From the Big Beautiful Bill to the Failure of Modernism

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

We are recording on Saturday, May 17th.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host.

I'm very, very privileged to be the host of this show.

And for five years, I've been doing this with my great friends.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, Victor.

We were the only ones.

Those were the days.

Those were the days.

You would be pre, maybe even pre-senior citizen status for you.

This particular episode will be up on Thursday, May 22nd.

Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

And he's got a website, The Blade of Perseus.

Its address is victorhanson.com.

You should check it out.

Subscribe.

I'll tell you more later in this episode why you should.

You know, we're on the cusp of the Memorial Day weekend.

Victor, I didn't tell you this ahead of time.

Maybe at the end of the show, maybe we could talk about a war movie or two.

But before that, boy, oh boy, we have the Supreme Court ruling on deporting illegal criminals as opposed to legal criminals, illegal alien criminals to Venezuela.

There's a new issue, Strategica.

We have so many new viewers and listeners.

I have a feeling a lot of folks don't even know what Strategica is, and we'll tell them about that.

You have a piece you've written for your website on the failure of modernism.

We can talk about reparations, the big, beautiful bill in trouble, salt deductions, so much more.

And we'll do all that when we come back from these important messages.

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We are back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

So, Victor, I guess we should start off today,

you know, getting

some take from you on the big,

beautiful bill.

It is when we're recording on Saturday to when the show's up, all kinds of things might have happened in the meanwhile to rectify political situations.

But there are enough Republicans in the House who are just not in love with, or the Senate, not in love with this big, beautiful bill.

What are your thoughts on this and the politics of it?

I have reservations about it because of the spending.

You know, Moody's, the bond adjudicator, I think that was patently political.

It just lowered the bond rating of the United States government from AAA to, I think, A1A,

the first time in history since 1917.

A viewer wrote me that, and I think it was political just like

the Fed, if you had these indicators under Biden of no inflation, job growth, corporate profits, energy, all these great news, they would have lowered from 4.8 down to 4 or something.

That would save some of the $3 billion in interest we're paying a year.

But all that said,

Doge has only found about $180 billion.

That's a lot.

But when you're talking about...

When you're talking about giving tax breaks on tips, on Social Security, on maybe military or first responders.

That's going to take a while.

I'm not sure if that's going to be the type of incentives that prime growth of the economy.

So what I'm getting at is right now the biggest problem we have is debt.

Debt, debt, debt.

$37 trillion

in aggregate national debt, basically $2 trillion in annual deficits and $1.2 trillion in trade deficits.

And we're getting kind of mixed messages.

I know that Trump want the deregulation and then tax tax cuts, if they're continuing, will be great, because that will grow the economy.

The energy prices will grow the economy.

$8 trillion to $10 trillion in foreign investment.

We're not getting enough messages.

That's only been three months, and they say they have $160 billion to $170 billion.

Does that mean that

in the next quarter, next quarter, next quarter, you're going to get $160, $160, $160?

I'd like to know.

And if they get $500 billion, that would make a big difference.

You'd get close to maybe just a $500 billion deficit, but we're not getting the information.

So we're getting two signals that we're spending a lot of money.

We're going to increase the defense budget, for example.

We're having fights over cutting Medicaid, and then we're told we're going to get more revenue, but I don't think the tariffs are going to bring that much more revenue.

We've discussed that.

So what is going to be the bottom line?

And is that why the Fed and Moody's are being pretty hard on this administration?

They just see too much debt that they inherited and they haven't addressed it.

I don't know the answers, but I would sure like to see a Simpson Bowles 2.0 commission to just go back and say, you've got to do this.

This will get us a balanced budget in three years.

In 10 years, this will cut the debt in half or something.

And we need to have that.

But

he's the only President of the 21st Century that's talked about these things, the debt, the trade deficit, the budget deficit.

But we've got to get a clearer picture of what's going to happen, is what I'm saying.

Victor, we all have our

finger or fingers in the pie to some degree on some of these proposals.

You mentioned

no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.

Then there's also salt, which is the state and local taxes, which for me in Connecticut, where we pay a state income tax or

California.

Right.

There were great boons.

13.3%.

Yeah.

I saw something.

I don't think the government can afford it.

It's all already involved.

People are living in La Lai Land.

We saw that Corey Bush's successor talk about reintroducing her bill for reparations, and she wanted like a trillion dollars.

It's not going to all, it's just everybody talks as if we're not broke.

Even Gavin Newsom finally admitted he can't demagogue the issue of giving free health care to illegal aliens to the same degree that he did before.

There's no money.

When the money runs out, there's no money.

There is no money right now.

Well,

you know what?

I'm glad you raised the reparations.

We'll get to that.

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Victor, here's a headline.

Democrats revive reparations demand in Congress.

And this is from Newsmax.

Congressional Democrats have once again introduced legislation to force the government to pay for damages suffered by enslaved black families.

The latest attempt is sponsored by Representative Summer Lee, a Democrat from Pennsylvania,

who said in a release,

We are owed restitution and justice to repair the government sanctioned harm that has plagued our community for generations, end quote.

The new congressional effort, the Reparations Now resolution, was introduced initially by in 2023 by then Rep Corey Bush.

Victor, on its own and as a political, politically, they want to make a go with this.

I mean, I think it's just nuts politically for the Democrats.

That's not going to work.

It's 160 years since the end of slavery, and it's probably 60 years, 70 years since the end of institutionalized Jim Crow in the South.

Here in California, we were never a slave state, and yet 3% or 4% of the population wants reparations.

When she says the damage done, I wish when people make all these statements, they never calibrate it.

They never say exactly what they mean.

Does she mean that the African-American community suffers higher rates of criminality, illegitimacy, interracial violence against other races?

And if so, are those attributable to the legacy of slavery?

And if so, how, 160 years later?

And why, if that were to be true, and she thought it was attributable, why when brilliant scholars like Shelby Steele or late Walter Williams or Tom Sowell suggested correctives such as restoration of the nuclear family or

redefinition of the obligations of males in the African community to their families and fatherhood,

why are they pilloried or ostracized?

And so

when people say reparations, then you say one particular group in the present owes you, another

groups owe them something.

And we're going to go down and then we're going to go down a tribal list.

So then you know what's going to happen.

People are going to say, well, let's just then calibrate every particular group and we're going to measure what they gave and what they got, what they didn't get.

And then we're going to have to even it out.

Is that what we're going to do?

So

what do we do with the people who just arrived here as immigrants and have no experience with the American system at all?

Are they going to pay money to African Americans for slavery?

Are they going to pay money because they think they meet an African American who suffers from slavery and then that's part of the dues of entering the United States?

Is there going to be some conservative white group who's going to say, well, let's just look at all the crime statistics and see which particular group has committed crimes in excess of their population or has taken welfare in excess of their demographic and then we'll see how much money they owe the rest of the people for the damage they've inflicted.

And

you see, you get it, you're going to see people, they're going to say, well, why is the black murder rate six times higher

in terms of interracial crimes toward whites than whites toward blacks?

Or they're going to say, why are blacks overrepresented in interracial crimes and hate crimes and whites are underrepresented?

Is there a kind of a compensation that's deserved there for victims?

Why are Jews almost half of the victims of hate crimes today?

Are they owed special consideration?

And if they are, from whom?

The people who perpetuate it?

Minorities are more likely to commit hate crimes beyond their demographic percentages.

Or we could go even further if we want to play this dangerous and spiteful game.

We can say, well, let's go through all the wars and see who was killed and what group deserves it.

So let's look at Afghanistan and Iraq.

They did white males.

who kick hooked up that?

Was it Mark Milley?

Was it the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that decided that they keep track on everything and when women are underrepresented on aircraft carrier pilots or blacks are underrepresented in particular

captaincies or pay grades,

they address it.

But they must have known.

They must have known over 20 years of fighting that white males were dying roughly at double their numbers in the demographics.

What insidious racism allowed that to continue?

So you had 35% of the population dying at 72, 73% of all fatalities.

Is that what we want to do?

We want to do all that stuff.

Because

that's the ultimate logic of reparations.

It's not going to be in isolation.

It's going to say each group then is going to try to see to what degree that they can game the system as a victimizer or on the receiving end of inordinate violence or insufficient funding or something.

And it would be much better if

the black caucus in Congress said: Look,

our future is in our hands, and we know the degrees to which

half of the black community is doing wonderfully.

And black women, I think, have a higher income level per capita than many other groups, maybe even white working women.

So they're doing very well.

But the half that's not doing well,

why don't they just be introspective?

Is it because of one-parent families?

Lack of fathers?

Is it

lack of policing in the inner city?

Is it not dispersing and not enough to integrate?

What is it?

Is it the school system unionized, a lack of school choice?

Why don't they come up with an innovative solution?

But they don't.

It's all victimizing.

We want reparations, and it's falling on deaf ears.

And when you have the Hispanics, 62% are polling that they love the first 100 days of the Trump administration.

There is no such thing as intersectionality anymore.

It doesn't exist.

Yeah.

We can call it any.

There's no rainbow coalition.

They're just people, just individuals.

Reparations is just another word for money, and the dishonesty is that

there are many dishonesties, but money has been central to the destruction of the black family and the black community.

But

trillions of dollars of federal money has subsidized the breakup of the black family.

And

the thought that reparations are going to do anything.

Am I going to work very hard to pay taxes to give money to Todd Nahisi Coates, who just wrote one of the worst anti-Semitic diatribes I've ever seen?

And he was famous, remember, for the talk, remember he said the talk that he has to all black fathers have to tell you that the police

put them in danger.

And then I think it was Roland Fire at the height of the George Floyd aftermath pointed out that statistically, given the number of encounters, 11 million or so encounters with the police that African-American males who were

unarmed and lethally shot was consistent with their demographics of encounters.

11 million, how many of the 11 million encounters they participated in.

There was no systematic racism.

That's one of the reasons Plaudine Gay went after to destroy his career for publishing that.

And I wrote an article.

I don't know if you remember it, Jack.

It was a National Review, maybe 20 years, 15 years ago.

It was called The Other Talk.

And I said, I had a talk too from my father, and he said, you're living in East Palo Alto, and it's got one of the highest murder rates in the United States.

And you are white, and you're living in a predominantly black neighborhood.

And I don't think that you're going to find it particularly safe.

And I was broken into, I think, twice.

A guy put a hand through the door.

My roommate and I had clubs, and we were trying to club this hand.

You know, there's a chain on the door, and he was breaking it and the hand came through.

We hit it with a bat.

And then I was walking once down to the drugstore and somebody took a six-pack of coarse bottles, you know, the bottles full of beer and threw it right at my head.

And so my point is I got the talk too.

It said, be very careful of going into particular neighborhoods because crime is inordinately

addressed at white people by black people and you have to be very careful.

When I wrote that, I got so many hate letters.

How dare you do that given the history of racism?

That's a small price to pay for what you people have done.

It was just crazy.

But I knew four guys in my neighborhood murdered because they were in the wrong, they went to the wrong neighborhood.

And nobody had sympathy for them in the sense of, why did you go there?

What are you stupid?

You know?

Well, I had three violent incidents.

I just mentioned one as a graduate student.

The other was I was riding on University Avenue from East Palo Alto Inn on a bike and a truck of four African Americans were driving around

attacking bicyclists and they saw me and they jumped out and tried to knock me over and I clung like a jellyfish an octopus to my old bike and they kept trying to pull it and then everybody was honking their horn as they were all up busy and they didn't quite get it.

The other was I was with my wife who was working at the Veterans Administration with disabled people

and she met one of her we were walking and one of her patients was out and he had traumatic brain injury from Vietnam.

And he was on the street and he was m making sounds that were kind of loud.

And she walked over to him and he recognized her.

And she was assigned to her, to him.

And even though she was more clerical, but she had worked with the patients when she could.

And she was talking to them.

And this two African-American guys came up and pushed her and pushed me and started making fun of this guy.

And there was a guy in graduate school with me who was a Vietnam veteran, Green Beret, and I don't need to go any further.

And

it didn't end well for those guys.

I didn't really participate, but they were trying to

rough up my wife, the person she was talking to.

So those three violent incidents were all on the part of African-American teens that were unprovoked.

Did I ever then make

a statement or in my mind or no about African Americans?

Because no sooner did I see that than I saw another African American person that was perfectly the same as I was.

But they were making the argument you have to give a talk because white people were systemically racist against black people.

That might have been true in certain places at certain times.

We know it was true, but

to transfer that to all of America seemed pretty, and that's why I wrote this article, the talk.

I think I've told you

once before maybe twice Victor that

growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s and 80s New York 2,000 plus murders a year just just brutal brutal crime but clearly a lot of it was race-based but then clearly things got were getting so much better in America on their own I was you know I was the publisher of National Review and there were like there were like 20 kids at my house and they were all gay black Hispanic

Sri Lankan, whatever.

And I just thought, this is not something America would have seen at the house of the publisher of evil conservative right-wing National Review 30 years ago.

But this is what America was, had become.

And then Obama came along and re-energized the whole...

He did more damage than any president in recent memory, whether it was Trevon was like the sun I looked like the sun I never had or the Beer Summit or downright mean country from Michelle or

America is not an exceptional country anymore than Greece or Great Britain.

It's it's

you know I grew up with a lot of poor people and I was at Cal State and there was an African-American couple.

One of them was HIV positive and they were returning students and they were parents.

They were in their 40s and they were history majors and they needed somebody to advise them on a senior history.

I wasn't a member of the department, but I was there by association.

I think at one point I had 11 master's students because at that time there wasn't a classical historian in the history department.

I was a classical philologist in the foreign language.

But anyway, the chairman said that we have these two people.

They're kind of problematic.

They're older students.

They're kind of angry.

I didn't know what that meant.

And we had, and by that time, we had a lot of Hispanic professors, a lot of women professors.

I think we had one black professor, Asian professor.

It was pretty integrated.

And they asked me if I would be their advisors and meet with them every week.

And I just, I didn't know who they were.

And so I just said, well, I already have 11 students that I'm advising.

And they said, no, nobody wants to advise them.

I don't know why, but I did.

And I met with them for

30 weeks.

And it was during the OJ trial.

So we had lively conversations about the guilt or innocence of OJ, but I got along with them wonderfully.

I thought they were really admirable.

And finally, at the end,

they were married.

And he said to me, Do you think a BA in history is really going to get me up into the middle class?

I said, you're very well spoken.

You're educated.

What was your alternative?

He goes, well, we would like to go to truck driving school and be a teen.

And I said, they make pretty good money.

And so that's what they did.

And I lost track of them, but they were very good friends.

And my point is that I think most people don't really care what color of their skin or anything if people will just get over it and treat people as people, but we can't seem to do that.

Yeah.

Well, we have to treat criminals as criminals.

I'd like to think we do, and I'd like to think the Supreme Court would.

And when we come back from these important messages, we're going to get Victor's take on the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Trump administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act.

We'll do that when we come right back from this.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show recording on Saturday, May 17th.

This episode is up on Thursday, May 22nd.

Victor's got a website, The Blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com, everything he does, the weekly syndicated column,

the weekly essay for American Greatness, other articles he writes, many appearances, archives of these podcasts, that and more, links to his books.

I don't know how many,

700 books Victor's written, I think.

Well, close to that.

And if you want to read the ultra articles, if you go there, you'll see ultra articles and a weekly ultra video.

You need to subscribe in order to access those.

$6.50 a month, $65 a year, discounted.

The Blade of Perseus.

If you're a fan of Victor, you're going to want to go there.

And by the way, Father's Day is coming up.

I think if your dad, you know your dad loves Victor Davis-Hanson, that would make a really wonderful Father's Day gift.

Victor, before we get to the Supreme Court decision,

you brought up General Milley again and

he see coats and all that.

We have to look at these.

I have to read these books and get educated.

And I know in the last couple of years, you've spoken so much about our generals and

admirals and some criticism of them, their violation of Section 88 and other things.

And I know you've gotten guff from some military officials.

Has anyone given you guff for that, for your criticism of Milley for embracing this, we got to find the white supremacists?

My gut tells me not really, but has that happened

in the sense that I was told by a colleague that a general said that I was exaggerating and that there was no such thing as DI basically in the military, that it was just the same as all.

And

I had mentioned that there was a

40 to 45,000 person shortfall.

And that person officer said, high officer said that was due to gang activity, physical inability to meet basic standards,

drugs.

And I said, those are constant throughout the last few days.

What's new is

DEI and especially the attitude of the joint chiefs and the public representations of the military that keep talking about white rage.

And you couple that with the 8,500 that were drummed out for not getting the COVID experimental vaccine.

Many of them,

from what I understand, the majority, vast majority, white males.

And there was a sense

that white males didn't feel comfortable anymore in the military.

And I had made the argument that that,

whether you like that or not, there was a multi-general...

generational over-representation to use a you know a

woke term, a disparate impact, a disproportionality, that white males had inordinately joined combat units rather than instructive areas of the military to get skills, and they had died at more than their demographics.

And when you were going to have a shortfall of that particular group,

you were going to be in trouble.

Then I spent a great deal of time.

I talked to a lot of statisticians.

I looked at the deal.

You can get the figures, and it is true that when you looked at that 40 to 50,000 aggregate and all the branches of service shortfall, the one demographic that was mostly, not entirely, but mostly responsible were white male.

Now, in the first 100 days, they have more or less met their

recruitment goals.

So if you want, getting back to the Google question and the algorithms, if you Google

recruitment restoration or recruitment rebounds, you know what you'll see?

Trump unduly takes credit.

This factor was already in the the process when he was inaugurated.

Trump should not take credit.

And that gives the game away that

that's what it was all about.

So when Pete Hexeth repeatedly said they're going to judge people on battlefield efficacy and the standards are going to apply to everybody regardless of race and gender, and there was going to be no favoritism or bias and under promotion, retention, et cetera, enlistment, then people felt that

it was once again something that their family had

always participated in.

They were going to be the next generation to do so.

But I had a lot of criticism about that.

I had a lot of criticism about the revolving door that I said that I didn't think, I think there should be a waiting period before

a four-3-star admiral or general leaves a Pentagon before they go into a defense contractor board.

Because I don't think that our procurement necessarily is up to the latest developments on the battlefield.

It seems to me that we're looking at drones, drones, drones, artificial intelligence, more rather than less, more

accessible,

inexpensive platforms, you know, drones on the water, on land, in the air,

that can

outperform human.

And we're instead we're just stuck on these very expensive, huge artillery platforms, huge carriers,

$150 million jets, when we should be looking elsewhere from smaller

companies.

I got a lot of criticism for that.

I wasn't directed at anybody, a colleague or anybody, but I got a lot of.

There's something about if a civilian

just looking at the military and worried about it, then you get, well, you never served or

you never did this and you don't know what you're talking about and how dare you.

So I got,

I've changed changed my attitude kind of radically about I was also a professor at the U.S.

Naval Academy for a year, and I can tell you that I was a Nimitz guest professor for a while, for a week or two at UC Berkeley.

I've taught at Pepperdine, Hillsdale,

Stanford University for two years, a visiting class at one year as a visiting class at Center for Behavioral Studies.

I can tell you at all these Cal State universities, I have never been in a more liberal place in my life than the U.S.

Naval Academy.

That was 20 plus years ago.

Yes, 2002 to 3.

I've never been in a place where it was so polarized.

You know, in the lounge of the history department, on one end there was CNN, and the other end there was Fox.

70% of the professors were watching CNN.

And I never had so much hostility there.

It was a very uncomfortable year.

I did meet some great people, but four or five, but...

It was pretty nasty.

And

I never want to go back there again.

I met met great students.

I had some of the best students I ever had, and I still communicate with a lot of them.

They were really good students, and I met two or three of the best people I've ever met.

Miles Yu was one of them.

But

I don't have a happy memory of the institution, the way that they,

I just didn't.

There were some really nasty people I met there.

Well, Victor, there are nasty people who have been arrested by ICE, sent back to Venezuela, and what happens?

The Supreme Court Court on Friday, and this would be on the 16th of May, decided in favor of an appeal by a group of Venezuelan migrants, they call them migrants in this story, who asked the High Court to halt their deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.

This, I don't think, Victor, this overturned the use of this.

I think it sent it back to a lower court to some degree.

But not a win for the Trump administration.

Justices Thomas and Alito dissented from the opinion.

So there's a couple of things here, Victor, the actual decision.

And then this kind of animus, not animus, maybe right conservatives.

Like, why did we get these,

this is our Supreme Court, you know, with friends like these.

Anyway,

I just don't understand that you let in 10 to 12 million people.

You don't audit them.

You're kicking out people in the military that are not vaccinated.

You have no idea whether they're vaccinated.

You have no idea whether they have tuberculosis.

They have no idea whether 500,000, as it turns out, were criminal.

And you bring them all in, and 75% that are given, detained, and given a card that they have to, a hearing, don't show up.

And they're all here illegally.

They all broke the law when they came.

They broke the law when they reside.

I don't understand why a law enforcement officer just can't politely go and get one person and say, you're here illegally.

and you have to go back to your home.

I'm going to escort you back home and don't do this again.

And I don't know why there was no hearing required for them to come.

Why didn't we just say we have a wall or we have if you want to come to the United States, you have to apply as a legal immigrant?

Why don't we put the onus on them?

They didn't do what they were supposed to.

We make people jump through all sorts of hurdles that come legally.

They didn't.

They came on the idea that they could break the law with impunity, and if they stayed here long enough, their advocates would give them some type of rolling or blanket amnesty.

So, what I'm getting at is the court doesn't, I can understand what they're talking about, the niceties of the law, but would they just give us an option or would they give us a direction how you deal with 10 million people in the last four years on top of 20 million other people who all are here illegally and broke the law?

Do they all, do the court really believe that we're going to have to have a four or five million dollar hearing for each of the 10 million people?

Is that what it is, a suicide pact?

And

do they know, do they care when they make these rulings?

I mean,

do they understand the pragmatic.

I was walking today at 6.30 in the morning around my perimeter.

It's partly

the 40 acres I own and partly of the 120 acres we used to own, but the neighbor owns.

And I can walk there.

I walk and try to look for things.

You know, if I see a broken emitter or somebody turned on a valve, I always turn them off or I notify the owner.

So I try to, but I was walking today and I turned the corner and here was a car with a door open.

And here were two guys,

didn't speak English, and

the door was open and they were snorting or using some kind of drug.

And I walked, as I turned around, I had to walk within a foot of them.

I had no idea who they knew.

were.

I asked them something.

They spoke Spanish.

I don't know why they were trespassing.

I don't know what kind of drug they were using.

But why do is that what they what I'm getting at?

They probably came here illegally.

And why do they understand what's happened when you put 10 to 12 million people in the United States?

In other words, if you create 10 instant San Francisco's,

what happens to those people the day after, the month after, the six months?

Is it people in the inner city of Chicago that have to deal with them and not the people at Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket?

Is it the people in southwestern Fresno County that deal with them when they're bussed here and not the people in Piedmont or

Presidio Heights in San Francisco or Malibu or Brentwood?

That's what the court doesn't seem to be aware of.

This was a catastrophic

event.

It really did affect millions of people and it will affect millions of people for now on.

And no one who broke the law and knowingly facilitate has ever paid a price.

Why doesn't why Joe Biden and Mayorkas Mayorkas should have been convicted, they didn't have the votes, but Joe Biden should have been impeached for this.

He really should have.

And there should have been some accountability.

They deliberately destroyed the border for political purposes and no one cared.

And the court didn't get involved at all.

Never.

And the court

has no clue right now what to do.

If you're a member of the Department of Interior or you're the member of the Homeland Security or you're a member of the DOJ, and you go to the court and you say, okay, we can't use the Enemy and Aliens Act, or we need to give a hearing before we deport this person who is admittedly here illegally and knew he was here illegally and came illegally.

How much do you want us to spend of 10 million people?

Just tell us.

Just give us a figure.

How much?

A million dollars?

Do you want to spend $12 billion, $15 billion?

Just tell us,

and just tell us what to do, and we'll do it.

And how many employees should we we hire?

Should we hire another 200,000 to facilitate this?

And should we give them much more deference than they gave us?

They gave us zero deference when they came in.

They just took their middle finger out of us and said, you know what?

This is what I think of your country because I'm just going to walk right through it.

I'm going to live here and I don't care about your laws.

And now we are going to consider them as the same as a citizen apparently.

But they don't have any practical solutions.

None.

And that's the problem with the judiciary today.

They operate in a vacuum and they don't offer unless you're on the left.

And, you know, when they find they'll tell a school, you have to do this and you have to do this and they'll order people, but not when they're culpable.

So.

Well, Victor, I want to take a moment for one of our sponsors, longtime sponsor and great sponsor, Hillsdale College.

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And we thank the good people from Hillsdale for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Victor, before we head to a break, I want to ask you to reflect on a piece you've written.

I mentioned earlier that you write these ultra articles.

for your website twice a week over the course of a year.

It's the equivalent of, I believe, of two books of wisdom.

And you have a series right now.

I think you may have concluded it, The Failure of Modernism.

And I just want to read a little from part four of this particular series.

You wrote, was the U.S.

a more stable and confident society with two-parent, three-children homes, or now with single-parents or no-children couples?

Did Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, The Hobbit, The Jungle Book, or The Wizard of Oz offer young readers a better model of plot, character, language, grammar, as well as ethics, morality, and character than the teen books on the shelf in most public schools today, the Harry Potter books accepted.

Would the workmen, would those workmen, architects, and city regulators of 1950, with unsophisticated tools and technology, have rebuilt the burned-out neighborhoods of Los Angeles more quickly than our crews of today?

Victor, what is the failure of modernism?

Well, it's relativism that there is no standard of judgment or justice, that everybody can have situational ethics or personal environment.

They can claim that they're exempt or they're deserving of some kind of

special exemption because of something, some particular trait or experience or trauma.

So it's relativism.

There's no accountability.

In a democracy, democracy,

Tocqueville said that the problem of the democracy, and he was a big admirer of democracy, is that most people

would rather be equal and poor than all better off, but some much better off.

And that is what democracies from Athens on deal with, is this institutional envy.

And you can see it today with oligarchs, oligarchs, oligarchs, oligarchs, aristocrats.

So you have somebody like AOC barnstorming in a private jet, railing against

oligarchs, why her district that she's supposed to protect and represent is overrun with criminality, homelessness.

It's a mess.

But it's this constant demagoguery in the modern age.

And then there's a lack of standards because of equity.

We are so afraid of offending people.

It's partly the therapeutic, you know, everybody is special.

T-ball.

It's a t-ball idea, and there's no winners, there's no losers.

You don't keep score.

There's always second, third, fourth, fifth chances.

Used to be American second chances.

That was it.

But

when you look at the decline, I mean, they built basically the California Water Project, the California Aqueduct.

They built it in about five to six years.

They couldn't do that today.

They have no ability to do that.

And it's very funny because this is the most hubristic and arrogant generation that I can think of.

They really believe that they are special and that they've done so much.

But when you look at high-speed rail or

their freeway systems, I don't, the United States is in decline.

You mentioned Minneapolis.

Does anybody believe that the Minneapolis of 1955 was a dirtier place than today?

I think it wasn't much cleaner.

I think it was much more functional.

So this happens in history.

You know, one of the ways we created Greek mythology, it's believed there was this sophisticated Mycenaean kind of palace culture at Mycenae, at Tirins, it's monumental architecture.

They had a system of writing, linear B, and then we don't know why it collapsed.

And then there was a dark age.

And in this dark age period, population declined by 90%, probably.

But people bumped into this stuff.

They thought, wow, look at that arch.

Look at that 40-ton arch.

We couldn't do that.

We don't know how to read or write.

What are all these little symbols on clay?

And they started creating this myth of a once-glorious time, right?

But they were really talking about the Mycenaean period.

But they made them into heroes like Achilles and Ajax and

the gods Zeus and everybody.

In fact, some of the heroes that are in the Homeric epics, the names appear on linear B tablets as if they were just pedestrian Mycenaean lords or something that were exaggerated through periods of five centuries.

And then when, you know, writing re-emerged and you had the Greek city-state.

But my point is that we're kind of like that today.

I'm always like that when I go around California and I look at certain things that were created by others, like the aqueduct.

Who built that?

Who built all these reservoirs?

My gosh, who built those pinstocks over the grapevine?

Tallest pinstocks in the world.

They pump all that water into Pyramid Lake.

It's amazing.

We're just custodians.

We don't try any of these projects.

And then we always are so judgmental about prior.

These people were racist.

They were homophobic.

They were transphobic.

They were horrible people.

16, 19.

I think, what are they going to say about you?

That you had a million abortions, 10,000 late-term fetus killings in the birth canal?

Are they going to say you had a million homeless people that were injecting, fornicating, urinating right in front of you every day on the sidewalks of your major cities?

Are they going to say that you took a subway system that was very functional 30 years ago and made it almost impossible to ride at night?

Is that what they're going to say of your generation?

I think they will.

But they're so self-righteous and say, and you know, a lot of it comes from the university.

The university, another thing, they do not want scrutiny.

They're giving about 70 to 80 percent A's because these faculty members are terrified.

Once they destroy the standards the last four or five years, they're terrified to know how to, they don't know how to grade.

Because if they were to grade according to the actual performance, they would be giving 70% Fs and D's.

And they would be, that would be the end of them.

So we're in a period of decline.

And when Donald Trump keeps talking about

we're going to make America great again, everybody gets angry, but he's trying to do a counter-revolution on every single level.

Architecture, art.

We talked about sculpture, but he's trying to restore some past standards.

And

maybe you think he's an imperfect vessel to be the

catalyst for all that.

But nevertheless, it's an effort to arrest what is going on now.

to arrest biological men spiking a ball down the throat of a girl and claiming that that's fair.

And the other thing is that people don't have any answers when confronted.

I had a person talking to me about

transgenderism.

I just asked a simple question.

If transgenderism is a separate category and men have no advantages over women, why do

females that transgender to males are males, right?

He said, yes, they're males.

I said, why have they not won one major sports contest?

Not one.

And why do women, women who transition don't win, and males who do transition to women win a lot?

Can you explain why?

Silence.

And so anyway,

never have I seen a generation so full of themselves and for so little cause as this my generation and the next two below it.

And we always make fun of, gosh, the idea that you could be attacked on December 4th, and by September 2nd, four years later, you would have all of your enemies prostrate and destroyed, and then you'd turn around and rebuild them all, and then you'd turn around and fight a Cold War against a nuclear-powered monstrosity like the Soviet Union, and you'd win.

With half the people we have now.

Yeah, with half?

We couldn't do that today.

We can't even deal with the Middle East.

We can't deal with Iran.

Couldn't get the work permits.

No, we can't.

And so it's nothing to be proud of for this generation if you look at a standard historical.

And,

you know,

I've been shocked.

I'm not going to mention the students and the situations where I met them, but I always thought the hope of your iPhone was you would have the world's cumulative knowledge over 2,500 years at your fingertips.

And all these young people would be saying, hmm, I'm walking along and I see a Supreme Court column.

Is it Doric?

I'm going to get on my phone and I'll find out whether it's Ionic, Corinthian, or Doric.

That's not what it's used for.

It's to take a selfie and say, this is what I'm doing today, looking at a stoplight, and then send it to somebody.

Or worse.

So all of the ancient arts and knowledge are being slowly lost.

The ability to write cursive, the ability to speak well, grammar, syntax, the old pedestrian ideas of manners.

That's why when I gave my Hillsdale graduation speech, I was really shocked, Jack, because it's the only place in the world, I think, on a campus.

When I first got there, I mentioned in the speech that I left my bike there and it wasn't stolen the next day.

I thought, man, that would have been gone in two seconds in Fresno State.

And then the second thing, everybody was nice.

Hi, hello.

Can I help you?

I don't recognize you.

Do you need any help looking at the library?

No, I'm fine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are you Dr.

Hudson?

No, I'm not a doctor.

You know, it was just, hey, you, when you were teaching at Cal State or when I was at Santa Cruz as a student, and I mentioned that in these essays.

So

it's kind of, there's a word for guys like me.

It's

a laudator temporis acti.

Horace makes fun of them in one of his.

means an appraiser of the time that's gone by, an old buddy duddy.

Wow.

And Horace has all sorts of things.

He has another one.

We are a bankrupt generation about to produce a generation worse than us that will produce a generation worse than themselves.

Well, we're conservatives.

We're supposed to be conserving something, right?

I hope so.

I hope that

so many nice, you know, what keeps me going is the rare times I travel.

I am traveling a lot, but I hope it's rare.

People come up to me and it's just amazing the stories they tell about themselves and they believe in the country and they work hard, they follow the rules, they're self-educated or they're formally educated.

It's about half the country really keeps it going.

They're very capable people.

And,

you know, there's 340 million people and

you get up to 160, 170 really sharp people of all different races and classes.

That's bigger than any European country, you know what I mean?

That's what keeps the United States going.

But it's not the people I read of every day in the Fresno B that have killed somebody in a drunk driving accident or stabbed somebody or shot somebody or stole something.

Yeah.

The people you meet

in the alleyways and amongst the vines.

We have to meet them almost every night.

My son, he stayed here one day, and

when I was in bed in Iraq, somebody gave me a bulletproof vest.

I didn't need it because when I got over there, the two times they made us wear better ones with plates, but I still have it.

So when he stays here, when he walks the dogs, he puts it on.

He says, I'm not stupid like you, Dad.

I'm going to put it on that vest.

Well, you know, I've been there.

There's a Mad Max essence to your town, but there's also beauty, a great beauty to where you are also.

It's a very beautiful area.

It used to be one of the

one of the last things my grandfather told me was sitting out under this tree that's still here up a con tree.

It was about

June of 1976.

And he said, this is the nicest place in the world.

It was in early May.

He said, this is the nicest place in the world.

And he explained why the sunset and the wind coming in, farm, all the different farmers who were so helpful, nobody had any key.

You know, I don't think anybody has a lock on their door.

It was a wonderful place, and it's completely gone.

I hope it's not a microcosm.

I hope there's little renaissances everywhere.

Maybe there'll be one here,

something.

I got a call yesterday from a painter.

I'll call him.

I'll just give him a name,

Jose.

He's one of my favorite people.

He paints everything I have.

And if I don't have anything to paint and he shows up, I have him paint over something that's already painted.

But he called up and said, I'd like to do a job painting.

I'm really,

I need to keep busy.

If I'm not busy,

and you know, it's kind of a well.

So we were talking about

this is a guy who had a kidney infection and he smelled all of these strong resins and turpentine, all these toxic chemicals.

And he had to go up to Stanford for injections.

And he never complained one second.

He was one of my favorite people.

And it wasn't because every five minutes he'd returned to me while he was e-painting.

He'd say, tell me, Biktar, Trump is winning, right?

He's going to win, right?

And I said, yes, he is.

You're the weather vane, my friend.

Hey, Victor, when we come back, we have a little time.

You know what?

I think I will ask you about a movie or two.

And we'll do that one.

Tell me which one, so I might be able to.

Well, not yet.

Yeah, no, it might be a free throw.

We'll do that when we come back from these final important messages.

We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

You know what, Victor?

I said we'll talk about movies.

Would you first, though, briefly talk about, since we have so many new viewers, listeners, Strategica, the online journal you oversee for Hoover, which has a new issue on our total wars obsolete.

So maybe you want to give us a little take on what the new issue is, and maybe also, again, for our new listeners, viewers, just what Strategica is.

It's a magazine of the Military History Working Group, which I founded 12 years ago under the auspices of our wonderful late director, John Racian.

And we bring anywhere from 30 now or up to 50 scholars and maybe 50 attendants.

Every year we fly them out and we discuss contemporary war in a closed session.

We have a lot of four-star generals, diplomats, politicians, military analysts.

I tried to select them on the basis of both their ability and expertise and record, but also that they don't agree with each other.

So sometimes it can be quite incisive and decisive, and the disagreements.

And then we publish every three to four weeks something called Strategica.

That's the Greek word for actually generalship in the plural, but it has come to mean strategy.

And we have a

background history.

So if I pick the topic and do a poll,

and then

the managing effort, David Berkey, along with Bruce Thornton,

he

contacts the he picks the contributors, and then he shepherds the essays with Bruce, who edits them as well.

And then we compile this online magazine, and there's a backgrounder that puts the question in a historical context, and we have kind of a pro or con.

Sometimes they're both pros, both con.

This time is

you know, is war obsolete, absolute war obsolete?

Can you come to a strategic conclusion in the age of nuclear weapons?

And we, I think, and I'm doing this by memory, Jakob Gregel, who wrote the main essay and gives examples of wars that really cannot be decisively ended because they're proxy wars for nuclear powers or they're existential crises.

Border wars, we just saw one with Pakistan and India.

Those weren't absolute, but they can be retarded or aborted before they do become something that threatens a nuclear world.

And then we had

one by Chris Gibson.

I think maybe he wrote about Claus Witz Still Matters, as I remember, that

people change, weapons change, modernity comes and goes, but human nature is constant.

So the rules that Clauswitz saw in the Napoleonic War about what causes wars, who wins, who loses, why, how do wars end pretty much stay constant, even in the age of bioweapons, AI, and nuclear weapons.

You know, everybody said the war is all over because of nuclear weapons.

Well, who's to say?

I mean, there might be sophisticated lasers that can shoot the missile down in the first seconds.

So defense, offense, defense, offense, counter, response, response, counter, counter.

That always goes on.

And then we had Gordon Chang also about whether you really know you're in a war yet.

And I think he's been arguing for years that we've been in an existential war with China.

He's been very critical, by the way, of the Chinese Trump deal.

Oh, he has?

Yeah, he thinks that we didn't get enough out of China,

The percentage of tariffs wasn't the key point.

It was to enforce the fact that they cheat, they dump money, they manipulate currency, they steal patents and ignore copyright, etc.

He's right about that.

For decades.

Listeners should know Strategica is free.

If you go on the Hoover website and or Google it or search for it, Strategica, you will come to it.

And I think this was issue 97 thereabouts.

And most of the previous issues, I think, are quite evergreen so i'm getting a lot of calls from people say you you wrote four books this year victor i said no no no i did not write four books but what the hoover institution has done essays i wrote a long time ago they've been repackaged as email books and i don't know anything about it i lost i mean when you write for hoover they own it but they're being recast as e-books so you press a button and then you go and say if you want to read victor's new e-book then you can learn about hoover or give but i've had all these people ask me did you write about populism?

No, I didn't.

I didn't.

Those are the things that I know.

You can't

go to a new website and not get a Hoover ad

with big Victor Davis Hanson.

I know, and I didn't do it.

I'm not criticizing Hoover.

I'm just saying that they have taken essays in the past that I wrote, single essays, and they've relabeled them books.

Repackaged,

and I don't,

and they're used for promotional purposes,

which helped me as a member of the Hoover Institution, so I have no complaint.

I don't want to misrepresent myself that I'm

visiting writing e-books out there.

You are a machine of writing.

Anyway, hey, again, Victor, this coming weekend,

this episode is up on the 20th, did I say the 22nd?

And coming up is Memorial Day weekend.

I take this a little more seriously than I do any other federal holiday, and I think it deserves to be taken the most seriously.

After all, Victor,

remembering remembering those who gave their lives for us, for our country, for our freedoms.

And Turner Classic movies, which I'm a junkie of, they drive me nuts a lot because they cannot help but

anytime someone wrote a movie who was one of the Hollywood blacklisted, they talk about Dalton Trumbull.

Like, Joe, just shut up.

These guys were communists.

Yeah, oh my God, you know, high noon and all that shit.

But they do run a marathon of 30-plus movies starting,

will start tomorrow, Friday, and it'll go through Monday.

And terrific war movies.

One or two is comedy, like

Kelly's Heroes, that kind of thing.

But they have a couple of few good movies.

They have a lot of good movies.

I just want to recommend a few.

Myself and Victor, if you have any thoughts on these, or if there's any you want to tell us, I know about Dot Spoot, what are your favorite movies?

But here are some of the movies that Turner is showing: A Walk in the Sun with Dana Andrews, which is, it is a just a sensational movie, I think.

Bridge on the River Kawai, Battle.

David Lean movie, that was great.

Oh, yeah.

Bill Holden, one of my favorite actors.

I don't think I ever made his mission.

He was in it, too.

John Ford said

he was the best actor ever.

Jack Hawkins was.

He's a good actor.

Oh, yeah, terrific.

He died early, I think, from lung cancer.

He did.

Yeah.

He was in a great military war movie.

Ben Hurt.

Well, he was in Ben Hurt.

Yeah, but he was in The Cruel Sea.

Based on the book My Montserrat, which is sincere.

But it's not part of

what TCM is showing.

Last thing I'll mention is a very short movie, Black and White, The Red Badge of Courage, Oni Murphy.

Stephen Crane.

Yeah, that was good.

Beautiful movie.

That was kind of what reminded me of Incident at Owl Creek Bridge.

You remember that movie?

That was a.

I've never even heard of that, really.

That was a surreal movie.

it was based on ample was it ample

a short story it's kind of crazy uh

i don't think i could write that down there's not a lot of great uh i mean there was gettysburg that great movie four-hour production um yeah

well it had its moments uh

a little round top you can't help but think the portrayal there was phenomenal.

It was just terrific.

It was.

But there hasn't been a lot of great...

Glory was a good movie, but there hasn't been a lot of really good action, you know, like a Battle of Shiloh or something that was

a great movie.

World War II is,

I don't know, there's,

as far as the production and the craftsmanship, I really liked Saving Private Ryan, but there's something about it, the message I didn't quite connect with.

Yeah.

That,

although there was a lot of irony in it.

And

Das Buddha was a great movie, though.

And so was Downfall,

Hitler's Last Days.

Oh, yeah.

Much parodied or used for parodies.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that was something else.

Yeah.

One of my colleagues said

he saw it in the movie theater.

I said,

then it was out on video.

I said, I'll see it.

He said, you've got to see it.

You've got to see it, boss.

And I said, well, can I see it with my kids?

Absolutely.

I'm like, there's no problem.

absolutely no problem at all well well the movie has this scene in it victor if you want to remember where they're having chicken they're all drunk in the in the furacella and they're having chicken fights with naked secretaries on the shoulders of the

like thanks my to my colleague thanks for well my 10-year-old son is watching that

life experience anyway uh i i want to recommend folks check out uh turner the non-advertiser here and he uh and and i do recommend honoring Memorial Day.

It certainly deserves to be honored.

Hundreds of thousands of people

who find them in our cemeteries and they gave their lives for us.

So Victor, you've been terrific today.

But I just want to read one or two comments from folks.

Much of this is from

YouTube.

Here's one from Patty Chapman, 7296.

Thank you so much, Victor and Jack.

I was a history major in college but went to computer science because of job prospects i love watching your podcast on youtube it doesn't matter if you're with jack sammy or jack i get an update i know i can trust it serves up a few up served up with a few laughs a great way to start my day

thanks again and then one last one this will be from Beck T48.

And this is off of Rumble.

And you often are wearing a hat, Victor.

You're not not today.

But it writes, I love baseball cap.

Yeah, that's okay.

I love the hat.

I appreciate your common sense approach to answers for today's problems.

You give me hope for my great-grandchildren's future.

That's really lovely.

Yeah.

Thank you, BeckT48, for your dear thoughts on Victor.

Victor, we're going to, oh, I'm going to tell people go to Civil Thoughts.

I'm going to tell people.

CivilThoughts.com.

Why are you going to go there?

You're going to sign up for Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter I write for the Center for Civil Society.

Comes out every Friday, has 14 recommended readings, great articles I've come across the previous week.

And I know you'll like it.

Yes, my friend.

I want to thank everybody who sent me

suggestions how to get over a three-month chronic sinus infection.

I can tell you that I have not done a

carnivore diet.

I'm considering maybe.

I haven't done inner venous cabogalbulin,

but

I have done, I got a navage, I do the neti pot, I do steam,

I've done manuka honey sprays, I've done iodine sprays.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's a manuca honey spray?

What is that?

Natural antimicrobial

spray spray.

You sprayed up your nose or something?

Yes.

And then I've done grapeseed extract.

I've done

a German pill called Sinopret.

I have done...

Just a minute, there's another one.

Anyway, I'm now on,

a doctor wrote me, I'm on a probiotic L

lactobacillus case, and I'm trying to spray that up to create a new culture.

I've done doxicillin.

I have done ZPAC.

So I did the antibiotic route.

It just made it worse.

It's a plumbing problem, you know, way up.

I had my CAT scan, as somebody suggested, and I have two block maxillary sinuses.

It looks like cottage cheese on the

stuck in there.

So I'm scheduled for a surgery, but I'm trying every last thing to avoid it.

But I really appreciate this.

Is all I appreciate what the people have sent me.

It's amazing.

Would it be over a hundred?

What?

Have you gotten over a hundred recommendations?

No, I've got about 15 to 20, but there are, you know, there are vitamins and

x-clear and put uh baby shampoo in your salt rinses they all have scientific basis yeah every one of them is not crazy believe me they're all when i look at you know nih studies they're they all have some efficacy the problem is that the more you read about i've had this my entire life chronic sinitis for three or four months and i used to get bombarded with steroids and and then I had this massive operation five years ago where they cut my turbinates, they took out polyps, they straightened my septum, they drilled out my maxillary passages.

I was wonderful.

And then I got long COVID twice.

And the ENT said, when I went in there, he said, you're all stuffed up again, meaning the sinuses have collapsed.

And I said, yeah.

And he said, did you have a problem with COVID?

I said, yes, I had long COVID for nine months.

I got it again for three months.

He said that most of his patients that had

very good success with surgery correctives for chronic sinitis, had had COVID, and it created it

for some reason in those types of patients, like myself, it created kind of a chronic inflammatory condition that closed.

Once the passages closed and the sinus builds up, you can't sleep.

It just, you know,

so I'm hoping that I can open these up before surgery.

So, my strategy now, on recommendation of one of our most loyal readers, is to implant positive bacterial flora to kill, strangle, can I say the word 86, the bad bacteria that have thrived with their help of the atomic bomb

doxicillin.

And maybe when I talk to you next time, I'll be in Washington, D.C.

I have one last trip,

and I will be breathing again without

well, just in case I'm going to bring some baby shampoo to give to you.

That stings that tell you the truth.

Okay.

Well, Vic,

in whatever state you're in.

I'm trying to keep a good attitude about it because so many people have it.

You wouldn't believe that people say, I had it for one year.

I could hardly walk.

I was fighting it off.

I was cranky.

I was obsessed.

I was going crazy.

And then I took horseradish or something that was a magic cure.

And I'm trying all of them because I have no

limitations.

Well, horseradish will clear out your surface.

I can't take steroids.

That's the one thing because I used to take them and I have glaucoma and that's a no-no if you have glaucoma.

Victor,

you are one of the most complex medical people I know.

But you're one of the greatest people I know also.

I got bad genes.

Well, immune problem.

Or maybe I was too wrecked.

I don't know.

But my two siblings

I don't remember a day they've ever been sick.

But

my mother died very young and my daughter, so I don't have great longevity in my in my immediate family.

If I stayed here and did what my grandparents did and just stayed on the farm and never left, my grandfather died in his sleep at almost 87, and he was 86 and a half, and my grandmother put all the bread.

That's the plan to stay in the family.

None of her daughters lived over 66, three of them.

Anyway, on a happier note, we're going to see you soon.

See you soon.

Thanks, folks.

You'll see me.

And actually, we'll eat over pancakes, maybe.

Folks, you've been terrific for checking us out and stick with us.

Thanks, Victor.

You've been wonderful with all the wisdom you shared.

We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody.