← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: I'm Not Racist for Saying Somalis Stole a Billion Dollars
01:08:36
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler take aim at Rep. Ilhan Omar’s trash talking America and how mass immigration without assimilation gives you what you’re seeing in Minnesota.
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Well hello ladies and hello gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen In His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to get wisdom, knowledge, insight from Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, and a senior contributor at the Daily Signal, which is the happy home of this podcast. Victor has got a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. Go there, sign up, subscribe $65 a year. You will be glad you did. We are recording on Wednesday the 10th. And I lied, Victor. I told people we were recording three shows, special shows to fill while you were gonna be taking a little break. Well, actually we're recording four shows and this is the fourth. And we do note that this show will run on Saturday the 20th. So I have some reader listener questions that have been submitted through our friends at the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club at Facebook. We thank them for doing that. And I think the first question we're gonna ask Victor is military and battles Favorites Favorite battles, Favorite wars. And we'll get to that when we come back from these important messages.
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Hey folks, it's Tony Kennit, national correspondent for the Daily Signal and host of the Tony Kinnit cast. I need to share something with you. Our goal at the Daily Signal is simple. To cut through the noise and give you the facts you need to stay informed as engaged citizens. Unlike so many liberal media outlets, we're honest about our conservative views and report the news with a commitment to telling you the truth. But I'll be straight with you. Running an independent news operation isn't easy. While big media companies have corporate sponsors and massive bloated budgets, we operate differently. We answer to you, our audience and supporters. That independence is exactly what allows us to tackle the stories others won't touch and ask the tough questions others often avoid. But our independence comes with a challenge. We need your help to ensure the Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the the truth. Every deep dive investigation, every exclusive interview, every fact check we publish requires time and investment. If you've found value in what we do. If the Daily Signal has helped you stay informed or given you insights you couldn't find elsewhere, would you consider supporting our work with a donation today? Even a small monthly contribution makes a real difference in our ability to bring you the journalism you deserve and expect. You can support our work by visiting DailySignal.com donate that's Daily DailySignal.com donate Every dollar goes directly into making sure we can continue serving you with the reporting you've come to count on. Please go to dailysignal.com donate and give your gift.
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Today. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. So, Victor, let me take this military question that's been submitted. It's a two parter. You've written dramatically about World War II and of wars of antiquity. You have several bestselling books in both areas. But as a military historian, Victor, what other wars? For example, it could be the 30 years war, it could be the War of Jenkins Ear, it could be some Chinese ancient China war. What other wars? Not World War II intrigue you, Victor Davis Hansen and then separately, not wars, but battles. What battles in the history of warfare interest you the most? Let's start off with what wars interest you.
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Well, I've always been intrigued. I've written about it twice, the battles between Cortez and the Aztecs, because it doesn't at no time did he have in one mean he had reinforcements, loss reinforcements, but he rarely had more than 1500 and he got down to 6 or 700 and he destroyed an empire of 4 million. And I know that whooping cough and smallpox had a lot to do with it, but it affected his army too, maybe not as grievously. So how did he do it? And he did it. Spanish steel, Toledo steel, the best in the world. Breastplates, mastiff, dogs, horses that people had never seen before. The wheel Cannon, arquebuses, crossbows. But he was still facing an army of 100,000 people and there was an empire of 4 million. But it was largely the Tlaxcalans and people that he enlisted on his side who were tired of the annual tribute. They were sacrificing 25 or 30,000 people a day. Something we never talk about. I was always curious about that because you know, we've been, there's so many sports teams that are called Aztecs, San Diego Aztecs, you know what I mean? And why would you want to name a team that oppressed indigenous people like that? And, and one of the reasons they lost were their tactics were to knock people over and bind them and then drag them out of the battle rather than kill them. So the Spanish, you get these stories and Bernaldez of a Spanish conquistador with 60 pounds of armor and he's fighting his way and they can't hurt him. They don't have metal, they have obsidian, very good for the first two or three hits and then the blade is lost. And they try to knock them down though instead of kill them, they jump on, they knock them down and then the idea is that the next day they look at the Great Pyramid in Templo Mayor and there's a. They're all naked, they're painted with bright colors and they're all with feathers. They're friends and they're up at the top of the pyramid and they can see them from miles away and they're having their hearts torn out. So it's a very ambiguous battle. Yes, it's European colonialism, but it's European colonialism attacking Aztec colonialism and imperialism. And it's a classic case of technology and the western military tradition of defense of tactics and mass columnar formation and weight against scattered irregular troops. That and the other very quickly is the, a very obscure war, the war between Sparta and Athens, excuse me, Sparta and Thebes, that broke out in the late 370s and didn't really end till 362 B.C. and over. If you start with the most kinetic act, the battle of Luktra. In 371 there was a nine year period where this rather small town, Thebes of mostly rural people and the Boan Confederacy around it. They marched 170 miles down in mid winter that nobody ever did in the ancient world. And one season they boxed up the Spartans, then marched over Mount Taygetus, freed 250,000 helot serfs and built a huge wall which became the city of Messenia. It's one of the most impressive walls and they did it in a year and then they invaded two more times and when they were done, Sparta was through. It had no Messenian hell out still had some Laconian helots. But they had been humiliated and defeated in the Battle of Leuctron. Nobody ever thought you could do that. And the hero is the famous Epaminondas. So that was one of the most remarkable. Answer your questions in advance. That was really a remarkable battle. I also wrote really quickly about the brief small battle at Rorke's Drift. I never quite understood where the day before at Islawanda they had wiped out a whole British army. The Zulus had. And then people fled to Rorke's Drift and they had these two low ranking officers, Broadhead and people around him and they were going. They were opposed by 4,000 Zulus and there was at one, you know, they got down to about 150, 40, 30 men and they, they survived with Martini Henry rifles which were very slow, you know, bold action, single shot, but very deadly at 500, 600, 800 yards if you knew how to shoot it. So and that's another. It's just that you remember that it's.
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One of the great war movies, no question.
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It's very accurate. It's very accurate. It follows the, the text of what people wrote about. They, they were given a lot of. I think there were three Victoria Crosses given and everybody thought they should flee and they decided to stay there and they, they had. It wasn't even a military contingent, it was a hospital and it was a logistics station to build a bridge and things like that. That was Michael Caine's first big movie, wasn't it? I think it was. Mm. Yeah. Michael Caine starts out as kind of a fob, you know, fop and then he shows that he's, he's really kind of a.
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That's that scene at the end. Rear rank, fire.
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Front rank, fire.
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The three, the three ranks just really. It's truly powerful. So Victor in that there's the geography of the location maybe was one of the assets that the British had there. But the previous day, was it the previous day or two days prior, 1500 Brits wiped out. They had repeating rifles.
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It was preventable. Yeah, they, they defied it. They divided their forces and they were so strict about ammunition that they had locked them up and each soldier only had about 12ammunition in his pouch. And they were Martini Henry rifles which had a big slug and was very deadly, not kill a person at, As I said, 600 to a thousand yards, pretty easily. But they were slow firing, so you wanted the ammunition delivered, but they locked them up and they had to request permission to open up while they were being overwhelmed. It's kind of like Custard's last stand. They were all mutilated, killed, and it was kind of like Little Bighorn. They divided their forces, which they should not have done, and they underestimated the Zulus like Custer did the Indians. And they didn't distribute enough ammunition and they had in their ability because the subsequent battles wiped out the Zulus, basically their military forces because they did have Gatling guns and they did have cannon. They didn't have them used then later they would within a year or two, but it was just terrible.
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Yeah. Have you ever been to the Custer battlefield?
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I have, I have never.
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No, no, me not. Me neither. By the way, Brent, Brent Bozell will be our ambassador there. So maybe if you ever wanted to go, you would have a friendly, friendly reception. Yeah, but Custer's. Custer's at Little Bighorn. Have you ever been there?
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No, I haven't. I've been. I've been close where I saw the sign, but I didn't go funny.
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I. I forget the book I read on that. I forget everything, but one thinks it's Custer versus the Indians. Meanwhile, there was another attachment under Major Reno, I think who survived there was.
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They could hear it and see it. They could hear it and see what was happening.
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Could you tell before we hit a little commercial here, why back on the Thebans, why were they at war with Sparta at this point?
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They had been allies in 401 at the end of the Peloponnesian War, 403 at the end of Peloponnesian War. And they fell out because Sparta was the hegemon of the leading power. After the destruction of Athens, Athens would come back. But they destroyed the long walls and they were the regional power. And they started arguing over the loot from the Peloponnesian War they had stolen. They started about Sparta's role in the world. Thebes had now been collaborating with the new democracy at Athens. That came out of the ashes of the tyranny that followed the Peloponnesian War. And then in 378 9, they had a democratic revolution at Thebes. So the oligarchy was replaced and it was pro Athenian and vice versa. And so the Spartans came in thinking they could. They had fought not very well. Thebes was famous because they had the best infantry. Not the best ordered, but the best. We're told, I don't know quite why, but they were the best in physical shape. They lifted weights, they practiced and they mar. They massed in column. That's an old argument. Should, if you have X amount, if you have 100 soldiers, should you have 10 rows 10 deep, or should you have 50 rows too deep, envelop the enemy or just smash through him? And they chose mass and they put their best troops on the left, which means they faced the. Traditionally it was on the right, so they faced the Spartan king. So the idea is we're going to mass everybody on this side of the battlefield 50 shields deep, normal was eight. And we're going to blast the king. The elite, usually one right wing fought the weak side and the other right wing fought your weak side. And you were supposed to win the battle before your other left side lost it. But he put everybody on the left and they killed the king, Kleomotos. And they apparently used a cataloxane. That's the Greek for diagonal. A in echelon march. They had reserves, supposedly they integrated cal. They was all. It was very. It wasn't new in the sense they invented it. They just did things that people knew about but had never combined into one symphony, so to speak. And Epaminondas was a democratic hero. And it wasn't democracy like Athens, you know, where it was a maritime cosmopolitan underclass running every. Like the Jacobins. It was a landed democracy where you had to have a modicum of property to vote. But it was much different than the. The prior aristocracy. And Sparta, they never really recovered from that. The battle of Mantinea, it was a draw because Epaminos was killed the next battle, nine years later. But they didn't even show up at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 against. It's kind of ironic. They destroyed Sparta as a military force and then Alexander came, you know, 30 years later and there was. They didn't have enough. They could have used the Spartans in a Panhellenic defense.
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Well, Victor, to our listeners and viewers this Christmas give the gift of food security with an amazing deal from our friends at my Patriot Supply. It's called Buy One Gift two Christmas special and you guys have got to check it out all month long. When you buy an emergency food kit, you'll get two more food kits free to give as gifts. That's right. Get a four week emergency food supply for yourself and they'll throw in two one week food kits absolutely free. The one week kits make perfect gifts for anyone on your list who's into preparedness or anyone who needs a little nudge in that direction. These days, it makes sense to have some food stored away for emergencies. And with this buy one gift two Christmas deal, you're not only getting yourself prepared, you're also getting unique and meaningful Christmas gifts for your friends or family. And they're free. So head over to preparewithvdh.com and grab yours today. This offer is only around for the holiday season, so go to preparewithvdh.com now that's preparewithvdh.com and we thank the good people from my Patriot Supply for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, I'm going to continue to show my ignorance on all things historical, but before we move on to another question, just curious. Are the Thebans and the Spartans, are they Greek that just happen to live in different cities? Of all these kind of city states, are there clear ethnic differences?
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1500 of them. And there were tribal groups. We know from DNA that they were pretty much the same people and they spoke the same language. But Greece is, you know, enclosed, flat, very fertile valleys, but half of it is mountainous, so they were cut off. So every ring of mountains created, sort of like the Cherokee, the Apache, different tribes. And they all were distinguished by a dialect. So if I pick up Sophocles or Thucydides, that's written in the Attic dialect, that's the lingua franca of the classical world. But if I want to hear about how these people differed, I'll pick up a play like Aristophanes Lysistrata. And in it he tries to emulate the women on the sex strike. And they all are from different places. So when the Boeotians come in or the Spartans come in the Doric dialect or the Boeotian dialect, it took me about three or four days to remember all the different changes in the dialect. When I read that the first time, I'd have to go back and review. But they're made to sound like, I think there's a you like this, a 19th century translation, maybe not early 20s, of the Lysistrata, where the translator made the Athenians speak perfect English and the Thebans spoke Scottish. Oh, excuse me. The Spartans spoke Scottish and the Theban spoke Irish dialect. It didn't work too well. But they were trying to convey that they each have a different God. Sparta was Artemis and Athens, of course, was Athena. Corinth was Poseidon. And they all had a protective not that they didn't worship all of them, but they had a protective deity and they had differences in architectural styles. The Doric order is more in the Peloponnese. Where you get the big cutoff is somewhere where modern Thessaloniki is. Thessaloniki is today, and that is Macedon. And that was a big argument. Did Macedonians speak Greek or not? Because we have inscriptions, but we don't know if they hired Greeks to write them. But we have a lot of information about Alexander the Great. And he does say things like, I'm going to speak to my troops in Macedonian. But we don't know what that means because apparently a Macedonian can understand a Greek and vice versa. I think that it's a bigger difference in Portuguese and Spanish. It might be something, I don't know, like it would be bigger than English and American, Macedonian and Greek. But the Greeks felt they were not Greeks, at least until, I don't know, 1978. And they were going to make the independent country of Macedon. And all of a sudden the Greeks said, they're stealing our heritage. Macedonians were Greeks. But it's. Anyway, that was a problem. There's no word in the classical Greek language for nation. That's a natio, is a Latin word. So they had confederations, what they called federal states. Sun hadria is one word they use. But they never could unite. And that's what Alexander tried to do to Greece to unite them under his kind of total.
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We're going to return later in this episode to Greece and Rome, but first we're going to hear some very important messages and then we're going to talk about a movie. And we'll do that when we return from Right is still right, even if.
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You stand by yourself. Mr. Chief justice, may I place the court?
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This is Hans von Spakowski, host of the Case in Point podcast, which looks at the hottest cases affecting politics, culture and everyone's daily lives. But we talk talk about them without confusing legal jargon. And we have interesting guests like former.
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House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
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And we end with reviews of classic.
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Hollywood movies relevant to the topic. Case in Point, the podcast available everywhere you won't want to miss.
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We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own Words. This episode will be up on the world Wide Web and on YouTube. And this is an authentic Victor Davis Hansen YouTube video. On Saturday the 20th and likely after that, there's going to be a week or two of holiday vacation. We'll call it that again. Victor's website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com do check that out. Also, if you're on Facebook Victor Davis Hansen fan club is not official, but they're good people, good friendly people. May want to check that out. VDH's Morning cup is on Facebook and on Xdhansen. That's Victor's handle. So, Victor, let's talk about a movie. And you and I have. You've mentioned this on some recent episodes. The movie Heat. And the question is very simple. Why do you like Michael Mann's 1999, 1995 film Heat so much?
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I shouldn't like it because it's kind of based on that incident, remember where they had those two Eastern Europeans that wrapped themselves in armor, body armor, and they shot it out, hurt a lot of people because the. The anti heroes are pretty evil. Robert Dairo's gang and Val Kilmer and the late. Is his name Sizemore. I think he was killed. You know, he died recently. A lot of them are dead now. Val Kilmer and the guy that played Machete, he's a great actor, that Mexican American actor. He was in it as well. Jon Voight has a great appearance in it, but they're not good people. But what I like about Michael Mann's style is that dialogue never is phony. It's quick, it's. Al Pacino made that character kind of crazy. But you know, he said, when somebody says, so I'm talking to you. Who, Who? What are you, an owl? You know, stuff like that. Spontaneous. I don't know if that was in the script or he ad libbed it. So the dialogue is. Is brilliant. The plot is really good too. You don't know really whether who to root for. You're supposed to identify with their ingenuity, but you want them to lose. And then they're violent and they kill innocent people in that final shootout. But he has this technique. If you look at those films, Thief, you like Thief, the first one ever, that was a great movie. And then I think Tom Cruise's best role actually was in Collateral. He. He played an evil guy, but he was really good. And that was a. That was. And then I didn't think Miami Vice was such a great movie, but there was something about it, you know, that was Colin, what's his name, drawing a blank, you know, the British actor. But my point is, what is it about Feral Colin Farrell. And there's something about the tempo. It's really fast. I like the music. It's really moving. Especially the end of all these movies and Thief, when he gets shot and he walks away and they play that music and then Robert De Niro dies in the arms of Al Pacino. And they have that light from the. From the airport planes coming. Light, dark, light, dark. And then the light, dark. You don't know who's light, whether Pacino's light or he's dark. Who's going to win? The music comes on and it's kind of like the music resolves everything. These people were evil. But you're supposed to kind of have kind of a little iota of empathy. But then they're dead now, so.
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Well, you have empathy in the Wild Bunch for back. So there are a couple of things about that movie. Victor. And you mentioned the thief one. Seemingly homages. Not necessarily though. But that airport scene is very reminiscent of the Steve McQueen movie Bullet and then the shootout, which was. You're right, that's about a historical fact. But it also reminded me of the Wild Bunch. I mean there's just so much shooting going on there.
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It's. The only difference in the Wild Bunch was the people that they were shooting were evil and these people were law enforcement, which makes it kind of weird to even want him to get away. And then when he puts the gun to the little girl's head as a hostage and Al Pacino shoots him, you know, but it had every. He. He's. I don't know what it is. He. He has a very fast moving plot. There's no scenes that are just thrown in there for editorialization or anything. The dialogue is superb. It just rings true. The music fits the screen, his use of light and when to cut in with music. And all that is. Is really brilliant. Even I saw that Miami Vice. I didn't like it the first time I liked it the. The second time I saw it. Yeah, it's. He's. He's reminds me of Tony Scott, Ridley Scott's brother. He made some really good movies. I thought that man on Fire with Denzel, that was a brilliant movie. It didn't get a lot of that. Those. The dialogue. He's another master of dialogue. When you have. Denzel Washington is dealing with that crooked narco officer who may have. May or not have shot the little girl. And he just. He starts talking to him and he corrects. The guy's kind of smiling as he cuts his fingers off. Then he corrects his Spanish.
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What? What?
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And it's. And then that. That kind of rav. Where they're all doing this and they don't even care that people are getting killed. They're so oblivious to it. And it's. It's a really good movie. So is the One that Tarantino wrote, you know, it has not about the.
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The end of Hollywood.
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True love, you know, you know that Christian Slater is in it. And True Romance. I'm sorry, it's got that great soundtrack and it really moves quick. It's got. In Tarantino, I think that was his first major screenplay. That's a good movie. That Tony Scott about.
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About my back on Michael Mann, the dialogue, you're right. I agree with you totally. But there's a scene there. And also in his Thief, which I think was about 25 years earlier with James Caan, both in Diners.
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Right.
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And terrific dialogue. One was Kahn and Pacino in Heat. The other was, excuse me, De Niro and Pacino in Heat. And the earlier one, James Caan with Tuesday Weld. Right. And that was really powerful. And it was long. It went on quite a while, but you just kind of didn't want it to end. So both. The parallel use of that is really interesting. But there was one other thing, Victor, you had said. I think you may have even said it on a show before, but that the idea of you got to be able to change your life on a dime, like literally drop everything and.
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Yeah, I was surprised how that's a theme in every one of his movies. Robert Dairo repeats that ad nauseam in Heat maybe five times. And it's in Thief, too. James Kahn says that. The same thing he quotes. You know, he quotes the guy in prison that. That says that to him. I learned this. You have to be able to leave, pick up everything and get out. And then Robert De Niro had said that in Heat. I think it's in one other movie. And just. I don't know what. What it is about it. He has a. An ability to convey tragedy in a way that's ennobling. Like James Khan. You don't want to empathize him because he's a crook, but he builds this kind of empire and he's very fiercely independent. And yet you know that he's doing that because he's dealing with crooked police and the Mafia and all this crooked union, all this stuff. You know that he's going to end up badly. There's too many odds against him. And yet he tries to. At the end, he just explodes. And yet there's a certain dignity about it. Tragedy. And the same thing is true with Robert De Niro. You think, okay, you got the plan, you got the money. You're not. You're going to retire. You've lost one of your guys. But Val Kilmer's Alive, two of your guys and you've got all this money and now you've got a private plane that they can't trace and they've given up on you. Al Pasino said he's gone, gone. He's flown the coop. And then you stop just to go back and get this decrepit, this creepy, horrible, degenerate murder that shot and one of your friends. And you know at that moment, you're going to throw away a whole relationship. Everything is going downhill and you're not going to get out. But he chooses to do that.
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Like the wild bunch. Those guys could have left, but they went back. They knew they, they were not going to get out.
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Yeah. When they say let's go and they said, why not? You think? Why don't you got the money? You go and they want to get their friend back and they know they're not going to get their friend back. Mapachi is not going. I mean, what's his name? The, the crooked general is not going to give it. Get him back.
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Well, Victor, have to do a little spot here. And I know you've been a close friend of Dennis Prager's for many years and have had the privilege of working with his remarkable team at Prageru. And you've appeared in several of their five minute videos which have reached tens of millions of worldwide people worldwide, and that you value that. Over 60% of PragerU's audience is under the age of 35. And that's the very generation most in a need of enduring American principles. At a time when education and media often erode confidence in our country, Prageru is standing firm in defending truth, reason and the legacy of Western civilization. So we are proud here at Victor Davis Hansen, in his own words, to be part of their family. And we're asking that you please join@prageru.com VDH at and that's please make a tax deductible gift. And that gift will be triple matched through December 31st. So please give generously@prageru.com VDH and we thank very much the good people at Prageru, Dennis Prager and his exceptional staff. We thank them for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So, Victor, before we this is going to be a truncated show today as these shows of this recent week have been. But let me ask one more question before we take a quick break and then we'll have a final question and back to Greece and Rome. And I'm sure you've been asked these questions before, Victor, but You are a classicist, so we have to go there. If you could be transported back to visit ancient Greece, whatever that might mean, what time and what place would you wish to visit? And the same for Rome. And then separately. Well, I'll ask a separate question. So, yeah, Rome, Greece, you could go back for a day and see, experience, watch.
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What would they be? I think that question depends on would you like to go in a safe, quiet time, or would you like to go in exciting. If you take Rome first, the most exciting time would be somewhere between 60 B.C. and 31 B.C. and there you would have. You'd be in the Forum and you would be hearing Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Marcus Tullio, Cicero, the Younger, Cato Crassus, the young Augustus, Cleopatra, all of that stuff that saw the transition, you'd see that the assassination of Caesar and then the end of the first triumvirate with Crassus, Pompey and Caesar. Then after the death of Caesar, who had won by defeating Pompey and Pompey, who had been decapitated, Crassus had been killed. The formation of a second triumvirate of Augustus, Lepidus and Mark Anthony, I should say Octavian at this point, and all of the changing loyalties, Brutus, Cassius. It would be very exciting, but it'd be very dangerous. There was probably a quarter million people killed and the proscriptions after the whole thing ended, the proscription list, the first cycle ended, Anthony's prescription list and Octavian were probably 7,000 people that they executed. That was the crim of the creme de necrim of the Roman aristocracy. And Augustus tried to restore those families when he. But then he ended the republic at the exact date you could say was somewhat where, between the battle of Actium at 31 BC when he won and took over for the next. Oh, you could say that he ruled the next 45 years, 44 or 45 years. Or you could say the principate officially took place sometime around, I don't know, the year five or six, depending on the legislative act that you choose. If you go to Greece. The most exciting time, of course, was Athens in the period what we call the Golden Age. That's really the great 30 years of the time when Pericles was first citizen and he was annually elected archon from about 459 until his death in 429. And at that time, the city there would be Sophocles putting on plays, Euripides, Aristophanes, comedies, Lysias, the orator, Democritus the philosopher. And of course, Socrates would be. And he served as a hoplite at the Battle of Delium. And then you'd have statesmen like Pericles, Nicias, Peloponnesian War. You'd have to live through the plague. But if you want to talk about a quiet time, a safe time to be alive in Rome, it would be that period that the great history, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon. He remarked in a very famous passage that if you wanted to go find the most tranquil peace in human history, it would have to be the period from the reign of the emperor Nerva to the end of Marcus Aurelius reign, which is about 98 years. You have Nerva and Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius. And then you get Caracalla. Excuse me, not Caracalla, Commodius, and everything falls apart. But for a hundred years, there's no major wars within the empire and it's a big building program. People have habeas corpus, there's clean water, 70 million people, a million square miles. And it's very sophisticated scientifically, but there's no active politics going on. And that's all going to fall apart for 100 years with, you know, praetorian Guard killing, civil war, et cetera, until the. You could argue the period of Diocletian to Constantine kind of restores it for a while. In the case of Greece, you could make the argument that after, oh, almost the same time, but after the end of the Free City State, 338 BC, Battle of Chaeronea, it was more or less a province of Macedonia, and then the Hellenistic successors and then the Roman Empire, and there were little rebellions here and now among Greek city states that try to rebel against the successors or the Romans. But by and large, it was a very tranquil time to be alive in Greece. And it was kind of a reactionary period. People kept saying, wow, there was once a time we fought at Marathon, or I have a little school and we can actually read the plays of Sophocles. Plutarch wrote around 100 AD at this period of peace, and he had a little schoolhouse and he talks about the manuscripts that he goes to Athens and he can walk in safety all the way to Athens. It's. And he kind of laments in many of his histories that you look out in the countryside and it's kind of. There's not a bunch of little small farms and councils, but it's all just latifundia and Part of a Roman Empire, kind of. I feel kind of that way when I am where I live now. You know, it was a very chaotic but really exciting time to be here between 1960 and 1990, for 30 years. It ended very quickly. I mean, that was a period when there was tractors and technology and all small farmers and contentions over sun made fighting over water. But every two parent families, three or four kids in each, every family, free ranging kids, no crime whatsoever out here. And then it all fell apart, partly because of illegal immigration, partly because of globalization. The prices crashed at the millennium and now it's Latifundia. I mean, I look out and it's thousand, five thousand acres here, ten thousand acres there, four thousand acres there. The houses that all the people I knew that grew up in are all rented out to mostly people here unlawfully. Not all, but many of them. And it's a very dangerous place to be at night. Where I live. I wouldn't walk along the side of Mountain View Avenue at night. And I would say, Jack, in this other Roman imperial period, since 1990, I would say 30 people have knocked on the door somewhere between midnight, probably one a year. And you never know what it is. You don't know if they're armed, you don't know if they're fighting.
- [43:44]
B
Come to the door with a gun in your hand.
- [43:46]
A
Yes, maybe two people came in when I was gone and I was in Iraq. Actually I was safer in Iraq than I was here. The first time I was embedded in Iraq was 2006 and I was there, it was in a, you know, in a Black Hawk helicopter every day in a combat zone. And they were fired upon us. And yet my wife and daughter were here alone. And they let the gate open. I don't mean let it open, they just didn't want to, you know, the driveway gate, they were driving out and it was open and two people came in and they woke up and they looked up and two people were walking around the living room. And then they said, we're going to take things. And they took things. Two women alone at night. And the next thing they took the keys, they took their cell phones, they took their purse, and luckily they called the sheriff and the people. One of the people had dropped their driver's license, can you believe that? And they went there and they had our garage door opener too. And they went there and met them as they drove back with a loot and arrested them.
- [45:00]
B
Do you think they served it could.
- [45:02]
A
Have been really scary. I doubt it. I can't remember But I don't think they did. Yeah, I say that because I think all of us have to just tell the left, be quiet. We don't care what you say. It's just true. Somali stole millions of dollars, probably a billion. I'm not a racist for saying that. You should talk about that community and Ilya Omar and the message she gave to them. If your spokesman is saying something happened on 911 or Somaliland only for Somalis, you're not going to get the leadership you need. She never said to that community. To take an example, we are in the most wonderful country in the world. We are so lucky to leave our worn, torn, impoverished, torn apart state and be in this wonderful country. I want all of us to work, work, work, work. Some of you will have to be on public assistance, but we'll confine that to as few as possible. And we want to contribute more and take less from this wonderful government that was never there. It was either this is the worst country in the world, I'm quoting literally, or it's gar. It's a. She said it looked dirty and she said that we had a dictatorship worse than Somalia. So that whole area, what I'm talking about is that classical paradigm of small farms, small communities, close knit. What was you can still find in America, believe me, in the Midwest that still exists. Hillsdale county is a good example, but it's gone in California. There's places in Northern California, in the foothills that sort of replicate that. But it was a one, two punch when you, when you let in millions of people, which is fine if you want to integrate and assimilate, but if you don't and you suggest that they're victims on top of that, it's like I was, I was the first debate I ever had at the Hoover Institution, I think I told you, was Milton Friedman and I on immigration. And he was an open borders guy, complete. He said the debate went downhill. I said, well, you're going to destroy wages. He said, well, when it gets down to a dollar an hour, they won't come, will he? And I said, yeah, but you're not going to be, you know, a person trying to get the job when it's $1 an hour. But then he did say something I'll never forget. He said, but you're right, it'll never work if you're subsidizing people who come in from impoverished countries with generous entitlements because you're not letting the market work. That's what he said. And I think I had another debate with a friend of his. But if you have generous entitlements and you let people en masse and you don't want to acculturate them or teach you in the values of your civilization, you're going to get it. A Minnesota.
- [47:59]
B
Maybe certain cultures or ethnicities that are less inclined to assimilate into another culture, just, you know.
- [48:11]
A
If your idea is that we're coming to the United States for the prosperity, security and freedom, but we want to keep entirely our own culture in an enclave.
- [48:21]
B
Yeah, we talked about the oath of allegiance.
- [48:23]
A
A few.
- [48:24]
B
I mean, those are words that mean something. And it means I am, I am you, I am an American, and I reject all this.
- [48:33]
A
It's, it's very different where I'm speaking. The Japanese community that came in large numbers in the 20s when I was in, I don't know, 1965, there was a Buddhist temple and there was a Japanese baseball league and that lasted for three generations. It just disappeared because the immigration stopped the intermarriage. They had one of the highest rates of intermarriage and, and they're completely similar. And they were never separatists, though. Those were enhanced cultural enhancements. But they were the most loyal, wonderful Americans. There was nothing like a Dearborn, Michigan. But even I don't know how long Dearborn, Michigan will last. It has to be constantly refueled by immigration because we do have popular culture that can change it. But if you want a Dearborn Michigan or you want London under Mayor Khan or whatever his name is, then the whole idea of a multi ethnic, multiracial, but single culture democracy doesn't work. And we're getting close to that right now that it doesn't work anymore. California is a good example.
- [49:41]
B
I consider what's happening in England a preview. So folks better prepare or they better prepare to tolerate it or prepare to stop it. Hey, Victor, we've got time for one other a question. And it will be kind of a look ahead. How will history remember certain things? And we'll get to that final question after these final important messages.
- [50:05]
C
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month.
- [50:21]
A
Now, you don't even need to wrap it.
- [50:22]
C
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [50:26]
A
Of $45 per three month. Plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.
- [50:37]
B
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words from the Daily Signal. The Daily Signal also carries Victor's in a few words daily four times a week. 7, 8, 9 minute videos on particular topics. Really excellent stuff. Check it out, Victor. Jenny Rager sent this question and it's very long. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but she wrote, what I think about often is how will this Trump era be spoken of and taught about in the future? There are so many lies. Mistruths, gaslighting and Morrisons. Trump descended down the escalator in June 2015. So to you, Victor, how do you foresee this time being spoken of and taught? What can be done for the truth of this time? To be in America's memory and fiber, to be what is taught in history classes? She's implying someday. Or will the digital footprint of social media be the true archive?
- [51:43]
A
Well, everything is cyclical. Academia is very left wing now, so it's the Trump administration will be considered a failure no matter what he does for maybe 20 or 30 years by the left dominant culture in the universities. But accomplishments stand the test of time, no matter who or what the interpretations are. They just, they're independent of, independent of bias, personal bias. So eventually somebody's going to look, let's just say that Trump is successful and they're going to say, joe Biden said you had to have comprehensive immigration. No, you didn't. You just need a new president. He didn't just help stop illegal immigration, he ended it. Pete Hexseth doesn't didn't just say, we'll get a few more recruits and stop this bleeding. He got 10% more than they ever had and the shortfall doesn't exist anymore. He didn't just get Joe Biden's top year of a billion dollars in foreign investment. Excuse me, a trillion dollars. He got anywhere from 10 to 20 trillion. It looks like it didn't just stop draining the petroleum reserve, he's starting to fill it, but he's pumping the record. He's pumping more gas and oil than it's ever been pumped in civilizational history. He didn't just have two wars break out on his tenure because of loss of deterrence, as had happened with Biden, but he solved one by taking out the Iranian nuclear plant, unleashing, letting Israel do what it had to do. And the result is a anemic Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas and Iran. And maybe there'll be some kind of solution to the Stalingrad. That's the Ukrainian war. So all of those. You know, we've never seen anything like that in this 10 minutes. So you can say that he's crude. I listened to his rally yesterday, it was crude. Yes, he's made fun of me, Omar and Jasmine Crockett. He uses this term, low IQ for Jasmine. I think it might be true, but it's. Given the history of IQ test and race, it's not a polite thing to say. But what he's done is going to continue. And Obama had everything. Everybody said he was a genius. Does anybody believe in 30 years that Obama deserved the Nobel Prize and Trump did not? Everybody knows that Trump deserves it for what he's done already with the Mideast and his efforts in Ukraine and these other ceasefires. And Obama did nothing. He did so much nothing that he admitted that he didn't deserve it. So that's what I'm getting at, that these. Horus said, I leave you monuments more lasting than bronze. Meaning his poetry was. You can say what you like about it, but it would exist forever. That's the idea of a classic. It comes from the Latin word fleet or big ship. Just preeminent classic. So we were talking with Sammy Jack and the Annenberg's annual Walter Cronkite Journalist of the Year award was shared this year by Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. And I said that was a crude thing to do, not Trump's speech. That's just a travesty. So. And everybody will know it's a travesty. Will anybody think, I gotta tune into Rachel Maddow because she's an award winning Walter Cronkite recipient, award from USC School of Journalism? No, they just. It's like saying, what does the president of Harvard mean anymore after Claudine Gay plagiarist. Never. Not even a scholar. That means nothing. It means nothing.
- [55:46]
B
Millionaire plagiarist.
- [55:48]
A
But I, I think to answer the question, yes, it's frustrating because the media has. The media, the left, the Democratic Party, the corporate boardroom, K12, professional sports, popular. It's all left. But they can't change reality. They can try to warp it, but they can't change it. And that's why. Does anybody think that Jasmine Crockett is going to win in Texas? I don't. I think she's going to be given inordinate amount of news coverage, but she's going to go to the Beto o' Rourke route. I saw her commercial just off the topic. Did you see it, Jack?
- [56:28]
B
What did she say?
- [56:30]
A
I've never seen in my entire life. Some of your listeners saw it. I know that you did. I never saw my entire life a person put out an ad that is a brilliant ad against her or him. So what she's done is she's got some stylus making her look exotic. And then she's got kind of dark shadows, like almost a. A sepia picture or something. And she's posing like this. Different profiles and they're like little boxes that come across the screen, but each one has Trump's attack on her. Jasmine Kraga is. Jasmine Crockett just has a low iq. And then she goes like this next one, Jasmine Cr. And it's like, if you didn't see the ad, you'd think, wow, I didn't know Trump said that. But look at her. She's. Anybody who would run an ad were giving clicks and publicity to a personal attack on you, and it rings true. What is wrong with you? And then she's. She, she referred, you know, she refers to herself as J.C. jasmine Crockett. Jesus Christ. And it's, it's really embarrassing. And the weird thing about it is she's from a very upscale. I saw a clip somebody sent me the other day where she's from a very upscale family. She went to prep school. She had no inner city accent. And she's doing the you all and you folks this, and she's talking about why African Americans should have no taxes as a form of negative, I guess, negative reparations. And you think, and who would get no taxes? Oprah, Michael Jordan, the Obamas, you, you. Iliane Omar, $30 million because she may claim to be from Africa. What do you think? And is it $40 trillion? A great society program. And. Well, I don't know. I guess you could say it's been 50 years of affirmative action. I can tell you. In 1980, the chairman of the department of Classics at Stanford called the four white male guys in, in our class and said, I want you to sign this. We said, what is it? Well, we don't know much about the Bakke decision and all this stuff, but I think it was the Bakke decision. But he says there's something called affirmative action and you're not going to get a job because all the classics professors met at the APA meeting and we're going to hire women and minorities and we want you to Sign that you were not admitted to this under false pretenses of getting the job. No, one of those four got a job. One, I think waited two years. Three of the four dropped out. For me, five years. And you would get letters back once in a while you get a personal note nailed to the like 50 places you apply. And I'd say you did a great interview. If we were not subject to affirmative action guidelines, we would have hired you. But I think that was just a sent to everybody. So I'm just thinking of that when she's talking about. And then she said in the same clip that. And she uses this word so pejorative. White men or white supremacists are the most responsible for violent crime in the United States. That's just factually untrue. 53% of all violent crime is committed by 6% of the population. African American males between the ages of 15 and 40. That's a fact.
- [60:20]
B
Mostly.
- [60:21]
A
So, yeah. So all of this, what I'm getting about that question, when you hear all of this stuff all the time and you superimpose it at what I just said, I'm going to get letters from people and say that's racist. What you say. Why did you bring that up?
- [60:35]
B
And.
- [60:35]
A
And you can't talk about it. That's what the letter writer is frustrated about. Will it ever be fair? Will anybody ever be able to capture reality without the left ruining the language and the discourse and the communication? I don't know about that, but I know that achievements can't be whitewashed or blackwashed or whatever term we want to use away. And that's encouraging.
- [61:02]
B
After you've answered a lot of interesting questions today. Appreciate it. We have a couple of comments from YouTube. I've got four. I'm going to read these quickly. We were talking about your your dad service and Bob Knuth wrote, my dad was a co pilot on B29 24 missions. You guys are fun to listen to then Axe Head, we've talked about truckers a lot. Axe Head wrote, back when I was and on the road trucker, I had one load that went through Quebec. The moment that all the signs switched to French language with different iconography was really jarring. I mean you can certainly figure out what the signs mean. But doing it while driving 60mph in traffic is not easy. So here's something that's a very good point.
- [61:58]
A
I've driven couple I've driven all over Greece, but I knew the Greek language and it was still scary.
- [62:06]
B
Cdm3788 wrote, I love VDH and was so grateful for all he teaches me. I wish I had his total recall. Such a fantastic memory. Today he rattled off the name of the teacher who taught the special class at his elementary. And the kid in that, Mrs. Henry.
- [62:24]
A
Yes. She was the sister of Louise. She was the special needs. And her sister was Louise Redden, my second grade teacher.
- [62:31]
B
So this guy says, I took a few minutes to exercise my brain and recall my elementary school principal and each of my teachers in grade one through six. I remembered exclamation point Q. Congratulations. Final.
- [62:46]
A
Yeah, but I think, don't you think that's the way the memory works? Your long term is stronger than short.
- [62:52]
B
Oh yeah.
- [62:53]
A
Like I said Apache and I said Machete for the other guy that was in heat. But Apache was the one that was in the Wild Bunch and I was trying to remember his name. And I know it was Emilio Fernandez that played Mapachi. He was one of the great actors of Mexico ever produced. I've seen him in so many westerns.
- [63:14]
B
Hunton Floss and Ricardo Montalban.
- [63:17]
A
Yes, he was good. Around The World in 80 Days Final.
- [63:22]
B
Comment from Keep Me Lord 05 wrote, Every time I find a fake, Mr. Hansen, I leave a comment saying it is fake along with their well hidden disclaimer. Makes me so mad I could spit. Indeed, Keep me Lord. It makes Victor and myself and Sammy.
- [63:40]
A
It's making me. It's what? How do I put it? I'm going insane just getting letters every day from people and said, did you say that? And this? Or I watched this whole thing Or I subscribed and then I realized it's not you. And again, I'm not a major person. I just don't know why they've. I don't have a frame of reference. Are they doing this to Tucker Carlson? Are they doing it to Megyn Kelly? I don't know. Are they doing it to Mark Levin? I don't know, but they're doing it to me. And I'm not nearly as high profile.
- [64:20]
B
High profile, but you're more consequential.
- [64:23]
A
I don't know why they're doing it. That's frustrating me. And then nine months of this, whatever it is, health problem that I'm going to find out has been very frustrating because I feel like I can't do the job I want to. So between these two things and the fact that we have not seen the sun in the San Joaquin Valley Jack, for 12 days, we're in an inversion layer. It's about 45 degrees there's no sun. And at 3,000ft it's bright sunny in the foothills, the Sierra above this. And there's no snow. All that beautiful snow in November. We were, it's all melted.
- [65:02]
B
Well, let us hope, Victor, you come through life's tunnel and it's bright and lovely and the mountaintops have snow on them and that you're healthy.
- [65:13]
A
You remember that, that you were talking about movies that emulate each other. You don't want to quote something from the Germans, but there was a tragedy in Das Boot and when they, I think I mentioned when they pop up out of the Mediterranean and he thought they thought they were in bad shape. And then he's, he said they're all, you know, we talked about that. And he says, and he says, not this. Not, not yet, not yet. And then I was wondering that. And I was watching a Game of Thrones the other day, you know, rerun. And there's this Sergio guy teaching the young start girl, Maisie is the actor, I think her name is Ariel, how to fight. And he's going to get killed. But before he does, she said, are you afraid? And he said, we have a God called, you know, Death Thanatos. And he said every day you got to get up and say, not today, not today, not today. Well, I think that line has taken. My point was from Das Boot, not yet, not yet. That was the finest movie. Jurgen Proctor was a great actor, but I really liked that.
- [66:25]
B
Well, Victor, you've been terrific. And I. And I not yet. And we, I think we're though, given that as people are listening to this, Christmas will be in a few days. I'm not sure when Hanukkah is, but let's just say, if we may, Merry Christmas to our listeners and viewers. Happy Hanukkah. And we may not be back till after the New Year's, we don't know. But if that's the case, then to all happy and healthy New Year.
- [66:50]
A
So, yes, and at this time of recurrent and unexpected but virulent anti Semitism, thank God for the Judeo Christian tradition. Amen.
- [67:08]
B
Well, God bless all and we'll be back soon. I don't know how soon, but eventually with another episode of Victor Davis, we'll be back. Not yet.
- [67:15]
A
Not yet.
- [67:16]
B
Victor Davis Hansen, in his own words, God bless him. Bye bye.
- [67:19]
A
Thank you for tuning in to the channel 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.