← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Must Surgically ‘Decapitiate’ Iran’s Warfighting Capabilities
01:26:45
In the early hours of Saturday, Feb. 28, the United States, at the direction of President Donald Trump, and in close coordination with Israeli allies, initiated Operation Epic Fury against the Iranian regime. Within 24 hours, more than 1,000 sites were hit and the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was dead following an Israeli strike in Tehran, the capital.
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- [00:00]
A
I have good and bad days. My model's Rush. I was thinking of him. He died about five years ago this month and he would text me almost every other night the last year or two. Just about things in the news were something much more than the summer attack on the nuclear facilities because those were essentially completely military targets with very few people around them. So there's all these, as Donald Rumsfeld says said, these known unknowns. We're all hopeful that it's not like Iraq. In other words, we're not going to go on the ground. We're not going to go in there with the CIA and DOD and State Department people to tell them what to do. As I understand Trump from his initial statements, you're going to take out the theocracy, take out their ability to harm the U.S. our Arab allies in Israel. It's a very tricky thing. That's why no other president would have done it. No, you can't negotiate with them because their whole currency is lying. And their ideologue are fanatic ideologues and they believe that they have a supernatural view of what's going to happen and they're on the right side of cosmic divinity and all of these ideas. So you can't negotiate. I think their strategy to tell you, was kind of a Muhammad Ali rope, a dope, where they were going to ride it out. And then Trump would be gone in three years and people would be angry and you'd get a Joe Biden type of puppet of the left. But better yet, you would get an AOC or a squad member or Newsom or Harris, and then you're home free to get the bomb because they would not do anything. That was the strategy. I think it would have worked, actually, if Trump had let him off the hook.
- [01:49]
B
Well, hello ladies, and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I am Jack Fowler, the man blessed to ask Victor Davis Hansen questions. This podcast is found on the Daily Signal, our happy home. Speaking of which, Victor is a senior contributor there. He is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's got a website, the Blade of Perseus. If you can find $650 a month or discount at $65 a year, you can subscribe and you should subscribe. Read all the exclusive articles and exclusive videos Victor does there. We are talking on Saturday, February 28th, and this episode will be up on Tuesday, March 3rd. A lot of news. A lot of things have happened today. Iran has been attacked and Iran's beginning to do some counter Attacking. We'll get Victor's take on that. I know he talked at great length with Sammy Wink on the most recent episode, but we've gone from anticipation to actuality. We have the illegal alien murder in Virginia. CNN is being bought, and yet another journalism operation. The reporters are having freakouts. That and more. We'll get to all of that Victor's wisdom when we come back from these important messages.
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A
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [03:52]
B
Well, we are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. By the way, Victor also has on the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in. In a few words. So he's doing two podcasts a week now and two or maybe even four. Victor, you're up to four of the little ones.
- [04:09]
A
I have good and bad days. I never know when I don't sleep a wink or I have a racing heart or I get, oh, forget it all. I have good and bad days. Okay, well, any day that's tentative. So I never know. Last week I wrote actually two columns on Normal and I don't think I'm going to be able to do that this week. I haven't been able to go back on Fox just because when I sit there sometimes it's not afib anymore, but it just your heart races, you know, it'll go from 55 to 95, and then you get kind of dizzy and then you don't want to do that on the air. This is tape.
- [04:53]
B
Yeah. I think people that see Victor and assume all is well and all that Victor did, which was if we go back a year, you're on FOX three or four nights a week, never mind all the other podcasts. And you're on Newsmax. You're doing four of the short in a few words. You're doing four podcasts here. You're writing an essay a week for American greatness and a syndicated column. Plus you're writing with the new Criterion. I mean, I don't know how you did that.
- [05:25]
A
I was doing four a week, two for the website, one for American greatness, and one for the syndicate. So I was doing, you know, last year I did 200 and, well, weekly four a week. So I did over 200 of them. And the, the thing is, you never, you can never Predict how you're going to feel. And sometimes you, you feel like, yes, last two days I said I'm going to really push it. So I did 8500 steps. It's about an hour and 20 minutes during the day. And yesterday I did 7000 and today I'm just. I didn't sleep at all. I'm completely wiped out. So you never, you can't really predict it. And it's not the cancer, it's the surgery. It was the second surgery. Loss of half your blood volume and my ferritin and iron are almost non existent. They're really low. And I'm trying to get that back. And the only good news is because almost a year today I got the flu. And I don't know whether this. And I, the doctor said it was probably from long Covid. So I had that mass of dead lung tissue for all of last year. But it got really worse after the flu and I think I got pneumonia. I was on six bouts of antibiotics. And what I'm getting at is that essentially the right lower lobe ceased to work last year. And so what happens is your three other lobes on your left and your upper lobe on your right start to take over. And so as one doctor said, when you lost your whole right lobe, which is more than half of your lung capacity on the right, but I don't think you had much of it anyway and you had developed. So that's not a problem. I have trouble breathing, but I think it's from the, you know, the surgeries.
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B
Right.
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A
Well, anyway.
- [07:32]
B
Well, you say you have good days and bad days and our listeners and viewers, it's a. Whenever you're, Whenever you're on is a good day.
- [07:42]
A
So, Victor, my model's Rush, I was thinking of him. He died about five years this month ago and he would text me almost every other night the last year or two just about things in the news. But he went all he had, you know, a major. Right. His was a. I think a large cell cancer. And he went the whole year, even though he was really God. He took a beating with immunotherapy, I think.
- [08:17]
B
Right. Well, he was determined to. It seemed determined to make it at least through the election. And he fought like the dickens against the lunacy that followed Biden. Well, Victor, it's Saturday, early afternoon here on the east coast, so the news of war or the attack by America on Iran is relatively limited. It's happened, it's happening. Iran is responding. I see some reports that it's firing rockets and drones directing At Israel, Bahrain and Dubai. Some of the buildings there, some hope hotel in Dubai has been hit. Anyway, are we at war or we're at something, we're in conflagration.
- [09:15]
A
We're something much more than the summer attack on the nuclear facilities, because those were essentially completely military targets with very few people around them. So there's all these, as Donald Lumsfeld said, these known unknowns. The first thing is you have to take out the missiles and you have to take out the nuclear facilities, and that includes research. So you don't argue whether you got it all like last time. And then you want to get all of the defense apparat, the command and control, the civilian theocrats to the extent you can. And I get the impression just from the news accounts in the first eight or nine hours that the Israelis are reporting that they got a lot of people. I don't know if that's a serious report when they say Khomeini, Khamenei might be dead, Khamenei. But there's been people in Israel that have been reporting that. Usually that's like saying, we got Saddam right before we invaded in 2003. But my point is, I get the impression there was a division of labor, at least in the first hours, that we are hitting the military targets and they're going after because they know much or who said what and planned what against them. And they're going after the actual theocracy, ad hominem, the people. And then they have this dilemma that they found out in Gaza. And so we've got to pinpoint the people that are running the country into the ground and are our enemies. But these are the same people who butchered 30 or 40,000 of their own people. And that means how do we be selective when they don't want us to be selective? And you're getting back to the whole thing about Gaza, where they positioned Hamas people in hospitals, mosques, schools. And we should assume that there's a lot of theocrats that are in residential sectors. There's probably a lot of missiles in the Hezbollah fashion in apartment building basements. We should assume that even though it's a more conventional military than it's proxies, so you have to decapitate the ability to make war and the people who order war. But you don't want to kill innocent people. The second thing is what is the psychology of an Iranian independent thinker who wants the regime gone, but he didn't go out and protest. He's just sort of a merchant or he's a Taxicab driver. He just wants calm. But he would prefer if it was possible to have the theocracy gone and then a orderly transition to something better. When he sees all of these infrast island, the oil exporting potential of his country, when he sees all of these different infrastructures that the theocracy has absorbed and have to be taken out to destroy their ability to maintain power, what is the psychology? You're blowing up my country. I don't like the theocracy, but you're attacking me. Or is it go ahead and do it because. And the only really historical model that I can think of is France. During France. Yeah, yeah. During 1944 when we made the decision to bomb the rail yards of France and the Gestapo command and control and a lot of the bases. And the Germans knew that. So they had French engineers, French rail people operating the rail lines. They put their Nazi headquarters in downtown office buildings. And the result was that over that spring and summer bombing campaign in France, we, the Allies killed 70,000 Frenchmen. And that was more than the Germans killed. I'm pretty sure in four years after the initial fighting, France lost about 25,000 or 30,000. In the actual fighting, maybe more. The Germans lost about that too. But a lot of the data that I saw when I was writing the second World War suggested that we inadvertently killed more people during the whole war, not just that summer before D day, but than the Germans lost, than the Germans had. And I don't know if that included trains to the death camps. And then what was the attitude of the fringe people? Well, they quickly forgave us, but it really empowered the Vichys for a while. And part of the anti Americanism in the years after was the anti British anti Americanism was that the British navy destroyed the French navy at their bases in North Africa. Yeah, they got out of Toulon and they went into North Africa and that's where the British fleet destroyed them. But they killed about, As I remember, 1300 or so French sailors. And then the bombing that we did. And we were very conscious. So when we finally invaded, we gave Leclerc and a lot of the French people a whole division of. They had about 16. The French 1st Armored Division was very good. They were great fighters. We gave them Sherman tanks, all their equipment, and they were the ones that were allowed to take Paris. Paris. And then it was kind of a nip and go about our relations with the population. But they still mention that in France. If you go there, people will mention that to you. So we have to be careful about and that's very hard because that costs more lives. When you have to worry about that, then we have to find out at what point do you stop? These carriers have been there a long time. At least the Gerald Ford just got there, but it can't be there forever. And we had a lot of ships there and, and we have unlimited supply because we've stressed as we can talk about the strategic issue, quantity over quality over quantity. So we have a finite number of munitions. I thought I'd never say that about the U.S. military. We had so many. But we'll see. We're all hopeful that it's not like Iraq. In other words, we're not going to go in the ground and we're not going to go in there with the CIA and DOD and State Department people to tell them what to do. As I understand Trump from his initial statements, you're going to take out the theocracy, take out their ability to harm the U.S. our Arab allies in Israel, turn over the actual killing of the people who killed the 30 or 40,000 civilians, the terror state, the Israelis know them better than we do, and they're probably focusing on them, and then hope that the people in the street, we can pause the bombing and then they'll come out like they did before. But this time I don't know whether we'll have agents in the street with them that will call in strikes or not. But we're going to have to have some coordination, because if they go back out on the street and the Revolutionary Guard has survived, they will be killed unless we have people there who either arm them or will be able to call in helicopter strikes, something to help them. But it's a very tricky thing. That's why no other president would have done it. None would have done it.
- [17:00]
B
He did make a promise. He President Trump in his statement, complete immunity for he did if they lay down their arms. But if they don't, they're going to be killed. So how are you carrying? Yeah.
- [17:15]
A
If you're a Revolutionary Guard and you've been on your motorcycle running around shooting people and rounding them up, torturing them, raping them, executing them, and they tell you go out and stop these people, what do you do when you look around and everybody's being killed that's giving you the orders. And you know from the earlier bombing, they killed a lot of people and, you know the people don't like you and, you know, you've been given amnesty and all that depends on whether you think the regime is going to survive. Because if you get off your motorcycle and take your AK47 and join the mob. It's not a mob, by the way. It's students, professionals that are demonstrating or might demonstrate they can't when the bombs are falling and then you lose and we stop and they haven't taken control and there's a lot more survival than we thought among the theocratic apparat, then you're going to be killed. So it's like every revolution, everybody's got their finger in the wind and trying to say who's going to win and who's going to lose. That's why it's very important that we not stop. And once you go down this, once you cross the Rubicon, you don't want to stop until you have the tide of momentum in your favor.
- [18:35]
B
I have another question about Iran and I do want to note, of course again we're talking on Saturday. This episode is up on Tuesday the 3rd. So the dynamics of this may have changed in the intervening cup of 48, 72 hours. But that said, to our good listeners and viewers, this year marks a critical moment for our country. As the opposition grows more aggressive and unapologetic, the fight now reaches into the everyday decisions we make. Patriot Mobile has been standing on the front lines fighting for freedom for more than 12 years. They don't just deliver top tier wireless service. They're activists like us who truly care about our country. Patriot Mobile offers prioritized premium access on all three major US networks, giving you the same or better coverage than the main carriers. That means fast speeds and dependable nationwide coverage backed by 100% US based customer support. They also offer unlimited data plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming and more. With simple seamless activation, you can switch in minutes, keep your number, keep your phone or even upgrade. And here's the difference. When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you'll be part of a powerful stream of giving that directly funds the Christian conservative movement. Take a stand today. Go to patriotmobile.com vdh or call 972 Patriot and use the promo code VDH for a free month of service. Don't wait, that's patriotmobile.com VDH or call 972 Patriot and we thank the good people from Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, this is just your thoughts. If we don't take action. Action because Iran is despite what happened a few months ago, the bombing of the enrichment and the nuclear facilities, they are constructing new facilities even deeper in some other mountain. Is there any doubt in your Mind that if Iran goes unchecked for the next months or years, that there will not be a catastrophe from them having nuclear capability.
- [21:06]
A
No, you can't negotiate with them because their whole currency is lying and their ideologue or fanatic ideologues and they believe that they have a supernatural view of what's going to happen and they're on the right side of cosmic divinity. And all of these ideas, they've said that I think Ralph and John, even a disputed statement, but I think it was accurate, said that Israel was a one bomb state and that was the advantage that you got half the Jews in the world in one place where you could. All you needed was one bomb, so you can't negotiate. I think their strategy to tell you was kind of a Muhammad Ali rope, a dope where they were going to write it out and then Trump would be gone in three years and people would be angry and you'd get a Joe Biden or better yet, type of puppet of the left, but better yet, you would get an AOC or a squad member or a Newsom or Harris and then you're home free to get the bomb because they would not do anything. That was the strategy. And it's. I think it would have worked actually if Trump had let him off the hook. So now the question is the domestic support. When the statue fell In April of 2003, I think most polls show that George Bush had a popularity rating of between 80 and 90%. There was a controversy over the carrier flag, mission accomplished, because there was a little bit of terrorist activity. But I was in Washington at the Naval Academy, and I remember distinctly that Chris Matthews, I was watching cnn, who ended up despising Bush, was a big critic. He said, we're all neocons now on the air. And then I remember Andrew Sullivan, who was sort of a chameleon in his political views, but mostly started out as, I guess, a British conservative, but ended up very left wing. He was all for it. There was a guy who did little green footballs. Remember that little podcast? I knew the guy, he was a nice guy. I rode a bike with him once and he was all in. And then all of a sudden the insurgency came. Yeah. And the American casualties started and everybody adopted. Then there was a Vanity Fair on the neocons that they felt had been the architects, Richard Pearl, David Fromm, Bill Kristol and all of them had adopted, I guess you would call it my beautiful war and your lousy occupation. And the scapegoat they focused on was Don Rumsfeld. If you just get rid of Don Rumsfeld, everything will be okay. So they all. But what I'm saying is that the domestic support will depend on a how many American casualties, how quick is it over and how effective are the results. If it is over within three weeks and there's a revolution and they have some type of transitional government unlike Iraq, then everybody's going to say I was for it all along, even the ones that were against it. If, on the other hand, they start shooting down planes or they hit an American base or they take out a frigate or something, they get a lucky shot on a carrier and we don't get a change and we stop, then everybody said I was never for it. That's the way people react. And the base is going to be very tricky because the MAGA base, remember it was predicated on no forever wars and no optional wars in the Middle east in reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq. And already Tucker Carlson, as you pointed out, I think in an email to me, has already said that Donald Trump's war was evil and he crossed the Rubicon because remember during the Dominion voting controversy right after January 6, when Dominion forced the Fox Corporation to settle for hundreds of millions of dollars and they had the interrogatories and the messages. One reason I think they wanted to settle because those discovery phase of that lawsuit was going to show a lot of internal medications and outtakes and stuff. But Tucker, do you remember he was there and he said I really hate Donald Trump and I hate him. And his first, if you think about it, his first, I'm trying to remember, but I think I'm pretty accurate. His first administrator, this administration has nothing they can show. So he was a die hard critic. And then he came back into the fold and he was credited along with Don Jr. To get JD Vance, who he felt was a kindred spirit, kind of neo isolationist. And his son Buckley went to work for him and that was sort of the veneer of the MAGA base. And then there were people like Candace and the fringe and Fuentes and et cetera. But he's already come out against it now and said it's evil. So he's basically saying Donald Trump is evil. And this comes on the heels of Candace Owens coming out with a documentary about Charlie Kirk's wife, Bride of Charlie or something like the Bride of Frankenstein. Yeah. So I think that fringe, those people are isolating themselves from the Trump movement, if I could say that. So I don't think he's going to get a lot of popular Right wing opposition. He'll get opposition no matter what happens. No matter what happens from aoc, the squad, Jasmine Crockett, all the candidates that are running for office, they think that. And you'll have Fetterman, I think he's already said that he thought this was a good idea. You'll see a guy like him or Mark Pennsylvania, a reasonable Democrat, understand why it's Ben Rhodes is already saying, you know, that this is a disaster. This is the guy who was the architect of the disastrous Iran deal.
- [27:41]
B
Well, we were going to be slaughtered because of the death of Soleimani. Right.
- [27:47]
A
So we'll see. Again, I think the base will stay with him. I think independence will stay if it's successful. And I think the Democrats are in a holding pattern and they're hoping, I'm not saying that out of maliciousness. I think they actually hope that it won't work even though that would put American lives at risk. Because from what I can read today and again, I'm speaking on Saturday, what they're posting, it's not just that it was a mistake, but it's wrong. It's evil. You know what I mean?
- [28:18]
B
Yeah.
- [28:19]
A
Well, if it's evil, then you want it to stop and then you want to destroy evil. But if you think the Americans. I don't know what Tucker means when he says it's evil. If there's Americans in the way of fire, if you believe it was an evil decision in the sense of wrong, then you might say I disagree with the decision. But now that it's made, I want Americans to prevail and be safe again.
- [28:45]
B
Victor, the end game is regardless of what happened over the last few days or even the last few months, there's no question that Iran unchecked will bring horrific violence to our shores and to Europe and who knows where else are we supposed to let that happen and then respond to that? It's crazy.
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A
They have been killing people with assassins teams all over Europe for 40 years.
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B
I think the world too.
- [29:17]
A
It's America. They blew up Jews in Argentina. They blew the Khobar. They were behind probably the. I don't know if they were behind it, but they were knowledgeable of Khobar Towers. They blew up the Marine barracks. 240 some Marines they butchered. They blew up the American Embassy in Beirut. Most of it killed more Americans there. The worst thing they did is they created these shaped charge IEDs and basically delivered them for free to the insurgents in Iraq. And that killed probably or maimed 2,000Americans. And then they tried to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. so they feel that they're untouchable, that they're so scary, so crazy that nobody would ever want to deal with them. And that's been, you can't argue with it because Jimmy Carter knew their nature and he let them get away with murder. Reagan was tougher, but Reagan didn't really react to the Marine barracks. He put the New Jersey and maybe it was the Iowa and they shelled the Beka Valley or something, but that was it. We pulled everybody out, killed some sheep. Yeah. And you know that George H.W. bush was pretty good, but he didn't want to deal with him. Bill Clinton, nothing. Obama, George W. Bush had his hands full. But a lot of people said, you know, the Israelis, that's what I disagreed with. The MAGA hard base that follows Tucker, when they said that Israel engineered the 2003 war. I'm not objecting to the idea. Israel was heavily involved in commenting on the war, but they thought they could handle Saddam Hussein. What they were worried about was Iran. And they said repeatedly, if you take away Iran, I mean Iraq, you're going to empower Iran. And the Bush people said, no, no, we're going to have a constitutional government in Iraq and that will undermine Iran because people will all see that success. That didn't quite happen as anticipated. But the Israelis idea was the Iran Iraq war of the early 80s. In other words, let Saddam deal with Iran and weaken each side. But if you take out Iraq, Iran will be the beneficiary. I think they were probably right about that. Anyway, it all depends. I hate to say that because there's so many good things that could happen with the demise of this evil regime that has so much blood on their hands and probably killed between 20 and 30 and 40,000 and they're still killing people in silent, executing them, raping them.
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B
Yeah. One of the great activist, destabilizer nations in the world. And, and no, no, no stopping them.
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A
It was funny. How did you hear Sturmer and the British supported what we did. If they really supported, why don't they let us use Diego Garcia?
- [32:23]
B
I didn't hear. I heard the Canadians came out. I saw some headline, full throated support. But Starmer, I thought had no, he was full. He was.
- [32:32]
A
No, he was, he was supportive. The one that wasn't was Macron. He said this is dangerous. What does that mean in war? Every war is dangerous.
- [32:43]
B
Well, speaking of war, which we've been speaking about for half an hour, we're going to keep up on it. And get your thoughts, Victor, on the thing you oversee at Hoover Strategica. And we'll get to that right after these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal run by the great Rob Bluey. We are talking on Saturday, February 28th, this episode up on March 3rd. We have say beginning of every show, Victor is the Martin E. Lee Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. And what does he do as a senior fellow? And he oversees this military strategy. You're going to give the correct title, Victor for Military Strategy Operation Oversight, historical oversight. But it does publish regularly an online journal called Strategica. And a new issue is just out, issue number 103 with the lead article by Bing West. And it's about weaponry and the volume versus the high technitude of some weaponry versus the sheer volume of weapons, which is a subject you've talked about, Victor. But you want to talk about this new strategic issue, please.
- [33:56]
A
Yeah, it goes back through history. Bing west wrote the main article about the age old divide between a quantity of weapons, emphasis and quality. Everybody wants both, of course, but everybody has also limited resources. So Bing went back. I think he talks about the battle of Agincourt, he talks about World War II, World War I, and each side tries to find that happy medium. So for example, if you take a Panther tank and you put it next to a Sherman tank, the Panther's 45 tons, the Sherman's 30. The Panther had a high caliber, I think 76 millimeter gun. I think some of them were up on them like tigers with 88, but most of them were 76. As I remember, the Sherman had a variety of guns, but until they had the British Firefly on a few models, it wasn't comparable. The Sherman didn't have quite as good armor as the Panther. It had a high profile. It was much more maneuverable and more repairable and maintenance free compared to the Panther. But my point is they only made about 1800 panthers. We made 50,000 Sherman. So the idea that people say, well, the Sherman tank wasn't like a Tiger or a King Tiger or a Panther. Yes, they were not. But they never saw those tanks. They were mostly on the eastern front. There were few in the western front. And when they did, you could swarm them with artillery or tank destroyers or Shermans. So it gets back to the idea that what they're taught. And then Nadia Slajo has a more updated. Both of them agree we need a more diverse profile. And so what they're getting at, if I could Put words in their mouth. It'd be something like this scenario. We take a $14 billion carrier with roughly 4,500 to 5,000 sailors and aircraft support and pilots, et cetera. The Gerald Ford, the most sophisticated, biggest carrier. I think it's the biggest warship in the history of civilization. And we park it off the Mediterranean and we've got these, what are they, 50 to 75 to 100 million dollar jets that fly off. If the Iranians knew what they were doing. And let's say they have a thousand drones and they cost, I don't know, 25 or 30,000 for, you know, they're pretty simple. Say, they say they'd spend a half billion or a billion dollars, not even that. And they send a thousand drones six inches off the water. You think that in the middle of the night that Gerald Ford could knock down or its supporting fleet could knock down all thousand. Or what if one went right into the propeller mechanism or one landed on the deck and went through an aperture? So what Bing and Nadia are trying to say is that why don't we in the Pentagon, I think we're doing this under Trump, just hedge our bets. And maybe we need light carriers that have nothing on them but 500 drones with a whole replenish fleet beneath the flight deck. Or why don't we have drone ships of the sort that the Ukrainians sank, some really capital Russian ships in the Black Sea. Or Maybe we want F35s to fly a mission to protect Taiwan and we'd have one piloted $80 million, $100 million F35. But it has a fleet, say of 50 to 100 little drones that it controls. It's the mothership, and it just controls them. And they can send them everywhere. So that's where we're getting the same thing about soldiers. We have these big, big tanks and they cost 6 to 8 million dollars and they had armored thrust and you need tanks, et cetera. But. But they're losing a lot of tanks, at least until they've been more recently, they've been able to jam them, the Ukrainians. But that offensive of 2022 was a disaster. And a drone that can fly under a tank or fly on top of a tank, they've had to, really, to preserve armor, they've had to reinvent tanks. The way they defend themselves by cheap munitions. That's the key, cheap munitions. The Israelis even have small things the size of your hand or smaller, like insects that can fly into buildings and blow people up. So it doesn't make any sense. To say that we have the. I mean In World War II we had over 100,000 military aircraft. And I don't think we have more than 2,500 or 3,000 now.
- [39:09]
B
Well, for example, the Kamikaze planes were one plane and one guy in a bomb. But they wrecked, they created much more
- [39:18]
A
death than they killed 5,000 sailors at Okinawa. And they sank 17 ships. And they almost sank the Ben Franklin X6 carrier. And the Japanese were very brilliant how they used them. They said the Zero, that was mastery of the skies in China in 37, 38, 39, terrified the Americans in the Pacific in 41, 42 was completely obsolete once the Corsair or the Hellcat came in in the Pacific. But if you took, and they required all this training for the pilot. What if you just took a bunch of rookie pilots maybe with 50 to 100 hours and you put them in a 0 with a 500 or thousand pound bomb and you got a fleet of them, like 20 here, 20 there, 20 there, and you flew them in the evening and then right at sunrise they came out of the sun at some of them came at 10ft above the ocean. Some of them came straight down from 5,000ft. And they weren't going to worry about letting a bomb go or machine. They were the bomb. The human brain was the cruise missile guidance system. And those were the most effective cruise missiles of the war. And they really, they almost nullified in a few days. People were thinking of taking the US fleet off the shore of Okinawa because of the success of these. And then finally they made so many destroyers and destroyer escorts and they had so many layers of defense to get to the battleships and carriers, they were nullified. But the other thing is, if you have a plane that can fly 2400 miles or 1400 miles radius and then it attacks the target, then it flies back. What do you do when you don't have to fly back? You double the range. So they were leaving bases that were not known to the Americans or out of range of the B29 sometimes. Wow. So it was really. We lost more soldiers in 1945, I think, than any year of the war in the Pacific. And that was the last war I can remember. My grandfather tell me when I was very young that he didn't understand that World War II was over on May 9th. And Victor Hanson, who I was named after, was killed on May 19. And then my father said, what was the Pacific theater? And he said, well, they knew the bomb was going to work or they had to know the Bomb was going to work because they let it off in the desert in July. Why didn't they just wait? Why'd they have to take it? Did they use it? So everybody was really angry because they thought that the war was almost over. The war was over, and European, and they didn't know. They had some idea the bomb might work. So 50,000Americans were wounded on Okinawa and about 7,000 were. Well, we had killed 12. I think we had 12 to 15,000 sailors offshore, and on Okinawa, Marines killed. It was a disaster.
- [42:42]
B
Grandpa had a point.
- [42:43]
A
Yeah, he did. Anyway, that was something to keep in mind. We're not going to have anything like that in this war. Because Donald Trump, remember he said that George W. Bush should be impeached for getting us into the Iraq war. And the whole Trump MAGA philosophy, and I think he was right about that, was you invest things that are in a cost benefit analysis in your interests. And when Bush kind of slightly changed, he said he was going to remove Saddam. Once he removed Saddam, it was clear the people were not going to come up out of the woodwork and create a parliamentary government. So then he stayed and said, we're for freedom now. Liberating. Okay, that's a much different message. So Trump comes along and says, I don't think they're worth it. He didn't say, I don't believe in nation building in the sense it's bad to. To implant consensual government. He just said, not in our dime. We're not going to do it.
- [43:42]
B
Well, so the implication was, everyone's an American just waiting to get out, you
- [43:46]
A
know, yes, he's a Jackson. He's not an isolationist. Everybody. Trump is not an isolation. He's not a nation builder. He's a Jacksonian. No better friend, no worse enemy. Cost to benefit analysis. We hit somebody and we hope that the cost is much better on our side of the ledger, the benefit is much better than the cost. And that's what he's doing here.
- [44:10]
B
I need to inform our listeners and viewers of something.
- [44:14]
A
Victor.
- [44:15]
B
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. And today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime time. 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 the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold not as speculation but as insulation. Our reputation matters here. Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And that's why we've partnered with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A plus rating with a 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 to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement count or sitting in the bank. If you believe as we do, that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 8447-909191-84479-09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-9191. One more time folks. 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view and we thank the very good people at Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, we're going to get domestic here, but I just want to make say that I just was looking at the headline, see if there were any updates while you were talking. And there is a headline about Starmer, the UK prime minister. Maybe we'll talk about him a little later also. But Starmer urges against further escalation after UK did not take part in US Airstrikes. So this is something that's come out.
- [46:49]
A
His first statement was unqualified support. Yeah, maybe he thinks they haven't got close enough to finish within 10 or 12 hours. Yeah, that's so the other weird thing is that Iran did hit things at our bases, or at least try to in the uaa, the Emirates, in Qatar, in Bahrain, and I think even they sent some to Saudi Arabia, which was kind of dumb because you got this now Orwellian situation where at least in the initial few hours, the United States has the support, of course of Israel. But all of these countries have warned Iran to stop it and that they might retaliate against Iran. They don't have the ability really to do that, but that would mean that they would give their own qualified support without the rhetorical showing of we don't support this. This is on not unstable. But again, I'd just like to remind everybody I'm not cynical and you're not cynical listening. But the degree to which people support this, and I mean the 51%, I'm not talking about people who are principled and they think it's cost benefit analysis worth it or they're so Trump supporters or a guy like Federman from the loyal opposition. But it's going to depend for independence and the majority of Americans the degree to which it's successful. And that's understandable. And that's going to be predicated on how many casualties, what's the end game and what does the government look like when you're done, how much does it cost and how long does it transpire? And of course, the world oil price. We are the biggest producer of gas and oil in the history of civilization. I think we're over 14 million barrels today. So the price of oil is going to go up, but we're going to be shielded. It's not going to be like the 73 Yom Kippur War or the Arabs boycott or OPEC. That's just not going to affect us. We can produce enough oil that's going to mitigate the price rises. But I think a lot of the Europeans, and I understand that because Russian oil and gas is cut off and they import and most of their it comes from North Africa or out of the Straits of Hormuz. The Straits of Hormuz are blocked now. There's no tanker going in or out. So what they're really worried about is where do we get our gasoline now? Well, if there's a big. And that's understandable, especially if Iran is hitting, you know, you can see a European saying why did you hit Carg Island? You know, hit the military base, but not the oil export. We need that oil or why Saudi Arabia? Be careful, stay out of it. That's what they're after. And that's reflected, I think, in the British. If you're not going to produce your oil and British still have known reserves in the North Sea and elsewhere and they have natural gas they could exploit. But if you don't want to do that, then you're going to have somebody else do it. And somebody else is going to produce gas and oil much more recklessly and without the environment, the environmental protections of a western country. And they're going to do it much more erratically and you can't depend on it because of political and have you
- [50:11]
B
over the over the barrel literally.
- [50:13]
A
And they do right now, well, let's
- [50:16]
B
come back to America here. And this has to do with the illegal alien murderer in Virginia which is now has Governor Spanberger presiding and she gave the response to the State of the Union which you discussed with Sammy in the most recent episode. But here's the story. Stephanie Minter, who was a 41 year old woman was found she was brutally stabbed to death in Northern Virginia at a bus shelter. Here's a headline from story from Fox News beginning Police in Fairfax county arrested an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone earlier this week on charges of second degree murder after he allegedly fatally stabbed a woman. Stephanie Minter, 41, was found dead at local bus stop with with several wounds to the upper body. The alleged Suspect, Abdul Jala, 32, also had I don't know if people are going to be shocked by this. He had a criminal history of more than 30 arrests according to the Department of Homeland Security, including for rape, malicious wounding, assault, identity theft, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, assault, pickpocketing. And yet he was roaming the streets of the United States of America, Victoria, and murdering as he did as he roamed.
- [51:35]
A
Your thoughts? Yeah, that horrific attack. And remember, it's just a hatred attack. It's like the attack on the poor Ukrainian young girl on the train by De Carlos Brown or the guy in Chicago that tried to set somebody on fire. It's just malicious but it does reflect the lowering of the bar. So if you're Governor Spamberger and you announce after evading the issue during the campaign and you want to go full Joe Biden where you campaign as your old Joe Biden from Scranton and you're Spamberger and you were in the CIA and your family's a, your dad's a law enforcement officer and you're and then as soon as you get into office, just like Biden, you show your hard left credentials and she's now taxing anything that moves and she announced right before, right simultaneously with this, I don't know if she knew about it, that you couldn't cooperate with ice. So this person, according to her, can't be detained. If he is let out, which he probably will be given all the other people that have been let out by left wing prosecutors and elected officials. And he'll be let out and ICE will be not allowed. She'll want to protect him. The other thing is that the Democrat rhetoric is so out of sync with reality. There was a legislature, a young black woman who was talking the other day on a clip, I think she was in not the Texas legislature, but I think the Virginia legislature. She was talking about white crime and white violence. But the statistics, and I'm not trying to get into inflammatory rhetoric, but the statistics and people go back and look at the FBI websites and to the extent that big city police departments report them, they don't report the statistics anymore because it's contrary to their boss's political narratives. But it's almost 50% of murders are committed by a demographic that's 12% and even less if you consider they're mostly overwhelmingly black males between the ages of 12 and 50. So you have this same pattern. And then the rhetoric doesn't reflect that. The rhetoric we hear all the time is black people are being killed, young black men are being killed in ordinary. We found the Washington Post disproved that by police. That wasn't disproportionate given the numbers that come in contact with police on a percentage basis. And then we have the rhetoric about illegal aliens, that they're all peaceful, isis, Gestapo, Nazis and they just go silent when they have these illegal aliens. And the same story, he should have been deported years ago. Nothing happened. And finally we hear Islamophobia, Islamophobia, Islamophobia, Islamophobia, Islamophobia. And when you look at the actual hate crime statistics, you don't see that Muslims are being attacked by so called white people all the time. It's not there. And so what I'm getting at is the Democratic Party's narrative of open borders, critical race theory. Critical legal is completely at odds with both the statistics, the data and every day's news. And you think at what time? What will happen if, what would Spamberger do? What's she going to come out now and say this was a horrific crime and a young woman was brutally murdered by an illegal alien and he had been let out inordinately by a dysfunctional legal system. And I'm going to ensure that he's going to face, if convicted of this, the full force of the law. And if that sentence is not a life sentence when he is let out, and if I'm in office, I make sure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement deports him where he belongs. She's not going to say that. No, it's ideologically impossible for her to say that because you have a 20, 10% of the country is completely crazy and they're running the Democratic primaries, fundraising. And you're not going to question that.
- [56:03]
B
Well, the craziness transcends the Atlantic Ocean, Victor. And when we come back we are going to get your thoughts on some real depravity happening in the United Kingdom. We'll do that when we come back from these final important messages.
- [56:20]
A
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Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in His own Words. I'm Jack Fowler. I want to ask folks and many of you have done this. Please visit civilthoughts.com when you go there. You can sign up for the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society, which is trying to strengthen civil society and it comes out every Friday afternoon and it gives you 14 or more recommended readings of articles I think you will enjoy. It's very simple. Civilthoughts.com, sign up totally free. Free, totally free. Just like by the way, strategica, I want to be clear with folks. It's totally free, totally accessible and the earlier issues are all this real evergreen quality to the material that you oversee there, Victor.
- [57:42]
A
So I want to recommend that.
- [57:44]
B
So Victor, there's of an emerging importance of British ministers, Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe, who is starting a kind of break off from Nigel Farage's Reform Party and his is called Restore. And he is though focusing on this cataclysmic attack on the meaning of what is it to be British. So he has put together a rape gang inquiry which we've heard about these rape gangs and we've talked about them before. The government of Starmer, Keir Starmer, who we've mentioned earlier, have been very, very afraid to put a spotlight on it just because of the broad complicity of politicians across the country. But here's a statement that Rupert Lowe put out this week just to give folks an idea of what has been happening in our, you know, sister country. He interviewed a survivor. The survivor's violent gang rape and abuse began at the age of 12. She was raped multiple times per day over many years. The rapes were filmed and were used as blackmail. The survivor has stated that multiple police officers were active perpetrators. Money was exchanged openly and this destroyed her ability and willingness to seek help. Police vehicles were used to traffic her and some of the abuse events were called cop nights. The extreme pain she suffered included filmed torture in places called red rooms. The torture included waterboarding and strangulation by rope. Distressingly, she was raped by a dog. Filmed and forced to watch. Rewatch the footage as the men placed bets. The coordination of this specific type of abuse was predominantly perpetrated by Pakistani heritage men. During this specific period of abuse, she witnessed the murder of at least three girls, one of whom was allegedly killed as punishment for speaking to the police force. Victor, I'll shut up in a second. Separately, earlier today I saw Tommy Robinson and he was on David Rubin's show talking about his investigations and what has happened in England in just one small town. And it's just so massive. There's so many young women who have just been so tortured, murdered, and yet it persists. So this is what is happening in the West. Your thoughts about this?
- [60:18]
A
I don't think Americans can figure it out. It's so bizarre and evil, surreal because Britain is the fountainhead of Western law. It's very clear that these people were not only raping and killing, torturing British young girls, but they were doing so without much effort to cover it up. And there were people in law enforcement, in the judiciary, in the prosecutorial arm of these municipalities and the government that knew about it and would not act. And so then the $64,000 question is why? And the answer, we can go with a multiple choice. Is it a. That they are afraid of constituents? Well, I know that the British government lies about the number of Muslims that are actually in Britain. They always play down. They'll say if you keep. Well, there's this many Pakistanis and there's this many people from the Middle east, but we don't believe they're all actual faithful, that they're apostate. You can't be an apostate. In most cases, it's almost impossible. So there's about 6 or 7%, as I understand it, of the population. It's not like Germany with 16% illegal aliens or something. But maybe it is illegal when they're not counting. I'm not sure. But it's not an overwhelming. My point is it's not a number that if it was to vote in solid mass lockstep, and it does, it would mean you couldn't be elected at a national level to political office. So then the question is, why aren't they acting? And the answer is that The Labor Party and the Green Party and all of these people in Britain, they have an intersectional pyramid. So remember intersectionality. Everybody means that. This is an update of Jesse Jackson's old Rainbow Coalition. It's the trans community, the gay community, the feminist community, the black community, the Hispanic community, the non Christian community. So in this intersectional community, the whites are the oppressor and all of these different groups and religions and ethnicities are the oppressed. But for in a consensual society, do you really believe that these politicians look at that intersectionality and you put all those people together and they'd have to be. Do you really believe 51% of the Britons will say something to the effect, well, I know they're raping little girls and I know they're little British citizen girls, but you know, they're white and these people are from a different country and we have to understand their culture and we don't want to be Islamophobic. And you know, we know what happened to Charlie Hebbo, we know what they get riled up, what they can do. So let's just put it under the table. You think that's the majority of the British citizenry? I don't, you know, no. And it just, I think there is
- [63:29]
B
a sense that they had, from some aspect of society that they had it coming to them anyway. I mean there's, there's such a looking down your nose at the.
- [63:40]
A
Well, that's another issue because the lower class, yes, you're really onto something there because you remember that video of the poor Scottish girl that was trying to protect her. And there was a definite idea that these are lower middle class or poor white people and they are not part of us, the blessed anointed. And that's kind of the British version of the deplorables, irredeemables, clingers, chumps, dregs, garbage that Biden and Hillary and Barack Obama used. That's a good point because you really get the impression that the elite white class in the Western world, it really hates white lower middle class people the most. You remember that reporter for CNN? It was a scandal in 2016, he went to a Trump rally and he said he had more teeth than everybody at the rally. And then there was that Lisa Page, remember, with Peter Strzok, that exchange, and they said he had just gone to Walmart and he could still smell the Trump supporters. And so there was this cloud. They really hate them because they lack the romance of the minority or the Muslim or somebody in the intersexual community. But they don't have the culture and the exquisite taste of the wealthy. So they're loser loser in their way of thinking.
- [65:13]
B
Well, this happened, by the way. We're not going to get into it, but I mentioned before unwon the website and I had sent you this article in the rural areas of California where people are hated because they're essentially rural and their lives are being destroyed.
- [65:30]
A
I can tell you that I went to public school in the San Joaquin Valley. I went when first six years old in 1959. I graduated in 71. You could argue that the Oklahoma diaspora really got going after not just the droughts, but the collapse of the stock market in the Oklahoma, Arkansas, et cetera, Grapes of Wrath, the Joe type of phenomenon. And that continued into the war. So what I'm getting at is in 59 where I went, I was seeing second generation people who grew up and we had a family who came every year and they stayed in a house here. I won't give them their name because there's probably a lot of people and they were the nicest people, but they were dirt poor. And I remember him because he had a long pole with a flashlight, 20 foot pole. And he would go in the pecan trees that I'm looking at right now and he'd say, victoria, get your daddy to come out here and let you come out tonight. And I went out one night and he had a long pole of flashlight and he saw a possum up in the tree and he put the light on it and then the thing froze and he knocked it down, it splattered. And then he said, tell your daddy we'll have the opossum grits for you. But I grew up with him. But my point of all this excursus is that as far as the actual prejudice came, it was twofold. It was from the establishment in the San Joaquin Valley who said, you know, before these guys came, we had the Methodist, the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Catholic Church. They came and suddenly we got the church of the Redeemer Church of Christ, Church of God, you know, the Holy Rollers. We had tent revivals.
- [67:20]
B
Snake handlers. Yes.
- [67:21]
A
And they had weird clothes and weird accents and they were very poor. And there was a lot of prejudice against the Okies. And then they came from the Mexican American community. I can tell you that I would say in 12 years of going to school I must have watched, I don't know, 20 mass brawls between so called Okies and Mexicans. And they hated each other.
- [67:48]
B
The Swedes stayed out of it, right?
- [67:50]
A
Yeah, well, we stayed out of it, I suppose, but I had a lot of friends that. Almost all my friends were from Oklahoma. I married someone whose parents came from Oklahoma. So I was very sympathetic to. They were the salt of the earth. They're wonderful people. But they experienced a lot from the establishment who were also wonderful people and from the Mexican American community was wonderful. But it was very. Psychologically, it was very. What happens with upper middle class and wealthy whites if they feel that they're vulnerable to charges of racism or elitism, they can performance art and say, look at those white people, they're really uncouth and then attack them. And then people say, well, they're not bad white people, are they? Right. And you saw that with the Trump supporters, the whole CNN News bunch. That's all they did night after night.
- [68:45]
B
Yeah, we should maybe end on it quickly. You mentioned CNN News bunch. So CNN is being. Seems to be being. It's bought. Where's my notes? Here. By Paramount. And we're having a freak out there because it's being bought by Paramount. Ellison.
- [69:06]
A
Yes.
- [69:07]
B
Who's. So we have the.
- [69:08]
A
David Ellison.
- [69:09]
B
Yeah. So we have the freak out at cbs, freak out at CNN now, and the freak out of course at the Washington Post by these. Look, I'm from the journalism community, but they have a right.
- [69:23]
A
They have a right. Jeff Bezos. What is Jeff Bezos doing when he's supposed to lose $100 million a year? Because we are his cultural, intellectual, moral superiors. Everybody knows that we are refined, sober and judicious reporters that deserve a lifetime of free expression. One of the things about the Bezel story was did you see the number they had just over hired? They were just so bloated. And then the actual output per reporter was like two stories a month, you know what I mean? So they were hiring all of these Columbia type journalist students who weren't doing anything, you know, their first job and then they were paying them all this money and they were sticking it to Bezos with the idea that he wouldn't dare turn on his liberal benefactors. And he did. He didn't turn on him. He just said, go do it in somebody else's money. Same with the LA Times and the same thing with msnbc. Same thing with cnn. Same thing with Colbert. Show that he thinks that somebody should lose 20 to $50 million to have his genius around. And that's how the left think that they're morally superior and you should pay for that.
- [70:38]
B
Did you see the picture of Colbert and his staff that they won the Emmy?
- [70:42]
A
Yes, I did.
- [70:43]
B
About 20 of them. And every single one of them was white.
- [70:50]
A
Yes, Jack, but they were not just white. They were a special type of white people. They were Karens, they were liberal, they were cultured, they knew where to go to, vacation. They were well paid and their children were prepped and go to the Ivy League. Except they do everything just so perfect. They're kind of like, I don't know, they're kind of like, you know, Nantucket Island, Martha's Vineyard, Peabody.
- [71:26]
B
They're so lucky to breathe the same air they do. Victor.
- [71:29]
A
I've just.
- [71:30]
B
I count my blessings every night, you know.
- [71:33]
A
That was part of the problem, I think, with my childhood growing up. My father, nobody in his family had ever gone to college. Same with my mom. And my father got a football scholarship to go to University of Pacific. And then he joined the Marines and he ended up in the Army Air Force. And my mom went to University Pacific because she liked my dad. And then got a second BA at Stanford, then went to Stanford Law School. And my dad would visit her after the war. And you would think that that would open up all of these avenues, you
- [72:12]
B
know what I mean?
- [72:13]
A
They were in the Bay Area. My mom was one of the first women to graduate from Stanford Law School. B.A. but they never really admitted. So then they come back to this little farm and they didn't have a house. So my dad goes and buys an 800. This is not a Gavin Newsom story, a real story, but he buys an 800 square foot home and puts it on blocks and moves it about 10 miles. And my grandfather gives him a little corner and then he puts a slab down. And we had one bedroom until I was seven. We slept in the living room, my parents slept in the bedroom. And then he built on his own, no permit or anything, a house next to it. They were never connected. So during the rain we'd walk from the three bedroom house he built to the kitchen and one bedroom. But my point, and all this was what would make somebody do that and turn down all those wonderful. You know what I mean? Bay Area, he had a B.A. he was a decorated war veteran. He was up seeing my mom and they came back to Selma, California. And I can see now, looking back, what it was. It's just what you're talking about, every single story. It wasn't jealousy, envy, anger. It was kind of funny. Remember Joe Smith? He's Supreme Court justice of California. Did I ever tell you a story about Joe Smith? Did you remember Reginald Van Cleave? Did I ever tell you a story where I met that guy? And I hear that my entire life. And then one of them came to visit once and his car broke down and all it was was. I don't know what it was, something wrong with a coolant. And I think my dad went in and got one of those fix it cans and put it in the radiator. And this is a genius. How did you do this? And once we went up to visit one of them, we were kind of the. They had reunions. And one of them. I won't mention the family name, very famous family on the shores of Lake Tahoe with one of the most prestigious houses. And we go up there, and the person who wanted to water ski was very famous. Her father was one of the most famous American diplomats. But she didn't want to get wet. She wanted to ski from the shore because it was cold and then come around and drop. But they had this beautiful wooden boat, classic 1930s, you know, with. Yeah, and they had a Chevy engine and it didn't work. So they said, we can't get this work. Nobody will come out here. My dad was a great mechanic, and so he said, I can do this. I'll just take apart the carburetor. So somebody had stuffed a rag in there, you know, to warm it up or something, and left the rag, and it was just destroyed. So he took the entire carburetor out while everybody was having lunch and rebuilt it very. And they were complaining about it, and they were saying, well, you're never going to be put. I want to get in the water. And my dad said, well, you know, this thing has been plugged up and it's going to take off. So he got it and anyway, he refined it so it was going like it never had gone before. So she got in, and the first thing that happened, of course, was the employee that was driving it just took off and she fell head over heels in the cold water where this boat just looked like a ramjet or something. And then they said to my dad, what did you do to our boat? What did you do to our boat?
- [75:50]
B
No favorite.
- [75:52]
A
I fixed her boat. And then all the way home, he said, what is wrong with these people? They're completely.
- [76:01]
B
Did you get invited back, Victor?
- [76:03]
A
No, they liked to use my dad. They would ask him to do things for him all the time. My dad was kind of a jack of all trades. He could fix anything. He was very disappointed in me because he'd always say, there's a tractor your grandfather Needs help. Oh, it's transmission. Go ahead. I said what? Give me some guidance.
- [76:23]
B
Yeah, you have more capabilities than most people. I've said this before. The first show we ever did, nr, you were under your house fixing a pipe with 103 fever and you did the show anyway.
- [76:38]
A
Yeah, I had a bad leak. Cast iron pipe. But anyway, I think what I'm getting at is getting back to the British and American. There is a, there's a systemic prejudice, a cultural prejudice against the. You go back to the founders, the John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson dichotomy. That kind of. And the MAGA thing was really brought it back to the fore. We had had pretty good aristocratic, you know, the Romneys, the Bushes and Reagan Cheney successful. And then we get Trump had nothing to do with his money. But the people who were attracted to Trump did not want to be part of the aristocratic classes. They had dealt with them their entire life and they didn't really feel comfortable with them. And I tend to be more with that group than the people that I work with. Although I have wonderful friends at the Hoover Institution. People are wonderful. But the Stanford University people have big problems and they have that attitude. I can see it every day there that I'm there.
- [77:45]
B
There's a lot of, there's a lot of Selma in you and that's a good thing. So. Well, Victor, I'm going to read three quotes from our the many. The thousands of comments that on YouTube and your site. Oh, I can't think of the name of the other rumble, but here, here are a few and we thank folks for taking the time to write comments. This is one from youm Can't Always get what yout Want. Who writes Professor Dr. Hansen. Loved by millions. Survivor like many. Protector of highest intellectual inquiry. Faithful man. Passionate for love of life. Country par excellence. A hero to me, to many. We love you and pray for your continued recovery and well being. Tender heart for usa. Thanks for helping many of us keep a keen eye on the importance of clarity in thought, mind and spirit for our 250th plus future years. For sustainability of our way of life in the usa. That is a mouthful of.
- [78:51]
A
That's very nice. I praised last time people who wrote in cursive. You know, Jack.
- [78:55]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [78:56]
A
They're such beautiful letters. They're so well written and thoughtful and I really appreciate. But I've created a new phenomenon and people are writing me now text and emails and they're using a font where they write it and type it and then they put it in cursive you've
- [79:15]
B
unleashed a giant there. Two more. This is from Shelms321. God bless you, my friend. You're the best. God's not done with you yet.
- [79:23]
A
Victor Davis Hanson.
- [79:25]
B
And then Susan Shepherd699 writes, if I had a history teacher like VDH in high school, in college, I'd have enjoyed the class a lot more and surely remembered a lot more than I do. Thank you for igniting in me an interest in the history of everything and for your wise take on current events. I think all these people who are.
- [79:45]
A
I had a wonderful high school teacher, Gerald Hodges. He was very eccentric. He had two huge large buck teeth and he talked with a lisp. And he'd always say, Mr. Hanson, what were the causes of the Civil War? And I'd say, say the papythn in three parts, theta papyvithin. I say, internal arguments over slavery, tariffs, tariff, faith, the propyth. And so I'd do that. And then he'd say, what are the corollary arguments? He was a wonderful teacher and he really taught me how to write and I really, I had it. And he was in a rural school district. He was a wonderful guy teacher. Yeah.
- [80:32]
B
Well, I love how you write for many reasons and we've discussed this before and we should end the show after this, that you do not use the word I. And I'd love to write.
- [80:43]
A
I was told not to do that. I had a wonderful graduate professor in Latin and Greek. Latin more. But I think he taught one Greek computer. But Michael Vygotsky, he had a very bad stutter and he was kind of an eccentric. He didn't teach well, he didn't write a lot, but he was actually a good hearted person. And I would take Latin and finally I spent this whole time writing, I thought, a beautiful Latin composition. And I went in and he wrote maybe possible Latin. That was his remark. And I said, well, what's wrong with it? The grammar, this. He says, Caesar and Cicero would never write like this. Maybe Tacitus or Suetonius, but not classical Latin. I said, what does it matter? He said to me, I'm teaching you. He I can't. I don't want to make fun of the stutter. But it took him a long time to say it. And he said, I'm teaching you how to write English. I'm teaching you how to write English. Just write English like Cicero does. Or Caesar. If you want to be terse and have Caesar style. If you want to be ornate and Asiatic, have Cicero style. And remember, you can have maybe one, one eye or it seems to me, just for shock effect. I had wonderful, I was very blessed. I had wonderful teachers of Latin. Gregson Davis was an African American from the island of Antigua and he was just a brilliant Latin teacher. Teacher. I liked him. He. He really taught me how to write Latin. We used Bradley's Arnold. He was a good victim.
- [82:23]
B
You've been terrific. I. You look, despite your lack of sleep, you, you look, you look a little better every week. I'm glad for that.
- [82:33]
A
I'm glad you're. Maybe people could. I'm getting about two or three hours because of wounds and I guess it's something to do with loss of blood or maybe somebody could write a secret. Dear Professor Hansen, Dear Victor, if you take this capsule and this capsule and you mix them, be careful because when you take them, you'll be out for nine hours.
- [82:58]
B
I predict the comments that person would be a billionaire. The comments on this program are going to have about a hundred.
- [83:07]
A
I hope so. I never was an insomniac like I am now. But anyway. Okay.
- [83:12]
B
All right. Well, you've been terrific, Victor. Thank you. Thanks to the Daily Signal for hosting this podcast. Thanks, folks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye Bye.
- [83:26]
A
Thank you everybody for listening and viewing and we'll see you next time. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please, like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition.