← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Why I’m Tired of Mitt Romey’s ‘Fake Magnanimity’
01:10:33
Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler take aim at what they call the “fake magnanimity” of America’s wealthiest elites, critiquing figures like Mitt Romney for publicly calling for higher taxes—while continuing to benefit from tax structures and investment strategies unavailable to working Americans on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”
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Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign.
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Jack Fowler
Well, hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler, the host of this marvelous little show that's bouncing around like a ricochet. But we found some time here on December 22, Monday the 22nd, to record another episode to get Victor's take on pressing and current events. So this episode will be up on Saturday the 27th, which will be the third day of Christmas. And after that, we're going to have some regular listener questions or other kind of shows You've all heard about. Victor's the battle he's facing, the battle he's going to win. So anyway, Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky distinguished, I think it's distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College and a senior contributor to the Daily Signal. Victor's website is the Blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. Please do subscribe. $65 a year. You just want to test drive it one month, it's 650. Why would you do that? Because you want to read the exclusive articles Victor writes for the Blade of Perseus twice a week and one exclusive video a week. It's well worth it, folks. So what are we going to talk about today on Monday, 22nd December, Victor? There's a number of important welfare related articles. One, Phil Graham and John early wrote an important op ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day. And then there's about the just the size and scope, staggering size of welfare payments in America. And then there's a Trump administration to claw back money from essentially nonprofits or sponsors who bring legal immigrants into the country or maybe even illegal immigrants because they were on the hook legally. They're on the hook for all the federal expenditures, taxpayer expenditures. And guess what the Trump administration is doing. They are wanting paid back to be paid back. So that's a big story. And then we have what else? Hamas cells are in Israel. Victor's going to talk a little bit about an article he's recently written, can the Dark Ages Come Again? And a couple of phrases that I think are important. It'd be nice to get Victor's take on. We'll do all that. We'll start all that when we come back from these important messages.
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Tony Kennett
Hey, folks, it's Tony Kennett, national correspondent for the Daily Signal and host of the Tony Kennett cast. I need to share something with you. Our goal at the Daily Signal is simple, to cut through the noise and give you the facts you you need to stay informed as engaged citizens. Unlike so many liberal media outlets, we're honest about our conservative views and report the news with a commitment to telling you the truth. But I'll be straight with you. Running an independent news operation isn't easy. While big media companies have corporate sponsors and massive bloated budgets, we operate differently. We answer to you, our audience and supporters. That independence is exactly what allows us to tackle the stories others won't touch and ask the tough questions others often avoid. But our independence comes with a challenge. We need your help to ensure the Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth. Every deep dive investigation, every exclusive interview, every fact check we publish requires time and investment. If you've found value in what we do. If the Daily Signal has helped you stay informed or given you insights you couldn't find elsewhere, would you consider supporting our work with a donation today? Even a small monthly contribution makes a real difference in our ability to bring you the journalism you deserve and expect. You can support our work by visiting DailySignal.com donate. That's DailySignal.com donate. Every dollar goes directly into making sure we can continue serving you with the reporting you've come to count on. Please go to dailysignal.com donate and give your gift today.
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Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You ready there, Victor? You all happy and.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. I'm just looking to burst, love. I. I get these little medical alerts.
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Jack Fowler
Well, it's never stops, right?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Never stops. I mean, I'm in a. A labyrinth of medical.
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Jack Fowler
Well, you are going to come out the other tunnel.
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Victor Davis Hanson
You know, I think I told you that member once said he was the brightest member of my family. And he said he's very clever. And he said when I came home with a PhD at 25 to the farm, I think I mentioned to our audience and I said I just passed all my exams and thesis. And he said, well, knowing Greek is like a dog that dances on two legs. It's impressive, but we don't know what for. But I know what for now because I am getting all of these polysyllabic terms and I've never seen them before, but I just look at the Greek equivalents and I can, I can figure them out. So I didn't know that, that all that when I was 25, instead of failure for getting a PhD in classical languages, I didn't realize that I had a rendezvous 50 years later with utility. And I've been using it to my advantage. Some listeners are going to say, Victor, you idiot, it took me 1 nanosecond to go on the Internet and find it.
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Jack Fowler
But Anyway, all right, Mr. Cogito ergo sum or whatever you.
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Victor Davis Hanson
How are you?
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Jack Fowler
All right, here's. Let's. Let me read this from this Wall Street Journal op ed that Phil Graham and John early wrote the other day titled the biggest fraud in Welfare. The government gives tens of thousands of doll benefits to the poor which doesn't count as income. So bear with me here two chunks. Yet even as our economy has experienced broad based growth, real federal welfare spending that's just federal now has soared 765% more than twice as fast as total federal spending and now costs 1.4 trillion annually. Where that money simply doled out Evenly to the 19.8 million families the government defines as poor, each household would receive more than $70,000 a year. One more chunk, Victor, with some data and then I'll shut up and you can rant. Take a single parent with two school age children who earns $11,000 annually from part time work. The government considers this household in poverty because its income is below $25,000. But this family could qualify for benefits worth $53,128. It would receive treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and 4,400 DO fundable earned income tax credits. The family would also receive food stamp Debit cards worth $9,216 a year, $9,476 in housing subsidies, $877 of government payments for utility bills, $16,000 plus to fund Medicaid, over $3,000 in free school meals, $6,000 plus in temporary assistance, et cetera, et cetera. All this puts the family's income at $64,000 or 254% of the poverty level. Victor, why are you and I working?
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Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know, but it reflects everything that I remember reading in Das Kapital by Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engel. Das Kapital by Marx. And that's the labor theory of value. You know that if somebody comes to rake your leaves and he gets $15 an hour and he's working for a brain surgeon who has a very very esoteric skill but can save people's lives and there's not very many people, then the capitalist supply and demand says that man will be compensated more. And on the theory that the brain surgeon can if he has to, wake leaves. But the wake Lever can't just jump into the hospital and crack your head open. There's a lot of critiques of that. It doesn't mean you ever. And I've been a big champion of muscular labor. But this idea that the government is going to make everybody the same, there's no incentive then. And I can tell you, living in one of the poorest areas of the poorest county, one of the tri county areas that are poorest. When I drive in to my local community at 10 o' clock in the morning, it's packed with people at Walmart, it's packed at food markets. There's nobody. You know. In the old days you get up at 6, you're going to work and you come home and the town was empty. So there's a lot of people, young, able bodied, who to read the local papers. It's just all about gang activities. So the whole system is being fraudulent. And here in California, Jack, as you pointed out to me recently, there was a 30 billion billion unemployment fraud, there was a 20 billion plus homeless fraud. There was the high speed rail I think is up to nearly 20 million. And as I say I see the trucks go by oh 10, 15, 20 an hour, maybe more, just barreling down to go work on the high speed rail, 70 miles an hour. The drivers are mostly non immigrant, let me put it that way to be polite. And the whole state had a 911 system. It ended up like the battery factory in Monterey, the solar farm out of Tehachapi. They don't work and so I don't know. And then when you see all this money wasted and then you read that Tom Steyer, the left wing Stanford activist area guy who ran for president, who made his fortune funding financing coal plants in Indonesia, says I need to be taxed more. He's worth about 3 billion. And then MIT came out. Remember MIT? Mitt said that he thinks that he wants to be that people should be taxed more and he wants to pay. No, you're not a big humanitarian Mitt. You're almost worth a billion dollars. So what you're saying at the end of your life you think that you should get pay a few hundred thousand more out of your multi billion dollar fortune or hundreds of million dollar fortune, but young Mitt didn't say that. And young people who are making 80, 90, 100,000 trying to buy a house, don't say that. I'm getting so tired of this fake magnanimity humanity by these very wealthy, wealthy people who say I need to be taxed more. Warren Buffett. I might secret. Well, then pay it. Pay it. All you have to do is write a check to the government and say I'm under taxed. Well, Victor, that wouldn't cover everybody. Well, don't worry about anybody. Set by your moral example. Open up a foundation, say Mitt pays 60%. Join me. You can do it, just do it. But don't tell Joe Smith out there who's driving a tractor all day long and then goes to a forklift night job so he can make $80,000 at. He needs to pay more taxes. It's disgusting. And in California, of the 40 million people here, 1% of the households pay 50% of the taxes. And they're leaving. They're leaving. Joel Cotton has a great out. He writes variations of it, but they're all unique and original. And he's just pointing out that the whole blue stripe model, the Minnesotas, the Massachusetts, the Illinois, the New York is imploding. Four or five million people a year are leaving.
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Jack Fowler
Can I interrupt?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.
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Jack Fowler
Joel Kotkin. That's who you're talking about, right? Where did he write? I mean, he writes all over, but.
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Victor Davis Hanson
He writes all over.
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Jack Fowler
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And I'm not sure. I just read it this morning at 4:30 in the morning. So I don't, I can't remember where, but it's listed in RealClearPolitics.com so you can all go there. And it's a very good article. He just points out what he's tried to warn people, that the blue state model allows young people not very much job opportunities, no housing opportunities, gas, electricity, all highly regulated by very wealthy people who are up in the attic looking at you, down at you. And they pulled up the ladder. That's what the whole cycle.
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Jack Fowler
I don't think they're in the attic. I think they're in the penthouse looking down.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Exactly. But you know, it's depressing to see this fake magnanimity by very, very blessed people who now suddenly want to pay more taxes. And yet they don't. They. They don't.
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Jack Fowler
Yeah. And that, you know, they do have that Buffet Gates effort with, with char. Quote unquote. It's not charity, it's philanthropy where they could be addressing real issues. Poverty, whatever they want, local. But they, instead they, they're more interested in spending money on abortion over overseas.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I would tell them, I would tell Buffett and I would tell Mitt, you made enough money, don't make any more money. You won't have to pay any tax. Don't worry. About the taxes, Mitt. Just don't keep investing or what, all the money you have and you're trying so desperately to get 8% here and 7% and 10%. Why not just put it in, I don't know, bank of America at 4% and just relax and then you wouldn't feel so guilty because you wouldn't be making so much money without physical labor and then you wouldn't have to worry. But this idea that you made all this money and you had this elite lifestyle and you're still an investor and all of a sudden you decide, don't pay capital gains. Just take your money, Mitt, and pay it at the income tax rate. Do not pay at the income. Just say, you know what, it's a technicality. This is income tax. This is money that came from capital gains. But I'm going to pay the income tax rate just like Joe Blow. But I really. You can see what happened to the Republican Party. I know there's internal divisions and rifts in the Republican Party today, but compared to the, oh, I don't know, ever since the Bob Dole, the McCain, the Bush, the Mitt model did not have a lot of empathy for the working middle class. George W. Bush had more than the others, but not a lot of empathy. And you can really. This is what also I think bothers us because I pick up the Wall Street Journal, I know people who write there. I like it, it's a great. But their news division is not their op ed. You look at almost every person who is writing now for the Wall Street Journal and just hit their name and go down on their bio. And it's the Atlantic, it's Politico, it's Washington Post, it's New York Times. That's where they came from. And I always say it's Monday. Now, they've had the weekend to digest last week's good economic news, that inflation is down to 2.7 from the 3% that Trump inherited. That there is a lot of strong forecast that the economy may grow 4% in the first quarter. It could even go up to 4.5. And job growth, unemployment went a little higher, but job growth was much higher than expected. But more importantly, this is real. The first jobs report where all the growth came from legal employment and not illegal immigrants. Two million people who were largely on the dole are gone. I thought, well, they have 48 hours now and sure enough, you pick it up and it's Trump. It's not working. The terrorists aren't. Nothing's working. It's bad. And then by the end of the week, they will be forced to report a good economic data point and then they'll have the weekend to revision it and Monday you'll see how bad everything is.
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Jack Fowler
Yeah, they'll be looking at their 401k numbers and going, yes. Meanwhile, so. All right, Victor, we're going to talk a little more about welfare. But first to our viewers and our listeners, you know, college is broken. Activist professors, seminars that feel like struggle sessions. $80,000 a year to hear Hamas chants on the quad while being told America is evil in class. So what's the ult? Well, there's a new university in Texas that's doing the opposite, and it's called the University of Austin, or uatx. Here's what really sets UATX apart and why students are turning down UChicago and transferring from Columbia to attend. At UATX, students are in small seminars taught by great professors. They read the great books of Western civilization to learn from them, not tear them down. They build actual companies on campus with mentorship from a vast network of top entrepreneurs and investors. You can be openly Christian or Jewish without apology. And when you walk into the main atrium of the school, there's a giant American flag. UATX admits students based purely on test scores, so the application takes just five minutes. Oh, and another thing. Tuition is completely free forever. I have to repeat that. Tuition is completely free forever. It's funded by American patriots who want to create the Navy Seals of the mind, not another generation of credentialed activists. To apply to the University of Austin, visit uaustin.org that's uaustin.org and we thank the good people from the University of Austin for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Okay, Victor, I gotta get this story in front of me now. Okay. Back on welfare. This is from the Daily Mail. Trump demands Somali scammers repay hundreds of millions stolen in brazen Minnesota benefit fraud plot. So Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary James o' Neill has fired off repayment demands to the sponsors of immigrants who became dependent on public benefits. Longstanding federal law requires the sponsors of immigrants to repay means tested public benefits, but the law is rarely enforced. The letter is the latest escalation in the Trump administration's response to mounting evidence of rampant fraud in Minnesota. Victor, Beyond Somalia, if this is applied more broadly by HHS to I'll pick on, say, Catholic Charities, which does a lot of immigration sponsorship and. Or the Lutherans, the Presbyterians. There are many religious organizations that are involved in this there is going to be a bloodbath, but maybe it's a deserved bloodbath that you bring somebody in. And we just read these figures from the Phil Graham article. You know, it's costing the taxpayers 20, 30, 40,000. Well, the law says you sponsoring organization are actually on the hook for that. So this is really powerful clawback tools. Anyway, your thoughts on this?
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Victor Davis Hanson
I'd like to put that in a wider perspective. It really shows the ideological differences that are splitting across the country and through history too, there is the conservative traditional's view that the laws are sacrosanct, that the people who made them, especially older laws, were intelligent and they did it to deter bad behavior and encourage good behavior. It's sort of like Plato wrote a dialogue called the Crito and Socrates has been unfairly sentenced to death for nothing other than that he was on the conservative side during a revolution that lost and was thrown out. And they wanted, it's kind of like they wanted to trump up, forget the pun, some false charge against him. So he says, I didn't corrupt the youth. I did not introduce new gods. And I know why you're going after me, and I refuse to, we can't. And they convict him and sentence him to drink the hemlock and he's in jail. So his friends come in, Crito among them, and they said, we're going to break you out, we're going to get you out. And he has this wonderful talk and says, do you know who the NOMOI are? Those are the laws, the ancient laws. And they talk to him and they say to Plato, has him talk. So you, you think you can break the law because you have an independent gripe. And then everybody, basically, it's the ancient argument that the laws have to be immutable because each person has a gimmick, a cause, righteous or fallacious, to get out of it. So in this context is, what I'm saying is when we had the immigration set up, a lot of wise people said, this is the best country in the world and people are going to flock in here and we're not. We have limits to our bounty. And they're going to come in and want things. So if they want to come in and they want things and they don't want to work, their sponsor is going to pay and that will deter them. And then the left came along and said, this is unfair. This is our, the wealthy left, always the wealthy left, and this is unfair, so we're not going to enforce it. So then Trump comes back and says, we're going to enforce it. And then they go crazy. You're heartless, you're mean. But all he is saying is, we're going to go back to what the law said and give it power again because you can't have a country. When people, as happened to me one night and let me think about 1998, somebody knocked on my door at midnight and I had the light on. And she came up to me in Spanish and English and said, do you know this person? And handed me a card with handwritten. I won't mention the doctor's name, but I'll just say, Dr. Smith, Dr. Susan Smith, Salma Hospital. O G by N and she was pregnant. And I said, what do you want? I need to see this person. And I said, where'd you come from? She said, I was in Mexico this morning and I thought, wow, people in Mexico, in this little town in California, know the name of a doctor who they can go to in their ninth month, eighth month, come across the border illegally, have a baby free. And I did say something, you know, I said, I had three children delivered at that hospital, and I had to put a deposit of $1,500 when I was making $6,500 a year for each one of them. And then I paid the OBY general who was my general practitioner. I paid him off by the month. And he was a saint. Marshall Sorensen was a wonderful. He is a wonderful man. He's retired, but he didn't even charge me the full rate. And I thought, you just fly into our country and you're going to charge 30, 40,000, and then you're going to use. And that's how the left would say, well, this is universal justice. You're better off than she is. So we're going to equal. And that's what they think. So what Trump is doing in this case, and a lot of them, Jack, he is restoring the integrity of the law. And the left is going berserk because I've been looking at the reactions to this. This is not fair. They have embezzled, according to a recent article. You can find it, I think it's on Powerline. They have embezzled more than the gross national product of Somalia. About 2 or 300. Somalia, it's about 8 or 9 billion dollars. It's not as much as Gavin Newsom's boondoggles, but it's considerable.
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Jack Fowler
And, you know, it's worse than the money flow, percentage wise to Mexico.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think everybody should look at Trump in this way. Yes, he's mercurial. Yes, he tweets, yes, he can be coarse and crude. But what he's actually doing a lot is restoring currency to the law that has been completely neglected on the border, on refugee status, on catch and release, on crime, and even on the military. Everybody was, I wish all of you would just go back and read the Uniform Code of Military justice, go to Article 88 or go to Article 90 to 92. And this was created as a corpus of law after and during. During and after the Korean War. And it was because very powerful, wonderful generals like Douglas MacArthur, a hero of World War II, had again and again and again questioned not just the wisdom of Harry Truman, which, you know. Yes. But his authority to tell MacArthur what to do. So they said that a. And then MacArthur retired, and then he had a ticker tape parade and he was going to run for president. He didn't get the nomination, didn't get close. Ike really was much more popular in the Republican Party. But the point was that he toured the country trashing the president in the way that other people had done that were officers. So they wrote this. And then Trump came in and we had about 11. I counted them, four star admirals who said he was Mussolini, Nazi, pathological liar, equivalent to the people at Auschwitz, etc. And then we had. That was the first term. And then it was pretty clear. And we all know Mark Milley. He was a little smarter than when he called Trump the biggest. And he and General Kelly call him a fascist. They waited until Trump was out of office because they would have been subject to that unenforced law. So they called him a fascist, I think Kelly said, the biggest fascist I've met and utter fascists and all that. And then Trump came back. This time he announced that he was going to enforce the Uniform Code of Military justice and return the sanctity to that law. And you haven't heard a word except. And by the way, there's a video circulating, AI, that I have attacked General Mark Kelly. I did not. That is another fake. And we're having an epidemic. As we've all talked about, fake Victor videos. AI, they talk much more mellifluously than I do and much more quickly without this acquired hoarseness the last few months. But my point is this. When Mark Kelly essentially told people that they could question the orders of their superior officer and frame that appeal to their conscience to disobey orders if they felt they were constitutionally suspect, it was very clear from that entire video that they were talking about Donald Trump in Other words, he was violating Article 88 and Article 90 to 92, 88. He was disparaging the commander in chief because he was basically calling him dictatorial in public when he was subject to recall. And then he was also suggesting, which is in the code that you cannot suggest, advocate, tell uniformed personnel to disobey orders at their discretion. And nobody's. And now all of a sudden, people in the Pentagon said, you know what? We're going to enforce the law. We're going to investigate. And they said, oh, my gosh, this is horrible. I could expand that list ad infinitum. But my only point is that before we all get very upset.
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Jack Fowler
What we're.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Seeing is a counter revolution in which old books, law books, old laws on the books that have been lax or have not been enforced, have not had any authority, are now being rebooted and recalibrated, and we're going back to the center. In other words, we're not going to the far right or far left. We're trying to go back to, I guess what you could call a return to normality.
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Jack Fowler
That's what Victor, along these lines, several weeks into this, blow Venezuelan drug boats out of the water. This is just the other day I saw some clips about that. There is a law permitting this. You're allowed to do this. And the person who wrote the law in 1986 was none other than then Congressman Chuck Schumer.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, yeah, yeah.
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Jack Fowler
So?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, Barack Obama killed, killed, killed, killed over 500 people with targeted drone assassinations. He killed a US citizen and his son. Not that the person was not a radical ISIS affiliate. But my point is that no one on the left I ever heard said anything. They didn't say anything. When he joked about it and bragged about if you get near his daughters, he was going to Predator you. And they didn't say anything. When he was asked about it, he said later, I didn't know I had that ability to kill people. I was well suited for ordering murder, killing, targeted, assassinated, no trial, no justice, nothing. And I defended that if they were known terrorists, that threatened the security. But it's pretty rich for the left now to say that these narco boats, which no one has said that they didn't have drugs on them, they have been going in and they're doing two or three things. They're popping, propping up a corrupt government that's killing people and killing people in the United States with its drugs and fueling Cuba, which has always been a problem. And now all of a sudden, there are Fewer drugs coming in. There's fewer income revenues and flows for Maduro. And when you intercept these illicit sanctioned oil shipments, these large ships, tankers headed toward Cuba, Cuba's on the point of bankruptcy. It's just about ready to implode. And that's what Trump is trying to do without the use of kinetic military force. And yet the left is going crazy. It's almost as if, well, it's not almost anything he does. They do the opposite, no matter how tawdry and unseemly it is. Now they're on the side of the communist government in Castro, Castro's communist government. They're on the side of Maduro's narco terrorist government and against the Nobel Peace Prize winner. Yeah.
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Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we're going to take a little break and when we come back, we're going to get your take on Hamas incursions into Israel. And we'll do that after these important messages, folks. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal. Victor, we're talking on Monday, December 22nd. This episode is up on the third day of Christmas, December 27th. Saturday, the day of three. French hens. Do you ever have French hens on your farm, Victor, or you just have boring old Central Valley hens?
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Victor Davis Hanson
I, for many years, along with my brothers was tasked with coming down to this house from our other little house where we lived to my grandparents house and collecting eggs every morning. And my daughter who just moved up to the Auburn Sacramento foothills has now had dreamy memories of her childhood. And she has five acres and she has, I think seven chickens. She's very upset because a huge red tail hawk sits right above the chicken cage and eyes them. Any moment they go out, she takes them out for walks and st. They've only lost one so far, but they have on their property bobcats, oh gosh, weasel. Every type of predator. And I don't know why those chickens are still alive, but the answer is right now. No.
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Jack Fowler
No.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Okay.
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Jack Fowler
Well, looking at X and say a post, that's, here's what it says. Three Hamas terrorists who infiltrated during the October 7th massacre were just captured inside Israel after hiding for over two years. They were found near Rahat deep in the Negev running a full scale weapons factory. Here's what the police seized. 34 pistols, 12 M16 rifles, a Kalashnikov, a Carlo, an RPG missile, grenades, over 50,000 rounds of ammo. This was a night raid and these Hamas terrorists were arrested in their beds. So while the world lectures Israel on Restraint. A Hamas terror cell that entered on October 7 was operating inside Israel for over 26 months, preparing for the next massacre. I'm a little surprised that this has even happened, Victor, but I think the point at the end there is right. Israel is going to be in a fight till the end of time. I think with these, Jack, you always.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Have an ability to have a timely simile. So when you mention chickens and chicken house, perhaps the predators came up. So maybe we could envision the Middle east peace as nice little chickens. And then Hamas is the predator, because they're never going to change. They're going to try to destroy it anyway. They're incapable of disarming. Everybody knew that because they represent 65% of the people. And the people who are the dissidents know that if they, if Hamas is disarmed, then they'll have elections or they'll have some free. And that's never going to happen. And they know that Hamas has to be armed to kill its opponents, so it's not going to happen. And then when you look at the Arabs that we have courted, well, Indonesia is going to send a force. Well, Pakistan is going to. No, they're not. They have restive Muslim populations themselves. And, you know, I always try to preface something I say about Tucker Carlson, but I knew him and I liked him. But when he said the other day at the troopsa thing that we are demonizing Muslims and why do we hate. Nobody hates Muslims. But I just would like to ask, since he's so critical of Jews, who blew up the Marines in Lebanon? Who blew up the embassy in Lebanon? Who. Who just killed two people at a museum? Who. Who was Major Hassan with Allah Akbar as he mowed down 13 unnumbered? Who were the people in Santa Barbara, in California, Southern California? Who were they? And I could go on. And who were 9, 11. We didn't ask for this. And so there is. And who were the people in Australia? I mean, there is something called radical Islam and it has taken over the Islamic world. And the idea that you're going to get a legitimate government to send peacekeepers into the Middle east. And according to the tenets of the temporary ceasefire, they're going to be tasked with disarming a radical Islamic group. And so imagine a Pakistani soldier, an Indonesian soldier, a Saudi soldier, going up to Hamas soldier and saying, put down that AK47, that RPG. It's just incomprehensible that would happen. More likely they'd say, well, here's where the Jews are and here's where this guy is, and here's what we want you to do. So it was never going to work. The other thing, very quickly, Jack, is that go back to October 7th. It was peaceful. Gaza had billions of dollars coming in. They could have been gutter in what, I don't know, two years. But they spent two or three billion dollars making a subterranean military complex. And they wasted their money. And still they were coming across the border, 20,000 a day to get very high wages to work for Israelis. There was something there. Not much, but there was something. And then after October 7th, the IDF, yes, they had sporadic strikes, but they waited 20 days, 20 days before they went in with a full. And they begged the people of Gaza and they begged the Arab world. They said, we will not go into Gaza and hunt these people down. If you will just do two things, return the 245 hostages and second, turn over the commanders who organized these 3,000 murderers and we won't have a. And they wouldn't do it. So then the existential question came up, well, what next? They're all underground and they deliberately have exits and entries under hospitals, schools and mosques. And they have the widespread support of the God people who tagged along with news that you could rape, kill, murder, torture, steal from Jews. So nobody said the IDF should do what. They never said anything. I can tell you what the United States did because I have flown over and walked through Fallujah and I can tell you that it wasn't pretty. It was necessary, but it wasn't pretty. I can tell you what the Russians did to Grozny. I can tell you what the Arabs do to places like Hama. And the Israelis didn't do that. I can tell you what the Russians do. I can tell you what the Ukrainians did. They just blew up a Russian soldier in a car bomb attack. And they had a military right to do so, I suppose. And they use drones to have targeted assassinations. So just somebody should at this point, when Tucker gave that talk, Dave Chappelle, a comedian, weighed in. You know, he was attacking Bill Maher the other day. He said, oh, these thousands of people are being butchered. Yes, but tell us exactly what you would do in that situation. What is the alternative? You would get an elite force and you would go down with miners helmets into the labyrinth and then you would ask for id, and then you would arrest everybody. You think that was going to happen? Just tell us. Or you just sit there and have the whole Arab world said, israel's westernized, it's weak, it's Anemic. It didn't attack. We'll do it again and again and again. But I think Donald Trump should realize there is not going to be a disarming of Hamas. The only people who can disarm Hamas are the Israelis. That's just a fact. And they're still getting money from Israel. And whether we like it or not, there's going to be a rendezvous with the Iranian theocracy.
- [40:15]
Jack Fowler
You mean with Iran, they're still getting money? Yeah, right.
- [40:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. They're still funding the Houthis, they're rebuilding Hezbollah, and they're just full of complete hatred. And it didn't come from the West. It came from a deep seated hatred of the west, but it didn't come from a provocation from the West. Just look at what's happening to the weak kneed anemic liberal democracies in France, in Britain, Australia. They're all bending over backwards to appease Islam. And they interpret that Magnum's weakness to be exploited, not to be reciprocated with kindness. Just the way it is.
- [40:54]
Jack Fowler
It's parallel to the press for individual suicide, especially uk, Australia. They seem bent on.
- [41:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's not going to everybody. I don't want to sound bad. It's not going to end well. We're headed toward a confrontation and it's not going to end well.
- [41:12]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, to our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a problem. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations that you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. And today America is is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold, not as speculation, but as insulation. Reputation matters. Which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A rating with a Better Business Bureau. For years, they've studied and guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer for our listeners to help you get started with real gold. Whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in a bank. If you believe that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 8447-9091-9184-4790, 9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 8447-909191-84479, 09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view, and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor what we were just talking about before that little break was reminded me of some things I've been seeing on X, more along the lines of the Tucker type. I'm not saying he said this, but seeming acolytes that we are not a Judeo Christian nation. We are just a Christian nation. There's no sense of Israel or Judaism or whatever at our founding. And there are some Protestant evangelical ministers who are hell bent on driving this point across, like making trying to remove even the thought that there's any Jewish influence on the founding of America. And I don't know if these guys really believe that, but it's well, J.D.
- [44:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Van said that. Are you referring to his J.D.
- [44:07]
Jack Fowler
Davis no, no, I wasn't referring to him.
- [44:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
He just said that we were a Christian nation. Well, I think what they're trying to to do is blend something that the founders understood at the founding that 95% of the people in the then 13 colonies were from what is now the United Kingdom or from Western Europe. And the majority of them were Protestants because at that time more of the European Catholics population was from either southern Italy or Spain or southern France or something or more. So anyway, my point is that they had a natural tendency to reflect reality. But, but, but they were they were absolutely intent on not establishing a national religion. And you look at what they wrote on if you read what Adams wrote or Jefferson or Madison, it was read the Federal it was very clear they had looked at Europe and they wanted two things. They did not want a continent with 50 different countries. That was where Manifest Destiny was from the beginning. They wanted one country and they did not want religious wars. And so there was no national religion put in there. But they did use the word God. And many of them were deists, not all of them. The majority were very devout and traditional, but some of them were deist in the sense that they believed in God and the Christian God, but they were not pious in the traditional sense of ritual and going to church and all the things that offer you the keys of heaven and traditional religion. But they thought that religion, especially Christianity was absolutely important for a virtuous democracy. Okay, so that's what they did. That was what we. And we, you know, we went a little bit too far. We outlawed all prayer in school. You can't use the word God. But their idea of God was open to an ecumenical interpretation. So we started, you know, you know, during our campaigns we heard, no offense Jack, Rum Romanism, Romanism and rebellion that was directed I think at the Irish, among the, and the Italians later. But the point is we were self critical and evolving and that tradition is Judeo Christian. So when you say we are a Christian nation you need some qualifiers. We were founded with Christianity as the main belief but we also welcome the wider Judeo Christian tradition where this religion grew up in the Middle East. And we are tolerant of people who want to come and want to worship in any way they feel as long as they do it privately and non violently. And that's what we do. I'm sympathetic to the idea of the Sermon on the Mount and the New Testament being the primary religious document for the majority of the population. But you that has a history behind it and that history is a Judeo Christian history. And it also has a message of tolerance. So that if you don't want to believe in Christianity or the Judeo Christian, you're a Buddhist, you're a Muslim, we have all you can in this country. And so I want to be very clear, this problem we have with Islam is not that we are not intolerant as Tucker argued, but if you read the Quran, there is no alternative religion. There's one religion and it's not like the Judeo Christian tradition. There are people in Israel, 2 million of them, that are not Jews. And there's Christians in Israel, I've met them and there's churches there. The same holds true. But if you have a Coptic church in Egypt or you have one in Bethlehem, then you have a special density dispensation from the government to protect you because you will not feel that you have the same ability to worship openly and transparently as the Islamic majority. And most countries that are Islamic, there's no in Iran, you know, the Jewish population is small and smaller and under constant assault as is the Christian population.
- [48:43]
Jack Fowler
Good luck going to a Catholic mass in Riyadh. Well, if I may, Victor, when you come back from recovering from what you're going to be going through, we've talked about you and I have talked about having Matt Spalding on Matt is the author of a new book by Encounter called the Making of America about the story of the Declaration. And he's got a wonderful he's a wonderful guy.
- [49:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's from Corcoran, California, 30 years, 30 miles from where I'm staying down the road.
- [49:13]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, he writes about, you know, the founders were not aloof to the Jews and Jewish the Old Testament. And actually he has a section in the book on how the original great Seal of the United States had Jewish imagery on it, Moses parting the sea. So anyway, my point on the religious front with some people, that this is an intentional effort to wipe out Judeo from Judeo Christian in our founding is just load. And also I think another thing to just raise and leave it out there. I want to encourage folks to read George Washington's Letters to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport because it is one of the most powerful documents we have. And it's not even about you mentioned before. Tolerance, this is beyond tolerance. He's talking the stock of Abraham. And all of us, all of us should sit under our vine of fig trees and vines, and none shall make them afraid. And we live in a world right now where particularly Jews in America are being made afraid. And to have this kind of rhetoric on the right in the face of that is deeply concerning. So anyway, this is the Victor Davis Hansen, so I'm going to shut up. And when we come back from these final messages, Victor, I'm going to ask you about two phrases that the left uses all the time and get your thoughts on them. The one phrase is the right side of history and the other phrase is in the current climate. We'll get your thoughts when we come back from these messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. So, Victor, I think you may have talked before about the right side of history, but this is something used regularly to force people to take positions they might not otherwise want to take. So I'd like to get your broad thoughts about that phrase itself and how it's used. And then I've seen come up much more recent, I mean recently, much more frequently, that phrase in the current climate. And you see these videos of these cops in the UK and Australia where they're stopping people from holding a flag. And well, in the current climate we shouldn't do that because it might incite blah, blah, blah. So this is now a mantra that's being used to suppress liberty. Anyway, anyway, Victor, two phrases that the left uses, deploys and needs your thoughts.
- [51:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, as to the first right side of history that regained its currency in the Barack Obama tenure because they felt that they were morally superior, as all leftists do to conservatives. So they wanted to say that history has proved us right. That was kind of an abbreviation, I think, from that quote that Martin Luther King borrowed. He didn't invent it as Obama claimed it was earlier, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. In other words, it's still predetermined that the world works in progress. And I don't believe it does. I believe it's. I wish it did, but I think it's circular. And right side of history changes all of time. If they mean that there's an absolute moral side, yes. But when I look at the left, throughout history, the left has killed more people in the history of civilization than any other ideology. Mao killed 70 million, Stalin killed 20 million, Pol Pot probably killed 3 or 4 million. We could keep the whole story of left wing hardcore socialism or communism is massive death and poverty. If you look at Venezuela, you look at Cuba, you look at North Korea and war. So I don't know what the right side of. They always want to say we're on the right side of history. You're on the wrong side of history because it's a cheap morality. It's very easy to say, I'm so worried about everybody. I want everybody to have welfare, I want the border to be open. Why should somebody down in Chiapas have less than I do in Atherton, just. Or less than I do in Malibu? Just because he had the unfortunate, you know, he was born in the wrong place? Well, there's 7 billion people born in the wrong place. So if you're really, really worried about that, instead of bringing, you know, I don't know, 4 million a year, why don't you open up your Malibu estate and put 50 people there instead of just you on weekends? And the answer is, that's part of the problem with the left. It's always at some. Their morality is always at someone else's expense. And so that's what the right side of history, that's what it all is. It's a moral piety and a claim to higher virtue to substantiate directing other people to do things that they themselves will be exempt and never suffer the consequences of their own pious ideologies. And so that's another one. Now, what was the second one?
- [54:40]
Jack Fowler
In the current climate.
- [54:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I was thinking about that. In the current climate. And that is sort of like the word, but you can wave any we are free in Britain and you can wave any flag, but not. And that gets back to the Bloomberg effect, what we've talked about. I use that term, I think I invented it for, for Mike Bloomberg. I had nothing against Mike Bloomberg. I was very critical when he said in his presidential $1 billion run, oh, you know, it's just like a farmer. You just drop a seed in the ground. You don't have to do anything. Bam. I wish he would try that and see if he would starve or not. I have dropped a lot of seeds in the ground and I planted a lot of trees.
- [55:26]
Jack Fowler
What finger to use?
- [55:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor? I planted 180 Santa Rosa, 108 Santa Rosa trees once on sandy soil. And the guy from the farm advisor said, you know, you can save money with ammonium sulfate. You don't have to use, you know, 15, 15, 15ammonium nitrate. And I put it on very careful, but be careful, put it two feet from the. And I walked out there on Monday they were starting to. The little leaves got brown. On Tuesday they were all brown. Wednesday they were all dead. And then I started looking up and it said a canon of palmology is you never use emollium sulfate with its high hot nitrogen content on sandy soil, which absorbs the nutrient very quickly. And I burned them all up. So, Mike, it's very hard to farm and it doesn't just happen on autopilot. But in the current climate is the Bloomberg effect where you can't deal with snow on the street. So you talk about supersized Cokes as a problem. You can't deal with radical Islam in Britain. You just can't do it. You're afraid to. But you can deal with law abiding British native citizens that follow the law. They grew up in the polite society of Britain in that long tradition. And they want to fly the flag of St. George. And you tell them, we decided that you're white nationalist, Christian nationalist, racist, so don't do it. And they usually obey. And in the current climate, and you have to do certain things, but in the current climate does not mean you can't have illegal immigration. And you're going to say, if somebody says Allah Akbar and stab somebody, we're going to, you know, we're going to deport you and your whole family if you're here illegally. Maloney just did that. There was a imam that threatened people. She just said, get out. You got 24 hours to get out. And all they'd have to do, these weak need. European leaders would say, we are an ecumenical, diverse society. We love diversity. However, if you advocate violence from the pulpit, mosque or church, or if you engage in disruptive behavior, we're going to deport you. If you are here illegally. Green card, tourist visa, student visa, we're going to do it very quickly and we are just taking a deep breath. We're not having any more legal immigration from the following countries. And just go through the data banks and see where the violence is coming from and take the top 10 countries of origin. And you know what would happen the next in a week, people would stop. But you can't do that because somebody would say, you're like Tucker, you're an Islamophobic and yell and scream. But if somebody said call, I don't care what you say. I'm more worried about the Satan safe. The safety and security of the majority of the population. They shouldn't have to have Jews that have to be armed walking around or the Jews shouldn't be murdered at a Holocaust. I mean, a Washington Jewish museum shouldn't happen.
- [58:35]
Jack Fowler
The Constitution's not a suicide pact, as we all know. Victor, I even think that. I know we've talked before about the oath of citizenship, but if you're not a natural born citizen, but you become a citizen and you violate that oath, I think your citizenship should be revoked. If you're advocating violence, never mind if you're.
- [58:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think it's going to happen. I really do. I think there's just. What's happening is there's a critical mass is happening and it's like a fusion bomb. It's from all sides. And it is not expanding outward, it's expanding inward at the U.S. population. And that is 52 million people came here and were foreign born. And we did not have confidence in our own history, tradition and values to assimilate, acculturate them and integrate them. And they got the impression wrong. I'm being very vague and stereotyping. I know, generalizing. They got the idea that they could create enclaves within the United States where they could have their own separate religions, separate culture, separate language. And they didn't have to integrate, but they would be parasitical on the general prosperity, security and lawfulness of the American system. Okay? And that has manifested itself, unfortunately, in giving them the wrong message. And that wrong message is 12 million people can come across the border. You can be an M13 gang member, you can be a drug trafficker, you can be a human trafficker, you can beat up your wife, you can peddle pornography. And we're not going to deport you. You. Or you can be Somalis and say that you're victims of systemic racism and you can steal $9 billion more than the gross national product of your entire country, and we're not going to do anything. Or you can come from India and you can be a truck driver, and you do not have to speak English or write it. And we will give you a license, even if you flunked it 10 times. In the case of New York, you won't even have to have your name on the license, because we want to do that for you. And if you come from the Middle east, you can come to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford. You can break all the rules about camping overnight. You can shout death to the Jews. You can push and roughhouse them. And we will give you. If you're at Harvard and you push a Jew, you will be an honorary. Honorary. You will be cited honorifically at graduation, or you can get a $65,000 fellowship. That's what the message was. And so it's our fault. And I think those forces are all around the center from these different groups, and they're pushing, pushing, pushing, and somebody is going to say, I'm not going to take the bait and be racist or nativist, but I am going to do this. I'm going to examine everybody who is here on any temporary visa, any student visa here illegally, and if you have engaged in behavior that threatens the security or prosperity, safety of the United States, you're going to go home immediately. And if you are a newly naturalized citizen and you engage in terrorist activity, we're going to deport you. We are going to. And, Victor, you can't do that. Oh, yes, we can. We had a lot of people come into the United States after World War II from the Baltic States, from Ukraine, from Moravia, Bohemia, from Germany itself. And they said they had no Nazi pedigree and they lived very quiet lives. And guess what? When they were in their 70s and 80s US citizens, we found out that they were not truthful about their actual behavior, and we deported them. We did. We did a lot.
- [62:25]
Jack Fowler
I think even maybe into the late 80s or early 90s, all these Ukrainian camp guards.
- [62:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, we do.
- [62:33]
Jack Fowler
I think that office still exists. Yeah, it does.
- [62:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it does. It does. And Trump can do that because there was a per. These laws didn't just come out of the head of Zeus. There was a purpose for them. And that's. There's a purpose for the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There's a purpose that you're responsible for an immigrant if you want to bring him into the country and guarantee his support without government assistance. There's a purpose for all all this. It's just because nobody thought that the purpose mattered and they weren't going to enforce it. They were the lawless, not Trump. Yeah, well, so we'll see.
- [63:07]
Jack Fowler
Ecclesiastes. There's a season for every purpose unto heaven. And some people don't know what season it is. I know what season it is, Victor. It's Christmas season. So we're going to wish our Christmas will have passed by the time people see this, but we'll be amidst the 12 days.
- [63:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yeah, everybody should have a good Christmas. This is a very strange Christmas for me because. Because I'm having this operation. I'm speaking just a few days before. And you can't go anywhere because you cannot get the flu, cold or Covid. So for the first time, my wife and I are going to be in a large house alone. I hope we can see people on Zoom.
- [63:47]
Jack Fowler
Doesn't Santa Claus come, Victor? He's not allowed unless he wears a mask. All right, but we're going to end this.
- [63:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
I've never done this before, so it's new to me, too.
- [63:57]
Jack Fowler
Oh, I thank you and Mrs. Mrs. Hansen is lovely and I'm sure you'll have a lovely time with each other. Now let me end the show with three comments from the thousands we are getting now. And thank you folks for taking the time to write them. And I said the last show. So, so many are about prayers for you, Victor, and that's lovely. Here's one from Don argiero. Don Argiero xn5tl who writes VDH. I pray that you are granted many more years of health and vigor. We are all fortunate to be witnesses to your wisdom as an ethnic Macedonian from northwest Greece who didn't exist until the 1990s. A special thank you for citing that epiphany, wishing you all those dear to you a merry Christmas and a happy healthy new year. Then Patricia Schaeffer 7146 writes, I worked for 45 years in manufacturing not only to build a better America, but as a blessing to have been part of it. That's kind of good for you, Patricia. One last comment, a little long, but from Bethwood9377 who writes, we were homeschooling our children when my husband got orders and we were driving to our new duty station in Seattle from Wisconsin. We did two educational stops a day on the trip. One stop was the Rosebud Battlefield. A park ranger gave us a talk, then we walked the battlefield. It was so easy to see with the terrain how the Indians were able to ambush Custer's Army. If I remember correctly, there are brass plaques set into the ground where the soldiers fell. Mount Rushmore, Roosevelt National Park, Custer's Last Stand were three of our stops. I'm so glad we went when we could, as we found that if we don't take advantage at the moment, we likely won't have another opportunity. Anyway, it's an impressive historical site. We were talking about it the other day on a podcast. That's why she's writing this, I'm sure. As always, thank you Jack and Victor. You enrich our lives. Thank you Beth Wood, Patricia Don thanks for and many more for your comments and I want to thank folks who subscribe to Civil Thoughts. If you're not subscribing, go to simplethoughts.com, sign up what's Going to Happen Magically? Every Friday in your inbox comes an email from Jack Fowler with 14 recommended readings. But I know you're going to like it, so it's totally free. Victor, as ever, thanks for the great wisdom you shared today and our good faithful listeners and viewers should know that we are going to be back with another episode soon enough of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye bye.
- [66:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for listening and watching. Have a merry I hope you had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday. I don't like Happy Holidays. I like Merry Christmas. But Happy New Year's.
- [66:44]
Jack Fowler
Happy New Year.
- [66:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, I'll be back. 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.
- [67:03]
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