. I got two bouts, one for a year and one for four months of long Covid that was due to an elite that cooked that up. Gain of function research and the expertise and money and instrumentation we sent to the Wuhan lab. Peter Dasek was helpful with that, so was Anthony Fauci, so was Francis Collins. When I look at high speed rail, that was an elite concept. I don't think it's very successful. When I go. And on the other hand, when I go out the door and I walk over an almond orchard that has gone from 1200 pounds an acre to 3200 pounds, I don't see anybody from Harvard, Princeton, Yale who did that. I see a guy who's a second generation Basque immigrant from Encompass who did that. When I used to go and talk to Carolyn Harris and John Harris, I don't think that was an Ivy League elite who built the Harris ranch and hotel and farming operation. I just don't see it. I don't know what on grounds what they're talking about. Is it in our. I think Bill Crystal is in his early 70s, maybe 70. What does he look around right now that is the product of Elite? Is he. Can he think of a great elite novel that somebody wrote? A great elite somebody picture, a motion picture that somebody directed who was an elite? An actor who was. Came out of the aristocratic tradition? I know there's some that did. But you know, when you look at Gene Hackman or Michael Caine and all these people, they were not elites. Yeah. So I don't think they have much common sense. I don't think they've been in the real world. And I think that they recreate in their own mind a fantasy world that doesn't exist of their success. And the things that they have given us, Jack, that are exclusively the product of elites. The modern university, Stanford, Ivy League, I've seen it. It's a disaster. It practices institutionalized racism. It's mediocre. 80% of the people at Yale or Stanford get AIDS. When I look at the government, HHS, I don't know. I don't see a lot of brilliant people running the government. Where. Where do they. Where do they. I don't get it. I know that they're everywhere, but I don't see the town. I don't see the results of it. I see that we have a very prosperous, materially successful society, but it's because of the successors to Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright brothers.
- [37:39]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [37:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
And to the degree there, they were masters of capital, like here in California, the people who designed the California Water Project or the Central Valley project or big four, Henry Huntington or Stanford, etc. Crocker. They were not. They were started from very meager circumstances. So what I'm getting at is there's nothing wrong with being an aristocrat and being. Going to prep school and going. Being packed off to Harvard and then going to Yale Law School. That's great. Yes, yes. But it's much better to have, I think, a wide diversity. I think that's why J.D. vance, and you can really see it with his career, that they hated him. They hated him partly because they felt they could control him when he first came to the national prominence and he was, you know, kind of critical of where he had come from, but once they saw that, that he had broad experience and yet he knew them because he went to Yale, Wall Street School, and he knew terror, they hated him. But the reason that he was slaying all of these media dragons all summer long wasn't because he went to Yale School. It was because he understood people and he had dealt with all different types of people from different strata of society, and he demolished them. And they did. That's why they. They didn't anticipate. I remember talking to two or three elites where I work, and they said, oh, man, Trump's gonna have to recall him. He's a white guy. So he gets no friction, no traction there. My God, he's from Ohio. There's no advantage there. Point taken. Point taken. All I said was, oh, I've talked to him a couple times. He's a master debater. He's got a photographic memory. He's a great. Everything he's done has been successful. He was a rookie and he went right in, became a US Senator and he understood finance and he's got a brilliant wife. He was a great writer. So he's going to go on there and defend the MAGA record in ways that no one can even imagine. And the people in the media are going to hate him and he's going to make them look stupid.
- [39:55]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [39:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
And it did happen though.
- [39:57]
Jack Fowler
He did. He did indeed.
- [39:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I'm not impressed. I'm not. You know, I was taught by, it's funny, all the great classicists that I know personally, the worst were the children of academics and wealthy people. And the best, almost all the ones that I found were very good, came from very modest circumstances or middle class circumstances where they were widely experienced. When I look at my field of classics and ancient history and archaeology, if you look at the great developments that changed the way of thinking, they didn't come from Oxford dons or Harvard professors. I can just name three. Heinrich Schliemann was a German banker and he was the first one to suggest and prove at my and Troy that there was a physical reality to the Homeric poems and they were not just hooked up in a poet's head. There really was a Troy, there was a Mycenae. And then you, you look at somebody like Michael Ventress who did show you that linear B was Greek and was the language of the, of the Mycenaean citadels. And the Alphabet had changed during the Dark ages when it was invented. It was a Phoenician Alphabet, but it was used for a Greek pre existing language. So a linear B script, an alpha to omega Alphabet are the same language. Everybody thought that was crazy. And he thought, you know, he was a cryptologist in World War II. He could even. Millman Perry was an academic, but he was an apostate. People hated him when he said that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed orally by memory through the techniques of memorization and epithets, type scenes. Everybody thought he was crazy. So I think that's true of every field. I really do. The, the people who really do things are not part of the elite consensus.
- [42:02]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [42:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because the elite consensus by definition focuses on certificate certificates. Certification, not branding. Branding. And that's why it's dangerous.
- [42:19]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, I'm glad you mentioned Thomas Edison because there's a poll out there about the ability of American youth to change a light bulb and we'll get your take on that. And you've written a piece about war for Mosaic that addresses Israel and Gaza and Hamas and I think we'll have we'll also get to some culture war matters and we'll do all that when we come back from these important messages. Question Ever wonder how much of your personal data is out there on the Internet for anyone to see? More than you think. Your name, contact info, Social Security number and home address, even information about your family members, all being compiled by data brokers and sold online. I recently found a solution. It's a great service called delete me. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your personal info from hundreds of data brokers. DeleteMe isn't just a one time service. DeleteMe is always working for you, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the Internet. DeleteMe sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what info they found, where they found it, and what they removed. To put it simply, Delete Me does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from data broker websites. I just signed up. It couldn't have been easier. And as soon as I hit submit I felt what you'll feel relief and even a sense of justice. I've taken control of of my data. Take control of yours and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting Victor to 64000. Text Victor to 64000. That's Victor to 64000 message and data rates may apply. See Terms for details. And we are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Again. We're recording on Sunday the 19th and this actual episode will be up on the 23rd day. Two or three of America being made great again by Trump 47. And Victor and the great Sammy Wink will be discussing the first days of this presidency. Round two on tomorrow's Victor Davis Hansen show podcast. So Victor, what was I going to oh yeah. On Gen Z, here's a poll.
- [45:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh my gosh, I'm not going to believe this, but go ahead.
- [45:20]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, the kids aren't all right. Gen Z admits that they don't know how to change light bulbs. So here's from the New York Post the adult babies of Gen Z cannot cry about strict can cry about Strict workplace moors and whine over the anxiety inducing stress of making a phone call. But they can't even change a light bulb. Per new data on the youngsters incapacity to tackle everyday do it yourself duties. The ability to do basic practical tasks is being lost amongst the younger generation. Younger generations, warned Andy Tuberfield of Halfords, a UK based motoring and cycling retailer. The investigators found that nearly 25% of Gen Zers have no idea. That's a quarter of these kids have no idea how to change a light bulb in a ceiling lamp. With many claiming that climbing a ladder is quote unquote too dangerous. Only 1 in 5 worry also, excuse me, 1 in 5 also worry that the light bulb might be too hot. Finally, analysts with Halfords found that Zers on average spend over 1500 dollars a year hiring professionals to knock out basic household chores. Victor, I know a lot of people don't even. Well they know how to turn on a light switch but they don't know how to start a lawnmower or they, or which end of a chainsaw to hold which is a lot more difficult than trading a light bulb. Victor, your your thoughts on this very troubling trend?
- [46:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think it is, it's, it explains certain things though. My kids since they were three or four years had to work on the farm and they learned these things but when they got out in the the world I felt that they had been shorted, that we didn't, I didn't teach them how to, I mean they were not taught by my brother how to weld or they were not taught but they did everything else. So chainsaw, you know, engines operating tractors, discs, spring tooth spray, rigs, spraying roundup, they understood all that so but they left out knowing less than I did and I knew less than my father. So when they went out in the world people were just astounded. I've had so many people say wow, your son can do anything. And I said really? They said yes, he can't. He can fix anything. He's mechanical, he is, but he doesn't know as much as maybe I did at that age. But I knew a lot less than my father did. And so we're getting. And then this risk aversion, I don't know where risk aversion historically it originates in societies that only have one child. For example people, they dote on one child. If you lose your child. I know people have done research that shows that as the fertility rate declines nations become less adventurous. Maybe this will happen to China. That they won't be so bellicose because they're a nation owned one child. But it's kind of disturbing because these skills are very important not just to function in the real world and not just to function. If we have a the end of days collapse and you can see. And when everybody looks at Los Angeles right now, there's 250,000 people without homes and there's no sewer or water or telephone or power in large areas. What skills do they think would be valuable? Right. They just some kind of rhetorical flurries. It's not going to help you. You need to have real skills. That can happen on a wide scale. So I think what I would like to see is instead of camp, SAT camps, you know, take your kid goes to SAT camp. Why don't they have a survival camp or a young boy, let's say he's 10 years old, he goes up in a nice camp. But instead of learning how to, you know, do sail or hike, that they have like one week. Here's a chainsaw, here's small gas engines, here's basic carpentry, here's basic electricity, just enough to get him to know how to flip off a circuit breaker. Why a circuit breaker goes off or something, or plumbing. Here's the difference between hot, cold, sewage. Why not just do that with our children? So they're aware of the real world. And it's also very important sociologically because when you have the working muscular classes know that and yet they're not compensated as much as the cerebral. There's a lot of friction in between, as the one dictates to the other. But you can really see it when I work in PO because there is a shortage of muscularity and expertise and yet there's an excess of capital. So you have all these people that want to build beautiful homes, remodel them, and yet they're dealing with people whom they usually don't associate with and they don't understand and they pay an arm and a leg. Some of the cost is just three or four times higher than it is here. But a society that doesn't have common sense or practicalities in big trouble. I'm just thinking of that, General. One of the reasons foreign observers in World War II thought that the United States won is because of mechanics. And there were a lot of Germans who said, you know, we are a society of ranked expertise where the average German youth did not take apart a car. And so when. And they design, that affects designers as well. So when a Tiger or Panther tank was disabled, say the transmission blew out. They took that and put it on a rail car back to the factory. And they had precise specs. When a Sherman tanks engine or went out a truck, a truck drove up with another one. And half the people in the tank crew of five knew how to change an engine. They grew up taking apart cars in the Depression and the same thing with weapons. So one of the reasons that the American army was so good is that we had this huge body of young men who in the Depression had made do with fixing things and they could fix anything. So when they got to Normandy, especially Omaha beach, more than all the other beach, they had not anticipated the elite had not that there was the bocage or the hedgerows, even though they had known about World War I. And they went into it and they started taking enormous casualties until a sergeant and others who knew how to weld said, look, all those obstacles on Omaha beach, that asparagus, that sharp pieces of metal, why don't we cut them up into spikes and weld them to a Sherman tank. And instead of going over the top and exposing the unarmored belly to Panzer fowls, we could just scoop right through the hill that separated these one acre and just not only go through the hedgerows, but dump that dirt on Germans who are in foxholes waiting to shoot up at us as we go over. And that was repeated hundreds of times over on things that the Allies, but especially the American soldier was very pragmatic and practical. Many of them had grown up on farms or they had worked in factories and they knew about mechanics they knew about. They all grown up with firearms. Same thing was true in World War I.
- [53:21]
Jack Fowler
That reminded me the Apollo movie where they had to. I forget which of which one. You know the. How do we rig up the oxygen system with the sock and you know these parts? And they figured it out. I wonder if that could be done today.
- [53:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think it can. I don't know. I'm kind of worried about that because when I have driven my wife's Tesla, I'll go out there one morning and I'll have a software update, you know, automatically that over the night and the, the instrumentation panel changes and I don't know the first thing about it. I don't even think you can change the tire because there's no spare tires. So I'm at mercy of a simple Borg somewhere that issues, you know, and even the. Today my Ram pickup, I. I drove around pickup in 2000. I had a, a six cylinder slant six. I think I could fix. I mean, I. I took the generator out once and fixed the brushes and I could do basic things on. I. When I pick up that hood, it looks like spaghetti underneath. I don't think I could fix anything. It's so sophisticated in the computer and all of that. And I think that's happening to all of us in every aspect of our lives. The complexity for minimal improvement. But the complexity of machines means that we're helpless. And I think, I mean, I still have my great grandfather and grandfather's horse collars here and there's some old horseshoes and some reins, but I have no idea. When I grew up, my grandfather, he tried to teach us how to. We. We learned how to saddle horses and ride them, but he had an old little wagon and how to. To do that. My Swedish. But I couldn't do that.
- [55:16]
Jack Fowler
Now, you know, there's a. The National Geographic cable network has these shows, Life Under Zero, about folks living, you know, up in Alaska and how they are great improvisers. I find it greatly appealing for the reasons, you know, you're discussing that they, they're able to take the few things they have and fix things and make things go and make them work when.
- [55:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
I hadn't known, literally. We had dryers and I would always buy a Kenmore simple dryer, you know, Model one, and the bearings would go out. I would just go get another one at a use. You know, there's a place in Fresno you could buy used. And I'm just going there and ask for a motor. And then if the belt broke. I was looking at the dryer the other day. I couldn't do that today. It's too sophisticated. Yeah, it's all done by microchips and everything.
- [56:08]
Jack Fowler
Well, hey, folks, we're going to talk about. Or Victor's going to talk about something he's written. But before that, I want you to consider checking out Victor's website. The blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com why? Because, well, if you enjoy what Victor writes and the wisdom he shares, you need to go there. So what are you going to find there? His weekly essay for American greatness, his weekly syndicated column, links to his books, links to his various appearances on other podcasts and shows, the archives of these podcasts, Ultra articles and the Ultra video. So two times a week, Victor writes articles exclusively for the Blade of Perseus. And he does a video that's exclusive there. To access them, to read them, to watch them, you need to subscribe. So it's 650amonth, and that's discounted for $65 for the full year. Check it out. The blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com is the address. And while we're giving out addresses, Victor on X is his handle is at VD Hansen, and Victor often writes a long piece I'm going to say once a week, but practically on on X and on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, there's VDH's Morning Cup. And what else? Oh, there's the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. Great group of people, about 60,000 people or so. So join it. Victor, you've written a piece for Mosaic. I never heard of Mosaic until I saw this the other day. You actually, on X, you, you reposted or or, you know, shared the link to this article you wrote. It's titled what we have Forgotten About War. And this was in response to to I'm just going to call him a guy, his name Ran Baratz, who was sharply critical of Israel's actions against Hamas. Can you tell us what did he say and what did you say in response? In your, in your well, he wrote.
- [58:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
A very Mosaic is is the it's a magazine that's put out under the auspices of the Hertog foundation, and our mutual friend Neil Kozadoi was the editor for years.
- [58:31]
Jack Fowler
Okay.
- [58:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think Jonathan Silver is known, but it's kind of like Tablet magazine that they emphasize or focus on issues of concern about Israel or Jewish Americans or Judaism worldwide. And he wrote this essay of which they're asking a number of historians to comment because it's very controversial. And he said, basically, to sum it up in a minute, says don't get too ient and don't get too excited. Yes, the IDF was brilliant in decapitating the hierarchy of the Hamas and Hezbollah and getting rid of Iranian surrogates. And yes, they're much better off, but why were they surprised on October 7th? Why was that barrier so flimsy? Why did they have to wait weeks until they had a viable operational plan? Why have they not been able to translate tactical or operational brilliance into final strategic resolutions, such as why hasn't Iran or Hezbollah just said, we give up, we're done, you win? And he gives a number of reasons. And I I'm not as critical as the idf, but I agree with him. I think it's a brilliant essay that he wrote, and some of it is new and some of it is just so what are just not to attribute to them. Why why is Afghanistan not working? Why didn't it work? Or why did we win World War II but we couldn't win Korea, or we couldn't win Vietnam, or we can't translate what our brilliant soldiers do at Benghazi into anything remote like a victory in Libya. Why did everybody get. Why did everybody run from Afghanistan? Of course the people will say it's nuclear weapons. Before 1945, or between 45 and 49, when America alone had the nuclear bomb, then there was no worry about blowing up the world. But once the Soviet Union got a bomb, and then China got a bomb, France got a bomb, Britain got a bomb, China, India has a. There's too many. North Korea. And any particular war that involves a client of a superpower can descend into a nuclear standoff. That's a typical. Mr. Ron says, no, no, no, no, you're too paranoid about that. Very rarely is there really a credible threat that somebody would risk deterrence. And in most of the cases that we've seen in the last 70 years, that hasn't income. Close. That was one of his art. Another is that in the west, in this therapeutic, materially comfortable leisure society, people are becoming more and more divorced from the elements of life. Food, hunger, scarcity, and more. As we talked about, utopian. And they do believe that war is an ossified concept that belongs in our past and we don't need to study it, we're going to eliminate it. Human nature, in other words, is malleable. With enough money or education, we can change who we are. And so when we see wars, we think, oh, Hamas isn't really that bad. The people, it's just misunderstood. Or we give. We let the Gulf states come in and pour money in there. Or why would we let Israel defeat them and kill people and go tell them, you're going to have to give up or else. That is so yesterday. That's one reason. Another reason. Another is that societies themselves in the west are so sophisticated and so therapeutic, they believe that they're not capable of exercising force that kills people. And that people, as we see with Alvin Bragg or Jesse Boudin or George people are really not culpable, just as people say. Well, critical legal theory postulates in California, if a guy goes in and steals sneakers and they trash a sneaker store and there's a law against it, and you want to put him in prison for it's only because the people who are millionaires don't steal sneakers. So they made a law, said, thou shalt not steal sneakers because they don't have to. That's Critical legal theory of character, but there's something to that character. So in this way of thinking, we don't really have to fight wars. It's just something that we're beyond that and we don't want to apply force because it would reflect badly on us. Not in our name, not in our name, not in our name. And then associated with that is, well, the people of Gaza didn't do this on October 7th. They're not. The people in the hospital had no idea there was a headquarters of Hamas underneath it. This, the mosque had no idea that they were storing RPGs in one of their basements. The school teacher didn't have any idea that Hamas commandants were meeting down the hall from him. Or well, there might have been one or two tag alongs on October 7, but the people of Gaza didn't support that. Or when they brought the bodies back and crowds tried to dismember or spit on corpses, well, that was just a few. And therefore, if you have that idea that there is no such thing as collective culpability, which war is about, then you try to fight war in that context. Well, maybe if we made predators and we just went out and took out individuals, you just take out the people responsible, not the people of the society at large. So if you're going to go into Gaza, you need to go target people with drone strikes. And that will stop it. That will stop it because the people didn't do it. These are the misconceptions about war that lead to it actually being kind of amoral because it never ends. It just keeps going on and on and on. Whereas, you know, Douglas MacArthur or Patton, there is no substitute for victory. And what was the classical antithesis to that? When you're in a war, to the extent you can, you try to defeat the enemy as quickly and as overwhelmingly and as disproportionately as possible. You try to humiliate its leadership, civilian and military, and you make its population conceive of what Sherman said. We make Georgia how H o W L and then you make them sign terms that change the political structure so they don't do that, I. E. The Confederacy, that is Germany, Japan, Italy. But you don't go into Iraq and try to rebuild it and make it a democracy. When the people and the culture are not defeated, they have no sense that you're going to defeat them. So you put the proverbial cart before the war. So that's what the essay was about. My only criticism in it was, well, what was the alternative? I needed to hear an alternative. So you're an Israeli, and you say, you know what? What was the alternative? What if there were not these limitations? I also said fertility, which I mentioned earlier. If you have one child or you're with a declining birth rate, you're worried about losing your only child in a war. So. And without a draft, there's fewer people in a war, too. So people can. They're not. They're disconnected of what's actually going on. But let's say that he was right and you did everything he wanted. So everybody listening. This is what he would do. He doesn't really explicitly say that. I wish he did. But it's clear enough and he's intellectually honest enough that if you read this critique of the IDF and the Netanyahu government, and by the way, he's also saying the United States is constraining Israel and preventing strategic resolution. And that's true. But what. What if Israel did everything he wanted? What would it look like today? Okay, let's start with Hamas. Hamas does that, did this. They go back in immediately, not three weeks later, and they use overwhelming force. Somebody say, well, how much more overwhelming could they be? Well, if somebody goes into a hospital and they're killing people from a hospital, then you bomb. You warn them, like we did with leaflets, and then you go to it. There is no Philadelphia corridor. You go through the whole country, and then you occupy the country and you say, this is the way it's going to be. And you pick leaders who are anti Hamas, and you're there long enough, like we were in Japan or Italy or Germany, that when the Hamas people try to kill the people who don't, then you kill Hamas, and then you rebuild it only after you defeated it. Okay, how about Iran? Well, Iran has attacked you with 500 projectiles. So the United States said, we don't. We don't really want you to reply, but kind of, sort of, if you did think about it this way. Israel, of the 500 cruise missiles and drones and hypersonic, I don't know, only 10 hit you. So you have to reward their incompetence, not their intention. The results, they weren't that bad. I know they wanted to wipe you off the face of the earth, but you can't go down to their level. He says, yes, you do. So what you do is you hit back and you take out all the nuclear facilities, all of their military bases, and you bomb Carg island so they don't get any. And that would take you about two weeks, 300 planes day after day after day. And then you hold public opinion and you say what you're going to do. Same thing with Hezbollah. You have the walkie talkies, you have the pagers. You went in and destroyed their ability. But then you go in and you go after the entire enclave of Hezbollah and you kill them or get them out of the country and then you tell the Lebanese government if they come back, we are holding you collectively responsible, just like we did in Japan and just like we did in Hamburg and Dresden. If you want to go back down that route and therefore you have strategic resolution and you don't have a war like we haven't had a war in 70 years with Germany or Italy. Yeah, that's what he's talking about. But there are danger. I'm not going to say this is the correct I'm just in the essay I it has to assume that somebody won't nuke you, that Iran won't say if you hit our nuclear facilities, China or Russia is going to stand in here or we have two nuclear weapons that we hit and we're going to hit Israel with. Or you think you can do that? CNN and msnbc, when you hit a hospital where a bunch of Hamas people are underneath and a heart patient gets blown up, we're going to broadcast that. So you can see. Anyway, that's what the essay and my response were.
- [70:26]
Jack Fowler
Well, thanks Victor. We have time for one more topic and we I'd like to get your take on mercy killing euthanasia craze in Canada. It's just what a, what a crazy ass place. And we'll get to that when we come back from these final important messages.
- [70:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign.
- [70:55]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show recording on Sunday 19th January. This episode is up on Thursday, January 23rd. The mothership for the Victor Davis Hansen show podcast is John Solomon's Just the news. Go to justthenews.com and and the podcast is now also being recorded on video and if you are interested in that you can go to Rumble and the address is too long. Just the Victor Davis Hansen show is now on Rumble. So Victor, I had, I sent you a note ahead of the show. If Canada becomes the 51st state, can we name it Kovorkia Wesley Smith, who's been just a terrific writer. He's been covering euthanasia as an issue for, for years and other topics and he reports on that. This is what a country Canada has had at least 15,000 people die in 2023 with the last data set. But if you Some providences provinces did not report the data. So if you extrapolate for the whole population, over 28,000 Canadians died waiting for health care. And this is Canada's vaunted health care system. We should be replicating Canada's health care, shouldn't we? So 28,000 people died waiting for heart surgery, et cetera. Meanwhile, 15,000 people died from euthanasia, which is a growing craze. And many of those people who died from euthanasia was they decided to kill them, to have themselves killed because they couldn't get the heart surgery they needed. So they might as well off themselves. And the last thing is hospices in Canada that resist allowing lethal injections on site because they want to focus exclusively on proper care. And I would say that would be like a Catholic hospice. They have now been defunded by the government which has is obsessed with the culture of death. So this is, this is Canada. Canadians are nice, Victor, but Canada I don't think is nice. Any thoughts about this as we head into the home stretch?
- [73:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, be careful. I just said that the people in this leadership are connected and war. So I mean that's like saying, well, it's 1945 and I crossed the Rhine and every German family, I haven't found one picture of Hitler. Yeah. And they're, they do they, they're such nice people and not one of them has any idea what went on at all. I didn't know. And they're very different than they were in 1939 when I saw those news reels where they were celebrating the destruction of Poland.
- [73:47]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [73:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
So euthanasia, talking about philology, you, you know, you took you means good in Greek. And by the way, utopia doesn't mean you good place. It's uk, not you. It's no place but eu. Thanatos is the word for death. So a good, supposedly good death. And it grew up, this whole movement was a post war movement largely, you can trace it, Jack, almost entirely to the advent of breeding. The ventilators and IV infusions were people who were critically ill and there was made a prognosis that they wouldn't live, could be kept alive through the use of technology. And then people saw their loved ones wither away. And so I'm trying to be fair minded, but out of that, that turned out to be kind of a small percentage. So then the good death movement said, well, everybody has a right because it's their own person to commit suicide. And they can commit suicide when they think that there's no hope of living Well, I think I probably know at least four people that were told they have no hope of living and they're still alive and doing quite well. So that's one thing. And number two, when you're told you have no hope of living, you're not as going to be as clear as when you're sick to begin with. You might not be as clear minded. And then number three, it's very ironic that the state that outlaws capital punishment for horrific murderers allows late term abortion in euthanasia, which is a form of killing a human being and not only allows it, but facilitates it. I, I, I can't imagine it. I, you know, I'm 71 and when my dear mother was in perfect health, she got something called a meningoma brain tumor. And they took it out and they swore that it was benign, as 90% of them are, but it was one of the 10% that transformed into a malignant meningioma. And a year later, it was everywhere in her body. Another sucker, I mean another softball sized brain tumor. Lungs, breast, spine. So she wasn't going to live, but she could talk. So then the question was, what was going to happen? We didn't want her to die in a hospital, but so we brought her out to where she was born on the farm. And then we took everybody and we divided up hours and everybody kept the, and the hospice, the hospice people were wonderful. They said, your, your mother will not suffer if you keep the nutrition going, the, the IV going. And they gave us opiates to stop the pain. And there was a point when she couldn't talk anymore. But we kept a vigil. I don't think that three week period of my life was at all onerous. And I think she enjoyed it. I don't think she suffered. But I couldn't imagine just saying, well, mom, you're not going to live, so why don't you just kill yourself?
- [77:26]
Jack Fowler
Be practical.
- [77:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, be practical. And the same thing happened with my grandfather, had congestive heart. Heart. I was there when he died. The same thing happened with my daughter. I mean, they came to me and said, your daughter's had a massive stroke. We were, we thought we had no choice but to operate to take this blood clot out. She cannot have blood thinner. And it was caused by a very rare form of a virulent leukemia that came out of nowhere. And you will put her on a ventilator and what do you want to do? Well, it wasn't, I just said, after about a day or two, I just said, let's just take her off the ventilator, but make her comfortable. Maybe she'll snap out, you know what I mean? And. Or she didn't. But there was no idea that I was going to try to end that or she would, because after the operation, until the second stroke, she was cognizant. And she said, you know, they said that she only she might be permanently paralyzed. They didn't know it was cancer. They thought it might have been energy at first.
- [78:38]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [78:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
So she was upbeat. But my point is that it's very dangerous for humans to play God. And this is never a static phenomenon. It always accelerates and it always explains accelerates in one direction. That if you start killing people for maybe understandable grounds at the beginning, cost family. And don't dismiss the idea that people don't have the money sometimes or there's in our dispersed family, there's no one to care for them.
- [79:12]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [79:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
And the hospices are crowded. They really are. But when you start thinking like that, then you allow it to go on quicker and quicker and then you do it. And now that's what's happening. And you get to the Orwelling situation where the state steps in and will not fund a hospice that won't allow that decision to be made. Yeah. And so, and then there's the other thing is as well. I mean, if you really do believe that, if you're a pro euthanasia people, then maybe you should just let people do that if they want to do that. If they're home and they're ill, there's mechanisms that's called a firearm or something to do it. But it's a private. I don't think the state wants to get into it, especially a state that is facilitating this. When I, when you do have viable fetuses. They're not even fetuses. Excuse me, I'm sorry. To people, they're babies. And There was about 10,000 of them a year that are terminated in the birth canal or even before that, that last trimester that would have lived outside the womb with no problem. And you allow that, or you, you, you allow that killing of a fetus. But then you also say that life is so sacred that this man, like Joe Biden just, he just commuted the death sentence of somebody who just barbarically butchered a police officer. And I don't understand the consistency or the continuity of these people that are making these decisions. On the left. Euthanasia, good. Radical abortion to the moment of birth, good. Capital punishment, bad. I want to save the Life of someone who's murdered, barbarically someone. But I want to kill an innocent baby, allow that to happen. And I want somebody who is ill to be killed before their natural death sequence.
- [81:17]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, it's. There's also.
- [81:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm just going to add one thing. There's also a big difference. There's a big difference between people. This is what. So I had a father who had a heart attack and a stroke. And it was very clear to me that although he'd been fine the day before he went. When he went in the hospital, we took him in the ambulance. He was in four hours, he was comatose. I didn't know how long he was going to live, but. But I knew he was not going to wake up. But the point I'm making is he died within 48 hours. So if there's a very poor family and somebody is brain dead and is shriveling before their eyes and they've been on this vigil month after month, that's one thing, but that's not the course. We have so lowered the bar. We're making people who get a diagnosis of a fatal. You have pancreatic cancer and then they think about that and then they. But they don't. They don't know what life would be like the last month or two or three. And you can see where it's leading in dystopian novels, an Orwell or an Atlas Huxley novel where people voluntarily say, you know, we have. Well, maybe you can. Is this so hard to think of, Jack? Our society or global village says, you know, there's 7 billion people on the planet. We have figured out how much consumption you do each year and there's not enough resources for you people from 74 to 85, you're consuming more than you produce and you're taking too many people to take care of you. So we suggest that when you hit the critical mark of all of your talents versus what you take out of the society, you should kill yourself. I think that's the.
- [83:17]
Jack Fowler
Some. Something between Logan's Run and Soylent Green, you know, and, and just let's look at China, which is an upside down pyramid of demography and, and very. Euthanasia is going to be a, A massive way of some societies dealing with their elderly.
- [83:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
So funny if they, I mean, if you think somebody is not. Is going to live and take too many, that's what.
- [83:48]
Jack Fowler
Useless eaters.
- [83:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, you can have robotics, right? I mean robotics are doing that. Japan.
- [83:53]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [83:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think it's an individual choice and the state should keep out of it. I really do. I mean, I know religion has a. I had another member of my family. I won't describe them very much. I disagreed. He got a very close and I have to be very careful because it's. I don't want to embarrass people who might be listening, who. But it was an awful. In my family and he had emphysema very bad. He was a heavy smoker. He was 78. And for about a year he was struggling with it. But he was not near the point of death. And they called me. I was the only person and they. The neighbor called me. He lived about three miles from me. And he said, you have to come here immediately. Something's terribly happened to your uncle. And I went in and he had shot himself with a shotgun.
- [84:45]
Jack Fowler
Oh, gosh.
- [84:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I identified and called the ambulance. But that was his decision to make. You know what I mean? I disagreed with. I thought that people around him enjoyed his presence, his wit and. But I. I didn't understand what he was coping with the pain. Financial. I think in his case, he was afraid that he would consume the. All of his heart, all of the family's money if he was in a long term. And he didn't. He wanted to make sure that his two children would have an inheritance. So he. Yeah, but my point is, I didn't. That's a little different than. You can condemn that or you can. You can understand it, but it's not. The state is what I'm getting.
- [85:34]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [85:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
The state's got to keep out of.
- [85:36]
Jack Fowler
It states making it a virtue. Yeah.
- [85:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's a matter of a person's individual decision and their religion, religious doctrine and what they believe in. We all have a soul. We came in. It's a Socratic idea that you all have a soul, as Socrates says, and you don't want to damage it because the soul is like a song and it comes alive with the body. That's. Just because you destroy a violin or you destroy a piano doesn't mean the song they played vanishes. It only comes alive when it has a musical instrument. But that doesn't mean that the song doesn't exist. We come alive, our souls do, when we have a physical body, but when the physical body is gone, doesn't mean there was nothing there to animate us.
- [86:27]
Jack Fowler
I think my soul in that case may be a kazoo or a ukulele.
- [86:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Mine is a very, very broken down.
- [86:42]
Jack Fowler
No, it's not. No, it's not. Vicki, you've been terrific. Hey, two things I write Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter for the center for Civil Society, which is determined to strengthen civil society. It comes out every Friday. It's free.
- [86:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's free.
- [86:59]
Jack Fowler
No risk. We're not selling your name. What do you get when it when you open it up or your inbox? Well, there's 14 recommended readings of great articles I've come across and interesting articles the previous week. Like I'm going to have Victor's Mosaic piece in the next one. So go to civilthoughts.com and sign up for that. Many people have and they they do enjoy it. So thanks for that. And thanks to the folks who on Apple follow this show and take the time to rate the show zero to five stars. Seven thousand plus people have done that. The rating average is 4.9. High five for Victor Davis Hansen. Some people take the time to write comments. Here's one. We read them all. By the way, Crystal Pistol, 17, writes, Hooray for Victor. I'll begin by sharing my sentiments that Victor and his co host Sammy Jack are brilliant. I don't know about that, but Sammy, yes, I try and make a point to listen to every episode as I'm always learning something new. As simple as this may sound, I thoroughly enjoy the impressions and silly voices Victor sometimes does. Makes me giggle every time. Sometimes it's the simple things that can brighten someone's day. Thank you. Crystal Pistol, 17. I agree with you totally. Victor was a comedian in his previous life.
- [88:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just come out of an academic conference and there was a person next to not next. I won't identify the location, but Jack, wow, you know, is my seminal work. Maybe you're unaware, but I just detour. And then they always do this with their hands and like these are little birds flying. These are cool. And and this word resolution was thoroughly discussed in an earlier paper that I wrote when I was on a sabbatical at Oxford, but that followed from my seminal year at Princeton with this idea. And you're thinking, man, got five minutes. This is going to go on and on and on and wow. I would just like to continue before I began, but by finishing in the middle. I don't know, man.
- [89:08]
Jack Fowler
Lots of drips. Lots of drips in academia. Y well, Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for, for all the wisdom you shared today. Thank you folks for listening. And we will, we will be. I can never get that right. I got to find a new way to end it. We will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Thank you and goodbye.
- [89:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thanks, everyone.
- [89:34]
Jack Fowler
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