← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: 'We Did That': Baby Boomer's ‘Generational Betrayal’
01:24:10
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss the failure of Baby Boomers to pass on the American Dream and the values of their grandparents.
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Michelle Obama. But she went into the law firm when she had just got there and I think she demanded the Nike or anyway she demanded one of the most lucrative accounts and then when they didn't give it to her, and then when he was elected, they created a job just for her, $300,000 to be the spokesman at University of Chicago Med Center. But when you look at the job, it was basically how to explain to people that if you don't pay, you're not getting in here. So there was a. An effort of the Arab world, especially from the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, to come to the United States and stay number one. And that will affect their foreign policy, their culture. Just as the, as the Latin American Mexican diaspora has affected us. Most Americans feel giving them enough money to make sure that they're the dominant military power in the region ensures that if we ever have to deal with the Iranian nuclear facilities, the IDF has already cleared the skies for us. Or if we can't do anything about Hezbollah, that blows up 242Americans half a 40 years ago or they have blown up our embassy, eventually they have a rendevous with pagers that will blow them up.
- [01:26]
Jack Fowler
Hello ladies and hello gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You are here to get wisdom from the great man himself, Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's also a senior contributor to the Daily Signal, which is now has been the last couple of weeks the happy home of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor's got a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. You should subscribe. I'll tell you why later in today's episode. Well, why you should do that. So we are recording on Saturday, November 15th. This particular episode is up on Thursday, November 20th. Victor, a couple of important topics. One of them is this percolating fight or emerging fight or kvetching about Generation Boomer. I want to get your thoughts on that. There's a really interesting poll out by. Excuse me. I'm not sick like you Victor. I'm just. I might not survive like you survive. There's an interesting poll by John McLaughlin. I love John, he's great. He's from the Bronx. Of course you have to love about American supporting international assistance. Qatar, if I'm saying it right, or gutter. I don't know anymore how you pronounce the damn country's name, but you do.
- [02:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
A gutter one minute, the next time you say Gadar and then you can't be wrong. Okay. It can be wrong all the time.
- [02:57]
Jack Fowler
Well, guitar sounds like a disease also, but our thing you play good, but it's got it's spending billions of dollars in the US and having a tremendous influence. We'll get Victor's thoughts on that if we have time. At the end, we'll talk about Bill Buckley's 100th birthday, which he's well, Bill's passed away 15 years ago, but it's coming up on the centennial on November 24 and the meaning of Bill Buckley and his consequence. And also if we have a little time, the things that keep American conservatives, people of principles, anyway, up at night. We'll do all that when we come back from these initial important messages.
- [03:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself.
- [03:43]
Jack Fowler
Mr. Chief Justice, I place the court. This is Hans von Spakovsky, 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.
- [04:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign.
- [04:21]
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I'm hearing some friends in the background there, Victor, but that's okay. We love how many dogs you have now? 6, 7, 5?
- [04:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Depends. It depends. We, we have this little Hotel Hanson and people dump them off and then that we had this funny look looking little bulldog who was pretty sculpted for his miniature size. And he just trotted in, looked around, crawled onto the fence and said, it's chow time. My wife got gaga over him and fed him a gourmet meal or two. And then he just said, see you. And he just sauntered out. And then his little friend was a terrier and he came in and munched around and then he thought he looked around and said, too many of these old decrepit dogs. I'm leaving. So I don't know how they come and go. It depends on the frequency and of which people on the road outside dump their dogs.
- [05:26]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, there's a doctor do little aspect to you.
- [05:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. As a general rule, if they dump them, they have no license, no tags, no collar, no shots, nothing. No spay. And then we rehabilitate them with collar dog tags, vaccinations, distemper shots, and the neuter or spay, depending on the gender. And then if we're walking around, there's somebody sees them with a pink collar or a blue collar and they'll steal them. That's happened a couple of times. So maybe they just dump them here and think those stupid people will kind of spend a thousand bucks and then we'll just drive by and we will just call out, fido, Fido, I'm back. And then they jump in the car and they leave. And he's been rehabilitated at the Hanson Hotel.
- [06:17]
Jack Fowler
It is accumulating treasure for you in heaven, for you and Mrs. Hansen, by doing these things regardless. So Victor, let's talk about this generational warfare. So I have two things I want to read. Sorry folks who are listening. This is a post from Benny Johnson, the prominent conservative social media dude. I used to be his boss once upon a time at National Review for a short while he posted on X the other day. This is generational betrayal. What? Boomer will have the backbone and humility to admit this, apologize, and spend their final years and energy to right this wrong? I hear nothing. A generation voting and regulating themselves, lavish riches and closing the door on the way out. This has to do with a home ownership of the lack of home ownership by young Americans and the increased home ownership by the elders. And here's this will be a little bit. Just bear with me folks, and then I'm going to shut up and Victor will share his wisdom. So Michael Brendan Daugherty, my old colleague at National Review, wrote a piece the other day. Boomers didn't pass on the American dream. And it ends like this. American men are less fit, less likely to be married, less likely to have children, less likely to own a home, and consequently more likely to be addicted to a drug, more likely to be married, in medical debt or on a disability, and more likely to be politically alienated. To the extent that political conservatism has in any way sanctified these results, telling boomers that they did it all by their own virtue, or assuring them that posterity failed them rather than that they failed to pass on their country in a better condition than they inherited it, it must repent. To the extent that conservatism pats itself on the back for victories so long ago in the past that they are not a living memory for the majority of its citizens, it is losing the fight for the future. 50 year mortgages will only compound the idiocy of indenturing the young for the profit of elderly asset holders. The idea that young Americans blocked out of ownership of real assets, most especially the ornaments of middle class and Familial life will seek to conserve the very institutions that dispossess them is a joke only an overfed ideal ideologue could believe. Pretty powerful claims, charges and worth your commentary because I think everybody is spreading social media. Go ahead.
- [08:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think boomerang boomers who are listening to this are trying to sort it out. They see the two arguments. The argument that Dougherty made was kind of we got ours and we inherited certain values that were inculcated into us. We inherited a 4% GDP per annum growth. We inherited a less regulatory society, a more can do. We had a house, we got, you know, I went to University of California, Santa Cruz. I think it was about $900. There was no tuition, there was just $300 a quarter for fees. And then we, once we got ours and our homes and everything we regulated, we were going to create nirvana. We were going to create all these elaborate procedures and health and home buying and the result was we regulated today to death. And then this young group suffered the consequences. That's his argument. And it's both that we, we changed the structure of America to the detriment of these young generations and then we created an ethos or we didn't pass on the Depression era World War II ordeal that our parents did. And there's a lot to say for that. I agree with that, absolutely. That being said, a lot of you are going to say, hey Victor, not so fast. And what they mean by that is. Have you ever asked any of your kids if they've had Spam? I don't think they've ever eaten Spam, do you?
- [10:41]
Jack Fowler
Me? No, they've never eaten Spam.
- [10:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
I've eaten Spam.
- [10:44]
Jack Fowler
I have.
- [10:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
But yeah, yes, we've all eaten Spam. I can remember being seven years old and, and eating things that were almost surplus at the cafeteria in a rural school. I can remember it was pretty poor. I can remember that. I can remember all of us. If you were in the 19, late 50s or 60s and you were middle, lower middle class and you wanted to drive 200 miles to the Bay Area, it was sort of like sailing on the new world. Santa Maria. I mean I have broke, when I was a student, I broke down at least seven or eight times trying to get 200 mile. Remember how carburetors, distributors, those cars and if they were used, and I had a used old Volvo, it was just a wreck. But. And then of course when you're growing up, you share your bedroom with your, oh, sibling or two siblings. I think at one point we had three of us in there. When my cousin and moved in, I.
- [11:47]
Jack Fowler
Had five in my room.
- [11:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, I never had a single bedroom. I always had a twin brother. We always shared it. But my point is that. And then, you know, something called chores. Do you think that these young people. I don't know. I don't think that on weekends they picked walnuts up for eight hours a day. And then their parents had to scrub their hands or even though we wore mittens because our walnut stain made our hands almost black. But we did all of that stuff. And you know what we were told, we were told correctly. So that this was a joke compared to what our parents went through. My father said, I moved into the barn at 12 years old. There was no electricity. I wired a hot wire over to the house. I had one cold water pipe. I had an outhouse. That's where I lived so that my sister could have one of the two bedrooms. My parents. And she had that. And I looked at that house. It was about 800, 900 square feet. And that was considered really nice. And what I'm getting at is that generation did not, I think daughter was right that we did not pass on that generational depression, that unique nexus of depression in World War II. And the idea, the ordeal they went through. And we were the beneficiaries of that, and yet we didn't pass on that. It's sort of like that old classical idea that Athens had. The Marathon men, they created the Periclean alien, the Periclean class. And then the Periclean destroyed Athens by producing the third generation, or as my grandfather always said, he'd point out to a house. He said, see that right there, that's a big fancy house. The guy who built that came from Armenia. And he had nothing, Nothing. He lived in a shack. He worked from the day he. This dawn up to sunset. He worked seven days a week. And when he died, his whole land was paid for and he had money in the bank. And his son, who's a good farmer and he. He built a beautiful home. But I worry about that family because that they don't work. Like I said. Well, maybe the son's a businessman now. He understands fruit market. And then the third generation before my grandfather died. So that boy that's your age came out to see you the other day. He. He's going to destroy that whole legacy because he doesn't even know who his grandfather was and what, how hard he worked. And that was just a. You know, and it's true. So that this baby I mean, this Generation X or Z or what are they Z's?
- [14:43]
Jack Fowler
I don't know, I lost track.
- [14:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't even know what they are anymore. But they're out. They vote for Mondame and they can't do this and they can't do that. But you know what, why do you, when you turn 18. I've never played a video game in my life. How many hours have you spent on video games? And what if you had not spent that time on video game. I'm not talking at 12 or 13, I'm talking at 16, 17, 18. Maybe you could have taken an online course in electricity. Maybe you could have taken an online course in roofing. Why not do something like that? And, and then, you know, when you, when you think that you're taking three units here and six units there and you're, why do that? Just get it over, just take the loan and then take 15 units and get out. But don't, you know, do this and then kind of do that and kind of do this. And I, I never lived at home after I was 18, 17. I went to college, I came back, and then I came home and farmed. And I, I did stick take. My parents called up and said, you, grandmother's 91 years old and we are not living on the farm and would you please come home for summer and take care of her? And she's all by herself. And I did. And then my mom would say, the house is falling apart, would you stay? And I said, I'm leaving, I'm going to get a job back east part time, by the way. And then I stayed because the house was falling apart and. But my point I'm making is both sides have it. We're, we're culpable for not passing on the values that our parents taught us in many cases. And we try, we altered the rules of the economy and the way that the United States functioned, the school system especially. And yes, because when I went to UC Santa Cruz, I took something called Introduction to the Western Civilization. And I had a guy named Jasper Rose who taught art history and another woman I'll remember named Mary, and they were fantastic teachers of art history. And I took a class in, they called it a seminar in Western similar. So you took the lectures three times a week and then you had. I had a seminar from 27 year old John Lynch, Harvard BA, PhD in classics, had written a book at 27. And that class was one of the most five 20 page papers in 12 weeks. Not even that, it was a quarter system and that thing was. And then just full of red ink. And so that was the most demanding stuff. The university had just opened and it. And I just remember studying the entire time and then going home and working on the farm and coming back. And I don't think people do that anymore. I don't think they have that demanding curriculum. I don't think. And we did that. Our generation destroyed that curriculum. So they go to college now and it's the poetics of masculinity or toxic masculinity or the racial colonial settler development of the Oregon Trail or something like that. They've just, they've just.
- [18:15]
Jack Fowler
And you'll get an, you'll get an A whether you're studying.
- [18:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
You'll get an A. 80% of the courses are A's. And so. Yes, but that generation didn't step up. It really didn't. Some of them did. The working class did. When I had gone over twice to Iraq and I saw these, I can remember being on a Blackhawk helicopter flying at dusk and there was an 18 year old kid sitting on that platform, you know, with a 50 caliber machine gun out the window. And I would talk to him before we. That kid was like a 50 year old guy. Remind me of my dad with a 50. He was completely fearless and he was competent. And I said, do you ever, what do you do? What's going to happen when we go up there? Yeah, I'm going to be up there. And he said, some guys like, like take a pot shot on us. I said a pot shot? Yeah, they'll get behind a palm tree and just unload a magazine at us. And if he does that, he's going to find out that I'm going to chop the tree down and it's going to fall on him with 50s. And they were just confident. And so that the working class didn't let us down. It was the elite. The elite let us down.
- [19:26]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Sticking on education, Victor? Well, two things. One, on my own, I've been working since I was eight years old. And those days are over for people, right?
- [19:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they are.
- [19:38]
Jack Fowler
And we allowed ideology to march through the institutions. The conservative movement started say with National Review, but Bill Buckley started with Got a Man at Yale. So we've known about the infection at higher education now for over 70 years and we still let it happen on our watch for various reasons. Don't rock the boat. The, the value of the brand, of the, of the diploma from a prestigious college who wants to cause trouble because you know it'll affect the the, the diploma my kid has, you know, they should speak out.
- [20:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
I. If you go to Power Line, I have an article there Leukophobia. It's a review of this Daniel Padilla. He's a classicist. And I just use. I just saw him as the epitome of what we're talking about. Someone who was very. The beneficiary of Lavish Grant after Lavish Grant because he was an immigrant, an illegal alien. He was a person of color. Everybody bent backwards. He was trained classically. And then once he got. He was a receptacle of all that. Then he metamorphosized into black, black, black, black, black, black. I think black or blackness is war is appears one and a half times on every page of the book. Whiteness. Whiteness as being bad. And nobody speaks out about that. No one does about what has happened to the field, which is a noble field in the small area of classics or Michelle Obama just. She's now on a tour and she was saying just today. It was quoted. I think it's from her new. Is it another memoir? I don't know. I don't know how many more she can write, but it's about how style. She had to straighten her hair and people said that they had to perform it. What do you think Melania Trump has to do? They treated you like a goddess compared to the way they treated and do treat Melania Trump. And then it's like, I had to do this and I had to do this and I had to do this. Well, don't do it. Don't do it. It's one of the worst things in the world being first lady and having a big 757 jet flying you all over the world.
- [22:05]
Jack Fowler
Even Victor. Even if she didn't become the first lady before that, she was. She was got into an Ivy League college, which she probably shouldn't have got into. She wrote an instance.
- [22:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
I read. I read her thesis, as I said before Christopher Hitchin sent it to me and he said it's written in language other than English.
- [22:23]
Jack Fowler
And she ended up with some.
- [22:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
Created.
- [22:27]
Jack Fowler
Job that I think it was paying her 300,000 plus a year.
- [22:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
She went into a law. But she went into the law firm when she had just got there and I think she demanded the Nike or anyway she. She demanded one of the most lucrative accounts. And then when they didn't give it to her and then when he was elected they created a job just for her $300,000 to be the spokesman at. Was it University of Chicago Med Center. But when you look at the job. It was basically how to explain to people that if you don't pay, you're not getting in here. And so she's had nothing but privilege. She lives in four houses. And, you know, I don't know what's so bad. It'd be like me. It's saying, wow, I'm sentenced to live in Martha's Vineyard and I got to be in this house with a 2,000 gallons of propane. How can I maintain that? And then when that's not enough, I've got to go to Kalorama. Nine million dollar house. There must be seven toilets. I have to clean in it or have to have clean. And then I get so worn out, I fly to the beach at Hawaii and I'm in this new thing. And you know what? It's loud. There's the ocean hitting the shore, and it keeps me up. And then I thought, well, I'm going to go back to my mansion in Chicago, just. And then I realized they're running. The neighborhood's gone down and I don't know what to do. I have four of these mansions. It's just not fair. And you know what? So many people. The Clintons came out of here and there were 2,300 million. We're only worth 150 million. This is not fair because we're black. And they made me do this with my hair and my style and this and this and that. Everybody's sick of it. Everybody. I always say everybody. I don't mean everybody, but I mean a sizable number of people are tired of that. Yeah.
- [24:20]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we got a few other things to talk about today. But first, to our listeners and viewers, you may have seen this. Utah and Florida recently banned from fluoride in their drinking water. And now ask yourself, why are they doing a massive U turn on a chemical that's been pumped into our water for 80 years? Maybe it's because they've finally realized what we've known all along. It's authoritarian. The government claims fluorides for healthy teeth, but that's just nanny state nonsense. You don't need bureaucrats medicating your water. You need the freedom to choose pure water. And that's why my family.
- [24:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
I.
- [24:57]
Jack Fowler
Anyway, no, my family uses Cove Pure. I got one in the back.
- [25:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Back here.
- [25:03]
Jack Fowler
It's a countertop water purifier certified to remove up to 99.9% of impurities. That includes fluoride. Yes, but also all the other garbage. PFAs, fertilizer runoff, pharmaceuticals, you name it. The first thing I noticed with CO Pure is the taste. Guys. This is what water is supposed to taste like. Pure, clean, no aftertaste. I actually want more. And it's so easy. No drilling, no plumbing, just fill it and plug it in. The best part is you can choose any temperature, hot or cold with one tap. So look, if you like fluoride, fine, use toothpaste, use mouthwash. But the government has no business forcing it into your water. So don't wait for the government to sort out pure water. Do it yourself. Head over to COVP Pure. That's C-O V E P U R E CO Pure.com/VDH. And for a limited time, get $250 off. We thank the good people of COVID Pure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I have to add, Victor, that here in Connecticut, even as a little kid, the first time I came, went to Connecticut and New York's water is. It's fine, it's good. And here it's like, what is this? It tastes like. It tastes funky and it still tastes funky after all these years. And I, and I. So I got the Code Pure and it's terrific. It's just really.
- [26:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
We pump our own water and it used to be the best water in the world. It still tastes wonderful. But it's, you know, it's got a lot of calcium in it, so it clogs up galvanized pipes. But it also absorbed in that period between 1945 and 1980, what I would call the pesticide era of farming. So dbcp, all sorts of high nitrogen. That was the, the period in which people just poured chemical fertilizer on sometimes that's some of the nitrogen gets into the water system. So it's. I'm not a radical environmentalist, but a lot of the wells here are kind of a water. They won't hurt you to drink. But if you live them and you bathe them and you drink every single day, today it's problematic.
- [27:16]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. So, well, get Code Pure.
- [27:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I am. I'm going to get one.
- [27:21]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Okay. So Victor, let's. We're going to talk about it after. We're going to take a break in a little bit. We're going to talk about this John McLaughlin poll on American supporting international assistance. But let's build up to that on an international matter. Gutter guitar. Qatar, however the heck you say Qatar, however you pronounce it. Some studies reports have come out in the last week about the amount of money it spends in America. Of course, as many of these countries do Saudi Arabia, China, they spend a lot of it at universities, but I believe it's over $3 billion a year. So any thoughts on the growing influence of this tiny little cash rich, investing in America nation?
- [28:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, if you had the position in the Arab world where you had, you were producing 40% of the world's oil and trillions of dollars of foreign exchange were coming into Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, emirates, et cetera, and you felt that the United States was towering over the globe and the United States had antithetical values to you. You were oligarchic, monarchical, autocratic. They had a constitutional republic. You were primarily Islamic. They were primarily, at least at one time and probably more so than not, Christian. You were completely one ethnicity, except for foreign workers, except Arab. They were a multiracial society. You had very little power as far as gauged in conventional military assets. They were a superpower. You then saw that they had enormous power to do things and that they were antithetical to your political, religious, cultural. And you had an enemy in your neighborhood, the historic Jewish state roots 4, 4000 years old and the Arab countries around it despised it because in some ways it was just like the United States. It was non Muslim, non Arab, consensual, Western, except. So what would you do? What could you do? There's only two things if that you could do. You could threaten to boycott the west with oil. And they did successfully, as we remember, 1973, 1979, pretty well. But then what happens if these people suddenly have developed fracking and I don't know, horizontal drilling, and they go from importing, I don't know, 12 million barrels a day to exporting and now they're the greatest producer of oil, natural gas in the history of civilization in that country. So that's out. So what are your two alternatives? One, you can make sure that people from the poorer parts of the Arab, not you, because you're sitting on liquid gold, but have as much immigration into Europe and the United States as possible. And they do. So there are now millions. If you look at the Jewish population of the United States, Jewish American, two things are happening at a fantastic rate. One is marriage, outside people who are observant Jews, it's about half and no more immigration. And that population is going to decrease. And it's scheduled in five years to be, I think there's three and a half million people who identify as Arab, Muslim and about 6 to 7 million Jewish American, that number is going to pass it in 10 years. So there is an effort of the Arab world, especially from the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, to come to the United States and stay number one. And that will affect their foreign policy, their culture, just as the Latin American Mexican diaspora has affected us, you know, so there's probably 50 million people have come from Mexico into the United States. The second thing you could, third thing you could do if you can't boycott oil anymore, it's no longer a weapon, you have massive immigration would be to look at the university system that trains, as we've talked about, half the population. And more importantly, you don't have the resources to go over to Utah State necessarily, or Cal State, Bakersfield, but you do have the resources to go to places that train the elite, the people who will go to the State Department, the people who will go to the Congress, the people who will be in corporations. So you will target Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, mit, all of those places. And you will give as much money as you can. 50, 60 billion we've had so far total from these places. And you will set up Middle east studies programs or you will get endowed professorships and you will start to very insidiously, carefully start to give a message about America. And it will be pretty much pro Arab, pro Muslim, anti Western and especially anti Israel and some, some cases anti Semitic. And that's where we are. That's the only reason they give the money. Why else give the money? There's no other reason. And then you, if you're in the university, you say to yourself, well, you know, we've got almost one administrator now for every student. We've got a center for humanistic transsexuality. We have a center for the rhetoric of gender studies. We have a center of settler colonial center. We have a, a center for sustainability. We have the Internet, Stanford Laboratory that's been reconcil. We've got a center of misinformation and disinformation. And they don't teach, they don't, they don't teach students, they just research and, and they're expensive. How are we going to pay for this? The endowment is not growing enough. The interest on it, I know we'll go appeal to Chinese communist people, we'll appeal to Middle East. The people have the money and they'll give us money to perpetuate these particular studies. And then they will, we will turn out people that will all be on the left and they will all be influential and we can change the nature of the United States. And that's why they do it. And they're very successful at it.
- [34:14]
Jack Fowler
The Muslim, you.
- [34:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
If you look at Harvard, who was coming out of Harvard in 1970 versus today, it's a very different type of student.
- [34:24]
Jack Fowler
But we should talk about it at greater length on another show, the Muslim Leftist Alliance. It's a. The Strange Bedfellows.
- [34:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah. Have all these people with trans and pride flags and then protesting on behalf of Hamas or Iran and yet their hanging gays and trans people in Iran. If you went into Gaza or you went into the west bank and you got on a. Took a megaphone and you said, pride, pride, gay, gay, gay, trans, trans, with your purple hair and all that, they would. I don't want to think what they do to you. Yeah.
- [34:59]
Jack Fowler
Go flying off a roof.
- [35:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [35:01]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we're going to talk about aid going the other way, American money going abroad and the popularity of that. Yes, it is popular, to the consternation, I guess, of some friends of ours and others. Anyway, we'll get your thoughts on that and other topics when we come back from these important messages.
- [35:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
Folks.
- [35:23]
Jack Fowler
We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I promised before I would tell you why you should subscribe to Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus, @VictorHansen.com and you would do that because you're a fan of Victor's and you want. You can't get enough of Victor. You're not overexposed, Victor. You're underexposed.
- [35:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think you should hear what people tell me in public. I think they've had. And they've OD'd on one episode.
- [35:50]
Jack Fowler
Well, twice a week, Victor writes an exclusive article for the Blade of Perseus. And once a week he does an exclusive video in the current series. I don't know if it's just ended, but as of today, when we're recording is a tit for tat Lawfare that you've.
- [36:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I try to explain why Lawfare. It's not just Lawfare, revenge. It's trying to recreate deterrence. And so I. That's why John Brennan is terrified. That's why Clapper's terrified. That's why Comey is the ones that are charged or may be charged, but they know that they have legal exposure and they use the Biden administration and earlier to give them a basically amnesty for what they did. And now Trump is saying, you know what? You did this and this and this. And maybe I am looking at what you did because of what you did to me, but it doesn't change the fact that you did something wrong.
- [36:42]
Jack Fowler
Wrong.
- [36:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's how it tries to sort it out between revenge and deterrence or the.
- [36:47]
Jack Fowler
Scope and scale of what they've done compared to Watergate.
- [36:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm writing this book on Trump and I'm finishing, I'm doing the copy editing for the, the publisher and just going over those five criminal and civil suits, you know, Latita James, Fanny Willis, Alan Bragg, Jack Smith and that crazy Eugene Carroll and what they did and how they manipulated the law. Law. I just have it f at the end of that lawfare chapter. I just point out they violated the third Amendment, the fourth Amendment, the fifth Amendment, the eighth Amendment. I just go through all of the constitutional things that the judges and the prose and they're all going to be overturned or they haven't already.
- [37:28]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. And well, they, they, they failed individually and collectively to stop Donna Trump from getting reelected.
- [37:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
But back let me just, they ensured, they ensured the victory. Every, I look at that every time in this chapter, every time he was convicted or he in the case of Alvin Bragg or he was at a gag order, I look at the polls and the primary. That's what washed away Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis because they were in an impossible position. They either when those stories came out how they harassed and tormented in an unfair manner their rival Donald Trump, they had two choices. They could either say this is terrible what they did to him, they've manipulated the law and they thought well, you're right, so you're going to vote for Trump too. Or they could say, well, it's wrong how they overdid it. They shouldn't have gone through Malenia's underwear drawer at Mar A Lago or debank them after January 6. But why did they have such a high profile in the first place? Why did he take off documents? So they, you know what I mean, they were both losing proposition then that people say are you siding with Joe Biden's weaponized DOJ so that they didn't, the left didn't understand that what they were doing, they were creating a new revived Donald Trump.
- [38:58]
Jack Fowler
I will conclude by telling people $65 a year, 650amonth blade of Perseus. Subscribe. But yesterday on so we're recording on Saturday, November 15th. Yesterday on Friday the 14th, I was at your old school, your six week school or eight week school, Yale, which has a Buckley Institute. And they were marking and we'll talk about this later in the show about Bill Buckley, but they were marking Bill's centennial and the keynote speaker at the dinner or the dinner speaker, I should say was, was Ron DeSantis and he spoke for he was pretty long time. He spoke about 40 minutes and just it really is remarkable, almost exhausting how successful Florida is. But I just wonder if like that given that, that he, I mean why was he giving this talk? Well, he's given it, he was asked to talk but it was sounded pretty much still want to be president someday. He didn't say that. But I just.
- [40:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Are you trying to say it was not as dynamic as Donald Trump's speeches?
- [40:08]
Jack Fowler
Nobody knows. It was not as dynamic. Not any stretch insanely impressive. But, but somehow or other compared to the, to the current president, not in the same league. Well anyway, Victor, let me tell you and our listeners and viewers about this new poll. John McLaughlin, the great pollster from the Bronx put out the other day. Majority of Americans support international assistance and new public private partnerships. So this is the summary. National survey of 1200 likely US voters shows majority support for international assistance that uses American made products to save lives, improve global health, strengthen alliances and bolster US national security and the economy. The voters who elected President Trump and swing voters who will decide who wins the midterm elections are proponents of the US Providing international assistance. Voters across party lines strongly support creating a new public private partnership that gives the US Government streamlined control over how American resources are deployed and saves US Taxpayers money by leveraging private philanthropic funding. Victor, the numbers are like 76% of Republicans.
- [41:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
It all depends on the, the way those questions are asked. And so everybody likes the idea to help the starving, the sick or to create programs that bolster Western civilization in general and Americanism in particular, especially when there's commercial elements that help our own industries and jobs. And what they object TO is a 80 million dollar gender studies program at the University of Kabul or the pride flag flying from the embassy or some of the things that our senators read off when they were Doge was cutting USAID, you know, 50 million to create gender ambiguity centers and all that stuff. So it's a left. Most of foreign aid is what I'm getting at under Democratic and then even Republican administrations that just continued it. They were block grants that were outsourced by USAID to these NGOs who were left wing and usually they came from the government. They work worked in the State Department, they worked in usaid. I thought man, this is a gold mine. So what I want to do is when I get out of here and I mastered, I'm going to go out in the private sector and become a NGO non government organization. And then I'M going to know who to call at a US and I'm going to get a big grant and maybe I can't get any longer. The American people listen to me on diversity under, on trans, on wind and solar. But I can go over to Uganda and set up a whole program to teach everybody to build a, you know, a solar panel or to have a, you know, a trans dance show at the universe. That's what it was and people don't like that. But they do like what you, it's how you describe it.
- [43:22]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, it's two things, Victor. One that reminds me of the movie Goodfellas where the with a mobsters take over that restaurant restaurant and then they use it to launder all sorts of things. It's kind of what aid was. But on the right and the issues of, of recent consternation amongst some conservatives, Tucker and, and Carlson and others, US aid manpower, whatever being being spent abroad, let's say, let's say the isolationists rhetoric certainly flies in the face of, of this. So I think the gripers would not, would be voting in the negative on this particular problem.
- [44:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Let's just be honest about it. They don't like giving 3.8 3.6 billion a year to Israel, but they don't really ever mention 1.1 billion to Jordan or, or I think it's 600 million to Egypt or another oh billion probably spread around Iraq, Syria, etc and then they don't ask what we get in return. At least with the Israelis we get shared intelligence. We give them a discounted F35 and a month later they call us up and say by the way, if you do this little, you know, hack on the software, you can extend the mileage you, I mean the hours in the air. In other words, they are as sophisticated as we are, even though there's only 10 million Israelis. But we learn a lot in transfers of technology and expertise and they are western and they're consensual. So most Americans, not all but most Americans feel giving them enough money to make sure that they're the dominant military power in the region ensures that if we ever have to deal with the Iranian nuclear facilities, the IDF has already cleared the skies for us. Or if we can't do anything about Hezbollah, that blows up 242Americans half, 40 years ago or they have blown up our embassy, eventually they have a rendezvous with pagers, it'll blow them up. Same thing with Hamas and all of that. So that's I, you can make the argument and I have made it in print that foreign aid to Israel is different than the other military and formal assistance to other countries. And I've said if you really want to talk about giving military aid to a country that is duplicitous, then you should give it. You should really discuss our NATO partner, Turkey, because Turkey, we can't even, we can't give them, sell them, give them F35s with any assurance that they will not. Because they're buying anti aircraft systems from Russia, they will not transfer the materials or the expertise so that the Russians will be able to target F35s. We do not know if they have in the center of Christendom for over 1100 years. If they have Hagia Sophia. We don't know when they will take it off the United nations historical list and turn it back into a mosque or shut down Orthodox Christianity. Places of worship in Ankara and Istanbul. And when you think about, we have Isla Air Force base, we have 50 at least cold War era nuclear weapons. And every time there is a crisis, they cut the power off or there's, there's, there is this. They have said, they being people in the Turkish government military, that they feel that those nuclear weapons, they've been there so long and they're in NATO, that they are really part Turkish. And I think if we ever got into a serious disagreement with Turkey, maybe over Cyprus, that which they still illegal, illegally occupy, it would be very hard to remove those nuclear weapons. I think. I don't have any. And this is just Victor spouting off, but I have a feeling we must have some type of program that tries to take one of those weapons out every six or seven months, just slowly, because they are not to be trusted. And so. But nobody ever talks about that, do they? No. And somebody wrote me a note, Jack, and it said on foreign aid and things. Well, how do you know that if I'm against Israel, Professor Hansen, that it's anti Semitic? I don't. You can be against Israel and not be anti Semitic. But is there a little symptom? Yes, there is. Anytime you voice a objection to Israel and you're saying it's principled and it's not based on the fact that it's a Jewish state or its supporters are predominantly Jewish, then we expect that principle to apply to other places. Occupation. You're just as upset about what the Cypriots suffered continuing. Right now northern Cyprus is much bigger than the west bank. And I don't hear anybody talking about it. Or if you're talking about settler colonialist, then you're talking about the Aberdanis that just took over a whole section corridor and ethnically cleansed 100,000 Armenians. You're upset about that just as much. And when you say you, you don't like collateral damage, then you're really sick to your stomach about the 150,000 Nigerian Christians that have been killed by Boko Haram. I don't hear any of that. So when you take these topics and you apply them to the Jewish state to create this image that it's singularly bad. You don't try to ever suggest that there's other, you know, so you say, well, they have. When they're going to bomb, they have to notify people, text those high rises so Gazans can get out. Okay, I agree. And they, and they do that. So when Zelensky sends a missile into Crimea, that he has to text everybody and they have to have a ceasefire. They need it now. Okay, so Ukraine's got to have a ceasefire. You say, you know. No, you don't. And they have to have a, you know, Netanyahu, they have to have more elections. It's a. They do. It's elected government. And you say that to Zelensky. Oh, Mr. Zelensky, you have to have an election. No, you don't. So you don't. You don't apply the same rules and I don't. And I'm not criticizing Ukraine. If we didn't support them, it would be like the Kabul catastrophe. And it would really hurt the Trump administration to have something on our TV screens like Kiev looking like Kabul in 20, 20, 21, and the Russians would overrun it. But what I'm saying is that we do things all over the world that no one seems to object to unless Jews do them in Israel.
- [50:45]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, to your letter writer, I mean, what other. Let's look at nations that are our allies and then maybe neutral nations. But nobody says anything like, I'm against New Zealand, against Australia, or even a neutral nation. No, I really can't stand Burkina Faso. You know who?
- [51:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Nobody. Yeah. New Zealand existed through the whole Cold War. And to the degree that it will exist as a beautiful home of the Lord of the Rings on site filming, and it doesn't have a poisonous snake in it like Australia. So it's this little place that is a utopia. There's no poison spiders, there's no poison snakes. It's beautiful. It's. I. Every time I see pictures of it, I see bore mer hiking over the mountains, vineyards there. Yeah, yeah. There's hobbit, little Houses everywhere. It's, and it's a spot where every American wants to go now. But we kept it safe in the, we kept it safe in World War II, let's face it, or the Japanese would have overrun that in Australia. We kept it safe during the Cold War and believe me, if we were on bad relations with New Zealand, it would, it would be like Taiwan or Tibet vis a vis the Chinese. They would look at that and they say this is a very beautiful place for about 100 million of our people since we have 1.4 billion and they kept safe and yet do you remember that they would not allow a nuclear aircraft carrier, submarine to come into their ports. They would not allow it. Can you imagine if Israel said to us, oh, your carrier, we're not going to let the Reagan come in because it has nuclear weapons and it would be too provocative. No, they wouldn't. There's very few very close allies of the United States. I can think of about 5. There is Australia and it has a left wing government but it's, it's a very good ally. There's Japan, very good ally. South Korea mostly a good out better be. We have 20,000 troops there. And I don't know if Taiwan ups its GDP on defense. Fine, that's an ally. I, I think Britain is, it's our oldest, closest ally. But when they have a government like Stormer, I don't know what he's doing. France, Macron, it's still an ally.
- [53:15]
Jack Fowler
Italy, throw me that bone. Throw me that Ilia.
- [53:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, if I look at the Pew poll, except for I, I don't know if it's Hungary or Poland. Italy is the most pro American government or people in all of Europe. And I was surprised that the French have a higher view of the United States than Britain does now. Yeah, one of the worst, the two parentally worst as far as our attitudes toward Americans are Spain and Germany. They, they have the lowest. I think it's something like 50%, 51. I'm just quoting by memory, whereas Italy is 65 or something. And I don't know why the Spanish detested so much, but they seem to. And the Germans, of course that's explicable.
- [54:09]
Jack Fowler
They haven't recovered. The Spanish haven't recovered from the war.
- [54:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think that's a lot of it. And I think Germany was defeated. Every time I see a German friend or I talk to them and I talk about World War II, you, you know, I don't want to be stereotypical, but if we talk about something, they'll Say something weird like, well, you know the Focke Wulf 190, it was much superior to the Mustang. I don't know if you knew that. And yes, the Tiger had problems with the mechanics, but it could blow the Sherman away at two miles.
- [54:44]
Jack Fowler
You lost.
- [54:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And I don't blame them. I'd be proud. But they have the problem of being proud of something. Something Tucker said was very. We haven't talked about that, but he said the other day, and I'm quite quoting by memory, he got on Christianity and killing Christians. Did you read that about the German theologian Bonhoeffer? Yeah. And he said that even a man of devout Christianity, once you demonize somebody as a Nazi, then you can justify a Christian killing a Christian. And I'm thinking. Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop, stop, stop. Hitler was not a Christian. And number two, you didn't. Nobody called him a Nazi. He called himself a Nazi. He's the founder of the. Of the Nazi movement. So when you say even a Christian will kill a fellow Christian if you call him a Nazi and you demonize him. Hitler didn't think it was demonization. He called me a Nazi. I made off Hitler. He called me a Nazi. He probably thought it was a worse slur to be called a Christian.
- [55:57]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [55:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
What's.
- [55:59]
Jack Fowler
Tortured logic, if that was even logic. Yeah.
- [56:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you. You take Hitler out of the. Out of the equation in 1939 or 1938. 37. It's very hard to think anybody around him. Goebbels, chinless gurgles, corpulent gurring. You tell me the person that resonated with the German people like that, and I can't think of any. And there might be a 20 or 30% chance that it wouldn't. That if they did go to war to reclaim their lost land and pride, then it would be more like a Ludendorff or Hindenburg, but not this sick, toxic genocidal regime. So I didn't know what the point of it was. Was he trying to defend. He was trying to attack a Protestant theologian who was. May or may not have approved of the plot to kill Hitler.
- [56:57]
Jack Fowler
Well, what's this church? I mean, doesn't it go back to this Cooper guy, also the historian like this?
- [57:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And David Cullum, he had on there the. The chemistry professor who said that we sort of could have said a. Might have made. He should have allied with Hitler. Why?
- [57:14]
Jack Fowler
I mean, just why, Tucker? Why is this a hill for you to die on or thrive on? Maybe he's. Maybe he's thriving on it.
- [57:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
The answer to that question is answered by a second question. Why now? Why, why now? Why not five years ago? Why not ten years ago? Why not? I don't know. When you were on Crossfire. And I think the answer is that they look at that as a parallel, that they feel that Israel and its Jewish cabal of supporters are dragging us in to wars against the wrong people. Given the Arabs have the oil, the Arabs can inflict terrorism on us. The Arabs are 500 million strong and little Israel is once again doing that. And to show a pattern of behavior, they take a deep breath and say, hmm. Ah. I read Pat Buchanan's book on World War II. I looked at a lot of the stuff and I've got a thesis. And that was we would have never gone into World War II had not the Jews cooked up and exaggerated the deaths in that the Wehrmacht committed in Eastern Europe and Russia. And the Holocaust was kind of iffy, sort of, maybe kind of not as bad. And Germany was kind of, you know, they, they messed up their hair a little bit, but, you know, they're misunderstood. If they're white, they're Christian, they're Western. And they were fighting Mongols and Eastern people that were atheist communists. And yet we ended up on their side. Now, who did that? Who did that? I think it's the same people doing it today, drawing us into a war in the Middle east just like they did in World War II. And then you take a deep breath and you say, are you insane? Did we wouldn't have got in that war and wrongly, probably, we were attacked on December 7th by the Japanese. There was no sudden thing that we got to go and fight Germany. Roosevelt didn't declare war on Germany. They declared war on us. In one of the stupidest things he ever did, he declared war on us. And then we got in and then we said to ourselves, they've got the fiercest, most deadly army in the world. 5 million German soldiers who are crack veterans and they've been fighting in six months. And they can see the towers of the Kremlin. They're 17 miles outside the the Kremlin, and they're at the first subway station in Moscow. And they're going to take it. And they just declared war on us. And we turn around and the Japanese fleet is bigger than what's left of our fleet in the Pacific. What are we going to do? We're going to save American lives because there's a 12 million man Russian army. We don't particularly like it. Maybe people like Alger Hiss do. But this is real politic. We're going to give them things that we can afford. We're going to give them aviation fuel, ponchos, radios. Hey, we have an F. We have a P39 Airacoba. It doesn't do much but for them it's a good plane, let's give it to them. And that's what we did. That was just entirely real politic that.
- [60:47]
Jack Fowler
They, that there are some Elders of Zion who had influence with Adolf Hitler himself to declare war against us or with, with Tojo and Hirohito is. This is, it's insane. And Victor, I must ask, there's in all this conspiracy theorizing about the Jews and the Rothschilds and whatever got us into World War II. There's no prop, there's no Zimmerman letter, there's no anything.
- [61:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's just like we know why they declared war on us. Hitler said to him, people like Guderian and Rommel later they said what in the world is he doing? Albert Speer, inside the Third Reich mostly lied about what he was doing, but he did tell the truth that they were shocked when they told Hitler that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He didn't know where it was. No, he didn't. He knew it was some kind of American base, but he didn't know anything about. They didn't even coordinate. So called fascists. Mussolini had no idea that Hitler had gone into the Soviet Union. He called up and said what? You were supposed to help me in the Balkans. And Hitler said to him, well, you invaded Greece and got me bogged down. You didn't tell me you were going to go into Yugoslavia. Greece they hated. They were, they were fascists. So no, they didn't trust. There was no honor among thieves. And so why did he go in? Why did he declare war? Well, because Donuts came to him and said in 1940 and early 41, we were knocking out 30 to 40% of the convoys going into Britain and the United States is supplying Britain. They have been doing it through Lend Lease and, and we are right off the coast. We. They didn't, they were lying. I'm only. They probably had 10 subs. And we're right off the coast and guess what? North for Philadelphia, Boston, New York, they're lit up like Christmas. They had the most beautiful silhouettes. And when those ships come out, we can sit off here and it'll be fair pickings. And yet we haven't been able to allow. You won't allow us. So that was one of the Reasons they said that they wanted to stop all supplies to Russia and the United States. And they could do it because now they could attack American subs with impunity. And then people. So that was one of the reasons. One, a major reason. The other was they felt that the United States, they had been at war with them in World War I, and they felt that they came in late, and they had come in late to World War II, and they didn't really fathom what we had done in World War I. And Gurin said, well, you make good planes, but you don't make enough of them. He said that to our ambassador, to our ambassadorial staff, not Joe Kennedy, but people in London in 1940 who met him, 1939. Excuse me. So that was what. What happened. We. Hitler had a complete. Gordarian said, with this division, I can stop the whole D Day. And he said, I can throw the cowboys into the sea. And they thought we were just incompetent. And it was going to be a walkover and we wouldn't really fight because the Japanese would occupy our time and resources. Once the war started, they started to think, you know what? I don't know where Pearl harbor is, but yesterday they destroyed the Pacific fleet. That's what they tell us. And we're right outside Moscow and we're going to take Russia in about a week, and then we're going to have England left, and then we'll turn our. We're going to make an America bomber. And they were thinking about bombing America with a four engine. So there was a lot of reasons why they did it, but the Jews had zero effect. Yeah.
- [64:44]
Jack Fowler
Well, I'm going to pray to Dietrich Bonhoeffer tonight for the sanity of the souls of those who use.
- [64:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Very sad that he. He did all of that protesting and he was put in jail, I think, in 1943. And he was killed, like April 9th or 10th, just three weeks. Three weeks before the liberation. And they went out and killed. They killed all the people they thought that had had anything, that they. They hung Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abuar, and they killed Mark Block, the medieval historian that wrote, you know, oh, strange defeat. Yes, strange defeat. And we had just got there a little earlier, but, you know, we didn't know anything about it. It's sad that they were. They almost made it. And I don't know why anybody would ever even question him and what he did.
- [65:40]
Jack Fowler
I think there's money to be made in the questioning, but we will save that for another time. Victor, we have one last topic. To bring up. And we'll do that when we come back from this final important message. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. If I could only find a pen. Ah, my kingdom for pen. Here it is. Victor. I had, I had wanted to talk. We'll, we'll hold it off for another episode. But these I, I did up a list of the things that keep me awake at night long term and man, oh man, there are a lot of massive issues out there that, that give me the heebie jeebies and spook me. But let's talk about the fact that Monday the 24th is the 100th anniversary, the centennial Bill Buckley's birth. Just to note that Bill was a great man. Of course I worked for him. I was, you know, I loved him dearly and he was my boss. But so what? He created the modern conservative movement. He has percolated up in. In the. In conservative chatter again recently. Not because of necessarily a centennial, not because a commemorative stamp has come out about him which happened in September, but because he's being used as a bit of a punching bag by the griper and other community. I don't even want to put. Call them right of sent, you know, woke. Right. I don't think they deserve.
- [67:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't want to hear another Buckley or shut up or blank. Blank.
- [67:14]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, yeah, those. Yeah. And others have said that like him and his patrician phony accent. What did he ever do? Blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean he created the conservative movement. It's in your hands and stewardship to make some, make it, make good of it but like that, that the man was in consequential or insignificant.
- [67:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think what Jack means everybody is when he said he created the conservative movement, what he meant was and what is true that in the 50s the Republican Party, the mainstream Republican party all the way into the 60s played by the Marcus of Queensberry rules. It was a polite, you know, Eisenhower was a great president, but there was no, there was no effort to turn back the progressive trajectory. Whether you're Republican or a Democrat. Government was going to get bigger, taxes were going to get higher, social pathologies were going to be explained away. All of our modern dilemmas that we deal with. And then he basically said stop. No more. Stop the course of history. We're not going to do that. And that was the beginning of the conservative movement. And he did it, correct me if I'm wrong, without incorporating the other strands of the conservative right that had made it impossible to be mainstream. And that was things like racism, anti Semitism, etc. Conspiracies, John Birch Society. He said that we, we can challenge the Eisenhower Republican or the. What would later be the George H.W. bush Republicanism, but we can't do it with these groups because they don't represent the values of the United States. And that's what he was trying to say.
- [69:05]
Jack Fowler
Well, kooks. I mean, Bill did have his own issues early on with civil rights.
- [69:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Right.
- [69:11]
Jack Fowler
But came to, you know, I'll say correct himself or say he was wrong. I, I'd like to say tell one thing, Victor. No one would know this from reading the colossal biography that came out about him earlier this year by Sam Tanenhaus, about 20 years late. But in the last 10 years of Bill's life, where people might have thought he's just out to pasture. Well, he wasn't out to pasture. He was still. He died with his boots on. But Tanenhaus gave his last decade, maybe 10 pages. But at the very last editorial meeting, I should say board meeting that National Review Inc. Had while Bill was alive and I was there, I had a. I stage managed it as the publisher. The meeting ended and Bill said, I have something very important I want to tell you all. And it's sort of a mandate he wanted to give to National Review and to. And brought more broadly so to conservatism. He said, the one thing we have to fight is Islamo fascism. And this was 2006. It was a couple years after, obviously after September 11th. But dang, I won't say. Damn, he was right. It is so important for us as a movement. It was important then, it remains important for us to see this as the threat that it has been said that.
- [70:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because I don't know what year it was 2004 or 5, or maybe it was 3. I had the Reston. I had that Reston Award from News Corps. The Eric Brindell snow. It was not the Eric Brindell. It was the Reston.
- [70:48]
Jack Fowler
Reston was from Manhattan Institute.
- [70:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
And he sat. I saw him at. I think I saw him earlier on the Brindell Award and then I got the Reston Award and he sat with me. His wife was very ill. What year would that have been?
- [71:02]
Jack Fowler
She was about 2004. Five.
- [71:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Five. Yes. And he talked about that. I talked about radical Islam and stuff. And he talked about that. That he was very worried about it. Yeah, well, there would be an. Especially being in New York and there'd be another type of attack.
- [71:22]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. The other thing he's come up and we discussed this More recently, you, it was, you brought it up was when, when we have conservative leaders or people who imply their conservative leaders and have platforms and they're going to bring on questionable, weird or nasty individuals, they should not just give them free reign to spew their filth and they should punch back and, and counterattack. And so that was Bill's way with Firing Line and, and he did, he.
- [71:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
You can go through that. We have it at hoops. Hoover. Yeah, it's very controversial. I, I like Margaret Hoover a lot. I know her personally. She's the host of the New Firing Line.
- [72:07]
Jack Fowler
She is. I like Margaret. Yeah, yeah, I like her.
- [72:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
But it's not, it's not in the tradition of being a movement conservative at.
- [72:15]
Jack Fowler
All or combatant or just. Yeah.
- [72:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I would say, Would you say it was fair that the people who are interviewed on Firing Line today either are on the left or on the Never Trump? Right?
- [72:32]
Jack Fowler
Yes, I would say if I found that you were a guest on the New Firing Line, I would, I would faint. How did that happen? Right.
- [72:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
You're not going to see Ted Cruz there. You're not going to see any Senator John Kennedy. I don't think think so. Right. No, I, I, I don't know what happened there. We're the receptacle at the Hoover Institution of Firing Line. Right.
- [72:57]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Yes, you are. And many, there are many great videos, recordings of the shows of the years. Folks should go on YouTube and, you know, search for Buckley Firing Line. You're going to find some.
- [73:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
But even I, I think I said that before Buckley did take risk when he brought people that, that were very extreme and he was confident in his own rhetorical skills to expose their venomous nature to the public so that they would not be fooled, that these demagogues would be persuasive. But there were times when I watched these, I've been watching them lately, that he was severely taxed when he, when he, he, he brought on George Wallace. And I thought George, George Wallace had a reprehensible agenda and Bill pointed that out. But when you looked at the actual mannerisms, voice intonations, repartee, wit, I think it was 50, 50 if not.
- [73:58]
Jack Fowler
Oh, yeah, yeah. There's no question Bill didn't defeat all comers. But he didn't have George Wallace on to just give him free.
- [74:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, he didn't. He had George Wallace on to warn people that there was popularity for that agenda in the north and it had to be, had to be met. And we wouldn't talk about Tucker at all. Nobody would talk about Tucker right now. If he had just conducted himself with Daryl Cooper or Nick Fuentes the way he did for years as the anchorman at the 8 o' clock 55 out here in the West Fox, he at the end, maybe he got a little into the weeds, but most of the time he was a, a Rush Limbaugh type of conservative and that's why he had that big audience. And if he had just said to Nick Fuentes, I'm going to put you on here, but I'm going to give you five minutes to tell you what you are. But you got to be prepared. You saw what I did with Ted Cruz and I agree with Ted Cruz a lot more than I agree with you. So when you come on my platform, I are you sure you want to do this? And then he went at it, he would be world famous today.
- [75:21]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, yeah. Obligation to call B.S. pardon my use.
- [75:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I don't know why he did not do that and why he did it with Ted Cruz. I don't understand that.
- [75:32]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, you've been as ever terrific for wisdom sharing. We'll get another episode. We're going to get to my nightmares and nightmares for a lot of conservatives. But we're going to end the show by two things. One, I want to encourage our new listeners and viewers to check out Civil Thoughts. That's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil society. Go to civilthoughts.com do sign up. Comes out every Friday. 14 recommended readings links excerpts not charging you and we're not selling your name. I strongly, strongly encourage it. Thanks. For those of you who write me nice notes about it and I'm going to read one comment this is off of recent YouTube video from last week. It's from Randy Santoro Z2P who writes I do feel bad for VDH. Between the medical scenario, the garbage dumping, the dog dumping, the horrible roads and traffics, to grow up in probably the most beautiful state in the country and gradually see the cesspool it's become, I know must be heartbreaking. I live in northern New Jersey, close to New York City all my life and we have a few of the problems similar to California. But as much as as look around me in disbelief of what has happened in New Jersey and the US in general, it pales in comparison to California.
- [76:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I am not a victim. I am a where am I? Almost I. I remember all that. Remember that 70s therapeutic word I'm a survivor. I'm a survivor. I have a medical problem, but I'm almost Over it. I feel like I'm over it. I think they'll find out what it is. I'll be over. And I haven't missed a day of work. And I have a little oasis out here. I can. Who gets to live in a house that has been completely updated, but it looks exactly like it was when my great great grandmother built it. And it has. And I have a wall around it and I have friend outside the wall. It's sort of, I feel like maybe how the first time in my life I felt how Augustine was at Hippo when he was surrounded by the vandal. And it's. Although you never know. That's what I want to keep telling. Don't stereotype. Last night I was walking out, it was raining and there was a car parked and a Hispanic man was in there, obviously illegal, not one word of English. And he was parked on my side of the road right in front of my mailbox. So I went over there, I didn't know what I was going to encounter. And I open up the. He opens the door and he has a pregnant wife and his car is heated over, heated over in the rain. He said I can understand a little bit of his Spanish pretty well. And he said that his hot water was boiling. I thought the car looks new. But anyway, I haven't had my hose out there there. So I said you can just get to the service station by putting water. So, you know, I just told him where and I continued my walk. He was so polite, he was so happy. And so what I'm getting at is that yes, we have this. We have this pathology of open borders and we've got 27% of the population wasn't born here. We have more illegal aliens in California. Anywhere else we have truck drivers. But on a personal level, you. You want to always have the Christian point of view. And my point of view was his wife was pregnant, he was broken down, he was trying to find some stuff in his car, I think to put into the radiator. I don't even know how you do it in a modern, you know, the radiator vessel. And I could see the water dripping under the. The coolant drip, dripping. So it just, just ha. That just happens. And it's not all bad experiences is what I'm saying. Next week I'll come out there and the guy will probably pull out a gun and say, but it didn't happen this yesterday.
- [79:45]
Jack Fowler
Well, I will let our listeners know what they already suspect as I've spent a lot of time with you over the years and actually some of the most enjoyable times of my life I've spent behind the walls of that of your house there. But if you needed a kidney and Victor could give you a kidney, you'd get the kidney. That's the way you are.
- [80:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor, wait, wait. I just got my MRI back and it said that I had a 7 millimeter stone in it. I don't even know I had it. But I wouldn't want to give a kidney with a stone.
- [80:12]
Jack Fowler
It comes with a bonus. Yeah.
- [80:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, okay. All right.
- [80:17]
Jack Fowler
Thanks, Victor, for all the wisdom and we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye Bye.
- [80:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
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.