Victor Davis Hanson: Want to See Illegals Getting Government-Funded Health Care? ‘Go to Any Emergency Room in California'

Summary

Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words (The Daily Signal)
Episode Date: November 11, 2025
Episode Focus: Government Spending Proposals, Healthcare, Immigration, Free Speech & “Platforming,” and Reflections on World Wars

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Episode Overview

This episode features Victor Davis Hanson’s extensive commentary on several major themes in contemporary American politics, economics, and culture. Topics include Donald Trump’s proposed $2,000 tariff rebate, the state of healthcare and government spending, arguments about illegal immigration and its effects on public services, the controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes, and a historically informed reflection on the U.S. role in World War I (in honor of Armistice Day).

Throughout, Hanson contextualizes current events—particularly major conservative talking points—within a broader historical and philosophical perspective.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

I. Trump’s $2,000 Tariff Rebate Proposal

[04:00–15:13]

• Jack Fowler introduces Trump's recently announced $2,000 check for every American, to be funded by tariff revenues. Fowler is skeptical, suggesting that such revenue could be better used to address the national debt.
• Victor Davis Hanson provides a critical, detailed analysis:
  • Mathematics and Scale:
    “So he's going to spend $400 billion … the figure that Scott Besant said is going to come in. And now he's upped it a little bit to $500 billion.” [05:32]
  • Historical Caution:
    “We got into this hyperinflation in 2022 when … they had Build Back Better and the American Inflation Reduction … said we're going to borrow $7 trillion and infuse it into the economy … You flush $7 trillion into the economy … you’re going to get hyperinflation. And lo and behold, 9.1%. It hit in 2022.” [06:03]
  • Economic Context:
    • The U.S. economy is performing well (stock market, oil production, investment in AI and robotics, etc.), and massive new stimulus may not be needed.
    • “Why would you repeat, albeit on a lower scale, what Biden did? ... Why not take the $400 billion, apply it to the $1.1 trillion deficit?” [08:50]
  • Media Narrative:
    • “He's getting a bum rap from the media... I think he deserves a Nobel Prize. I think his foreign policy has been stellar... But that's not going to win the midterms. It's the economy.” [12:20]
  • Advice: Trump should emphasize economic achievement, deficit reduction, and avoid cash handouts.

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II. Filibuster and Institutional Change

[15:28–19:30]

• Hanson expresses deep concern over threats to the Senate filibuster:
  • “If you get rid of the filibuster … they're the ones that tamper with the system, not us.”
  • The filibuster is historical, “an ancient way of slowing down government ... The House is supposed to represent the Prairie Fire people and get things done. The Senate says, well, we're older.”
  • Dangers in removing it: “...when they get the majority … you won't believe what they'll do. And it's much more likely that [Democrats] will benefit from it than conservatives.”
• Bill Clinton example: Working with the opposing party to achieve budget surplus saved Clinton politically, even despite personal scandals.

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III. Healthcare, Insurance, and the System’s Failures

[21:53–33:40]

• Trump’s Insurance Critique:
  • Plans to redirect billions from “money sucking insurance companies” (Obamacare) directly to the people.
• Hanson reflects on the complexities of American healthcare:
  • Patient experience and inefficiency:
    • “Had this problem. I must have had nine CAT scans ... waited three weeks to see if the insurance company... had to sign an affidavit ... $7,000.” [25:28]
    • “Nobody says to me, here's your problem. This costs this much, this cost. And this is the efficacy ... My job is to get you well, but somebody has to pay for it.”
  • Lack of price transparency, insurance company obstacles, the rise of concierge models
  • Systemic issues, especially delays in specialist care and bureaucratic snarls.

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IV. Immigration and Public Services

[27:49–33:40]

• Hanson cites the “Yale study” to challenge low estimates of illegal immigration, suggesting a far higher real number.
  • “We probably have 35 million [illegal immigrants] and we know we have 53 million foreign born. So … it wouldn't be unusual to have 35 million of them here illegally.” [28:55]
• Healthcare Burden:
  • Responds to Elizabeth Warren’s claim that illegal immigrants can’t get federal health insurance:
    • “She should just go to any emergency room in California … I've done that twice … they don't see [private insurance]. Everybody either has no ID or they're on Medi-Cal.” [29:45]
  • Concludes that illegal immigration imposes a significant burden on public programs.
• American Civic Ethos:
  • Emphasizes the need for civic education among immigrants to assimilate, warning against “DEI” and “claims against the racist country.”

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V. Disability, Public Housing, and the Expansion of Entitlement Logic

[31:03–37:24]

• Hanson recounts personal family stories of true disability and struggles for support, contrasting with his dismay at the expansion of what “counts” as disability in the modern era.
• Philosophical critique:
  • Cites Plato and Aristotle:
    • “The logic of radical equality is there's always one next group who has not been given equality.”
    • “Aristotle ... once a man feels he's equal in voting with every other person, then he demands that he be equal in every other respect of his life.”
  • Warns of the dangers of expanding every program and looking for absolute equality (often at the cost of prosperity).

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VI. Free Speech, Platforming & the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes Controversy

[37:53–56:02]

• Listener question challenges conservative “self-censoring and deplatforming” reactions to controversial figures.
• Hanson’s detailed response:
  • Clarifies the difference between “platforming” and “cancellation”:
    • “No one is saying that under the First Amendment that Nick Fuentes can't say his crazy, hateful, racist [views]...But no one is saying that you have to give him your forum.” [41:14]
  • Risks of giving big platforms to demagogues:
    • “If you want to put a king cobra on your program, you can. But you got to expect that it's still a king.” [42:04]
    • On interview responsibilities: “You have to cross-examine ... if you bring someone explosive and don't cross-examine them, you become an enabler or catalyst rather than a disinterested host.” [44:55]
  • On apologies and accountability:
    • “If [someone] offers a sincere apology ... then you watch whether their deeds … confirm their apology and resonate it.”
  • Admits strong feelings toward revisionist WWII narratives that call the war a “mistake,” sharing personal family impact stories.

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VII. Armistice Day & America’s Consequence in World War I

[68:10–80:30]

• Brief family history: Hanson's father and uncle joined the Marines; family military service contextualized.
• Wilson and U.S. Entry:
  • U.S. entry “determined the outcome of the war; Russia was gone, France and Britain were exhausted.”
  • U.S. managed to deliver 2 million troops to Europe “without a single loss in transport.”
• Armistice and Versailles:
  • The armistice gave Germany hope because most Allied forces went home, fostering the “stab in the back” myth.
  • “If you compare the Treaty of Versailles … with what the Germans imposed in 1918 on the Russians at Brest-Litovsk, it’s not even close.”
  • The problem: “Germany did not think they were defeated and they could try it again. The people who won did not want to fight again, and the people who lost most certainly did.” [80:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tariff Rebates & Economic Policy:
  “Why would you repeat, albeit on a lower scale, what Biden did? ... Why not take ... the $400 billion [and] apply it to the deficit?”
  – Victor Davis Hanson [08:50]

• On Government ethos and Disability:
  “There was an ethos, a JFK… ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ That permeated all these programs.”
  – Victor Davis Hanson [32:15]

• On Free Speech & Platforming:
  “No one is saying that under the First Amendment that Nick Fuentes can't say his crazy, hateful, racist ... But no one is saying that you have to give him optionally your forum.”
  – Victor Davis Hanson [41:14]

• On Drawing Lines for Interviewers:
  “If you want to put a king cobra on your program, you can. But you got to expect that it's still a king.”
  – Victor Davis Hanson [42:04]

• On Anti-Revisionism and WWII:
  “When I hear somebody say that World War II was a mistake ... and then I look at, as a historian and see the end of Japanese militarism that killed 16 million people ... then I feel like you said Jack. ... I'm going to be very, very angry.”
  – Victor Davis Hanson [62:00]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:00 | Trump’s rebate proposal, economic context, and Hanson’s analysis | | 15:28 | Filibuster, institutional reform, and its dangers | | 21:53 | Trump’s critique of insurance, insurance as middlemen, patient examples | | 27:49 | Illegal immigration, ER experience, burden on government healthcare | | 31:03 | Disability, public housing, expansion of entitlements | | 37:53 | Listener comment and Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes “platforming” debate | | 68:10 | U.S. in WWI, Marine Corps, Armistice, Treaty of Versailles |

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Overall Episode Tone

Hanson’s tone is analytical, historically-informed, and at times impassioned—especially when reflecting on the personal and collective sacrifices of prior generations. The discussion is in-depth, leavened by philosophical references, personal anecdotes, and clear advocacy for traditional conservative principles.

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This summary skips all advertisement and internal promotional content, focusing solely on the main discussions and key insights.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The Democratic Party has a strategy. This shutdown was timed, I think, for these elections. They knew they were coming up and they wanted to shut down. They have no coherent argument anymore if you get rid of the filibuster. I know the Democrats tried to and they didn't have the votes and they will try it again when they get the majority. I understand that. But conservatives have made a good argument that they want to pack the court, they want to get rid of the Electoral college, they want to change redistricting and they want to let in Puerto Rico, want to let in change Washington, D.C. to a state. They're the ones that tamper with the system, not us. I'm not trying to tell anybody, don't watch Tucker's show, don't do that. No, I don't believe in that either. But I do believe that when somebody comes on like Nick Fuentes, everybody has an obligation according to their station to say that most of the things that he is saying are anti American. They are.

[Jack Fowler]

Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler, the host, and we are here talking to getting wisdom from the great Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and he's a man with his own website, the Blade of Perseus. Victor Hansen.com is the address. You should check it out later on this, this episode. I will tell you why I believe you should be subscribing. We have a lot of new listeners, Victor, a lot of new viewers through YouTube and rumble and other platforms. So we are recording on Sunday, November 9th. This episode will be up on Tuesday, November 11th. I think we're going to try and close the show today with having Victor talk a little about some something related to World War I, November 11th being the, the day of that colossal tragedy and Armistice Day. You know, so much to talk about between before we get there, though, Victor. I mean, there's so much still roiling in the conservative regarding, you know, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes and the Heritage foundation and, and other things. Donald Trump coming out today talking about a 2000$, essentially a tariff rebate or bonus that he wants to pay to all Americans. The president also hammered insurance companies the other day. Have a poll, a great poll about young men and there's so much else. We'll see what we can get to and we'll do all of that when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right. Is still right even if you stand by yourself.

[Jack Fowler]

Mr. Chief justice, may I please record this is Hans von Spakowski, host of the Case in Point podcast, which looks at the hottest cases affecting politics, culture and everyone's daily lives. But we talk about them without confusing legal jargon. And we have interesting guests like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And we end with reviews of classic Hollywood movies relevant to the topic. Case in Point, the podcast available everywhere you won't want to miss. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, why don't we, let's, let's, I hate to say like get it out of the way, but let's talk about Donald Trump and tariffs and then separately we'll talk about his, his feelings about insurance companies. So here's the headline from the Daily Mail this morning. Trump promises $2,000 check for every American thanks to tariff revenue he's collected. The President. This from the article. The president made the exciting announcement on Sunday morning blasting those who hated on his tariff strategy as quote, unquote, fools. He I don't know, Victor, I may be a fool. He said that the dividend of at least 2000 would be paid to everyone bar high except I guess, except for high income people didn't say what that threshold would be. The president also generally lauded the state of the United States, calling it, quote, the most respected country in the world. He said there is, quote, almost no inflation and a record stock market price. Trump cited trillions of dollars of tariff income and said the money would soon go to paying the country's enormous debt of 37 trillion. There's much more in the article. I'll just conclude with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said he expect that the US will collect at least $500 billion in tariff revenue per year. Victor, my own opinion of this is if there was more income to come in, I would have thought it would have gone to $37 trillion in debt.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I think everybody who's listening agrees with that. So there's 340, what million people in the United States? Let's just take an arbitrary figure and say there's 200,000 households. Okay. Because a lot, you know, under 18 and infants. And anyway, what I'm getting at is solely going to mail out 200 million checks. We'll put three zeros from that million because he's going to give $2,000 to each one. So that would be 200 billion times two. It's not 1,000, it's 2,000. So he's going to spend 400 billion. That's the figure that Scott Besant said is going to come in. And now he's upped it a little bit to 500 billion. But here's my point. It's twofold. We got into this hyperinflation in 2022 when economists, when they had build back better and the American inflation reduction, all that crazy stuff. And I can't say Joe Biden, I don't know who was running the country, his operators with the levers and gears and switches said we're going to borrow $7 trillion and infuse it into the economy. And people like Larry Summers, left wing economist and others said wait, wait, wait. We have everybody pent up. They're emerging from the COVID lockdown. They have pent up demand a B the supply chains are in disruption. They can know they will not be able to supply cars and dryers and everything that people want, stakes and everything. And three, if you give everybody this huge amount of money and that's what it was in Covid relief and if you miss work, if you were an employer, if you flush $7 trillion into the economy and people are going to want to buy stuff and they will have the cash and there won't be stuff available for a year or two, I think cars went up 6 to $8,000, then you're going to get hyperinflation and lo and behold, 9.1%. It hit in 2022. And over the Biden four years we had 5.2 average. And so here's what I'm getting at. You don't want to take a lot of money like this, not nearly a $trillion dollars, but $400 billion and flush it into the economy at a time when for all the talk about affordability, the inflation rate is about 2.9. It was at 2.8 the GDP. The Atlantic Bank, Federal Reserve bank said it would get to 4% this year and the pessimists say it's going to be 3%. So the economy is strong. Stock market is at a record price. We are pumping 14 million barrels of oil. Everything is going like gangbusters. Going to get better because of AI is coming in. They're going to pump another 2 million barrels. The price of gas has already gone down from 346 a gallon to 298 on average from the four years of Biden was 348, I think 346. So energy is going to get cheaper and we're hit. The tariffs did not cause a recession. They did not melt down the stock market, they did not cause hyperinflation, did they did not destroy the American Chinese Relationship, they made it better. So what I'm getting at is this economy is going to take off. And I know that they said affordability costs, Republican stuff, but this was a long term economy. He's got, if we said this before, Jack, if 30% of the 15 trillion in foreign investment actualized, he's going to get 5, 6 trillion dollars in foreign investment. That's going to be millions of new jobs. There's going to have to be robotics, there's going to be genetic engineering, there's going to be AI. It's all coming online. And you hear these tech people, they're giddy and so all of the indicators, energy productivity and we don't even, we never, we've never deported 2 million people. He's going to, we've never closed the border. We don't know the effect of having American only jobs, but there's going to be a lot of jobs open for people. And more importantly, we don't know the effect on state and local. I can tell you that if the country is anything like the local places I go to and you take a lot of those people out and you're not waiting in line for 20 minutes while somebody gives you five fake EBT cards, is you're going to save a lot of money. You're not going to have thousands of people in hotels at free stuff. You're not going to have a crime that costs the crime wave. You're not going to have as much fentanyl. So there's going to be a lot of stimuli. So why at this, why would you repeat, albeit a lower scale, what Biden did? And why not take, as you said, Jack, the 400 billion, apply it to the 1.9 annual $1.1 trillion deficit and you know, and say I took the deficit, I cut taxes, I deregulated and yet I still cut the deficit by 30 or 40%. Maybe he could do that with the doge cuts of 100 or 200 billion. Why not do that? And I know that he thinks that he got a bad rap because the economy was strong and the Democrats a compared his first nine months. The Democrats logic, Jack, was this. We went in for four years and gave you hyperinflation and screwed up the economy, high gas prices. You came in for nine months with the antithesis of that and it's working, but because it hasn't, you haven't created deflation and undone all the destruction we did. Therefore, we want to come back in power to do what we did before to make it even worse. And he needs to articulate not just what he's done, but what he's done in comparison with the four year disaster. And you don't hear that. He's got to address the media. The media says recession, recession, hyperinflation, hyperinflation, crash, stock market, trade war, trade war. And I'm speaking of you Wall Street Journal, you said that all of March, April and May ad nauseam. So you were like no difference between the New York Times, Forbes had an article the other day, a friend sent it to me and it was grudgingly saying 26 is going to be a boom year. Could not believe it and that they would write the truth. And so he's getting a bum rap from the media. And he's not, He's. I think he deserves a Nobel Prize. I think his foreign policy has been stellar. Seven or eight cease fires, no Iranian nuclear threat for three or four months. But that's not going to win the midterms. It's the economy. And he needs to talk about the great things he's done on the economy. And a final thing, one final thing that he I think has to be addressed. The Democratic Party has a strategy. This shutdown was timed, I think for these elections. They knew they were coming up and they wanted to shut down. They have no coherent argument anymore. If you just ran a campaign ad of all the things Obama said, when the Republicans shut down the. This is terrible. This is bomb throwers. This is, they're just sore losers. If you don't have the votes because you didn't win elections, then you have to take away your, you throw over the chessboard and go home. Well, just that's what they did. So number two, you could argue that, but they did that intensely to create chaos and it's the longest in history. And to slow down the economy going into the midterms number that wasn't deliberate. The Federal Reserve, there is no hyperinflation, no hyperinflation and we don't have yet 7% GDP. It's not a booming thing that's gonna get out of control. It's a stead market that requires moderate. If you get the mortgage rates from 7, it's almost 7 down to 4. And the developers and the builders knew that for the next two or three years you'd, you would solve the affordability, it would boom. But they're deliberately doing that. I think, I think the Federal Reserve is deliberately keeping interest rates high to hurt the Trump economy. I think the news media is deliberately doing that. And that's Politics. I accept that. And I think that the Democratic Party is trying to sabotage the economy. So if he can address that, get the government back open and jawbone, keep going up to the Federal Reserve and tell everybody how partisan they are, because they are, and survive the court challenges of most of the tariffs, he will be in great shape. He will win the midterm elections because the economy is going to boom. But they need to talk about it, and they don't need to give $400 billion to all of us, you know.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, perception being reality and politics, Victor, it does look like this comes as a response to the poor showing of Republicans last week on Election Day. It may not be, but that's the perception at least.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The other thing I'm really worried about is the filibuster. I mean, if you get rid of the filibuster, I know the Democrats tried to and they didn't have the votes and they will try it again when they get the majority. I understand that. But conservatives have made a good argument that they want to pack the court, they want to get rid of the Electoral College, they want to change redistricting, and they want to let in Puerto Rico, they want to let in change Washington to D.C. to a state. They're the ones, ones that tamper with the system, not us. I know it's not in the Constitution, but The filibuster is 100. It goes back to 1830. It's an ancient way of slowing down government. So the House is supposed to represent the Prairie Fire people and get things done. And the Senate says, well, we're older. We're the old Roman senators, we're the old Cato, the elder. Just slow down. And that's the filibuster. So I wouldn't get rid of that. And another reason not to get rid of it is when you look in the near future, which party is going to adopt radical, radical changes? It's not the Republicans. Trump, for all of his maverick tendencies and the great things he's been doing, he is orthodox Republican in a lot of ways. He wants deregulation, he wants lower taxes, he wants Supreme Court justice or conservative, but he's not, he's not going to be a radical person that is going to need, I mean, the filibuster has hurt him, no doubt. He could open the gun, but they're not going. He's done most of his things on executive orders, what I'm trying to say. But when they get in, if, if they get the majority and there's no filibuster you won't believe what they'll do. And it's much more likely that they will benefit from it than conservatives. So I would leave it alone, and I would leave the $400 billion payout or if that's. That arithmetic is just arbitrary. But I would. I would use it against the deficit. What got Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was reckless. His personal life was a train wreck. He did a lot of bad things when he was president. His foreign policy was a joke. But you have to give the guy credit. He worked with Newt Gingrich, and Newt Gingrich gave him a plan. And this is how we're gonna. This is what we want to freeze spending and cuts. And Clinton said, I'll do it for a little tax increase. I wouldn't have done that. But he did. And we had four balanced budgets, surpluses last we've ever seen. And he's. That saved his presidency. That's why he was not impeached over Monaco. People said, why would you impeach a known philanderer and a sex addict for having a tawdry sex act off the White House in the Oval Office bathroom when he balanced the budget for four years?

[Jack Fowler]

I mean, impeachment is a political act, and it is a political act. You don't have the super majority numbers.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I'm being facetious, but they didn't understand that. When I saw that, I thought, yes, by any rules of government behavior, sexual harassment, asymmetrical power relations between a president, a young interim, he should have been impeached, but not politically. People were so proud that all of a sudden they. Do you remember those Wall street journal articles in 1999? They said, We've got to be very careful. We've never been in this situation where we're running vast surpluses. It could affect the bond market. We could have a deflationary spiral. Moderate deficit spending is preferable. You know what I mean? It's whatever you do, it's good. They get some guy out as sober and judicious and war you that. And then you read him a month later and it's exactly the opposite of what he said anyway.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, that's your official Wall Street Journal voice.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Victor, we're gonna.

[Jack Fowler]

I like.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I shouldn't say that. A few. If somebody would say to me, you don't like Gerald Baker. I love Gerald. You don't like home, and I like him. You don't like Kim Strauss. I like her. What am. I think they're great. What am I talking about? The news division.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right.

[Jack Fowler]

I have to Add in the great Bill McGurn also.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, Bill, 90 of the art of the reporters that are for the new Wall Street Journal are from Politico, Washington Post, New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic. Just look up their bylines in their bios.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay? Now, fair listeners and viewers, if you listen to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, you care about where America's been, where we are now and where we're headed. And that's exactly what Freedom Frequency is all about. It's a new online publication from Hoover Institution where Victor is a senior fellow, designed to cut through the noise and bring clarity to the issues that shape our country's future. Each week, Freedom Frequency delivers serious, accessible analysis grounded in research and guided by the American values of liberty, democracy, free enterprise and the rule of law. You'll hear from some of Hoover's most respected thinkers. People like Condoleezza Rice, General Jim Mattis, General H.R. mcMaster, economist John Cochran, and of course, Victor Davis Hanson, providing clear thinking and principled solutions for a complex world. As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation, there's no better time to dig deeper into the ideas that built America and will determine its future. Subscribe now to Freedom Frequency on substack. That's the freedom frequency.org and join the conversation that's lighting the way forward. We thank the good people from the Hoover Institution for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And I just want to say when it comes to Hoover online journals, they're pretty good. Including Strategica one that I know a guy that edits Strategic.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I do too. Yeah. So although I have to give credit to my team, David Berkey's the editor, the acting managing editor and Bruce Thornton's a editor. And Megan, you know Megan, Megan Ring.

[Jack Fowler]

I love Megan.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And Morgan Hunter. I have four really great staffers. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well Victor, let's keep on Donald Trump before we head into a break. And when we come out of the break, we're going to have your take on this prolonged Tucker etc issues. But right now Donald Trump is attacking insurance companies. This is a truth social post from the other day. He writes, I am recommending to Senate Republicans that hundreds of billions of dollars currently being sent to money sucking insurance companies in order to save the bad health care provided by Obamacare. All caps now be sent directly to the people so that they can purchase their own much better health care and have money left over. In other words, take from the big bad insurance companies, give it to the people and terminate per dollar spent the worst health care anywhere in the world. Obamacare unrelated. We must still terminate the filibuster. That's a caboose to this other.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Is this true, Jack? I'm going to draw on your infinite wisdom as a New York Washington corridor insider.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, my.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I'm just kidding.

[Jack Fowler]

Thank you.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I read that only 25% of Americans have Obamacare. The rest are on Medicaid. Medical. If you're in California or they have private insurance or they're just on Medicare.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Is he right to blast the insurance? Well, when you have this question of moral hazard and the patient and the doctor, the doctor prescribes something and he looks at medical need as he should, he doesn't look at the cost, although he's under a lot of pressure to do that. And then the patient just. You pay your premiums. I pay a fantastic amount of Medicare Advantage. You know, the extra thing. My pension takes it out of. It takes it out of my pension and. But my point is this. Whatever the, the, there's the insurance, there's the doctors, medical community, and then there's a patient. And when you have nobody cognizant of the actual price and the cost of benefit analysis, then the insurance companies are going to make it a fortune. And they're going to make a fortune by saying no to you. No to you. No to you. And yes, maybe. Yes. Yeah. And I, it's not so simple that they're. I mean, that's what, that's what got Luigi Mangione famous, is that he bought into. The insurance companies are all crooked. But I'll give you an example. I had this problem. I must have had nine CAT scans, and that's a lot of radiation. I think I glow in the dark. And then they said, well, you need a PET scan to see what lights up in your lung. So I waited three weeks to see if the insurance company. And then finally to get it, I had to sign an affidavit that said I would pay for it if they didn't. And I think it was like 7,000 bucks or something. And then when it came back, it said, well, sort of lit up, but it sort of didn't light up. So what does that mean? You sort of had a tumor? You sort of didn't have a tumor. So now I'm going back tomorrow. But I think I've had. Had MRIs. It must have been. I never used. I never hadn't gone to a doctor in two years except for eyes. So my point is I've had sinus CAT scans, I've had Lung CAT scans, I've had MRIs, I've had PET scan. And then they wanted. You wanted a steroid inhaler. One week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, four weeks to have the insurance company, I go to Walgreens. Here's your medication. I said, that's my eye drops. I just need my. I'm supposed to inhale this to re. Inflate my lung. Oh, it wasn't approved. Well, I have no idea about the. You see what I mean? Right? Yeah. Nobody says to me, here's your problem. This costs this much, this cost. And this is the efficacy of this or that. And I know, I understand. The doctor said, that's not my job. My job is get you well, but somebody has to pay for it. And that's the problem where there's no information. I kind of like what we're going to. When I was in, I think it was Michigan, I went to a store and they had at Walmart, you know, a Walmart brand. Right. And they had you ever seen those things? Strep throat treatment. And then they have each maladay with the, the dosage. And they had a doctor there, then.

[Jack Fowler]

You could do it there. Yeah, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And they had a price. A price. You know how much a penicillin prescription would cost? Cash it. I think for minor things it would be better just to say, have your, you know, your non taxable medical account, just pay cash. That's what I, I have two. I have the Medicare and I have Medicare Advantage. And now I'm paying a concierge doctor because you can't find anybody. Yeah, I couldn't find. I called up and they said pulmologist six months, internist a year. And my intern is retired, is retiring. So I don't have any. I hadn't had no doctor, hadn't been in two years. And they said, there's a great guy and I won't mention his name, he is great, but it'll be this amount a month. So I pay by the month, even though I have insurance.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, the chaos, Victor, I think everyone experienced it in one way or. I remember back in the McLaughlin Group when he was still alive and it was sponsored by GE&GE used to run all these commercials about medical technology and medical information. How, how all this information was going to be collected in one place and everything was going to be so much easier and better and it just seems to have gotten worse.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Everybody has that experience of going to a doctor and they're on their computer typing while they're talking to you. You so they can get you in and out or everybody's had the experience since Obamacare. You go to a specialist, I went to one and there was five people in the waiting room. And then he would do the exam for 10 minutes and then he would say 10 minutes. Now let's watch this. You know, if this gets worse, we'll do the. It was nights and now it's da, da, da, da, I got three men or four and you're out and you look at the waiting room and everybody's swarmed. Right. The other thing is when you have 12 million people coming in illegally in the Yale study of 2019, I want everybody to listen to this because I get these people that write to me and said, oh, you're just lying about illegal immigration. There was only about 6 or 7 million and Biden only left in 5. And if you say 12, most of them were legal. No, we have a most. A million legal people come in and we have somewhere between 10 to 12 illegal entries. We don't know if the entry is equivalent to a person, but it was probably 8 to 10 million people. And the Yale study 1, 2, 3 of 2019, six years ago said all of the estimates are wrong. And there's more likely 21 million people, let's say average, another 3 or 4 million, 25 plus. We probably have 35 million and we know we have 53 million foreign born. So it wouldn't be unusual to have 35 million of them here illegally. So when Elizabeth Warren gets on TV and starts screaming that you're lying, there's no such thing that illegal aliens can get federal health insurance. She should just go to any emergency room in California. And I've done that twice, as I said earlier in the last two years. And the first time there was not one person speaking English, maybe 70. The second time I think there was a person speaking English, but they were from an English speaking country or where English is a second language. And when I started talking to the person, they were very surprised that I had a private, private Medicare Advantage. They don't see that everybody either has no ID or they're on Medi Cal. And if you think that's crazy, 40% of people who reside in California are on Medi Cal, 50% of the. So Ms. Warren, just because you write in that there will not be illegal aliens getting Obamacare does not mean that when somebody comes in here they don't have an infected tooth or twisted ankle. And when they do have that, and they have it a lot, they go to the emergency Room. And no one, no one says no, you can't come in, you don't have means. And then somebody pays for that. We don't care about the program or the name of the payer, but it's the federal government and when you have 10 million people coming in, it's a huge cost. And that's what the Republicans are trying to tell you.

[Jack Fowler]

Layered onto that, Victor, is the explosion of disability, Social Security, disability.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I get really upset.

[Jack Fowler]

35 year old men who are, you know, bad.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, no, it's not just that, it's. My son got a D because he has attention deficit disorder. So he's disabled and he needs to get. It's not. I mean, I think it's great to have disability for people who have severe mental. You know what I mean? Downs, absolutely. But when you have people who are using gaming the system. I had an aunt that had severe polio. She was shrunken, she was a beautiful. They said she had been a beautiful young girl, about nine and she got in the swimming pool I think in 1924 or something, polio. And then they took her to the Shriners and they did 19 operations to break all of her bones, to straighten them. And she ended up up incapacitated and they could not get disability in the 60s for her. And finally my grandfather took her in, she was like 55, 60 years old. And he said, watch her, right? And her hands were like claws. And I went with him. And there was a gruff old guy, I don't know about this, you know, I don't know, can you walk? And then she wrote it and he goes, I can't understand it, my grandfather, that's the point. She can't write a check. So then he gave her. And she was so happy. I think she got $130 a month. And when she died, she died. And she said to me, before she died, she goes, I want to have an inheritance for all five of these my nephews. I think I have about $6,000. Can you believe that? $6,000. So what I'm getting at everybody, there was an ethos, a jfk. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And that permeated all these programs. And when you have people who have never had the American experience and they don't know anything about your culture, your language, and you decide to let in millions in one big fell swoop, then you better have a Marshall Plan for civic education. You better say, we have at every Walmart, at every home Depot. At every Target we have a little booth where you sign up for English lessons and tutorial about the American experience. But we don't. Instead we give them dei filter down dei. Oh, you're, you walk one inch into the United States, you have claims against the racist country and that's, it's, that's a disaster.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor, just one last thought for me if you don't mind, was I was on the housing authority in my town in Milford, Connecticut. And originally public housing, was that public housing for the poor and then senior housing. Housing and senior housing became senior disabled. And disabled means. Well, you could have multiple, multiple sclerosis, you could have cerebral palsy, there could be any number of reasons that we would consider traditional disability. But now you could be a drug addict, you could be a 29 year old drug addict and apply and qualify for public housing, senior housing. So this is, then that's irrespective of immigration.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And you know, this was old, this fallacy with equity was ancient. And the two greatest philosophers of the ancient, maybe of the entire western experience were Aristotle and Plato. So Plato has a dialogue where Socrates, the interlocutor is talking to a radical advocate of democracy, but not democracy, as we have a constitutional republic, but radical democracy. Jacobin, French Revolution, that's what Athens was. And he says to him, these people should vote. And then these people, and then these people. And then he said, you will not be happy until the donkeys and the dogs vote. Because the logic of radical equality is there's always one next group who has not been given equality. And you can't live with any inequality, even though by nature people. And then there's a great passage in Aristotle in the politics, I think it's in the ethics too, where he says the problem with Athenian. And he was a supporter of a moderate democracy. He says once a man feels he's equal in voting with every other person, then he demands that he be equal in every other respect of his life. He's not saying you shouldn't vote, he's saying you have to be very careful that when a person says my vote is just as valuable with another, which it is, don't get me wrong, but then you can't make the next logical natural leap. Well, if I get to vote and my votes, then why does he have a bigger house? Why don't we just have the same houses? And then if we have the same houses, the same cars and the same this and the same this and the same this, and finally it becomes a reduction to the absurd and that's the problem. That's where we're we're in that spiral of constantly expanding every single program in a way that had never been intended and then taking culpability so, you know, somebody isn't equal. We say, do you work the same number of hours? Are you as healthy as the other person? Are you as lucky as the other person? Did you have this I'm not talking about everybody needs a bottom that you don't go below a guaranteed health care. I get that. But this idea that Mondami is now and you, you're we're going to talk about socialism and the popularity, but they really do believe the socialists that everybody has to be equal and they should. Read again. Democracy in America, 1832 Tocqueville the problem we the problem is that most people, Tocqueville tells us, would rather all be equal and poor than all of them to be better off. But some people would be better off than they were and they would prefer poverty, inequality to prosperity and some inequality.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, you couldn't have said it better than that, Victor. Now we're going to have to take a break here. When we come back, we're going to to get into that pleasant topic of Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes and the platform providing platforms for nasty stuff. And we'll do that when we come back from these important messages. We are back with the I was almost going to say the old name.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

We're back with don't, don't say that.

[Jack Fowler]

We're so happy to be at the Daily Signal. Love you, Rob Bluey. Love, Katrina Trinkle. Go Victor Davis Hansen in his own.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Can I ask you a question? Wasn't there a suit when I was a kid? There was a super Remember Superman, DC Comics? They were kind of the straight comics compared to the more exciting Marvel Comics. But wasn't there an alternate Superman or an bizarro Superman? And he was the alternate he looked like, but he was the evil Superman.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I think.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, that's the Victor Davis Hansen show. It's the Bizarro, my alter ego. It's morphed into a rival bars.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, yes, Bizarre Jerry Seinfeld did a picked up on the Bizarro stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Victor, let me, let me get some business out of the way. Your website, the Blade of Perseus, folks should check it out because there's a ton of free stuff, links to everything Victor writes and appearances and even the archives of old shows. But you should subscribe. I heartily recommend because twice a week Victor does an exclusive archive article for the Blade of Perseus and once a week an exclusive video. It's $65 a year, but if you just want to stick your toe in the water, pay 650amonth. That's the blade of Perseus. Victor Hansen.com Victor, we have so many, so many comments on your website and other places, YouTube. I look through them. The great Sammy Wink looks through. But here's one I wanted to, I think. Let me read this as an entree to get your additional thoughts on this, these Tucker Carlson controversies. And this is by a comment from Kevin Herman3419. This is not to pick on him, but hey, he wrote something and it's a springboard to your further thoughts. So he writes, I'm going to have some fairly stern words for Victor and Jack. For one, self censoring and deplatforming are leftist tools, not conservative tools. This hyper focusing on Tucker Carlson and Fuentes actually makes them more popular and sympathetic to their followers. They should be criticized on things they say that are incorrect. But the hysteria I'm seeing from the traditional right over the interview and these people, in my honest opinion, it's borderline hysterical and will not end well. People should actually be platforming Nick and debating them. Tucker did a horrible job of never pushing back, but that doesn't mean others can't. This audience skews very old and I think he started with the audience of this podcast. And these two are very popular with under 40 men. And these people are not even close to all being neo Nazis. Young men are very disaffected. They have gotten the short end of the stick for a long time, but the clock is ticking. Well, Victor, I mean, he's, he's saying things not in a caustic way, but.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Saying, no, I don't think on a.

[Jack Fowler]

Lot of people's minds, mind. So how do we react?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I, I didn't see that as a stern. I'm glad he wrote it. But there's a certain leaps of logic he makes. I'd like to clarify two or three things. Number one, he conflates platform deplatforming, self cancellation, cancellation culture. There's a difference. There is platforming and there's cancellation. No one is saying that under the First Amendment that Nick Fuentes can't say is crazy, hateful, racist. That's his. If he wants to do that, that's his. But no one is saying that you have to give him optionally your forum. That's the question. So Tucker, he can put anybody he wants on there. I think I listen to it sometimes. He went Lindsey Graham. Why? You wouldn't believe. He called him a lover of death. That's his. He can do whatever he wants. But if you want to give a platform to someone that likes Hitler and loves Stalin and wants Jews to go back who never were living in Israel and it talks non stop in racist fashion, if you want to give him a big platform, then you have to be very careful. And here's number one, there is a reason why George Wallace had a good audience. There is a reason why Nick Fuentes has a big following. There's a reason why Candace Owens has a big. These are not amateurs. They are master rhetoricians. There's a reason, I'm not saying they're Hitler or anything, but there was a reason. The reason that Mussolini, you should listen to Mussolini's speec. Look corny, but he was a master of speaking demagoguery. So when you put those people on your platform, you better be prepared because often they will be more experienced than you. I watched for an hour the other day George Wallace debate William F. Buckley. William F. Buckley had every argument on his side. Segregationist versus civil rights. Okay, but. And William F. Buckley was an expert at interviewing people. But if you watch those two, the better speaker, the more the better, the more common, the more populous to be. It's George Wallace. It really is. And even though what he said was hateful and even so what I'm getting at, these are not amateurs. If you want to put a king cobra on your program, you can. But you got to explain, expect that there's still a king. Number two, when they get on your program and you've run this experiment, they're not going to say Heil Hitler. They want a bigger audience. So they're not going to go through the gamut of what they say on their own programs with tiny audiences. And Nick Fuentes didn't go through his repertoire. He said a few times things that he couldn't stop himself. He said things that were outrageous. But he didn't get into what he said the other day about Kevin Roberts or he didn't say what he said about Mark Levitt. I mean they get really. So number two, when you bring in this person and you decide that you're going to give him this huge multi million audience and you don't know that he is a expert rhetorician and you don't know that he is not going to be transparent. But every time David Duke got on a TV show, do you remember what he would Kind of say, well you know, I'm not racist, I love black people. I just think that we went the wrong road with separate but equal. That was where we should have been. We just separate ourselves. So that is number two, you've got to be very careful to draw them. And number three, you have to cross examine. And I made that point again and again. If you have a non controversial person and somebody of the same conservative persuasion ideologically, politically as Tucker did with Ted Cruz, nevertheless, I think it was. Ted Cruz is a very experienced debater, but he had no idea that this was going to be an ambush. Don't you agree with that? That and Tucker went after him with 250 calibers, man population. And he. I probably would favor Ted Cruz over Tucker as far as politics, but as a disinterested arbiter, I think Tucker won that because he knew what he was going to do. So my point is if Tucker had abused those skills because he obviously didn't agree with Wallace what Ted Cruz was saying, so he wanted to cross examine him as he should. But when he brought in somebody who's not even anywhere near Ted Cruz, he's so far off the acceptable speech and language, but he didn't do any of those, he didn't employ any of those cross examined skills that he exhibited. So that was the criticism that, not that you're canceling Tucker or you're canceling Fuentes, they can do, anybody can do all they want. But if somebody has a huge audience, an Edward R. Murrow, a William F. Buckley, a Tucker and they want controversial people on there, then they have an obligation to be wary of what territory they're entering. And they're going to bring in a very explosive dynamic. William F. Buckley's, I mean Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton got a PhD from my Alma mater eventually, but doesn't say much. But they were very articulate, they were charismatic. Buckley had to use all of his repertoire to show people what these people were. And even then he kind of let up on them because he didn't want to seem like a bigot or something. But they were out of control. And yet he brought them on and I think in a very successful way drew them out that they were finally saying things that were abhorrent and that's the role of somebody to show somebody they get, you know, a bigger audience. And so what I'm getting at is you don't. That's not anything. So when you object to that, you're not saying I'm canceling Tucker you're not saying you're canceling Fuentes. You just say if somebody expresses hate and wants to really torment a particular people and you think you want to let more people know about it and use your fides and your authority and your reputation to do so. If you don't understand what you're doing and bring this guy on, or if you do understand and you don't cross examine him, then you have amplified his views and you're going to be seen as an enabler or catalyst rather than a disinterested host. And Tucker knows the difference because he has people on there that he disagrees with. And he's very good in cross examination. And I'm not trying to tell anybody, don't watch Tucker's show, don't do that. No, I don't believe in that either. But I do believe that when somebody comes on like Nick Fuentes, everybody has an obligation, according to their station to say that most of the things that he is saying are anti American. They are. When he says, earlier he said he loves Hitler, an arch enemy of the United States. Then he said that he liked Stalin better, who we waged a cold war and he almost went to war. Well, in Korea, we had a proxy war with him. So what I'm getting at is, and most of the he said, as I remember, he didn't want Trump to be elected. He worked against a lot of conservative candidates. I don't think he's very conservative. And so that's the difference. And the same thing with Kevin Roberts. I disagreed. And he disagreed with what he said when he said that he attacked people who objected to the Fuentes interview. And then he came back and said, I didn't understand the depth of the hatred and venom that Fuentes espoused. And then he went through them all and said, I should have criticized him more rather than criticize the people who criticize Fuentes. Everybody see that? And he admitted that. But that second apology did not entail a reference to Tucker. So he was trying to say that basically heritage is not obligated for any one person to defend him. But I did, but he didn't say that explicitly. So then he had another town hall, and I thought he was very good in the town hall. And then the question is, do you cancel someone for a mistake when the person feels terrible about it? And the answer is always in these situations, it doesn't have anything to do with heritage. It's a universal principle. You give the person the benefit of the doubt if they offer a sincere apology and Then you watch whether their deeds in the ensuing days, hours, minutes, seconds, months, confirm their apology and resonate it. If they don't, and it's not, then you can act accordingly. But I agree with the reader that I don't understand why everybody wants to say Tucker should be taken off or Kevin Roberts should be fired. They shouldn't. They all work in the world, we all do in the world of ideas and the arena. And I have people get hysterical about me and want to, you know, they attack me all the time. And my point is, if you, if you think I'm wrong, make an argument. If you don't, don't. I mean, I would. I would be happy to have Tucker come on. And if he did come on, I would be very pleasant and disinterested. And I would say, Tucker, this is what hap. This is what Daryl Cooper did. You agree or disagree? And this is what I think. I think the record shows data archives on World War II. Let's talk about the firebombing of the Black Forest, which he says was a terrorist act. And here is what actually was the background of it. And then just see what he says. I'd be happy to. I think it would be good. And I wouldn't give him a platform. If he said things that people felt were. I felt were anti Semitic, I would cross examine him. And that's what Buckley did. That's what people do do. But you've got to be very careful if you have an audience to allow people to come in and manipulate that audience unless you agree with it. And the purpose of having them on is to amplify their views. So that's the difference between not bringing some, platforming somebody and canceling them. Nobody is canceling anybody. When you say, I don't want. If I say I don't want Nick Fuentes on my show and I don't, I would never have him on. That doesn't mean that I'm canceling Emma. It's a free country. You remember that scene in Heat, the Michael Mann movie, when John Voight, remember, he was kind of the fixer. I don't know if you ever saw that.

[Jack Fowler]

I've never believe it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's one of my favorite movies.

[Jack Fowler]

And.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So they've done the. It's kind of. You don't want to glorify these guys. They're horrible. They kill people and they rob a bank. But Val Kilmer wants to go connect with his wife, so he's not going to meet at the rendezvous to get out of the country. And so Robert. Yeah, you know, did he get out? Is he going to make it? He was wounded. He said, no, he's not. He's not going to be there. Well, he does. He just didn't want to come. So you're going to be gone. He said, oh man. He said, hey, bro, it's a free country. And that's what my attitude is. It's a free country and you can say what you want. There is a Supreme Court has defined numerous times when that say what you want leads to violence and stuff, and they have some restrictions. But just if you bring on a firebrand and that person uses your platform to advocate extreme views, then you have a responsibility to your audience and I think to the country and the public at large to cross examine him. Unless, and I'll be very, very careful here if that's not your purpose. For example, I had two guests the other day, Jack. I did a solo that run a wonderful American Heritage museum near Boston, Mr. Collins and Boland. And they came on and they had taken a friend of mine, Jack Littlefield Jr. Had a tank museum, beautiful. I mean, it was one of the biggest in the world. And, and he died tragically. And they used a lot of the, they shipped a lot of the Panther tanks, you name it, everything. So I was giving them a forum. Did I ask hostile questions? No, I asked to give them more information because I wanted to use this platform, such as it is, to allow our listeners, many of them who write me all the time about World War II esoterica, which is fascinating in itself, I wanted them to get more information. So I was amplifying. If they came in and said not them, but if somebody else came in and said, well, I collect Tiger tanks and Panthers and Mark4s, I said, oh good, you want to come on. He said, heil Hitler. Yes, I want to show you how they were the best thing and we could have won then. If I'm going to put him on, then I'm going to make him look what he is. And that's the difference. It's a very easily distinguishable difference. I think everybody should see that. You don't have to give people an opportunity unless you want to amplify. When you give a person an amplifier, according to your station, when you give a person a platform, then you have a choice to either amplify or to be neutral or to be cross examining. It's one of the three. And if you pick the wrong one, given their views, there's going to be a lot of outcry. Of people that this person has attacked and hurt and you did not stick up for. So then you have to take that responsibility. That's all.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, we. We all have a responsibility to. To this republic. And as we as we approach the 250th anniversary, the semi quincentennial, I think it's an opportunity to reflect a little on some of the founders and what they said about America's future. John Adams and. And George Washington were very explicit. This is of this republic will survive if it's on a republic of moral people. And if you are helping to make it a republic of immoral people or giving platform to moral I think you bear some.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I addressed in two articles in a long podcast with my colleagues Andrew Roberts and Neil Ferguson. We addressed in that podcast for Peter Robinson. But I did it in two essays. The mistake, factual mistakes and analytical mistakes that Darrell Cooper had made. I wasn't demonizing. I don't know anything about him. I know that he wrote a book on Twitter about Twitter. That's about it. I would look as soon as Tucker had him on. I looked all over. I wanted to read, you know, an article, a popular article, anything. But I couldn't find anything he's ever written. So it was hard for me to adjudicate what he was actually saying. I went and listened to one of the podcasts and I didn't get a lot of detail that was would confirm his version. But after I did, I listened. I got angry about World War II because these were just men and women in 1939, 40, 41 all the way. And they didn't have a lot of choices and they made the choice that was better than the alternative. They thought. So they didn't like the Soviet Union. I know there were people around Roosevelt who were communist sympathizers and Communist Party members and they had ill intent. But for the most part, Roosevelt was not making these decisions alone. He had a lot of different people in his cabinet. Stimson, he had people like George Marshall, he had congress people, conservatives as well, Admiral Leahy, he had everybody. And they came to the conclusion that after Hitler declared war in the Soviet Union, they could stay out of the war, but supply 20% of the needs of the Soviet Union and hurt Germany. They never knew about Pearl Harbor. They thought that they were going to get through the whole thing as neo isolationist and use the Russians to. And you know what? 75% of every German death, tragic, whatever wartime death was inflicted by the Soviet Union and the United States came out of that war. After fighting on two fronts for four long years with about 450 tragic dead. But they did not lose 5 million, 6 million, 7 million, 15 million like China. They did not lose 20 million like Russia. And yet. So there was a logic there. You might not like the logic, but the logic stands the test of time. Now, did that empower the Soviet Union during the Cold War? Yes. And that's what we all do in life. We make a decision and it's 51% then that 49%. We deal with the next decision and the next one. Because we're not. We're human. As Petronius says, sumus homines non dei. We're just humans, we're not gods. So that's what it is. And you can't demand perfection. I got really angry too, because as I said earlier, we had a first cousins, the Cather family, their grandparents. And my grandparents were. My grandmother were sister, two sisters. There were 11 kids, but that was her favorite sister. And she had one son before I was born, Holt. He was a one. Everybody loved him. I read about him. I read his letters. He volunteered. He went over to World War II and he got shot in the head right after Normandy. And it destroyed that family. They had another quiet introspective kid, Belden. He went over with MacArthur to the Philippines. He got dinghy finger. He got 106 degree temperature and he had severe brain damage. And he came back. And when I was growing up, I loved. We called him Uncle Belden. And he rode his bike out from a little apartment all the way out to the farm. The bike was still here until about eight years ago. And then I would talk to him. He could barely. He was the sweetest kid in the world. And then I talked to my grandfather. I loved my Swedish, but he would cough and then he would never tell me why. And then my dad said he had phosphine gas and he was in a. And mustard. And he was in a hospital in Brussels for one year until he got back after World War I. And then I went to go see my father in the hospital, Jack. And he had a severe operation and they gave him all this. And all of a sudden he got up out of the bed and he had both hands like this and he was screaming at full. I was about 9 years old in the Fowler Hospital. He said 9 o', clock, 9 o', clock, 9 o'.

[Jack Fowler]

Clock.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Tony, Tony, Tony. Come on. Come on, Cliff. Again, again. And get again. I gotta get him. And he did this for 10 minutes. And then they came in and they tried to suppress him. And he was back, you know, over Japan at 29,000ft. And there was this Kawasaki Tony coming right at him.

[Jack Fowler]

And it's like that scene out of the best sense of our Life. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And then he says. And he's got a cigar in his mouth. He's got a cigar in his mouth. Get him, get him, get him, get him. He's off me. He's off me. Get him, get him. Tail gunner. Tail gunner. And then, you know. And then I can remember when I was nine, my dad goes in and he opens a green World War II wood trunk. And he says, here. And I said, what is this? And he goes, here's a Louisville Slugger. It was one of those old, like, Babe Ruth Smith, little tiny thing. Here's a briefcase. Here is a belt. Now, this was who I named you after, Victor Hansen. His mother died in childbirth. His father was blinded in a sulfur machine accident. We adopted him. He was my first cousin. We went to school together. We went to college together. We played football for Stag together. I didn't know anybody, what all this meant. And he and I joined the Marines and something happened to me and I was disciplined. And I went over to the B29s to die. And he went to Okinawa to live. And he got killed. And he said, that ruined that family. That was the only child. That was it. And you're going to live up to this. This is the most wonderful person in the world. And if I ever see you do anything to cheapen that name, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. So I want you to do so. When I'm repeating all this stuff, when I hear somebody say that World War II was a mistake or we blew it, or it wasn't worth it. And then I look at, as a historian and see the end of Japanese militarism that killed 16 million people. And I see what a wonderful place Japan has become. And I see what Germany did to the world and the Holocaust. And I hear people saying that we were on the wrong side and these people were suckers. Then I feel like you said Jack. I feel like Dana Andrews in the Best Years of Our Lives. I'm not going to listen to it, and I'm going to try to use. I'm not going to hit somebody like he did, but I'm going to be very, very angry. I'm going to try to use in a disinterested fashion as a history of all the tools that I was trained with because I grew up with These people who were. Their lives were destroyed by World War II. And you know what they all had in common? None of them, none of the Cathars, not my grandfather, not anybody. Said it wasn't worth it. Right, Right. And my grandfather, who did not go to World War I because he was in charge of producing food, said to me, I produced food during World War I. But your other grandfather was far more important because he risked his life. And I honor him because he allowed me to produce food and I had a. Agricultural deferment and da, da, da. And that was the way that whole generation was. And then for us to go back in our affluence and prosperity and say, well, you know, I was just thinking about it, and we were sold out. The Commies came in, they stocked Roosevelt's cabinet. True. And then we allied with the Soviet Union, and then they caused the Cold War, and that was stupid. And they sold us out. And this. And now it's happening again. I. I just. I don't have any patience with it personally.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. I didn't know your father had endured that, Victor. That's. I mean, I know what all the battles he went through. You've talked about that before. But that he, as many men carried that torment with them through.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, I mean, you don't want to make excuses. He drank very. He didn't. It was very funny. He did not drink until he was 50 years old. And then as soon as we were all raised, he started drinking and he started smoking again. Skin. And I don't think he wanted to live. He. He smoked three packs a day and he drank a fifth, and he was. And once in a while, people who had known he was an athletic and fitness freak. He lived to be 75. And I remember one person rebuked him, and my mother said, I wouldn't do that if I were you. Yeah, I would rather live with him. I would rather live with anybody. I would rather live with him than anybody else. And what he went through and what people like him went through, I'm going to give him a little slack. She tried to discourage him from drinking, from smoking, but not haranguing him because she knew what he had been through. I have all her letters that he wrote, and I have a letter of almost every mission and everything, and it's pretty gruesome.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, I. We're going to have to talk a little more about war. I thought we were going to get a chance to talk about socialism and.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Madame, I talk too long. Are we? Almost.

[Jack Fowler]

You don't talk long Enough, I think, sometimes, but we have to we have like about an hour and 15 that we do these shows through our listeners. So we're going to we'll forestall talking about Mondami and this what the Socialists Want in New York and some other topics. We'll do that for the next podcast. But when we come back from these final important messages. Since this episode is out on November 11, and it's a day, one day after the 250th anniversary of the founding of the of the Marine Corps, I thought we would get your thoughts on America's military consequence and difference in World War I. And we'll do that when we come back. And we're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, recording on November 8th, this episode up on November, November 11th, Victor's website, as I mentioned before, the Blade of Perseus. Victor's on Twitter or X, excuse me, at vd Hansen is his handle. If you're on Facebook, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club, which is a friendly group, not official, but you might want to check, check that out, of course, the Daily Signal, you should subscribe to their YouTube page. Victor does four podcasts a week now with the Daily Signal and four more of seven minute videos with them. So do subscribe. Okay, Victor, November 11th, just whatever you want to say in about 10 minutes about America's consequence in World War I, maybe with a little focus on the Marines, if you're by the way, was you was your father, I think your father was in the Army Air Corps.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But no, he was a Marine. He joined, they joined the Marines. Marines together. They were told that they were forming a new 6th Marine Division. And if you had a college BA and they were the first in their families to do that, you would be fast tracked to officers. So they went to basic training and Victor went on to Guadal. They trained in Guadalcanal, which had been, you know, won. And they had an incident, as I said, and I never really got. But he was not he was honorably discharged from the Marines and automatically enrolled in the Army Air Corps with the provision from the commanding officer that he had to go to this new experimental program on B29s.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And so and it was pretty dangerous. And the idea was it was a punishment. They didn't know who had hit this officer who had attacked, they felt had attacked them, got drunk and then somebody laid him out. They were very big guys and nobody really knew. But he took the wrap on the idea that the person who had to go to this B29 was going to die. And the person near the end of.

[Jack Fowler]

The war.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They had said that after all the island campaigns there was not going to, you know, you weren't going to die. And the irony of the February iwo Jima of 45 and the April to June Okinawa were the worst. That's where more Marines died in those two campaigns. And all the Marines put together in four years. And the people who were in the Marine Corps, they destroyed the 1st Marine Division on Okinawa and they destroyed the 6th when they got done with Okinawa, the 6th Marine Division was 93% non functionable dead, wounded and missing. And the 1st Marine Division, the old breed that E.B. sledge wrote about, that had been fought so it was 50% combat ineffective after that. And you can argue I wrote about it in ripples of battle. I felt really bad that the air Simon Bolivar Buckner, the grandson of the Civil War general, I think made a lot of mistakes by not using amphibious Marine landings to go around the Shuri line and attack it from the back and front rather than use the Marines as head on. The army couldn't do it. And they hit this Shuri line and they had had about 30 days of easy fighting. They mopped up, but the jet. They didn't understand that there was 200,000 Okinawan civ people who were impressed by the Japanese and 100,000 Japanese and they were dug in and they had been waiting for a year and then they didn't. They just plowed right into them. And it was just medieval. It's the worst fighting in World War II in many way. But anyway, World War I.

[Jack Fowler]

Any thoughts about Marines in World War I?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, they didn't. Yeah, they didn't play. I mean the Marines were used. But the main story was, you know, the election of 1912, the Republicans had split the ticket. William Howard Taft and Bulmas Teddy Roosevelt. And part of it was Teddy Roosevelt was kind of bullish and all that. And in 2012 and again after the war broke out in Europe in 2016, Wilson said that we're not going to ever get in the war. But then he was told in 1917 if he didn't, France and Britain were running out of manpower money and they were going to. And that was true because they had knocked Russia out of the war in March, February and March of 1918 and they were losing. So we got in the war in April of 1917 and we managed, this is incredible, with about an army of 100,000 people. That was it. We sent 2 million men under arms to France and Belgium. Belgium by the end of the war and they did not lose one man in transit, not one man was killed by the German U boats or anybody. And did we win the war? No, in the sense that the British and the French had been fighting heroically in 1914, 15, 16, 17. But they were going to lose because Russia had been knocked out and Hindenburg and Ludendorff had transferred half a million German veterans across on the superb German rail system. They had taken a million square miles of Russian territory. They had 50 million Russians. They were almost. They basically did what Operation Barbarossa did. For the first month they occupied a vast swath. They had all these natural. And they sent them to, to the Western front. And in March 1918 they were on their way to the coast. And then the British and the Americans and the French, but mostly American manpower, money and logistics stopped it. And then Germany was worn out. They went on the offensive, the Americans did. These were places like the Argonne Forest, the Muse Argonne, Belleau Wood. The Americans did not learn from the British and the French who told them that head on attacks would be suicidal in the age of the machine gun Pershing. But we lost 117,000 dead least. I mean it wasn't a million like the French or almost a million dead by the British. We didn't have a Somme, we didn't have a Verdun, Passchendaele, but we really suffered. And then we won. And suddenly Wilson was the man of the hour because his 2 million people had determined the outcome of the war. Russia was gone. France was exhausted. Britain was exhausted. The Americans had lost a very small number comparatively. We had all the money, we had lent them all the money. So they went to Versailles and they made a terrible mistake. And that was the war was over on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, which is coming up, by the way, everybody, it's Armistice Day. I think that changed when we were kids into Veterans Day. And even today most kids don't realize the difference between November 11 and Memorial Day, May 31, which is memorializing those who died in war. Whereas this, this holiday coming up is one memorializing anybody who served as a veteran of a foreign war war, both the live and the dead. But then at Versailles, Wilson took over because he had the money and the influence. And I think Clemenceau said God had ten Commandments. You've got. Why couldn't you? I think you have 400 of the Versailles Treaty. But the problem was twofold, that they humiliated Germany by the war clause that said everything was your fault. Fault because they had invaded and started the war. That's an arguable point. It probably was. But if you're going to do that, you have to enforce it. But the war was over on the 11th of November, but Versailles didn't start really to June of 1919. So 75% of the Allied forces left France. France was basically undefended. And Germany had defended, had surrendered 70 miles inside of France in Belgium. So in that six month period, the Germans woke up and said, hey, wait a minute, we knocked out Russia, we humiliated them with the Treaty of Brest Litovix. They're still wiped out. And all those people that were killing us and just about ready to destroy it, they're all back in America or England and there's not very many people now in France. And we were stabbed in the back.

[Jack Fowler]

Back.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's what happened. Communist Jews stabbed us in the. That was before Hitler that they stabbed us in the back. So they went to Versailles and they said. And the Allies said, well, we're going to come back and start the war. They weren't. But they threatened that and so they signed it and they. John Maynard Keynes created the myth that Versailles was too mean because of reparation. And that meant that the exhausted German economy had to pay back France and Germany so that, I mean France and England so they could pay back the United States that had all of the IOUs. And so we were happy to see that because we wanted our money back, I think was it. Coolidge said we rented them the money, didn't we? When they asked if the United States should forgive the debt of our allies, he said no, we rent into the money. Or was it Hardy and I can't remember one of the two. But anyway, they. So when Germany decided to pay back not in bullion but in paper marks and the rest was wheelbarrows full of paper marks, they deliberately inflated their currency. They paid back worthless money or not at all. The United States didn't get the money from its own allies. And we used to have the ingredients of the Great Depression. But if you compare the Treaty of Versailles, everybody said it was too hard with what the germans imposed in 1918 on the Russians at Press ltowitz. It's not even close. That was a punitive. No one said in that treaty we're going to take half of Germany. Nobody said that we're going to take all of their. No, they didn't even occupy. When they asked General Foch, is this Versailles going to work and he said, no, it's a parentheses. We were winning. We'll be in war in 20 years. Because they don't think they lost. They say right now they were completely exhausted. We fought for four years. We beat the German army, we humiliated the German army, and then we stopped. We never set foot in Germany very much. Maybe a little bit after the war, but we needed to go into Berlin and show them they were defeated. It's very important to understand that, because that was the reaction after World War II. The Allies said, not again. We're going to occupy Germany, split it up, and we're going to make them have a different type of government. And so the Versailles Treaty is kind of ambiguous. And if you look at the program that they had very quickly to finish this, and there was something called the September program that a German American, a German who was teaching in America, then he went rising, he went back to Germany, Germany. And they were so sure they were going to win with the Battle of the Marne. He gave to the Kaiser a plan for the occupation of France. And you know what it was? We don't have Atlantic ports, so we're going to take everything from Dunkirk all the way down to Brest, and that's carve out a whole area, and that's going to be Germany. So we have all the ports of France on the Atlantic, and we're going to make Belgium a weak protectorate, like a colony of Germany. And they would have done it. So my point is only that if you look at comparable treaties that Germany imposed on others when they were victorious, they were seven times harsher than what the Allies imposed on them. And then we created the myth of the Versailles Treaty, caused World War II because it was unfair to Germany. No, what caused World War II was that Germany did not think they were defeated and they could try it again. And the people who won did not want to fight again. And the people who lost most certainly did.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, that's a great lesson. I think I want to go read the Versailles Treaty.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's really fascinating. It is. I mean, there is this war clause, guilt clause, where they say here, you know, it is decided that Germany and Germany alone called. And they did. But it was kind of a controversial thing. And the French and the Italian. The French and the Italians wanted it. Italy was on our side, and they wanted parts of Austria that were, you know, that were disputed. And the French got back the Alsace Lorraine, which had been theirs and taken in 1871 by the Franco Prussian War. Right.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, thanks for all the wisdom you shared today. I want to alert again our listeners, listeners and viewers. We some of the topics we had hoped to discuss today we'll discuss on the next episode, which will be out On Thursday the 3rd. Is that the 13th? Yeah. I, I should tell you that I, Jack Fowler, write Simple Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter for the center for Civil Society, comes out every Friday. Had 14 recommended readings, totally free. Not selling your name. How do you get it? Go to civil thoughts.com sign up. I know you're going to like it. By the way, Victor, I was, I had talked on recent episodes about this America 250 conference the center was having and we did have it last week and a number of people came from me talking about it and wow, they love, they love you. My gosh, they love.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I'm going to be in Bakersfield with Megan Kelly on her tour. Tour. And I'll announce that. Yeah, I'll announce that on our next podcast in Bakersfield and I'm looking forward to that coming up. All right. Somebody wrote me just to finish. They said, well, what is the blade of Perseus? Why'd you. And I said, it's Perseus was the mythological hero who killed the Medusa and the snake headed woman that turned you to stone if you saw it. So we are on this podcast using the proverbial Perseus sword to decapitate the Medusa of false knowledge. And then I'll have to ask Sammy, the art historian, but I have a. We use the emblem of Cellini's Perseus, you know, holding the Medusa's head that is in the Plaza de Loggia. Is that the right word? In Florence in the museum there. And you can see it. It's a life size. I don't know when it was sculpted. It's a bronze 1550 or something by the great Renaissance sculptor and bronze figure creator. And it's, it's really something to see it. Medusa is a scary little thing.

[Jack Fowler]

Jeremy knows her artwork. So.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay. Well, thanks Victor for all the wisdom you shared. Thanks folks for watching. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to this through the Daily Signal. We will be back with another episode of the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Bye Bye.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thanks everybody. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own [e-mail] and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.