← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [01:51]
Jack Fowler
Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to listen to our star namesake, Victor Davis Hansen who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Victor is a best selling author, syndicated columnist, farmer, classicist, philologist. Classicist is one of the big focuses of today's episode. We're recording on Saturday, 21st December and this particular episode will be up on December 24th. We have a special guest with us for the beginning, big beginning of today's episode and that's Justin Schumaugh who is the president of the National Civic Arts Society and we're going to talk about him. Victor will ask him some questions. I may get in one or two also on Making America Beautiful Again. And we'll get to that right after these important messages. Time is our most precious commodity and we've heard from so many listeners who have asked for advice about how they can spend it wisely to improve themselves and the people around them. That's why we're so excited that Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. That's right, for free. We recommend you sign up for Athens and Sparta. In this course you'll hear from Victor Davis Hansen and Paul A. Ray, distinguished professors of history, as they discuss the history, culture and government of each city, the ill fated Peloponnesian War and its consequences, and examine what is necessary in order for a democracy to flourish and endure, how best to form free and self governing citizens, and how to resist tyranny from without and from within. Start your free course Athens and Sparta Today. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale to register Hillsdale EDU VDH.
- [04:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [04:26]
Jack Fowler
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Victor Davis Hanson
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- [04:36]
Justin Schubao
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- [04:57]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show and I would like again to introduce Justin Shubao and he's going to turn on his camera magically because folks, we are not only recording this for audio purposes but we've begun to record video versions of this of these podcasts and I think at the end of the show Victor, I might tell people where they can find them. I had the great pleasure of meeting Justin earlier this year at the National Conservatism Conference where he and some others were talking about civic public architecture and beauty. And then he's also a very good friend of Sabin Howard who Victor, you remember you interviewed Sabin, who's the sculptor who designed the beautiful striking and I think game changing World War I sculpture, the official sculpt memorial now down in Washington, A Soldier's journey and more to come from Sabian I hope in the future. But you know we found out Donald Trump also is has great passion for for these things. These things, beauty, finding our heritage in sculpture Finding our heritage in public architecture. So as we approach the, you know, the forthcoming 47th presidential administration, and I think Justin, who was, who was an appointee of Donald Trump in the, in the prior administration, he was on the US Commission of Fine Arts. I think he might find himself again in important positions and doing important things to make America beautiful again. So, Justin, welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. If you'd like to give us a little correction, if I need any correcting of your introduction and a thing or two you might want to say, and then we're going to have about 20, 25 minutes of discussion with you.
- [06:55]
Justin Schubao
Well, that was all great. I'm really appreciative of being here. Long time fan of Victor's work and just a true honor.
- [07:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Justin, let me just get to the quick. You represent, I don't know if it's a restoration or rediscovery of the classical traditions in Western art and particularly in America. How did, how did we go from the point, I don't know at what magic moment it was in the 20s where we had people in, in Daniel French who did the Lincoln Memorial or St. Gaudians who did the Sherman Monument. And then we had this takeover of postmodernism or impressionists or representational art in public statuary and modern art, et cetera. And then is it your feeling that your champion, I'm just going to sculpture. It applies to architecture. But the Saban Howard or the Frederick Hart, what is it a reaction or restoration? Is that what you're envisioned for public statuary, architecture? We would go back to the neoclassical mode. That that was that really when you come to New York or Boston or San Francisco, people are always struck by neoclassical architecture and statuary, even though it's in the minority now. It's all from a prior generations. It's not, it's not being done except from that Frederick Hart School, at least in terms of sculpture and statuary, Sabine Howard, etc.
- [08:30]
Justin Schubao
Sure. So my organization believes that the greatest celebratory commemorative works are those done in the classical tradition. You know, you look at the Lincoln Memorial, you look at the Jefferson Memorial, and my favorite overlooked memorial in D.C. is the grant Memorial in front of the Capitol Building, where you could really see both the heroism of the troops, but also the suffering and the tragedy. You mentioned the new national World War I memorial. I think ever since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which is obviously modernist and minimalist and there was an incredible controversy about it. And then ultimately realistic statues by Frederick Hart were added to satisfy the public. You know, Maybe that kind of bleak modernism was appropriate for the Vietnam War, but it set a trend where we no longer build statues or memorials that evince heroism in valor. And in fact, I worked with the person behind the World War I memorial to ensure that the competition for the design would require that the memorial have heroism and valor in it. And so was that.
- [09:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Was that a contentious struggle or.
- [10:00]
Justin Schubao
No, no, I mean, it was not controversial at all now, I mean, among ordinary people now there was, you know, a mention of it in an architectural newspaper saying that the memorial glorifies war. I don't think that's true at all. If you look at it, it shows, yes, absolutely, the courage of the troops entering the crucible of battle, you know, charging with their rifles and bayonets and you can see the officer encouraging them. But then, yes, you do see death and destruction. There is what I would call a stylized broken cross representing a kind of destruction within Western civilization. But the memorial does end with an actual victory parade with the troops flying, holding the flag. And for Saban Howard, the sculptor, he describes us as representing America on the ascendants, on the world stage. It is a victory memorial. And I think, well, I'm hoping that it will change the direction of American commemorative works. A bleak counter example of, you know, the general trend among the artistic establishment is the United Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where that plane went down. You know, what the passengers did on that flight, storming the cockpit is up there with Paul Revere's ride. Ordinary citizens fighting back and saving a core building of government. Yet that memorial contains nothing commemorating the heroism of the passengers.
- [11:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
What is the status right now? If I could ask you about the Eisenhower Memorial.
- [11:52]
Justin Schubao
So we launched and led a campaign to stop the proposed design for that memorial by Frank Gehry. So called starchitect, very flashy postmodernist architect. Originally, the sole statue in that memorial was going to be a life sized barefoot boy seated on a plank, kind of like a Tom Sawyer image based on a speech. Eisenhower gave his first political speech called Dreams of a Barefoot Boy. But it was a matter of political hokum, as Eisenhower would later admit, and we started this fight. Ultimately, the Eisenhower family came out in force against the design, which is completely out of scope and scale. The main feature is this 400 foot long steel screen or so called tapestry held up by 80 foot high pillars. Now Congress objected to the scheme so much that it upheld funding for four years. But alas, although we improved the design by forcing Gary to remove two sections of it each as big as a basketball court, two giant screens, and also got rid of the barefoot boy. The Eisenhower family essentially caved to pressure, and once that happened, Congress authorized the memorial and it got built.
- [13:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Is there going to be any statuary at all of Eisenhower?
- [13:15]
Justin Schubao
Well, it did open and there are statues of Eisenhower as president and Supreme Allied Commander. So that's better than him being a barefoot boy. But the main feature of the memorial is so called tapestry. It's supposed to depict Normandy beach today at peacetime, but really it just looks like a bunch of scribble and you have no idea what you're looking at.
- [13:42]
Jack Fowler
Justin, could you tell us your expectations for for Donald Trump's next administration, given especially what he did in his first term with Variousi think there are about five or six executive orders related to art, beauty, sculpture, and I associate that also with the commission. Victor was on the 1776 Presidential Advisory Commission, which also was an attempt to restore and reclaim America's heritage in some way, shape or form. Anyway, what are your expectations for Donald Trump in his next term?
- [14:21]
Justin Schubao
Well, the first major cultural move that Trump made in his first term was issuing a revolutionary executive order that reoriented federal architecture from ugly modernism to beautiful classical and traditional design. The order which, you know, I'll admit my organization instigated and helped draft. Look back to the founding fathers, Jefferson and Washington, who consciously chose the classical tradition for Washington, D.C. and its core buildings of government. I mean, they even had a direct hand in the design of the White House and Capitol. And Jefferson had amazing rhetoric talking about how the Capitol is the first temple built for the people. He said it embellishes with Athenian taste for a nation looking far beyond Athenian destinies. And the founders began this or inaugurated this classical tradition for American public architecture that lasted for about 150 years, but then the federal government rejected it and started building brutalist, ugly, dismal federal buildings. And in more recent years, under the current design program, has been constructing even avant garde works that look like art projects or alien spacecraft. I'd ask people to look at the San Francisco Federal Building as one of the worst of the worst. Trump recognized this problem and issued this amazing executive order that was widely hailed. Unfortunately, almost immediately after taking office, Biden rescinded it. There was tremendous pressure from the architectural establishment, which is dominated by modernists. And then there was also opposition from cultural elites like the New York Times. They published an editorial titled what's so great about fake Roman temples? I mean, the implication being that the Capitol building and the Jefferson Memorial and the Supreme Court are all fake, because obviously Those are not 2000 year old. 2000 years old. Now, I have, I'm very hopeful that President Trump will reissue the. That order. I mean, I think there's going to be a general agenda to make America beautiful again, and that will be a key part of it.
- [16:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
If, if you, Justin, if you were the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, given the budget and the na. How, how can the National Endowment for the Arts affect this or what. What could you do? Is it because it's largely grant making, isn't it?
- [16:59]
Justin Schubao
Well, the, the Endowment, which has a budget of 210 million, is the largest funder of arts and arts education in the country. My vision for the NEA comes from Dana Gioia, the masterful poet and translator who ran it under George W. Bush. He said, a great nation deserves great art. I think that the NEA needs to give grants to the most talented artists, musicians, choreographers and so on to design or create pieces of art that redound to America's greatness. And one way I would like to do that would be to create an initiative to celebrate the grand tradition of American civic architecture that goes back to the founders. And so that's part of my vision. There's also incredible opportunity here. Given the semi quincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. I would love to see the NEA perhaps fund a design competition for a new monument or memorial that the NEA actually funded, the competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and also the NEA chairman has a role in the Garden of American Heroes that President Trump said he's going to build. And we need to make sure that the statues are done right, that, you know, we don't get kitsch, we don't get mannequins, but that we have art of the quality of the national World War I memorial by Saban Howard. And in fact, I encourage Sabin to enter that competition in the first place. We need to find the talent where it is. Just because a sculpture is figurative does not mean that it's good.
- [18:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, that's absolutely right. One of the things it seems that a lot of the fuel for postmodernism or representational or whatever term we use comes from the university art departments. They seem to be dominated by modernists. But I noticed every I go to each autumn to Hillsdale College and their sculptures that are arranged of Thatcher and Churchill, but especially their Romanesque new church. It was the largest church built in the United States over, I think, a six Year period when it was inaugurated two years ago. But it is. It's a beautiful building. It's a Romanesque art building and it's. I think it's patterned after the cathedral at Oxford, but that's very rare here. Where I work at Stanford. There's a very good represent classical artist, John Peck, and he's giving classes and in acrylics and watercolors. And I guess it's in the tradition of what the Greek artistic critics said, that you want to capture what the eye sees. That was the point of archaic art. And then in classical art, you want to see that something even better than the art the eye sees. It's not necessarily always realistic. It's perfection if you look at some of the things by miniscules or praxilites and especially Renaissance art. But it's too bad, because I guess what I'm trying to grasp at. We have a public desire. There seems to be an innate hunger for that type of art that's inspirational and makes us want to aspire to greater things. And yet the artistic world is cynical and nihilistic and wants us to see things that bring out cynicism or nihilism or depression in us. And it's. And that's why I'm very confident, because I think the Trump movement shows that there is this popular support for classical norms. And that applies to art and literature as well.
- [20:56]
Justin Schubao
Absolutely. I mean, one term I like to use when it comes to what kind of public art we should Building is legibility. Is there symbolism and allegory and meaning that the ordinary person can understand? It's not some question mark or inkblot. These works should be making a statement or even an exclamation. And talented sculptors and artists can achieve that if you're doing some kind of modernist minimalist work. Sometimes they're not trying to make a statement at all, or they're making a bleak statement. I mean, to give a. Maybe a controversial example, I say look at the memorial in New York City for September 11th. These two giant black holes in the ground, literally water going down the drain. To me, that's an image of looking into the abyss when what we could have done is build upward in the same site that the World Trade center used to exist and build something magnificent and inspiring. But that's very often just not what we get from modern artists today. I mean, Theodore Adorno, the Frankfurt theorist, he said there can be no poetry after Auschwitz. And I think that's summarizing a particular worldview, but I completely reject that. We do not want.
- [22:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
Is it true the old classical argument that rebounded in the 40s and 50s and 60s that people who, that the first generation of modern artists at least were trained by classical masters so a Picasso could draw, but in subsequent generations those techniques and that craftsmanship was abandoned. And so you get the impression now that the young artist who is a representational or modern or postmodern artist lacks the basic artistic skills to do classical art or classical architecture.
- [22:56]
Justin Schubao
Right? Yeah. Tom Wolfe famously said modern art is creativity without skill. You know, you'll go to a contemporary art museum and you say, well, I could have done that. But the artist response is, well, but you didn't. You didn't.
- [23:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.
- [23:12]
Justin Schubao
And so they're demonstrating their cleverness, their ability to play within the art world. You know, it's a demonstration of power. You know, there was that recent artwork of a banana duct taped to the wall that sold for $6.2 million. That's an amazing achievement by the artist. Right. What a clever, powerful, I mean, trickster, you might say. And there's no skill involved. It's conceptual art. It's about. Well, I had the idea of it. It's in some ways representative, almost a kind of the end of art. You know, art has become so self conscious of itself, so questioning of every fundamental principle that it's ceased to exist.
- [23:56]
Jack Fowler
Hey Justin, we have just a few minutes left and again, I appreciate your joining us here. You mentioned before the National Garden of Heroes. And Donald Trump, I think as he was maybe in his last week or two as president, he more fully, he issued a more fulsome executive order that had over 200 figures from Arthur Ashe, Cy Young, baseball, Bill Buckley, just a wide spectrum of great Americans. So could you give us a little more on what Donald Trump's plans were and do you expect them to be repeated and maybe even expanded?
- [24:43]
Justin Schubao
So sure. President Trump issued an executive order creating this garden of American heroes that would include many, many figures of great figures from American history. It didn't state where it would be, but it referred, I believe it referred to Mount Rushmore. And I've heard that maybe it will be located near that work, obviously one of the great works of American public sculpture. And it could also be, you know, the sort of destination that people would go to see art. I mean, I have high hopes for the garden. I think one thing that they will start with is gathering already existing works of art, since you don't have to build them from scratch and we can find the best that is out there. But then they will commission Artists to do the new works.
- [25:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Just a final question. During that frenzied period of iconoclasm, when we were destroying and toppling statues, say, from 2019 to 2024, not that it has ceased completely, but. And I know that some of them maybe, if there's a difference between Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and somebody like James Longstreet, who, after the war, worked hard for. He was an abolitionist, essentially, but he was kind of a tragic figure. But that was all lost in that frenzy. Some of the works that were destroyed and replaced were not just Southern generals. Where are all those? And is there any. Were they. Some of them were removed. I think there was one at the Natural Museum, the Museum of Natural History in New York. What happened to them? And where are they? And are they ever going to come back?
- [26:38]
Justin Schubao
Well, the one you just mentioned at the Natural History Museum was a statue of Theodore Roosevelt. You know, I think he was accompanied by, you know, like, you know, he was on a horse accompanied by an. A black man and a Native American. So, you know, it offended various people that I believe was moved to North Dakota, even though it was, you know, artistically a great achievement. I mean, another example, this one's really outrageous, is the New York City Council removed a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Talk about iconoclasm at its worst. So, you know, I think that obviously, you know, people went too far under certain circumstances. You know, it is interesting to talk about Theodore Roosevelt. He was actually extremely interested in art and architecture. He wrote a review of the 1913 Armory Show. But he also said that a national greatness that does not include artistic production is but a malformed greatness. And I think that's the sort of attitude that President Trump is demonstrating. I mean, great statesmen throughout history, going back to Pericles and the building of the Parthenon, have understood the importance of great art and architecture for the body politic. So I'm extremely optimistic about what's going to happen next.
- [28:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
And it could be quick. Pericles, that was the great achievement. He completed the Parthenon in 20 years. His team of architects and sculpture. Well, if anybody's listening in the Trump transition, and I know that some people have are, we have a great guest, Justin Shubin, and he would be the ideal director of the National Endowment for Arts. And good luck, Justin. Whatever role you'll play, I'm sure it's going to be influential and determinative.
- [28:38]
Justin Schubao
Well, thanks so much for having me.
- [28:40]
Jack Fowler
Thanks for joining us, Justin. And to our listeners, we will Be back after these important messages.
- [28:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Hey prime members, have you heard you.
- [28:52]
Jack Fowler
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- [28:54]
Justin Schubao
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- [28:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [29:02]
Justin Schubao
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- [29:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [29:11]
Justin Schubao
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- [29:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [29:48]
Jack Fowler
Hey, we're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show again. We are recording on the 21st of December and this episode is coming out on Christmas Eve, December 24th. Santa will be coming down everyone's chimney soon. Victor, a couple things we need to talk about would I guess include.
- [30:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
The.
- [30:12]
Jack Fowler
Border wall and this craziness. You may have talked about this with the great Sammy Wink, the craziness of selling the wall, two things that happened yesterday, newsworthy. And then Victor, we'll talk about this a little. And then onto illegal immigration more in general is that Donald Trump himself filed some amicus brief, I'm not sure exactly in what court to stop the Biden administration from auctioning off this existing wall that has know it's just sitting there rusting. And then the auctioneer today has pulled the auction of this a taxpayer funded protection of our border. Victor, any thoughts on that? And then into broader on, on immigration.
- [31:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well I mean it's pure nihilism as I, I think I said with Sammy, we, we mentioned just a second that he Biden hates Trump more than he likes the American people because if he liked the American people he would have said the following. The people have spoken. The wall came up in the campaign. Even my vice president Kamala Harris supported it. She did not oppose it during her hundred day metamorphoses. And by the way Jack, where is she now? All those positions that she carved out that were not representative of her last 40 years, but she swore to us that she was for fracking, for border enforcement, for a wall. I haven't heard her. She could stay. She could appear out of nowhere in the last 30 days and say you know what, I had a change of Heart during this last hundred days of that campaign. And I told you that I would stop illegal immigration in a wall. I assumed and I was asked about it and I said I was happy to say it. Built. Okay, let's build it. She's not going to do that, obviously, because she was never sincere. She was always disingenuous. But it was very cynical because they would rather charge the. The American taxpayer will get hit twice on this. Not that it's a great sum, but it's emblematic. They'll get hit the fact that the. The materials are there for a lot of miles. They sold them for scrap or for other uses. You know, other federal agencies, other private entities that will use it for some type of fencing may perhaps. And then due to the Biden hyperinflation, and that included building materials, when we have to purchase the next elements of the wall, they'll be much more expensive. But, you know, it's the. I just want to talk a little bit about illegal immigration. I first started talking about this, I wrote Mexifornia 23 years ago, and it was very controversial. It was so controversial, Jack, that I had just been appointed to the Hoover Institution. And the director, John Rayson, who was a saint, he was a wonderful person, he called me, he said, victor, I got a problem. I've got a lot of open borders, free market libertarians. And they have no problem with you. In those days, you didn't. I was the first person you. That came in that under the new system that you had to be tenured by Stanford. But in that transitional period, the old system of a unanimous vote was assumed for senior fellows. Okay. And he said, there's a lot of otherwise conservative, moderate, some left, but they don't like what you wrote. So I got to wait six months. And that shows you how controversial it was because it wasn't just the left, it was the corporate right who wanted cheap labor and the libertarian philosophers who thought that, you know, borders was a federal regulation and get rid of it. That being said, the attitude of the left right now is they said it could cost a trillion dollars to deport people. It's too expensive. And think of that logic, everyone. The that logic is if you say, well, when you. A highway patrolman is going down the road and he sees somebody swerving around, it's very expensive to pull the guy over, give him a breath test, arrest him, have somebody come out and confiscate the car, take him in, book him, then have a trial, then maybe a jury and that. Da, da, da, da. It's much cheaper just to let him go. And then that's economical. That's the attitude of the left. Well, yes, we let in 12 million people and yes, there's crime and yes, they tax Social Security and people have suggested it may be a trillion dollars in labor and capital for now, what would be 30 million plus illegal immigrants. But the cost to rectify what they did is what they're arguing. And therefore we shouldn't follow the law because basically they're saying, well, we were weaving all over the road. It's too expensive at this late date to put us, to punish us, but we can do it very quickly. There were three things that Trump did. He built, he, he repaired 500 miles plus and then he built 30 or 40 with a trajectory and you couldn't fortify all of it. But it's a 2,000 mile wall and there's, he will do it in a year. The second thing is he will bring back the demand that you apply for refugee status before you come here. You just don't come over here and say, you know what, I'm here and I'm illegal, by the way. I look back at my situation, I think I'm a refugee. No, you go to an embassy or consulate and you make the argument and then you're adjudicated before you come. You don't come illegally. The third was catch and release. We're going to catch you, but you have rights of anybody else. And we don't know whether it's illegal that you came illegally or not. So we'll give you a court date. A million and a half people have not showed up that already have deep, they've already been adjudicated. They have quasi deportation. So if he did those three things, stop, catch and release, refugee status back in your native country, finish the wall. The other thing he could do is he could stop the tax free remittances. And there's 63 billion that go to Mexico and there's 60 that go to Central America. And he slaps a 30% tax. You're, you're talking 18, $20 billion. It would more than pay for the wall. And you could just say, we don't care what the status is of anybody who use Western Union or online banking. Anything electronically that goes to Mexico or Central America until the immigration problem is solved, will be taxed at 20 or 30%. And then you can threaten tariffs as well as he did last time, because Mexico knows what it is doing. It sees this as a deliberate policy. It's the Frederick Jackson Turner Safety valve which going to let all these people go so they don't march on Mexico City for redress of grievances. People in Chiapas, Micho, Khan, Oaxaca, we get the money. It's a greater revenue stream than oil or tourism. We have to have it. We want, as Obrador said, We've had 40 million expatriates. It's a beautiful thing. The third thing is, and I think they're really going to hit this, if you look at the 14th amendment, it does not say flat out unequivocally that anybody born on the soil of the United States is a citizen. It says anybody born on the soil who is not subject to the laws of a different entity, basically. And so when you're coming here as foreign parents, you are subject as a citizen of Mexico or Russia to those laws. If you look at the 27, I think it is European countries, 17 of them just say no way. These are liberal left wing that we all admire on the left. Leftists are always saying got to do what the EU does. They don't allow anchor birth and the 10 that do. I went back and looked at this. They require all sorts of things that at least one parent be a citizen or a naturalized citizen or they apply in advance, that they know they're going to be in a foreign country when the baby, it's just completely different. And those are the liberal and they would be considered conservative. I think there's only three countries that have this anchor baby clause. And if we stop that, believe me, we would remove an enormous incentive of people coming here deliberately to have a baby so they could anchor relatives, etc. The other, I think it's really important is that the deportations, they have iterations. So the first deportation, easy, 500,000 felons. We know that, everybody will love that. The next, a million and a half felons. Now, excuse me, a million and a half. The next one. These are people, as I said, they're not felons. But they have already been adjudicated and found to be here unlawfully and either didn't go to their deportation hearings or refugee status hearings and they're subject to immediate deportion. Deportation. That's 2 million. The third, I think is, is politically viable. Those are people who are able bodied, not working on public assistance, state, local or federal, and have only been here, say been here less than five years. That would, that would be 3 or 4 million. The fourth iteration would be easy. Those would be people and Trump had signed that order. Remember Jack, about terrorist People on from countries that sponsor terrorism would not be given visas.
- [40:23]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [40:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
So if you, you could just say we don't want people right now coming from Russia, from Somalia, from Sudan, from Iraq, from Iran, from Venezuela. You can get 20 countries that sponsor terrorism are mainland China. Mainland China. And those we could say we don't want you coming. And if you're here illegally from those countries, you're subject to immediate deportation. Then we get into the territory of well, what if they have been here five years and what if they are working and what if they are not on public assistance? Then I think you could say then we can offer you a green card, not citizenship, a green card. And I think you would have a lot of public support. Why do I believe that? Because in the past illegal immigration and the efforts to stop it were opposed by the La Raza Identity politics di woke group and they said this was racist or it's Mexico has claims on the American Southwest, etc. But when you talk to Hispanic communities today, and this was evident in the last election, they are at odds with their bi coastal university media political elites. They're at odds because these people coming in. There's two things about this immigration that's different and makes it politically toxic for the left. Number one, they're coming in huge numbers and they are not going to Malibu or as we've seen, Martha's Vineyard and they're not going to Maui, they're not going to Kalorama or the one of the four Obama mansions. They're going in the Rio Grande Valley, they're going to Fresno county, they're going to inner city Chicago, they're going where you Queens, Bronx, Manhattan. And these, these groups are traditionally left wing groups and they are angry that their activist leadership promotes this in the abstract and they suffer in the concrete.
- [42:39]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [42:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
The second thing that makes us politically viable and I think Trump will be able to do this politically is half these people, I would call them the Biden illegals, half of the Biden illegals are not coming from Mexico and I think about 40% are not coming from Latin America or Mexico. So somebody who's in the Rio Grande Valley and he's a representative or state legislator, he can say these people are overwhelming and they're from China, they're from Syria, they're from Angola. We have no vested into. We, the expatriate community don't want this. And these constituents don't have a lot of expatriate communities. So I think it'll be politically viable. I really do. The other thing they can do very quickly is, and they've talked about this, I think it's a federal law already for five or 10 years. If they can just Trump can just announce tomorrow with an executive order and then he can reify it with congressional legislation. He can just say if anybody is detained here who entered the United States and resided illegally, you will not be given a green card from now on for 20 years. You will never be able to come in the United states legally for 20 years. So we want to warn all of you, all of you who have not been detained, all of you who are under the radar, please go home and apply for legal Visa cards or legal green cards or work cards or student visas. Because when we take office or when we set this policy, the clock is ticking. And if you are apprehended, you will never be allowed to apply for a legal green card. That would set off a gold rush in the opposite direction.
- [44:34]
Jack Fowler
Well, that sounds like an exceptional, almost a ten point plan, Victor.
- [44:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I hope it is because I think that Tom Holman and Kristi Noem and all these people, they're the right people and you have to be inured to criticism. And let's remember 62, I think before.
- [44:55]
Jack Fowler
The election I saw some polling numbers. 62, 65. Somewhere in there, percent of Americans favor deportation. Just a deportation, like get rid of all the illegals. So that is a great political number to work, work from. Victor. Before we move on, I just need to take a moment for our sponsor, Quince. And I need to remind folks, you know, there are 12 days of Christmas, right? We're not going to sing the song, but there are that many. So if you're still looking for the perfect gift this year, well, I found the perfect spot for timeless gifts made from premium materials. You've got to check out Quince Quince let you treat your loved ones and yourself to true quality at an affordable price no matter what you're looking for. All Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They only work with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and they use premium fabrics and finishes for that luxury feel in every piece. Gift luxury this holiday season without the luxury price tag, go to quince for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Quince. Q U I n c e.com Victor to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Victor and we thank the good people at Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Hey Victor, I'm betting and I hope what you've just gone through with us we will see that in some form of writing by you. But there's another piece you've just written. It's up on your website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com you've written this. This is your essay for American greatness. Are the years of madness ending? I strongly encourage our listeners to check it out if they haven't already. Victor, it's a terrific piece. Would you give us a little rundown on what it's about?
- [47:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, this election was a mandate. As we've talked before. Very rarely have Republicans done the following. Won the popular vote by a clear margin. Won a very clear majority in the Electoral College of 312 electoral votes and then entered office as they will in a month with the White House small but nevertheless a speaker who is a Republican in the House. A small majority. They own the House. A wider majority in the veto proof. They cannot not excuse me. Not that they have 66. But the left will not be able to veto things. They won't be able to do it. There is a Republican 53 Republican senators and they control the Supreme Court. They have all. And then the third leg of this trifecta popular vote, Electoral college, all the branches of government and every issue that Donald Trump ran on. Close the border, fund the police, develop energy, deter our enemies, worry about people in East Palestine or the people suffering the Carolinas and Georgia rather than giving a billion dollars as we did this week to Ecuador. All of those have 60 to 65%. And so I'm very happy. That was what part of the article was that gives you the political wherewithal to stop the madness. But as we just stopped talked with Justin. This was a cultural revolution that we witnessed for the last five, six years. It started in opposition to Trump. So Trump is waging a counter revolution. And it's got to be cultural, economic and what Justin talks about in the realms of art or literature. It has to be. It has to be 360 degrees because that's what happened. We woke up and I'll define the madness. You know what? Better than I do. We woke up one day and it just hit us like this. I knocked. I knocked off. I hit it so much I knocked off my hat. But we woke up and there were three genders. Three sexes. Not that 0001 historically of suffered from gender dysphoria. But now that was a civil rights movement and people who thought that you should treat people with tolerance and kindness and equality and parody that suffered from gender dysphoria. No, that was different. This was a category where biological males had a right to dress in your daughter's walking room. I'm just taking the most egregious example. And then we were told that we were going to change names. We were going to rename buildings, topple statues. 1619 was the foundational date of America, not 1776. We were told that it was archaic, ossified, passe to vote on election day. Suddenly we were told 70% of the electorate through early balloting and mail and would not show up on election day. And by the way, the error rate, rejection rate would go by a drop, by a magnitude. We were told that the military was a social, cultural organization and it was going to be on the tip of the spear of providing abortions and resistance to this anti abortion craziness. That's what we were told. It was going to have transgendered issues, indoctrination, and we were going to focus on the three pillars of white privilege, white rage, white supremacy. I'm quoting Lloyd Austin and General Milley. And we lost 45,000 soldiers. And then we were. It was just everywhere, every element of our life. And so then this rejection came in. And now Donald Trump is saying, the madness is over. We're going to fund buildings that look like classical, beautiful buildings. We're going to have art that looks what our, like what our eyes see, not just trickster stuff that we just talked about. We're going to see. It's going to, it's not. We're not going to rename buildings anymore, at least not for the next four or five years. We're looking at the universities in a new way. We're saying the clotting gaze of the world. You're not going to just institutionalize antisemitism. You're not going to say that plagiarism is okay for me, but not for thee. We don't have to honor the first or the fourth or the fifth or Sixth Amendment on camp. Yes, you do. You do, because you take federal funds. You take a lot of federal funds. We're not going to weaponize the agencies and the bureaus anymore. In fact, we're going to go one step further as counter revolutionary. Donald Trump is going to say, you surveilled Cash Patel, you tried to destroy him. Along with Devin Nunes. He has been a public defender, he has been a prosecutor, he has been an investigator, he has worked for the Senate, he's worked for the House, he's worked for the Executive branch. He, the victim of you is going to run you. Same thing with rfk, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Bataria, all. You went after these people and these are the people we trust most to stop what you're doing because they've been victims of it. So this is a counter revolution against the doj, the irs, the CIA, the FBI and, and the Pentagon, all of which have been part of this crazy cultural revolution. So I think that Trump and the people around him see this. It's not just George H.W. bush comes in and he takes over from Reagan and then he loses to Clinton and then George W. Bush comes back and stops Clinton. No, these people were not even Bill Clinton. They came into the White House first under Obama and then under Biden to change the very nature of, of America in every conceivable fashion. And to redress that grievance, you have to do the same thing. And you have an advantage because you're not saying that you're trying to destroy things. You're trying to restore and save and preserve the work of prior generations. Most of them were better than us, to tell you the truth. We need to get over this idea that we in the present can use our values and go back and judge condemnation, execute people of the past who had no, you know, when they had a cataract, they went blind. When they got an infection, they died. They had no sewage, they had no electricity, they had no cars. Most of it was just a struggle to live one more day. And we, in our decadence and lush leisure and affluence then from the part, are condemned now. We're not going to do that anymore. So I, I'm really excited. For the first time really in my adult life, I like George W. Bush. I did not think that he was going to, I mean, with no no Child Left behind or a lot of the stuff that he allowed, I don't think he was looking at, he was a political reformist. I don't think he was looking at the entire cultural middle and I don't think that John McCain was and I do not think that Mitt Romney was.
- [54:28]
Jack Fowler
No, they weren't. Victor, I mentioned that this article can be found on your website, the Blade of Perseus. The address there is victorhanson.com I want to recommend to our listeners that they check it out regularly and if you go there, you will find these essays. Victor writes for American Greatness, his weekly syndicated columns, the archives of these podcasts, links to Victor's various books, best selling books and his other appearances on other podcasts. Then you'll find ultra articles which you need to subscribe in order to read them. Victor writes two or three of those every week. The current series he's working on is called Turning Points on the Road to Trump's election. Terrific stuff. Five bucks a month gets you in the door and $50 discounted for the full year. That's the blade of perseusvichterhandson.com Victor I sure hope the efforts to crack down on the universities have broader consequences for the students there. Ivy Here's a headline from the New York Post article the other day. This has to do with the murderer Luigi Mangione who killed the murdered the head of the CEO of United Healthcare. Maximilian Meyer, who is a student at Princeton, wrote a piece for the Post. Not bad. Why my Ivy League campus is rooting for Luigi Mangione and here's just a quick little glimpse from it the Emerson College poll found 41% of voters age 18 to 29 saw Thompson's murder as acceptable, while just 40% found it somewhat a complete unacceptable. But here at Princeton, a poll of nearly 1500 students on the phys I'm not sure what that is Social network revealed that 25% found Mangione's action completely justified, with another 22% saying Thompson's death was deserved. Only 13% managed to say the killer was purely in the wrong. This is what is the mindset of today's Ivy Leaguers. Any thoughts on this?
- [56:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor yeah, I have a lot of thoughts. I I say I want to be very careful what I say. I spent, you know, I'm 71. I've spent 50 years defending the university and the importance of a college education, the importance of learning literature, art, science, math at a high level beyond high school. I'm, I'm the way that it is practiced now, at least at the elite level. I don't believe that anymore. I believe that you get those statistics at Princeton either for one or two reasons. You self select people who have lost their moral bearings and they look at Princeton or Stanford or Harvard or Yale as places where they can come and be lectured to and accommodated by similar people who have lost their moral bearings with the caveat or the I shouldn't say caveat, the advantage that you will get a cattle brand Harvard degree and that will be entree into riches and career. Or they come from all over the United States and they come as first year students and they end up being morally and mentally and intellectually corrupted and brainwashed. And so whatever it is. They're not mutually exclusive. They are turning out people for whatever reason that are harmful to the body politic. They're amoral. Anywhere you get close to 50% that would approve of a person on a video taking a firearm out and shooting them. And then there is all this hypocrisy. We just had a tragic shooting in Wisconsin. And the fact that we don't know much about the shooter tells. And I don't know what the shooter was, but Christian school. But anytime in America, it's the Ann Coulter rule. Anytime in America, when you're not giving the normal description of the shooter, you should assume that the left feels that that shooter had some justification because she was part of the victimized binary. I don't know what that means in Wisconsin, but we'll see. But the point I'm making is as soon as that happened, they were called calls for gun control. Here you have an example of a guy with a pistol that he printed out parts of it, at least, that were not metallic. And he's shooting. And there hasn't been one person who said on the left, oh my God, we've got an assassin. And he shot this person. We've got to stop virtual printing of gun parts. Let's stop. Because the left always wants to outlaw stuff. They don't. It's almost like they're glorifying guns. And then the second thing, this guy was a product of the upper, upper, upper, upper 1% as defined by income, money, privilege. Where are the people saying he is a beneficiary of white privilege? The person he shot came from the lower middle classes, worked hard, did well in school, pulled himself up from the bootstraps and was running a large company. And that large company was functioning in a post Obama, Obamacare environment where the government came in and controlled things and limited competition. We know that in every other realm of economic activity, that means higher cost, more regulation, more burdensome regulations. So this person basically is angry that the health care system doesn't work like it did 15 years ago, before the he and his supporters voted for people who put this system in. Then he uses a firearm and it's a. Oh, gosh, I forgot Jack. It's one of the biggest sins you can commit. It's a ghost gun. He created it so it's not registered. That is the greatest sin of firearms abuse. And you hear nothing. I thought that Elizabeth Warren said, we've got to stop all ghost guns. Look at this. Instead she got out and tried to explain why she could understand that people were sympathetic to him. So rich kid. The real headline is rich spoiled brat who has no real source of support for four or five years, bounces around from, you know, Frisco to Hawaii, surfs, gets a surfing injury, blames it his problems on other people. I was watching when I was listening to this, I was, is it Jimmy Jones, the guy on Fox that lost his legs in Afghanistan? Yeah. And they were reporting this. I just looked at him, I thought, how much pain and suffering did you have to endure for double amputations? And you did all that for your country. And I have never heard a bitter word from him. Never. And yet the left is now trying to tell us that because this person had an operation that didn't go well on his back and he was frustrated with the health care system or they didn't understand him or he wanted to shoot somebody. The other thing is, and this is not conspiratorial thinking, do you really believe that this guy, we're talking about support for him? I don't believe that. He just happened to walk out and a few seconds later he sees this person. He must have had somebody who told him where this person was staying when he was coming out or somebody who was out there trying to be lookout. My point is it's representational of all of the support that he has. And I was shocked to see young people cheer this guy on. It was really disturbing if you had a little bit of that with Ted Kaczynski and the Unabomber. But this was just egregious. This was outright mafia style murder. Shot him in the back, executed him. And then people are cheering that on in the university. And who would want. So you're now a Silicon Valley's employer at Amazon, Google, Apple, and you look at all this support and you think, wow, these, you, these campuses have almost 50% either strongly or somewhat favorably are inclined to this type of activity. Do I really want them here in my, my building? Because at some point they might consider me a capitalist insect.
- [63:25]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [63:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
And go out and get their raid can and spray me or shoot me.
- [63:29]
Jack Fowler
This is why what philanthropists dollars have I've rendered. You know, this is what they've grown at these petri dishes. So. Hey Victor, we. I want to ask you about another topic and has to do with BB Netanyahu. But first I just. We need to say something about our friends@besthotgrill.com and everyone knows that football's back. So is tailgating. And whether it's Friday night lights Saturday, college or pro Sundays, Solaire Tailgate Infrared Grills. They set up fast, heat up quickly, only three minutes to searing hot temperatures. Just like the big backyard Solaires. The Solaire Grill will make you the master of the tailgater with the juiciest, most flavorful food in the parking lot. And the fast grilling times leave you more time to enjoy the pre game festivities. They also cool down fast so that you won't miss a minute of the game. The USA made Solaire anywhere, everywhere and all about Infrared Grills are portable and perfect for any grilling on the go from picnics to camping RVs to boating, but especially tailgating. Amaze your tailgating friends with the great food you grill with your Solaire Infrared Grill. Learn more about these fantastic grills and about Solaires. Try before you buy Demo Rental Pro program at best hot grill.com that's best hot grill.com besthot grill.com and we thank the good people from Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, we're going to get to Christmas after the we we take one more break, but I just have to ask you about I'm going to call him my old friend Radek Sikorsky. Radek wrote for National Review when I first was there and I was when I was a congressional reporter over 30 years ago. Radek is Polish extraction and English, not extraction. He's Polish and also part English. But he moved on from being a journalist to a leading Polish politician. He's the Foreign Minister now and he had been once before. By the way, here's the headline under under my old friends Foreign Service of Poland Poland says it will arrest Bibi if Israel PM attends Auschwitz Liberation Anniversary what the f has happened to of all places, Poland is going to arrest the President of the Prime Minister of Israel. These people are cracked. They're not that cracked. They're nasty.
- [66:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Anyway, 70% of Jewry that was destroyed in World War II. Not that it was the Poles fault they suffered 2 million fatalities. But it would seem that people who were in control of the government in Poland would be at least cognizant that they have a special obligation as custodians of the death camps and the memorialization of what happened on their soil. That they wouldn't try to do that to an Israeli, an elected prime minister President of Israel who was visiting not to discuss military strategic issues but to commemorate the people who died at Auschwitz. So then the question then comes what do you do about it? Well, we're not a participant in an international criminal court and we and neither is Israel, so, so they're not subject in the greater sphere to their jurisdictions. But supposedly Poland doesn't have to do this, but they are exercising as is Trudeau saying, we are a member. So if whoever we condemn as a war criminal, we, the members of international, we're all going to criminal court. We're all going to enforce it. Donald Trump, if I were the Polish government, I would not, I would be very scared right now because they are on the front lines of a Russian, Ukrainian war. They are staunch allies of the United States, and they depend. They are members of NATO and they depend on American largesse, weapons and readiness. And if they are going to threaten to jail, indict, jail, hold, whatever, our closest ally, prime minister of Israel, then I think Donald Trump will react to that. I really do. He will just say, and it could be any type of reaction. He can say, I don't want to have anybody. I don't. You know what? If you don't want the prime minister who's trying to save his country as it's attacked by Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Iran, 500 projectiles from Iran, 10,000 missiles sent in from Hezbollah, 7,000 sent in from Hamas, another 500 from the Houthis, and they are after October 7th. They are fighting for their very existence. And if you don't see that and you want to jail the person who was a government, the prime minister whose country was attacked, then just don't come here for a while. And I think Trump will do that. I think he will say to the Polish government, if you really persist on that and you're threatening to arrest an Israeli official, the highest official, an elected official, an American's closest allies, we don't want to see you. Just think about it. And that would be the lightest objection. And I think they're really crazy. I don't think they understand Donald Trump. He didn't care. He doesn't. If he says something like, I don't want the police foreign minister coming to the United States till he sobers up and somebody comes in, Mr. President, I'm the under Secretary of Secretary of State. This is not very sober and judicious. It's fucked. Get out of here. You're fired. That's what he will do, and he will get the support. Same thing with Trudeau. Trudeau said that he would arrest Netanyahu. Yeah, okay. Well, then don't leave my. Go. You know, Justin, just stay out of the United States. You're going to lose your, you're going to be out of power. Anyway, and then you're going to be a non entity. But for these vanishing months in which your control of connect Canada's destiny, don't, don't come in the United States. If you can say people can't come in your country that haven't done anything and they're our closest ally and you're saying that they don't have a right to come in your country and not, I shouldn't say that Canada, like Poland is not saying don't come here. They could say that. They can just say, you know what, it's very tense. We don't want you to come here. They're saying we're going to arrest you if you come here. And I think that we have to tell people that we stand for things. And I would just say to Trudeau, don't come to the United States as long as you have that order of resting Netanyahu, just don't come. And I think they'll make, you know, everybody says Trump can't do this, can't do this. He did this with Obrador. He just said, if you're going to greenlight millions of people here and your cartels are killing a hundred thousand people and you know what you're doing by laundering the profits, the cartels are on your soil and you know it. And half your government's corrupt and you're buying Chinese product, maybe we just won't have NAFTA for you. How's that? And that got their intention. And I, I just think that they're one of the reasons we saw that at the Notre Dame Cathedral, that greeting of the returning president elect and everybody was like a mob fighting to touch him. I've never seen anything like it. And it was because they know that when he comes in, he's going to beef up the military, he's going to deregulate, he's going to invite capital. And there's a very good chance that the American economy, military will be preeminent as it was in the past by the time he's done. And that means it's very strong. And more importantly, people like the Canadians or the Poles or the Japanese or the Australians, they know that if they get into trouble, it won't be, we'll fly you out a Joe Biden ask, hey, if you get a Mr. Polish Foreign Minister, if Russian invades, depending it's a major or minor Russian invasion, whether we help. And by the way, oh, they're already in your country, we'll fly you out. Oh, we're going to put A hold on offensive weapons to Poland. Remember, that's all the things that Obiden did. He put a hold. When he, as soon as he came into office, he put a hold on offensive weapons to Ukraine. Then he said his reaction would depend what the magnitude of the Russian invasion. And then right during the period when they were trying to decapitate Kiev, he offered to fly Zelinsky out. Maybe we should have that attitude toward Poland and see if he prefers that type of government.
- [72:43]
Jack Fowler
Victor for Secretary of State. That's my vote. Folks will be back with.
- [72:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
I would object because I'm a fan of Marco Rubio. I really am.
- [72:54]
Jack Fowler
Oh, yeah. No, I agree. I agree.
- [72:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Especially the, the maga Marco Rubio.
- [72:59]
Jack Fowler
You know. Yeah.
- [73:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
He has been the most effective elected senator on these along with Tom Cotton on China.
- [73:07]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [73:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know what I mean?
- [73:08]
Jack Fowler
He's terrific.
- [73:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's not unthinking. He just, oh, we're going to put tariffs on. He's been very precise in saying we've got a problem with our economy and we've got to be very smart how we finesse this. But they are enemies.
- [73:20]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. You like someone that. Yeah. That will call out our actual enemies and point a finger at them.
- [73:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
I should have included him. I would not press Marco Rubio, once his secretary of state. I think he's going to tell the police foreign foreign minister and he's going to tell the Canadian foreign foreign minister. If you think you're going to arrest or threaten to arrest the elected prime minister of Israel, given he's done more for Western civilization in one year against the fight in the fight against terrorism than you people have done in your entire lives. You should thank Mr. Netanyahu. Without him, Lebanon would be doomed for eternity. There would. Hezbollah was growing. The Assads were massacring people every day and the Houthis were completely in control of the Red Sea. And Iran was. We'll see. But Iran was the funder and the creator of all of this. Anti Western, anti American, anti Israeli. And he and he alone almost stopped all of it. And yet you're going to put him in jail. I think Rubio will tell him.
- [74:31]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Okay. Well, I withdraw that nomination, Victor. And we will, we will come back with, with your take on your favorite Christmas movie when we return from these final important messages. Credit karma makes building your credit straightforward and stress free. With help from our credit builder. Sign up today@creditkarma.com and start enhancing your financial health.
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- [75:27]
Jack Fowler
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- [75:41]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Merry Christmas. Coming. Santa's coming. Reindeer up on the roof already on your new roof, Victor. I hope, I hope on your roof the reindeer aren't walking on. Do you have some solar panels up on some of them? We don't want, we don't want any damage there. So Victor, just, you know, our listeners love your thoughts on your favorite military movies and all your favorite books, what you like to read, etc. So, yeah, do you, do you have.
- [76:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
A favorite Christmas movie you mentioned to me before? You like Battleground?
- [76:16]
Jack Fowler
I do.
- [76:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was 1949, I think, wasn't it? William Wellman movie. William Wellman was a great director. He did a lot of great films. And I think one of my favorite was that mid-50s, the high and the Mighty with Robert Stack and John Wayne. They're flying that DC4 across Hawaii and they have that explosion and then they tell, they tell John Wayne, he's the retiring pilot and he's trying to mentor Robert Stack, who's the technician. He's a great pilot, but he doesn't have the old vacbone.
- [76:49]
Jack Fowler
Did they make the, the move? They made the comedy airplane based off of that too, I think.
- [76:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know if they did. Maybe they did. But Robert Stack keep, they have the navigator and he keeps coming in. The wind is this way and the weight is this way and that we're not going to make it. And then, yeah, we have the wind's chain. We're going to make it. The whole time John Wayne's calm. Robert Stack's trying to grab the wheel. We got a ditch and he said the wheel ditching now. And we ditch in the water. We're gonna go, we're gonna go.
- [77:18]
Jack Fowler
Wow.
- [77:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
So then they, they, it's just incredible movie and they land and then they say to the retired, I think his name is Roman, his last name in the movie. And they say, Mr. Roman, we had 30 gallons of gas left and he starts to walk away and he whistles all the time when he's happy and he whistles and then Robert Stack go, there goes that old pelican. And it's a great movie. William, well, was a great director. He did Battleground, but that's not my. My favorite.
- [77:51]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Just say Battleground is not a Christmas movie. It's about Bastogne, which happens at Christmas. But anyway, it's about.
- [77:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
It had. What was good about that movie? There was a movie with Henry Fawn. Remember the battle of Bond bulge?
- [78:06]
Jack Fowler
Yes.
- [78:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
I thought that was a kind of. It was attempted to tell a story better in Battle. Battleground was the first real post World War II movie where that was realistic. They showed people getting scared and arguing. I think one guy abandons his position. They have a Ricardo Montablanc as the Latino guy who's pretty good in that.
- [78:26]
Jack Fowler
He was.
- [78:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's never seen snow before and he's freaked out.
- [78:29]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [78:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
He gets killed in that. They almost all get killed in that movie as I remember.
- [78:34]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [78:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
But I. I still like It's a Wonderful Life by Frank Calpro.
- [78:40]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [78:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Partly. I like it because of the actors and actresses and that. Not just Jimmy. Not just Jimmy Stewart, but I always liked Donna Reed. She was really good. She died very young, you know, it was tragic. She died I think in early 60s of pancreatic cancer.
- [78:59]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [79:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
But I read Show. Oh, great show. And then one of my favorite actors is. He was the adult uncle in that. That loses the money. Thomas Mitchell.
- [79:10]
Jack Fowler
Tommy Mitchell, yeah.
- [79:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Remember he was in High Noon. He was the guy that was the city, the mayor. And he comes in and praise. Praises Gary Cooper about how we have to help him.
- [79:21]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [79:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Gary Cooper starts a smile and. Yeah, but I think you better get out. Get out of town and all our problems vanish with you.
- [79:30]
Jack Fowler
He was the drunk doctor and Stagecoach, he was. He was in. He was the father in. And Gone with the Wind. He's been in many, many of the classics. Yeah.
- [79:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Another great actor was Lionel Barrymore as Potter. Yeah, he was. He was just wonderful in that movie in a very sinister way. He. He was supposed to epitomize the heartless small town. I grew up in a very small town similar. And there was always one or two people in these small towns that. You know what I mean, that owned everything.
- [80:01]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [80:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
They were the city attorney. They were. They ran the funeral p. They had the only law firm they. All of downtown they owned and that was Potter in In a Wonderful Life. So it was. It was a great movie. And Frank Capra, everybody. He was faulted for you know, being happy endings and rosy versions of America, but he was actually, he was a great director. I was just thinking, though, that was the golden period. And I was looking down here, I just looked at this. If you look at those films right after World War II, Jack. Now just take the year after 1946. The best picture was the Best Years of Our Lives. William. Are Great Love. They have the same year. The Razor's Edge. That was that. A great book, that. And then the Yearling. Remember the Yearling?
- [80:57]
Jack Fowler
Oh, sure.
- [80:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
With Gregory peck and, and Mrs. Reagan. The year of It's a Wonderful Life. He didn't win the Academy Awards. And then Duel in the Sun, Caesar and Cleopatra. I like that movie. But my point is, this is a list of all the movies that were considered. And even if you go back into the last year of the war or the last two years of a war, and I was thinking maybe of, oh, 1943, I'll just pick it in Casablanca, 1942. Casablanca, Best Picture of the Year. And in that year, right during the war, they had all of these great books, you know, the Talk of the Town. That was a great movie too. And Mrs. Minerva, this is Miniver.
- [81:51]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [81:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Pride of the Atlant of the. Remember that?
- [81:54]
Jack Fowler
With Gary Teresa.
- [81:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Right.
- [81:55]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, yeah.
- [81:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I, I, I, I know that it's nostalgic and romantic and we always. But there was something about movies in the 1940s all the way through the 50s, on the waterfront, High Noon, all of those great movies. And yeah, and then there was a reaction against them with the Anti Hero and we, you know, the Wild. These were great movies to the reaction to those. The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy, everybody loved those movies, even if they were violent. But then something happened. I don't know what it was. It got a little bit the reaction to the reaction or they were away from the exemplar and they'd forgotten how to make a good movie and now it's just ruined. But it's just Soviet. They're not even movies, they're just Sovietization. Every time you go to a Hollywood movie, you know, if it's a drama crime, there's going to be a evil white guy with tattoos and he's going to be missing some teeth. He's going to have some crosses tattooed on his chest or back. He's going to have a Russian or South African accent and you know that the hero will be a black woman or a gay guy. And if it's a. I don't know, a drama, just a everyday drama. It's going to be like in New York, it's going to be a bunch of neurotic young people who are unmarried, no children, psychodramatic, under meds, and they're going to inflate some little triviality in their lives about why they didn't get a raise or this person had sex with somebody who was not kind afterwards. And it's just going to bore you because it's going to be saturated with little themes about abortion and gay marriage. All that stuff. It's all. It's not ours. Gratia artists anymore. Not art for the sake of art. It's art for the sake of politics.
- [83:53]
Jack Fowler
Well, this is why it's creativity. Yeah.
- [83:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think one good thing I've noticed, I've been talking to people in the publishing industry and my wonderful literary agent over the years, Glenn Hartley and Lynn Chu.
- [84:09]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [84:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
And others. Just people who write. Me and you and reading, reading. And you get the impression that the WOKE list that came in, especially after George Floyd, that era is over. And the same thing with MSNBC and the Joy Reid. She's taken a big pay cut, supposedly, as did Rachel Maddow. Not enough, but some. But you get the impression that the readership for WOKE literature and the viewership for WOKE news, and then Disney is just. I don't know what's happening to Disney. They cannot make a movie, a contemporary movie. They either have to take an old cartoon and remake it and not deviate from it. But once they deviate and put in the WOKE value system, nobody wants to see it. Nobody. It was like, it was like the Soviet Union in the 50s. I don't want to see another movie about the class struggle and how brilliant Stalin was. And that's what they've done to art. And that's what we were talking about with Justin sculptures.
- [85:17]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, you know, we've talked about it before. I mean, thank God for Turner Classic Movies that we can see so many of these great films that you, you mentioned, by the way, Victor, we have to close out. But you mentioned, you know, Joy Reed and, and Rachel Maddow taking pay cuts. She took a pay cut from, from 30 million to 25 million. But I saw some article that said Joy Reid is making 3 million. And, and so why isn't there a racial yet.
- [85:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, $3 million to tell what, 600,000 people is what she's got, or 500 that they are racist and horrible. That's what she does every night.
- [85:56]
Jack Fowler
But how come, how come she's not accused. And she's on every night. Rachel Maddow's on like what, once a week?
- [86:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
One night. One night a week. 30.
- [86:06]
Jack Fowler
And she salary. Yeah.
- [86:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
When they had the 16 million dollar settlement with ABC.
- [86:14]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [86:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
They were outrage at ABC. All these people said, this is terrible. They didn't back up George. They, they settled. George STEPHANOPOULOS Got a 20 million dollar renewal of his contract.
- [86:27]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [86:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
And they said for 16 million we.
- [86:29]
Justin Schubao
Could have hired, we could have hired.
- [86:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
30 more people that are losing their jobs. 40 more people. Well, how, how about Rachel Maddow? She's getting $25 million for one night a week. That's double what ABC paid out, right? That is. And they don't say a word about that. It's the funniest thing in the world.
- [86:48]
Jack Fowler
That's warped. Warped.
- [86:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they don't know who their friends are and who their enemies are, but their enemies. If you're a worker working stiff at the network news, your enemies are people like Rachel Maddow and George Stephanopoulos because you're left wing and you believe in equity and parody. And these people are making, I don't know, thousands of times more than you are staggering. And they're mediocre. And you can justify a George Stephanopoulos or a Rachel Madow or Joy Reed on two grounds. Either they're so brilliant. They're like that old guy, remember him? For old liberal. I really liked him for the NBC or cbs. Eric Severide.
- [87:28]
Jack Fowler
Oh, he was. I, oh, I forget what he was on. I was gonna say it wasn't abc. He was, he was cbs.
- [87:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah, cbs. Edward R. Mural and Walter Cronkite and those guys that.
- [87:40]
Jack Fowler
Howard K. Smith.
- [87:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah, Howard K. Smith. Brinkley.
- [87:46]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Harry Reasoner.
- [87:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. They were the guys that went on B17s in World War II, on missions and stuff. They were great people. And Eric Seid had those always, those convoluted analyses of the Vietnam War. He was like an intellectual.
- [88:02]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [88:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
And my grandfather, I would be down here in grammar school or working on the farm and he'd say, it's getting dark. We've got to go inside and hear that man Severite. He'll straighten things out for us. I would be picking up walnuts or I'd be in the. And I'd go into my grandfather's. He said, now boys, don't be quiet. The news, they'll bring Severite on and he'll clear up all the stuff about that damn Vietnam War he didn't like. Excuse me for the Language. He didn't like Vietnam. Of course, nobody did at that stage. But the point I'm making is that those guys, they were old liberals, but they were, they were somewhat empirical and they were much better educated than Stephanopoulos or Joy Reid or Rachel Maddow, the Roman scholars.
- [88:50]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, let's head off into the sunset. I just want to refer to your It's a Wonderful Life and Frank Capra and remember that he also, as a great patriot, he was the producer of why We Fight, the great documentary.
- [89:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
They treated him very badly. Remember when he said these people are communist and communism's killed millions of people. And I'm not going to lie that this person's not a communist. During the so called McCarthy. And then when they gave him that lifetime award, you know, for on the Waterfront. Did he do on the Water?
- [89:20]
Jack Fowler
That was Kazan. Yeah.
- [89:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm thinking of him.
- [89:24]
Jack Fowler
Half of them.
- [89:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was a great director too.
- [89:28]
Jack Fowler
He was. Oh my gosh, wasn't.
- [89:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Was Capra's Italian, wasn't he?
- [89:35]
Jack Fowler
Yes, he was.
- [89:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Kazan was a. He was an Asia Minor Greek.
- [89:39]
Jack Fowler
He was Greek, yeah. Yeah.
- [89:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
And when they gave Kazan that award, you remember all those actors turned their.
- [89:45]
Jack Fowler
Back on they did they. Yeah. Half of them, Half of them sat. He was.
- [89:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I remember Ed Harris. I was watching him at that. He's such a.
- [89:54]
Jack Fowler
He's such a.
- [89:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was a great director. On the Waterfront, Kazan. And then Capra was a great director too.
- [90:00]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well he, Capra did It's a Wonderful Life. Kazan did one of the great anti communist movies. Man on a Tightrope Rope. I, I know you can find it on, on YouTube somewhere. But hey, anyway, Victor, you've been terrific. I want to thank the folks who rate this show on what on. On Apple and zero to five stars. And again, practically everyone's giving you a five stars. Some people leave comments here and there and a lot of them leave comments on your website. The Blade of Perseus. Here's one from Green. Greg Fuso who writes, quote, rally around the flag, down with the traitor and up with the stars.
- [90:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's.
- [90:39]
Jack Fowler
I think he's quoting from the. Those are the lyrics of our, our old theme song, the battle cry of freedom. I feel like we just fought and won a civil war, albeit a cultural one. If we are vigilant and smart about it, we can have 12 years of peace and prosperity from the next attack on Fort Sumter. Thank you, Greg. I want to thank folks who go to civilthoughts.com and sign up for the free weekly email newsletter I write.
- [91:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just did this.
- [91:08]
Jack Fowler
Yes.
- [91:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yesterday I did Megyn Kelly and Mark Levine, and they were so upbeat and buoyant at the election. And even Eeyore. I'm no longer Eeyore. I'm smiling. Vic. You know what? I've been very upbeat and I'm amused by the whole thing, the people that are in mourning. And I like Trump's attitude now. He's. He's almost like he's an Olympian. You know what I mean? Reserve now. Except he did do that. Chris Christie. Did you see that?
- [91:45]
Jack Fowler
Oh, my God, the drones. Yeah, well, you know, I would mention.
- [91:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Mention that, but otherwise, you just did. He's become an Olympian. And that's. That's great. And, well, we like. They hate. I'll just finish. They hate Elon Musk now, and they think he's running the country. And I heard Van Jones go off on him. This is a millionaire. We don't know who's running the country. I'm thinking, okay, you told us for four years that Joe Biden was fit as the fiddle. He was there. And you knew that he was senile when he ran because, you know, Barack Obama. Barack Obama said to Joe Biden, joe, you don't have to do this. Don't rhyme. And you sat there and didn't say a word when we didn't know for four years who was running the country. And as far as billionaires go, Jeff Bezos gave you $100 billion million dollars and you took it. And you can use give it to charities or you can spend it on yourself. I won't ask you the ratio of charity to personal consumption ban, but you have no moral or rational right to get up logic, I should say. You have a right to do whatever you want.
- [92:59]
Jack Fowler
What was Zuckerberg's 470 million?
- [93:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Elon Musk, when your candidate outraised Donald Trump two and a half to one and got almost double the number of billionaires than Trump did.
- [93:14]
Jack Fowler
Right?
- [93:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
And 250 million. What Elon put on his own money and hired people to get out the vote was not what Mark Zuckerberg did in 2020 when he spent $419 million to absorb. Absorb the work of the red shirt registrars with mail and with his own employees. So, yeah, I get so tired of this hypocritical, sanctimonious beast, people. Well, more power to Elon.
- [93:43]
Jack Fowler
Amen, brother. All right, Victor, I'm going to wish our listeners a Merry Christmas and a happy Hanukkah, which I believe starts on. On Thursday. Thank you. Victor, you've been terrific. God bless all. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.
- [93:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Bye. Bye. Thank you, everybody.