← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Lost Appeal: From Democratic Party to Their Representatives and Policies
01:35:54
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [01:37]
Jack Fowler
Hello ladies. Hello, gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the man lucky enough to be the the host to ask Victor questions. I like to ask the questions I think you'd like to ask Victor. By the way, is that guy over there slurping? That's Victor Davis Hansen. He is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale Colle. We are recording this episode on Saturday, April 12th. Passover. Blessings to our brothers and sisters in Abraham. Today's episode will be up on Thursday, April 17. That is holy Thursday for us Christians, I'm sure for my orthodox friends. Sometimes we're a week off. Depends on where the moon is. When the moon. Whether it's a full moon or not. You know Victor, a lot of things can be happening between when we're recording. When this is up, I'm sure a lot's going to happen and that's why stay tuned for when Victor talks to the great Sammy Wink for the Friday and Saturday episodes where Victor will talk about what has transpired this this week. Now we've got so much to talk about, Victor. And I think the first topic that will be of interest is your take on a new CNN poll that says Democrats are just not the party of the people anymore. And we will get to your thoughts on that. A lot of military leadership issues, Qatari Qatar and its massive expenditures at US Colleges, California homelessness, an obnoxious admiral. Maybe there's more things. We'll do all that when we come back from these important messages.
- [03:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [06:34]
Jack Fowler
We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show. Victor, I forgot another topic. We want to talk about all the these, all the media types. I, Joe I know was so sad when I saw him so decrepit but I didn't have the courage to say anything about it at the time. But we'll get to that a little later. First topic today, Victor, if I could find my paper. Oh, here it is. CNN poll. I forget this guy's first name, Enten, but he's, he's the guy that's on cnn.
- [07:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's on there. He's the one that sort of drives everybody crazy on cnn, right?
- [07:05]
Jack Fowler
Well it's, he's showing the numbers and they don't like the numbers. Shocking shot. And here's one that shocks shocking data shows Americans believe Republicans care more about people. Democrats are the party of the people. Know more. And here's, I won't read this whole thing that I had cut out but Democrats always, they always had a lead on this question. Back in 2017, before the 2018 midterms, Democrats had a 13 point lead on the question again is who cares more about the needs for people like you? Okay, in 2005, Democrats had a 23 point lead over Republicans and in 1994, which was a big Republican year, they had Democrats had a 19 point lead. Now all of a sudden a tie. All of a sudden the Democrats who were the party of the people. No more. No more. We get a tie on this question. On it we get this, we get a tie on this question. On a question that has traditionally overwhelmingly been a Democratic advantage. People for party, which party cares more, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, that's just that was a transcript. So it's a little bumbling. I just do want to make one additional point on this poll. Currently though, Democrats, do you care more for me, Democrats have an 18 point advantage among those with college degrees. That's the same number as it had in 2017. But in 2017among non college graduates, Democrats had a seven point advantage. Right now Republicans have a nine point advantage. Victoria, your thoughts on I wonder why.
- [08:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
This is half, I wonder why it's really shocking to Democrats because there's two things going on. The more that there's reality and then there's the abyss between the rhetoric and the reality. So you've got on the one hand Bernie Sanders, the squad, aoc, Schumer, Pelosi, talking about oligarchs, including plutocrats and aristocrats. And it's the old boilerplate. But then when you look at their actual positions. Does anybody believe that when you look at those old clips that the Trump administration and Fox News have been focusing on of Nancy Pelosi giving this eloquent. She was really good. She was in her mid-50s about why China was cheating, we had to clamp down. Or Schumer. I forgot that. Anyway, does anybody believe she would ever give that talk again? No. No. So it's not perception, it's the Democratic Party moved to the party of the wealthy. Now why was that? That was because from about 1990 to 2025, something called Silicon Valley went from a bunch of kind of little nerdy people and their garages or Steve Jobs off the wall to $9 trillion in market capitalization, partnering with the FBI to suppress news, Mark Zuckerberg giving $419 million to warp the work of the registrars in the 2020 election, etc. So they became not a counterculture, but the culture. And it was as big or bigger than anybody on Wall street. The big fortunes. And they were left wing. And the Democratic Party lapped that up like a puppy to milk. They loved it. That's where anybody who went out of the Obama administration got a high paying job in Silicon Valley. At the same time they adopted this globalist, ecumenical, pro Europe, transatlantic, we are the world type of attitude about trade, communications. And this was the period in which USAID grew up to 50 billion and basically foreign aid voice of all served one purpose, to blanket and persuade the world in the left wing ideology. But it was an elite ideology. So that's. And then the Republican Party was like a deer in the headlights. And this is Romneyism, McCainism, Bushism, hey, we give capital gains cuts. Hey, we want to privatize Social Security, we play golf. Why aren't the rich people for us? Because you weren't hip. You didn't get the professional classes, the lawyers, the doctors, the professors, the reporter. All the professional classes are want to be hip and wealthy. You want to be straight and stayed and wealthy. And that's only a few people in the corporate elite anymore. So they captured the wealthy classes and they changed their message for their donor class. So suddenly it was not about protecting union jobs and lunchmucket blue collar people. It was invest in China and don't ever say anything about China. That's racist. Oh, you said it had a bio lab. That's unfair. It was a virology lab, all that stuff. So they got into dei, and that was a really weird thing, too, because DEI replaced class. Sudden they like to be around rich people and entitled people. But then people said, well, I thought you were color. And they thought, we are. We're for Eric Holder and Oprah and the Obamas and everybody who's. Because they're wealth, their class is no longer synonymous with race. And so they got rid of class. They used to say race, class, gender, race. Then it was just race and gender. They didn't care about class. So in other words, they create this warp policy that Kamala Harris was an oppressed victim and somebody in East Palestine who makes 20,000 bucks is her oppressor, her victimizer. And it was just a complete metamorphosis. So, yeah, it is the party of the very wealthy and the subsidized very poor. And that is sort of condescending. Well, we'll take care of you people and give you a bunch of welfare, but don't be like those Hispanics in the Valley, San Joaquin Valley, or the Rio Glen and think you can get on your hind legs and tell us that you're going to vote against a Democratic candidate. Or do not be like, what's her name? Leah, the Democratic bundler who was Asian. And she's on TV a lot. And then they turned on her. Yeah, I forgot her. She's wonderful. But you may be a minority, but don't ever question us. Don't ever question us. So that's what happened. And everybody understands that. And especially you can really see it now. It's really strange. I mean, I don't like the divide mainstream Wall Street. I think Trump has helped Wall street just as much as he has Main Street. But the point I'm making is that a lot of this hysteria, and I was reading Business Insider, I think it's not just 87, it's 93% of the stock market is held by 10 of the market capitalization. Not the number of stocks, but the value in dollars is held by 10% of the country. And part of the reason the Democratic Party is so outraged is that its spokesmen are so heavily invested in stocks. Nancy Pelosi, they're worth $200 million. I don't know how she made that. She should investigate herself rather than to see if Donald Trump was insider trading by saying, go out and buy stocks. But my point is it's the party of elite privilege. It's geographical it's the big cities. The big cities are the encapsulation of the Democratic Party. It's if you go to San Francisco, it's Hunters Point and Presidio Heights. If you go to Los Angeles, it's South Central and Watts and Pacific Palisades in Malibu. But it's not out in Oxnard or something. It's not middle class. And it's the same thing in Washington, D.C. it's the poor people who are in the ghetto, so to speak, and then the elite, media elite, and all the people in politics and academia. That's the Democratic Party. And they have a whole vocabulary they've developed for everybody in between. Chumpstrag's garbage. Now, Obama, I mean, Biden said garbage. They're just garbage. They're the real garbage. Irredeemables, deplorables. Obama started it when he said, they just cling to the guns. They just. Out there, I can't win. They just cling to guns in religion, the clingers. So they have a. And then remember Peter Stroke and Lisa Page? I could smell them at Walmart in their text exchange. So they really hate. I got in a little tiff right after the 2016 election. There was a Silicon Valley minor grandee, and I think she was in B and B or bread for whatever you call renting your house out. She had a company and she wrote a Airbnb. Yeah, did you remember that? She wrote a posting. It came kind of infamous and I wrote a column about it and she said, these people are basically trash and this election was a bunch of losers and they have no education and their cities are crappy. And I said, if you actually want to look at crappy cities, look at the roads in Palo Alto or, you know, or. Anyway, I was doing that and she got really angry and tried to rope about me. But it's that type of elite person that's in the Democratic Party, cultural elite, and they're very privileged. And then they feel so bad about the distant poor, but not the immediate poor, the distant poor. And then they hate the middle class. The middle class lacks the sympathy of the noble suffering of the poor. And they don't have the culture of the upper classes, so they just hate them. These are the people that go to Olive Garden and they can't stand them.
- [17:25]
Jack Fowler
Victor, I would love to see this question asked again three months from now, because there's movement here and I think the mindset of the person answering the question, the average American who cares more about you is influenced. How can it not Be by the street theater we see from the left. We've always had protests in the country, but it seems like this is now the official hobby of residents of major cities in America. And so this is what this party is about. It's about these weirdos who are protesting.
- [18:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's the weirdos. But have you noticed when you see, have you seen that I don't understand people who are keen and attacking Teslas when They've got a 360 degree photographic shield around them.
- [18:20]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [18:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
But you see them and they kind of try to be stealthy. They walk up and turn their back and then. And they're secretly keying it. Or one guy was smearing excrement on it. But it's all there. But when you look, go file maybe I know everybody. This is stereotypical and it's not data driven. But everyone I've seen almost, there's a white woman or guy around my age, 70s. And I almost always get this picture of the people, as I said earlier, that you see Santa Cruz in those turbulent years of 70 and I saw them and they were all very wealthy and they were all loud mouthed and they were all selling drugs and promiscuous and all this stuff. And it's almost like these people are just ossified in amber. They're the same people and they just arrested. I think I mentioned a guy right near me near Fresno and he was just a normal person, upper class, you know what I mean? Why are they doing this? Is it they're going back to their college days. But they're the, they're privileged people and they get really angry when you talk to them that Trump won overwhelmingly. The Hispanic mail vote or the black male vote went up to 26%. Or Hispanics was almost 50, 50. And their attitude, have you noticed they don't even hide at these elites. They think like, well, after all we've done for them. Or they'll talk about people picking grapes. Even Jasmine Crockett. I thought this is so weird. She went to prep school. She may be that fake black patois and you all, but she went to a finishing school where the tuition was $30,000 a year. My kids went to public schools and pretty rough schools. And I don't think I could have afforded tuition at that time. And it cost $1,000 a year. But my point is this is that she was talking about immigrants and that's how she got into the whole cotton picking. We don't pick them. Cockatoo. We're not going to. There's no plantation no more. We're not going to be picking cotton. How many of you got and. But we'll let the Mexican people do it. We'll let all the Mexican people do it. I know probably 200 Mexican American people very well, and probably 50 illegals, I imagine. And not one of them is in agricultural labor, I can guarantee you. They're doctors or patrolmen, they're architects, they're contractors, they're painters or. But there's almost nobody. I think the percentage of people. She said, well, who's going to pick our crops? I think Schumer and Pelosi said that when you actually look at illegal aliens and you look at the percentage in agriculture, it's down to about 20%. Somebody said, well, how can that be possible? Well, I'm looking out the window right now at 40 acres of almonds. And I spent a summer with a mallet and gunny sacks and canvases once, not on my place, but I was hired out as an almond harvester. And you went over there and it was like you were. My dad would come and check on us and he said, well, you like to play baseball? Swing away. So you take this mallet and hit the trunk, you know what I mean, really hard. And it had a rubber mallet. It was huge. It was really heavy. And then you hit the main laterals going up. And then you had this heavy duty canvas. It was so heavy. And you dragged it on both sides and then you did it. And then you rolled it up and you kind of siphoned it into a big gunny sack. And that took per tree. There was 114 trees per acre. But that took about 20 minutes, 30 minutes to do. A good 20 minutes. Yes. And that's how they harvested them. And they hired my brothers and cousins to do. I think it was 20 acres. We spent the whole summer doing it. I look out the window and the guy comes in and I'm having coffee in the morning and I look around, I hear this horrible noise and I think, wow, I won't be able to do an interview today, one day out of the year. And then like two hours later, he's gone. And there's a neat row down every almond row of. Right in the middle of the row there's a row of almonds and that sits there for two days to dry out. And then the next thing I big sweeper comes in and you know, to pick them up. And I think, well, this will be. Oh, man. 48. And then about it's gone. And then it goes into a Bunch of bins and then they fork them on. And I think harvest is over. One guy someday. Yes. They don't need us. They don't need people like me with mallets and teenagers.
- [23:04]
Jack Fowler
Well, that's someday, Victor. When your way. And we're going to pre record. I think I'd love to hear a show. Don't answer this now because we have other. But Victor's pickings. Like everything Victor's. Victor, how you dealt with persimmons. How you dealt with plums.
- [23:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I have picked persimmons. I have picked pleaches. Plums, nectarines. Grapes. Fresh. And for raisins, I have worked in almonds. My mother would get very mad at my grandfather because we had about 100 walnut trees. He was a very great guy. He put walnut trees on all these little alleyways ways. This 135 should have been perfectly flat. But it had all these beautiful hills and he wouldn't level it. The pond, it looked like Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings. It really did. It was beautiful. But he lined every little row. I mean, there'd be an acre here and two acres. And the Federal Land bank would come out and say, what is this? This is so inefficient. And my grandfather would say, well, I've got Wilson Wonder walnuts here. But they were beautiful. And we had to go pick them. And he'd get. My mom would say, if those boys pick those, you know, pick. A big machine would shake them and then we would have to pick them up on the ground. And she'd say, they have to wear cotton gloves, dad, because those boys. The teachers are getting mad because they came to school with their whole hands were walnut stained and it looks very dirty. And people were saying they weren't unkempt. So we had to wear these little. So I did walnuts. I've done everything.
- [24:37]
Jack Fowler
I think Wilson Wonder walnuts.
- [24:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, Wilson Wonders Hartnells. I've done all of them. And I did pick. Oh, the worst were boysenberries. I've done boysenberry patch. Yeah, I did it all. And it's pretty hard. But I always had great respect for farm workers. I really do.
- [24:58]
Jack Fowler
Well, you are one. You were one. So to deserve it now this.
- [25:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
But I have to say something here.
- [25:03]
Jack Fowler
Victor.
- [25:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Listen, listen.
- [25:05]
Jack Fowler
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- [26:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Wait a minute. What do you mean? He's old Joe Biden from Scranton and he's. I went down that. I went down to that basement. I said, said, measure me and cut me six foot a chain. Then I went out there and I said, corn Pop, you're you. Come on, let's get it out. We'll get it over with. Corn Pop said no. And then I went back in my lifeguard and I was tan and all these African American kids looked at those blonde hairs on my tan leg. And so I had a lot of relationships with the black community. Remember that most racist, racist thing in the.
- [27:13]
Jack Fowler
Well, he. He went to black church every Sunday. He was the most Puerto Rican guy in the world. I think he was a Jewish guy.
- [27:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, yes. And he also. He was also a tough guy because he said, you know, I don't know why people got this idea. I was a. I went once in there to the lunch counter and I said, did you. You make fun of my sister? I just took his head and I slammed it down on that counter. Remember that? And then Donald Trump. I'll tell you what I like to do with Donald Trump. Like to take him behind the gym and beat the hell out. Excuse my language. Beat the hell out. He had all of that. It was so Funny, he had that insecurity and he would always brag about beating people up and never was in any little vignette. He was weak or the victim or naive. He was always dominant and tough. Yeah, he was a pathetic human being.
- [28:09]
Jack Fowler
Except when he was put in jail in South Africa. Africa with another Walter Mitty thing. Well, let me.
- [28:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor, wait a minute. You're conflating the uncle who was eaten by cannibals, right?
- [28:19]
Jack Fowler
No, it happens on every generation of the Biden family. So two things. One is, well, we've been just overloaded the last week or two with these retrospectives from Democrat insiders about coming clean now when they should have come clean weeks ago, but our lying eyes didn't believe or whatever. Two things. One is Daily Mail article about AIDS reveal how Biden was out of it and needed fluorescent tape on the floor to guide him. And he thought in his preparation for this now infamous debate with Donald Trump, he thought he was president of NATO rather than President of the United States.
- [29:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Why are you doing all this now?
- [29:07]
Jack Fowler
Well, why don't you ask George Stephanopoulos who this another Daily Mail story where he comes. I think this is quoted in this book by Chris Whipple, how Trump beat Biden, Harris and the odds, et cetera. Yeah, George interviewed Biden right after the disastrous debate and softballed him questions, but came away from it privately and personally.
- [29:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
He said, yeah, yes, he would. All of these people that Kane, Ron Cain, that's chief of all of them, deprecated Joe Scarborough, he was giving insinuations that he knew he was the one that said he's fit. I've never seen him a stronger, more coherent Joe Biden. I wrote a lot of columns and I got a lot of nasty letters. I was mentioned on TV by somebody to be careful about suggesting that he may be non compos mentes. Everybody knew we've talked about. He read the prompt stop. You know, he read it. He'd say now as the negotiations in the middle stop. And they had, remember, he would pull out those little cards of all the people. You could read them. They showed them of who to call on and what their background was. This was the biggest cover up. It would made water look like a joke. It's going. We put into the White House someone who did not know where he was on given days or what he was doing. And he was controlled by a cabal of people whom we don't even know who they were exactly other than our guesses that they were a coalition of the Obama people. Obama, Michelle And Barack plus the squad, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders wing, and then with some input from the orthodox leftists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. And they were doing all the appointments, everything. No one else knew what was going on. He didn't know. And then Jill Biden, she was the conduit that they called. And Hunter, Hunter and Jill would translate that and do the auto pin. Probably no idea where he was. Very tragic. He should have. He lived by the coup and he died by the coup. He was put in by a coup of sorts. When they looked at that field and they said Joe didn't win New Hampshire, he did not win Nevada caucus, he had not won Iowa, he's going nowhere. We've got a bunch of nuts. We've got Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth, this is not going to work. So you get rid of those people, give them a cabinet position, give them this, give them that, give Bernie another house on a lake or something, but do not let these people. And all of a sudden, after South Carolina, they all disappeared. Joe was anointed within 30 days and the COVID up went. And then every once in a while they'd say, we got a big trouble. Give him, tell him that the laptop was Russian disinformation. We'll round up some flunkies and get old James A. Baker from the FBI and put him over there and Twitter and make sure he censors the news. Call up Zuckerberg and tell him to put in 400 million. That was how they ran the whole thing. And then when he was a useful wax and effigy and they had that, then they said, you know what? He's got fluorescent tape on. He doesn't know where he is. Well, I know what we'll do. We'll have a classic never done before debate. We'll have a debate before he's even nominated, before the conventions have ever met. Can you imagine that? Well, Trump wouldn't do that. He's ahead in the poll. No, no, no, no. We'll bait him. Trump is very vulnerable to macho baiting. So just put Jack, put Biden on for a minute and make him act like he's Clint Eastwood. Make my day, Trump. Make my day. I'm ready for you anytime. And we had that June, was it, June 27 debate. And he just looked there like he was. I don't know where he was, he wasn't there. But then they decided, just take the coup in reverse, we'll just get him out of here. They had a little problem with Jill Hunter was worried that he'd go to jail of his dad, but they promised him that he would be pardoned and that's how we got it. And then they were going to have an open convention. This is the party of the people, transparency. And all of a sudden the Obamas got rid of Biden and they didn't understand that Kamela had it sewed up and then a billion dollars later she was anomaly.
- [33:50]
Jack Fowler
Well, we should talk about that. I'm going to spring this on you when we come back from these important messages, but it's about James Clyburn who figures largely into all these things. And as the aforementioned coming back from these important messages.
- [34:11]
Narrator
We'll be back to our show in just a moment. But first, an important message for anyone concerned about their financial future. Have you seen the headlines? The Department of Government Efficiency has uncovered a staggering $115 billion in government fraud, with investigators suggesting this is just the tip of the iceberg. Financial analysts are now confirming what many the previous administration's economic success was largely artificial, propped up by funneling trillions through NGOs and creating an economic mirage. As this corruption is exposed, experts predict we're heading toward a short but deep recession when this false economic support evaporates. What does this mean for your retirement savings? Throughout our history, when governments manipulate economies and currencies collapse, physical gold has been mankind's most reliable store of value. Shouldn't you consider protecting part of your retirement with an asset that governments can't create with keystrokes or devalue through corruption? American Alternative Assets is offering a free wealth protection guide to help safeguard your financial future from the coming economic correction. Call 833-2-USA Gold or visit victorlovesgold.com today for your free guide and learn why now may be the perfect time to add precious metals to your portfolio. That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com protect what you've earned before the fraud economy collapses completely.
- [35:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [37:38]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson show recording on Saturday, April 12th. This episode is up on Thursday the 17th, two days before the 258th of April. That's Paul Revere's ride. Lexington and Concord next day. So 250th anniversary of the shot heard round the world is coming up. Maybe Victor and the great Sammy Wink will talk about that when they record there the next two episodes. Victor's got a website, the Blade of Perseus. You'll find it@victorhansen.com why would you go there? Well, you're a fan of Victor's. And Victor doesn't only appear on videos and podcasts. Audio, video. But he also writes a ton. He's a machine. He writes two pieces exclusively for the Blade of Perseus every week. And he also does an exclusive video for the Blade of Perseus. Do subscribe. It's $65 a year, discounted from $6.50 a month. Also there you'll find his weekly essays for American Greatness, weekly syndicated column, the links to the archives to these podcasts, links to Victor's books and other appearances. Month. You know, every month he's there with Megyn Kelly and he, he's on many other.
- [38:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
I like a lot.
- [38:55]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, she. If she'd only get rid of the cursing.
- [39:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Everybody has their search. You have to have the exceptions for everyone.
- [39:06]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [39:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know what's really weird? You said I write a lot, but I've had this sinus infection. So I wrote a column and at the time I was writing it, I was trying to think of things and so I was reading this column for the Proofread to send it in. And I had written sinitis in the middle of a sentence. So I was like, my head's on top. And I typed in sinitis as I was going along and I thought, wow, trade war sinaitis.
- [39:39]
Jack Fowler
Well, first of all, it could have been Mount Sinai you were thinking of. Who knows? But yeah, Victor, you just.
- [39:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
That sounds like a Joe Biden handler.
- [39:48]
Jack Fowler
I mean you, you write actually a book a year now, I think. But if you took all the other content you wrote for all all the other essays or new criteria in other places, I think you'd have to blame three books.
- [40:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
I've never had a normal life. I need to develop one before it's too late. I'm socially inept and backward.
- [40:13]
Jack Fowler
Oh, mamma mia.
- [40:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Anyway, socially inept, I do two columns a week and I do two ultra columns and then I try to do one essay a week. And I'm working on this book on how Donald Trump came back. But that's hard to write, right? Because you know what I mean? You're right in, as we say in Latin, in medias rebus, right in the middle of things and it's hard to know how it's going to end up.
- [40:35]
Jack Fowler
Well, and then. Yeah. And when the actual publication date comes, will the rebus be even rebusier? I guess so. But hey, Victor, let me just get this Clyburn thing out of the way because he is the instigator of saving Biden or creating Biden in 2016. But then some of these recent articles I've seen, he is the one that snookered Obama. He did enforce the immediate recognition by Biden of Kamala Harris.
- [41:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
He did. Obama called him up because Obama wanted an op. Obama engineered the removal and he thought he was going to have some kind of fake little convention where they appointed and they did a call in and they were going to nominate, I don't know, Gavin or Josh Shapiro or Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Whitmer, somebody, you know, someone that was a governor or something. And he called up Clyburn and said, you know, I think he thought, you know, I'm Barack Obama, Jim. I thought about it. We got rid of Biden a few minutes ago. We're going to open it up. No, you're not. It's Kamela. And they said the phone call lasted like what, a minute or so? And that was, was the most non transparent, Tammany hall, back room, insider, smoke filled room type of nomination from the party of transparency. It really was. It was no more than 24 hours that she. Everybody said, what's going to happen now? And. And there was even. Remember, it was. There was one or two people. What's his name from Joe Manchin. Remember, he thought he was going to be a candidate for about two hours.
- [42:22]
Jack Fowler
He could be an independent, Right?
- [42:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, he was. But when they opened, he thought he might even get the Democratic nomination for. About it. He went on tv, maybe I might be considered. And that thing was just. It was about it. She called up Biden and said, I need your endorsement. She called up. It was done. And then all of a sudden, the money poured in. And then she was about hope and courage. And Biden went. The Democrats went down from about four down in the polls with Biden to these phony new polls that said she was ahead by two or three. I don't think they were ever. She was ever ahead, but that was what they said.
- [43:00]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, James Clyburn deserves to be on the COVID of some conservative publication as the guy who. Who really needs to own what has happened to the Democrat Party.
- [43:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
By the way, Victor got his wish. It was a DEI party.
- [43:15]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [43:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Even Bill Maher, he's been on. He had dinner with Donald Trump, and he said just today that he got a lot of criticism. He said he was very friendly to me. He talked to me in a way that Obama or Clinton would have, you know, not had me or Biden into the White House. I wanted to say it's worse than that, Bill. He's of the opposite party. So the proper metaphor or simile is not you talking to Biden, but somebody like Charlie Kirk being called in to shoot the breeze with Joe Biden. That's our Michael Savage or somebody. And that's not going to ever happen. And so. But anyway, all he was fair. I would tell you about the one time I went on, Bill Maher's here.
- [44:05]
Jack Fowler
I know you mentioned you were on it and kind of set up. Go ahead.
- [44:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
I had just come back from Libya and I'd had a ruptured appendix. And I was home the first day, and their producer called and said this. Wait, wait, wait, wait.
- [44:19]
Jack Fowler
Can I say you almost died in Libya?
- [44:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they told me I was going to die.
- [44:23]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
Okay.
- [44:24]
Jack Fowler
So this is just like two weeks after near death. All right.
- [44:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, it was about eight days. And I was on painkiller and I was pretty sick. And they said, this producer called and said, would you like. I was pure. My face had no color in it. I had periantinnitis still. I was taking flagyl ocmintin and Cipro, three of them at the same time. I think that's why I'm allergic to my antibiotics now. But anyway, point was they called and said, nobody wants to talk about the surgeon. Would you talk about it and you. And explain why they're doing it. And I said I don't want to go. And Bill Maher and said, no, no, no, no, no. We're going to have an open debate. And I swear they put me on there and he introduced me as Cheney's war guru. And then that guy that played Gandalf, Ian McClellan, he said he's not even an academic. He's not even a. I've never heard a. And they just attack, attack, attack. And then the producer called up and said this was wonderful. And I said, I will never, ever, ever, ever go back on this crazy show. This was all a ambush. And they were just talking into Bill Maher's ear. He had an earpiece, that's what he did. That said, I'm glad he went and talked to Trump. And he felt that he'll still trash Trump, but he said that it was a decent. But he's going to learn that the people who hate him the most are not people like you or me. We don't hate Bill Maher. We disagree with a lot of stuff he is, but we're open to anything he says. It's going to be the left because he's going to be an apostate.
- [46:01]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. He will be a traitor.
- [46:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And he'll be called a white male, aging, 70 something, 60 something, out of touch person.
- [46:11]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, Victor, let's talk about some out of touch people. There's an obnoxious admiral who just got the boot. Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chat field. I forget what department she was. Maybe SpaceX and she.
- [46:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, no, I think she's just a regular.
- [46:33]
Jack Fowler
Just right. Okay. She wasn't going to put the new president's Trump's picture on the wall or the new Secretary of Defense. We'll wait four years, as she boasted, and she's out of a job. Now, I don't know where they get.
- [46:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
The moxie, but I can tell you what's going on. And then there's. It was kind of replicated when JD Vance and his wife went to Greenland. They kind of gave a speech to the space base, that's what you were referring to. Of which we have a base in northern Greenland, of course, for monitoring space satellites, et cetera, both defense and exploration, I suppose. And J.D. vance gave one of his maga speeches basically saying Greenland is huge and it's strategically important. It's a North American huge space. And Denmark, until we brought it up, had not been adequately A ensuring its security and B giving it money for internal development. And we would like to see that change. Basically he didn't say he was going to invade it. He didn't say and Colonel Susanna. I know because she spells the name of my late daughter the same way with an H on it. Myers. Susanna Myers is a colonel and she was in charge of the base and she said something like, I know that I'm not versed in politics or I'm not interested, but meaning I'm going to say the exact opposite of what my disclaimer was. I don't agree with anything and that's not going to be basically what we do in this space. Based on what she heard and then she was fired, she should go back and read the Article 88 of Uniform Code of Military justice and it says that no serving or retired. It doesn't say retired, but it says subject to recall and people have interpreted as retired and it is shall disparage the president, the vice president or the chief cabinet officers publicly. But by basically saying that Vance is an idiot and I'm going to disobey or I'm not and he was reflecting the command and I'm going to disobey that on this base she was in some way violating the spirit if not the letter of Article 88. Of course, we haven't heard much. Just to finish this topic, Jack, we haven't much. Have you noticed that we don't have Mark Milley talking about a fascist suddenly. He did that during the Biden administration. And now Most Dangerous Man, General McCaffrey.
- [49:15]
Jack Fowler
And all the others.
- [49:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
I haven't heard any Mussolini slurs. I haven't heard General McChrystal saying he's a liar. I haven't heard General Hagen saying that he's got Auschwitz like pins on the border. I haven't heard any of. I haven't heard Admiral McRaven say that he basically should be removed sooner than later. And why is that? I think it's because during the first administration it was chaotic and the cabinet and the appointees reflected the organized resistance to Donald Trump, Rex Tillerson at State or John Bolton. But this time around, I think the general feeling is among the retired one to four stars is if I call him Hitler and I clearly violate Article 88, they're going to court martial me or they're going to bring me up on charges so we haven't heard a word if that would be true. It would be a good deterrent for whether you're Republican or a Democrat. And I wrote a column saying that Stanley McChrystal was very lax in having an aide say in front of all of his assembled officers, Joe, bite me about the vice president and the Rolling Stone reporter that did that. And they recalled, remember, he was a very good officer, and he was a whole Afghan project superior officer in charge of Afghanistan. Obama recalled him to Washington, basically said, you had a reporter here and they were making fun of the Vice President of the United States and called him Joe bit me in your presence. And you didn't reprimand him or something. And they removed him of command. Boy, go crazy. If when Trump, he removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, just he couldn't point any. It wasn't that he fired him for anything. He just wanted somebody else, kind of like General McCarran, that Obama had removed before McChrystal. He hadn't done anything wrong. They just wanted McChrystal there. And then McChrystal they felt had violated, I guess, Article 88. But if Trump ever did that, they'd go nuts.
- [51:33]
Jack Fowler
You have talked about Article 88 and these characters for quite a while. You're talking about facts here with the article, and you're not well loved by many generals.
- [51:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
I have the greatest respect for the military, and I know a lot of generals, and I like them. But there was a period in 2020 when the cities were burning and they tried to burn the St. John's iconic Episcopal Church, and they were trying to storm, remember the White House and Donald Trump was taken to the bunker. The New York Times said he was a coward for doing that. I remember they said that he had no courage. And then there was a photo op with Mark Milley, which all commanders do, with the Chairman of the Joint. And all of the came out and they started, gosh, it was. We had two colonels that came out and said that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who has no, he's not in the chain of command. It's an advisory, you know, prestigious, but advisory bill. They argued that they should have an intervention and remove Trump forcibly. I think it was Colonel Lieutenant Colonel Nagle and another person. It was really crazy they were calling for. That was the period, you know, when Donald Trump earlier had been inaugurated. Rosa Brooks wrote in Foreign policy on day 11 that he should be either impeached or 25th amendmented or there should be a military coup to consider refusing to let him enact his policy. It was a crazy time. But I mentioned some generals who had said things like Mussolini. And I think that was. And I have to be very careful. That was General McCaffrey said he was Mussolini. Chris Matthews just said that as well, but he's not an officer. And I mentioned a person who's a colleague who said that on D Day. The people on the other side of the beach, we know who those were. Anyway, I don't want to get into it, but it was a suggestion that he was more like the enemy on the other side of the beach than he was the American. And it was just non stop amazing. So then people should remember that Article 88 came from the Uniform Code of Military Justice 1951, because for two reasons. That is, the Marine Corps had the army, the Marine Corps, the newly independent Air Force, they all had their different regulations of protocols. So they wanted to uniformly create a code of behavior, especially for officers. And they did. And the second thing it was based on. Douglas MacArthur had been pro consul in Japan. He had been the chief head of all US military operations in Korea. And he had kept after he did that brilliant Inchon landing in September and surprised the communists, expelled them from South Korea, went up 350, 400 miles in North Korea, said everybody was going to be home by Thanksgiving. And they said, are you worried? Your lines are thin, the peninsula is widening, it's getting cold. They don't have winter equipment. And they were going north and the peninsula widened and they were warned there'd be a million Chinese Communist troops that would cross the Yalu River. And they did. It was the longest retreat in U.S. military history. And MacArthur said there's no substitute for victory. So even though he had been embarrassed and was naive and he said air support B29s will just wipe them out if they cross the yellow. But he didn't realize the Mig 15 was at that time much better than the F80 and we wouldn't get air parity to the F86 came the Sabre too. But anyway, my point is this, that he started mouthing off about Truman and saying this is his commander in chief. So when they removed him, he became an iconic hero for maybe six months. And he was actually nominated in the 52 Republican convention, but with very little support. My only point was at that point they said, we've got to make sure that this does not happen again. Then an active or even a retired was retired as well. When he retired, he kept it up. So they said, we're not going to have a retired or active general, admiral, attacking the commander in chief, and they expanded it to the cabinet and that's where it came from. The weird thing about it, Jack, is they have enforced it, but not for the very top echelon, but for middle ranking officers. And I think they should just follow the law, even if it's, you know, I would have no problem if a conservative general attacked Joe Biden or Barack Obama. I would have no problem with seeing him disciplined. And if you read it, they say they're subject to court martial. But anyway, my point is that there are groups of people within the military. These cases were two women, but they really do believe they represent the new military. This is the DI military, this is the inclusive military. And when they hear Pete Hexseth talk about, I don't really care whether you're male or female, you're going to have to meet the same standards for combat troops. Or they hear about Donald Trump saying, we're going to toughen up or it's going to be military, military efficacy and combat readiness and not DEI and all that. They don't like it and they don't like their left wing. And they feel that they were promoted as part of the Biden vision that the military would be more socially, culturally inclusive. And by the way, the left went from opposing the military from the Vietnam era opposition to it to loving it. Because in their way of thinking, there's a chain of command. And if you have a DI initiative, a trans initiative, gay, whatever it is, you can just go ring those generals into Congress and scream and yell at them like, Millie, remember that about Professor Kendi said he wanted to read and understand Professor Kendi. And they will enact change like that. It'll just be an order. And you can really greenlight social, revolutionary change. So all of these people got used to that. And then Trump and Hecseth come in and they think, you know what? I'm just going to make everybody know that I don't like that sob. I'm not not going to put his picture on. I'm just. Vance is out of Greenland now. I'm just going to tell her, basically and tell everybody. Base, hey, everybody, I'm a folk hero. And you don't have to listen to a thing that Vance said or much less what is. That's what she was basically saying, what the commander in chief wants. And they said, you know what? Out. And I like that. Yeah. And they're not, they're not personal hero.
- [58:49]
Jack Fowler
That's a great way of how they probably do things. Think of themselves.
- [58:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, they do. And they're not. Remember everybody. They're not putting them up on cart Marshall. They're not even charging them, not doing anything. They're just saying, I prefer you not have your present billet and you'll be reassigned. That's all.
- [59:08]
Jack Fowler
Can't be walking a beat in the Bronx something.
- [59:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think so. Ah, well, maybe you're being. You're being ahead of the National Guard in Fresno or something.
- [59:17]
Jack Fowler
Maybe.
- [59:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Which is. I think it's a very prestigious point. But they wouldn't post. But they wouldn't. Every time I land at Fresno and I see those F15s or 16s or maybe they're 18s, I can't tell. I feel really proud of Fresno. Oh, yeah.
- [59:31]
Jack Fowler
I love Fresno. Hey, I want to take a moment for our sponsor, Field of Greens. We all know eating healthy is key to staying healthy. But life gets busy and sticking to a perfect diet isn't always realistic. Field of Green Greens makes it easy. It's whole fruits and vegetables. That's it. And we could all use more of that in our diets. Just one drink and I've got my healthy head start on the day. Every fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens is doctor selected for specific health benefits. There's a heart health group, lungs and kidney and metabolism groups, even healthy weight group. And Field of Greens promises at your next checkup, your doctor will notice your improved health or your money back. We've got a 20% discount. To get you started, go to fieldofgreens.com and use the code Victor. That's fieldofgreens.com code Victor. And we thank the good people at Field of Greens for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, I'm going to ask you a quickie a quick question here. Then we're going to take break as we head into the. The turn, the home stretch or where we head into and let's see the quickies. Oh yeah. This is a cultural question. Victor, you know earlier. Yeah. The last podcast you mentioned our friend David Bonson, it was an investor I had wanted to raise this because there's another big investing company, Edward Jones. Right. Everything's Edward Jones. That's, that's got a little, you know, there's a storefront downtown in every town America, but they're really DEI and woke driven companies. So there's this article about how they're in February as part of Black History Month. And this is in our rearview mirror now. But the firm's internal DEI website highlighted a page on Inclusive language about race and ethnicity. That instruction guide from the from Edward Jones Washington office provided examples of racially or ethnically biased language. You know, what is racially and ethnically biased language, Victor? It's the term brown bag. Now if I would say I'm going to brown bag lunch means I'm going to make my lunch at home and bring. Do you know that's a racist term you know you're not allowed to use?
- [61:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, I did. You know how I knew that? I have a very good friend who's very well known. I almost worshiped him, who's African American. And he once told me, I mentioned another African American grandee. He's not a grandee, he's a very wonderful person. And he mentioned that anyway, in connection with this other person, he mentioned that when he was in college, people of the elite in Washington would, if he wanted to go to a sorority, they would have a paper bag and they would look at your skin tone if you were African American. This was the lighter group of people. And that was part of an intro to a larger discourse about within the African American community, fixations on skin color. It was white, racially driven, obviously, but. And after that I started, you know, he mentioned that people who were the most radical of all blacks tended to be people who he felt had been beneficiaries of the brown bag rule. In other words, they were fixated on that.
- [63:10]
Jack Fowler
Were they lighter skinned?
- [63:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
If we're going on that, yeah, like a Reverend Wright or a Huey Newton. And there's been a lot of. After. There's been a lot of literature written about that. Some of the more radical 60s figures were either of mixed heritage or rap brown. They were lighter skinned than there had been. That came up during the Clarence Thomas hearings. Remember when they had a lot of very elite African Americans, but especially the white liberal Joe Biden. Remember they went after Clarence Thomas and there were people suggesting that there had been racism not only in the white community against darker toned and southern blacks, but also the elite of the African American community. And people both black and white had written about that, deploring it. But it was very interesting that when Clarence Thomas went up, there was a great deal of hostility and it almost bordered on. Well, it didn't all. It was racist a lot from white liberals the way that they attacked him. And it was.
- [64:19]
Jack Fowler
Anyway, well, I learned something new every day. So, Victor, we're going to end the show today by talking about foreign influence at our colleges and one nation that doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. We talked on numerous podcasts about the amount of Chinese nationals who are students in America, et cetera. But it's the nation of Qatar and it's really troubling some of the numbers we're seeing. So we're going to get your thoughts about that when we come back from these final messages.
- [64:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [68:20]
Jack Fowler
We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. April 12, Saturday we are recording Happy Passover to my brothers and sisters in Abraham. Today's episode is up on Thursday the 17th. Keep watching for tomorrow on Friday, which will be good Friday the 18th and then Saturday the 19th when the great Sammy Wink will be talking to Victor about surely the tremendous amount of events that will be happening in the forthcoming week. From when we're talking Victor, if I could get my act together here. Yeah, this is I saw this Instagram post and has to do with Instigated by Texas A and M Cornell, Columbia University. What do they have in common? Is the this guy is giving Dr. Charles Asher small is testifying before the US Senate help committee. That must be Health Education. I don't know what the LP is for. He laid out a troubling map of foreign influence and radicalization. Texas A and m over $1 billion in Qatari funding. More than 500 research projects, including sensitive work with potential military application. Qatari proxies were contractually granted ownership of the intellectual property. Cornell received nearly this is staggering $10 billion from Qatar, making it the university's largest direct foreign donor, 30 times more than its next target. And then Columbia took at least 7.17 million. None of it disclosed to the US Department of Education in violation of federal law. There's lots more here. I'll just say one last thing. K through 12 as it relates to K12 there's a program called choices program used in over 8,000 US schools. There's been uncovered foreign funded curricula that distort history and promote anti Israel bias. Reaches over 1 million students again thanks to Qatari money. Victor, this is really troubling your thoughts?
- [70:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it is. When you look at the amount of foreign gifting there's two things that come up. It's increased geometrically each year almost and Qatar is the leading contributor. But most of the money, not all, but most of the money Comes from two sources, either from the Gulf states. And it's designed to inculcate a whole generation at the elite campuses because these are where the policymakers, the future State Department diplomats are going to be the political party grandees and magnificos. All of those people will come out of these elite 10 or 20 universities, and that's what they center on. And then China, China had the Confucius Institute and stuff like that, but they have for the same reason. So that if you ever objected to saying that it was not a pangolin or a bat, but the COVID 19 virus came out of the Wuhan lab and somebody would write and say you're an idiot who got a degree from a group and he got a minor in Asian studies, got the real dope from the great professor. But the point is, if you do the math, the way these endowed professorships work is say they pay a guy 250,000 a year, professor, 300. I don't know if that's that high. And then they have to take a couple percentage to keep up with inflation on the gift. But you're talking about 7 million bucks, 6 to 8 million to endow a professor and so forth for, you know, a thousand. Get 150 professors per billion dollars and you get a Middle east program and you salt out with eight or nine of these people, you could do this. Nine, ten. You know what I mean? Ten, 15 departments. A billion dollars goes a long way in academia to endow professors and fund these Middle east programs. And that's what they're trying to do, to create tell the elite. And they have been very successful, very successful. Just think how successful they are. When this administration came in and they said they were going to highlight anti Semitism in general in particular at Columbia, where it was completely out of control and they threatened to cut off 400. I guess it is still suspended. And the interim president resigned. And now we have this. Jay Carney, Obama's former press secretary's wife, is the president of Columbia. I forgot her name, but she's. Yeah. Anyway, I don't want to know her name. But the point is they just had a big. Columbia. Did you see that? Another demonstration.
- [73:26]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [73:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
And they were disrupting Natalie Bennett, the guest speaker, and they wouldn't let him speak. So think about that. What. What gives those students and what gives that university this confidence that even though you're under suspension for $400 million, even though the world's attention is focused on you for harassing Jewish students and interrupting speakers, and even though One of your godheads, Mr. Khalil, is under adjudication to be deported. You're still doing it. You're still disrupting a speaker that wants to give the other side of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and you won't let him speak. And you are calling Jews names. And the answer, you know, and this was reported on today, and the answer is that all of these students have had this constant indoctrination from faculty members who, I don't know, if it paid better, they'd be fascist. They're very susceptible to money because there's not a lot of money in a faculty member's salary. At least I think there is. But they think that because they're brilliant and geniuses, they should be played like corporate lawyers or corporate CEOs, because nobody appreciates their genius like they do. But any case, my point is that money is very influential. And for when you start giving 10 billion, you're talking about a thousand professorships. In theory, you can really change things. And that's what the Qataris have done, and that's what the Chinese are doing. And I think they should really look at that. I think the part of, I don't think the universities want to get in a fight with Donald Trump because they're the proverbial mossy rock. And when you, you turn it over, there are slugs and all sorts of debris under there that's gross. And when you start looking at that university and you see all the money that came, that was not reported as mandated from outside the United States to the Department of Education, I'm speaking from experience that Stanford was fined millions of dollars in the first Trump administration for not reporting Chinese donations. Or we had, I think, five or six years ago, a member of the People's Liberation army as a neuroscientist visiting professor. Can you imagine that at Stanford? And she was suspended and sent home when the media got a hold of it. But my point is that when you start looking at these universities and you start seeing the amount of foreign money that is coming in, you start looking at the overcharging or the surcharges on individual faculty grants from, say, NIH or Department of Energy, et cetera, and how the university snatches 50, 60% of it, when you start looking at racially segregated dorms, graduations, safe spaces, when you start looking at institutionalized violations of the First Amendment, when you start looking at the actual curriculum and how biased it is, when you start looking, especially at the admissions policies and seeing how race and gender are used systematically in Violation of all the civil rights statutes and court rulings mostly against white males, but generally Asians and whites in general. I don't think they want people to look at that. And when you look at the size of the endowments, the money that is coming in and what's down the pipeline because the more they resist and the more they get self righteous, the more they're going to look at a re examination of the student loan program. And maybe they have to put some will change the dynamic of moral hazard and they'll have to start guaranteeing a large portfolio of loans. And then in addition maybe we can get a fair ratio of how many dollars in the endowment per student and if you have over 500,000 or a million, we'll start taxing that endowment at 15%. Some people want higher and if they don't, as I say the Bill of Rights on campus. So they have a lot of exposure is what I'm trying to say. And they don't get it yet. They have all of these memos by these presidents and deans and provost that they keep reassuring the fact we're basically, basically they're reassuring the fact well we're an independent, we're autonomous and we don't just rely. Well, they don't know what's coming down the pipeline.
- [78:06]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well I think their boards too. Trustees tend to be echo chambers. Yeah, they saw Cornell even though that president, I forget her name now, last year, retired two months after the board voted unanimously to. There's no dissent within these institutions.
- [78:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Exposure. They're not like the universities of the 50s and early 60s at all.
- [78:35]
Jack Fowler
Well they're, you know, you join a board in order to burnish your own image. I'm on the board.
- [78:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know, it'd be wonderful, you know, if all of these donors instead of saying I want the Victor Davis Hanson endowment professor of humanistic Studies. I would rather, if it was me and I had that money, I would rather say I have a Victor Hansen tradesman award for a welder or electrician and really fund these trade schools and get people really we should be just as I would rather have the world's best electricians, plumbers, carpenters, drywall painters than I would ethnic studies, leisure studies, environmental studies. Why don't we just put everybody's upset at the university, just redirect your giving and get a name chair at a trade school. I'm serious.
- [79:30]
Jack Fowler
For every five men, women leaving the trades retiring, only two are joining. So you're right, the focus is, is quite dire.
- [79:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
You can't Find people that really know what they're doing, and we need to do it fast. And we used to have the best tradespeople in the world. I grew up with people. My gosh, they could do anything.
- [79:55]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, before we end, could you just take one minute and tell us. We've rarely mentioned that you were on the board of the Bradley foundation. And every year the Bradley foundation announces the prizes. There's three winners of the prize tend to be conservatives. Sometimes when you look back at who got it, you realize they used to be conservatives.
- [80:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, you mean Bill Crystal.
- [80:18]
Jack Fowler
Oh, I, I didn't want to say that. But the prizes have been announced. There's a ceremony for them in, In Washington in, In late May. But you've had. I just think it would be a nice opportunity to, to let our listeners know who've been recognized. And I, I particularly want say that you. I saw the news the other day that Jimmy Lai, the great hero who's in prison in China, has received an honorary Bradley Prize. But tell us about Jimmy and the others who have gotten this this year.
- [80:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we give three, and we've never done this before, have an honorific, because we only have one requirement of the recipient, and that is they have to be there to accept the award. And that be there means in Washington, D.C. and when I was a recipient, I was on the roof digging snow from a leak. And the director of the Bradley, I wasn't on the board, and the director said, well, you've won the Bradley. And I didn't really know what it was, but he said, you've won 250,000. I almost fell off the roof. I really did. I was slipping. And I couldn't believe, Believe it. I thought, oh, my gosh. But then I realized I lived in California, so my actual was 120,000, but that was still so generous. But now it's 300,000. But we have. So we. The committee was discussing. I can't get into. This is confidential. But anyway, the long and the short of it is, how do you honor this brave person? Because he's incarcerated. I mean, he can't come and we can't communicate. So for the first time, that Bradley created an honorific, one that did not. And because he had means, it was honorific, but there wasn't a stipend. He does not have to go. So there's going to be. At the May ceremony, there's going to be a special segment to honor Jimmy Lai, and I think it'll be quite moving. And then, in addition, this show used to give four, but now we give three. I don't know why. The logic must be that because of longevity and the conservative movement, this has gone on, I think since 2000. Five or six used to give four. So for 20 years there's 80 people. And they feel that maybe you don't have the same Tom Soul type of caliber people. I don't know why, but we have. Or maybe it's. It's not so much the money, but anyway, we increase it to 300. But there's only three now that are given. And this year they were very good. It's been announced, so I can say it. Chris Ruffo, who was the. I don't know. He really led the anti di counter revolution in academia. And he's. He's fearless. Works for the Manhattan, among other bills.
- [83:14]
Jack Fowler
Manhattan Institute, City Journal.
- [83:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, City Journal. He's very brave. He's very talented. And then one of my favorite people, James Pearson, and he was the head of the Olin foundation. And he's a writer, he's a PhD, he's been a faculty member, but he's an essayist. But he's really an unspoken hero. He's been involved with a lot of initiatives in the conservative movement the last 50 years. And the nice thing about the awards are they're not just for past. You can't just give someone and expect that they're not going to do anything. In other words, they're active right now and that the award not only recognizes past contributions, but it's an incentive to keep on doing it. And these two cases, they're both still very active then. And the third was for Barry Strauss. He was a professor. He was a professor at Cornell, and on that very left wing campus, he was a center right. Not that the ideology mattered, but he spoke up on behalf of Western civilization culture, the History Department, and he was even put in charge of the peace studies department, just kind of straighten it out. And then he's written about 20 books or 18 books. But he was a scholar. I knew him as early as. Let me get this straight, 1978, he and a scholar named Josh Ober and I were all writing on the attic countryside for our PhD thesis. American School of Classical Studies is where people go to get archaeological experience for a year in Athens. So I was writing about agricultural devastation during the Peloponnesian War. He was writing about the after effects economically of the Peloponnesian War on Attica. And Josiah Ober was writing about the fortifications of Attica. So the three of us would walk out and look at walls, fortifications, archaeological sites, each week for almost a year. But anyway, he's now at the Hoover Institution and he writes about the ancient world and its lessons for the modern world. And he's a public, kind of like an Andrew Roberts public intellectual. And that's the idea of the awards. You want somebody who is a scholar. We've given it to Martin Gilbert, Andrew.
- [85:37]
Jack Fowler
Roberts, that type of Alan Golzo.
- [85:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he's a wonderful Civil War historian. And then we've given it to what we call an institutionalist of this conservative or traditional movement that tries to make change by serving in institutions and improving them. That's what Jim Pearson is doing, even though that's not fair to him because he's a very effective essayist and writer. He's written some great articles.
- [86:06]
Jack Fowler
New Criterion, you'll find a lot of his essays.
- [86:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And he's written some good books. And then we also to more of a. Just an activist. An activist in every sense of the word. A public intellectual, in other words, that tries to affect change through essays, through serving in academia, corporate world, but somebody who is more of a grassroots type. So we have a tripartite system of adjudication.
- [86:40]
Jack Fowler
It's a great trio. Plus the caboose of Jimmy.
- [86:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it is. And that's Jimmy. And it'll be in late May at the Daughters of American Revolution in Washington. It's kind of the big festivity of the conservative or traditional movement in Washington every year. It's kind of lavish and the board is a wonderful board of 10 people. And I've been on it, I think, for 12 or 13 years. It's very hard for me now as I'm older, because I have to fly. I have to drive up from my farm, get to Fresno airport and you know, 5 or 6 o'clock flight and hope I can make an hour connection to Milwaukee. And then usually that's where Bradley's located. Yeah. And then most of the time it's because of weather or something. I'll fly to Chicago and then take. And sometimes it takes me a day. And I've been doing this for 12 years, so I don't know how long I'll be able to do it.
- [87:35]
Jack Fowler
Well, I have a couple.
- [87:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Er.
- [87:39]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, our great sponsor of podcast back in the day at National Review, Shraga Kawiar, who's. Who's loves you. He asked me to. At least you didn't mention your actual age. 71. He said, Please tell Victor to stop mentioning that he's 71. I said I had.
- [87:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Somebody wrote that, too. You know what? It's funny. I had an old friend. Friend. And she was a professor with me. A wonderful person. I'll just say Ms. Drake. Professor Drake. I won't tell your whole name and embarrass her, but she wrote basically insane. You've got a Jetson. The baseball cap. Or when I knew her, I had a full head of hair. And she was part of a group of professors that we once a month went to guess where? The Olive Garden for lunch.
- [88:32]
Jack Fowler
It wasn't Hooters. Okay, good.
- [88:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
And she was this Southern. She was from the South. So she had a very distinctive accent, was very rare in California. But she wrote me in kind of out of the blue and said she was a very talented professor. And she said, you've got a Jets in the hat and the fedora. I like your big, beautiful bald head. Or I like your bald bald head beautiful. It's not.
- [88:57]
Jack Fowler
It's just, you know, I'd say this.
- [88:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Better than the ones that called me Freddie Gray. Freddie. What's the guy? Krueger. And then Skeletor. And I looked up Skeletor comics. Gosh, I did look like Skeleton. And then somebody, oh, my gosh, sent me a copy of an illustration I showed my wife and she said that, well, I don't know every. I don't know. I mean, I had these things right here were from a bicycle.
- [89:22]
Jack Fowler
Stitches. You are indestructible, as I've said before. And your brain. There's no hair up there because your brain's so big there's no room for follicles. Okay, I have to read a comment.
- [89:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sweetie. Squat square head.
- [89:36]
Jack Fowler
It's a big pineapple head. There's a comment from YouTube watcher. And thanks. We have so many new followers of the podcast Victor. This is from Hammer and Tong. Victor, your way of distilling these issues to the. What would an individual do if is most effective. Asking why families have locks on their doors or fences around their homes, or why is it disastrous when you pay your bills with your credit card, etc. Applied to the larger national or global narratives, these illustrations of reduction. Personal level reason makes more sense to Americans trying to navigate the hurricane. Common sense. Thank you, bdh. I have two other quick ones from Tosh Ferratu, who writes, it's a great day when you get an Obama impression from Dr. Hansen. And we got multiple today.
- [90:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
My hero, Rush Lebron was a master of it.
- [90:35]
Jack Fowler
And then another One Republicans Forever 25 wrote, discovered this brilliant American recently. What a historian and writer. I am hooked. So we thank all those folks. I try to read many of the comments I want to mention again, Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. I can catch my fingers together. The plate of Perseus. Victorhansen.com do subscribe $65 a year, discounted from 650amonth. And two, two original exclusive pieces every week.
- [91:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Week.
- [91:07]
Jack Fowler
And one exclusive video every week. If you're on Twitter. Excuse me. XD Hansen this Victor's handle. If you're on Facebook, BDH's Morning Cup. Also, there's a great friendly group called the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club. I'm Jack Fowler. For me as for me, I write.
- [91:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Go ahead. I'm sorry.
- [91:26]
Jack Fowler
Well, I'll just, I'll get my commercial and Simple Thoughts. Okay.
- [91:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was going to actually remind you to do that.
- [91:33]
Jack Fowler
Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Go to civilthoughts.com sign up. Why? Because when you do that every Friday in your email inbox, you will get Civil Thoughts, which is the weekly newsletter I write. What's in it? 14 recommended readings. I think great articles you will find of interest. So we're not free. I'm not charging anything and we're not selling your name. I do that for the center for Civil Society, which is a part of my gig. And we are trying to strengthen civil society. I think that's a noble thing to do. So anyway, that's my spiel. Victor, do you have any last words you want to.
- [92:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, I do. You know, I had. I was in the airport and somebody came up to me and said, when you do your podcast, you have a very funny wedding ring on. And it's this thing and it's not a wedding ring ring. And it's.
- [92:28]
Jack Fowler
It's your cousins, isn't it?
- [92:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, yes, it's a Roman legionnaire on a. It's just a low. And it's kind of interesting because as I said earlier, this is very strange, but you remember I wrote about and my father's first cousin, mother died in birth and his father was blind. So they raised him as my father's brother. And they both went to the University of Pacific and won for tight ends and they got scholarships under Alonzo Stagg was the coach. And then they both joined the Marine Corps. And the family lore won't tell you which one hit. And they got in a fight in a bar room and everybody was swinging and one of them had hit an officer or a sergeant, I think. Excuse me. And they brought the both up and Said one of you stupid big Swedes, they were 6, 4, 200 pounds is going to take the wrap. So my father volunteered and they said we're going to fix you. There's an experimental B29 program in Nebraska and they all crash. So you're going to go over there and that'll do you. And the other one gets to stay in the new 6th Marine Division which was created. You're going to go to Guadalcanal, which was American held. It had been pacified for a year. And we're going to train you in the Super 6th Marine Division and we'll get some of the old breed. You know, the old breed that went in earlier had had a terrible time in Peleliu. And anyway, we're going to get them and we're going to train you guys and we're going to get a lot of kids from college and we're going to make a super learn all of the errors we did and we're going to Yushu. And that was what they did when they landed on April 1st of 1945 on Okinawa. And so for the first 30 days, the Japanese had a new strategy. They did not contest the beach. They just used firepower and they brought them in. And the southern part of Okinawa was lightly held. And they took the 1st Marine Division was there and the 6th Marigion. There were army divisions there. But the 6th Marine went down, pacified it and then they brought up and then all proverbial hell broke loose because there were over 100,000 Japanese troops buried deep in the coral reinforced concrete. They'd been doing it for a year. There was another hundred thousand impressed Okinawa civilians that were working with them or fighting with them. And there was something called the Shuri Line, which was a belt across entrance to the north of the island. And being Marine, I don't want to make fun of Simon Bolivar Buckner, the grandson of the famous Confederate general. But they decided the army was in trouble and so they brought the 6th Marine Division up and they decided not to use maritime amphibious landings, which was a Marine specialty, behind lines. So the Marine Corps said we will go around the Shuri Line. I said no, go right through it. Well, they didn't know I have anything. So my uncle Dash first cousin, we moved. But basically my uncle because he grew up as my dad's brother Victor was in the 29th Regiment. And they fought like head on on the last day on the worst place, Sugarloaf Hill, he was shot in the thigh. And all night long they couldn't Go get him. And he bled to death. And they brought him down two days later. And this is not known to my family. Didn't know how he died. My grandfather would never mention it. My father named me after him and told me he came in when I was 8 years old and gave me his Louisville Sluggers bad his UOP briefcase and said, you've got to live up to this. And he told me about him. That was all he ever mentioned, period. And then anyway, I was writing about Okinawa for ripples of Battle and I mentioned this. And all of a sudden his commanding officer wrote me, who was 96 and had written a letter to my grandfather in 1945 about the death of Victor. And he still had a copy of it and he sent it to me. And then he said there was another person who was very close to him who helped with the body and he will write you. This was in 2003. This was all. Everybody who knew him was dead except his high school girlfriend who used to come and visit me. She was in her 80s and happily married. Wonderful person. But anyway, the long wrote and said. And he described his last hour. He said he was a big kid and he protected a small Italian kid that was picked on. And when he was wounded, this young Italian soldier who was very slight, quick ran out to. To try to help him and he was killed. And he was very moving. And then I started, I went out into the barn. I found all of these letters. I had never really opened them. About Victor asking his grandfather to go buy him a 45 because he was going to go to a tough battle and he wanted a 1911 and the Swedish grandfather was trying to get it. It was exchange to send to him on Guadalcanal before he went in to what would be Okinawa. But anyway, the whole point was this person wrote me and said I have his ring that we cut off the body and it's been in my bookcase for 60 years. Would you like it? And I will send it to you. I didn't know what to make of it. And so he said I didn't know what it was. So he sent it to me. And I was a classics professor and it's a picture of a Roman legionnaire. I had no idea. So he sent it to me. And then I had it reef. I just had it welded and I've been wearing it ever since. So it's a very strange thing.
- [98:55]
Jack Fowler
Do you know what day your uncle died? The actual day?
- [98:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
May 19, 1945. Last day. The letter had a point and he said they had vicious, horrific fighting, getting up to the summit of Sugarloaf Hill, which was the breaking point of the story line. And he said he died in the last hours of the last day of the conquest. And after that they were able to make motion they could go northward. But the thing is, that battle was not declared. They thought it was declared secure in July. I'm doing this by memory, July 11th, but I don't think it was till actually July 2nd, when I wrote about it. The battle and ripples of battle, about all the things that happened. E.B. sledge's great memoir. Everybody should read it with the old Breed. It's about the 1st Marine Division, how horrific that battle was. And anyway, to get a long story short, Simon Bolivar Buckner, I think the third was the highest ranking after Leslie McNear. He was the highest ranking Pacific officer. And the battle was. The island was declared secure. They had to go back and sweep through because there was a lot of Japanese soldiers that were dug down deeply. And then a freak, one person came up and I think it was a mortar or artillery. They had missed him. The island was secure. It hit a granite rock and it sent a sliver that went through about four people standing around him and didn't hit any of them and went right through his heart and killed him. And he was the commander. And his son wrote me a very. I had been critical of him because he's usually considered somewhat culpable for the strategy of not head on and did not serve the Marine Corps well. But I felt bad, but because his son wrote me a very, who was in his 70s, a very moving letter about what a wonderful father he was. And I lamented that, that I had criticized him. I didn't do it out of personal animus, just that after reading a whole corpus of literature about the battle, I think there were ways to avoid it. And the weird thing was is that, see, this was in July of 1945, and the war was over on September 2nd. So my point is this was the most costly of all the island hopping of Peleliu, of Tarawa, of Iwo jima. This was 50,000 Marines, army and naval. 5,000 naval people were killed by kamikazes, 12,000 dead and 30, almost 40,000 wounded seriously. And they didn't know. So everybody talks about dropping the bomb. Nothing made a greater impression on that decision than this blood battle right before the end of the war. And people said, well, I thought we had mastered amphibious operations. I thought the first and Marine divisions were expert at it. I thought we had the biggest fleet in the world and they had bombarded. And then they said, but the, the closer you get to Japan, the more fanatical the resistance, the more time they've had to pour reinforced concrete and they're burrowed down. And Okinawa is just a small indication of what's coming, taste of what's to come. And that accelerated the napalm of. So in May, June, July, people, they were bombing. My father was kind of ironic because he was at the same time in a B29 and was supposed to be killed in the sense that they thought the B29 would be much more dangerous than being in the 6th Marine Division because they thought the worst of island hopping was over. And he lived 40 missions, got crashed twice and forced down in Iwo Jima twice. But the weird thing about it all was that, and I mentioned this, but just to finish this harangue, they took Okinawa and Curtis lemay immediately went there and he said, you know, I'll keep the 2200 B29s on the Marianas at Tinian, Guam. And they're going to continue to fly eight or nine hours over the target, eight or nine hours back, 1600 miles each. However, I can do three missions a day because this is 350 miles off the coast of Tokyo. So they had blueprints, they were already starting the runways. And he had another 2000 B29s on order to deploy there. But more Importantly, there were 10,000 idle B24s, B17s, and especially the superb heavy Lancaster British bomber. And there were plans to transfer a lot of them, thousands of them, to Okinawa. So you can imagine with napalm what that would have ensued had they not dropped the atomic bomb. It took months to get going, but they were just about ready to open up Okinawa and just burn Tokyo and the major cities to the ground that were still standing. So in a weird way, the Okinawa disaster fueled the decision not to invade the mainland and either to bomb them with conventional napalm or the atomic bomb. But they did really have the planes transferred over there yet. So in a weird way, the atomic bomb saved millions of Japanese lives because they would have just burned the whole country to the ground. They were so furious of the screw up and the tragedy of what Okinawa was. And the Navy took a terrible beating on Okinawa. It's just terrible. From kamikazes, people forget that you have a kamikaze. The human brain is a more sophisticated cruise missile than a computer. And if you say, well, the zero only had a range of 400, it need a range. It has a radius now. So if it's not going to come back, its ability, its range is double what it's. So you put a pilot in and you have him go a foot above the water, radar can't see him and a couple of others at, you know, 25,000ft and coordinate it in tactics and the brain can react to targeting. And he's got a 500 pound bomb. Boy, they were unstoppable and they, they sunk 17 ships and that was a whole nightmare. And so anyway, that family never got over that, that Swedish family never. It was kind of weird. So anyway, it's kind of a weird thing because everybody would always, my father would always tell him, you've got to live up to this person. You've got to do this.
- [105:55]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, you said it was a harangue. It was anything but a harangue. It was beautiful, thoughtful remembrance of.
- [106:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
But some person came up in the airport and asked me about this because he said he saw it.
- [106:07]
Jack Fowler
Well, they notice everything. I do want to. I hope and pray your uncle cousin is with our good Lord. This episode ends on holy this appears on Holy Thursday and the next time you and I are going to appear on the World Wide Web will be after Easter. So I want to wish all of our happy Easter, brothers and sisters. A happy Easter. And those who've gone before us, I hope they are in the good arms of the Lord.
- [106:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they will be. Everything will be known to all of us at one point.
- [106:40]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've been terrific, my friend. Thanks so much. We'll be back with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. God bless and bye bye.
- [106:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for listening.
- [106:54]
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