← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Why the American Republic Has Survived for 250 Years
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Colonists were not objecting to British free market capitalism. They were not objecting to the role of religion. Jefferson said the country was based on the nuclear family and the independent agrarian. He was self supporting and these were the ideal citizens to be entrusted in making their own laws. You want autonomy and to be self governed. It was a republic of virtue. That's how we survived for 250 years.
- [00:38]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. We're on the Saturday edition, and it is July 4th. So happy July 4th to everybody out there. We're going to talk about the early Republic and the 250 years of the survival of the republic created by our founders. But we'll look at a few news stories first and we're going to do some of the international news since Friday. We we talked a lot about domestic issues. So stay with us and we'll come back to talk about the Iran war and the Ukraine war after these messages.
- [01:16]
Mount Titano Media Announcer
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- [02:56]
Sammy Wink
welcome back Victor Davis Hansen, in his own words. Victor's the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhansen.com so, Victor, let's talk a little bit about what's going on with the war in ir. There's been some, a few missiles shot at ships. And the issue of the Straits of Hormuz seems to be one of the things with Trump's peace agreement with the Iranians. But I think myself that the conflict and the problems going on between Hezbollah and Israel seem to overshadow that because that is an active war. And two things, though, with Israel, not just that war. But I was reading an article, I think, in the Jerusalem Post, Hamas is coming back and starting to reform their military. And so they have grave concerns on that front as well.
- [04:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, essentially, Israel can destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and they can't stop them if they're unleashed. So Iran keeps trying to bring into the negotiation, Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah. They're the most powerful. They were the premier terrorist group, and they were shattered not only by the pager explosions, but they've lost most of their arsenal. They've lost Nasrallah, they've lost most of their leadership. And the Lebanese government is starting to come out of the shadows and saying, maybe we have a country again, thanks to the Israelis. They can't say that publicly. So they are back channeling with the Israelis. And Iran doesn't. Hezbollah says, well, how about us? Aren't you going to include us? We need to be saved. And Iran is sort of, well, we're going say we're going to save you. But they're worried that if that explodes too much, the Israelis will just without the United States hit them. And they have the ability to hit them hard. The war itself, we're now almost four months to the day, to the midterms. Donald Trump is polling about 40%. Republicans are about minus 5 in the generic poll. Democrats have caught up on fundraising, almost. And the war is unpopular. And gas is still over $3 a gallon. It's gone way down from four. So Donald Trump and the Iranians know that he has a vulnerability because he wants to get out, get a negotiation and tell people the straits are open and they don't have a nuclear weapon. Mission accomplished at a very low human cost. And that will be, in time, recognized as a victory. So the Iranians keep trying to draw it out because they want to have a tit for tat and keep his polls down and the price of gas down and the strait uncertain. Donald Trump knows what he must do, and that's hit them hard. So they stop that. But that means reopening that can of Worms and people. People's attitude is not pro or anti. Anti war. It's more or less, I don't like the Middle East. That's what they say collectively. I don't like Iran in particular. And they're not worth the life of one Marine to go into that hellhole. Now, we like the Iranian people. All good wishes to them to rebel. But that regime and the whole 47 years leaves a bad taste in our mouth, especially after Afghanistan and Iraq. So Trump's instincts are right. He's basically saying the people don't want us here. But I had to get in here to stop that weapon. I've done that. And now I've got to find a way to get out and punish them so they can't make another one. And I am letting them know that if they violate the strike, for each time they do, I will be disproportionate, but not disproportionate to a way that hurt me politically. So that's where we are more importantly, the geostrategic. Trump is saying the Middle east isn't that important to us anymore. The Saudis have been fickle. They're sort of backsliding. They're stabbing us in the back. They wouldn't let us close straight from the use of their bases. They're afraid of the Iranians. We're just not compatible with that part of the world. Israel is now taking care of its own business. It's nuclear. It can handle itself if we support it. But he's trying to basically pivot to where it really counts, and that is Asia to a lesser extent, Europe, but Asia and China. And he wants to make sure we have the resources to help Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines. And so that's where the war is, and he's right on that. And if he can get through the next four months without a major war, and I'm talking about 40 days of bombing or something, and the gas price goes down to $2 $2.50 a gallon. Then all of these things, all the things that made the betting markets and the polls say he's going to lose with 75% surety, are no longer quite true because of the a redistricting, both racial gerrymandering taboo by the Supreme Court and more red state legislatures in blue. They might pick up total five to 10 seats there alone. Number two, gas. And the economy might be a lot better than it is now. It's starting to improve. The unemployment rate fell this month to 4.2. Inflation didn't really go that much higher. If he can get inflation down and say, the unemployment rate below 4 and the record stock market GDP, he may. The economy may not be the issue and the war may not be the issue. They can probably out fundraise the Democrats, but not overwhelmingly so. And then there's two other developments that are very important. Number one, this isn't the Democratic Party that's running in the House. These are socialist dash communists. And every time one of them wins and gives a victory speech and starts screaming and yelling, they lose votes. They have candidates in Colorado, they have candidates in New York, they have candidates in New Jersey. And collectively they say basically white women are ugly and white supremacy and I wipe my hands on the flag and we despise Israel and we're pro Hamas and Hezboll. I mean, it's just completely out of the norm. And they're going to play those. It's going to be if the Republicans are smart. The best commercial was the they them of 2024. They them they them the trans words. And then I'm there for they them, I'm for you. And they can run all of those and then with good statistics, they can show what they've been doing. And I think they will improve. So I would say it's more like a 50, 50 chance. If the war doesn't completely break out after the midterms are over. Even if he loses and Iran has been acting up and has not been disproportionately hit enough to knock some sense in through them, he's got all kinds of cards. He can arm the Kurds, he can send weapons into the people of Iran stealthily. He can hit them. He can hit dual use bridges, he can hit dual use energy. He can bring that regime to its knees. If he loses the midterms, his attitude will be, what do I have to lose? And if he wins the winter, he says, that's it. Last election I'll ever face. So Iran knows that and they're going to try to finesse it, but in four months from now, they're going to have zero cards to play.
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Sammy Wink
It seems like the ceasefire was a red line, though. And if they keep breaking it, it seems, well, let's hope that he uses, as you've put it, disproportionate response to breaking the ceasefire.
- [11:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's hit them twice and he' been disproportionate. Not disproportionate enough to stop them from doing it again, because they know that there is a limit to his disproportionality and that is don't get a flurry of missiles into the Gulf to stop the oil production. Don't get disproportionate enough so that somehow they're able to hit tankers and scare them off with their missile fleet if they had no missiles. See, we were told in the first 40 days, 90%. 90%. 90%. 90%. 90% of the missiles were taken out. True. Never. Given the denominator, 90% of what? 5,000, 10,000. 5, 3000. So that 10% say if it was 6,000 missiles, that's 600 missiles and they probably launched another 300. They could have 300 missiles right now pointed at all of the oil producers and all of the cargo ships and shut down the strait. So you know, he's got to be very careful until after the midterms. After the midterms we're self sufficient in oil. He's already mad at Saudi Arabia because they've been double dealing. Gadar's been double dealing. There's another issue that I have to be very careful how I mention it. The Wall Street Journal had a big
- [12:55]
Sammy Wink
article
- [12:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
in the last few days about members of the Trump family. In terms of the Trump family has made about a billion dollars. So mostly Don Jr. But to another extent Eric Trump. And there are some people that. And Lushnig's family as well. The Secretary of Commerce.
- [13:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, because they're investing in crypto.
- [13:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
They're investing. But part of the problem is when the Arab Gulf states said they were going to make these massive investments and usually when they say that, just cut it in half. But members that are associated with members of the Trump have been investing. In other words, if Kuwait or Oman says I want a trillion dollar investment, what should I do? They can steer them to companies that have contracts with the US Government, say in missiles or missile defense, drones, and then they can get a cut for that direction and maybe they can invest on the bottom floor of those stocks before they have, you know, the Anderal is a good example. Only certain people had access to that type of stock. And so are they using their position with the President to make money they otherwise would have? Not. Now every person who's been in the White House, Lyndon Johnson's brother, Don Nixon, Nixon's brother. I don't need to mention Billy Carter. Billy Carter, George H.W. bush's brother. George George W. Bush didn't have too many problems at all. Obama had, he only had a half sister, but he had no real family. But there were members of the, you know, there were Tony Resco and all that stuff earlier. But it's especially injurious to Trump because of two things. The economy is an issue now. And they went after, rightly so, Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden was flagrant, but he was a crackhead. He was incompetent. So he would just brazenly get on a plane and buffoonishly call a Chinese guy up on his phone. These guys are a lot more subtle and they're making a lot more money now, you think that. And they're much more conscious of staying within the bounds of the law. I'm not talking about illegality. I'm talking about unethical behavior, as it appears to the voting public. So when you have everybody glued to the economy, the worry is that the Democrats two worries during the campaign. They're going to say you can't afford gas, but the Trump family, and they're going to show them on a private jet, flying into, you know, UAE or something, and then they're going to say billion dollars there. And then that hurts them both because of the word affordability, that everybody's struggling with affordability, but the Trump family's not. That's what they're going to say. And then they went after Hunter Biden. So they've got a really, I think for the next four months, and afterwards, they've really got to read the riot act to any member of the family or associate member that you have to be like Caesar's wife. Beyond suspicion.
- [16:29]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. It seems to me that that's why the Democrats are shrieking billionaire trillionaire all the time. They don't want to say millionaire because they're all millionaires. But that is making that message from the Democratic socialists in particular stronger among the especially young population, as we said on Friday.
- [16:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they, they're doing that also for two other reasons. One, their funders are billionaires, but Mr. Syngman's in communist China. Nobody knows who he is. And George Soros is just hated by everybody. So he's not really an issue anymore. They just take money. He has so many foundations. And Reid Hoffman is in the Epstein files. He was the one that funded the Gene Carroll suit against Trump. So they're talking about billionaires and billionaires because their billionaires are below the radar. They think the second reason they're talking about them is they used to love them. When Molly Ball wrote that Time essay, she bragged about all of the money that was coming into the 2020 Biden campaign from Wall street, et cetera, Tech. But that was when Mark Zuckerberg's foundation gave $419 million to take over the registrar's work, essentially. And they said they were augmenting or complementing it in the swing states. 419 million. Half a billion bucks almost. And then there was Elon and he. I think he's on record that he voted for Biden in 2020. And then of course, there was Jeff Bezos and the Google people. And Google and Apple were just hiring all of the people as they rotated out of office. So they love billionaires. But when Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz flipped and David Sacks flipped and you could say the people at Palantir flipped and joined the Peter Thiel Group, then the billionaires became bad because they were no longer left wing and funding them. In other words, the Democrats relied on them so much that they toned down their attacks on billionaires in exchange for getting their financial support. But when these guys took a great, a good look at the Democrats and saw they're not Democrats, they're socialists and they're going to take our money and they're going to have billionaire taxes, they fled and said, we're not with you anymore. Then and only then have they started talking about billionaires. So when they say billionaires are running the country and oligarchs and all this. No, billionaires and oligarchs are running the country. And we used to love them and now we scared the blank out of them and now they don't like us and they're giving money, so we hate them. That's the attitude.
- [19:30]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, I like that new watch that you have on. And we have a new sponsor. It is Ver watches. We tend to forget that civilizations are remembered less by their politics than by what they made. The tools, the objects, the things built well enough to outlast the people who built them. For most of the last century, America made things. Then, like much of the old productive economy, watchmaking packed up and moved overseas. Today's sponsor, and that is VAR V A E R is trying to bring back a piece of that past vaer. That's V A E R is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring America watchmaking back. They now assemble watch watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials, and full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. VDH has been wearing a VAERS C5 Korean feel solar. If you could Put it up to the camera. Victor Davis Hansen. There you go. Nice, nice. A modern take on the watches worn by American soldiers during the Korean War. And it's the kind of watch you could wear for decades and then pass it on. Ver has already earned over 10,000 five star reviews and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. If you value things that are rugged, made to last and built here at home, take a look. Go to varwatches.com Victor that's V A E R watches.com VDH again, that's Vere watches.com VDH and Vaer is pronounced V A E R. And we'd like to thank Vere Watches for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show on this Fourth of July weekend. And we hope everybody's enjoying their fourth of July. So Victor, let's turn to the Ukrainian war or the war in Ukraine. And it's apparently not so much in the Ukraine anymore. And this is what's surprising me because it is stunning that the Ukrainians are taking this war all the way to Moscow and sending drones in and blowing up especially gas facilities. And now the Russians have long gas lines at their fueling system.
- [22:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't understand. The first this war, remember, started in February of 2022. So we're over four years, we're going into the fifth year. I don't know whether the American or NATO advisors had told them in 2023 they needed a traditional tank offensive with the Russians were prepped for. But, but my point is that they got bogged down worrying about the territory in the Donbass and the Crimea that in 2014 had been expropriated and expanded in 2022 by the Russians. So that was like a Somme or Verdun, but that when you have a Somme or Verdun slog, it favors the country that has four times the GDP, four times the population and it 10 times the area and I think it's got almost eight times the GDP. So little. Ukraine didn't have a chance. And I kept wondering why are they doing this? Well, part of the reason was that the drone technology hadn't really taken off in Ukraine yet. And the other part is the Biden administration was afraid of a nuclear exchange or something because they had forbidden them to take hit deeply into Russia or they didn't have the they also didn't have the drone capacity. They had to sneak drones inside Russia and launch them from there. They don't have that problem anymore. So now they're doing the only thing that a smaller power could do. They're sending drones on long range. It's kind of like B17 missions in World War II that finally had fighter escort and they broke the back of Germany and they went in all the way to Germany. These drones now are targeting the one thing that Putin needs for foreign exchange, and that is oil exports. So they're hitting refineries, they're hitting pipelines, they're hitting distribution. And one of the effects of it they've noticed is Russia had no real reserves as far as domestic storage like we do. They don't have a strategic petroleum reserve. So the people have no gasoline and they're in line lines. And so that's going to weaken public support for the war. The only unknown, unknown that's dangerous is if Putin thinks he's losing the war and if he thinks there's going to be a coup and if he thinks the Russian people are going to rebel. And if he has 6,500 nuclear weapons among some tactical. Is he going to go down or is he going to give them an ultimatum? You either stop hitting inside Russia or I'm going to send a tactical nuke. And then what would we do? Or what would NATO do? Do. That's dangerous. So we'll see what happens. But ideally, Russia would just say, let's cut a deal. And then Ukrainians would say, well, the deal is not what it was a year ago, that we have a battle line frozen in place, and that's the dmz. We want you to go back somewhat to where you were. Maybe in 2020 or 2024 or 2022, they're going to get a better deal than they did. And that's always true of war. Nobody ever really talked about that. Negotiations. Everything depends on the pulse of the battlefield. The reason that the Iranians are even talking to us is they lost big and they know better than we do. They've lost probably a half a trillion dollars of infrastructure. And if we didn't do that. When Obama was talking to them, everybody said, this is like the first Iran deal. It has nothing to do with the first ir. They were intact and aggressive and Obama was begging them, as was Biden. Now they're begging us to talk because they've been slacked and they know they'll get it again. But everybody should remember that negotiations reflect the power on the battlefield and the pulse of the battlefield.
- [26:33]
Sammy Wink
Yes. Well, Putin is an interesting person given reality right now. He's not.
- [26:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, he's not in a good place because he's Overextended, he's lost his foothold with the Assad regime in Syria. He has no influence now. In Venezuela, he has no influence in Iran at all. North Korea is a client of China. China is looking at this huge. The largest country in the world by area with only 145 million people. It's got a smaller territory with 1.4 billion, and they have a long history of a disputed border. So he's not in a good position.
- [27:17]
Sammy Wink
No, he sounds like he's in a corner to me, which is very dangerous. All right, so, Victor, let's start with a question. You know what? Let's go to a break and then come back and we'll start with our questions on this fourth of July. Stay with us, and we'll be right back after these messages.
- [27:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. They knew that this would be regarded by the King and Parliament as an act of treason. So the people who signed that were basically saying, we're revolting against the most powerful country in the world.
- [28:11]
Daily Signal Narrator
The Declaration of Independence reminds Americans who they are. Its words are ingrained in our memory. Its virtues are etched into our character. Its principles are impressed upon our destiny. Its signers carved out a new nation in the new world. For 250 years, the declaration of Independence has inspired their descendants to defend their liberties.
- [28:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Liberty doesn't want paths from one generation
- [28:41]
Mount Titano Media Announcer
to the next through the bloodstream.
- [28:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
It has to be fought for, defended, won with every generation. There's nothing more important for which we would give our lives.
- [28:50]
Daily Signal Narrator
But history has a way of making the unthinkable seem inevitable. But the Declaration of Independence was never inevitable. The Declaration of Independence is the culmination of one of the greatest political dramas in history. As ideas clashed, as armies gathered, as the fate of a continent hung in the balance, the hopes of millions wanting independence rested with a small group of statesmen willing to risk everything they had. Their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor. This is the story behind America's Declaration of Independence. The story of how a Declaration became a nation. Sacred Honor presented by the Daily Signal, premiering on YouTube July 2, 2026.
- [29:42]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor has an X account. His handle is Dhanson, and he is on Facebook at Hanson's morning co up. His website is called the Blade of Perseus. I know I announced the URL victorhanson.com earlier, but the name of the website is the Blade of perseus. And on the 4th of July, I'm not really sure whether it's going to be at midnight before the 4th or midnight of the 4th. We are going to launch the new website. So I hope everybody takes some time on the 5th to have a look at our new website. So Victor, I guess the first question maybe we can could discuss is how have we made it in 250 years this republic? A rare thing historically that a republic could go for so long.
- [30:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, the secondary reasons are we had not the primary, but I'll get over very quickly review the secondary. We had a huge North American continent. It was richly endowed with natural resources, farmland, et cetera. We didn't fragment into European warring states, but we were the size of Europe. But we were one complete nation thanks to people like James Polk and Jefferson and other people who saw that we needed to have the whole continent or end up like Europe. Number two, we had two oceans. So we were protected from what was going on in Asia and Europe. But that is secondary to the Constitution. So we took the Spartan Cretan and then Roman idea of a mixed Constitution, a legislative, executive and judicial branch. But unlike some of the mixed constitutions, we put a number of checks and balances. So the whole point of it was to slow down radical changes through the President's power to veto legislation, the Congress's power to impeach him, President's power to pick judicial appointments, the Congress not to approve them, and the judicial to strike down laws is, you know, unconstitutional. The President and they can impeach. The legislative body can impeach judges. The president cannot appoint people he thinks would be bad judge. There's, it's all intricate checks and balances. Number two is we were the only country that really have a bill. Right. So there were certain issues in other countries that have never been up for. I mean there are nuances and everybody reinterprets them, but they're not up for discussion as far as eliminating them. The Bill of Rights, the ability not to have your house searched and seized, the right to bear arms, the right not to have to testify against yourself, the right of habeas court, that's all documented. And then with the amendment system we have have further rights. The other things are more intangible. But that revolution was never a French Revolution.
- [33:04]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. One moment though, just to clarify for the audience that the Bill of Rights for the United States is the first 10amendments and then they flow afterwards, there's
- [33:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
17 other ones that follow and they're very hard to pass. You need 2/3 of Congress vote and then you need 3/4 of the state legislatures. So unless it's something like the 18 year old vote or women's suffrage or repealing prohibition, it's very hard to do to get an amendment.
- [33:37]
Sammy Wink
And you were saying that it's not like the French Revolution either.
- [33:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, it's not like the French Revolution because it was limited. In other words, the colonists were not objecting to British free market capitalism. They were not not objecting to the language. They were not objecting to the role of religion. They were not rejecting claiming that they wanted the poor to take over from the rich. They were not angry at both the British colonialists and the large landowners like Washington and Jefferson. Okay, so it was basically a one dimensional political revolution. And it said we want autonomy and to be self governed. We do not want to be a colony of Britain and have no say in taxation or representation, et cetera, et cetera. That was a much easier revolution. But what I'm saying is it kept intact the strengths of the British system, the British Enlightenment. And so when we became a nation, there was Christianity, there was Anglicism, there was all these religions. They were all tolerated. Nobody had gone out in the countryside and lynched nuns or cut beheaded priests as it happened in the French Revolution. There was no year zero. There was no renaming the months, the days. There was no God called ratio that everybody bowed down to. There was nothing like, I mean Thomas Paine was the most radical of the founders, but he was nothing like the Robespierre brothers. He wasn't even like Danton. He was a much more reasonable person in comparison. So that was a big step that we kept the traditions of the Anglosphere except political. And then there were cultural things that were embedded from the beginning. One of them was that there was no peasantry, there was no serfdom. Those were European ideas. So Jefferson especially said the country was based on the nuclear family and the independent agrarian, the farm. And that person was self sustained. He was autonomous, self supporting. He could feed his own family from his farm. He could control its own destiny. And these were the ideal citizens then to be entrusted with voting and making their own laws and directing their own affairs. So it was a republic of virtue. And that stayed through that in the United States. Nobody. I'm not Sir Hansen, you're not Lady Sammy. And we have no class distinctions formally we have a fluidity of classes. Wealthy people have children that are bad seeds or they don't want money and they get poor. Poor people have children and they become millionaires. So there is fluidity, but we are not based on class. We're not based on race. We champion the middle class, but we don't institutionalize. Nobody asks in America, where was your father born? How many acres does your grandfather have? What was your parents education? Maybe the east coast or west coast elites do, but that's not American tradition. And then finally, we're a nation of emulation, not envy. So we're not like the British. I've said that before in this broadcast. It was the old maxim that if you go to Britain and somebody sees a Bentley, they want to kick it in and come to America. They want to know how much Cadillac and maybe now it would be a BMW or some cost and how do you finance it? And I can remember when I was a young person, we had no money. We lived in an 1100 square foot home. My mom stayed home with us. My dad was a high school teacher initially and then a JC teacher, but he was a coach and he tried to farm on the side. But we would get in cars when we went to Disneyland or we went up to San Francisco and my mom insisted we drive through wealthy neighborhoods and not to say, oh my gosh, look at that, look at how much money the Gettys have or something, you know what I mean? She was saying, oh wow, I love those cypress trees, the way they've done that. That's a good idea, Bill, when we get home, let's plant some. Or then she would say, I love those colors, that gray and white, I like that match. Or she'd say wow, some of those Victorians are tacky. They're overdone with that gingerbread cut. I don't want that. In other words, that was a very common thing. That's why the Wall Street Journal gets away. Or I guess shouldn't say gets away. It's one of its most popular features or mansions, usa. Because people love to go in there and look at these beautiful lakes and tennis courts and gables and they look like. But then they look at the price. They're you know, Monacito 30 million. It's not that they can ever buy it, but they get little ideas. So that say that they're in fresno with a 1500, 1600 square foot tract house and then they go there and they look in there and they see the little videos or they said wow, I like how they park their car there. Maybe I can make a little version of it. So it's in Europe. I don't think that would be the aristocracy. And you'd say that we should burn those houses down. And I'm kind of worried because that is sort of the attitude of Los Angeles to Pacific Palisades. Not that this was a great asset to have these beautiful homes, but oh, they lost their home. Too bad. Let's not rebuild them. When we get to be an envious country, we won't succeed. And by the way, when we used to nation build, or any country used to nation build, they never said to Iraq or Afghanistan or South Korea or Vietnam or Europe itself after World War II. We've got a really good system for you. It's called a Senate, a lower house, a Supreme Court, a President and a Bill of Rights. And here's how you do it with a two party system. No, they have a parliamentary system because it's much easier. Ours is a very complicated system. It's very hard to reproduce. It's designed on one principle. People are no blank good. And I think many of the founders said if we were angels, we wouldn't need a constitution. But it assumes that unlike the French Revolution, Rousseau, we're all born into chains, that we're not. We're all born evil, bad, fallen, the Christian notion. And we need to be redeemed. We need to curb our appetites and our excesses. And one of the things we have to curb is the desire to power and to tyrannize others. So we're going to make a constitution where you cannot have a dictator. And they can say all they want about Trump. The closest we've ever had was FDR because he had four terms, but he did things that is just unthinkable. Go to the New York Times and say, if you write another bad op ed at me, I'm going to pass antitrust legislation or inheritance taxes. It'll ruin your family. And so. So it's a wonderful system, but it's very intricate and complex and it requires an educated populace. And we don't seem to have that to the degree sufficient anymore. So I'm kind of worried that's how we survive for 250 years.
- [41:34]
Sammy Wink
Yes. I remember reading in the Federalist Papers somewhere that the idea of the checks and balances and all of the checks and balances all the way down to the individual was one man's ambition would counter another man's ambition as far as corruption went. Right. That ambition of one man would be to expose the corruption of the other for the purpose of getting above him. True.
- [42:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
But at least the corruption wasn't utopianism. It wasn't like the Soviet Bolshevik reservoir or the French Revolution. It didn't say give me Enough power and I'll make a new man so he won't have those feelings. So we said they're going to always have those feelings. So what we have to do is blunt them so that they can't hurt each other or destroy the system. And it worked pretty well. But when you see people who don't know the system, every time I listen to Hillary Clinton or who's supposedly a Yale trained lawyer or all these socialist communists, they all talk about the Electoral College. We're going to get rid of the Electoral College. We're going to get rid of the. Why don't you first understand what it was designed for? It was designed to preserve the state's federalist system so that each state would be given representation in the Electoral College based on the number of senators and they'd all have at least two votes and representatives. But the point is nobody would ever go out to Wyoming. They would just write off that whole rural area of America and they say, you know what, it's Wyoming is less than south Central la, so why go? So they would just. The presidential campaigns would be basically 10 cities or 15 cities. So they were worried about that because they thought the rural people were more virtuous. They did. Jefferson said that. And they needed representation and they needed people to know about them. The second thing is they were very worried about voter fraud. Voter fraud. And they felt that if each of the states had their own and it's in the Constitution, except for unusual circumstance, 18 year old vote, women's rights, the states are allowed to create their own balloting laws and they're unique, then it would be very hard to throw an election because you'd have to go to all 50 states, all 50 different systems and rig the votes. And if you had a popular vote, you wouldn't have to do that. You would just change the law one time and everybody would be the same or you would just go to nine cities or 10 cities. But these electoral votes are very close sometimes, so it was very hard to master the system and warp it if you had the Electoral College. So it also re emphasized state rights, not just regions that were rural, but it said all the powers invested in the federal government that are delineated shall be the domain of the. But anything not delineated shall revert back to the states. And this was saying that we are the United States of America. We're not the united peoples of America, we are the United States. So each state shall be represented in two unique ways. One, they will have two senators no matter what the Population is and, and so Montana will always have the same amount of clout in the Senate as California. And that's what drives the left crazy. They just want to make it into a big house. And then number two, they will always have a say in the selection of the president, even if their votes can be just ignored. Popular vote. You can't ignore their electoral college vote.
- [45:31]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, we'll continue with some questions on the legislative, judicial and executive. But first I want to welcome back a sponsor, Pure Health Research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, then this message is for you. Pure Health Research is on a mission to make America healthy again. And two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way. First is Liver Health formula. Over over 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism, pile on the pounds and make you feel tired. Liver Health Formula takes care of all that. It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels. Next is lymph system support. If you struggle with fluid buildup or swelling in your legs, ankles or feet, this one's for you. The natural ingredients in lymph system support help gently flush extra fluid and toxins out of your body. And right now, for a limited time, you can get 35% off liver health formula, lymph system support and all 50 plus health supplements that Pure Health Research has to offer. Head over to Pure health research, that's purehealthresearch.com and use coupon code Victor at checkout. That's purehealthresearch.com with coupon code Victor to save 35% off your order today. And that sounds like a great deal. And we would love to thank Pure Health Research for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, let's look at at some issues that we're seeing today in our republic and just ask your reflections on whether the republic had the same issues in the earlier period or if things have changed. As far as judicial review, we just yesterday talked about all sorts of cases that have come through. Especially the birthright citizenship case was big, but also trans athletes in in women's sports in particular was also passed and then also just the executive powers. So we talked about all of those. And my question for our judiciary or the whole act of judicial review trying to establish the constitutionality of things, has it always been political? Because I Can remember you said that Justice Roberts made a political choice, especially on the birthright health. Or were there times in the early, earlier republic when justices have been above the.
- [48:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
They didn't really know. The first generations didn't really know how you would implement the third branch of government. It was John Marshall that introduced Marlboro case, the idea of judicial review, that any person in the United States could go through the federal court system. There's not even, there's not even a court system mentioned. It just said there shall be a Supreme Court. It doesn't say how many people. And it says there'll be a chief justice, but it doesn't say there's going to be a circuit appellate court in a lower federal district. All that had to be made. And the idea that an individual citizen could sue in a federal court, they saw no need for it. Their idea was that most of the criminal statutes and most of the civil disputes would be settled by each state in their own idiosyncratic way with their court system. They didn't understand that at times, times there would be states that would contravene the Constitution. So what the Supreme Court and the court system was in the very beginning, it was basically for two or three reasons. One was there was going to be disputes between the federal government and a particular state. And then the state or the federal government could sue the other person to make sure that they were in harmony with the Constitution. Number two, states could be rivals to each other or extraditions. If somebody shot somebody from a Connecticut, if a Connecticut person shot somebody in Maryland and then he fled back to Connecticut, he could be extradited. So, so and they had differences with say, rivers that went through both states. And some people adjusted the flow of a river or barges going down the Erie Canal, things like that. So these were disputes, second between states. And then third, there was national policies like tariffs. But they didn't get into these individual civil rights. The idea that if, if I'm walking down my street and somebody pulls over and shoots me and then he pleads self defense and he did it for a racial reason or something, then my family can sue him in a federal court for violation of my civil rights. I think they would have said that's crazy. That's double jeopardy. We're not going to allow the federal courts to duplicate the state court. But that came because of Jim Crow and segregation, that they could not trust the state courts anymore. The federal court stepped in. The big expansion was twofold in the 1930s under Roosevelt when he tried to expand the federal government to create socialism. And there were people who pushed back in the court against him and the court got active against him. That's why he wanted to pack it. And then he used the court as well. And then the second was during the civil rights era when it was mostly the Warren court vastly expanded. Anybody that was a founder, if you ask them, do you think that if Vermont becomes atheist someday and Virginia says they're going to still remain devoutly Christian, so every morning and in first grade in Virginia, they're going to have to say a little prayer, but they're not in Vermont. Do you think that Vermont can then sue? Or an individual in Virginia can sue and throw out all Virginia laws and say the Constitution says there shall be no state religion. And that's a state religion just doing a prayer. And therefore all the new states have to agree with Vermont. I don't think they ever envisioned that. So the intrusion by the courts into our lives is a modern idea. Washington gave executive orders. He's in charge of running the whole executive branch and that means enforce the laws. He doesn't interpret them and he doesn't make them. The big thing the founders said was when they, besides the checks and balance, they said take the law. The most important thing, the legislature shall make the law. The judicial branch will interpret how it is enforced and the president will be in charge of enforcing it or executing it. The legislation, I shouldn't say just law, but there was no executive orders. But I think in the early 1900s they started formally having executive orders orders and then they went back and numbered them all and they said that Washington did. The person who had the most executive orders ever was FDR. It was like 3400. He did it every day. The thing about the left is they created Trump. Obama had the most executive orders, I think in his first three months until Trump. I remember when Obama lost in 2014 the House and the Senate, he no longer had it. And he said, I have a phone and I have a pen and I can executive order everything I want. And he did. And so basically Harry Truman wrote an executive order that said, I hereby nationalize all the steel industries in the United States because there was a wildcat strike. All the steel industries. I have appropriated your property and I'm going to run this them. Can you imagine that? And we had the Korean, all that stuff war. So they did things that just unthinkable, but I just sort of shuddered when I see left wing presidents and left wing people bragging on how much power they have because I always say to myself, those idiots, they're just setting a precedent. So when Obama. I remember when Clinton bombed Serbia, Libya, 78 days, war powers Act. No, no War Powers Act. Obama, seven months, Libya. Why didn't you take it to the Congress? Well, I didn't take it to the Congress because they're going to vote against me, the right wing, and I wouldn't have an Arab Spring. Okay, so you didn't take it to the Congress and you bombed unlawfully, according to your left. How about the 500 assassination drone missions where you targeted people? Did you ever ask permission for Congress to wage that war? No, that wasn't a war. That was a police action. Okay, so now Trump comes in and he bombs for 30 hours and for 40 days, much less than either Obama or Clinton. War Powers Act. War Powers Act. He's a dictator. And then you think, well, what does a dictator do? A dictator suppresses the media. He tried. He just sued in court and he won. But it was open court. He didn't bribe the judges. It wasn't like that. He told FBI agents to work with Facebook and Twitter to go after the New York Post so they wouldn't print a story that would hurt Biden during the election. It wasn't like that. It wasn't.
- [56:09]
Sammy Wink
Are you talking about the Hunter Biden laptop story? Okay, ahead.
- [56:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And it wasn't like, you know, I don't think. What if Trump did the following. I am a dictator, so I'm going to call up the doj, say, Pam Bondi is still there. Pam, I want you to appoint a special prosecutor to go after that corrupt Biden family right now and, and come over here. And we're going to appoint somebody and let's make him a partisan. Somebody who's, I don't know, his wife made a picture, I mean, a film of machine shell, really, which is what Jack Smith's wife did. So they come into the White House and then he says, hey, since we're going after Biden today, let's get, I don't know, the counterpart to Fannie Will. Let's get a local prosecutor in, I don't know, let's say Montana, and say that during the 2000, in, let's say 2024 election, Kamala Harris called up, or one of their people called them up, get them in here, get their, you know, their version of Nathan Wade in here. And then they said, well, who do we have in the DOJ that knows how to go after Biden or Harris? Well, we got one guy, you know, he Tried to sue. Well, get him back out here, get him out of the DOJ and get him over there to New York. Letitia James. And then do we have anybody that can sue the Bidens on their net worth or something? Oh, yeah, we've got someone. They're kind of like Letita James. So let's bring them into the White House. The same day Jack Smith appointed. The same day Letitia James in the White House, the same day Michael Colangelo, the same day going to help Alvin Bragg, Nathan Wade, Fanny Wolf, Paramore, the same day, all coordinating to destroy a likely presidential candidate. That's what Biden did.
- [58:12]
Sammy Wink
So he was using presidential powers as a great. To a greater extent and more tyrannical
- [58:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
or authoritarian he did that all the time. He did that all the time. He did. Right before the 2022 midterms. He was going to lose that, you know, and he was going to lose the house. And what did he do? He drained the petroleum first. He went over to Saudi Arabia and changed U.S. foreign policy and said, oh, please, I'm so so. And said, you were a rogue regime. Would you please pump oil? No. Okay. They drain the strategic. Not for a national emergency, just for the election. And then he said, what else can we do? Well, can we forgive student debt? We owe 1.7 trillion. Let's do at least 500 billion or so. Mr. President, that's unconstitutional. That's contractual. Oh, go ahead and do it. So they did it. It was thrown out. And then they say, what do all these kids, what really motivates. Well, some of them got busted for marijuana and some of them are in their fort. Let's just give amnesty to all of them. So he did that right before the election. No one said a word. No one said a word. So I can't. And they all say Trump is a dictator or an oligarch. I just want to know exactly what he did that was illegal. Because no one has been more reported upon, scrutinized by the hostile media than Trump. And no one has been sued, sued in district court more than Trump. I think They've had almost 500 lawsuits by Soros and Syngman funded left wing non profits are suing him. They're suing him on everything. Epa, the border, everything. So it's not like he's running, you know, rampant. And yeah, the things that they say that are dictatorial. The reflecting pool. So I've been to Washington. Every time I go to Washington, it stunk. It was ugly. It looked like a green frog pond. And every time I got out of Union Station, it was full of graffiti and there was no water in it. It was ugly. They're spotless now, and they're so spotless that they had to go destroy or try to vandalize the reflecting pool. But that's the fact that they fixated on that or. I have been to the White House, not very much, but I'm always shocked at how small it is that I won the National Humanities Medal one year. So I went there and it was so crowded and stuffy in this small ball. And I thought, wow, can't they have another wing or something? And then I was in the West Wing one. The West Wing. A major corporation would put their. It would be like their basement for first year rookies, you know what I mean? It seems to be really poorly constructed overall. It's not grandiose. So when Trump made this huge ballroom and he actually got a neoclassical architect to blend it in, I thought everybody'd say, wow, this is really needed. And he can get it done quickly. But of course, it was Trump, so they're trying to stop it. And they call that a dictator.
- [61:35]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I know. All right, Victor, let's go to our last break and then come back and talk about amending the Constitution. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [61:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife. The importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [62:14]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back. Victor Davis Hansen. In his own words. This is a subsidiary, or so I call it, of the Daily Signal. And the Daily Signal has other. We're associates of the Daily Signal. They carry these long form podcasts and four short form podcasts per week. So check out the Daily Signal sometime. So, Victor, the birthright citizenship left me with this question that, well, if you can't. If the courts are not going to uphold the position that you think should be, I. E. That there should be at least one parent that is a US Citizen for a child to be a citizen and not just born on
- [62:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
the side most places in Europe.
- [62:58]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, well, if the courts cannot see a way to do that, then we should just amend the Constitution. And so it should turn to the legislature and our legislators to get the job done and introduce a bill that would ensure that citizens have at least one parent who is a citizen.
- [63:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
They don't have the votes. They don't have the votes in Congress.
- [63:25]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [63:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
And they don't have three quarters of the states to vote. Maybe they have 55% of the state, 60%, but not three quarters.
- [63:35]
Sammy Wink
Okay, so my question then, is this amending the Constitution, almost impossible?
- [63:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
It is, but so when you look at the 17amendments, they're all crisis. So during the Vietnam period there were all these people who said, you mean I'm 18 and I can go there and get killed in a rice paddy, but I can't even vote on it. So what is an adult? And everybody agreed, left and right. Okay, 18 year old vote. The left did it because they thought they were going to get all the 18 year olds that were anti war. And Nixon did it to stop the criticism from the left, but his handlers and pollsters said, hey, Nixon, 18 year olds are more conservative than they are liberal. All those long haired hippie stuff, that's a small percentage. And he won the 18 year old vote. Women's suffrage, that was a no brainer. They all understood we had a point, you had to do it. And so Prohibition, they got into, first of all, they outlawed alcohol. Everybody got out of the Roaring twenties, they said this is getting out of control, we can't have everybody drunk every day. And the way women, Christian Temperance Union, all that. And then they saw it created basically the modern mafia, Al Capone. So they all agreed on that succession. Don Kennedy was killed. What if they'd killed the Vice President, the Speaker of the House or the cabinet? So they had an amendment for succession. And then people got, I think the last one, if I remember, I'm just doing my memory. People said, said, well these people get paid when they're elected, but they haven't even served yet. And then you should never, no congressional person should get money until he's actually working, actually working. And so if they shut down the government, they shouldn't be paid. But that's been reinterpreted, so it's going to be very rare. So if you really think that you should get rid of, of anchor babies and get rid of birthright citizenship, then there's two ways to do it. Number one, you just as I said earlier, you just bar people, you say it's a health risk and you do not want women coming in from foreign countries in the third trimester. That's all you have to do and say you don't have the ability to pay for the, that $40,000 bill. And none of them, they're all billing us by the way. And Number two, we know why you're coming in. So we're just going to make a rule that it's too dangerous to have people coming in here when they're pregnant, on flights, airport. We want, and we don't have the resources to handle it. That would stop it very easily. And the second is, and I think it's the only almost happening, you just patrol your borders. So if you get a wall or the security areas that resemble a wall in deep canyons from the Gulf of America to San Diego, you're going to eliminate half that problem. And if you could look at all of the airports that face China, lax, sfo, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, in addition the major hubs like Dallas or New York, Boston, and you just said, we're not going to issue tourist visas to Chinese people unless they're going to. There are students. And I would cut back on them radically, or they have green cards. We're not going to give tourist visas, you know, for a week or two weeks or three weeks. Just not going to do it. You can do all sorts of things, legislative. The problem is, though, that when you want to do all these things that are necessary, you have to have an opposition that says something in our national interest outweighs something in my political end. But this Democratic, ever since 2015, when Trump came down the escalator, they're different. They see him as an existential threat. They hate the way he talks, they hate the way he looks, they hate the way he dresses. They hate everything about him. No matter what he does, they're going to oppose. And it's really warped. And that hatred is hatred. It destroys the hater and they're completely destroying themselves. But they will not cooperate on anything because they're afraid that Trump will take credit and he will. I used to think if Trump gave a speech and said, I want to quote you what Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon and Jerry Ford and Carter and the two Bushes and Bill Clinton and Obama said about the need for a ballroom and a facility. This is not a political issue. And I think all of us should come together and work on this and we will get it done, but we're going to have to get it done quickly because it's in dire need. I thought if he just do that instead of just, I'm going to make the biggest, most beautiful gold, they would have gone along. They wouldn't know. They wouldn't know. They would have still opposed it. Does his rhetoric polarize them? Yes. Does it make it worse? Maybe. But Is it ultimately fundamentally, existentially change their attitude? No, they are the ones that are different. He is about as polarizing as Obama was. When Obama said things like the police. Oh, you know, the police, they just stereotyped black men or Trevon, you know, like Senate never had. So I'm going to interfere in a court case and basically side with somebody looks like me or Michael Brown and Ferguson, he was really trying to oppose it. America's exceptional, you know, way Greece is and uk, Everybody thinks they're exceptional. Big deal. He did that all the time. I got to apologize for what we did to indigenous people. I got to apologize the way we treated people overseas. I got to apologize for you. That was him, his virtue signaling. And that was very polarizing. And he dared people to. He wouldn't. The last two years, everybody said Obama deported people when he came in and he was afraid of people, that he would be unpopular. Yeah, the last two years it was the precedent for the Biden border. And when Trump came in, it was wide open. And then Jan Brewer was the governor of Arizona, and she said, I'm going to enforce this border. And he said, no, you're not. That's my job and I'm not going to do my job. So I'm going to let millions of people come into your state just the way it is. And she said, well, we'll see about that. Well, we're going to pass a law that says I can, I don't care. And they sued her in the Supreme Court and they won. And think of that. Arizona does not have the right to enforce an existing law that the federal government will not enforce because it wants to break it and flood Arizona with potential Democratic voters.
- [71:14]
Sammy Wink
Absolutely insane. Well, Victor, let's get to the last question. It's kind of a broad question, but as you've been talking about, the separation of powers is intended to limit the government's powers. And the Bill of rights, our first 10amendments, to ensure the individual's liberties. And these things have really led to what everybody's celebrating today on July 4th, which is our freedom and our freedoms. I was wondering your thoughts on how freedom has impacted the United. Not the private life of individuals, but the United States, either culturally, economically or socially. Has it been a net good? Has it made our culture stronger, our economy stronger, to have these individual freedoms so protected?
- [72:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we have been becoming more Democratic than Republican. I don't mean that with the capital letters. We're more and more getting like ancient Athens than we were a landed, what the Greeks called a Polite and the Romans called a republic. And that's because we had pushed freedom. The people who drafted it was mostly Jefferson with help Madison, except the Bill of Rights didn't envision the way they would be interpreted. So when they said freedom of expression, no one thought that you could open that computer there and see two adults fornicating and have a camera on their genitalia. They didn't think that was, was a type of expression that would be covered by the First Amendment. But they always push it to the maximum state. So they didn't think that the freedom of expression should be what I think America saw. I guess it was in Boston or some big cities where the Pride Festival had full grown men completely naked, riding bicycles and walking with little children on the sidewalk. Their parents had no idea that these people would be exposing their genitalia right in front of their children. And that I guess they thought it's protected under the First Amendment because nobody enforced laws that say it's against the law. If you walk in the bank of America nude, you'll be arrested. They didn't arrest them. So that's one thing. And the other thing that they that's happened when you mentioned freedom law enforcement now and the executive branch is completely ideological. So we have been under the influence of law schools who believe in critical race theory, critical legal theory, critical judicial theory and all of that says laws are the product of a proper deed. Wealthy white, heterosexual, male, Christian minority. So if I'm in the inner city and I need sneakers, I'm going to go into the local Nike store with about five of my friends, swarm it and steal sneakers. But you can't prosecute. The local DA said, you know what? They need sneakers. And who made that law? Well, it was a bunch of wealthy white guys in Congress who don't need sneakers. Or if you're in San Francisco, I'm kind of hungry, I'm going to go get a couple of T Bones chocolate bars, some beer, just take it in my cart. If it's under $950, that's not really. They'll give me a little citation, but I'm going to do that. And the people who drafted that law said, well, the people who write laws about shoplifting don't shoplift because they're privileged. But some people have to shoplift, therefore it should be legal. So when you see all these things on the Internet of people ramming a car through a jewelry store and then they're all hooded and they go in and strip, the whole person's livelih everybody knows that the chance that any of them are going to be identified, A, B, even arrested, C held in jail with bail, that they, you know, D actually prosecuted, E, put before a judge and jury, F, convicted go on all the way to Z and say what? Convicted, incarcerated. And then incarcerated, not pardoned or not paroled immediately. So that's what I'm getting from A to Z. The whole judicial system now is predicated on legal theories, not the law. And that's because this emphasis on freedom, that's why we scare everybody. And you know, just because something is legal doesn't mean it's moral. But we have this idea now that because we have all of these legal parameters to do whatever we want that it's okay to go inspecting a secular atheist agnostic society. There's no moral religious prohibition about anything. So it's particular freedom. It's starting to happen in Europe too. But, but basically if you get on a flight, and I think I flew once a week last year, I'd go to the airport and the first person I'd see would be in yoga pants with no underwear underneath them. And then I would sit down in a seat and the person next to me would have cut offs and thongs with no socks and smelly feet and then have a chilly boat to eat, eat. And it looked like the Greyhound bus. When I was a kid. Everybody, you know, we had poor relatives every once in a while and they would take a Greyhound bus to Selma. The bus depot was, I mean it was really a poor man's ride. And it's not poor man's ride now. It's just that there's no decorum by anybody. There's no sense of behavior, there's no dress code, there's nothing. And that's the absolute expression of our emphasis on do your own thing. It came out of the 60s.
- [77:37]
Sammy Wink
So would it be fair to say that all the freedom guaranteed by our Constitution to us has a definite ugly underbelly unless we have Christianity and common
- [77:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
mores to keep people from community shame, family shame. I'll give you an example. Example. We used to have a paper called the Selma Enterprise. And if somebody was caught in breaking into a sports store, which one prominent person was, they would say on June 2, 1961 headline Local Jones Boy Caught in Sports World in Fresno. 16 Son of Mr. Jones John and Barbara Jones at Da Da that's what they would say. And so that created a shame factor. Everybody was scared. Or the attitude was if you had a farming neighbor and they had three Good boys. And every time they came around on your alleyway and disc, they were careful to lift up the disc and not bring out all the weeds and dump them on the alleyway. But one kid you would see on the tractor and he would be smoking and drinking with a beer in his little tractor box and he would just come out, I'm telling you true story now, at full speed and just cover the whole alleyway. Not my favorite neighbor. He would never think of that. This was a neighbor who rented my uncle's place. And if you'd say, he'd either stick out his tongue at you or he'd flip you the bird. And I would be with my 86 year old grandfather and he'd say 85. And he'd say, now, there, now there, please, you're raising a storm of dust. You're going to get every mite in the country on my vines. Would you please do that? And he'd say, F you and go out. So in the old days they say, yes, that's the Thompson kid. And he was the one that was a bad seed. That was no blank good. And we want nothing to do with that guy. And everybody knew it. But today that would be judgment. So it's the whole rise of the social science of sociology, psychology, dash studies, the whole therapeutic culture. And when you combine that with the First Amendment, that there's no limitations on expression and other things that have been widely by the Warren court expanded. All I know is you just go. I mean, there were a lot of things bad with the 40s, 30s, 40s and 50s, in this case, country. There was, you know, I don't. You look at a movie and every African American person's a servant. Okay, so they were, that was bad. They didn't want. And there weren't. They weren't all servants.
- [80:35]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, yeah, Woody Stroz and all those westerns. He was sort of a. He was a hero of sorts. Right?
- [80:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
He always was. They made a whole movie where he was a star. You know, John Ford made him the star of Sergeant Rutledge. That was a good movie. And he was sort of the star. He was in the background as the sidekick or the employee of John Wayne and the man of shot, Liberty, balance.
- [81:04]
Sammy Wink
And isn't that the benefit of our free thought? Free thinking is that there are critics that grow up in, for example, the film industry and they have alternate ways.
- [81:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sidney Poitier was in Lilies of the Field. He won the Academy Award. It was a wonderful performance. He was the moral paragon of the whole City. But my point is that when you have that unlimited freedom, you have to have breaks on it. The reason the First Amendment and other amendments like that work so well is that they assume the founders of a normality of behavior. And they thought that even though, I don't know, there's been studies done. But I would say of the founders who signed the Declaration of Independence or were involved in the constitution, maybe 30% were not regular churchgoers, but they were deists. They believed that Christianity was very important for other people, even if they didn't believe completely because there was a moral code that suppressed the appetites. That was very important. They thought the nuclear family was very important and they thought the small town shame culture was very important. I remember telling my parents as a snotty nose brat When I was 17, I said, I'm going to go to UC Santa Cruz and I'm never going to come back till Christmas because I'm so tired of this Selma little gossip rumor manger. And they all, you know, I, I went, I drove through town and I, I did a rolling stop at this stoplight. And then next day, mom, I went to the library and the librarian said, I hear you're racing around Selma, aren't you? I said, what did I do? Well, Mr. Says that he was behind you and you did a rolling stop. That's no business. I said, what is it with this city? Can I sneeze? I'm going to go to Santa Cruz. So I go to Santa Cruz and the first thing, my dad drops me off at the dorm. And then I walk down the dorm thing and I lean against it and I fall through the wall because they've all kicked in the walls and put posters over it to hide it when they get drug parties. And then the next person, they have a little sign that says, Hashis, marijuana, lsd, mescaline, with the prices right on the wall. And then down at the end, there's this guy who is a male prostitute. And I notice that all, all these weird people in suits and ties are at a college dorm way up on the hill. And they're knocking on the door and they're signing this little thing. And so finally I walk over there and I said, excuse me, why are all you guys going to Roberto's room over there? And they said, why are you in line? I said, what? And then they started laughing. I asked everybody, I said, oh, he's servicing all these people he meets at this convention center. Very wealthy business people. I thought, what does that mean? Service? What is this you know. And then the guy, his name was Jamie, was a nice guy. And one day I look over there and he's got a locksmith and we all had keys. And he's drilling a hole in the university door. And he's got this lock, smart. This huge bolt lock. So I go, what are you doing? He said, well, everybody comes and steals stuff. He was a electronic genius. We had all this expensive. I said, they wouldn't steal stuff in their own dorm. Well, they were. So I thought, wow, all these idealists, they steal, they act prostitute, they break all the drug laws. And then this was really funny. When I would be in my first seminar, we all sat on the floor. We had a carpeted room. We didn't want to go to a classroom. John lynch was a great professor. And then I noticed that half the people did not bathe. And then the girl next to me, she lifted up her arm. I about passed out. And she had something called patchouli oil. It was so strong. And she hadn't shaved her legs or arms or anything. And then this one guy passed wind really loud. But he didn't try to suppress it and go outside or say, I'm sorry. He just started laughing. And then I noticed that my roommate, who I won't mention, but I really liked him, he told me he did not take a bath for six months. Six months. And my dad said to me, next time he's there, spray him with right guard. And so I did. He almost killed me. I sprayed him with right guard. So my point. The point is, when I came home for Thanksgiving, not Christmas, I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. And I went straight to my grandparents and helped them with the walnut. You know, help pick walnuts. I said, I am so happy to be home. And he said, we're so happy. We missed you, Victor. Lila, who was crippled, she goes, 20, you're back. I said, yes. She was bedridden, 60 something. I said, I gotta get it. She goes, well, we're always here. And then it was like the back the world. I all was parochial, you know, and stay and conventional. It was normal. It was good. The place was insane because everybody was pushing the law to the absolute maximum.
- [86:36]
Sammy Wink
With no customs or conventions.
- [86:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
The worst thing. And I'll finish because I. There were some good things about UC Santa Cruz. I get a knock on the door and a guy is in a white coat. And he says, we are from the University of Health Center. I said, yes. And he said, we're going to every room on campus. And I said, why? Said, there's a new virus out, a sexually transmitted disease. I said, well, what's a sexually transmitted disease? I was a 17 year old brugeon, I didn't know what it was. And he said, it's called herpes. I said, well, herpes? He said, yes, and it's kind of like the AIDS scale. He said, and it never goes away. And it can kill you, it can get in your eyes, it gets on your lips. And I said, is that that big sore? I said, no, that's herpes one. But we think that Santa Cruz is Target Zero. We're looking for the original patients. We want to trace every one of their sexual contacts. And I said, really? And we want to stop this because this is where it started in California, they thought, and they had some people from the Santa Cruz County Health Department with a little clipboard. And I said, what do you want to know? How many sexual partners have you had? I said, since I got here, zero. I said, zero. And they said, no, we mean since you got here. I said, I just turned 18. And they said, you don't have any sexual partners? You've never had sexual intercourse? I said, no. And they said, okay, how about your room? I said, he's not here. I don't know. Has he had sexual partners here? And I said, and then they kind of laughed and they said, do you know of anybody that has sexual relations in the lounge? I said, I don't think so. So then as they were leaving, there was kind of an attractive young woman and I asked her a question. I said to her, well, how many sexual partners have you found? And she said, well, we're not allowed to release names. And because my boss is already left, I think the record that we have is 26. I said, wait, wait, 26 sexual partners in their first year at UC Santa Cruz? Are you serious? She said, yes. And she said, and we have a lot of other diseases that we're finding. Syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia. But we haven't found more than three people with this herpes. And that's why we're here, because we think we can contain it. And this. I was thinking about all this and then one of my family members came over who was at UC Santa Cruz. I won't mention whom. And he said, you know, blank, blank. I'll say Bob, and I'll say yes. Well, he was patient too. So that's what that. That's too much First Amendment freedom.
- [89:36]
Sammy Wink
Too much freedom, I suppose.
- [89:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know.
- [89:40]
Sammy Wink
In other words, too much Freedom is dangerous, but it's done lot a. A lot for us.
- [89:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I mean, I went in and I said to my professor, I didn't know what to call him. I've never seen a PhD before. Is it Professor Lynch? I said, hello. He was our dorm preceptor. I said, is it Professor lynch or doctor? He said, I haven't operated on anybody, Mr. Hansen. So I said, I say, professor. He said, no, you can call me John. And he was dressed like anybody else, hippie, you know, he was a great professor. So everybody would call him John John. You know what I mean? And there was no hierarchy. And they said they were going to destroy all hierarchy. And then I noticed that when we had class discussion, he was the pillar of civility, politeness, order. John was. And then there would be this guy Doug, and we were talking about the Iliad and the character of Ajax and Achilles. And he'd say, that's stupid. F. Uh. And he'd say the F word every time in the seminar. Nobody said anything, but he would argue with a professor in a really insulting manner. Or they would never come in on time. Everybody would come in when they wanted. Hey, I got hungover. Sorry, come in 20 minutes late. Or they'd say, oh, I gotta leave. It was just like a revolving door. There was no order, no attend, nothing. And I thought, wow, this is pre civilizational. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
- [91:03]
Sammy Wink
It can very culturally dangerous.
- [91:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
I went from one extreme. I thought it was an extreme. But then when I saw what that was, that was the extreme. And what I had seen was the middle. Because the town I grew up in was not just rumor mongering. They had other. I mean, they were too gossipy and all that, but they had other attributes that outweighed those defects.
- [91:27]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. All right. And even we could look at economically, people like Elon Musk, obviously are possible in our country because of the great freedom. And so we can really benefit from that.
- [91:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
We have an equality of opportunity, not result. And it used to be that people like you and me, who like Elon and are impressed by him, used to be Americans would say, Elon Musk. He resurrected the word of that old Siberian guy who helped invent the modern use of electricity to Tesla. And nobody gave him any credit. They all said Edison. Now, thanks to Elon, we know who Tesla was. And he had maybe a superior version of electrical conductivity for the mass market. And he gave us an actual electric car that works. And then, wow, he saved NASA. He has more launches for us. In America than all the countries combined last year. And wow. He allowed X. Everybody doesn't get censored by the government and anymore. Thank you. And that was what we would. That's the attitude. But now, I mean, we're trying to get the European Union. Yeah. He's got a. He's the richest man in the world. Why doesn't he just send a check to me? Or why doesn't he solve cancer? You know what I mean?
- [92:53]
Sammy Wink
Yes. But Elon probably wasn't possible in any other country. The United States. They were never allowed.
- [92:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, no. If he was in the Soviet Union or China, they'd confiscated. They'd confiscate his wealth.
- [93:05]
Sammy Wink
Absolutely.
- [93:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
They would have. Or he'd have to give it away. Or if was in Europe, they would tax it or they would try to do something. There's a few billionaires in Europe, but they're among the aristocracy and they have deep ties with the government that go back generational. A new guy. No, he'd be in trouble. It's only in the United States. And if these socialists were to take over, he would flee and we would lose all those guys that have talent. Everybody hates Jeff Bezos. But I was thinking the other day, I'll just finish with this. This is the freest country economically. So I had most of my right lung out. And then I had tachycardia. All these problems. So I couldn't drive and get stuff. So all I would do the last five and a half months is if I needed a part on the. You know, I'd say, oh, the sprinkler system's not. Rather than go all the way to Fresno to. I would just get on Amazon and I would just. You know, I need this type of solenoid and I need this type of fluorescent light bulb H256 to fit this fixture. And then because you're a loyal prime minister, the next day it's delivered. Some days it's the same day. Or I say, I just read that this type of herbal tea somebody sent me, one of our loyal, Wonderful reader said, Mr. Hansen, try Hawthorne tea. It calms your heart. I never heard of it. I ordered it. It was there seven hours later he did that. So I don't really care that he's a billionaire. Multi billionaire. I care that he did. He probably saved a lot of energy too, because we're not all going on these weird hunt for something store and then they don't find it. You just deliver it straight there. And they try to consolidate the packages. So a person like that did a lot. I don't particularly like the Google people, but I can find that. I don't. I'm worried about AI, but you can find things.
- [95:06]
Sammy Wink
Oh, yeah.
- [95:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
They all. They all have contributed and they're integral to the survival of this nation and we have to stop demonizing them.
- [95:15]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, so that is.
- [95:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
I would want a billion dollars. I don't know what I would do with $10 million. I don't. You know what I mean?
- [95:23]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I do.
- [95:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
Too much of a worry.
- [95:25]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [95:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you have too many people calling you up. You have $10 million. Can you spare 50,000? That's not much.
- [95:34]
Sammy Wink
Well, thank you everyone for joining us on this Fourth of July. And give thanks to the Constitution and our individual rights, but also your God and your customs and conventions that help to make a civilization possible under such great freedom.
- [95:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
And thank everybody that knows the great middle class of America. They get up every day, they go to work, they don't complain, they go home, they obey the law, they make the country move. And nobody gives them any credit, but they're the backbone of the country.
- [96:11]
Sammy Wink
And then I have one reader or one listener who wants to thank you, Victor Davis Hanson. I'm writing to tell you how much you are appreciated. My friends and I listen to you daily and are so happy you are on multiple platforms. A couple of us refer to you as our boyfriend. Many thanks and prayers for your healing. Sincerely, our estis or Otista. Sorry, I'm not sure the first name. Marchioni.
- [96:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you. That's very nice.
- [96:44]
Sammy Wink
Italian American, I have a feeling. All right, thanks everybody. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.
- [96:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for listening and watching. 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.