Two Giants: The Legacies of Charlie Kirk and William Tecumseh Sherman

Summary

The Victor Davis Hanson Show

Episode: Two Giants: The Legacies of Charlie Kirk and William Tecumseh Sherman
Date: September 13, 2025
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson, Sammy Winkler

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Overview

This episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show delivers an in-depth reflection on two figures with "giant" legacies in American history and public life: the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was recently assassinated, and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Victor and co-host Sammy Winkler discuss the investigation into Kirk's murder, Kirk's societal impact, and the broader cultural implications. The episode transitions seamlessly into an extensive historical analysis of Sherman’s controversial but crucial role in Union victory during the Civil War.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Assassination of Charlie Kirk

[04:50 – 30:53]

• Details of the Assassination & Investigation

  • Victor describes the surreal immediacy of Kirk's assassination, the details of the shooter’s weapon, and how the FBI may track the assailant.
  • The peculiar symbolism around the event, including rumors of transgender imagery engraved on bullets and links to the question Kirk was answering at the time.
    • "Supposedly, according to the Daily Mail, one of them had transgender imagery on it. I don't know what that is." (Victor, 05:44)

• Cultural and Political Significance

  • Victor positions Kirk as a transformative figure who challenged both higher education and norms around conservatism, especially for young men.
  • Critiques of American universities' current ideological environment, contrasting them with his own educational background.
    • "I don't believe that a college education is necessarily a beneficial thing to people. Because 95% of the faculty are left wing...they promote a message of racism." (Victor, 08:54)

• Kirk’s Core Messages

  • Emphasized traditional family values, encouraged self-reliance for young men, and opposed cultural trends around identity politics.
  • Kirk founded Turning Point USA as a high school student, casting doubt on the necessity of formal higher education.
  • "He posed the greatest threat to the left of anybody on the conservative side." (Victor, 10:57)

• Response from the Political Left

  • The online reaction to Kirk's death is discussed as callous and even celebratory among some progressive figures.
    • "People celebrated on the Internet, as they did with Charlie Kirk. This morning. I was looking, I could not believe what people were saying." (Victor, 12:20)
  • Victor draws a broader line connecting recent political violence—including attacks on Trump and other right-leaning figures—to radicalization on the political left.

• Kirk’s Legacy in Voter Mobilization

  • Kirk’s critical role in rallying youth voters for Trump, possibly swinging key states in tight races.
    • "I don't think Donald Trump would have won without his effort." (Victor, [17:45])

• Systemic Social Breakdown

  • Broader lament about civic unity eroding due to radical university trends, unchecked immigration, and normalization of violence.
  • The rise of revolutionary rhetoric and celebration of political violence is critiqued as posing existential threats to American civility and democracy.

2. The Legacy of William Tecumseh Sherman

[31:42 – 53:00]

• Re-examining Sherman’s Reputation

  • Sherman is often cast as a “terrorist” in popular Southern memory, but Victor counters that while Sherman was ruthless to Confederate elites, he generally avoided wanton violence against civilians.
    • "He burned down the plantation of how Cobb, the governor of Georgia...he said, if I'm such a terrorist, why would you leave your family here?" (Victor, 33:00)
  • Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas strategically broke the South’s will and capacity to wage war, arguably ending the Civil War sooner and with fewer casualties than Grant’s campaigns in Virginia.

• Sherman as a Military Innovator

  • Positioned as a forerunner of the “indirect approach” in warfare: targeting enemy infrastructure and morale rather than direct attrition.
    • "Sherman is what we would call, I guess you would argue he followed the later advice of Liddell Hart or Patton. The indirect approach..." (Victor, 50:40)

• Character & Myth

  • Sherman’s personal background: prone to depressive episodes, failed in business, but rose to lasting fame due to his military brilliance.
  • Warm relationship and loyalty with Grant, pivotal at the Battle of Shiloh, and personal bravery.
    • "I’m going to be eternally grateful. And they made, at that moment, a team." (Victor, 42:55)
  • The tension between Grant’s and Sherman’s strategies reflects long-term debates about American military doctrine.

• Comparative Notes on Grant, Lee, and McClellan

  • Discussion of Union and Confederate leadership, McClellan’s organizing abilities but lack of resolve, and how Lincoln’s political strategy intertwined with military events.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Charlie Kirk’s Impact:

  • "He was giving a message to young men: treat women with respect, but do not leech on women...it was a very radical message." (Victor, 10:01)
  • "If people are worried about his legacy and want to honor it...you could do nothing better than go out right now and register to vote en masse." (Victor, 17:27)

• Attacks on Civic Institutions:

  • "We have these centrifugal forces and the center’s not holding. We have the universities undermining traditional America. We have a left-wing socialist element that believes violence is legitimized." (Victor, 12:44)

• Sherman’s March and Judgment:

  • "He burned a swath about 50 miles wide...if you look at that particular march, he did not attack small towns. He did not attack people's homes. He was merciless to what he called the Cavalier or plantation." (Victor, 33:22)

• Grant & Sherman—Mutual Loyalty:

  • "He said, Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I'm standing by him when he's drunk." (Victor on Sherman’s defense of Grant, 42:44)

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Important Timestamps

• [04:50] Start of Charlie Kirk segment: context and investigation into the assassination.
• [08:54] Victor’s critique of the university system and higher education's role in current cultural divides.
• [12:20] Discussion of leftist celebration of right-wing assassinations and broader trend toward political violence.
• [17:27] Kirk’s practical legacy and the call for youth to vote.
• [31:42] Transition to General Sherman’s historical legacy; correction of myths and deeper insight.
• [42:44] Anecdotes about Sherman’s relationship with Grant and their respective leadership styles.
• [50:40] Military theory—Sherman’s "indirect approach" vs. Grant’s "Clausewitzian" direct strategy.

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Noteworthy Additional Segments

• Criticism of judicial reforms in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, especially concerning the lack of a requirement for law degrees among magistrates. (Victor, 54:15)
• Update on Russian drones violating Polish airspace and the global implications. (Victor, 60:07)
• Discussion of college freedom-of-speech rankings by FIRE and reflections on campus culture. (Sammy & Victor, 62:51–66:59)
• Social attitudes among the American youth, particularly the shift toward socialism and support for income caps, interpreted as outgrowths of elite frustration and disillusionment. (Victor, 67:35)

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Final Reflections

• On Honoring Charlie Kirk’s Legacy:
  • "If you want to honor both [Kirk and Irina Tsaritska], the best thing you can do...is to register to vote and get out to vote." (Victor, 70:23)
• Calls for civil engagement, rejecting violence, and a return to respectful political opposition.

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This episode melds personal, political, and historical reflection in characteristic Victor Davis Hanson style: blunt, scholarly, and deeply attuned to both current events and lessons from the past. Whether exploring the cultural earthquake surrounding Kirk’s assassination or reassessing Sherman’s controversial place in American memory, the conversation underscores the vulnerability and resilience of American institutions—both then and now.

Transcript

[Victor]

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[Sammy Winkler]

Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen show. This is our Saturday edition in which we do something a little bit different in the middle segment. And this week Victor is going to be talking about the reputation of our General Sherman in the Civil War. So stay with us for that. Before that, we'll be looking at the Charlie Kirk assassination. There's lots of news out on it and there's a lot more to say. So stay with us and we'll be back with those stories.

[Victor]

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[Sammy Winkler]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. So please come join us there. If you'd like to read the ultra material, it is 650amonth or you can get a discounted rate of $65 a year. So we'd love to have everybody join us. So, Victor, the hunt for Charlie Kirk's assassin. I know that you and Jack talked about it on your Thursday show, but there's a lot more to say, I think about Charlie Kirk and especially his significance to our culture at this time. So I was hoping to talk about that and also a little update on where the investigation is going to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, well, I'm speaking on a Thursday morning and it has not even been 24 hours since the news came. There's been this horrific videos of his actual last moment of life. Really? That wound? Apparently the shooter has been identified. Not his id, but identified in the sense that they see where he was, they know where he went. He dropped a. It said.30 caliber rifle, but bolt action. I have one like it here. I think it's a.30 06. That's a very powerful, accurate weapon, especially at 200 yards. So when people said he was a trained assassin, I think anybody who went to a range with a.30 06 with a scope on it could hit something at 200 yards, especially from a downward slope. I used to target practice with it. It's a very lethal gun. There were other reports, and I want to be very careful what I said, that there were other bullets in the chamber. In other words, he thought probably he was going to shoot two or three times with the first shot. He could tell from his scope was a lethal one, and then he made his getaway. But there were engraved bullets with messages on them. I don't know, symbols that somebody had carved into them. And supposedly, according to the Daily Mail, one of them had transgender imagery on it. I don't know what that is. But the other thing is, I think they will find him because the gun can be traced. They can go to, if he's a student age shooter, they can go to every gun range in the area or anywhere and ask if there was a person, you know, fitting that description who wanted to practice with a.30 caliber.30 06 rifle. So I think the FBI will find him. Then the question, just before we get to Charlie himself, was during that question, he was shot right when he was answering a question where the question was, how many transgender shooters? And it was kind of a trick question. And Charlie said, well, how many were not gang related? And then he was shot. That was very crazy. And I don't know. I don't want to give currency to any theory, but it was very strange that somebody, if this is true, and I can't confirm it, the news accounts that there were imagery on a bullet with transgender, that the person asking the question at the time when he was shot. So that can be a coincidence, but it's a terrible coincidence. That being said, I was thinking about the question, what he was trying to answer, what he was going to say, I think was, we don't want to go back to 20 years of mass shootings because the transgender movement is a recent phenomenon. If we had this conversation, you and I, eight years ago, we wouldn't even know really what was going on. But when you talk about the recent shootings and people who identified as transgender or gave, you know, listed their pronouns, and you get four or five of them. And that rubric according to scientific literature, not the mass cult of on the campuses but scientific literature before the cult started is about 001. So it is a legitimate worry. And he was trying to address that when he was shot. But then the question is turning point USA that he created as a high school 18 year old. I mean one year of college. And that kind of a referendum, isn't it on the value of a college education. Because we're awash in millions of people with BAS, in sociology and psychology, with 100, 200,000. And then we look at Charlie who could out debate them. And it shows you that we all have to take a hard look at higher education. I grew up with the idea on this farm because my grandfather told me that he didn't have any sons and he was going to send all three of his daughters, even one that was crippled with polio. She tried to go to Stanford, but she went to San Jose State. The other two girls, my aunt and mother got bas and then graduate degrees at Stanford. And we were inculcated that even though we were out in the middle of nowhere on this little farm, higher education was the answer, the enlightenment. And it was. I went to UC Santa Cruz. I think it did a lot of damage to people there in the 70s. I don't know if I would go to that campus again. But I got a good education. I went to Stanford, PhD. I had all left wing professors, but they were all liberal and enlightened. They didn't inject their politics. What I'm getting at, I don't believe that anymore. I'm afraid to say I don't believe that a college education is necessarily a beneficial thing to people. Because 95% of the faculty are left wing. And out of that 95%, 50% of them are not left wing. They're radically left wing and they promote a message of racism. Separate dorms, separate spaces, special graduation ceremonies, special admissions based on race contrary to law and the Supreme Court. They despise Israel. They inculcate an anti Semitism that's endemic on campus. They glorify Hamas and terrorism. They meaning the larger culture of the university. I am trying to exempt the science, math, engineering, they're very vital to this country. When I look at the humanities, I don't think it's a positive influence anymore. Because when I go to universities I look at the book orders, I don't see Milton, I don't see Machiavelli, I don't see Montesquieu, I see all of these studies courses and the literature is pretty much worthless. And it's an indoctrination that these young people get. And so he was trying to fight that. So he would go anywhere. And he was very. I mean, he debated Gavin Newsom. He was laughing, he was not angry. And I think he posed the greatest threat to the left of anybody on the conservative side, because what he was doing was he was preaching that you don't have to be ashamed to be traditionalist and conservative and all of these other issues. Don't be ashamed to say that the nuclear family or two children or normative sexuality is something to be ashamed of. Worry about the fertility rate. We're 1.6. Worry about divorce, worry about single parent. And that was starting to ignite. And then he was giving a message to young men. I know you're in the age of treat women with respect, but do not leech on women. Do not think they're going to support you. Go out there, get going in your teens. Get a house, get a job. So it was a very radical message. And I think when the left scanned the horizon, there were certain people that are in danger, I think right now. And these are people who have affected change. One of them is Donald Trump. They've tried to kill him twice. And after each time, people celebrated on the Internet, as they did with Charlie Kirk. This morning. I was looking, I could not believe what people were saying. And then you, you have these actors, Patton Oswald or Mark Hamill, that was in Star Trek. They're saying things that are absolutely outrageous. They're sending memes about Trump being killed. And then the next person who's in danger is Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk. There's a lot of people, and I don't know how when you couple this with the reaction to Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth, and Taylor Lorenz. As I mentioned earlier, they made a hero out of Luigi Mangione. They want to name a ballot proposition after him. Here he is a cold blooded assassin. So where did this radicalism come from? Donald Trump just exposed it. He tore off the scab and looked at the putrid wound beneath. But he didn't create it. It's part of the university. It's part of this immigration policy where we let in millions of people. We have the highest number of people we've ever had, 55%, 55 million and 16% of the population, which is okay if they are legal, diverse, merocratic skills, English fluency. But when you bring that many people in, then you get people like Rashid Tlaib screaming and yelling about how horrible a country is. Or Omar Ilian, Omar talking about the trash and the dictators here. Or Representative Ramirez saying that her first loyalty is Guatemala or aoc second generation, not really the United States. And you know, saying I'm not going to have children because this country is going to be what, too hot. We're destroying the planet. So we have these centrifugal forces and the center's not holding. We have the universities undermining traditional America. We have a left wing socialist element that believes violence is legitimized. And then you have rampant and unchecked and unaudited immigration. So we have no idea who people are who are coming in. We don't teach civic education. And then we have one other thing. There's a counter revolution against all that. And it for the moment controls government, Supreme Court presidency, Congress and most of the majority of the state legislatures and governor. And that means that the left, for all of this influence in the culture, in the media, in the universities, they don't have actual power. And that's why we see them going crazy with the lower court judges that are just out of control, like renegades with attacks on ice, with trying to identify ICE people, with hoping they get killed. Another person who's in danger is Tom Holman because they were always talking about killing him. These people are really not good people, these young left wings people on social media. Everybody's in danger from them. And I don't know how you and Charlie Kirk was trying to engage, you know, prove me wrong. That was his tour. I'm going to go out and talk instead. There's something there though. Finally there's something there. We will find out because this was a planned political assassination and I doubt that person acted entirely alone. It was too professionally carried out. I don't think he was a professional assassin. I think he was a college age student that was angry at him about his conservative traditionalism and he and somebody else talked about it or helped and I think we'll find out. Don't expect the left to disown it because Congress wanted a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk. Remember that? Just a prayer.

[Sammy Winkler]

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[Victor Davis Hanson]

That can be determined by statistics. So Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris roughly by 1.5%. He won all seven to eight swing states. When you look at those swing states and you look at the youth vote, he picked up five or six points. He lost the youth vote nationwide. But when you look at Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, he was in one or two points. And I don't have the data with me, but I think he was even in one of those with youth. And that was because Charlie Kirk's massive turning point organization spent millions of dollars registering young people. And he was going to these campus and saying, you've got to get out and vote. You've got to get out and vote. If people are worried about his legacy and want to honor it, then you could do nothing better than go out right now and register to vote en masse. And the best way to send a message to the people who killed him and the people who are glorifying in that horrendous act is for everybody, each according to your station, to go out and register and show up at the midterms and vote and, and have a historic occasion where the end party, the Trump presidency, wins the first midterm, wins it. And I think they can do that. But he set that press. I don't think Donald Trump would have won without his effort.

[Sammy Winkler]

And also his significance is in the belly of the beast, the K to 12 schools. I mean, he really inspired especially high school students with his, his acceptance to make, as they said, conservative values cool. And so I think his work of all his work was really done there. Really in the balcony?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. I was on the show, I think, in late August, and I had a little talk with him afterwards, and he was very interested in higher education for that reason. Where do these teachers come out of that are indoctrinating kids at K12 schools of education? What is wrong with the schools of education? They are not empirical or disinterested. They feel they have to indoctrinate the nation's next generation of teachers who will then indoctrinate students. And so as I said before, when you want to know, where did all this guys do about crazy, his, her, them, then ze z All these pronouns. I can remember somewhere around 20, 20, 21, I started getting memos, a regular boilerplate from Stanford administrators. And under their signature they said, here are my pronouns. And then I started filling out medical forms and stuff. What are your pronouns? And then it didn't say male or female, it said male, female, assigned at birth. That was all top down, generated from theories in the faculty lounge. And the same thing about DEI post George Floyd that remember, Mr. Kendi, you have to be a racist to stop racism. Anti racism means you have to give preference on the basis of your race. That started in the university with his $50 million center which he collapsed very quickly. And there's no downside for spouting out just hatred, whether it's against the nuclear family or heterosexuality or Christianity or so called white people. It always earns career advantages. So that's why people do it. If there's a downside, if people say how dare you and socially awestruck, then it will stop. But it won't stop until there's a downside.

[Sammy Winkler]

You know, you're reminding me that the things that come out of the university are the things like we've just recently seen with Irina Zaruska, where the media is talking about there's no comparison to the George Floyd event with Ms. Saruska. And they're talking as though the George Floyd reaction and rioting was more noble than any protest for what happened to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, there was no comparison. They're absolutely right. George Floyd was a career felon who'd served prison and he had broken in in a home invasion and put a knife at the abdomen of a pregnant woman. And he was in the process when a store owner called of passing counterfeit money, which is a federal felony. And then when police arrived, he resisted arrest, which is a felony, and they couldn't subdue him. And he was on fentanyl and other drugs and he had a heart condition and he was suffering from effects of COVID and then an approved police technique, unfortunately Offer Chalvin had a pretty scowl on his face and did it too long or that's even that is in dispute. And he died. And then what happened? Antifa and Black Lives Matter for the next five months were responsible for 35 people dead and 1500 officers injured and burning a federal courthouse, burning a police precinct, burning a historic church, trying to storm the White House to get to Donald Trump. And that's different. And Irina was what she was just 23. And she was sitting there and she was not doing anything wrong. In fact, she was sitting in the seat with three black individuals on her right and a black individual behind her. And that didn't bother her. She wasn't racially. And I got really angry, as I said earlier, when Van Jones said, how dare Charlie Cook make this erasial. He didn't do that. Van Jones, he didn't make it erasial. Carlos Brown made it erasure. Listen to the tape. After he slits her throat and then gets up and walks nonchalantly by. And the three other occupants, the other three black Americans, watch her and don't lift a finger as she bleeds to death. He walks out dripping blood and he says, got the white girl. He says it twice, you can hear it on the video. Got that white girl. And no one does anything for at least a minute and a half. But the people right next to to her might have saved her life. All they had to do is stop the bleeding or if they saw him trying to stab her, try to resist him. But of course, you know, if, if it was opposite. I hate to say this, and I'm not trying to incite passions, but if that was a young 23 year old immigrant from Nigeria, let's say young black woman all by herself and she got on that train and there were three white people to her right, and a white person with long hair who looked kind of scruffy. And then he saw her and then he got up and he picked up a jackknife and he slit her throat. And then he walked out and he said, got the black girl, got the black girl. And the three people there who were white did not render assistance and walked out, this country would be in a riot right now. And so that's why he, that's why it is not like George Floyd. It's not at all like it. And when people say that, I just think we're at a turning point. That's kind of an ironic term because that was true. I just think that with the 911 anniversary today and the assassination yesterday of Charlie Kirk and the two weeks ago the assassination arena Czar Utska, we're in a turning point, I think people. And then you add on the Auburn professor who was butchered, 57 year old professor veterinary medicine and she was butchered by a felon who was out who shouldn't have been. Just like Carlos Brown was a 14 time felon who should not have been out. And then you factor in the mayor of Charlotte who said let's not use this to judge people. And let's not be, let's not be judgmental on homeless people. And you can't arrest your way out of these problems. And then you have the magistrate who didn't even have a law degree, just a BA and she is letting him out. Carlos Brown, even though he should have been in jail, given his felonious record. And you put all of that together and I think a lot of people are just saying, I'm had it, I've had it. If you've had it, then the best thing to do is to smile, be nice to people. Don't lower yourself to what the left is doing. Just very quietly register to vote, go out to vote in the midterms, and anybody with a D behind their name, no matter who they are, just vote no. And that may be unfair to, you know, I don't know what you would do with John Fetterman. I like him. He's not up for election. But I would just send a message that you've had it.

[Sammy Winkler]

And the last thing about Charlie Kirk that we've seen recently is the continued bankruptcy of the left. And that is in the House, the Representative Boebert from Colorado got up and asked for a prayer for Charlie Kirk. And all she got from the left were vicious yells against Charlie Kirk. And just to think that, look at activists.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

If you had an activist, Van Jones is a left wing activist. If somebody happened to Van Jones, I would surely say a prayer. I think the Republican caucus would say a prayer. You know what I'm saying? There's a lot of liberal activists that if they were assassinated by a right wing nut or a killer or not even a nut, just an evil person, I think they would give a prayer. There's something wrong. And you know, when Hikem Jeffries, as I said, carries a bat and makes a video and he's the nominal head of the Democratic Party as far as the House goes, House minority leader or he just kept fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. We're going to get serious. We're going to get serious. Don't back now. Get in the streets. Fight in the streets. And then you see senators going down to El Salvador to champion this thug Obrego Garcia. And then you see all of the threats to ICE people. And these are coming from House members who go into ICE and push ICE officers, as we saw. And you see we're going to cut a video and we're going to hit people and kickbox. Ha ha ha. And then you see Elizabeth Warren. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. And then you see Ken Martin, the head of the dnc. We're not going to bring pencils anymore. We're going to get out. It's just fury and hate. Why don't they just say, we disagree with Donald Trump, but we'll find areas. We can work with him like the right did once in a while with Barack Obama. But got to remember when Obama was president, they had zero tolerance. They had a Tea Party, big protest, huge about Obamacare. There was nothing. They picked up all the trash. It was very peaceful. And then some of the members of the Black Caucus said they yelled racial epithets. They showed the tape. They did not. There was a clown at the Missouri State Fair. He had an Obama mask on. They all do that, kind of. Not Obama mask, per se, but they dress up as clown. He was banned for life. That was absolutely. You could not criticize Obama. And I can tell you I wrote very critical op EDS of some of the things he was doing. I would get just virulent anger, you know. And so the left is very strange. They think they're so morally superior, intellectually superior, that the rules only apply to other people, not them. And I think everybody's had enough.

[Sammy Winkler]

Yeah, I think. And it's made them into liars and violent people. And that's the way that they think that they. That progress occurs. And that's a very sad thing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Look at Governor Pritzer. What did he say? He said two things. He blamed Donald Trump and then he blamed January 6th. Governor Pritzer, a lot of people thought those in January 6th who were violent deserved to be punished. But they arrested 1,600 people and the majority of them weren't even inside the rotunda. And some of them were just walked around and committed a misdemeanor. They killed a young girl, young woman, you know, 14 year military veteran, for a misdemeanor of going through a window and hid the identity of the shooter. Compare that, as I said earlier, with five months, Governor Pritzer, five months of violent arson, looting, theft, assault, murder.

[Sammy Winkler]

And there is no comparison.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The country went nuts when Donald Trump said, and I don't think he should have said anything, but he did say, assemble peacefully and patriotically at the Capitol. Compare that with Kamala Harris. This is not going to stop. This is going to go on. We're not going to stop. We're going to keep protest. It's going to go on past election Day. That was really whipping up the crowd when she said that. I think it was in July of 20, 20, 2021, 20. I think.

[Sammy Winkler]

Yeah. All right, Victor. So let's go ahead then and take a break and come back and hear a little bit about the reputation of General Sherman. Stay with us, and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can on social media. His handle is Ed Hansen. And on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. And so, Victor, let's turn to our historical segment, General Sherman. And I'm kind of curious about his reputation. I know that one of your books, I think it was the Face of Battle, Soul of Battle, Soul of Battle had a biography and lots of new things to say about Sherman's reputation that I thought would be interesting.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I mentioned him as well in Ripples of Battle, at least not devoted a whole chapter to him, but he came up prominently at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. I'm responding to readers, and one of the readers just mentioned, what do you think of Sherman? And if you look at the popular culture, Sherman is considered a terrorist. He went through Georgia in 1864. He descended into Georgia from Tennessee. He surrounded Savannah. I mean, Atlanta. It was burned down. You can argue who burned it down, whether it was cannon fire from his men or people tried to light cotton or something, it went out of control. And then after he occupied Atlanta, he marched all the way to the Atlantic coast. No one knew he was going at Savannah, Georgia. And he burned a swath about 50 miles wide. The army of the west did. But if you look at that particular march, he did not attack small towns. He did not attack people's homes. He was merciless to what he called the Cavalier or plantation. He burned down the plantation of how Cobb, the governor of Georgia, and his family was there, and he had left and gone to Savannah. And Sherman said, if I'm such a terrorist, why would you leave your family here? Because you know that I wouldn't harm them? And he didn't. You got to remember in 1865 at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant never took Richmond. He couldn't take it. It was entrenched with sophisticated bulwarks and trenches. And you had Robert E. Lee, that stronghold. What ended the Southern resistance was William Tecumseh Sherman, because once he got to Savannah, he regrouped, and then he marched up through in the winter, South Carolina and North Carolina. He had to corduroy the roads. Columbia was burned. There's a big controversy over who burned that. But he came up behind Lee, and Joe Johnson was supposed to stop him. And they had a separate armistice. And then Lee went Out to request a surrender with grant because he was looking at an army of 65,000. The army of the west was very different than the army of the potomac. It was made up primarily about 215 regiments. And they were from what was called the west at that time, not the far west, but Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan. And he deliberately emphasized that these were people who were farmers. So when they went through Georgia in the fall, they were used to sleeping outside. They were used to physical labor. They were used to foraging. And they freed about 20,000 blacks who were sophisticated pioneers. They trained them. They helped make roads, clear the way. When they had the victory march In Washington in April 1865, the German military attache saw the army of the potomac come by. And they all had beautiful blue, brand new uniforms. But it wasn't really an army in the sense of this, that everybody there was new because it had been destroyed in the summer of 1864. It suffered over 100,000 casualties. It was a revolving door. And then following it, Sherman deliberately would not let them have new uniforms. So they came in the raggy clothes. They were all suntanned, and they were all big farmers, Germans, Scandinavians. And then they had black pioneers at the front of the army. And the German actis says, oh, my God, I'm glad these people are in the United States. And they can't get to Europe. This is the most fearsome army I've ever seen. It would go right through europe. And then, because they had treated him so badly, the government, some people in the Lincoln cabinet Had said that he had been unkind to slaves. He gave slaves islands off the coast of the Carolinas without any legal mandate, Just said, take it. And they couldn't find freed slaves. That could speak poorly of him, Although he was a man of the prejudices of his time. So he's a very interesting character. And when you look at popular culture, if you look at Hollywood movies, gone with the wind, there's always a scene when a northerner comes into. They're called. They were his bummers. And they were the people who scattered 50 miles. They had three. He broke up the army in three wings. And for about 50 miles, they scoured the countryside for food, cattle, horses and plantations. And that there were some. There weren't a lot of rapes or murders, but there were some by bummers. They called them renegade union soldiers. But in popular culture, if you look at. Remember gone with the wind, where they try to come into the house. When you look at John Ford's the horse soldiers, the same thing she's worried that there's bummers. And if you look at that Jimmy Stewart, great movie Shenandoah, Northern bummers kill one of the people. So they had a bad reputation. But in the last analysis, if you look at what he accomplished in 1864 versus what Grant did, who was a great general, Grant, probably in 1864 and half of 1865, lost 100,000 casualties, and he inflicted at probably 50 or 60,000 Sherman, probably in that entire march and the battles leading up to it against Joe Johnson or John Bell Hood, probably he lost 10,000 casualties and he probably inflicted 5,000 casualties, and he ended the war. So he's a very problematic person. He was very brilliant. He might have been, in modern parlance, a little bipolar. He was prone to radical fits. He had been at the Battle of First Bull Run. He had founded lsu. I mean, he was the first president of lsu. It was a military academy. And he went back north to. Even though he had sympathy with Southerners, he just warned them, you're going to lose this war. Don't fight it. So then he. I mean, he re enlisted. He was a West Point trained officer. He'd had a terrible record in peacetime of financial insolvency. He'd been a Teamster. He had tried to be a banker in San Francisco. He tried everything. He was very honest. And when something went wrong, he tried to pay all the debtors, but he didn't do well. And then the war came, and there were no West Point graduates because half of them had joined the south and suddenly they needed it. And he was very brave at Bull Run as a colonel, and then he was made a brigadier general and he was given the entire control of the West, Ohio, Michigan. And he gave an interview in 1862, and he said, mark my words, you're going to lose about a half a million men. This thing is going to go on for years until you liquidate the cavalier class. The 300,000 he talked about that owned slaves and were very great warriors. People like Nathan Bedford Forrest, although he was poor, but mostly people like Wade Hampton. And they believed him on command. And the headline said, sherman Loses his Mind. He's all done for. And he was. And then Grant knew him at West Point. Grant, I think, was two years behind him and said, you know, my star is rising. After Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, I'm going to make a big army, army of the West. I want you to be one of my brigade commanders. So he resurrected him. And then in 1862, in April, the great Battle of Shiloh, in which the south almost won that battle. They pushed him back three miles. On the first day. They had a huge army under Albert Sidney Johnson. They had every general there, Beauregard, Hardy, you name it, Nathan Bedford. Everybody was there, and they were going to win. But they stopped that night. Nathan Bedford Force said, you got to liquidate them because they're on the run. But there was another big army across the Tennessee river under General Buell. And Sherman said, this is a bad day. And Grant said, yes, but we'll lick them tomorrow. And that army came across the river that night. And then Lew Wallace, who got. I won't get into that. Lost or was given wrong directions, was there with another army, small army. And Sherman was the only person on the first day who was really heroic. He lost. He was shot, wounded three times, slightly. He lost, I think, three horses. But he held his position while the Union army collapsed the next day when Albert Sidney Johnson was killed, the Southern commander. And they stopped them and they pushed back that huge army. And that was the myth of the lost battle, the lost cause. If Albert Sidney Johnson had not been killed, if they had pressed on that night, they would have taken Cincinnati. If they had done that, the war would have been over. That was sort of the lost cause, lost battle narrative that followed from Shiloh. But my only final point is, after the battle was over, Halleck and all of the bureaucrat generals wanted to get rid of Grant. Because they said he had been drinking in Tennessee. He probably had, and he came late. And they wanted Sherman to be promoted. And Sherman said he was kind of kidding. He said, grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I'm standing by him when he's drunk. And he said, I'm going to be internally grateful. And they worked at that moment. Then they became a team. And when you added two other generals to the team, and that was Philip Sheridan, the cavalry commander, and General Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga at that point. For all the great generals in the south, you know, the south had Nathan Bedford Forrest, Whatever you say about him, he was a brilliant cavalry commander. And Jeb Stuart was. And Robert E. Lee was a good general, and Stonewall Jackson was a good. They had the good generals, but those four men were better than anybody. The south had Grant and Sherman and Sheridan and Thomas were geniuses. And the rest of the Northern generals were not very good. You know, Pope and Burnside and McClellan, Hooker, Lincoln went through all of them. And when they wanted to get rid of Grant after Shiloh, they said he was drunk. Lincoln said, I can't spare that many fights.

[Sammy Winkler]

You mentioned McClellan and I think I've heard you say before that he was relieved. He was one of the earlier commanders. He had built the army and trained it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He did. He trained it.

[Sammy Winkler]

I just want to put a word in for the hard work McClellan did, even though he was waiting around.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They called him little Mac. He was very short, like Napoleon. And he'd studied. He had been the Union, I think Union Pacific president, somebody will correct me on which railroad. But he was an expert organizer for his railroad experience. And so when the war came, he trained and trained and trained. And the first great tragedy of Antietam, they invaded. And Antietam, it was technically a northern victory, although their losses were the worst of any battle in American history. He was worse, I think, than Gettysburg or comparable, and he didn't pursue. When Grant was losing a battle, Grant poured more people in. Lick him tomorrow. Whatever you say about cold harbor or the wilderness, he didn't stop. And as Sherman said, he grabs him by the leg and I come around and kick him in the rear. So. But mcclellan did do that. The problem was that he ran for president against Lincoln, anti Lincoln guy. And his argument was that they needed a negotiated peace. He wasn't quite a copperhead like some of the people who were pro south in the north, but he thought the war couldn't be won, and Lincoln outsmarted him. Lincoln had the first mail in ballots and he said that the soldiers could vote. And then they sent a message to Sherman. If you're going to go down to Tennessee, going to Tennessee and then you're going to go into Georgia, you better take Atlanta before the election because if you don't, I'm in big trouble. We didn't have polls, but he was supposedly going to be beaten by McClellan. And what happened in September, early September, he took Atlanta and he sent a telegram to Lincoln. Atlanta is ours and fairly won. And then Lincoln said, what's next? I don't know. I'll leave it to you. And he took off. He sent all of his wounded home on trains back north. He got the supplies. And they said, you can't march to Savannah in enemy territory without a supply train. He said, it's November. They all bought their harvested and my farmers will find food. And they asked Lincoln, well, what did. Nobody heard from him for weeks. They didn't know where he was. And Lincoln said, he went down some hole like a gopher and I assume he'll pop up somewhere. So Lincoln had complete Trust in him.

[Sammy Winkler]

Well, we often hear about Sherman back to him, that he stayed at the front with his men. For example, at the Battle of Shiloh.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, he did.

[Sammy Winkler]

He does that. And so that was probably one of his strengths as well. And I was wondering maybe you could compare, because you don't hear that about Robert E. Lee, although you hear he's a great general, but you never hear him at the front.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, he was. He actually was. I mean, he wasn't distanced from the.

[Sammy Winkler]

Front, but Sherman at the front. Was Sherman on his horse being shot up through his jacket.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's a little different, though. When Sherman was shot, one hit his belt, I think, one hit his boot, one went through his hand. He was a brigadier. He was the one. He was in charge of a brigade of 7,000 soldiers, and he led them. You're absolutely. But when he was a. You wouldn't call it a corps commander. You call it a theater commander. Then he had. I mean, a lot of his. Some of his best brigadiers and corps got killed. Some of his best friends on that march In Atlanta and McPherson got killed, as I remember Grant, in the Civil War. War. It was very hard to get away from the front because it was. Because you had to be engaged and. No, no, he was. Robert Lee was personally very brave. He's a tragic figure. I don't like the word tragic very often, but he was a very tragic figure because although he had owned slaves, he was in theory against slavery. And he said that, and he didn't want to the war to take place. Of all the people in his generation, he was considered the top. There were two people that West Point and the hierarchy in Washington thought were critical to get on the Northern side when the war broke out. One was Albert Sidney Johnson, who had put down the Mormon revolt a decade earlier. And the other was Robert E. Lee, who had put down John Brown's revolt. They had stellar records. And Johnson just took off from Texas to join the Confederacy. And Lee said, I can't fight against Virginia. I know now that they're demonized figures. Stanley McChrystal, remember during the George Floyd, General McChrystal said he looked at his hero's picture and he didn't realize what a horrible person Robert E. Lee was. So he took the picture down, he threw it on the ground. He threw it on the dumpster or something. Threw it away. He wrote an article about it. So. But if you want to look at men who saved the Union and were abolitionists and saved the Northern cause, which was about ready to lose in 1863 and save Lincoln. Then there's two people who did it, and it was Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. He was like George Patton. He was married to a very influential family in Ohio that he had been an orphan. His father died and this family adopted him. And he married his adopted sister, and then she and her family promoted him when he was considered crazy. The same thing about Patton's wife, who was very wealthy, big pharmaceutical country company. And had she not intervened when he slapped soldiers, I think he would have been in trouble. So Sherman then became. He died in 1890, I think he was at 70. And he moved to Washington, New York, and he held court from 1865 to 1890. He had a basement office and all these veterans would come and visit him. And he befriended them and he gave them money. He even helped John Bell Hood. And then he promoted Commemoration of the Civil War. He went to the opera, the theater. He was kind of a. I don't know, not a gadfly. That's a bad word. But he was everywhere. He spoke at all the reunions. He died of what he always had. He had a terrible case of asthma. And he smoked, like Grant, dozens of cigars. So he died from. From an asthmatic attack or strep throat, something like that.

[Sammy Winkler]

Didn't he live with shrapnel in his body?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He must have. I don't know. In his hand. They all without. Grant was almost killed. He fell off a horse and he was severely injured. Grant was, you know, Grant had. If you look at their actual moral code, as far as not surrounding yourself with grifters and not being ambitious, you could say that Sherman was the moral superior. But Grant was a great man. Grant understood. They had a very different idea just to finish. Grant's idea was Clausewitzian. This is the army of Northern Virginia, and you've got to destroy the army of Northern Virginia. Once you destroy the army and get Lee's army and just decimate it, even if you have to do that, what Lincoln called the terrible arithmetic, lose two men to their one because the north had three times to four times the population, you can win the war. Sherman is what we would call, I guess you would argue he followed the later advice of Liddell Hart or Patton. The indirect approach said, no, no, no, that's too costly. You go around the enemy's rear and you cut the roots out of the vine. And then the army or the grapes dry up. So I'm going to go into the south and humiliate the people who started the war? The politicians and the plantation slave owners and burn their plantations, ridicule them, but not, not, not, not attack average Southerners. I'm just going to destroy the elite and I'm going to destroy their railroads. I'm going to destroy their armories, I'm going to destroy their roads, I'm going to destroy their factories, and then that army will not be able to be supplied. And if Lincoln can hold the naval blockade of Confederate ports so they can't get imported gunpowder rifles, we'll win the war, and that's how they won't. It was very influential because that became. That divide was very prominent in World War II. You had Patton, who was the Shermanite person who believed that you just raced as fast as you could, don't worry about the flanks. The air power will help you. And then you had Hodges and Eisenhower and Bradley said, you just go on a broad front and hit the enemy. Patton's idea, even if the bulge was to go around and cut the bulge off. Same thing with air power. The air power said, watch out, you guys, we'll destroy the Germans ability to make an army. We don't need to destroy the army in the field. That controversy goes on today.

[Sammy Winkler]

Well, Victor, we're going to take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about the judge in the De Carlos Brown murder case, or sorry, not the murder case, but in his earlier ability to get out. You had an update on that. And we also have an update on the drones, Russian drones in Polish airspace. So stay with us and we'll be right back from these messages. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. You can find these podcasts in video on YouTube, Rumble and Spotify. So please come join us if you prefer the video version instead of the audio version. So, Victor, I just, I don't know if you have more to say, but you. Because I asked you on Friday, how can a judge not have a law degree? And I believe you were looking into that. And so the judge in decarlos Brown's earlier arrest and ruling had let him out. And everybody looked at the case, you know, just promised to me and signed that you will come back for your court case. And she let him go free. And January of 2025, and I was.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Wondering, she let him go free and she had a record as working in an alternate sentencing program. So she actually had a conflict of interest the way she sentenced people not to prison, but to the types of alternate treatment of which she was a beneficiary in some way. But after George Floyd, there were a number of states or municipalities or counties that changed the rules for magistrates. These were urban magistrates mostly and said that you did not need a jd, you just needed a ba. And the idea was under the new enthusiasm for diversity, equity, inclusion, this was considered an unnecessary construction, the J.D. and it would be over represented by white people and non black people, non Hispanic people because they were inordinately awarded JD degrees. And so you had talented black women, for example, who were not going to be judges, de facto judges as magistrates because they didn't have a little piece of paper which white America had created. That was the logic behind it. And that's why you have so many people who are letting so many people out with so little legal expertise. But I don't even know if that's the problem because if you look at critical legal theory, critical legal theory says that the laws are constructs of the wealthy and the privileged and the white. And the reason, as I've said before, that there's laws, you know, why do we have a law about stealing up to $950 a person goes in, he needs some shoes, 300, oh, he sees a television set, 800 or 700, 600, that's not bad. We only have those laws because wealthy white people don't need televisions and they don't need sneakers. So they make laws to hurt the other. That's critical legal theory in a nutshell. Critical racial theory says that a lot of the laws, customs and norms have been established by wealthy white oppressors that have no benefit for anybody. Such as why do you have to be on time at School at 8:30? What if you come at 9 o'? Clock? What's so good about being prompt that just oppresses people that have had a alternate lifestyle? Maybe it's just as they're not so neurotic. So I'm just taking one example. But critical race theory says the norms that we as a nation follow were created by Anglo Saxon founding fathers, white people. And they don't take into consideration alternate paradigms of different cultures and races. And of course the answer to critical legal and critical race theory is nobody forces anybody to come to the United States. But it takes more legal and illegal immigrants than any other country in the world. Some years it actually took more than all the other immigrants in the world combined. And since Ted Kennedy's laws of 1964 and 65, the vast majority are non European, non white. So why would they come to a country that our legal and racial theorists said is so innately flawed. Unless they don't believe that. Unless they believe they're going to be freer, more prosperous and more secure in a country that was founded on principles antithetical to what we see in Puerto Rico or Somalia or Gaza or the West Bank. Contrary to what Representative Tlaib says, why did her parents come here? She hates the country so much. Why do they come here? And it's so prejudicial. Does she think when she says that this is a settler, colonist, horrible country, and she says that to a thousand people, that any American could go over to the west bank and have a big audience and say, I hate you people. I hate your culture? No, of course not.

[Sammy Winkler]

No, of course not. Victor, I'd like to take a moment for our sponsor, zipa. ZIPA is a doctor design mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward and is the only device with a patented tongue seatbelt to keep your airway open and the snoring away. The snoring can stop as soon as the first night. Zipa was proven in a 600 patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units. From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition pink zipa. Not only can you save $10, but zipa is on a mission to raise 50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another 10 to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation. Go to Zyppah.com and use code PINK or text Victor to 511511. Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we Trust by visiting Zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511511. Remember, ZPA is happy Z spelled backwards. And we'd like to thank ZIPA for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So, Victor, I know that also we were talking about drones in Poland on Friday, but there's been news since. And so your update on the Russian drones that entered Polish airspace, well, it was deliberate.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I mean, they didn't just drift a mile across the border. They were launched from Russian or Russian allied territory toward Ukraine by deliberately going through Poland's airspace to send what, a signal the signal is? What are you going to do about it? So Donald Trump, for good or evil, and I think for good, tried to reach out to Putin to show everybody that he wanted a deal. And you can't get a deal with Putin, as I said before, because he made a colossal blunder. He's responsible personally for over a million Russians dead or wounded. He has not got the territory that would justify such a colossal human loss. And he wants more territory. And to get more territory and get a DMZ line further west, he has to cause more havoc. So what he's trying to do right now, he's trying to kill more civilians with drone attacks inside Ukraine. And the more horrific, the better. Old people at a senior citizen hospital, schools. He's trying to kill farmers. He picks off individual farm owners so the food supply is endangered in eastern Ukraine businesses, factory owners going after them individually with drones. And the whole point is that sometime Zelensky will call Trump or vice versa, and they'll say, we got to settle this, we've got to give up more territory. And then he will digest that for a while and think he can rebuild his forces and go. But he's counting on the fact that we won't do anything we than the west because he's seen Europe and he knows it. He sold them natural gas. They'll do anything other than to fight him. But now he's in Poland. If you look at the Polish army, if you look at the Polish army and you look at the Hungarian army and forces, and you look at the Ukrainian forces, you probably are looking at over a million people. And they're well armed and they're strong allies of the United States. They will fight. So I don't know what he's trying to do there because if he goes into Poland, he's going to lose and the United States has a nuclear deterrent against him. But when Trump tweeted, here we go, what he was saying is, I warned everybody, don't go do that. But if you do this, we're not going to back down. So let's hope that there's still a chance for a negotiated settlement.

[Sammy Winkler]

Well, Victor, let's then return to Charlie Kirk and what he did in his life. The effect. He was an absolute advocate for freedom of expression. And as everybody notes, he was especially good at addressing people who did not believe the same as him. And he had allies on his side doing similar work. And one of them was fire. It's the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And they have a new study out. They interviewed 68,000 college students and they ranked all the colleges according to a grading system, actually a B all the way down to F for their free expression on campus. And 166 of those colleges got F. But I would like to tell the top ranked colleges for freedom of expression according to FIRE and those were Claremont McKenna College, the university of Chicago, Purdue, Michigan Technical University and the University of Colorado.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Where was Hillsdale?

[Sammy Winkler]

Hillsdale's not up there. Well, I mean, I don't know what.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Maybe they're talking about colleges of a certain size. Those are all much bigger. Well, Claremont's part of the Pomona cluster. Colleges. Yeah, those are all good colleges. Mitch Daniels did a wonderful job at Purdue and he left a really strong legacy. So it's a wonderful campus. I know the Claremont people. The Claremont Institute has a lot of influence still at that college. That is heroic because Claremont is juxtaposed to Pitzer College, Scripps College, Pomona. They're all very left wing, but I think Hillsdale should be there. I've been associated with it. I got ill, so I couldn't go on my annual visit. But I will give, as I said earlier, a lecture on the cultural fallout of the Vietnam War during their military History conference this Saturday. And I think I'm scheduled to speak at 1:00pm Eastern, 10:00 clock Pacific on that topic. But it's a wonderful college and I know people there who have strong differences on the conservative side, but there are people who are libertarian. I've even met students over the 20 years who were liberal or Democrat, but I never saw anybody trying to suppress their thought.

[Sammy Winkler]

Well, would you like to know the big losers?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I can tell. I know that Columbia must be there. I haven't seen this.

[Sammy Winkler]

Yes, Columbia is there. I even the other one that I really recognized was the University of Washington.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah.

[Sammy Winkler]

In Seattle. Oh, my gosh. Indiana University.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I've spoken at Indiana and Bernard.

[Sammy Winkler]

College, and those were the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, Bernard's Columbia. Yeah.

[Sammy Winkler]

That's.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's the women's school or supposed women's school.

[Sammy Winkler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes. So no surprises. Khalil, Mohammed Khalil. He's representative of Columbia. I don't know why Stanford wasn't there. I mean, that faculty group just said last year they did a 900 page study and found that antisemitism was endemic at Stanford. And what they did to Joe Lonsdale, who was volunteering to teach, and they put him through the ringer and denied him. I won't mention another person's name who's a Hoover donor, who's a wonderful person, but they. He wasn't given a fair hearing. So I can tell you that after January 6, I had to go before the Faculty Senate along with my colleagues Neil Ferguson and Scott Atlas, and we were accused of various things by a professor of English that had really not written more than one book since he arrived and he probably tweeted 600,000 times and it was kind of like a circus. He had been prominent in forming antifa. So I always consider when I leave the Hoover Institution to walk to my apartment a hostile workplace.

[Sammy Winkler]

I think you and Jack talked about the Democratic youth and their preference for a socialist state. They are over 50% that way. But also Rasmussen poll found that in youth 18 to 39, 59% favored some maximum annual income where you couldn't go beyond. So whether it was I think 100 million was one, 10 million was another, but down to 200 million was the last group that you couldn't earn an income over that and they would favor a law station.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I mentioned that phenomenon and the statistics that I've seen when people are interviewed why they're socialists and they ask questions such as your parents income or your own educational status. We're talking about a subset of the population 25 to 40, usually in the bicoastal area or in the major metropolis, places like Chicago or something. And they tend to be white, they tend to be single, they tend to be childless, they tend to have degrees and they tend to come from affluent families and they because of the economy and their disdain for going into say small business, opening up a 711 franchise, being a, I know operating three Burger Kings are something like that. They go into government and they get titles, they go into media local. They don't get to the very top so they don't get into the million dollar range. But they live in the most expensive and impossible blue states in the world with high taxes, high property values, cost everything from energy and they're making maybe 100,000 and they think they're successful. But then when they look around they see their 20s and 30s, fleeting often they have student debt, they're bitter and angry at their parents that their parents who paid for their education in many cases are not giving them more money or don't have the money or they're not going to be as wealthy as their parents. So they blame the system because they're so educated and so blessed and so aware and so intelligent. This is just not fair that 711 guys making a million dollars and I got a degree from Swarthmore and I, you know I'm good on trans, I'm good on green new, I'm good on all the issues and I'm living in a rent control 300 square foot box in New York and I don't even have a car and all these idiots These MAGA idiots are making a lot of money and this is not fair because I'm better educated and more moral than they are. So I'm going to vote commie or socialist. That's how they think. Tell me I'm not just saying this. I have met maybe a thousand people like this and they are the weirdest people in the world.

[Sammy Winkler]

Well, I think we're at a hard break here. I know you have to go, but let's go ahead and take a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk and Irina Tsaritska. Thank you, Victor, and thanks to our audience. And this is the Victor Davis Hanson Show. I'm Sammy Winkler and Victor Davis Hanson and we're signing off.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

If you want to honor both. The best thing you can do, especially in the case of Charlie, to honor his work and his legacy, is to register to vote and get out to vote. Just do that. Thank you everybody for listening and watching.

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[Sammy Winkler]

Greasy pizza?

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