← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: The Common Denominator of the Issues Troubling Me Most
00:58:30
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler weigh the four finalists from their Sour 16 troubling issues, with Hanson explaining what they all have in common.
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- [00:13]
A
Well, hello, ladies, and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I'm Jack Fowler, the host, fortunate host. I get to ask Victor questions. You're here to hear the answers to these questions from Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's also the senior contributor at the Daily Signal, which is the home for this podcast and also home for Victor's other. Well, it's not a podcast, but Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, four times a week, seven eight minute video. Just pearls of wisdom. Victor, you're just. You're a clam. All these pearls come out of you. Thank you.
- [00:53]
B
You're welcome.
- [00:55]
A
Anyone was ever called a claim before as a compliment.
- [00:58]
B
I may feel like that after this oper.
- [01:02]
A
Well, okay. So Victor also has a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. You should subscribe. It's $65 a year. If you just want to test it out, 650 for a month, do that. But you're going to wish you had done it already. We are on the final of four special podcasts where Victor has taken the playoffs. It's like the playoffs of bad things, issues and topics that keep you awake at night. And Victor's boiled down, we've pitted these things against each other, nukes versus Islam, et cetera. And we've got four finalists. Instead of going, well, we won't have semi finals, Victor, I'll just lay them all out and you can discuss each one a little bit. But of the four finalist issues, which ones worry you the most? And then after that, we're going to talk a little bit about a headline, even though this episode we're recording on Christmas Eve. This episode will not air until.
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B
When is it?
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A
January 10th. January 10th. But we'll talk about a current headline that's all. This massive fraud that's going on in Minnesota and California. We'll get to all this when we come back from these important messages.
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B
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- [02:52]
A
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So, Victor, we had the sour 16, the hate 8, the finality. Here we are with the finality 4. But we're just going to. We're not going to have a play off. We're just going to lay them all out here. The four of the 16 issues here, the four that have achieved this noble status of worst of the worst, the ruination of our cities, the destruction of the nuclear family, I guess we call it just the ignorance of American students after K through 12 and even college education, having zero knowledge about things, real practical, et cetera. And then the growth in irreligiosity in our country and maybe even globally. So something about lack of faith, lack of knowledge, lack of family and ruin of cities, lack of home. These are four very troubling things. And of these things, Victor, we could talk a little about each of them, however you want to do, but one of them should worry you the most. And what would that be?
- [04:04]
B
Well, one way to discuss these is there are different solutions to them and it's a little worrisome because they're starting to develop in a geographical manner. We've never really seen that since the 1830s to 1860. What do I mean by that? If I had said red state, blue state, when Barack Obama gave the Democratic keynote to John Kerry's nomination in 2004, remember, he said, there is no red state, there is no blue state. He was an ecumenical person. He wasn't. That was phony. But that was really the first time people had really, red state, blue state. Wow. But in the 21 years since, all of these problems are crystallized along ideological lines. And what I mean by that is, and increasingly because of the federal system, where you're free to go to a state, et cetera, they are also crystallizing as force multipliers on geographic land. So if you don't like California, that's probably because you're more conservative. You go to Tennessee or Florida, maybe Arizona, Nevada if you're in Idaho, et cetera, Nobody is going to the blue states. And ideologically the blue state paradigm does not work in these four areas. We know. We know. Let me repeat that again. We know statistically that in blue states, the fertility rate is much lower. It is. It just is. We know that in blue states the crime rate is higher, if you correct, for blue cities and red states. But small town suburban red state is safer than small town suburban blue state for the most part. We know that debt is higher in blue cities and blue states. We know that deficits are higher. So we know that pensions are not as well funded. We. So what I'm getting at, and we know that taxes are higher. We know that deficits as a result of high tax is still there. We know power is higher, we know gas is higher. And as a result of that, that's a combination of ideology that doesn't work versus ideology that does. And people are now moving to a red state. So I think I've been, I was thinking I hadn't, I couldn't sleep last night and I just thought of all the, I've been to all 50 states over the last 30 or 40 years and it's when I first started this, I didn't see much difference, you know, accent. Yeah. But now when I go to Florida or I go to Texas or I go to Idaho or Montana and vis a vis Massachusetts or New York or Washington D.C. or California or I go to Utah, compared to them, it's a whole different world. It is. And things work and people are, if they're immigrants, they're much better assimilated, acculturated, integrated. There's not a lot of enclaves like you see in Dearborn or in Massachusetts of ethnic communities or in Minnesota. So what I'm getting at is these problems of a poor educational system, a lack of religious belief, a big city disintegration. And we could, over the last two or three, we've had 10 or 12 more of these. They are now crystallized in red blue paradigms. In the red states, the fertility rate is over 2%, 2.1 or 2. And the blue states, it's about 1.7 are smaller. And by 2030, they're going to lose about 12 seats in the reapportionment based on the census. And so what I'm getting at is because of this brilliant federal system, we had a safety valve. You don't like California, leave. But nobody is going to these places. They're shrinking. California's population is flat. It's about the first couple of years that no, it's not growing. And that's besides the people who are flocking here for generous welfare benefits. You mentioned the hundred billion, approaching the 100 billion. 911 scandal, the homeless scandal, the misappropriation of unemployment. That's just, you know, on top of driving out two oil refineries, gas looking at $8 a gallon coming up, 25% of the people can't pay their power bill. There's a big blackout in San Francisco that just keeps going on and on. They're not able, I mentioned the solar plant that doesn't work. The Battery plant that doesn't work. The high speed rail that doesn't work. The Pacific Palisades, that doesn't work. Highest income tax in the country, Highest gas tax among the fifth highest state. Forget the local add ons, but the state itself sales tax is number five. And the education system is in the bottom 25% even though it spends as much as almost anybody. And you know, 27% of the state is not born in the United States. And no one seems to think that it's not right to give somebody who can't read English a commercial driver's license or if somebody cannot speak English, it's a problem. And if they don't feel acculturated into the body politic, then you're going to get a separatism. And you add all of this up together and what is going to happen is I think we're going to create sort of like a north south over. And that started in the 1820s. And you know, they tried the Great Compromise, they tried the Missouri compromise, they tried, they floated ideas of repatriation of African slaves, they tried to buy them out and give plantation owners compensation. They tried all of it and it didn't work. And I don't know if these two ideologies of democratic socialism, it's not democratic, but it is a socialist paradigm in the blue states versus the traditional American paradigm of limited government, limited regulation, liberty rather than mandated equality, all of that, they're becoming more and more antithetical. And you can see it in the Congress that there's no bipartisan. They keep saying we need bipartisanship. Well, there's no bipartisanship because the left wing paradigm doesn't work and people are leaving. And on the issues, on the issues, nobody wants open borders, nobody wants a foreign policy that leads to a Kabul. Nobody really does want a Soros prosecutor in their cities. Nobody wants DEI in the schools. Nobody wants no cash bail release. So that paradigm nobody wants. And in compensation for that, what happens is the left looks for extraneous ways of holding on power when they don't have national popular support. And we can go through them, Jack. We have before open borders Change the demography. 55 million people in the United States were not born here. 55 million. 16% of the population highest ever control the institutions, get the clappers and the comeys and the Fauci's deep, deeply embedded into the institutions so that even though a president like a conservative like Trump takes over, he can't control the bureaucracies that's have the institutions Take control of higher education, the foundations, the movies industry, the television industry, the professional sports, try to exercise influence culturally, economically, politically, socially, without 51% approval to mold public opinion. And that's what they're doing. There's 90% of all, 95% of the professors are left wing and K12 are mostly left wings. And yet the country is not mostly left wing. So I don't see how those are going to be reconciled. And every one of these issues is really, if you think about it, a product of a blue state ideology. They are the ones that are promoting radical secularism. They're the ones that are trashing nativity scenes. They're the ones who are saying you can't say Merry Christmas. They are the ones that make fun of religion. They are the ones who that say you don't have to come to class, that you don't have to take a SAT score, that the teachers union should run everything. They are the ones who are saying that young males are toxic. And they're the ones that are playing the race card nonstop. They were the ones that gave us critical legal theory, critical race theory, that, you know, there's no absolutes, it's all relative and they're not going to change. And so they're losing too. And they're getting angrier and angrier. So whether it's 2020 and you get four months of, you know, 35 people killed, 15 officers that made January 6th look like a picnic. And what you see with the ice rays or going after Tesla or the potty mouth comedians or the videos from them where they kickbox the screen or they say the F word, it's that it's this diagnosis of a ideology that doesn't work and is desperate. And the problem is that the red state ideology contains within it a certain sort of isolationism or I don't mean in the foreign policy, but just I'm so sick of these people. I'm so sick of these trends. I just want to go to get my own one acre, have my family, do my job, go to church. I just can't get involved with these. And it's kind of an escapism and they take advantage of that vacuum.
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A
Yeah, we embrace the concept of the pursuit of happiness, but their pursuit of happiness is keeping us from pursuing happiness. Right. You know, there's something perverse about what.
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B
I try to do, is that when I had this diagnosis, I've been trying to reach out to people I've known for a long, long time and whatever are differences, I try to be you know, I want to reconcile and it does seem to me that people on the left do not want that as much as people on the right. It just seems that way that for them politics is 110% of their lives. And for people on the right, it's live and let live. Right.
- [15:24]
A
America reconciled the Civil War, didn't we?
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B
Right. In a way.
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A
And yet 100 plus years later, the left in America has to unreconcile it so they can.
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B
Yeah, I mean if you look at all of the Hollywood movies from 1935 to 1960, it was a deliberate effort by left wing people in Hollywood who were liberals, FDR people, many of them Jewish Americans, but they went out of their way to try to reconcile that wound. So if you look at the Searcher, John Wayne is a mysterious guy who's the hero, but he's southerners and he probably road with Quantrell. If you look at Shane, Shane is a southerner and he fights Wilson the bad guy who's a no down Yankee liar. Right. And that was the theme. Not because the people in Hollywood approved of slavery or anything, but they just saw that this country needed a cultural healing. And that was the same with literature and the gone, you know, and sometimes it wasn't as well the combatants themselves. Yeah. And so the idea was, and that's what to give credit to Ken Burns, his Civil War, he would never be able to make that again. But that was a landmark, brilliant documentary where he had people like Shelby Foote and Southerners who read, read from diaries and stuff. And the whole point they had beautiful music was that it was a southern tragedy, that the vast majority of southerners did not own slaves, there was no middle class because of slavery. And yet they felt as Scotch Irish heritage, proud Americans from the south, that they were not going to give up, they were not going to let people tell them what to do. And that was the tragedy. But they were not all evil is what we hear today. And therefore the government said you can have your statues, you can have your songs, you can have your heroes like Robert E. Lee. He was a flawed person, but there were elements about him that had integrity. So, but we came along and said, no, It's a, it's zero, it's 100% or zero. And if you don't, you're not perfect on all these, you're, you're evil. And that's what we did and we undid a lot of that healing. And, and the same thing with race. If you look at what Martin Luther King was saying, Or Ralph Abernathy or it wasn't Stokie Carmichael and Rap Brown. They won out. And they undid a lot of. And Obama undid a lot of. Before Obama was elected, there was a sense that we were healing and race was becoming incidental. And when he came in, you know, bam, bam, bam, beer summit and never been proud of my country, Michelle, and she mouthed off the whole, you know, this is a downright mean country. And then the Georg, and then we had the George Zimmerman and all that stuff. Trayvon's like the son that I never had looks. It was just constant. And he created the DEI idea. He really did. He said, you know what? It'll Never work. With 12% black victims and 88% white. We just don't have a big enough constituency. So I'm redefining it as anybody that's not white. You can have blue eyes, you can have blonde hair, but if you came from Brazil with an accent, you're a victim. And so he created a 30% constituency and he did a lot of damage. I know people that like him may resent what I said, but he did. He really did.
- [19:09]
A
I don't think they're listening to this podcast. Well, Victor, we're going to get your judgment eventually. And I have a question to ask you too. But first, I want to let our listeners and viewers know that if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Of course, we're just talking about history here. Nature foundations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. And today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond the discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or those in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold. Not as speculation, but as insulation. Now reputation matters. Which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer for our listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in a bank, if you believe that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 8447-9091-9184-4790, 9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 8447-909191-84479, 09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view when we thank you, the good people from Allegiance Gold, for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, I'm going to ask you a question and we're going to take a break and then we're going to get your final judgment. I'm going to give you an out on the final judgment also, so you pay attention. It's interesting about of course, here you're just talking about the flexibility of a citizen. If I'm sick and tired of living in Connecticut and the taxes and the cost of energy, et cetera, I can sell my home and move to Tennessee, move to Texas, Florida, et cetera. I don't want to. But there's that option if you were a citizen of one of the quote, unquote socialist countries in Europe that Norway was may still be for all I know, Sweden. I mean, there are any number of European countries that had true socialist governments, but they threw them out over time, like this isn't working. And now we're going to have a more conservative or liberal, as in the classical sense of liberal government. But we don't really say, I think the federalism works against that in one sense. Again, how come Norway can change its ways from left to right or moving in that direction. And can we? Can we as a nation? I don't know.
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B
Anyway, well, you're talking about California, and that's what everybody's lamenting. They're saying every time I try to say we have the quarter of the people can't pay their power bill or that Gavin Newsom is letting out precious water out to the ocean or now he has a commission that wants to take land from what he calls white farmers and almost like Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, that ruined that country. And he wants to either give public land or buyout, forced buyout, of course, and give it to people who have historic claims against whom I don't know. But it'll be based on their race. I guess if you come from Oaxaca and you've come up here and you set one foot into the United States and you've Never been here. Then you're entitled to be a victim with, you know, repertory claims against people who've been here five generations. So but my, but my point is that the corrective for all that is what you're talking about because the Ronald Reagan voter eight years, the George Dukmajian vote eight years, the Pete Wilson voter eight years, and that's 24 years. And the first term of Schwarzenegger before he went woke another four. That's 28 years of good governance that created this wonderful state. And I could even add Pat Brown, he was an old fashioned liberal, but man, he sued the Sierra Club to make the Aqueduct. So I would even say 32 years. And what happened that we didn't continue that was in that interregnum, we had 16 years of Jerry Brown Jr. And we had Gavin Newsom, we're now going to have six. So we had 22 years of this crazy. And we had a year, some two years of Gray Davis and they had certain legislative support and people left. So there are no Reagan voters, there are no Duke Mason voters. They're gone. I know that I went to Boise, Idaho not too long ago and people said, hey, Victor, it wasn't because I was a celebrity, just because I had lived in this area. And I found out that a quarter of Fresno was in Boise, you know, and I knew these people. And the point I'm making is in this federalist system, you vote with your feet. And then the blue state gets bluer and bluer and bluer and the red state gets better and better, but also redder and redder, the blue gets worse and worse and worse because they're left to their own devices. And somebody's going to say, well, Victor, there is a self correcting system and it's called collapse. As all of these upper middle class, entrepreneurial, hard working people leave the state and more indigents and immigrants come in that need social support, there's fewer. And only 1% of the households now pay 50% of the income tax. And they have squeezed the fruit so much, there's only the pulp left. They've killed the golden goose. He's gone. So something is going to happen very quickly, I think in California. And my metaphor this week is this very quiet rural road I've lived on my entire life. I counted them yesterday. I was out for five minutes and there were eight, eight semi trucks full of gravel going about 65 miles an hour with, I would call them fairly without demonization, ethnic immigrant drivers who were breaking every one of them passed A car with a semi truck going 65. There was no law enforcement. And what were they doing? They were bringing gravel to the high speed rail off ramp project that hasn't laid one foot up track after 17 years and spent 20 billion doll. That summed up what California is doing right now. Those truck drivers are a danger at the speed they're going, without any concern for the speed and the danger of having 20 tons of gravel in their trucks or sand. And then what are they doing? They're just like, there's no point to it. That rail is never going to work. As I said, if you gave the state and said I will pay for all the rail, I will pay for that, I will build it and give it to you free. All you have to do is operate it. They couldn't do it. It'll look like bart. BART won't even allow you to have videos because they're afraid that you'll capture a criminal of the victim binary and then you will stereotype him. So they don't even want to help.
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A
You to know that happened in Sacramento, I think recently some light rail. There was a guy, well, he was shot by cops, but his father, he got like $200,000 compensation.
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B
Absolutely. But they don't know how to operate it and they wouldn't do it. And the average person that has any wherewithal, if you said to him you drive to Fresno to San Jose or take a high speed rail 50 years ago, if he said you can get from Fresno to San Jose for $30 in an hour, he would do it. He'd be inconvenienced. But now after what we saw with De Carlos Brown and what we saw in Chicago with Bernina and we know that they will be let out and we know that no one cares about the dead and doesn't remember them at all. They're just unlucky victims. So they would say to themselves, why would I leave the safety of my car and get into that high speed rail when a I would be entrusting my life to somebody going 130 miles an hour or 40 who was probably higher on DEI principles and is incompetent. And more importantly that if they won't really have videos or if they do have videos and somebody attacks me, they won't release it. And so I have no idea how safe it is. So it's headed like this and California is. And they're going to keep voting and voting for it. The people who don't need the money because they're wealthy and they can Give it. And they feel good about themselves and the people who want to scam the system. The only hope that I have is that many of the people who are called minorities, Asians, Mexican Americans, Indian Americans are solidly middle and upper middle class and I talk to them all the time and they are paying an exorbitant amount of taxes. And they may have been first generation recipients of California largesse, but now they're not. They're the ones that are paying and they're paying the high taxes and they are irate. And I don't know whether they will galvanize politically in time to throw the rascals out. I have no idea. But it's building because they can't live here anymore. It's impossible with the price of electricity, the quality of the schools, the crime and all of this.
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A
And I just read today, or was it yesterday? Phillips 66 is closing its.
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B
Yes. So is Valero. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be, I don't know, two or three hundred thousand barrels a day we find.
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A
And people ten bucks a gallon is in the future.
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B
Yeah, people will, they will get very, very angry and they're going to get very angry even when you have $35 billion in unemployment fraud and you have 25 and homeless fraud and you. Now Gavin Newsom says he can't give any more free health care to illegal aliens. But that's just a. That's just phonics. It's just a euphemism because you can go into any, trust me, I've done it twice. Go into any ER in a very impoverished area. And that is the general practitioner for the illegal community. It is free. Everything's free. And they will go to the emergency room and get good care. But that doesn't count as extending because we're a humane nation. If somebody comes in with a cut foot, we're not going to say, are you legal or illegal? But it doesn't mean that we're not giving free health care to illegal alien. He knows that everything that comes out of his mouth in some ways is not true with Gavin Newsom because the main truth is that he inherited a workable state. And as mayor, lieutenant governor, city council, person, supervisor or whatever, and governor, he's got over 35, 33 or four years at the epicenter of this disaster. And everything he's voted for has helped destroy this state. And he knows it. And I don't think he's going to get the nomination. I really don't because I think there's just too Much of a record there.
- [32:10]
A
Well, Victor, we're going to take a break and when we come back from that, we're going to get the final verdict of these final massive troubling issues. And we'll do that when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are recording on Christmas Eve and this episode is up on January 10th. And thanks folks for following all this, this idea. We had 16 issues that were troubling and we had head to head battles between them. And we're down to four issues. And the out I want to give you, Victor, is maybe the way to consider these things is like the Horsemen of the apocalypse. There are four of them that are riding shoulder to shoulder as opposed to to one. But maybe you don't want to go that way. Maybe there is one of these and they are the ruin of cities, the destruction of the nuclear family, the ignorance of post Children following 16 years of education in America and the growth in secularism or irreligiosity. Maybe there's one of those issues that you find most troubling. But are they all sort of equal in your eyes? What's your take on this?
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B
They're all part of the same monster. They're all components. So the lack of education means that things don't work. And the blue state, blue city ideology politically ensures that they don't work. And the morality behind that, without a divine sanction, shows that they're not going to work. And we could go on to all 16. It's all part of a component. And it's like the hind legs, the horns of the revelation beast, you know what I mean? It's the tail and it's a combination. In these blue states where the schools do not train the people, the family is completely destroyed, people are atheist. And then the blue city tries to address those pathologies by giving, giving, giving and taking from somebody else who's productive. And the productive people leave. And so a Mayor Johnson or Gavin Newsom or Jasmine Crockett or Elizabeth Warren, they're just the same person with a thousand faces. They really are. They must have a factory somewhere that makes these people because they all are privileged, whether political power or financial power. And they feel that they want to experiment on the body politic like it's a white rat. We're lab rats. Let's just try. I know. We'll mandate mileage and Ford will have to spend $30 billion on the Ford Lightning. And then we'll tell them to bill. It's a Wonderful truck. And then people will buy it, they'll pay 80,000, and then they'll discover that when they're out on the trail and they're loading it up with camping equipment and pulling a boat, it doesn't get 300 miles, it gets more like 100. And oh, now we're going to cancel that $33 billion project. That's what they're going to do. And all of these experiments don't work. The windmills don't work. The solar panels are not cost to benefit efficiently. And maybe fusion nuclear power will save us, maybe more natural gas. Gavin says now he's going to give 2,000 permits. What good would that do Gavin, if you pump the oil, if you don't can't refine it, especially if you can't refine it to your very, very, very specific, unique 1 out of 50 state requirements for gas. And you're going to import gas from Japan, probably, if you shut down these refineries, because there won't be anybody who can make it because no other state makes it, because no other state is as crazy as your state. And so all of this component we've talked to is. I'm not trying to be too depressing on Christmas Eve, but it's all very worrisome. But what is good about this country is still the majority. And there's an antithesis to that. I try to read the letters as many I can from our viewers, and they're just really heartwarming. They're dear Mr. Hansen, my husband and I worked side by side in a factory for 40 years. We bought our house. We have 10 grandkids. My son went to Vietnam. His son. My son went to Gulf War, I went to Vietnam, he went to Gulf War, and my other. It's just really inspirational stories about the people who keep the country going. And it is that model. And I think they're finally saying we're kind of the proverbial sleeping dragon. And we've been poked and poked and poked and poked and ridiculed and made fun of. We're sick of the late night comics. We're sick of the deplorables. We're sick that people call us garbage. We're sick of being called sexist, racist, nativist. We're not going to listen. We're not going to take it anymore. But I think that no more fetal position. No more fetal positions. Make it all go away. I really don't. I think that. And then there's one other element to all of this, Trump. Whatever people say about him. And I've said he's crude and people and he's uncouth, but I mean it in a superficial sense because crudity is being mean to people. I don't mean rhetorically. I mean depriving them of economic advantages or getting them blown up in Kabul or not protecting the country's national interest or a 9.1 inflation rate in one year. That's cruel. That is cruel. And Trump's not doing that. And all you have to do is look at the Wall Street Journal and look for the adverb Unexpectedly. And you will see unexpectedly, there's 4.2 growth. Unexpectedly, the inflation rate went down to 2 point. Unexpectedly, most of the jobs that were gained were for citizens and most of the jobs that were lost were for non citizens. Unexpectedly, there was a record year in military recruitment. Unexpectedly, there is almost no illegal immigration. So things are getting very good. And I have a feeling that when you combine this calculus of $10 trillion in foreign investment with another 10 trillion in nuclear fusion plants and AI and biotech and all these new technologies that are starting to be reified and the deregulation and tax reductions in the big beautiful bill and this Doug Burgum, gosh, I mean, he's going full blast and 14 million barrels almost, they'll get up to 15. That's incredible.
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A
He put out a great analysis of the BS of the wind power the other day. Just really, really quite impressive and almost sinful that these lefties with these turbines, each turbine itself, whatever power could actually generate is less than the power it takes to make the damn thing. So why I just drove over, we.
- [40:14]
B
Just drove back from Stanford on Pacheco Pass. And they're the biggest turbines I've ever seen. And it was winter and not one was moving. There was no wind, nothing, nada. And then I'm out at my farm and I have 44 panels and we have had an inversion layer for prior to two weeks with no sun. We didn't see the sun for two weeks and now we have four days of rain. And I looked at, there's no generation. So I'm talking to you from the grid. And for all the talk about wind and solar, they're not working in California when it's an inversion layer and it's raining. Right now we're dependent on one nuclear plant at Diablo Canyon for 20%. And the rest of the is either imported coal, generated electricity from our neighbors or hydroelectric from Oregon or our own hydroelectric or own natural gas. That's it. And so it doesn't work. And I think people will find that out, I hope. I think we're going to have an economic renaissance in the first two quarters of next year. I think we're going to have economic growth well over 4%. I think inflation will be down below 2%. It's hard to predict, but I think interest rates are going to fall and we're going to see a big a huge boom. And we saw this in 2019. And then Covid hit. And I will guarantee you that the left will think of something. They either try to shut down the government. If they went in the midterm, they'll try to do something, but they will not enjoy the bounty that their fellow citizens will.
- [41:59]
A
Well, Victor, I have to take one more quick break and I'm going to ask you one quick question so we can close out the day. And we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages. And we're back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Hey, folks, I just want to say I didn't do this so I could make a plug for myself, but go to civilthoughts.com, sign up for Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society, comes out every Friday, 14 recommended readings. You're going to love it. I know you will. And thanks for those who have done so. Victor, I know I'm springing this on you, but happy days are here again. Maybe it seems the last few days the news has been very good economically. And yeah, it looks like more to follow. I'm wondering, on the attack front now, looking ahead to the November elections. We mentioned it earlier in this episode, the fraud issue, the massive numbers. The numbers, I mean, they're just staggering. Minnesota, $10 billion in fraud. Does it even have $10 billion?
- [43:08]
B
It's climbing, too. It's climbing. Now. I read that there could be 12 billion. And it's not just 170 Somalis. It's it's the 170, 200, 300 that organize it. But it's the other people who are recipients of this money. It's larger than the gross domestic product of Somalia.
- [43:27]
A
Somalia, sure. But then you look at California, it's like $100 billion in fraud.
- [43:31]
B
You know, I can see it, though. I know that people think, well, Victor's just railing about California. But I wrote Mexifornia in 2002 as an article in the book in 2003, and I said it was going to happen like this. I got really attacked by, you know, I Got attacked by, I got attacked by people like James Q. Wilson and mainstream conservatives and Milton Friedman. They thought that open borders were great. So it's cumulative and it's been going on. But you can see it. You can see it when I drive through California and I see farms and then all of a sudden I see a house with 30 people living there and third world condition. Or I see, I go to a supermarket and there's a special room for theft and maybe one out of every three I see somebody come out of that room and just grab somebody that has been stealing in the store. Every three or four visits I go to a particular place that happens. Or I go to the parking lot and if I get there at six in the morning, they have the sweeper out. It's just a total garbage. People just. Or when I go to a particular store and there's the grocery baskets, you know, that you get out, they're all lined up under a stall and you have to find seven or eight before you can find one that doesn't have newspaper, Kleenex, handy, wipes, you know what I mean in there? Just a general coarsening and a disintegration of civilized life. Life. And that's just a superficial. Or I roll my eyes now and maybe four years ago the checkers would get angry if they saw me do that, but now they get angry and now there's the person that goes in there without English fluency and starts this ritual where they bring out the EBT and the WIC cards and there are five, six, seven of them. And then they're expired or they're not in their names. And then they divide up the little thing, they chop it up. This is for cash. That's Coca Cola or alcohol. And this is for a wick. And this is for this. These are just on the bottom end. And then when you see the crime and I look at the local papers and it's almost every day somebody turns up dead in a field or an orchard or I walked yesterday morning. It just. Why does somebody put an industrial sized refrigerator in an almond orchard that must weigh half a ton? Or why does somebody, when they know this is a natural water thing, why would they go take six bags of garbage and throw it out there in a pond? Why would they do that? Or why, you know, when I walk now I have to have an electric shock stick because I do. It has batteries in it because I would say every 10th walk there's a wild dog that's been dumped and you don't know if they're going to bite you because they have no call and you don't want to get rabies shots, but you might have to. You don't know where it came from. And this was the safest, most stable area in California. And I can see it in Palo Alto. I can see it everywhere. I can see it in the big cities in Los Angeles. I think I said we were. We had to go to San Los Angeles at 2:00.00. And I thought, oh my gosh. Going down to downtown Los Angeles at 2:00'. Clock. It was a ghost town. It was a ghost town. And that shopping center, Westview. And gosh, I could never. I always say, I don't want to go to that place. I cannot find a park. There's nobody there. It's a ghost town. Part of it's Amazon. I understand that. But there has been a. The coarsening of civilization and the lack of respect for the law. And it's starting to. And we're all big supporters of legal, diverse and numerically feasible immigration. But not 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 70% coming here with no English, no nothing, no idea what America's like. No desire to integrate, assimilate, no desire of the host to ask them to do that. 500,000 criminals, it doesn't work. And who would do that?
- [48:08]
A
I'm going to get in trouble here. But there are some cultures that. Are you just talking about litter essentially earlier? There's some cultures that are aloof to the concept of not throwing things here or there on the side of the road or in the trash here or there. So I walk.
- [48:27]
B
Part of my walk is along the rural side of the road. And I now have to walk way almost into the orchard because of these trucks, because I don't know if they're going to go off the road at that speed. But when I walk there, I always say to myself, what's new today? So big mattress is there on the side of the road. It's still there. And because they told me not to do certain things before this operation, I can't go pick it up in the truck and drive. And then I see, I saw a big bag of McDonald's yesterday and then I saw some type of. I don't know what it was. It fell off a truck. It was a long section of plastic pipe with a break in it. And it's just trash and it represents what's going on in the country. And then just when you get depressed, you see that there's hope, there's people that don't do that. And the person that I rent my orchard to, Furman Campos, he comes from a family of Basque. They came here with nothing. They created one of the most successful, you know, Tony Campos. Yeah. They made one of the most successful almonds farming and processing in the country. And they've so enriched American life. They work like crazy. And when he's, when he drives by and his men and they see that on the property and they go by once a week and they just take it, they. They clean it, it looks immaculate. But in that week, the forces of decivilization overwhelm it. He's the force of civilization. And so we know that immigration works. When I look at some of the Sikh community, I look at the Armenian American, the Greek American, the Japanese American. My gosh, it's all success stories and it's enriched the country. And why would you mortgage that legacy by just destroying the border and then bringing in people from the poorest area in huge numbers and not asking them for the elements of the melting pot? It doesn't make any. And you know, there's these cities. I think you sent me something about a city in Massachusetts where they bragged that they were the first Palestinian city.
- [50:43]
A
No, it's Patterson, New Jersey, the home of Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello is.
- [50:49]
B
He said it was. Didn't the mayor say it's the first Palestinian.
- [50:52]
A
Yes. City in America? Yeah.
- [50:55]
B
What if somebody said that to an immigrant? What if they said this is the first Swedish America, this is the first. Not American, this is the first Swedish city. First Swedish city. That's what it's going to be when that happens. It's a tourist attraction. When Solvang says we're going to be the first Danish, it's like Disneyland. Right. It's not serious. Or Kingsburg, California tries to have a Swedish theme to it, but it's not an exclusionary idea like that we're the first Palestinian or Dearborn. It's not going to work. And I don't know, it's kind of like just poking, poking, poking. The middle class citizen of all different races, all different ethnic, but the guy that gets up and his wife, and they work every single day, they're not on public assistance. And you just keep increasing the taxes, increasing the energy, increasing this. And then you add insult to injury by saying, and you're an oppressor or you're a victimizer and we're taking this from you, or we're doing this because you're not as moral as these other people. But when you see the Other people. You're saying I am as moral. Moral, if not more moral.
- [52:06]
A
Amen.
- [52:07]
B
And that, that's what's, that's the problem.
- [52:09]
A
You don't belong on Turtle island or whatever the hell like they call this Turtle.
- [52:13]
B
Turtle Island. Yeah, Turtle Island. And I would just say to Gavin because he's going to try to approve this commission he said is going to expropriate land and give it to. Just ask them when you get a malignancy, who's going to take care of it on Turtle Island? It's going to be somebody that. Yes. So the people from Turtle island will go somewhere to get a non Turtle island oncologist and surgeon, I guarantee you that. And they should go somewhere to get that. They're entitled to that care. But it doesn't make any sense to deprecate and demonize the western tradition and call it settler colonialism, imperialism and then turn around and try to tap into all of that technology and that political, economic, social culture that created this vast amount of wealth and livability and say I hate these people and everything about them is bad. But I want this now. I want this, I want this truck, I want this surgery, I want this gadget, I want this iPhone. That comes from the western tradition. Doesn't come from, whether you like it or not, it does not come from indigenous native American culture. They have a lot of good things about it, but that's not one of them is a sophisticated technology that adds, that allow that makes the rougher edges of life livable.
- [53:43]
A
Well, Victor, you've been as usual terrific. We end this four episode process with a four way tie or they're all part of the same monster. The ruin of cities, the destruction of the nuclear family, the lack of knowledge of our allegedly quote unquote educated youth and the growth in irreligiosity. And I thank you for all the thoughts and explanations you've shared, my friend. And again, this is after the New Year when everyone's seeing this, but I want to wish you, Victor, and the great Sammy Wink and Mrs. Hanson and your family a blessed Christmas and a happy New Year. And the same I hope, by all our listeners and viewers. So thanks very much. And you get the last word, Victor.
- [54:35]
B
Well, I appreciate everything. And when you hear this, I'm going to have a procedure on December 30, Tuesday and I will be on the other side. So I will be on the way back.
- [54:48]
A
Yes, the other side. We have clarify.
- [54:51]
B
I'm getting the less. Oh, I don't mean on the other side. I mean on the other side of the operation, ready to strangle if they. If whatever this thing is, we know what it is, if it's not cut out, I'll strangle it myself. Okay, very good.
- [55:10]
A
Thanks, Victor. Thanks, everyone.
- [55:12]
B
Okay, God bless. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please, like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.