Victor Davis Hanson: Anchor Babies the Defy Logic and Spirit of 14th Amendment

Summary

Podcast Summary

Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

Episode: Anchor Babies that Defy Logic and Spirit of 14th Amendment
Date: April 4, 2026
Host: Victor Davis Hanson
Podcast Platform: The Daily Signal

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Overview

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson delves into pressing political and cultural developments—focusing on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the value and future of NATO, the concept of "anchor babies" and the 14th Amendment, Supreme Court decisions, and nuanced explorations of historical myth via Greek gods Aphrodite and Ares. Throughout, Hanson weaves his historian’s insight with contemporary analysis, challenging prevailing media narratives and highlighting the unique American position in world affairs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump’s War in Iran & NATO's Frayed Relevance

(Begins ~03:57)

• Trump’s Recent Address: Trump framed the U.S. action in Iran as a necessary, concise intervention—not an endless war, drawing contrasts with previous extended engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan:
  • “The speech last night, it was only 19 minutes... He compared it with the first Gulf War... And then he mentioned that we went and helped them in Ukraine...” (Victor Davis Hanson, 06:15)
• European Reaction and NATO Frustrations: Keir Starmer (UK) claims, "this is not our war," illustrating a growing rift in alliance solidarity. Hanson recounts historical instances—chiefly the U.S. unwavering support for the UK during the Falklands War—as a counterpoint to current European hesitation.
• U.S. Burden-Bearing: Hanson describes European countries’ reluctance to share the costs and logistical burdens. He sharply criticizes Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and unwillingness to invest adequately in their own defense:
  • “They have the money. But... they adopted a series of policies that ensured that they will not only be weak, but appeasing and anti American.” (Hanson, 17:04)

2. The Weakening of Europe and Why NATO Falters

(15:06 – 24:50)

• Europe, despite its population and GDP advantages, is described as self-sabotaging through energy dependence, unassimilated immigration (especially from Muslim-majority countries), aging demographics, and collapsed fertility rates. Hanson’s withering critique lambasts Europe’s lack of "intestinal fortitude" to defend itself or stand up to threats like Iran.
• On NATO:
  • “What good are they? ...If you can’t use them, what good are they?” (24:25)
  • Suggests a "coalition of the willing" may supersede a recalcitrant NATO.
• U.S. global alliances are shifting: Greater value seen in relationships with energetic, capable allies (like Israel and Greece) than with hesitant traditional partners.

3. American Politics: Media, Culture, and Democratic Party Leaders

(35:00 – 41:39)

• Democratic Figures Criticized: Hanson and his co-host take aim at Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Eric Swalwell, painting them as symbolic of a failing Californian and national political elite.
• Cultural Snobbery: The hosts highlight incidents of condescension toward middle America by liberal elites, viewing such behavior as emblematic of a party disconnected from ordinary Americans.

4. Greek Gods and Moral Archetypes: Reflections on Ares & Aphrodite

(41:52 – 54:44)

• Hanson explicates how Greek mythology’s gods mirrored (and shaped) ancient moral values and social mores. Ares (war) and Aphrodite (love) serve as metaphors for both the dark and aspirational sides of humanity and polity.
  • “The 12 Olympian gods reflect mores of the Greek people… If Ares, for example, commits adultery and gets caught with Aphrodite… the other gods get to look and laugh…”
• Artemis’ legacy carries on in the naming of American spacecraft, emblematic of U.S. frontier spirit.

5. Anchor Babies and the 14th Amendment

(57:09 – 67:38)

• Abuse of Birthright Citizenship: Hanson rails against the contemporary interpretation and usage of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause. He recounts anecdotes of pregnant women coming from China and Mexico expressly to have children granted U.S. citizenship, concluding that:
  • “It defies the logic and the spirit of the 14th Amendment.” (59:20)
• Supreme Court Arguments: He lampoons Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's reasoning during oral arguments as illogical, contrasting this with what he views as the clear original intent of the 14th Amendment (to address the children of slaves, not visitors or illegal immigrants).
• International Comparison: Few countries allow birthright citizenship; Mexico and European nations require one or both parents to be citizens. Hanson emphasizes:
  • “No sane country in the world would do what we’re doing.” (65:01)
• Expects Supreme Court to avoid changing precedent due to cultural and political pressures, despite logical arguments.

6. Supreme Court, DOJ Appointments, and Political Strategy

(67:58 – 71:56)

• Analysis of changes in Trump’s administration, specifically regarding Attorney General appointments and the high political stakes for enforcement of law against political adversaries.

7. Attacks on Churches and Cultural Shifts

(75:33 – 81:49)

• Hanson discusses rising attacks on Christian and Jewish places of worship, citing both cultural (the “Me Generation” rejecting guilt and tradition) and demographic (rise of Islam, DEI ideology) explanations.
  • “50 years of radical cultural and social change has identified Christianity and Judaism as the cause of their neuroses...” (76:12)

8. The Shroud of Turin: Faith & Science

(80:10 – 81:49)

• Brief discussion on the Shroud, where Hanson notes that new scientific findings continually challenge and reshape debates over relics’ authenticity—but the religious dimension remains powerful.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s Iran War Comparison:
  “He compared it with the first Gulf War, 42 days... Then he looked at Iraq and Afghanistan, 7,000 dead, 20 years for Afghanistan, 10 years for Iraq.” (06:20)

• On European Defense Policy:
  “Are they weak because of their population? No. They have 450 million people... Are they poor? No. They have $23 trillion in GDP... But the reason they’re weak is... they went whole green power... and so they’re completely dependent on foreign sources of fossil fuels.” (17:04)

• On NATO’s Worth:
  “If you can’t use them, what good are they? Or if you have to fight over them all the time when you really need them. So next time there’s an existential threat, you don’t know whether they’re going to say no or yes, depending on how scared they are.” (24:50)

• On U.S. Immigration Policy:
  “It defies the logic and the spirit of the 14th Amendment.” (59:20)

• On Modern Attacks on Religion:
  “50 years of radical cultural and social change has identified Christianity and Judaism as the cause of their neuroses.” (76:12)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Trump’s Address, U.S. Military Actions, NATO History: 03:57 – 15:06
• European Weakness, Green Energy, Population Trends: 15:06 – 24:50
• NATO’s Relevance & U.S. Alliances: 24:50 – 33:48
• Criticism of U.S. Democratic Leadership: 35:00 – 41:39
• Greek Myths and Politics (Ares & Aphrodite): 41:52 – 54:44
• Spacecraft Artemis & Modern Symbolism: 53:55 – 54:44
• Anchor Babies & the 14th Amendment Discussion: 57:09 – 67:38
• Supreme Court, DOJ Appointments: 67:58 – 71:56
• Attacks on Religious Institutions & U.S. Culture: 75:33 – 81:49
• Shroud of Turin and Faith/Science: 80:10 – 81:49

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Conclusion & Listener Comments

• The episode closes with listener feedback and both hosts' Easter and Passover wishes. Hanson’s critical, vivid, and at times sardonic style comes through in his analysis of both international affairs and domestic policy, as well as in deeply contextual historical commentary.

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For those who missed this episode, it provides a sweeping, often controversial, critique of America’s allies, political class, and the cultural underpinnings of contemporary policy decisions—all through the seasoned perspective of Victor Davis Hanson.

Transcript

[A]

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gave a relatively short address last night, but very concise in defending where he is in his war in Iran. But also Keir Starmer has come out to say that for Britain, he's talking about this is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict.

[A]

Well, nearly 50 years ago Ronald Reagan could have said when Margaret Thatcher said that she wanted to go halfway across the world and take back the Falklands Islands that were very close to the Argentine coast and people on the left said it was a neo colonial maneuver or it was a post colonial embarrassment. And everybody in England got, for probably the last time, enthused with patriotism. And they came to us and Alexander Haig was secretary of state and he said, well, we're trying to reach out Monroe Doctrine like to our South American Spanish speaking friends because we're worried about Castro and Honduras and we have a growing Hispanic voter population and they're all for Argentina. And Reagan, Reagan said, I don't care. This is a NATO ally. It's one of our oldest allies. Give them what they got. We gave them everything they wanted. What if he had said what Sturmer said, sorry, this isn't our war and our cover is out for the counter revolution. The fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. It's a nice cover. There was a mistake on one of the sides that said the rise and fall. I got a lot of letters said, victor, have you gone full Tucker rise and fall? And I said no, it was just

[C]

a title I've heard and I've just heard this sort of out there. So I don't know exactly the source, but that the Iranians were requiring basically what would be bribes to get through the Straits of. So they were making a lot of money off of ships and cargo.

[A]

So he was basically saying you appease them. And now I didn't appease them and I exposed them and I saved you guys from being blackmailed by nuclear tipped missiles, which would have happened this year hadn't I done it. If you don't want to pay the bribes anymore and you want the straight open or you can pay the bribes up to you not going to play your game anymore. Which then raises a more existential question, why does NATO do this?

[C]

Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. This is our Saturday edition where we do something a little bit different in the middle. And today Victor's going to be talking about two Greek gods, Aphrodite and Ares, the God of love and the goddess of love and the God of war. So stay with us for that. But first we'll look at some news stories. Trump has just given an address to the nation on the state of the war in Iran, and we'll look at that first and some of the fallout from that. Stay with us and we'll be right back.

[B]

If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, the Tony Kenneth cast, the same common sense perspectives you love, weekdays, 7pm Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis and good old American sarcasm. Thom Tillis I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kennett cast on YouTube, X Radio TV or wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

Welcome back. Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinc Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. So Victor Trump gave a relatively short address last night, but very concise in defending where he is in his war in Iran and in fact, comparing it with other administrations and other wars, that he is well within any sort of evaluation of a short war here. So that's a good thing. And there's two things about this, though. I would like your reflections on his talk. But also Keir Starmer has come out to say that this quote for Britain he's talking about this is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict. And then he is also calling together 30 five nations to talk about the security across the Gulf. He says today, in fact, I think he is, and it's Thursday. So your thoughts on either of Those?

[A]

Well, nearly 50 years ago, Ronald Reagan could have said when Margaret Thatcher said to him that she wanted to go halfway across the world and take back the Falklands Islands that were very close to the Argentine coast, and people on the left said it was a neo colonial maneuver or it was a post colonial embarrassment. And everybody in England got, for probably the last time, enthused with patriotism. And they came to us and Alexander Haig was Secretary of State and he said, well, we're trying to reach out Monroe Doctrine, like to our South American Spanish speaking friends because we're worried about Castro and Honduras and I know there's a dictatorship there and we have a growing Hispanic voter population and they're all for Argentina. And Reagan said, I don't care. This is a NATO ally. It's one of our oldest allies. Give them what they got. So they came to the US military and they said, this is a long way. We have no ability to provide gas for an invasion. Can you give us 2 million gallons? 2 million of gasoline? Yep. If we exhaust our Tomahawks, because we're going to need them. Can you give us Tomahawks? Can you give us information where the Argentine fleet is? Can you give us satellite reconnaissance? Can you give us logistic backup? And Reagan said, we'll not only give you logistic backup, but if you lose your carrier, we'll get a marine carrier, 30,000 tons, and we'll have it ready for you. We gave them everything they wanted. What if he had said what Stromer said, sorry, this isn't our war. Everybody would have been infuriated. So the speech last, it was only 19 minutes. And he did a couple of things he tried to say, I'm getting to the subtext was people on the left and now the hard, hard, hard maga minority right are saying this is an endless war. And I didn't. Let me just give you two examples of why you're wrong. Let's compare it with other wars. So he compared it with the first Gulf War, 42 days longer now than. And we lost about 300. Then he looked at Iraq and Afghanistan. 7,000 dead, 20 years for Afghanistan, 10 years for Iraq. And then he mentioned that we went and helped them in Ukraine. He could have mentioned Chad, that we for 40 years have supplied the French. He could have mentioned Serbia. I think we went in on the initiative of the Europeans and said, we have genocide in our own territory. Can you help us? And we flew the vast majority of missions to take out Milosevic. That took 72 days. And then there was the Libyan misadventure where the French and the English went to Hillary Clinton Secretary of State Samantha Power UN Rep. Special Deputy National Security Susan oh, would you please help us? This is a NATO coalition of the willing. We don't have the logistical support, the fuel ability and the skilled pilot. And they bombed for seven months and we were there. They all forget that. So what he was trying to say was we are not in a long engagement as in past presidencies. This is very short. It is more like what I have done in my first and second term. And then he enumerated them, took out Soleimati Baghdad. He could have mentioned the Wagner group. And we bombed ISIS into oblivion and we took out Maduro in one day. And this is the same time. It's tragic. We lost 13. He was very poignant mentioning the dead. But the subtext again was, you don't destroy the war making ability of the bully of the Middle east who's terrified seven presidents with 93 million people and do it in four weeks, which he has done at the cost of 13 tragic lives. So that was the framework. And then he didn't say he was getting out of NATO, but he, like Rubio, said some things. And basically the story was we were there in Ukraine. Ukraine is not a NATO member. There's no Article 5. You guys came to us and you said, they're going to take over Ukraine. You got to send aid, you got to send himars, you got to send patriots, you got to send reconnaissance satellite. We said, okay. And then he said, but this is highly ironic. You're Mr. Pure Green, spiritually Moral, condescending postmodern green fanatics. And you look down at us, why, I'm pumping more oil and gas, but you're buying Russian gas and Russian oil. And that's empowering the regime that you're asking me to fight because of your green, chasing your green unicorn. And they laughed at him. They laughed at him. They looked across the table and they basically said. And he said, well, if you don't buy Nord Stream pipeline gas from Russia, then you can cut off. So he had all of that in the background. And then he said basically that he was negotiating. Everybody laughs at that because they say the Iranians aren't. He's got a very strategic plan. He has picked out members of that regime that he thinks resemble the Venezuela people. That is, they're no different than Maduro, but they want to live or they don't want to be in chains. So he dealt with that Venezuela, and he gave them some ultimatum. You got to open the oil to the world market. You've got to quit your Chinese relationship. You've got to give it to the people you can sell to us. We'll fine it, we find it. But we're going to put it in a trust account for the people. And you've got to let out all your dissidents and you've got to schedule it. And so that's what he did. So now he's saying to the Iranians, well, you can make fun of the speaker of the House or the President or whoever I'm trying to talk to, but I pick who I want to talk to. This isn't 1950s CIA where I'm trying to install a government or I'm assassinating DM or something in Vietnam. These are your people and I want to talk to these people now. Not that they're angelic. They're no damn. Excuse me. No darn good. But they're realists. They don't want to lose their country. You radical people I don't want to talk to. Now, you keep making fun of me. I'm interpolating what the message was. But you're all going to be dead. Because every time you announce that you're a spiritual follower of Khamenei and you're the head of the Republican, the National, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, you're going to die. Or that you're going to take over the Navy, you're going to die. So I'm going to deal with two or three people, and that's a way of empowering them, because the people look at that and they think, well, he's dealing with the more moderate people and they're killing the people who want to deal. And so that's a very successful strategy. So what was the end game? In two or three weeks, he's taken out most of the military assets. Now they're taking out the military infrastructure and they're starting to take out the industrial military complex, the factories. The military communicate without trying to touch. They took out a bridge today. They're starting to do things that they're getting really close to affecting the civ in infrastructure. I don't know if they'll continue. Finally, the NATO problem. So what got him angry and what got Rubio? And we discussed this last time. As we said, the Spanish won't let us use the bases or the airspace. The French won't let us use the airspace. The Italians won't let us use the bomber strip in Sicily. The German president said it was kind of an unjust or illegal war. Sturmer wouldn't let us use Diego Garcia. Now he's distancing. He's going to have a conference of 30 countries to go open this trade. I think that's great. They each have one ship. Go ahead and do it and keep us out of it because that's more important to you. We did the hard work for you. And the only reason he said that Europeans said, well, the strait was open before Trump started bartering. Yeah, it's because you appease him. That every time they killed people and slaughtered people or sicked Hamas and Hezbollah and all those people that killed Jews on October 7th and afterwards you thought, you didn't say a word because they had you hostage, you needed their oil, you needed the straits open. So you didn't say a word about their nuclear proliferation, you didn't say a word about their ballistic missiles even though they had you in their sight because they could have hit you had we not taken out the missiles that could have reached Europe.

[C]

Can I ask just a question? It seems I've heard and I've just heard this sort of out there, so I don't know exactly the source, but that the Iranians were requiring basically what would be bribes to get through the Straits of Iran. So they were making a lot of money off of civilization. Yeah, even before.

[A]

So the Europe's. So he was basically saying you appease them and now I didn't appease them and I exposed them and I saved you guys from being blackmailed by nuclear tipped missiles which would have happened this year hadn't I done it. So if you don't want to pay the bribes anymore and you want the strait open or you can pay the bribes up to you, but I'm not going to play your game anymore. Which then raises a more existential question. Why does NATO do this? Why do the Spanish? Who you know, basically after World War II, they were fascist under Franco and everybody in the coalition, the Soviets and the British wanted to get rid of them. And we said no, no, no, no. Maybe they'll be anti communist, maybe they'll. And we allowed them to have Franco into the 70s. Why do the French do it? We put up with de Gaulle, got out of NATO and all of this. Why do the Italians do it? I thought Meloni was our friends. Why do the Germans? And I can tell you why they it because they're weak now. Are they weak because of their population? No. They have 450 million people in the NATO European membership. 450 million. That's 100 million more than we have. Are they poor? No. They have $23 trillion in GDP, EU and NATO European members 10 times bigger than Russia, almost the third in the world, close to China. So they have the Money. But the reason that they're weak is they adopted a series of policies that ensured that they will not only be weak, but appeasing and anti American. The first was they went whole green power. France has nuclear power, but they won't drill for oil. Natural gas is in France. It's off the shore still of Britain. They can get a lot of natural gas. They don't want to do it, they don't want to get their hands dirty and they don't want to look for oil. And so they're completely dependent on foreign sources of fossil fuels. And their wind and solar doesn't work in northern Europe. I mean, you go to Germany, you see those solar panels and it's shady every day. You go to England, it's rainy. You go the coast of France, it's rainy. So my point is that they put themselves in a situation where they're either dependent on Russian cheap, cheap gas or they've so priced themselves out of the market, the price of electricity and power for their industries are no longer competitive. So they don't have that robustness that would allow them to be a muscular power. Then you go to their populations now under Joe Biden, he almost committed American suicide by letting in 12 million people. And it's going to take a generation to find them all, especially the criminal. But the majority of them were not Muslim. So they let in under Merkel million million and a half illegals, the rest of them across the Mediterranean, through Eastern Europe. And what did they end up with? 16% of the population of Germany is foreign born. About 12, I think of France, Italy's about 10. The only country that woke up was Greece. They really did. They said no more and we're going to partner with the United States. And they're right now in Souda Bay and CRE working on the Gerald Ford. They're an ideal ally. They punch way above their weight. But so what I'm getting at is when Sturmer acts like this or Macron, they have a socialist architecture they can't afford. They've got Muslim populations that are absolutely critical for their coalitions under parliamentary democracy, where splinter small parties have much more clout. You know, here in the United States, a third party has no clout, so they pander to Muslims and they have no energy efficiency, so they're not competitive anymore and they're vulnerable. And the third leg of this disastrous chair, to use a weird metaphor, they don't believe in reproduction. We thought AOC was bad. I don't want to have a child because of global warming. I can't bring them into the world. Well, they all believe that, so they're fertility rate is 1.3. It's going to shrink by 50 million people in 20 years. So the population is expensive, it's older, it's risk averse, it's quiet and youthful, robust, dynamic. People are not to be found. So you have infertility, energy, suicide a la green power, unassimilated, non acculturated and non integrated Muslim populations. And they can't ever get the wherewithal or the intestinal fortitude to save the United States. Hey, Iran has missiles. We know. Our reconnaissance shows our satellite that they have 2500 mile range. All of our capitals of Western Europe are in range. And we're not sure that we've got all of the nuclear. We got to do something. They can't do that. It's more like, well, let's see what we'll do. We'll talk privately to the United States and praise them. Oh, the Finnish Prime Minister. Oh, I play golf with Donald Trump, the NATO guy. Hi, Daddy Sturmer. The Anglo American is a rock of a rock of our foreign policy. Oh, there's Schultz. The United States is doing the dirty work. Ha ha. And then they do nothing. And then they turn around their rallies and their parliaments and they say, this is not our war, this is the United States. They're imperialists and they trash us and they won't help. And then they say, you can't use any of our bases, but we want you to come into Ukraine, we want you to come in, in Serbia. If we want one of our unilateral little expeditions into Chad or Falklands, you better help us. And people are sick of it. And then we have all of these transatlantic globalists who give us these stern lectures, many of them I know, and like this. Oh, Trump is disrupting NATO. He went onto a unilateral expedition and he asked, what would you expect from NATO? No, no, no. He was unilateral in the sense that he and Israel, who has more, as I said, combat aircraft than any individual NATO country, including 80 million person Germany. But he didn't ask them to do anything. He said, you don't have to bomb, you don't have to bring your ships in here if, you know, all we want to do is when we're flying to the United States to eliminate this collective threat to Western civilization, and particularly you, because you're closer to it than we are, would you just let us land and we'll take off and they said no. So the point is, as Rubio said, what good are they?

[C]

Yeah, exactly. I have a question on that in just a second, but I want to welcome back a sponsor, Silent. And that's spelled S L N T. Everything we carry today is broadcasting a signal. Your phone, your laptop, even your car key fob. Most people don't realize it, but these devices are constantly sharing location data identifiers and wireless handshakes with the networks all around you. That signal can be traced, collected or intercepted, making you and your data vulnerable. That's just the reality of the world we live in now. That's why you should start using Silent again. It's spelled S L N T. You don't want big tech, the government, or anyone else knowing your every move. You want control over when you're connected and what you share. When you place your phone, laptop, or key fob in a silent Faraday bag, the signal instantly stops. No cellular, no WI fi, no Bluetooth, no gps. Your device is disconnected from the grid. And here's the part that really got my att. Silent has been awarded nine military contracts. This is the same type of signal blocking gear used to help protect our soldiers from GPS detection and electronic threats. Now that same technology is available for everyday people. If you want to check it out, go to slnt.comvdh that's slnt.comvdh to save 15% plus free shipping on qualifying orders. Again, that's slnt.comvdhsilent.comvdh and we'd like to thank Silent for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, I would just like to ask you, sort of playing the devil's advocate, what your perception then is of the value of NATO to us? Because, you know, on the left, everybody who's complaining about what Trump says and does is saying, oh, it's just so valuable. You can never break that alliance. And, you know, as Rubio kind of intimated, well, we could reconsider how valuable it is, but how valuable do you think?

[A]

Well, the argument for NATO, this is why they. They're committing suicide. The argument for NATO and our participants. Yes. If you look at the total cost, not just the money, but the total cost, it's about 60%. One member of 32 nations, Spain, just says, I'm not going to pay the 2%. So does Canada. Every time I see Carney, the Prime Minister, start lecturing us so that he's going to help Denmark defend itself against us and how wonderful China is, and the US order is over, I say to Myself. Your country couldn't even spend 2% of of their GDP. And you promised you would. Why didn't you? Because you were next to the United States. That protects you. And you are so ungracious. You won a trade surplus with us. You don't carry your weight militarily. You triangulate with a Chinese. And there's things that are bothering us about Canada. You know, you have a euthanasia policy that's amoral, utterly amoral, and you have certain socialist practices are antithetical to us, so get really upset. But the argument for NATO for us was, well, we have to go to the Azores and you know, we have a base there and Portugal's a NATO member and it's been very good, by the way. Let us use it. But we. Spain is, you know, right. Right near Gibraltar, and it's right in the Mediterranean. We can stop there. Sicily is another stepping stone. There's always five. Since class Greece and Rome, there has been five stepping stones. Key places that were fought over forever. One was Malta, one was Sicily, one was Crete, one was Cyprus, and one was, I think you could call it Gibraltar. And those are all in hands of Europeans. And no surprise, they all have big bases that sometimes we can use. And then in the northern part, we can use bases in Britain. We have submarine bases, we have nuclear facilities, we have air bases. And we have Ramstein Air Base in Germany. And I think it's the biggest hospital outside the United States. It's American. But the point is, with that hundreds of billions of dollars and we paid for all that stuff for NATO, they're absolutely critical. But if you can't use them, what good are they? Or if you have to fight over them all the time when you really need them. So next time there's an existential threat, you don't know whether they're going to say no or yes, depending on how scared they are. So the point is, what would you replace NATO with? You would replace NATO by a coalition of the willing. You would go to Portugal. Look, we're not asking you to turn on your EU brothers, but do you want to have a relationship with us or not? We will guarantee your security as a country and we'll use your big base. You go to Italy and you say, we want to know you got coalition. Maybe you don't want to do it, but if you want us to use Sicily, we will protect you and we will come to your aid and just pick and choose and tell the rest of them. Go to France and Britain, have nuclear weapons. They're already talking about a European NATO. They always do that. When Vance kind of dressed down Zalinsky for. I did a couple of shows with Europeans. They were really, like, fighting. There were, you know, there was one British guy was on with. And this is good because, you know, we had the biggest fleet in World War II. And we're going to. To. We're going to. This is a chance for us to man up. Sturmer is talking about 10,000 of our special Forces. Didn't happen, did it? Most analysts that I've talked to thinks the Chieftain tank is better than the Abrams. Not if you don't have any. And they're not running. And then the Germans people were saying the same thing. And nothing, nothing. They didn't do anything. Now they're trying to rearm. They say they're never going to rearm. They're socialists. They've got big Muslim populations. Their energy is out of sight, and they don't believe in reproduction. And they're traumatized. They're traumatized from World War II, World War I. The French are traumatized that they folded in eight weeks in World War II. The children of the Battle of the Somme in Verdun that were so gallant. And the Germans are traumatized still, I guess, that they were the cause of two catastrophic world wars. The British were traumatized because these wars cost them their beautiful empire. And here, these rowdy, illiterate, Yahoo Americans are running things. And you know it's going to get worse because two things are happening that no one talks. There's a divergence. Europe is adopting policies like Obama and Biden that weaken a country country. And it's going to get weaker and weaker. Trump with an open economy, and he's got the tech barons working with sophisticated weaponry and the Pentagon and no dei. The United States is going to get more and more powerful and they're going to get weaker and weaker, and it's going to get even worse. And there's countries in the world that we're looking at that want to be allies of ours. Look at Israel. Tiny Israel, 11 million people. What does it matter what its population is if they have 300 of the best pilots and the best aircraft and the best intelligence in the world? One Israel is worth six European countries in this type of situation. And now you've got the whole Gulf Cooperation Council, all six of those Gulf Cooperation countries, begging us to finish the job. Although they are, if I must say, a little bit duplicitous. They told everybody. They told Iran, hey, Iran, we're going to make a public statement on the eve of the war. We don't believe that this is a necessary war. Let's just have peace. War happens. And they tell Trump, you make sure you destroy them. And then they say, let's get it into this peacefully. And then Trump says, well, I can see the end of in sight. And then they whisper, no, no, it's not. You've got to completely demolish them. It's very funny because we have all these people on the right who are saying Israel is running everything. The Jews and you. I've been doing a little experiment. I look at Al Jazeera coming out of Qatar, then I read the Israel Times and the Jerusalem Post. In Israel, people are terrified that Trump has a different agenda and he won't finish the job. And we're far away and we're strong, and they're close by and vulnerable, and they're thinking, oh, my God, he's taken this bear and cut off both of his legs. But he still has claws on his paws and we're right there, so we have to keep. And then you read Al Jazeera, and it says, arabs in the Gulf are exercising an enormous amount of influence with the United States, Trump and people of the Trump family. And they're very close, you know, Kushner and the rest of them. So I would like to see my friend Tucker, whom I like, but why doesn't he have about 70% of his shows around the Jews in Israel? Why doesn't he have a show saying, I want to talk about the people who are behind the throne, the people who are really running this war, and it's all for the Gulf monarchies, because they're going to come out of it with no competitor in Iran, and they're going to probably have much more diversified delivery systems. They're going to build a pipeline across the desert, probably to Haifa. They're going to go beef up the wind of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman. They won't even need the strait, but they'll be able to be so strong they can deny it to Iraq. Unless they're compliant. They just run things the Arabs do. They give money to our universities. They have endowed chairs everywhere. Whole cities in the United States are full of. He could easily do that. I wouldn't necessarily agree with it, but it would be much more logical than blaming the Jews.

[C]

I think Trump's getting a little fed up with Tucker. He just posted a Charles Murray article explaining Tucker's anti Israel, anti Semitic, pro terrorist.

[A]

Charles Murray wrote.

[C]

Charles Murray wrote It.

[A]

I haven't had a sort of a realist Neil Mersheimer person for a while.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Although he wrote a recent book about religion. It was very good.

[C]

Yeah, he's very smart, that's for sure.

[A]

Yeah. I think, Marjorie, it's funny about apostates. They have a zeal. So when you read what Candace Owens is saying or Tucker or Marjorie Taylor Greene or Ban, they're more critical than the left. They really are. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she blew up her career. You know, she was becoming a very powerful member of the House and apparently she believed that the Epstein files had all of this lurid stuff about all these Republicans and that's why Trump didn't release it. And he didn't. There were some people in there, but when he released it, it was all Democrats.

[C]

It was, it was far more damning to the Democratic Party.

[A]

Larry's some people.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Harvard president. It was the Reid Hoffman, you know, the big billionaire lefty. It was a royal family. It was. I don't know, but you name it, they blew. I don't know why she did that. There was nothing. There was nothing there. And now if there is any files that are there, the Swalwell files, because we have Fang Fang. And then we find out thought that he was broke and he was using all this money and he's not going to go anywhere as governor.

[C]

Yeah, I don't think that's a winning campaign in California. Swalwell for governor, Swalwell for nothing. Isn't that scary?

[A]

You know what's really scary is that they put up Swalwell as their leading candidate for governor. And their two leading presidential candidates are Kamala Harris, who can't finish this sentence without that chuckling and hackle or whatever you want to call it. And then Gavin Newsom, he's got restless arm syndrome, restless wrist syndrome, restless finger syndrome, and he cries now. And he's got this idea that he's basically saying, oh my gosh, I can't deal with a high speed rail. He's on tape now. They got all these tapes where he said it was a disaster 10 years ago. Don't do it, it'll never work. And he was. But now he's waded into it as Mr. Green and it's a disaster. And the fires were a disaster and la 50,000 people left and the Palisade's mess and the taxes are the highest in the country and the state's broke. Now he's looking at a multi, multi, multi billion dollar, much bigger than Minnesota. Hospice fraud, medi Cal Fraud Covid Money fraud Could have been a quarter of the. Could have been. People are talk that it might be $250 billion. As someone who pays a lot of California state taxes, the amount of fraud is just staggering. But he can't deal with any of that. So he goes on TV every day and I'm going to hit Trump in the mouth. Or that reporter is a pedophile or the Europeans need their knee pads. Or I was dyslexic and Ted Cruz made fun of me. Or I was lonely. Or now I'm weird. I'm just weir.

[C]

And he's crying.

[A]

He's crying and that's his new thing. You know, he's. You know what the parliament guy said to Cromwell? I mean, and during the. Cromwell. It was a very famous statement. Be gone, be done with you. Get out. Just leave. No more. Get out. Gavin. You and your wife. Gosh, his wife, she, she. That was the worst. She said she gave this little interview like she took her children. She claimed. I don't know if she actually did it on a zoo tour, but the zoo animals were Alabamans in Georgia. And I wanted them to see what. Who. Red state, basically. Racist and sex. She didn't quite say that, but I wanted them to see what this country was about and how they could counteract that. So I took. Can you imagine getting in their BMW SUV and driving through Mobile and rolling down the. There's one. One. Is that a giraffe? No, that's a white rhinoceros. And then let's go to Mississippi. I hear there's a really weird breed there of white redneck who's horrible and we can look down on and you know, they can't hide it. You know when you had Jimmy Kimmel making fun of Mark Wayne, the Senator Mullen and saying he's a plumber. A plumber. These people are so weird because they all pose as the champion of the underclass and the working. They hate the working class, they hate the middle. Middle class. They hate the DEI people. They just. But. And they, they create this facade of caring to, to square the circle that they're guilty because they're not comfortable with people like, unlike them, they don't like people of different class, a different race, a different zip code. There's such a weird group of people that run the Democratic Party.

[C]

Yeah, it's a big cover up.

[A]

Trotskyites.

[C]

Yes. Well, Victor, let's go to some ads and then come back and talk about Artemis or sorry, Aphrod and Aries and Actually, you might want to say a couple of things about Artemis because we just had a spacecraft take off from NASA to circle the moon and it's named Artemis too. So we'll look at that. Stay with us and we'll be right back from these messages.

[B]

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.

[A]

I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.

[B]

And in the age of clickbait and rage bait, that's a really good feeling, right?

[A]

The media. Thank you. You can leave now.

[B]

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 policy making 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 this Victor Davis Hansen, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X Radley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal. Sit down.

[C]

Welcome back. For you who are new and are on social media, you can find Victor at on X and his handle is Dhanson and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So if that's your outlet for news and et cetera, please follow Victor on those two social media sites. So Victor, I'm curious the ideas or the thoughts? Because the reason that I got you on this subject was because they always say about these gods in ancient Greece that they had a whole bunch of different faces because they were seen differently throughout even the Greek, the continent that

[A]

is Greek, 1500 different city states.

[C]

So I thought this week Aphrodite and Aries, God of love, God of war, what are the manifestations that we have of them? And then if you have anything about

[A]

Artemis to say, well, I mean if you're on the seacoast of the Isthmus and you're at Isthmia, then obviously Poseidon is going to be a very important God. So you. So we have a cult of Poseidon at Isthmia. If you're in Olympia and you're supposedly the home of ecumenical Greeks, Pan Hellenism, then you're going to have zoo Zeus. So there's a big temple of Olympian Zeus. So there's a regional component. And remember what these. Again, just to remind everybody, these 12 Olympian gods reflect mores of the Greek people. And so if Aries, for example, commits adultery and gets caught with Aphrodite and the Iliad, it rather than banish him, the other gods get to look and laugh and then they say, oh, he made a fool of himself, but I sure wish I was him. Given what Aphrodite looks like, that reflects the more Zeus is a big philanderer and he has all these illegitimate kids. So they're valuable as they reflect the moral code, but they also reflect the good part of it. Zeus is the protector of justice and order. So when you look at, you would think that given Greece is such a romantic place and sex was so openly discussed, you would think the two important gods were the Aphrodite and Ares. And Ares is a son of Zeus. Aphrodite has a very strange genealogy. The myth says that she, when they cast off Kronos, the father of Zeus and the Olympians took over and he was castrated, the blood near Cyprus hit the ocean and she came out of that. And again, linguistically, etymologically, there's an argument that the Greek word Aphros is what Aphrodite means. She's the God of the foam. And she's always, if you look in vase paintings and literature, statuary, she's often associated with shells. You know, like, you see that famous one, Botticelli, the big.

[C]

Yeah, Botticelli has.

[A]

So in Aries, you would think that he would be a very important and noble God. And he is. There's a Areopagus, the hill of Aries, you know, where. Where Paul preached and there's a temple of Aries. There was an argument whether it was Aries or there was a fourth temple. It was the temple of Hephaestus and the temple at Ramnus and the temple at Sunium, they were all the same type by one architect. And there was a temple of Ares. So he was very important. And he was important in the Peloponnese. And he's the son of Zeus. And we hear a lot about him in the Iliad. He's kind of a rascal, he's kind of a traitor. He goes and helps the Trojans and he helps the Greeks. Poor old Physis is crippled and kind of ugly. The Greek version of Vulcan, the God of the smith, iron working, steel fabrication, and kind of typical Greek where young women often married older people. He's married to the most beautiful woman, goddess Aphrodite. And he's the ugliest. He's the son of Zeus. And she commits adultery with Aries. So Aries is kind of a raptor, but he's not the God of treaties, he's not the God of diplomacy. He's not the God of messy like Hermes the messenger. He's the raw, savage God. And I think in the Iliad, at one point Zeus reprimands him, says, you are the most hateful of all the gods because all you bring is discord and hatred and killing. So he's the one that you sacrifice. Not when you discard us about whether to go to war, but right before you're on the battlefield. If you take a lamb or a pig and cut their throat and see how the blood comes out, or you take the livers really quickly and put them on a little tray and burn them and see how they move and stuff, or you see that scent going up. Two types of divination in ancient Greek. One was predicatives. You wanted to know what the gods thought. And one was honorary to pay them and give them the scent of meat that they, they loved. Apparently that's how they ate, along with ambrosia and other things. So anyway, right before two armies met, they wanted to either see if it was a good thing to fight, and it was kind of rigged. If they got on the battlefield, they were going to fight. So often they rigged that and said, arius says we should go. But they often wanted to pay him homage. And they had a war cry some place, you know, they all had yah, yah, yah, ew, ew, ew. They did kind of like the rebel yell. And some of them were yells to Aries, but he's a violent God. And remember that the mythology reflects the history. So these names of these 12 Olympians and others were on Mycenaean tablets. And they have all eastern Hittite and Egyptian contact. And so when that very sophisticated society, which we know from the linear B text and the physical remains at Mycenae, Tiran, et cetera, when that was destroyed, that was captured in mythology as the death of the earlier generation of Kronos. And then the Olympians that came were new and they grew up during. They were in the Mycenae period. And those myths were magnified with the destruction of culture. Population declined in Greece, say from 1150 B.C. to 800 by 90%. Agriculture was retarded. It went backwards. People had flocks. You can see that economy. In the Iliad, Moses Finley wrote the world of Odysseus. And he talked about all of the sheep and guest friendship of a Dark age society. He thought, so in that period when these Dark Age people were looking at these huge monolithic Mycenaean palaces or these huge. You'd be plowing your field and all of a sudden it would cave and you'd drop 50ft into this big tomb or you'd be be a shepherd out somewhere. And after rain you'd see all these clay tablets with writing on it. You didn't know what it was. You had no idea because that was lost. But you kept that memory of the Mycenaean expedition to Troy, let's say, or to Asia. And then you magnified it and the new way of magnifying it was, well, whatever those guys were, they're gone. And there were new Olympians. And then when the city state, the rebirth and the beginning of western popped up, sprouted around 800 to 700, population suddenly started. Agriculture returned in a very sophisticated manner. Cities, buildings, those gods were even more reinterpreted as wise gods. Gods that knew how to make things like Hephaestus, because people were working in iron, or atheists. Athena, gods of wisdom, because people were beginning to write again, or that she was Zeus. But now he was not just the thunder God or the light God, he was the God of justice. Because these city states now had constitutions. And all of Those myths, over 400 years of the Dark ages and exaggeration then were codified when writing reappeared. A new type of writing, not linear battle Greek, but a Phoenician adopted light, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, et cetera. And so the Olympians then became the gods of the city states. And by the 5th century, the actual ecstatic belief in them was waning. But they were more like kind of a traditional religion that you, a state religion. You had temples for, you had theaters for. But the actual number of Greeks who actually believed in them was waning. And then of course they're going to be reinvigorated by the Romans who will take the Olympians. Once the Greek city states of southern Italy and Sicily were absorbed by the Latin speaking Romans, then they appropriated. So Hephaestus became Vulcan, Zeus became Jupiter, Hera became Jupiter Juno, Aphrodite became Venus. It's kind of ironic. The best statue that we have of Aphrodite is now called the Venus de Milo, the Venus statue from the island of Milos. But it was actually a third century pre Roman statue to Aphrodite.

[C]

Oh really? I didn't know that.

[A]

Yeah. So Aries is. We'll get to Aphrodite next. But Ares was a in the dark ages as reflected in part by the Iliad. But even the earliest he was kind of seen a rogue. He destroys things. But you want to be good at war, so you worship him. But he's a reckless and unpredictable God, spoiled, capable of anything, great savagery.

[C]

Did anybody like the Spartans especially worship Ares?

[A]

I think so. But when you go down to Sparta, I think there's actually, and I'm doing this by memory. There were more cults as I remember it. I lived 2 1/2 years in Greece and we went everywhere with the American School of Classical Studies. As I remember there were more cults dedicated to Aries and Thebes than there was in Sparta. Sparta. You gotta remember one thing about Sparta when you're campaigning. When you have 10,000 Spartiets that are Trump trained from the age of seven in what they called the agoi, the ritual making of a soldier. And they lived in group barracks and you had helots and perioikoi, those were the people who were serfs. And they did all the farming and supplied the food. So this select 10,000 could fight and train all year. Well, they were on patrol mostly over the mountain of Taygetus, patrolling the helots of Messenia that provided them food. They conquered a whole region, enslaved them. I made them serfs. So the women were very powerful because they were in charge of things while their men were away fighting. And we hear that they wrestle, they practice Olympic Games. They could own property, they were not afraid of nudity. And it's no accident that Artemis. There's a lot of temples and cults in the southern Peloponnese, in areas of Laconia that are dedicated to Artemis. It seemed to be their principal deity. Artemis propolis on behalf of the city.

[C]

So now we have a space vessel up there by the name of the.

[A]

Yeah, now that's interesting. I don't know who named it Artemis, but I get the impression that they were trying to tell us that American dynamism and hunting for a new frontier like Star Trek. There could be a double. It could have a dual use to champion the fact that we have women astronauts and women are just as capable of men. So we'll call it after the God the huntress, the God of the huntress, the God of the wild, the God of, you know, Artemis. We'll get to. She was the great archer and huntress and yet she's a witch woman and I think that's why they picked it.

[C]

The Romans called her Diane, right?

[A]

Yes, Diana.

[C]

Diana, yeah. Well, Victor, go to Italy today.

[A]

You see a lot of people called Diana go to Greece and there's a lot called Artemis.

[C]

Is that right? All right. Well, Victor, we're going to have to take up Aphrodite on another Saturday because we got a lot to do today. And I have another sponsor to welcome to our show or welcome back and that's Patriot Mobile. America is entering its 200, 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 are or what you believe. They just want your money. Patriot Mobile is different. For more than 12 years they've stood with Americans who believe freedom is worth defending. Funding the Christian conservative movement when others stay silent. And here's the deal. You don't have to give up your 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% 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. That's 972 Patriot. Use promo code VDH for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com VDH or 972 Patriot and switch today. And don't forget to use the promo code vdh. And we'd like to thank Patriot Mobile for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So Victor, we will come back to Aphrodite on another Saturday. Today we have a lot to discuss. I was wondering about about a couple of SCOTUS things going on. The first one is they're hearing arguments on birthright and I was wondering, we haven't heard you on birthright citizenship so if you would like to tell us how you feel.

[A]

Well, I mean the countries that abuse it. So the first person born, I think this year they had a big celebrate. First American born was from China and it was somebody who was coming here to abuse the 14th Amendment. So we have literally thousands of people coming from China flying over here using our facilities, probably for free, having a baby, flying back with a baby and then saying that they can come anytime they want as guests of their child who's a US citizen who probably doesn't speak English and have any idea. Same thing happened when the border was open. I think I told you that I mentioned this to our audience. I think it was around 1991 or 2. I got a knock, I was fast asleep and I just had a rickety fence then. And I went outside and it was raining and there was a pregnant woman there with a guy. Neither one of them spoke English, but she had a piece of paper, paper and it had a well known Selma Dr. O B Y G N and it had her address and phone number, but it had the address of the Selma. And she wanted to know how to get this before gps, how to get to the Selma hospital. And it had her name and her address in Oaxaca, Mexico. And from the little Spanish I used to be able to understand some. And she said that she and her husband were from. Or her compatriot had driven up for two whole days from Oaxaca and she looked like she was going to. I thought she was sweating and she was in pain and she wanted to go to have this particular doctor, not just the Selma hospital, this particular who had delivered so many children from her larger extended family and friends and wah. And that. Where did all that come from? It came from the 14th Amendment, which was really addressing slavery. Most of the elements of that amendment and it said that if a person has a child in the United States and is not subject to an allegiance to a foreign country, that child should be a U.S. citizen. But because of court decisions and custom and practice, we never really had this abuse of it like we've had. So the irony is that Mexico sends people to do that, China does it, Central America does, and none of those countries allow anybody to do it to them. And I think of the 30 or 35, 40 European countries, there's only one or two that have half. Half you have to have. You can have one parent, not a citizen, in other words, but otherwise you have to have both parents as citizens before you're born. So the Trump administration is saying, is this crazy? Because this anchor baby means that people are coming across the border with no affinity toward the United States at all, having that baby at enormous cost, 50, $100,000 and then either claiming that they have to stay here to take care of this American citizen or take them back, raise them until they get to a considerable age, 10, 12, and then they have a pass, apply for a passport, and then they accompany them and they're giving preference on green cards and tourist fees. And then eventually that child will sponsor them as their anchor. And defies the logic and the spirit of the 14th Amendment. So then when you looked at the arguments, Ketanji Brown is getting a reputation as somebody who, I don't know how to put it. She's not able to reason logically. She just can't do it. And she talks more than any other justice. They always time help, which she talks probably more than all of the conservative justices put together. Clarence Thomas has more sense in his little finger than she does, but he never says much because when he says something, it's pretty good. But she talks. And she made the most ridiculous argument. She said, well, if I go to Japan as a tourist and somebody steals my wallet, then I deal with it, with the Japanese legal and criminal system. So I'm pledging my allegiance to. To them. And so I guess if I had a child. And then she stopped. I thought, are you going to put your head in the noose? Because what you're saying is if you had a child, then you think that that would be a Japanese citizen. And of course it isn't. So how is that relevant here other than to show something would be. No sane country in the world would do what we're doing. And you thought, think that anytime a person sets foot in another country and is visiting or that they have shown allegiance to that country, people come from Mexico as citizen, they are showing that allegiance to that country. And if you don't believe me, go to a soccer stadium in any major city like LA Coliseum. Every time we've had an American team versus a Mexican team, the 2 million illegal aliens of LA county root for Mexico. And when you saw the ICE demonstrations, we saw this bizarre disconnect of people burning the American flag of the country they want to stay in and proudly waving the Mexican flag. And when I go to get groceries, I'd say one out of every six cars has a Mexican flag on the window decal. And of course, there's 50 Mexican consulates in the largest number of consulates of any foreign country. And they're here for one reason, for the 30 million illegal aliens, probably 20 million of which are from Mexico. And so they have allegiance. I think they still do it. There's a soccer field about a mile away from here next to a park and Every once in a while, when they have elections in Mexico, we get candidates that come here and they have a big nighttime rally and they try to whip it up and they vote. So I think those peoples, by any normal standard that are here illegally or legally as non US Citizens, their allegiance is not to the United States. So when they have children here, they should not be. Does that mean that the justices are going to agree with the Trump administration? No. The justice's attitude will be this. Well, we, we did some controversial things. We left abortion up to the states. That was a very brave move. And we knock the crazy guys like Judge Broodsburg and those crazy Judge Furman and all those lower district court. But this is a bridge too far. We've gone for 150 years with this stuff, and we can't just. It's illogical. It doesn't make sense. It's contrary to US national interests. It's costly. But I don't want to be tarred and feather for overturning this. We'll get every DEA group, we'll get the La Raza Caucus, we'll get the Black Caucus. It's just, and you know, that's what I know, that China's abusing it and everything, but, you know, it'll not be seen that way. It'll be seen as hurting people of Hispanic heritage. So they won't do it.

[C]

You think that they'll just allow it to keep on going, keep on keeping on?

[A]

They know it's wrong. They know that no sane nation in the globe does it. The Europeans who say how left they are and how far right are far more right wing than we are on this.

[C]

I'm sure Mexico doesn't even do it.

[A]

Oh, Mexico doesn't do it? No. Well, Mexico has in their constitution and they've kind of changed the wording to tone it down. But 20 years ago it said that immigration shall not change the ethnic composition of the Mexican people. Think about that. We don't want any gringos coming down here who are white and can don't speak Spanish because they would be a drag and they would destroy our ethnic essence. If the United States had copied the Mexican Constitution until it was slightly, euphemistically changed, everybody would say we were racist. But Mexico's racist. The people who are coming here say they're economic refugees. Many are from southern Mexico. But the subtext of that is they're economic refugees because Mexico is a racist country and sees them as indigenous Indians and treats them like dirt. The people in Spanish who claim that they're Conquistadores, and they're direct descendants from, you know, Hernan Cortez himself.

[C]

But back to the birthright issue. Do you think that the Supreme Court then is just going to pass it on and basically the implication will be Congress just needs to make a law about this particular issue. Probably kick the cat.

[A]

There was never a law, though. No, it was just a court interpretation decades ago. That said the situation wasn't like it is to now. It was a theoretical conjecture. Well, if you come here, you know, you can. It was for people who were freed slaves and there was never they under the Constitution had been counted as three fifths of a citizen, not for racist from the north, but from the south for purposes of getting legislative congressional districts. But nobody had ever said what the status of their children was. So after the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the Civil War, 14th Amendment, who gave them other rights said, you know what? All they have to do is have a child and won't stench anybody. There will be citizens. But they had no other allegiance but to the United States.

[C]

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, Victor, I would like to go on with the other SCOTUS ruling, but maybe we'll talk about the ruling on conversion therapy at another time. I was wondering if you had some thoughts on Pam Bondi just stepped down today. It seems that

[A]

I think she's very good politically for, for Trump. She had experience as the Attorney General of Florida, but that was a hasty appointment after the disastrous and I'll be candid, I'm not trying to criticize the administration. That was a disastrous decision to put Matt Gaetz as Attorney general. The only logic I can think was they wanted to pert somebody so egregious that would drive the left crazy, that the left would expend all of their emotional energy on trashing Gates to forcing him out. And then when they were taking a second breath, they would put in Pete Hexseth and other people that were more controversial. And it worked. But she was the last minute and I don't think she really wanted to do the job as much, you know, for that type of job at this particular time and place. And given the welfare that was waged against against Trump and given the fact that James Carville and Susan Rice. James Carville just the other day said, when we take over, we're going to jail all the Trump family members and their spouses. And Susan Rice goes, we want to warn all you corporations in law firm, anybody at work, we're going to go after you. So they mean business. And so I think they wanted an attorney general who would pursue these conservative cases in court, but also say, I don't care who Letitia James is. I don't care who Fannie Willis is. I don't care who John Brennan is. I don't care who Alvin Bragg is. I don't care if the New York Times goes crazy. If they broke the law, we're going to go after them. But I think it was a reaction to a complacency decency that we have this swamp. And if you're James Comey or Robert Mueller or you've done something wrong, I think they have. Or Jack Smith, then they get immunity. Jack smith got what, $150,000 of free legal. And they said, well, that's taxable. And I don't think he reported it as taxable. If I'm paying my taxes right now and I'm going, I mean, I have a very good accountant. And I can tell you that if he asked me, do you have other. Any other income? And I said, well, yeah, I've got this lawyer friend who's defending me for free. He said, I'm sorry, Victor, we have to report that. And I report every nickel and dime. But I think there's a sense that people. That he wants to shake up things.

[C]

Yeah, he and I got. I get a sense just from all the talk out there, nobody's saying this too loudly anyways, that maybe she wasn't moving things along quite as fast as he would have.

[A]

He doesn't. They say he. He fired people that disagree with him politically in the first term. He fired my friend HR McMaster. He fired Jim Mattis. He fired Rex Tillerson. He fired John Bolton. They were fiery. He fired James Comey, he fired. Fired Scaramucci. Right. But these are not firings. When he wanted to get rid of Kristi Noem, he wanted to ease her out quietly because she was spending too much money on herself in these commercials. And then there was Corey and all that stuff. And I think. I don't know if he knew about the latest revelation about her husband, but he found another job for the same thing with Pam Dahmey. Everybody says he fought. He didn't. He just said, pam, it's not working. What are we going to do? Take your pick of jobs and probably offered her a selection.

[C]

Yeah. And I'm sure she's going to be paid a lot more in the private sector. So there might.

[A]

What the Obama administration did was basically, you remember their EPA person who was. She had a fake name and she was going on the EPA website and bragging about how good she was. And it was her, I think she ended up at Apple or something. I mean that was what they the Obama, when they wanted to get rid of somebody or somebody was going to retire, they just called up Silicon Valley and they all ended up on million dollar a year jobs doing nothing.

[C]

Victor, we need to go to some ads and then come back. It is Easter, Easter Sunday or Easter weekend and so I have a couple of stories for your comment on related to Christians and Christianity and then we can wish everybody a happy Easter Sunday or any thoughts you have on that. But stay with us and we'll come right after these messages.

[A]

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 first things. Things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful welcome back.

[C]

This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are a subsidiary of the Daily Signal and I encourage everybody to go to the website of the Daily Signal that has great articles and also a locus for these podcasts. But also you should come and enjoy Victor's own site. It's VictorHansen.com and the name of that site is TheBlaze to Perseus. So please come join us there.

[A]

And our cover is out for the Counter Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the Maga Movement. It's a nice cover and you can get it at Amazon. It's coming out in August. It's all finished. There was a mistake on one of the sites that said the Rise and Fall. I got a lot of letters, said, Victor, have you gone full Tucker rise and fall? And I said no, it was just a typo that, that that site inverted it. It's the fall and that's where he was in the polls after January 6 and then his rise or recovery.

[C]

So Victor, a couple of stories. One was I was surprised to see in USA Today a story about how there is an increase on Christian churches and Jewish attacks on Christian churches and Jewish synagogues. And I thought that that was interesting since the USA Today is kind of a very standard magazine that tends to lean left. But they concluded this. I thought it was even more interesting. They said in the article, I can remember a time when even one such incident, which is an attack on a church or a Jewish synagogue, would have shocked the American conscience. Instead, these repeated incidents of hate, violence and bigotry on America's most sacred spaces are becoming a part of the background noise. Catholics as well as those of other persuasions cannot be complacent. This is a pattern of hate targeting what we hold most sacred and dear. We have every right to our righteous anger. That was in U.S. uSA today. So I was surprised.

[A]

There's two things going on. I don't want to use that term again, subtext, but there's two undercurrents that explain this attack on Judeo Christianity. One is more generic and one is specific. If you have a me generation that has taught Generation X and the boom, the boomers have taught Generation X and Millennials and XY or all of them, and they're unhappy. There's always a sort. So we, and my generation said, you know, these up tight traditions said you couldn't have sex before marriage and women couldn't define their own sexuality as they wanted and make. Timothy Leary said, drop out, tune in and you know, make love, not war. When I went to UC Santa Cruz, I would, you know what I mean? I went to a very traditional school, mostly Hispanic, very traditional. But people would say there's a scandal. We heard that Mary X and Billy Y, he said they had sex after the football game. That was what it was. When I went to UC Santa Cruz, you'd walk down the hallway and people would be fornicating with the door open. So that generation, then that activity was blamed on, on people. We were repressed, we had fake traditions. We were not plastic. But the ultimate cause of their anger was traditional religion that made them feel guilty. We're not guilty, we're not guilty. We don't play by your rules. There's nothing wrong, you know, the homosexual movement, we don't like the church's traditional roles of women. So some of it was understandable and perhaps necessary. But what I'm saying is ultimately, ultimately 50 years of radical cultural and social change has identified Christianity and Judaism as the cause of their neuroses along with their parents. So we've created a culture, a multi generation culture that when you strike out at these places, you're kind of like antifa or you're kind of like BLM or you're kind of like Code Pink. It's a social, cultural resistance movement. And it's okay. And the, and the, the law enforcement, the judicial system who are part of that same generation, sanctify. The other, more immediate is Islam. And that means if they did this to a mosque, it would be all over every newspaper and you would have an F. The FBI would be under enormous pressure to find their culprits. But. And that difference is attributed to fear. If you attack a mosque, two things happen. It's considered a DEI property. It's on the victim side of the ledger. Genocide and Palestine, neocolonialism, all of that stuff. And therefore, it's not to be done. It shouldn't be done done. But if you do anything that is anti Islam, you're on the oppressor, victimizer side of our binary. And second, it's dangerous because, as we know in Europe, I mean, they're beating up people in Scotland that were walking their dog by a mosque, or a little girl had to pull out a knife to protect herself from Islamic predators. So. And they beheaded a French teacher and a French priest in France. You don't make fun in cartoons of any. So that's what it is. If you're very angry at organized religion because you're unhappy and they have all these rules that you feel that you violated. I'm gay, I'm promiscuous, I have an illegitimate child. And you feel there's condemnation from the church. Church, then that is one of the motivations. And you also think that if it's a Judeo Christian, it fits in with your leftist ideology or something, that these are oppressors, whereas Islam is a victim, at least here in the United States. Not historically by any means.

[C]

Well, the other story then is just. And I don't know if you have any comment on this, but you know the Shroud of Turin, which is the shroud that covered Jesus after he was brought down from the cross, they've done DNA testing on it, and it shows animal, plant and human DNA everywhere. As far as India, human DNA, in fact, as far as India. So I thought that was very interesting. I mean, obviously it had been everywhere even before it had.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know if it was the materials that was made of or people who handled it, but the Shroud, its authenticity, or lack of authenticity, is always predicated by the latest technology. So it's radiocarbon dating or sophisticated CAT scans or PET scans or examination of fibers. So it changes all the time. It does seem to me, that does seem to me that the Church's official exegesis that this was the Shroud, and because of the supernatural energy that murdered Christ, it was emblazoned on this. That is as persuasive of any of the scientific that I've heard, because they always say it can't happen. The scientists do. And then they always find a new technology that give you parameters in which it could happen.

[C]

And they had some really good pictures. I've never seen it myself, but they. There is clearly a body on there.

[A]

I've been to Turin and unfortunately it wasn't being.

[C]

It wasn't there.

[A]

It was. Well, they were restoring. Yeah.

[C]

All right. And then we'd like to wish everybody happy Easter Sunday and Passover as well.

[A]

Passover, Easter Sunday, yeah.

[C]

And I have some comments, very quick ones. The first One is from LM Sullivan 1, and it says, victor, President Trump posted this video on True Social. He is listening to you. So anything you can do to encourage him to continue to do right for we the people.

[A]

What was the video?

[C]

I don't know. I think it was yours and Jack's or something.

[A]

I don't know.

[C]

Or maybe. Probably more likely one of the daily, shorter, daily singles.

[A]

That's good.

[C]

Becky Teague, 4407. Thank you, Jack and Vic. Victor, I love this show. Thank you for reminding us of where we came from and what our forefathers did. And then the last One is Jim Ray, 2281. Love hearing your thoughts, Victor. Still miss Rush. And now, Scott, we need your voice now more than ever. That was sweet.

[A]

Yeah, I miss Rush. I keep saying that. Yeah, man. Then we lost. We lost, you know, Charlie, Kirk and Rush earlier.

[C]

Scott Adams.

[A]

What?

[C]

Scott Adams.

[A]

Scott Adams was very astute. They treated him so terribly to the council culture. He just, he said something that was explicit, but it wasn't necessarily factually correct. It's just the way that he was treated. I mean, he's talking about a high incident, I think, of crime. And he kind of went beyond that. And. And it was right during the transition from MeToo to George, Floyd Covid era. Yeah. And they destroyed his life. Well, he didn't because he reinvented himself and he was very successful with his own platform and he was very logical and analytical, as was Rush. And then we lost people who they reinvented themselves. Cells like Tucker and to a lesser extent, Candace. I think she was where she always wanted to be. But Tucker, what he's saying now is very different than what he used to say on Fox.

[C]

All right, well, thank you for all your wisdom today and thanks to our audience for choosing to join us on this Easter weekend.

[A]

Thank you, everybody. See you next time. 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 [e-mail] and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition.

[B]

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