Victor Davis Hanson: The Danger of Dumbing Down American Students

Summary

Podcast Summary: Victor Davis Hanson: The Danger of Dumbing Down American Students

Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Host: Victor Davis Hanson with Jack Fowler
Episode Title: The Danger of Dumbing Down American Students
Release Date: January 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson, noted historian and classicist, joins host Jack Fowler to navigate a series of existential threats and cultural challenges facing the United States. Using a “bracket” format of key concerns—ranging from the threat of rogue nuclear actors to the decline of the nuclear family and the intellectual decay of students—Hanson contrasts foreign and domestic dangers, ultimately focusing on the insidious unraveling of American social fabric and education.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Rogue Nukes vs. Ruination of American Cities

[05:52–12:47]

• Rogue Nuclear Threats:

  • Hanson quickly dismisses the likelihood of established nuclear powers such as Russia or China using nukes due to deterrence and mutual destruction. Instead, he identifies North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran as plausible sources of "rogue" nuclear threats.
  • He notes the relative manageability of this threat via existing missile defense systems and deterrence upgrades being pursued.
  • Quote: “So that's a problem with an identifiable solution. But our cities [...] that is harder. And so I think that's the greater worry because it's insidious.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 06:34)

• Ruination of Major Cities:

  • The greater threat, in Hanson’s assessment, is the decline of American (mostly “blue”) cities, driven by failed policies: lax law enforcement, over-taxation, regulatory overload, unsustainable pensions, DEI-driven leadership, and minority tensions.
  • The exodus of the middle class, unchecked growth of an underclass supported by subsidies, and dominance of a wealthy elite insulated from policy consequences have resulted in urban decay reminiscent of ancient Rome’s decline.
  • Quote: “The cycle is destroying these cities and people know it and they're leaving. And the blue mayors just call it racism, racism, racism. But eventually what's going to happen is the professional classes...are going to leave.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 11:07)

2. Gain-of-Function Pathogens vs. Destruction of the Nuclear Family

[18:02–27:55]

• Gain of Function Pathogens:

  • Hanson recounts recent Chinese efforts to infiltrate U.S. biosafety with lab incidents and importation of pathogens. While serious, he argues that future incidents may be more effectively deterred with firm responses and heightened awareness post-COVID.
  • Quote: “If we have another SARS outbreak, a SARS 3...I think [Trump] will destroy it. I really do. So they know that.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 19:08)

• Destruction of the Nuclear Family:

  • Hanson regards the unraveling of the nuclear family as a more profound concern, attributing its decline to affluence, changing gender roles, societal acceptance of divorce, and the disappearance of multi-generational households.
  • Special mention is made of its effects in minority communities, linking high rates of male absence to crime.
  • He laments the absence of positive family models in media and music, reflecting a societal “yearning” for past familial bonds.
  • Quote: “There is no mainstream normative majority...multi generational rock of stability socially, economically, politically. And I can remember that...” (Victor Davis Hanson, 25:50)

3. Radical Islam vs. Education & Knowledge Freefall

[34:38–47:36]

• Radical Islam:

  • Hanson again cautions against overestimating the threat, suggesting radical Islam poses limited existential danger to America due to technological inferiority and the U.S.’s overwhelming power, should it choose to wield it without restraint.
  • Quote: “Radical Islam can't hurt the United States abroad, they don't have the technological wherewithal to do it...we fought that battle on their terms, not ours.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 39:22; also repeated at [00:00])

• American Students’ Ignorance:

  • Hanson is deeply disturbed by the intellectual and educational decline in young Americans. He argues that therapeutic, ideologically-driven curricula have supplanted basics in math, science, and language, promoting a culture of victimhood and prolonged adolescence.
  • He contrasts his own rural, poor but effective schooling in the past with today’s graduates, asserting today’s students would fare poorly against those from the 1960s in basic academic skills.
  • Quote: “It's something about our young people that there's not a code, an ethos that says, I am 10, I'm 11...I'm going to go to school every single day...The result is, I get really tired of all these leftists that brag on themselves, look what we've done.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 40:55 & 46:34)

4. Secularism vs. Emasculation of Young Men

[50:12–55:53]

• Secularism and Irreligiosity:

  • Hanson identifies growing secularism and loss of religious and moral framework as the most dangerous, referencing the Founders’ view that the republic required a moral, religious people for self-governance to work.
  • He shares personal anecdotes and musings on fate, guidance, and the “messages” received in life, concluding that meaning and purpose—beyond the material—are essential to societal health.
  • Quote: “Without a belief that we're here for some purpose...It's going to be kind of a dual fight between our physical bodies and...our soul. And it just—it explains everything.” (Victor Davis Hanson, 51:01)

• Emasculation of Young Men:

  • While acknowledging it as a concern, Hanson places more weight on irreligiosity as the cause of society’s ailments—implying emasculation is one of many symptoms of a broader moral decline.

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On Urban Decline:
  “It was very sad to read what Procopius talks about: The fountains are choked up, the statues are falling, a lot of the marble has been melted down...and it's all in decline. I think that's already happened [to American cities].”
  (Victor Davis Hanson, 11:54)

• On Family Gatherings:
  “My mom would get up at 3 in the morning with these two 25 pound turkeys and...You don't have [big family holidays] anymore. In my family, you don't even. And I think everybody yearns for that.”
  (Victor Davis Hanson, 23:01)

• On Modern Education:
  “A therapeutic curriculum in the school...demonizes men. It demonizes white people. White men. . . . And then you, you don't tell people. . . . It's prolonged adolescence, it's the toxic masculinity, it's the curriculum, it's the therapeutic, it's the DEI.”
  (Victor Davis Hanson, 45:50–46:34)

• On Morality & Democracy:
  “The majority of the people, because they will be determining everybody else's life, have to be good people. Otherwise the democracy just reflects the worst and it's worse than . . . a bad king.”
  (Victor Davis Hanson, 54:07)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Threat assessment: Nukes vs. urban decay – [05:52–12:47]
• Gain of function vs. family breakdown – [18:02–27:55]
• Islamic extremism vs. educational failure – [34:38–47:36]
• Secularism vs. emasculation – [50:12–55:53]
• Historical parallels and family anecdotes – Throughout; esp. [23:01], [28:14–33:40]
• Final four “biggest dangers” recap – [56:22–end]

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Tone & Style Notes

The conversation is frank, historically informed, and tinged with nostalgia and urgency. Hanson weaves personal and national narrative, drawing on classical analogies and generational anecdotes to connect America’s present cultural crises to the collapses of previous civilizations. The tone is at once mournful, cautionary, and steeped in dry humor—peppered with personal stories that accentuate the magnitude of the country's decay, especially in education and family structure.

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Takeaway

For Hanson, the most perilous threats to the U.S. aren’t foreign adversaries or immediate disasters, but the quiet implosion of civic, intellectual, and familial foundations—slow-moving yet profound dangers that, if unaddressed, risk dooming American civilization from within.

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Next Episode Preview:
Hanson will revisit his four “finalist” issues—urban decline, nuclear family collapse, educational freefall, and rising secularism—to determine which is the gravest threat to America's future.

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Transcript

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Radical Islam can't hurt the United States abroad, they don't have the technological wherewithal to do it. And every time that we've mistakenly gone into an Islamic country and not done well, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq, the reason was is that there were necessary restraints or unnecessary, whichever way you look at it, that we didn't use the full extent of our power and we could. In other words, we fought that battle on their terms, not ours. We didn't do what the Russians did when they wanted to subdue Chechnya, they just leveled Grozny. So what I'm getting at, if you wanted to get into an existential war with radical Islam, you could, and you could win it. And a cost of benefit analysis, maybe it wouldn't be worth it. And a moral, maybe it would be questionable. But if you were an extremist, you could do it. Foreign.

[Jack Fowler]

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 from Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he's a senior contributor to the Daily Signal, which is the happy home of this podcast we are recording before Christmas. It's actually Christmas Eve. And God bless, Hope everyone has had a happy Christmas and a happy New Year. Because this episode will be up on, I think, Victor, January 9th. And this is the third of four special episodes we're doing on issues that keep you up at night. And we have 16 issues. And Victor, on the previous two, excuse me, of these special episodes has helped winnow down the. Sorry, 16. I forget what we called them. Exactly. And now we're dealing with the Hate eight. The Hate eight. So we have eight issues. We're going to pair them off, two against each other. So that means four topics. And we're going to get to the first one, which are rogue nukes versus the ruination of our cities. And we'll get Victor's take on which of those is the worst when we come back from these important messages.

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor's got a website, by the way, the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com it costs $65 a year to subscribe, and you would want to do that because twice a week Victor writes an exclusive piece for the Blade Blade of Perseus and once a week he does an exclusive video. If you're a fan of Victor's writing and wisdom, why you're not a subscriber yet is beyond me. But if you just want to take it for a test run, you can do one month $6.50 discounted for the full year. Anyway, Victor, to the topic at hand. You know, by rogue this whole the premise of this are issues that are above and beyond the daily headlines, although many of them are get enmeshed with the daily headlines. But on rogue nukes, I do want to add a little caveat because we discussed it on a previous episode. You know, there has to be some qualification on your part like is this really a possibility? Do I worry about about this? What's the plausibility of it? Of course it would be catastrophic if there were rogue nukes. But how, how plausible is that? Versus so that's you do with it as you wish. But then we're going to compare it up against the ruination of many American cities. Not only American cities, but major cities throughout the world. So what worries you the most of these two issues, Victor?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, when you say rogue nukes, you're talking about countries that would not be subject to deterrence because China and Russia have a lot to lose and they know that if they were to send nukes they would cease to exist. So Israel is not a problem with nukes. France is not a problem with nukes. England is not a problem with nukes. India is not a problem with nukes. I don't think Russia and China are at this point, just not because they wouldn't want a nuke us but because they're subject to deterrence. So that leaves in my mind three possible players. North Korea, that seems lunatic. Pakistan, that's an Islamic country and we don't know what Iran will do in the next five years. But my point is they, they're not going to have vast fleets of nukes and maybe they'll get hypersonic technology from Russia or China. But we do have a rudimentary missile system that can knock some of them down, one or two in Alaska, etc And Donald Trump is building a golden dome and he is working on our deterrent rebooting the triad of submarines, bombers and missiles. Okay, so that's a problem with an identifiable solution. But our cities, and we're talking now about blue cities, we're not talking about Miami, we're not talking about, about. Yeah, yeah. We're not talking about Salt Lake City, we're not talking about Bozeman, Montana. We're talking about Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Detroit, the same old characters, the blue city in a blue state or a blue city like a Memphis or somewhere in a red state. And that is harder. And so I think that's the greater worry because it's insidious and it's not that paradigm of high taxation, lax criminal justice system, lax law enforcement, unsustainable pension system, over regulation, minority and ethnic tensions, mayors that are DEI for the most part. Why does that exist? And that exists for two reasons, actually, three reasons. If you look at those cities like Chicago or New York or Boston, the middle class is leaving. They're going to rural places. Here in California, if you go to the foothills outside Sacramento for maybe a hundred miles and you go drive through these rural, beautiful scenic roads and you think you're in the middle of nowhere and it's nighttime. It's all lit up, Jack. It's all lit up with lights on every hillside, 1, 2, 3, 10 acre home sites. And who are they? They're people who are fleeing the Bay Area and Los Angeles area. So the Middle. And that's the good news for California. 300,000 plus leave the state. So the middle class is leaving these cities. The very wealthy don't care about taxes. I mean, when Tom Steyer or Mitt Romney say I want to be higher taxed, that's just nothingness. Because they have so much money, they could be taxed or not. They don't care. It's just a virtue signaling performance art act. But the wealthy then approve of these policies because it doesn't affect them. The Nancy Pelosi's, the Barbara Boxers, the late Dianne Feinstein, the Gavin Newsoms, the Nancy Pelosi's. They feel good psychologically, that they're left wing and they're fair and just, but they never take a hit because they have so much accrued capital that protects them. So then you look at the third factor and that is the subsidized poor. And we talked about that last time. Some of These subsidies are 70 or $80,000 per household. But that's not the whole story because we have an enormous black market. If you go to downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco on certain times, these canteens and these people in the streets of New York, they're all selling for cash. It's a huge here. If I drive for 10 miles, I can find maybe 10 corner canteens. And I'm not just going to get ethnic food. I'm going to get everything from clothes to coffees to bicycles. You can buy anything there. But there's one thing in common. There's no sales tax. And so that model of a few very rich that promulgate policies that are detrimental, but they make them feel good and they're exempt from the consequences. A mass of poor who feels they're victimized and therefore they have a moral right to massive subsidies to get driver's license if they want to drive a truck without audit or if, you know, they have a little welfare fraud, if you're in the Somali, it's okay because they're a victim. That cycle is destroying these cities and people know it and they're leaving. And the blue mayors just call it racism, racism, racism. But eventually what's going to happen is the professional classes, which are mostly, not all, but mostly white, Asian, Indian, are going to leave. They're going to leave because they're not going to feel safe or they're going to just stay in the suburbs and the cities are going to be non. They're going to be like Rome.

[Jack Fowler]

You.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Know, when the great, when the great General Belisaris, the Byzantine general tried to reformulate the Roman Empire. He went into rome in the 530s and it had been in Germanic hands for 50 years. And it's very sad to read what Procopius talks about. The fountains are choked up, the statues are falling. A lot of the marble has been melted down for lime, for whitewash on houses. All of the lead clamps that kept building blocks together, I mean, sealed the steel so the steel wouldn't rust on the clamps. That's been pried off to use for, you know, various things. And it's all in decline. I think that's already happened. When you go into areas of blue cities today, it's just decline.

[Jack Fowler]

Who's left? Who would be left with the sense or just the common sense to say, okay, gosh, we gotta turn this around. I think we discussed this once before. New York City did this. Giuliani was elected, but there were still significant enclaves of, I would say, sensible neighborhoods, sensible people in sensible neighborhoods.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But what year did he first get? Was it 90?

[Jack Fowler]

Early.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Early 90s, 92, 94 somewhere.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But that was still a period when you had some consensus that you were having Newt Gingrich work with Bill Clinton. And we didn't have any debt deficits for four years. They were left wing, but they were restrained because they felt they had not won 50% in any of the, the elections. And they were very worried about the midterms, which they took a schlacking the first time like Obama did. But that's a very different climate than today.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I just don't see who would be around to pick up the pieces in these major cities.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And no, I don't see it.

[Jack Fowler]

And you've also mentioned before, Victor, it's much easier to destroy than it is to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It is very easy to destroy things. Yeah, destroy the border is very, very easy. You just let people in and then you just say come. But to catch them, send them back to build a wall, that's hard to do. Find them when they're here. That's what's so ironic about the left. They just sat there while we made a mockery of immigration law, destroyed the border. They didn't utter a peep. And then all of a sudden when people come in to clean up the mess and enforce the law, then suddenly they're obsess. Fairness and equity and legality doesn't make any sense.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Where does Baghdad Bob begin and Mayorkas end or something like that? That they could just lie, Bald face, lie about reality.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right.

[Jack Fowler]

Right in front of you. He went the border. It's just, it's still staggering how that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

New Yorkist would say the border is secure. And it was like Baghdad, Bob. There was no planes flying over Iraq and you'd hear the bombs dropping behind him and you would see him on the border and people just swarming across. He was, he was the worst public servant I think in my lifetime. Bureaucrat, cabinet official. Yeah, I can't think of any worse than he was.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, to our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for a correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. And we're talking about 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 and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in a bank. So if you believe that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 844-7991-9184-4790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-9191844 7909191 or visit ProtectWithVictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, before we head for a break, we're going to take on another dust up between two issues that will keep us awake at night. We're here dealing with the hateful eight on its way to the finality four. The next two issues are the gain of function, pathogens as something that keeps you up at night versus the destruction of the nuclear family. Which thing is of greater concern?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, it's kind of the same paradigm. One is insidious and among us, and we know it's occurring and it's deleterious, but we can't. The medicine seems worse than the disease and the other is foreign, but it's identifiable. And so what I mean by that is we know what the Chinese are doing. They're sending in scientists, graduate students. We had in the last two years, we've had, as I said earlier, people arrested for E. Coli importation, for wheat fungus importation, and of course, in my neighborhood, this bio lab that had all sorts of vitals that were very dangerous, run by a Chinese national who had abandoned it and split. So, but I think China's at the point, it knows that if it keeps doing that, if. What do I mean by that? If we have another SARS outbreak, a SARS 3 that comes out of that lab, what do you think Trump's going to do? I think he'll destroy it. I really do. So they know that. And there's no tolerance for it. And we have a bio program and we're better at it than they are. So there is a deterrence there. Once the people wake up, I don't think the left will be able, like Fauci and Collins, to lie anymore and say if there's another bio incident of a manufactured virus that kills 1 million Americans and sickens permanently 20 million, that anybody's going to say, oh, this is not that bad, or, you know, Covid's an invention, no, we'll do something about it. But on the nuclear family, it's, you have to know what the causes of the destruction were. The part of it was that we all got more affluent and leisured, so we had more temptations for our appetites. You know, you go on the Internet, you can do things you couldn't do when the nuclear family was intact. There is no more multi generational nuclear family. People can say, yes, there is, Victor. I know you guys that listen, have your grandparents and your grandchildren in the same house or compound, that's great. But most people don't. And that's why rest homes proliferate. And then there is the emancipation, which is great, of women. So women were able to make money and they now, you know, they make more per capita, I think, by gender than do men. And they make the majority of graduate students in the humanities. They make, they're the clearly the majority of college students. 54, 55% of most college campuses and so it's very hard for the modern woman to say, I have my BA from Vassar, but I want to get married and have three or four kids and stay married especially. There's no stigma for nuclear family break. There is a greater stigma for religious observance than there is for the breakup of the nuclear family. And by that I mean, I don't just mean divorce. I mean that even within a marriage, people who don't fill their obligations of supporting. We have this deadbeat phenomenon is what I'm getting at. It's not just males who are in the basement, but we have this phenomenon that when males get married, they don't take charge of the nuclear family in the way they used to. You know what I mean? They don't see themselves as the physical protector of the family or the primary breadwinner or. I don't know what it is. It's come kind. I don't know if it's the charges of toxic masculinity or the innervation of masculinity, but it's, it's very serious. And then we don't talk about the black community's disintegration. So that's 12% of the population. 73% of those households do not have a male in them. And the crime rate, as I said earlier, Black males from 14 to 40 comprise about 3% of the population and they account for 50% of violent crime. And that could be ameliorated if they had a nuclear family. But we don't have the mechanisms. Everything is against it, Jack. If you listen to rap music, it's all about do this to the bitch and the popo, the police. It's all a negative, nihilistic, violent, sexual. God, it's awful. And when you look at other types of genres, there's no, in the movies, there's no model of a nuclear family that's intact. It's always, it's, you know, Alice doesn't live here anymore. Or there's always a berserk white, white male wife beater or some woman who's emancipated. But there's no. It's not like a John Wayne Western, you know, like the Searchers or you see that type of family, extended family. And I think everybody misses it. You know, on this particular Christmas, my wife and I are going to be here alone because I can't go out before this operation that's scheduled. By the time people hear this, it'll have happened, but in the same house. I'm having memories of. I Mean, when I grew up, when 10, 11, 12, there was 30 people here. There were us five in my family and then our first cousins four and then our other first cousins were five. Then there were my grandparents, all the aunts and uncles, my paternal grandpa. It was a wonderful jam packed. My mom would get up at 3 in the morning with these two 25 pound turkeys and it was just, you don't have that anymore. In my family, you don't even. And I think everybody yearns for that. They look back at it and one of the nice things, not nice, but of getting kind of ill is I've had relatives I haven't talked to in a while and they have contacted me and they've said they miss that, they miss that, as I do. So I think that that will make a return, I really do.

[Jack Fowler]

It's hard to put that genie back in the bottle, but if you've experienced it like you have and I had growing up, I for a long time lived with my grandmother and we were one of those Italian houses where you knew your third cousins, the Irish you didn't know your first cousins, but the Italians you knew your third cousins. And every day people would come over. It's just a drop. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful thing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It was. I was my grandfather's chauffeur when I was 15 and a half I think for the next three years. And I would be a Stanford graduate student with no time on my hands. And my mother would call me and say, we have to do something. And your grandparents just have to go to Eastern Star in Masonic Lodge Saturday night. And I said, mom, it's Friday night and I have to read 100 pages of Aeschylus and Sophocles in Greek by Monday morning. She said, could you possibly drive down? And I said yes. So I would get my 200,000 mile 544 Ladybug Volvo and my brothers did this as well. And I drive all the way 200 miles in the dark and you know, and then the next morning I would go rake their leaves, mow the lawn and then I would take them to Eastern Star and then I would go have a hamburger at the bowling alley for two hours and then pick them up and bring them home and then usually that night drive all the way back to Palo Alto, I think. And you know, I never. But what was weird, I never, I never got angry about. I always wanted to talk to them.

[Jack Fowler]

Sure, sure.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I think everybody misses that. So I think people are going to start recalibrating their views of the nuclear family. We've had so much of the abnormal. I don't mean that in a negative sense, everybody. I'm just saying the atypical, the drag shows, the trans, the gay marriage movement, all of these different movements, that's fine. It's a free country. As Jon Voight says in our favorite movie. Now, Jack, hey, bro, it's a free country, and it is. But at some point, there has to be a nucleus that you're reacting against, if that's what you want to do. And there is nothing there. There is no mainstream normative majority. 2 parent, 3 children, household, multi generational rock of stability socially, economically, politically. And I can remember that my grandfather had. He was. He had no money, but he had this big checkbook. Remember those old kind of things? They open like a book.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, sure, right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And he had. He was so parsimonious. And when somebody had a funeral, he'd say, now can you come into my office? Well, his office was like a porch with wind blowing in it. It was outside, tacked onto the house. I tried to remodel it and I had to just tear it down. Yeah. And redo it. But then he would take this big and he would hand his check out, and it would be very generous. If my aunt needed a house, it would be a thousand dollars. And then you'd see him in the market. We'd bump into him and he would not buy meat. It was too expensive. So my mom would always tell me, go to the other side of the supermarket and get two or three roast. Don't tell him, and just go put it in his basket. So when he checks out, he will be embarrassed and have to buy it because I know he. He's been so generous. But he can still afford a roast.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know, so that was. That was. You don't see that anymore. And it's good. Good. So, yeah, that. Just to speed things along, I'm more worried about the nuclear family.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, not. Not to. To delay things, but before we take a break, we'll go down a little rabbit hole because you're mentioned about holidays with the families. You did have an. You've talked about this once before. You had an uncle, an uncle Turco or Turk, something like that. Tango. You had to bring him some. Some stuff on Christmas. Was that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I did that for 25. I like tango. Some people in my family didn't. He was my grandmother's brother. He was born deaf. He was 5 5. And he had a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. That made him 5, 8 and he very quickly, you know how he, you know how he was absolutely genius when he was 80, he, he would come by and talk. I had no money. And he'd always, ah, you know how money, you know, you know, you're not going to be anything but, you know, but he didn't. He liked me. Not that he, he ended up with a lot of money and he gave it to his adopted son, who was, I think 48 or something, and his lawyer so much, I shouldn't say that he liked me. He didn't like. He did give me in his will. He did give me in his will a wooden redwood bench, two benches and a table. Oh, wow.

[Jack Fowler]

There you go.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh, and also he before two five gallon buckets of tulip bulbs, which I still have. But he said, I want to tell you how to make money. And he laid it out. It was absolute genius. He got a concession from the city. In those days, you could put gray water, not sewage water, but the gray water into. He knew a widow who had 400 acres. And he said, I will level it myself, so make it farmable if you'll give me half. And she did. So he had 200 acres. Then he, it was located near the sewer farm. So he said to the sewer, you can run this out. And he made kind of concrete pipes and then he planted alfalfa and it grew like crazy. And then this thing was one mile from one of the biggest meatpacking plants in the country. Then he would get this big truck and his wife would go with him. He was deaf. So he wrote it all off as a medical, you know, it was a business expense and he was disabled. And they would go to Montana and they'd buy These cows maybe 20, 46 or 7 times for nothing. And they would come back to Cal and he would put them in these 200 acres. And he had it in 10 different 20 acres so that he just turned all these gates so the sewer wet, wet one day and then five days later it would dry out. And then a falfalfa would split and then the cows would come on. Then he just, he had it and they fattened up and then he got on his horse and he didn't have to pay anything. And he drove him down the side of the road right into the meat packing, the kill zone. And he said, I have no expense. I'm getting paid to get rid of the sewer water. And the sewer water was my nitrogen. And I didn't have to pay anything for the lamb to go like this. And I don't have no trucking to the feedlot. I don't have it. I just make money or you don't know what you're doing.

[Jack Fowler]

Great entrepreneur. Yeah, that's. Anyway, it's nice to have characters like that in a family.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I was thinking of him the other day because I don't, I don't drink, I don't use drugs. I've never smoked a cigarette. And I had this problem with my lung. And he would come in at 90, he lived to be 98. And he'd. I'm gonna have a whiskey. And he'd have two whiskeys and then he'd have a cigarette hanging from his mouth. I have five cigarettes a day. And he lived to be 98. Wow. God bless Uncle Tanko. I have a theory though, and maybe you know, from your own experience, do you feel that people who are self interested and they're not empaths.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, they.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They live longer because they. They don't repress things or they don't try to be calm. I had a daughter who. She could not go to Walmart without picking up a kitten, you know what I mean? And then she would come home or she. If a student came over on a weekend and said, I used to tell students, if you want to come over on weekends and you can and talk to me. And they were complaining about a grade. I said, I can't change your grade. I can't do that. And she'd go, but he was so nice and he worked so hard. Can't you do that? I said, susanna, I can't do that. Well, why not? And that was her whole life and she died very young. I think there's something about that type of personality that if you. If you're very sensitive to the plight, but if you're just consumed with yourself, it's a immune protectorant. You know what I mean?

[Jack Fowler]

I do indeed know what you mean. But I'm not going to tell you about my old man.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But you know certain relatives that they always come over, like my father. He said, victor, it's New Year's Eve and Tango and his wife are alone. And he made the most beautiful. I had. It was like this big platter, you know, and it was all. And I said, now it's your duty. The other boys will not go over there, will. And I want you to deliver this and don't expect anything from him. I said, fine. I'd sit there and he'd give me a drink and he'd say, you know, if you had a cigarette, you you might live long. I, I, I liked, I like Tango. I liked it.

[Jack Fowler]

Characters are build character maybe.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I said, I said to him, langford, why did they call you Tango? Because it was emblazoned on his belts on the back. He said, why do they call me Tango? Because I could do the tango when I was 20.

[Jack Fowler]

Gosh, what a hoot. Well, Victor, we're gonna move on and talk about another important head to head battle between two issues that keep us up at night. The growth and spread of radical Islam versus the educational and knowledge freefall of American students. And we're gonna do that when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. By the way, also on the Daily Signals, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, which is four times a week he does a seven, eight minute video. And I want to encourage folks to go to the Daily Signal on the YouTube and do subscribe. And by the way, if you see a video of Victor, it's real. If it's from the Daily Signal, if it's some other source and he looks a little hanky, report it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

If he looks tan, relaxed, he doesn't have any excursus. It's not me.

[Jack Fowler]

If he's got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know, just one thing very quickly. I wasn't ever critical because when he, his family had nothing. My grandmother, they came from New Mexico, they lived out in Magdalena, New Mexico. And her brothers and her, her 12 year old brother was shot in a saloon. A outlaw shot him because he made too much noise. He was a bar sweep. And they sold their property and went after that guy, my great grandfather, he got a posse and he went out and they got him. But in the process he was not home for two. It was kind of like the Searchers. He was not there for two years. And my great grandmother and 12 children kept that couch and they went broke and they all got on the train and they came to Selma, California and they went broke. And my grandmother needed a job. She was 19. She came out to my grandfather's apricot shed and he hired her and married her. But the point I'm making is when they left, he was called Uncle Baby we called him. He was the youngest, he was 12 years old and he had a horse and they had four horses, that's all they had left. He had just turned 13 and he took those four horses and he rode them all, drove them all the way to Selma, California. I don't know how he did it by himself. And he camped out and he told me about it.

[Jack Fowler]

It's gotta be like 700, 800 miles.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh, yeah. And he was 13 years old when he was 5ft tall.

[Jack Fowler]

Wow.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And then when he got here, he lived in the water tower. They had an old farm, and he lived up in the top by the water tank. So he had it pretty rough. And I admired his courage and his skill. Wow.

[Jack Fowler]

Living in a water tower, that's tough. That makes me think of Stalag 17. Didn't they have. They were hiding up in the water tower?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It was kind of like that. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, less mirthful. And again, there's a seriousness to this special series. Cause there are, you know, every day in the headlines, there are stories just make us mad. But then there are trends and situations in the world that really make us worry us. So this is the whole. The premise of it. There are two worrisome issues. The growth and spread of radical Islam here in America and abroad through Europe, et cetera. That's a real issue. Another serious issue is the. I call it the ignorance of the American student.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Now.

[Jack Fowler]

And these are. These are systemic issues. Can I call them systemic? Which one of these two worries you more, Victor?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, I had glanced down because I keep getting these medical messages of alerts. So we do that because I want to ponder it a little bit. I'm very sorry.

[Jack Fowler]

No, that's all right, Victor. We want you to live.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They send these alerts every 10 minutes. And, you know, it's kind of like the. It's kind of like the seventh book of Thucydides when the Athenian fleet is attacking the Syracusan fleet in the great harbor, and everybody is on the side. And Thucydides has a great thing, and he says, the Athenians watched every element, but some of the Athenians were watching where they won, and some were watching where they were losing. And he says the cacophony, and he has it in quotation mark. We're winning, we're winning, we're winning. And the others say, no, we're losing, we're losing, we're losing. So these messages are that. And then ignore. Or they can be. They're kind of bad news, but then not kind of bad news. You know what I mean? I don't. And I'm going like, I'm an Athenian at the shore, and I don't know if I'm winning the battle or losing it.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay. It's like, maybe on a. On a less serious level, it's. I'm going to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Is this all the paperwork I need? I have this. Is this. Okay, all right, I'm coming. And then you get a note.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

These are lab.

[Jack Fowler]

You're missing. You are. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, lab and scan reports.

[Jack Fowler]

But you think you have, right. At this point as we're talking, there's a solution. A few days ahead and it seems like somebody might pull the rug out from underneath you.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, there's always a solution. That might not be the one you want. Yeah, but there's always a solution.

[Jack Fowler]

We're praying.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So let's go back.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, we're worried about the spread and growth of Islam versus the ignorance of America's students. I mean, pure ignorance of pure lack of knowledge, dumbness as a product.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think it falls into the same category of overt versus insidious. And so this time I'll do the insidious. Well, I'll do the overt first because, you know, radical Islam. Radical Islam can't hurt the United States abroad. They don't have the technological wherewithal to do it. And every time that we've mistakenly gone into an Islamic country and not done well, whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq, the reason was, is that there were necessary restraints or unnecessary, whichever way you look at it, that we didn't use the full extent of our power and we could. In other words, we fought that battle on their terms, not ours. We didn't do what the Russians did when they wanted to subdue Chechnya. They just leveled Grozny. So what I'm getting at, if you wanted to get into an existential war with radical Islam, you could, and you could win it. And a cost to benefit analysis, maybe it wouldn't be worth it. And a moral, maybe it would be questionable. But if you were an extremist, you could do it. However, the other matter of our youth and not being able to. What was the word? Delayed. Would you call it prolonged adolescence?

[Jack Fowler]

Well, you might have not prolonged adolescence and still not know what two plus two times three is.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I'm just trying to say it's something. It's something about our young people that there's not a code, an ethos that says, I am 10, I'm 11, I'm 12, I'm 13, I'm 14, I'm 15, I'm on a curses of norm. I'm going to go to school every single day. I can tell you that everybody screws. If I could use that word around in high school, call it. But there was, at least when I was in school, there Was an idea that you did come to class and you did turn in your homework and you did learn something. I was from a very poor school. I went to a rural school that was very poor. And I went to a high school that was rural and had not a lot of money. But I can tell you, even there, when I went to UC Santa Cruz with all these wealthy kids from prep schools and LA and San Francisco and they had a much better education, but I still was able to, with hard work, keep up. And so the education system was. There was no powerful teachers unions. And the teachers were, I would say half of them were excellent. And nobody attacked a teacher. Nobody. And everybody did their homework. And there was no. What I would call non academic topics. There's nothing about. There was one class you had to take called Senior Problems. And they showed you World War II frightening syphilis movies. They showed you marijuana where you go crazy if you smell marijuana in a room and you're insane. They showed you first aid how if you're driving. I remember the movie, you're driving along and a guy's in a wreck and you jump out and tear your shirt into six different types of bandages and save his life. And then how to write a check and how to shake a person's hand. It was really good. Valuable. I didn't like it at the time, but I thought it was very valuable. But I think what's happened is a therapeutic curriculum in the school. It demonizes men. It demonizes white people. White men. It does. Cause it's dei. It doesn't approach minorities the way it used to. And I know that people will get angry at this. But as I said before, when I was in fourth and fifth or sixth grade, Mrs. Evans, the speech pathologist, speech would come in and I had a pathology. I couldn't. I would say W for R. I would say, if you wanted to say a red rocket, I'd say the WED walket. And she would say, you know, you're not Elmer Fudd. You're going to get in here. And she would, you know, take. She would show me how to make my mouth. I can still remember how to make a round circle with my mouth. And then they had an old tape player and then they would play it back every. I was mandatory 20 minutes a week with her, and everybody had that. And then if you had a strong accent, she would say, she would come to our class. I have a stick shift Chevy. And then half the class were recent immigrants. I got a stick chip Chevy. No, you do not have a Chevy. It's called a Chevy. And I'm saying this because I want you to excel and I want you to speak the King's English without a trace of accent. And that goes for all of you. And it was very valuable. But you would be fired today for cultural appropriation or something like that. But you just have to look at the results. I live in a town where I'm 72, and I think that almost everybody I went to high school with, who's still alive, who is Mexican American, is a unqualified success. Everyone. Everyone. And I mean that sincerely. And I can tell you that the next generation below me was a success. But this new therapeutic DEI victim, it's not working because again, commission and omission. The omission is you waste time on these therapeutic studies classes and you don't give them math, analysis, logic, language, syntax, grammar, biology and commission. You, you fill people's heads that they can't make it, that they have an enemy holding them back. It's. And then you, you don't tell people. You wouldn't dare tell people, as we were told. Well, you're 18 and we would expect that you, if you're going to go to college or learn a trade, by 20, you're. You're on your way. And we would expect all of you by 21 or 22 to have your house and by 23 at the latest to get mar. Married. I got married at 23, and I remember I saw a teacher, one of my old teachers. Well, I was wondering when you were going to get married, what happened to you? Yeah, what happened to you? 23. So, I mean, it's prolonged adolescence, it's the toxic masculinity, it's the curriculum, it's the therapeutic, it's the di. And the result is, I get really tired of all these leftists that brag on themselves, look what we've done. Look what we've done. Look at the society we've create. And I just say to them, you really think that if you took people from 1965 out of a high school class versus today in any major high school, they would be better or worse at algebra? And I can tell you they'd be a lot worse today.

[Jack Fowler]

On top of all that, Victor, it's the hostility to rote learning, the hostility to phonics, although here, allegedly phonics is making a comeback, and then the prolongation of the career of a quote, teacher who are. Look, I know there are probably many teachers who listen to the show. I'm sorry, I'M sure you're terrific. But in general, the students with the lower SAT scores are the ones who are going on to the teaching professions. And not only are they majoring in education undergrad, then they have to get the master's in education. I don't know what the hell they're learning at that level, but we have, you know, we should have even better teachers given the amount of time they're put in being trained. And yet I don't think anyone could pass a high school accumulated knowledge exam from 1950. I doubt anyone could get one answer right today.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I know my father was a junior college teacher and also an administrator. He had to do both. My son is a teacher. I was a teacher. My older brother taught for a while. And I was always wondering what my father said. I said, what do you think about teachers? And he said, a teacher is always the guy that borrows your table saw and never gets it back. Poor things.

[Jack Fowler]

So, anyway, well, God bless the teachers. All right, so, Victor, we're going to move on to our final issue. That is the growth and stuff, secularism and irreligiosity. A declining worship versus the emasculation of young men. We'll do that when we come back from these final important messages. Back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words from the Daily Signal. Okay, Victor. Oh, I just. I mentioned before you posted something. Oh, I think that was offline. Well, anyway. What was that? Well, you posted about AI abuse of you, but if folks are interested in reading that or anything, Victor's posts frequently on X. And if you want to follow him.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There and you can go to the ultra. I have 10 case histories of near death experiences and they're going to start coming out and I'm on number. I can't finish the one because I'm engaged in it. So I'll have to have Jack write the epitaph if it doesn't work out.

[Jack Fowler]

No, no, there's no eulogies. Victories.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, but I have the torn ureter in Greece and malaria. Almost died of malaria in Egypt and a ruptured appendix and how they all happen. And that was one common theme. It was Victor. Yeah, well, okay, Mr. Hansen, I think that you might have chronic appendicitis. I wouldn't get on that plane to Libya if I were you. Thanks, I can handle it. I went to an emergency room anyway.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, on X, his handle is dhanson on Facebook, VDH's Morning Cup. Check that out. And then if you want to, it's not official, but encourage you to check out and join the Victor Davis Hansen fan club, which is also on Facebook. Okay, Victor. Growth in secularism, irreligiosity in America versus the emasculation of young men in America, which is the thing that troubles you.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

More, worries you more, maybe a close call. That's a tougher one because it's not a foreign, explicit danger. They're both insidious. And you can look at Europe and see where we're going to be in five years at the current trajectory. So when I go to Europe and I see these beautiful churches in the French countryside or the Italian. You know what I mean? And you don't see anybody in there. And even Greece, which is my favorite country, is having this problem. It was one of the most devout. It has one of the lowest birth rates in Europe now, very high abortion rate. And the churches are not as they once were. I used to get in a car every other summer when I was writing a book on the ancient world, drive all through Greece by myself. Sometimes I went with friends and family, took my daughters. But you would see these little villages with these beautiful churches, and then there were weddings and funerals and everything. I don't think that's true to the same degree. So I think the biggest problem is secularism and nihilism, atheism, agnosticism, because without a belief that we're here for some purpose, and the purpose for which we are here is going to in some ways determine where we are next. And it's going to be kind of a dual fight between our physical bodies and their appetites of jealousy and anger and ego versus our soul. And it just. It explains everything. The other thing is, I don't know. I know all of you have these feelings that every once in a while you get kind of a message. I don't want to be too surrealistic, but you just get a message that you see somebody coming into your office, or you see somebody and at first you think they're obnoxious or they want something, but there's just something that tells you, be very careful, be very nice. This person is in. You have to be nice. And then that turns out later to be absolutely true. Or there's these coincidences. You'll be thinking about an idea and you're not sure whether it's right or not. And you'll go online on a completely different topic, and that same topic will just appear or something. Now, I'm not saying that. I'm not trying to say that this is surreal or it's the other world. I just think that there's some force in the world, it's a religious, Christian force. I do. And I think it means you have to tread very carefully and be constantly observant about your soul and how you treat people and the nation and problems of other people other than yourself. And I just think, and you know, if you do that, I think everything works out. It doesn't mean that you're going to get healthy or you're going to get wealthy or happy, but it just, it'll work out at the end.

[Jack Fowler]

On a more national level. John Adams and others, in his own way, George Washington separately talked about that. This nation, I think Adams specifically said, well, Ben Franklin too, you know, a republic, if you can keep it. But John Adams was, this was a republic built for a moral, a moral people. So that's the troubling thing to me. How does America, which is a unique nation, survive if it's a non moral, immoral, irreligious nation?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The founders were very interested because they understood that if you have a dictator or a king, that is one person, that person can be bad or good. But when you have a democracy, in particular a constitutional republic where it's run by the majority of the citizens, there is no one to blame if it's bad and there is no one to take credit like a king. If it's good, it's the people. And the majority of the people, because they will be determining everybody else's life, have to be good people. Otherwise the democracy just reflects the worst and it's worse than a bad, you know, because it's legitimate. If you have a bad king or a bad dictator, you can say, well, Saddam Hussein is bad and he got us in this TR trouble. But if you have a bad moral public body that passes a law, then who do you blame? You know, it's us. So when I look at the blue cities, I don't say to myself, it's Mayor Johnson did this in Chicago, or it's Mondami did this or Gavin Newsom. We elected them, right? We know what they're like, we know what they did. And so that's why it's very important to have the population. I think in a deist sense, I'm not going to try to tell people what to believe, but they have to have some transcendent belief. They have to be well educated. I don't mean by college at all, but I mean they have to know what either through firsthand empirical experience. They have to understand how the universe works and they've got to be basically good people. Otherwise the majority is going to reflect what they really are, which is bad. Something's going on in England right now. I don't know what it is, but these local councils and all of these people are passing bad laws that reflect poorly on the English. And I'm just hoping that the majority of Englishmen and women will come to their senses and take back that country. But what they're doing is not right.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, part of the way to take back is these local elections, but the labor government has delayed them and they're fearful that Nigel Farage's Reform Party is going to take over major cities, as probably. Well, it should. So how do you change things if they negate the process to change? Sounds like blood in the streets.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Maybe it's something something. Anyway.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, we've boiled down all these issues to the final finality four, and that's the ruin of cities, the destruction of the nuclear family, the free fall of knowledge and education, and the growth of irreligiosity and secularism. And we're going to get to your analysis of which is the worst of all these in our next episode. I want to thank you for sharing all the wisdom, Victor you shared today. And I want to thank folks for hanging in there and watching and listening to Victor. And we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you everybody for listening and viewing. And we're going to have another episode coming right up. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own [e-mail] and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.