← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
The West’s Anti-Christian Crackdown, Holy Land ‘Security,’ ‘No Kings’ Protests & CCP Stalking at Stanford | VDH
01:24:28
Last week, Israel denied access to Bethlehem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites in the Christian faith, on Palm Sunday, citing security concerns amid the conflict with Iran. Many expressed outrage. Nearly all ignored the risk, Victor Davis Hanson argued on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”
Loading summary
Transcript119 lines
- [00:00]
Jack Fowler
Victor, not to, you know, I don't want to Catholicize everything here, but this is an international incident. We'll say so. There's the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Bethlehem. This is the site of Golgotha where Christ was crucified and of his tomb. And every year there's a major Mass there. Well, there was no major mass yesterday. The Israeli government said no. Did you see any of these videos of the no Kings rally of some of these?
- [00:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
I did.
- [00:27]
Jack Fowler
Crazy ladies acting like dogs in the street.
- [00:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
The whole thing is so disturbing because first, first of all, the only monarchical autocratic thing we've had is the Biden administration waged warfare and inherited it from the Obama administration. Nobody elected the people who went into Mar? A Lago or nobody elected Jack Smith. Nobody elected John Brennan or James Clapper or James Comey or Peter Strzok or Lisa Page. Nobody elected Judge Brodzburg either. So we have a lot of people who have not been elected. They've been appointees or they're part of the bureaucratic state that really violated the Constitution and it means nothing to. And Trump has been elected, he would say three times. I would, you know, probably two. But he was elected. There was a scene in the airport where a white spaghetti armed antifa voice, NPR voice kind of person.
- [01:18]
Jack Fowler
Is that funny? Is that funny?
- [01:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Started making fun of these free African American ICE agents and then it just reified what we've been talking about. The ICE officers are disproportionately non white, but the people who ridicule them and taunt them are disproportionately white. And out there's an edge there that nobody talks about. But I have a feeling it is that a lot of these white liberals, and we've talked about this before, are not comfortable around people that don't look like them non white that contravenes their abstract political ideology and they can't square that circle. So every once in a while, they look for a cause that allows them to vent a racial animus.
- [02:09]
Jack Fowler
Well, hello ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler, the man very lucky to be the host and ask questions of the great Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College and a senior contributor to the Daily Signal. And he's got a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address, if you like. Thousands of other people who love everything Victor writes and you're not subscribed, you're going to want to do that. It's $65 for the year. Or stick your toe in the water, test it out at 650amonth. Victor writes a number of exclusive articles every week for the Blade of Perseus and does an exclusive video. Victor has also got another show with the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen, in a few words. Check that out on YouTube. I think I got everything in there, Victor. Yeah, we are recording on Monday, March 30th, and this episode is going to go up on Thursday, April 2nd. Holy Thursday. Yesterday was Palm Sunday. I'm in Connecticut, Victor. It's best going to be known from here on in as the day that UConn defeated Duke on a buzzer beat at one of the great games ever in March Madness. Five of my kids graduated from UConn, so it was a big day here.
- [03:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
What was the point spread? They were favored. Duke.
- [03:44]
Jack Fowler
Duke was favored, yeah. UConn is the least favored now that they're in the Final Four. But we shall see. We shall see. I'm not a Duke hater, folks. Not a Duke hater.
- [03:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
But.
- [03:57]
Jack Fowler
So, Victor, again, though, yesterday was Palm Sunday. There were a couple of Palm Sunday political incidents worthy of your reflections. And then we have some international religion hate. We have this student at Stanford that's being harassed by the Chinese Communist Party. And then I took a trip through the College Fix earlier today and there's just so many articles in there that make you want to scream. And we'll get to a few of them, including one. Claudine Gay is back teaching. Teaching how to be a governance at Harvard. Crazy.
- [04:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Anyway, how did that work out?
- [04:36]
Jack Fowler
Well, how did her job work? And we all know, but that she's still being held in such esteem that she could teach a course on this. I don't get it. Anyway, Victor, we'll get your take on these topics when we return from these important messages.
- [04:55]
Bradley Devlin
Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen, whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. I always leave an episode. Learning something new.
- [05:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.
- [05:12]
Bradley Devlin
And in the age of clickbait and rage bait. That's a really good feeling, right?
- [05:17]
Jack Fowler
The media.
- [05:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you. You can leave now.
- [05:19]
Bradley Devlin
Well, if you agree, you might like my show the daily Signals long form interview podcast called the Signal. Sit down. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington D.C. as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever with the Trump administration back in office because in 2024 you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy. Victor Davis Hansen, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X radleydevlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal. Sit down.
- [06:04]
Jack Fowler
And we are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, not to you know, I don't want to catholicize everything here, but this is an international incident, we'll say. So there's the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Bethlehem. This is the site of Golgotha where Christ was crucified and of his tomb and of course Palm Sunday yesterday. So there was you. Every year there's a major mass there. Well, there was no major mass yesterday. The Israeli government said no. Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzabala, who's the preeminent Catholic. Roman Catholic. I know it's the most Catholic name.
- [06:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Are you kidding me? His name was Pizza Ball.
- [06:51]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Pierre Battista Pizza Pizza Balla. That is his name. Victor, come on, we got a colorful language. Remember America is named after an Italian Americo. So anyway he was denied access to the church and the reason was there are the holy sites in Bethlehem are being targeted by Iran. So the Israeli government said no, of course created immediate outrage amongst many. Our ambassador Mike Huckabee was upset but Netanyahu intervened immediately, explained why. But there's a lot of I think overreaction from the increasingly Catholic or just pure old woke right about what happened. See, look at Israel. Look at meanwhile Victor, I'll shut up in a second.
- [07:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think Tucker will have a special show on it. Oh he probably.
- [07:42]
Jack Fowler
Yes, I'm sure he'll have the grand Mullah of Bethlehem on the show. Meanwhile in Nigeria once again Catholics and Christians were being slaughter by Muslims on Palm Sunday. You don't hear the same people complaining about that. All right. Anyway Victor, have at it.
- [08:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean if we know that the Iranians are targeting certain iconic sites and they're getting Russian satellite intelligence and they have western trained people who are pretty accurate in programming their missiles. So if they had hit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and blown up Catholics inside or Orthodox inside, what would they have said? Netanyahu put them at danger. That's what they would have said. So I, I, it's a non story, but it is a story when you want to know why they're so hysterical. And I've been very careful, Jack, because of your Catholicism, not to bring up, but I've mentioned before that there is this phenomenon of often young converts. I don't think they're lifelong, I don't see it as much as lifelong Catholic, you know what I mean? It's converts. And they see something in Catholicism. I don't mean necessarily the doctrine, I really don't. They see something in the structure or the age old antithesis between Islam and the Church, which until, oh, 1492 and 1495 was synonymous. There wasn't. The Catholic was kind of a subset adjective. It was the Church. Christianity was Catholicism. So they want that structure or that clarity or that linearity. And so I don't. And they see it as a political force. It's kind of ironic because we had already always associated the church with liberation theology and especially here in California with open borders. And the church would, you know, they would lecture us, lecture us, lecture us about the wonders of, I mean they had Cesar Chavez not been revealed as the man he was, I think they would have canonized him. I mean he was just a saint in the Catholic community. So it's very ironic to see that the right now is gravitating to Catholicism. It's kind of a return to the 1930s when you saw in Spain the right was associated or 1780s and 90s were during the French Revolution they went after priests. And people forget that during the Spanish Civil War the left, I think murdered 8,400, 8,500 priests and nuns. But now it's kind of returning to the idea that the Church is indomitable. It will not change, it will not change. It won't start listing pronouns. It's been, you know, in the 60s and 70s the church was changing. And now there's a sense that the church is a bulwark of Western civilization and that has an attraction to disaffected, some kind, sometimes listless, not always young men, many white male, female conservatives, traditionalists. And I think in my immediate circle I must know 10 people that have converted and maybe on the national scene, 10 or 15 people who have converted that are high profile on the conservative movement. Right.
- [11:26]
Jack Fowler
Well, we shouldn't forget that the conservative movement, essentially founded by the modern conservative movement, founded by Bill Buckley and very public Catholic National Review was considered a Catholic magazine.
- [11:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know. Was I the only Catholic columnist each week? The apostolic.
- [11:44]
Jack Fowler
No, my gosh, no, not at all. Florence King was an atheist lesbian. So she took. She has you beat by far. God rest her soul. But Victor, I think one other thing on this point, because you talked about it for a little bit, I do think there's a desire from a lot of people, including conservative Catholics, including those who are converting, where I think this is broader cultural infection by being. I want to be a victim too. Somehow or other, you know, they're looking for some woe is meanness or so I'm no sociologist, but.
- [12:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
You mean the convert wants to find victim status and being a persecuted Christian,
- [12:25]
Jack Fowler
who besides you and me doesn't want to seek victim status in this world today? You know, I just think it's a broad cultural.
- [12:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want. Somebody the other day called me a cancer survivor and I felt I'm not a cancer survivor. Then I thought, well, wait a minute, I'm a cancer victim. But you should read the defiant letters I'm getting from our listeners and audience. I try to read a few every day. I mean, and it's like they're in an existential war against lung cancer. You know what I mean? They write me and say I had stage four and I laughed. Death in the face. That kind of attitude. It's really. And they're surviving. I don't know if they have the same type as mine, but they were. They don't want to be victims. I think the victimhood is a DEI bicoastal phenomenon. I really do. It's from Karen's. Oh, I said that word. I'm sorry, everybody, but I mean elite, well educated liberal women who want to find something in their lives that bonds them with the victim class and they can't find it with. Given their money and affluence and education. So often they go into a psychological introspection where they say that they were a victim of emotional abuse by their parents or a sibling or a date or something like that. Me too. Had a lot of that.
- [13:47]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Did you see any of these videos of the no Kings rally of some of these.
- [13:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
I did.
- [13:52]
Jack Fowler
Crazy ladies acting like dogs in the street.
- [13:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that was just. The whole thing is so disturbing because first of all, the only monarchical autocratic thing we've had is the Biden administration waged warfare and inherited it from the Obama administration. I mean, nobody elected the people who went into Mar? A Lago or tried to get him, tried to, you know, Jack. Nobody elected Jack Smith. Some of the local DAs were elected, but it was a nobody elected John Brennan or James Clapper or James Comey or Peter Strzok or Lisa Page. Nobody did. Nobody elected Judge Brodsburg either. So we have a lot of people who have not been elected, they've been appointees or they're part of the bureaucratic state that really violated the Constitution. And it nothing to these people. And Trump has been elected, he would say three times, I would, you know, probably two. But he was elected and he's not a. He's no more a king than. Yeah, I can't think of any. So the name was so confusing. And then you saw, I looked at it very carefully and I saw the ICE agents being pelted in Los Angeles by these huge rocks and spit on. And then there was a scene in the airport where a white spaghetti armed antifa voice, NPR voice kind of person started making fun of these four, three African American ICE agents. And then it just reified what we've been talking about. The ICE officers are disproportionately non white, but the people who ridicule them and taunt them and try to are disproportionately white and affluent. They're middle class or lower middle class. And so there's an edge there that nobody talks about. But I have a feeling it is that a lot of these white liberals, and we've talked about this before, are not comfortable around people that don't look like them non white and that contravenes their abstract political ideology. And they can't square that circle. So every once in a while they look for a cause that allows them to vent a racial animus. And one of the ones right now is the Gestapo, Hitler, ice. And that allowed me to get in the face of a Mexican American ICE agent and call him all sorts of names or African American guy at the airport and shout horrific things at him. And that didn't make it. Then the Communist flags in New York. I thought, wow, nobody's even waving them in the old Soviet Union. Russia. Did you know it failed? Did you know the Communist Party in China has become a capitalist predatory state? Do you know that Cuba is just about ready to implode? You know that North Korea is a pariah society? Why are they doing this? Is it Mandami? I don't know.
- [16:57]
Jack Fowler
What about the UYGHURS you know, the Muslims who were tortured and get their kidneys cut out.
- [17:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then they had that guy, that guy with a mask on his face from Philadelphia. That was the worst. When he said he wished that more coffins would come home or the American dead. Remember that? And then that freelancing reporter put a microphone in him and he said, are you going to say this or clarify what you say? He said, I hope Hamas blows up your home. At least in World War II. Lord Haha, the British propagandist that joined the Nazis and Tokyo Rose, who was a Japanese resident in America, I think she was a US Citizen. At least they did their propagandizing and anti Americanism in the midst of a horrific war. They did it from Tokyo and Berlin. But we didn't have people like this character openly siding with the enemy and propagandizing and hoping our soldiers die from the United States. I could see it if he was in Radio Tehran or he was in southern Lebanon or he was in Gaza or he was in Yemen and saying that he hoped, but right in downtown Philadelphia, the city of the foundation of the United States. It doesn't make any sense. And if he was on a green card or a student visa, I have a feeling Marco Rubio will rip that up and get him out because he doesn't have a right to be in the United States. Nobody does. On a visa you can arbitrarily refuse somebody and just say, his character, we found, is not suitable for a visit to the United States. So all of those protests, I mean, there's something about them. I don't know what it is. The people look strange, they put on strange costumes, they use foul language. They have often sexual metaphors and similes. They. When you have a conservative on one side of the street and a liberal on the other, it's usually the, it's usually the left wing person that, that provokes the, the attack. It's just at least in the 60s, people there were, you know, I used to watch these things at UC Santa Cruz and, you know, they, they were crazy and they were Marxists. But, you know, when they went down in the Santa Cruz City hall, they jumped in the fountain and frolic, you know, and the girls wore halter tops and the guys wore. It was kind of a youth. It was kind of like the 50s generation crowding into a telephone booth, right? Or swallowing goldfish. It was a fad. But now you see these older people and they're the ones that are really, really angry. And you get the impression that they're living in the last decade of their life. They're reliving what they did when they were 18 as baby boomers, but they're angry and they're mean and they snarl and I can't say they're Snagglepuss. Somebody wrote me and said, Victor. Victor Snagglepuss was a nice guy. He was nice.
- [20:07]
Jack Fowler
Exit stage right.
- [20:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. So get your feline heroes and monsters straight. Yeah. That was a very good thing the guy wrote.
- [20:16]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. There was the prevailing psychiatric problem amongst these people in America and then in Canada too. Did you see the video clips of this? I think it was a national democracy, whatever the NDS meeting and these people look like. It does look like the bar scene at Star Wars.
- [20:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
It does. It is. It is, it is. And it is. And you know, it's a. I just wrote an article for New Criterion about. In Western society, the combination of free market capitalism and consensual government is a very tricky thing because it leads to an excess of luxury and affluence and satisfying the appetites if you don't have a shame. Culture and a traditional reverence for your ancestors. What the public and religion. And then I cited for each one of these symptoms of that low fertility, low marriage rates, oikophobia, hating your. Your own country and criticizing your own country during a time of war. Inflation of the currency to pay for social programs that bankrupt the society. I quoted almost 15 or 20 quotes from history literature from Greece and Rome and their similar periods to ours. It was uncanny how this west has had this reoccurring pathology that people, when they get very, very wealthy out of free market capitalism and then they have freedom to do whatever they want, they end up in the. In a Kardashian mode. You know what I mean? It's just decadent. And these protests are decadent. They're just when then. And then there's always a conservative journalist will go up and say, why? Did you see the one where he said, why are you here and what are you protesting? They had no idea what? No. I don't know. How would I know? So maybe they were like 60s frolickers, I don't know. But a lot of them, a lot of it I think also comes from. It's not just they hate Donald Trump, of course, we don't need to get in Donald Trump derangement syndrome, but they see their world, they see themselves as impotent and all the things that were dear to them. Letting in 12 million illegal aliens and then having mail in ballots that can't be verified. That's going to go out the window. DEI out the window, massive subsidies, EVs for green, green stuff that's going to go out the window and it's all slipping away very quickly. The other thing is they can't stand Donald Trump to be successful, especially on the foreign stage. They remember that in their universe, if you're Barack Obama and you're half black and you, according to Joe Biden, you're very articulate and I think Harry Reid said the same thing, then you deserve a peace prize. And here Donald Trump may, in the space of a year after disposing this narco terrorist autocrat, Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, stopping illicit drug sales to the United States from Venezuela, stopping the interference in the foreign affair internal affairs of South American Caribbean countries, stopping the export of virulent toxic criminals from his jails to the United States who kill and prey on people. Then he's moving to Iran. And who knows, he may. It's not, remember, it's not a stated objective of this war. He's given four or five aims and one of them was not regime change. But he may weaken or attrite that government to such a degree and humiliate it that when he walks away, there will be people who say, I don't want you to spend another trillion dollars of our money when we're starving to pay for a bunch of Arab terrorists in Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, nor to build a nuclear bomb that's going to get us all bombed again. And we're not going to. And so if that were to change, and then you see Cuba, which is about ready to blow up like a balloon, and there's all these people, these very successful Cuban Americans who want to go in there and invest and the government, we might have a Maduro solution. Okay, we'll let you stay as a transitional figure as long as you follow these mandates from the United States. You could see Donald trump solving a 67, 67 years in Cuba. Yeah, 1959, I think, 67 years in Cuba. He could be solving a 47 year problem in Ukraine, he could be solving a 15 year Chavista problem in Venezuela. And who knows, there might be the big loser in all of this, geostrategically are China and Russia. And Russia is out the ropes. It's lost over a million dead. I see the latest figures and maybe 500 another million casualties and it's broke. And the BRICS things that it helped to craft is falling apart. And if you had a peace deal in Ukraine where basically the borders were not too different than they were on February 24th of 2021. And you had four of those things happening. Donald Trump would be the greatest foreign policy presidents in FDR during World War II. And at what cost? There would be. It might BE We've lost 13 dead in Iraq, tragically. But if you change the entire map of the Middle east because it'd be successful, the Gulf autocracies are not going to be afraid of Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis. They're going to be broke. They're going to have nothing, they're going to have no money. They get it all from Iran and they're going to move toward the west because the west eliminated their existential threat, Iran. If there's a good government that comes in in Iran, then you might be back to one of our closest friends or the Iranian people and you've got both sides of the strait or Hormuz, pro Western. And you could have the Abraham, you could have so many things happen. And the same thing in Venezuela. You look at what's happening in Argentina, maybe in Colombia, what happened in Chile, and you get the impression that when they look at the United States and they see conservatives are ascendant, they like that idea. But when we're weak or the left is in power, then the opposite happens. But what I'm getting at is the world is could be radically changed by a supposedly crazy Donald Trump and at a very, very small cost. A fraction of what we lost in blood and treasure in the first Gulf War, but especially in Afghanistan and Iraq the second time. And I think that terrifies the left. They really don't want that to happen.
- [27:51]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, they need a whipping boy. Well, Victor, America is entering its 250th year and the direction of this country is being decided right now. In our culture and our economy and who we choose to support matters more than ever. Most wireless companies don't care who you
- [28:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
are or what you believe.
- [28:08]
Jack Fowler
They just want your money. Well, Patriot Mobile is different. More than 12 years they've stood with Americans who believe freedom is worth defending. Funding the Christian conservative movement when others stayed silent. And here's the deal. You don't have to give up quality or service when you switch to Patriot Mobile. They deliver premium priority access on all three major U.S. networks. So you'll get the same or better coverage than you have today. Think switching is a hassle? It isn't. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. Their 100%. US based support team can activate you in minutes. Still, Paying off a device. Patriot Mobile even offers a contract buyout. This is a defining year. We must work together to save our country. Go to patriotmobile.com VDH or call 972 Patriot. Use the promo code VDH for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com VDH or 972 Patriot and switch today. And we thank the good people from Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Hey, Victor. Two other religious matters. One is that Canada, the House of Commons passed an anti Christian bill that would criminalize quoting the Bible. And that happened last week. 186, 137 vote in their parliament. And then on the other side of the world, almost in Finland. Finland Supreme Court convicted Pavi Rasinen of hate speech. She was a Christian member of Parliament. I'm reading from an article here now that she had faced long hate speech charges for tweeting a Bible verse. So the Supreme Court there said by a 3, 2 majority that, well, the Bible verse, she's not in trouble for that, but she's in trouble for a 2004 church pamphlet which states the church's views on homosexuality, against homosexuality. So this is a very aggressive elite bureaucrat effort to suppress faith. Except if you're Muslim.
- [30:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Faith, not faith, yes. Because if these were Muslims, they would have reached out by now and being in all of mosque praising them. So it's a hatred, it's an oikophobic hatred of your own culture and Christendom. And that's not the whole story though. The whole story is that there's no consequences for them doing that. A Christian monarchist or nationalist will not go in to the Supreme Court and threaten them. You know, they're not going to go on stage and put out the eye of Salman Rushdie. They're not going to do Charlie Habo. Everybody knows that. So they make the necessary adjustments. I was shocked at that story though, Jack, because when I look at Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and sort of Finland, although Scandinavians that feel that Finland's a little bit Russianized, but Finland always impressed me as in the modern world, as the most muscular or the most traditionalist because they had a direct experience with the communists. They fought the 1939 war. They were highly armed. They got some of the best artillery in the world. It's a very valuable Sweden. The inclusion of that's the first good news we've had of NATO in years when Finland and Sweden joined because they came with ample resources and wonderful arms industries. So this wasn't from an elected official it was from the Supreme Court. So I don't know how popular it would be among the people. I would doubt it would be very popular. But Canada is typical. It's representative of what Canada is. It came out of the Parliament. The other thing about Canada, there's a narrative that we were very close friends. And then Donald Trump, the disruptor shot off his mouth about Alberta as a state or Canada in art of the deals. And then he ruined what Louis once said, the start of a beautiful relationship. No, no, no, no. There were things that were, since the premiership of the ministership of Stephen Harper, things have gone south. He was, as I praised him to the skies last time, he was the last sane Canadian. And even he was starting to see, I think, from his policies that he could not convince the Canadians to return to their former grandeur. Canada. Canada has a lot of pathology. So what Donald Trump did is he tore the scab off the wound. He didn't create the wound itself. And when that scab came off because of him and we started to examine this, Americans started waking up and said, wait a minute, wait a minute. These people have to wait a year and a half to get a brain surgery that might kill them. Well, wait a minute, they have this euthanasia, 83,000 people, is it 5% of the people who die are put to death with government assistance. Wait a minute, we have a free trade thing. How did they get a 50, 60 billion dollars surplus? Wait a minute. We had an agreement that everybody paid 2% of their GDP on defense matters. Why were they the biggest laggards of everybody? They were, they were one of the three worst and they still haven't quite made the 2%. And why would they do that? And I could go on. And then the open borders, they have some of the worst open borders policies, far as bad as Biden. So I think people are looking at Canada and they're saying it's a socialist, EU type, anti American country and it has certain cause celebs. It's not just DEI and green energy, but the dying and traditional religion that are antithetical to the west and what the United States stands for.
- [34:33]
Jack Fowler
So what they did with that freedom, that truck.
- [34:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, same thing with that. And then when you put in Carney flirting with the Chinese and lecturing us that small or medium sized states don't have to be the recipient of a bullying and maybe China offers an alternative. Go to it, Canada, go to it. That's what I say. Just let them come in and you can buy all their cheap EVs and shut down your plants and your GM plant. Go to it if you want to, but don't expect us to say, oh, poor Canada, Donald Trump bullied you. I'm not talking about the Canadian people. I've been to Canada a lot. I like it, it's a beautiful country. The people are very nice. But they have swallowed hook, line and sinker this EU trajectory to national suicide. And I don't see, I see in Europe, in Italy, elements in France, most of Eastern Europe, some awakening in Sweden and the Netherlands that people know that if they persist with this left wing ideology, they're going to destroy their country, they're going to disarm it, they're going to bring in immigrants that cannot be assimilated, they're not going to have any energy, they're not going to be competitive. The entitlements industry is not sustainable and they're going to change. I don't see that in Canada. I don't see, you know, well, we're their buffer.
- [36:06]
Jack Fowler
But I agree with that. Victor, Imagine if you were someone our age and in France or pick one of the countries you just mentioned and you might think, well, I wonder, my grandchildren, I wonder what's going to happen to them in 30 years. They may be murdered for being Christian or not converting or who knows, euthanized somehow.
- [36:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
It kind of confirms that thesis I was writing for Roger Kimball, the New Criterion. This essay I just sent in, I don't know if they're going to like it or not. I think they will. But look at Canada when it was a much, much poorer country and had a very small in comparison to now, population. They had the fifth largest navy in World War II. They had an entire beach at D Day dedicated to the Canadians. They undertook one of the most dangerous and disastrous raids of World War II, the Dieppe Raid. They landed on the coast of Normandy and tried to as a forerunner of D Day and about half of them were captured or killed. So they were enormously courageous people in government and they were an inspiration. The Canadians were. You know, we had this image when I was growing up of Canadians as lumberjacks and, you know, tough, proud people, you know, that were wonderful. They were English, without the pretension and I don't know what happened to that. It's not there anymore. They're completely disarmed and they're up in the Arctic Circle where China and Russia are thinking that there's going to be a new Northwest Passage or there's going to be precious minerals in the Arctic Circle that are going to mine. And here we're down here and we're saying to the Canadians, well, you know, if you're not going to make your 2%, much less you're 5, why don't you build? You used to be great at building icebreakers and patrolling the Arctic. Why don't you do that for us? And I think there's going to be a lot of ripples, especially from the war. When you look at this opportunistic ankle biting from the Europeans, the Canadians, especially the Spanish, they've denied now this week no US Military planes can fly in their airspace. If it's involved with either supplying or being actively involved in the Iranian war, we should say that if, if we ever get a missile system to protect Europe or the United States, we should tell the Spanish it's very warlike. So we're going to make sure there's no missiles that ever enter your airspace. And we'll tell the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans out.
- [38:44]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, we'd hate to trigger them. Hey, Victor, we're going to take a break here. When we come back, there's a story about a Stanford student being tormented by the ChiComs. And we'll get to that right after these messages.
- [38:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [39:29]
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. We are talking on Monday, may excuse me, March 30, and this particular episode will be up on Thursday, April 2. That's for those of us, many of us who practice Christianity is Holy Thursday. We wish. I do anyway. I'm sure Victor does. A blessed Easter forthcoming to our Christian brothers and sisters and its Passover is approaching too. And blessed Passover to our brothers and sisters in Abraham. Victor, here's the headlines. Stanford student reveals sick way Chinese Communist Party allegedly stalked her. This is a student at Stanford University opened up about the disturbing ways in which Chinese Communist Party agents allegedly stalked her, mentioning her mother, demanding she delete material on her phone and harassing her with a blitz of calls. This is Ella Johnson, who's a junior majoring in East Asia studies, and she testified last week to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about how this chilling, alleged transnational repression that's her phrase against her began and rip Stanford. She's attacking Stanford now for being very reluctant to engage with me on it. Victor. She's also the editor in chief of the Stanford Review, the conservative.
- [40:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I mean publication, I think I mentioned. I went out to dinner with the editors of the Stanford Review not too long, right before I was operated on. They were some of the most brilliant, well spoken, analytical people I met and they had run a earlier series on what China was doing and basically the gist of it was, any Chinese national, and there are hundreds of them at Stanford, is thoroughly investigated and expected, I shouldn't say required on their return to China to give a full report of all the technology and expertise they came across and any military knowledge they have. So essentially, whether they like it or not, they become organs of the Chinese surveillance state and espionage. And so anybody who is a high profile person who studies China at Stanford or who writes things critical and that's confined to the Stanford Review gets the attention of the Chinese Communist Party. I mentioned before too many times in my office, I wrote something very critical at Stanford of China. And I got a call, you were very mistaken. You need to talk to me at the consulate. And I said, yeah, so what? Make an appointment. I said, I'll make an appointment with you, meaning I'll never. She said, I'm outside your office, can I come up? And so I just. Little bird said, you better have the door open and have your couple of people work with you there. So I did. And I remember it was Fong Fong Fang Fang, excuse me. And she came in with tight Levi's and knee boots. I thought twice. I'm thinking to myself, I know that Eric Swalwell is very not bright, but anybody who saw her with sunglasses tucked into her blouse.
- [42:54]
Jack Fowler
Yes.
- [42:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
And the fake Chinese thick accent. And then giving me a lecture about China. Chinese were butchered by Japanese militarist and I'm part of the Japanese war. It was just, it was so archaic and ossified. And then when I kind of laughed and said, and then she had gifts, of course, take this and take that. And then I have reservation. I take you to Sundance, you know, we'll go to dinner. I said, no, forget it. And then she just stopped the whole thing and went into her, I guess it was UC Humboldt State accent. You know, she had been in America. Hey, man, it's like you're an idiot. Like, man, Obama doesn't do nothing, man. We go into Japanese airspace and what's he do? He goes, nothing, he's weak. Why does he do that? That kind of stuff. And so that was at Stanford. And then we had, I think it was eight years ago, we hired somebody in neurophysiology who was a colonel as a visiting lecturer, who was a colonel in the People's Liberation Army. And then we had one of those awful Confucius Institutes, you know, those fronts. And I think that the first Trump administration, Betsy Voss, fined them 50, they had $50 million gift, they didn't report. So it's just, what I'm getting at is the west coast of California, China sees it almost as if it's Taiwan. And when you have a governor like Gavin Newsom who's bragged he's got his own Chinese foreign policy, da da, da, da da. It's, it's very scary. All I would argue to our audience is why can't we have reciprocity? That's all I want. Not to be unduly mean to the Chinese. Just say we're going to have a policy and you tell me how many students you're going to let into the, united, into China. 10,000. I think it's 10,000 a year. That's how many you have here. You tell me, did you want to buy farmland next to a military base? Then we're going to borrow it from you. Let us buy farmland next to your bases. You want to run this surplus with us, we'll run this surplus with you. It's all going to be reciprocal because it's so one sided. You want to have a balloon go over the continental United States? Well, then give us. We're going to trespass your airspace. Oh, we have some unidentified drones that can't be jammed of military quality, and they're hovering over our biggest, I guess our solo B52 base in Louisiana. We're going to do the same to you, see what they say. But we have gone so far. And who did this? Who did this? Well, I can tell you who did it. It was the Democrats and the Republicans. And their greed created a whole subset of Western academics who wanted campuses, Western investment, Western legal form, Western insurance, Western outsourcing, offshoring, assembling and manufacturing. And they made a fortune. And after they made a fortune, I know some of them and I've heard the lectures from them. Well, you're very mistaken, Victor, about this. The Chinese are wonderful people. Have you ever been to a presidium? They're very good people. No, they're not. It's a dictatorial. The Chinese people are good, but the government is a dictatorial. Communist autocracy. They've got a million people in camps and they do everything from forcing people to have abortions to organ harvesting. Everybody knows that. Yet these capitalists made all this money there and then they wanted us to believe that they did it for us.
- [46:39]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, let me ask you about that, Victor. Do you think some were all. Or was this BS that through commerce with America, China would become free? Do you think they actually believed that or is it just a cover for why?
- [46:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think originally the person who first, you know, he was what ambassador there? George H.W. bush for a while. Yeah, I think in the beginning he did, but before, was it in 79 or something? He was. I can't remember when he was. It was maybe during the Ford administration, but somebody will correct that. But I think he did originally. They had this crackpot idea, it was originally a left wing idea that the more that you reach out to autocratic countries, including communist ones, Castro being the best example, and they see how successful the west is, they're going to emulate your political system eventually because they're going to have a consumer society. They're going to have a middle class. And we know now that when they adopt market driven economics to a degree, they use that largesse to strengthen the autocratic surveillance state. They don't liberalize. They think we're decadent. Tucker Carlson thinks we're decadent. He said, as I said the other day, he thought that most Muslim cities were nicer than the United States counterparts.
- [48:13]
Jack Fowler
Which one of his mansions does he think that from? Hey, Victor, to read a little spot here.
- [48:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sorry, I use that against Obama. His four mansions.
- [48:21]
Jack Fowler
His four mansions, yeah. Victor, if you've studied enough history to you, Victor, I know you have. But to our listeners and viewers, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise, though, never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold not as speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters at Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special Liberty offer for our listeners and viewers to help you get started with Real Gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. And if you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 8447-9091-9184-4790, 9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 8447-9091-9184-4790, 9191 or visit ProtectWithVictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, we can save this topic. I didn't raise this ahead of time, but it just dawned on me.
- [50:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was just going to add one footnote to our prior topic. Yes, my friend, the last year I was finishing my PhD at Stanford, 1979, 80. Do you remember Stephen Mosher? He was the critic.
- [50:48]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I knew him well. Yeah, about forced abortion in China.
- [50:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. Well, he was a graduate student at Stanford. I think he was in anthropology. He was really smart and it was just a huge every day I'd go there and the student paper would have a story on it. But it wasn't that he was a champion of liberty and he had spoken up to these horrible communist China, that he had criticized China. And Stanford had these new exchange programs as other universities did, and they were going to send anthropologists over there and get to have all this research. And then the same was true of people in math and science. And it wasn't the top down ostracism of him. It was the people, the academics, they thought this was so wonderful. China is now going to be a market economy. We're going to go over there, we'll be treated, we'll get all this research. And this guy spoiled it by telling us something that we didn't want to hear, that they forced people to have abortions and they demonized him. They kicked him out. They expelled him from Stanford University.
- [52:00]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I was working at the Human Life Review when I first got out of college and we were publishing his original essays on that. And Stanford doesn't have killing girls.
- [52:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, Stanford does not have a good record vis a vis Communist China.
- [52:16]
Jack Fowler
I wonder. Victor, I really don't wonder, but I think these schools that have the programs with China, NYU has a big one. There must be a tempting thing for the academic to think, well, I'm going to go. I will teach there one semester.
- [52:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I will teach them and show them that Americans are not all garbage or deplorables or chumps. They're like me, they're enlightened. They don't like the United States, and I'm going to represent them. The first year I was at Hoover, we had a program where we brought in Chinese scholars. I won't mention the person who created it. And there were four of them sitting there. I was only there a year. That was my first year, I think 2003. And I didn't know much. So John Racing said, we have a new problem. He was a great guy, the director. He said, we knew program and these people are very interested in military history for visiting Chinese scholars. And they go into the lounge at Hoover and have coffee. I want you to go in and meet them. And they know you're coming. So I went in. There they were. It wasn't, hello, Professor Hans. Doctor. It was, why do you. Why don't you write about Japan? Why don't you write about Japan? They killed. I said, and I said, I know they killed 16 million Chinese. I understand that, but what is the issue right now for me to write that? Just tell me. Oh, you don't care. You don't care. And the United States is part of it.
- [53:45]
Jack Fowler
It's guilty.
- [53:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was. Now it's gone. On the side of Japan. I said, we're on the side of Japan because you turned communist and you butchered under Mao. I think you're the greatest mass murderers in history. 70 million of your own people. And then you helped invade South Korea with the North Koreans and you helped kill 35,000Americans in Korea. And I'm supposed to be happy about that, but they were the rudest, most angry. And every time I would talk to them, they would, you know, they'd back off. Well, come by next time. They all talked about they have an obsession with Japan. And I can see now the new Japanese prime minister is finally getting that. And she's thinking, these people despise us partly because we were so awful to them in World War II, partly because we are wealthy and we are powerful and we're an obstacle to steamrolling South Korea, Taiwan, Australia. And we're going to ally with the United States. And you can see what's happening. She's really seen that Japan is very, very vulnerable, as is South Korea, as is Australia, as is Taiwan. But the more that they can unite and help partner with the United States, the less vulnerable they are. And you can see it and obtain
- [55:14]
Jack Fowler
the new Chinese version of what was the Co Prosperity Sphere,
- [55:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
the Greater East Asian Co Prosperity. I think it was 19. It was kind of late 1940, but
- [55:27]
Jack Fowler
the Chinese, modern Chinese version. Hey, Victor. Well, since we're talking about the economy, let's stick on it. Headline from the College Fix, run by our great friend John Miller. John and Jennifer Cabani, who's the editor. Claudine Gay will teach class on governance of universities. So this is the. Let me read the first line or two or three. Harvard University's shortest tenured president will teach a class on how to run universities. Former President Claudine Gay will also teach a class on the politics of race and ethnicity, her fall course. That's coming next, this coming fall. What is a University Purpose in Politics? In Higher Education is a selective tutorial capped at 16 students.
- [56:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
16 students.
- [56:13]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. It will trace the evolution of American higher education before turning to present day disputes over curriculum, admissions, research, preservation, governance. She's a barnacle on the hull of the USS Harvard, I guess. Anyway, Victor, your thoughts that she's, I think she.
- [56:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Isn't she making a million dollars a year? I heard that. And there's another story contemporaneous with this that Stanford, excuse me, Harvard has dropped 20,000 admissions this year. 20,000. They are hurting and they are borrowing against that huge $50 billion endowment which they can't really get their hands on because a lot of it's not liquid. And. Well, my point is they're acting as if they're poor. And then I think one of the Harvard spokesmen said, you know what will happen because of all the things Trump has done, we're not going to have critical cancer research. And I'm thinking you have, according to your own statistics, I think you have seven vice presidents. We only have one in the United States. And then you've got Claudine Gay, at this astronomical salary, teaching one class at the CSU system, we would have 50 students. I taught many, many semesters. Four classes. 50 students and one overload. Five classes a semester and 10 a year. And she's teaching one class, but she limits it. I remember I was teaching a Greek history class in Cal State for the history department. I was in foreign languages and it was capped at 50 students. And all of a sudden, the first day there were 82 students and I had two papers and four essay exams and they all came up to me, we need this class. We need this class. So I let in all of them and I have a picture of my daughter and I. And I'm talking to her. She was about eight and there's nothing, just a whole mountain of blue books. And I was laying on the floor every night, every two weeks I do that. And that's not unusual for Cal State University professors. But the idea that this person who ruined the name of Harvard and exposed her ignorance before the whole world and had no qualifications to be president, she was a plagiarist. She was a known plagiarist. Everybody else would have had their career ruined, but they contextualize all of that. And then she came from Stanford where when I was a visiting professor there in the 90s, it was a cause celeb that she shouldn't have. She was trying to get tenure, but it was based on nothing. So even to get tenure at Stanford, there was a controversy that she hadn't. And now she's going to teach one class and limit it to 16 and it's going to be on race and her expertise as a college. She had no expertise. That's why she was fired as the president of Harvard University. And as far as race goes, she came to the United States, I think from the Caribbean, from a very, very wealthy family and she was never a victim. And the only thing we know about race and the university is it's racist that safe spaces are racist, that separate graduation are racist, that quotas and admissions are racist. Everybody knows that. So it's.
- [59:53]
Jack Fowler
And then we know she went after what's his. Roland Fryer. Autonomous. Yeah, Roland Fryer, yeah.
- [60:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [60:01]
Jack Fowler
Speaking of race, you know, you would
- [60:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
think that if she thinks she sees a racist under every bed right in her midst. She had one of the most brilliant economists, according to my colleagues at Hoover who were experts in economy. And I read a lot what he wrote and he was disinterested, he was factual, he was empirical, he was African American. He did not come from the aristocracy like she did. And she tried. He made a little off color joke or kidded around with somebody he thought he knew well. And the next thing they knew, they were just waiting like wolves to sheep and tried to ruin his career. And they almost did. Of course there is something, as we know, if you're a secularist, it's karma or no. Yeah. Or nemesis. But if you're a good Christian. I feel like I am. There's God's will. As it works and manifests its own. He doesn't see anything. Even the pagans said the eye of Zeus. Hesiod said, sees every everything. The eye of Zeus. And so when she went after to destroy somebody who was brilliant then you get the impression she was going to be destroyed by her own hand and her hubris. And she was. Now she's back again.
- [61:17]
Jack Fowler
I have a feeling she'll step on another landmine.
- [61:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor, I don't know. I met so many part time teachers at these community colleges and CSU campuses and they're so smart and they've got good degrees and they're trying to publish and they get in their car and they go to four or five. You have these campuses to cobble together 50,000 a year without benefits. And most of them are white males. Not all, but most of them. And then this woman has made a career that she has a victim aristocracy and she needed special consideration given all the racist and sexist pressure she faced. And they, I guess unknowingly or hypocritically or ironically, they so prepped her that she would enter that trajectory where she was going to destroy herself because she was so accustomed to not doing anything and not producing good scholarship and cheating through plagiarism and having it contextualize or excuse that she kept getting promoted until nemesis or what comes around goes around. Waited till she was at the pinnacle of her power before the nation and Congress and said now it's your time to be revealed as a total incompetent. And she was. She couldn't even define antisemitism or talk about what she was going to do about it or anything.
- [62:47]
Jack Fowler
Well, I have another college fixed thing. I'll hold off on it. Maybe we'll get to it at the end. Although we're getting near the end because there are two other things non academic I wanted to ask you about. One was the news yesterday about Scott Besant was on some of the Sunday talk shows. So again we're talking on Monday, March 30 and he is launching a new program today, the day we're talking, that will reward tipsters with up to 30% of the fines imposed on criminals who are trying to bleed us taxpayers dry. This is according to a New York Post story and this is to go after this. I mean it's staggering the numbers on the Medicaid and Medicare and every related ripoff and fraud that's happening across America. So good for Scott Besant and I heard he's already being flooded with tips.
- [63:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Can you imagine what this is going to do. You're going to have some guy who works from home and knows every single element of not only computer science, but how the federal government works. And he's on his computer for 20 hours a day and then his eyes are going to get this big when he says a $9 billion fraud in Minnesota and maybe they'll find them each at $10 million and I could sit here for the first time in my life and be rewarded commiserately with my talent. And you're going to unleash those people all through the United States? I hope so. I hope so too because they will be more effective than the government. Far more effective. And they won't be polluted by ideology, they'll be guided by self interest.
- [64:27]
Jack Fowler
A sad thing, there's lots of fish in the sea here for them to go after.
- [64:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Wait till they get to California. It's the biggest fraud.
- [64:34]
Jack Fowler
I hope they go out to stuff
- [64:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
2 million plus people who were registered twice or multiple registration, same person for votes with mail and balloting. The more it comes out, the more it really is true. And it's indisputable that the border was open for one reason, to flood people in who would be registered with mail in ballots that could not be verified. When you're starting to look at these states, I looked at them, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, every one of them, with a few exceptions with a blue state. And they had double registrations.
- [65:13]
Jack Fowler
And if you overlay with some of the presidential returns in 2020 for far beyond the margin of victory.
- [65:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then we were all told that. But Donald Trump, that special race in Palm beach area, the special election for Congress, remember the African American conservative lost by 800 votes. And we were told that this was a bellwether and Trump was done. And now we learned that the successful left wing candidate stole a key that would unlock a computer program dealing with.
- [65:46]
Jack Fowler
Well, I think, yeah, I think it's a volunteer for the. So far. Volunteer for that campaign.
- [65:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Volunteer, yes, for her. I don't mean that she did it herself, but they should throw that election out.
- [65:57]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, speaking of elections, California has municipal. Well, so do a lot of American cities. Municipal elections are coming up. But LA's mayor, there's a. I just found out today. I'm curious. You're there. Victor Spencer Pratt is a Republican running for the mayor of Los Angeles and he's known to a lot of people because he's been on a ton of these reality shows. Unless he was on 90 Day Fiance, I don't know. But, but you know, I'm a little bit. Or of him. Any thoughts? Never.
- [66:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I never heard of him. I had never heard of him. Not because he wasn't an important person to be heard about, because I, I never, I've never watched reality tv. But all of a sudden a friend of mine said, would you mind if he called you? And I talked to him on the phone for about 40 minutes. And he's not a fly by night candidate. He has mastered the data of LA governance and the misadventures of Karen Bass. And when he, he had that little interview, he's got a whole array of quick. He's very quick. So he's got a whole array of quick repartee. You know, when someone said, what were you doing 20 years ago, reality TV? And he said something to the effect, at least I wasn't in Cuba. Of course, I'm not sure that that won't help her because of the LA people, but I think in the case of Karen Bass, she's lost her primary constituency and that was upper, upper, the very wealthy LA elite, the kind of, you know, tech investment big elite, and the professional classes. The Karen class, excuse me. And she's lost them because of what happened in Pacific Palisades and her utter indifference to what they've suffered and all of her taxes and crime. And I think he has a chance to win. I really do. He's very quick on his feet, he's very knowledgeable, he's very personable. And I, I hope he wins. I think. Well, I, he, I asked him if he wanted to. Come on. We're going to have him on when the campaign heats up. Oh, terrific. Okay.
- [68:24]
Jack Fowler
Well, last thing to raise to get your wisdom on Victor today is this headline, also from the College Fix. UC Berkeley backs Blacks Only Maternal Health Program. So this is University of California, Berkeley supports a program called Beloved Birth Black Centering, that's the whatever, which provides prenatal and postpartum care exclusively for black birthing people. That's not women, not mothers birthing people with an all black staff. Berkeley's Wallace center for Maternal Child and Adolescent Health has partnered with Alameda Health Systems Highland Hospital to provide research support for this program, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not going to read any more, but Victor, I mean, it's just blatantly racist.
- [69:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
I have no problem, you know, if they're doing it with their own money, but they're not, because I'll give you an example. Part of the Armenian diaspora, we were, I think, the third locust after Cambridge Massachusetts and Los Angeles. So at one time, second and third generation Armenian Americans were in the tens of thousands. And one of the good things they did, they had things called the Armenian Retirement home. Right. But what I'm getting is they didn't skirt the law. They just raised their. And there's a Sikh. And you know, it's like a Hollywood actor's home. It doesn't mean that if you're not Armenian, you couldn't join. You probably could, but they encourage it. So if a bunch of black doctors got together and helped people and said, we're going to raise money and we're going to have our private and we're going to emphasize black health. But you know, if you're a poor white guy and you walk in the door. But that's not what they're doing. They're getting, I think they're getting local, regional, state or federal monies. And that's abjectly illegal. I think that comes out of a flawed study. It got all of the press about four years ago. You remember this crazy article that said the researchers had found that if black children at risk were treated exclusively by black doctors, they had a higher survival rate than by white doctors. And I was a little suspicious of that. And then later we learned, because they had a higher survival rate, we learned that most black that in referrals, when you are treated by a black doctor and you're referred because of low birth weight rate or infectious, they tend to have higher incidence of white specialists. So in other words, children that had been at risk innately or under the care of black doctors, and they wanted a specialist second opinion or a specialist expertise, that group of doctors tended to be more white than other groups. And often the children came there very, very ill and they may have died at a higher number than the ones that were healthy under black care. And it was. The whole thing was exposed. But after that flawed study, people started to advance that narrative that only black people should take care of only black people. And I think that's a big. That's a suicidal policy, obviously. Well, Victor Wiff, I think, Tom. So I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he said this a couple of times to me. He said once, have you ever been to a black doctor? And I said, I have. And he said, in the 1950s and 60s, because you had to score higher on MCAT and you had to have straight A's to get into good universities. And few blacks did. But when they did, I've hunted them down. And I thought that they were the best doctors in the world. And I said, do you still go? He said, no, no, no, no, no. It's not because they're black. It's because of affirmative action. And di. Now the opposite is true, that if you're black, you can get a couple hundred points, 150 or I don't know what the exact number is lower on the standardized test. And great point. And I'm afraid that the system that ensured that black doctors were as good or better than the alternatives is now operating in reverse. So that was very astute thing of many that Tom said.
- [73:04]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we've come to about the end of this wisdom dispensing that you do four times a week, twice with me, twice with the great Sammy Wink. I have a few comments, two from YouTube and once let me read the first one though, from the Blade of Perseus, Michael McDonnell, who writes, because you've talked about Cesar Chavez and you talked about me actually today, but in a couple of previous episodes from my childhood in the 1970s, I can think of no saintlier figure than Cesar Chavez. At my parochial school in Omaha, Nebraska, he was venerated. The nuns at the school inculcated the Chavez message. We too did not buy table grapes, or at least not those hearty bunches that could be shipped by rail thousands of miles. There were prayer vigils held for the ufw. What is that? The United Fruit Workers.
- [73:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
United Farm Workers.
- [73:59]
Jack Fowler
Farm workers. Chavez was a hero and cited in many a guitar mass, as you note. Sadly, truly. Feet of clay. And two other comments from YouTube. One is cool poolers, who writes, VDH is the touchstone of sanity for me. I value his insight, integrity and intelligence so very much and pray for his continued recovery and healing. And finally, Alana Adams 7440 writes, the elites hate regular people, but who do they call when the toilet is clogged? Who do they call when their Range Rover won't start? Who do they call if the roof leaked or the dishwasher dryer go out? We don't need them. But they need.
- [74:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know who they call because he said he knows how to work on trucks. Tim Waltz, he said, I'm just an old. I'm a white guy that a lot of people don't feel comfortable with any elite because I can just change the oil and fix a carburetor. Like, yeah, so that was being Michael
- [75:02]
Jack Fowler
Bloomberg can help with the farming issues that some people might have.
- [75:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
So you just drop it in the ground and you come back later and bingo. It's there. And same thing with plumbing. I tell you, if you. I have done a lot of plumbing and I've had a lot of plumbers come and fix it and then they've lectured me on the most esoteric, you know, diameters of plumbing and a hot vent and all of this stuff. And they're very smart guys. So are electricians.
- [75:32]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. My great friend Al Munro lives in Milford. He said, jack, plumbing is not a hobby.
- [75:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I can tell. You can do a lot of damage.
- [75:44]
Jack Fowler
Can I just say, I want to mention two people, if you don't mind. Victor, our friend Shraga Kawiar, who used to sponsor the show when he could.
- [75:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, I remember him.
- [75:53]
Jack Fowler
He's lovely and he wishes his best and gives his best. And then I have my brother in law's cousins, allie and Kevin McSweeney who just are humongous fans of the show. And I told my sister I'm going to mention them. So there I did. So thank you for letting me do that.
- [76:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
I found a. I was going through my phone the other day to kind of clean up because it had too many. And I saw a whole series, maybe a hundred exchanges between Rush and I the last year he was there and I was saying, Rush, you've got to. We need you. You need to take it easy. And he would write back and say, I'm going to go to full blast to the end, you know what I mean? I have to. To keep my sound, you know, it was very noble of him. I did at the time, but I noticed what a kind person he was in the tweets and he was just. And they were coming to me at 10 and he was at 1 o' clock in the morning. So then when I never in my right mind thought that I would have the same malady that he did, you know, lung cancer. And I would have. Comparing small things to great things. He was a very successful. I might just have a podcast, but I can see what he meant now that you want to keep going as far as you can because it gets your mind off what's wrong with you and you get enthused or supported by your listeners, that's all. And you feel you can do something good. Otherwise you just sit around, feel sorry for yourself or say, I'm going to conserve my energy. I think you're going to have a much better chance to stop the recurrence coming if you're happy and you're engaged. That's all. And I learned that from Rush.
- [77:38]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, here you are, you're doing four of these a week. Four of the others a week. You're still writing your essay a week, your syndicated column, the essays for a New Criterion.
- [77:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just wrote a 4,500 word essay for Roger Kimball at New Criterion and I did 5 Ultras today. 3500 words. I have a very good assistant, Morgan. I won't give her the last name so it won't embarrass her. But she's very bright and she's been. Especially now that I've had, I've been. I can't say this because it sounds like I'm a victim now that I'm a cancer survivor in a weakened position. But sometimes I've noticed, I, I get little burst of blank. And she's very good. She's been proofreading them and it really helps me a lot.
- [78:32]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, don't discount. I shouldn't tell you anything. How to judge your own life. But the victim line you just said. But I do think there are a lot of people who feel a deeper brotherhood with you because, because they have beaten this or they're still fighting and they see you fighting. So I consider it. I don't have this. I'm not a member of this brotherhood and praise God.
- [78:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
A guy wrote me the other day and I hadn't thought about, you know, what he said. You had a four hour operation to take out a whole lobe and it had a large size tumor in it that was cancerous. And the mutations, he knew, he had called me before and the mutations cannot be treatable and it is aggressive and it has a tendency to metastasize outside the lung. Sometime this particular mutation and it had spread through the air spaces. So there's a chance that it can come back very quickly and it might be in your brain or pancreas. I said, yeah, yeah. And then he said, then you had another four, almost four, right after to correct a bleed. And you lost three liters and five transfusions and you're 72. And he was saying, because he had called me and I said, I don't feel that great. But he was basically saying, no kidding. And I hadn't really thought about it that way. I'd always thought about, well, the surgery's over, why don't I feel good? And he was trying to apprise me that the anemia in itself or the transfusions, and I'm a universal recipient AB negative. And I had, I think five different blood types, four different. And then I, you know, I had afib from the trauma in the heart. But I can see what Rush was saying. You just feel that you can't think about. So I don't think about it. I mean, I know that there's a good chance it's going to come back, and I know that I might not be here very long if it does. But I don't worry about it. I really don't. I feel like I had a good life and I'm going to try to do all I can to stay here and talk to her. And I hope to beat it.
- [80:43]
Jack Fowler
I hope you do, too. Don't make me cry here, Victor. Well, you've been terrific. I don't mean that jokingly. I mean I'm going to get choked up.
- [80:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I had a mother who was really brave. They insisted that her meningioma was benign. And it came back and they insisted it was benign and it wasn't. And I watched her fight that for a year. And then I had a daughter who had leukemia, very virulent. I saw her. And when you see people that act a particular way that were, you know. When I went down to see my daughter, the moment they diagnosed her, I drove straight down to Los Angeles all night. She said, why are you here? You've got a lecture to give. Come on, dad, I'm fine. And I always. And then I said to my mom, this isn't fair. You're just. You worked all your on a farm. You raised kids. You went to Stanford. Undergraduate, you went to uop. Undergraduate, you went to Stanford Law School. You were a mom until you were 40. Then you were a lawyer. Then you were a superior court judge. Then you were appellate and you were young. You might be in this California Supreme Court. Victor, you play the cards that are dealt. You remember that line in Godfather 2? This is the business we chose. We've chosen. So this is a life that we are leading. And you have. You can't think backward. You have to be. I can't use the word forward. That has a communist connotation.
- [82:14]
Jack Fowler
I like to forward. This is a temporary place and hopefully
- [82:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
we will all be at a eternity.
- [82:21]
Jack Fowler
And you're back with your mom and dad and daughter and all others. So you look Uncle Tango and the rest.
- [82:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
So Uncle Tango.
- [82:30]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, Victor, you've been terrific. Go Yukon. Go Yukon. And folks will be back soon. Soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words.
- [82:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Bye Bye. Thank you everybody for listening and watching. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also Check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition.