A Happy Biden Kwanzaa and Crazy New Toy Requirements

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I am Jack Fowler, the host, but the star and the namesake.

That's Victor Davis-Hanson.

He 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.

He has an official website.

It's called The Blade of Perseus.

The web address is victorhanson.com.

You need to go there.

I'll tell you about it at the end of this, towards the end of this particular episode.

Victor,

I think today a couple of interesting pieces have come up on the great website Powerline.

One is about Kwanzaa.

One's about a forgotten massacre in America by the Dakota Indians.

And those things, and maybe if we have time, Victor, we're going to be a little short today, folks, but there's some insanity going on in California about requirements for toys to be sold.

Gender-neutral toys must be sold in gender-neutral parts and toy stores.

I mean, it's just crazy.

God knows what else will happen in our lifetime in California.

But we'll get your thoughts on these issues, Victor, right after we come back from these important messages.

When empires debase their currency, citizens who hold gold survive the transition.

That's not opinion.

It's documented fact.

Trump's economic warning isn't speculation, it's pattern recognition.

The same signals that preceded every major currency crisis are flashing now.

Unsustainable debt, foreign nations dumping our bonds, and central banks hoarding gold.

But Trump's also revealing the solution.

The IRS strategy he's used for decades is available to every American.

It's how the wealthy preserve their fortunes when paper currencies fail.

American Alternative Assets has documented this strategy in their free 2025 wealth protection guide.

It shows exactly how to position yourself before the turbulence Trump's warning about arrives.

Call 888-615-8047 for your free guide.

That's 888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com.

The patterns are clear.

Make sure you're on the right side of them.

Cooler temperatures are rolling in, and as always, Quince is where I turn for false staples that actually last.

From cashmere to denim to boots.

The quality holds up and the price still blows me away.

Quince has the kind of false staples you'll wear non-stop, like super soft 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $60.

Their denim is durable and fits right, and their real leather jackets bring that clean classic edge without the elevated price tag.

What makes Quints different?

They partner directly with ethical factories and skip the middlemen.

So you get top-tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands.

When the weather cools down, my Quint sweaters are a go-to.

My cashmere short sleeve that works under any jacket, formal or casual, or my thick, long-sleeve, go-everywhere, do-everything sweater that pairs with any pant or jogger.

Quince products are my favorites, which is why I went to Quince to buy my recent very beautiful purse that leaves the house every time I do.

Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash Victor for free shipping on your order and

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com slash victor for free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash victor.

And we'd like to thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

And Victor, before I pose

something to you about, I think we should start off with the Wanza.

Let me just take a minute quickly to welcome back a great sponsor of our podcast.

That's Hillsdale College.

And I want our listeners to know that Victor is one of the professors in three of the over 40 free online courses that Hillsdale College offers.

The first course is American Citizenship and Its Decline.

That's based on Victor's best-selling book, The Dying Citizen.

The second course is The Second World Wars, and that's based on another of Victor's best-selling books by the same name.

And the third course is titled Athens and Sparta, and that course is partly based on Victor's book, A War Like No Other, How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

These courses are seven to nine episodes long, and they're self-paced, so you can take them whenever you want and wherever you want.

So go right now, or why don't you wait till after the episode ends, to hillsdale.edu slash VDH to start.

They're free and they're easy to get started.

That's Hillsdale.edu slash VDH to start, Hillsdale.edu slash VDH.

And we thank the good people at Hillsdale College for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor,

the other day,

the President of the United States put out a statement.

Jill and I wish a very happy Kwanzaa to all those celebrating across America and around the world.

May your homes be filled with hope, peace, and light.

And in 2024, may we carry with us the wisdom of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, especially those of unity and faith.

And at Powerline, Lloyd Billingsley took this as an opportunity to

give a little education on Kwanza and Kwanzaa's founder.

And that's

an activist and an academic and a brute, I think, my words, named Ron Karenga.

And here's just one little quick thing about him, according to this is from Billingsley's piece.

In 1971, a court convicted Karenga of kidnapping and torturing two women in his organization.

According to Karenga tortured women followers, wife tells court, that's a title, from the Los Angeles Times, Karenga stripped naked Deborah Jones and Gail Davis, whipped them with an electrical cord, and beat the women with a karate baton.

The Kwanza founder, and he is the founder of Kwanzaa, he concocted and made Kwanzaa,

also stuck a hot soldering iron in Davis's mouth and used a vice to clamp down on one of her toes.

Victor,

I don't think we're surprised that in our world today,

creeps and weirdos and ne'er-do-wells

rise to positions where they're esteemed by the President of the United States.

I have a feeling, Victor, you know a little bit about this character, you being once part of the California education

college system.

Any thoughts about this?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think, and

while you can correct me, I don't think his name is Karenga.

And that's a tip-off, isn't it?

In America, you can always reinvent yourself.

That's what Elixir salesman did out west, and that's what he is.

He's a peddler of nostrums.

I just remember him because I was a member of the California State University system, and he, I think, was from Long Beach.

Every once in a while, you'd hear about him.

And he just created this

imaginary event.

He has an imaginary name.

I don't know.

I think his name was Everett or something.

It's like for anybody who who changes their name for a particular,

you know, it's Professor Ibram Kendi, right?

Kendi.

Or

I think Van Jones made up the name Van.

You can even argue Barack Obama.

I mean, he was known as Barry Sotero for a long time, Barry, even though his given name was Barack.

But my point is that that's always a tip off of a person

trying to find authenticity where there's no authenticity there.

And so he did a lot of damage in the sense that he campaigned that Christmas was a white person's this.

He's one person of the 60s who was given a complete exemption for his criminal behavior.

He went right back.

I think he's still at Cal State.

I think he still is.

Yeah, almost like, seems like 50 years.

Yeah, he's probably in his 80s.

But my point is that criminal conviction, imprisonment, what does it matter?

You can still be a professor.

And I think he had kind of a phony PhD, and then I think USC gave him a PhD.

But it's just another one of these examples that there's all these exemptions given on the, if any other person was not him with an African Swahili fake name, and Kwanzaa and African American and always calling people racist, his career, such as it is, would not exist.

If I right now went out and committed felonies, and I would be fired from every association, and I should be if I did what he did.

And it didn't happen, did it?

Yeah.

So

that's, and then what does Joe Biden know?

I mean, wasn't his, didn't his wife say something about having a breakfast taco, remember that, to Hispanics?

These are just

suburbanite, guilty white people who grift and try to shake down.

I mean, he's really a reprehensible person, Joe Biden.

He goes around the country telling everybody to pay their fair share when there's hard to find anybody.

His family doesn't cheat on their taxes.

He mouths this stuff about Kwanzaa.

He has no idea what it means.

If you ask him what it was, he would have no idea.

And I don't think anybody seriously follows it.

I think it's just something that white, guilty, wealthy people reference so they feel good about themselves.

Well, white guilt is, we listen to Shelby and Eli Steele, it is the core of everything in the last 50, 70 years.

Victor, sticking with power line,

Governor Waltz Walls of Minnesota, which had just changed its flag, by the way, in some flag controversy,

he put out a tweet or an X

the day after Christmas.

He writes, 161 years ago, 38 Dakota men were hung.

Today, the Dakota 38 plus two runners ran 71 miles overnight from Fort Snelling to Mankato in remembrance of the largest mass execution in U.S.

history.

Their sacrifice reminds us all to continue our commitment to accountability and healing.

So,

John Hendricker takes the opportunity of this tweet to remind us, well, why were these

38 Dakota Indians,

men, why were they hung?

And they were hung, Victor,

because they participated and engaged in the greatest mass murder.

ever to happen in America.

And it's a fascinating read.

And your thoughts on it, my friend.

Well, it was the greatest mass murder of American citizens.

And it wasn't just a mass murder.

It was mutilation and rape.

It was kind of a Hamas raid.

It really was.

It was very similar to Hamas.

They not only killed settlers, civilians, but they mutilated them for a purpose of instilling terror.

And I mean, you go back.

One of the things that people don't talk about is these collisions of civilizations.

I'm not excusing the brutality on either side, but they're never 100%,

0%.

When Hernan Cortez went in in 1521 to Tenochitlan, he met a society that was ripping the hearts out of sacrificial victims at over 20,000 a year and was practicing ritual cannibalism.

So it wasn't like the Aztecs were beloved.

The only reason he destroyed Tenochtitlan, the Aztec Empire, he had 100,000 Plazcalans that hated them more than they hated the Spanish.

And the same was true about the Lakota and the Dakota Indians.

They were very fierce tribespeople and they went in and butchered people,

people being other indigenous tribes.

And they had certain traditions that would be considered today

quite violent.

And so this romantization.

John Keegan got in big trouble once, the distinguished military historian.

He was talking about the wars for North America.

And he made a point that

at the time of the Irish waves of 1840s, when people were starving, you had cities in Europe, and he gave other examples, where

you would have,

you know, 10, thousands of people living per square mile.

And then in

North America, you had maybe three or four people for 100 miles in the West.

And when one society that's crowded and starving has the ability with transoceanic navigation to get to another place where they're not starving, then you have a collision of cultures.

That's something like what you see in the border.

And the result's going to be a mess.

And it's not going to be

it's not going to be pretty.

But what I'm getting at is, and I think the power line writers make it really do a good job, is it's not Marcus of Queensbury rule.

It's not beanbag.

When you have people who are starving, they're coming in and settling places, and they have a technology that the Indigenous population who's very violent does not have, then you're going to have a conflict, and there's going to be savagery on both sides.

But,

and this is the but, the people that are in the United States today,

and for all the romanticism about Native American this and that, would you want to base your current lifestyle, your prosperity, security on the Lakota-Dakota model or on the Western civilization model that came here?

And you should make that decision before you take sides.

And

when you look at the number of atrocities,

it's the people that were,

this governor, Waltz, they think there's a bunch of wealthy white people that came

in beautiful ships and then they landed in the East Coast and they got on these luxurious wagons and they had all this money and they came out and they just started slaughtering.

It wasn't that way at all.

They were the poorest people in the world.

They died in droves.

They died of diphtheria.

They died of every imaginable disease.

They had nothing.

And they came out and they were hard scrabble.

And they fought with Indians and Indians tried to exterminate them and they tried to exterminate him.

That's what happened.

But the net result of it is they did something, I don't think any other, they did create, I think you, I'm pretty sure that the land that is devoted for reservations is larger than 11 individual states.

Not together, but 11 individual states, and it's a huge amount of acreage and it's very wealthy.

And so that, whatever you want to say, there was something that the conquering power did, and everybody says genocide, but it was not a systematic genocide at all.

It was disease, it was counter,

it was challenge and response.

So one side brings to the new world

people with malaria or people with smallpox or people with different types of traditions that are injurious.

The other side gives them what?

Sugar,

tobacco.

cocaine, venereal disease.

Do you say, oh my God,

those crazy Spanish or British just hadn't have gone to the New World, they wouldn't have discovered sugar or they wouldn't have had tobacco or they wouldn't have had venereal diseases or they wouldn't have known anything about cocaine.

No, it's tragedy.

It's not melodrama.

That's what history is.

Well, Victor,

we're going to shotgun a few quick

items here to get your views.

And then and the next one we're going to

talk about is surgery, the American College of Surgeons, and their deep embracing of DEI.

And we'll get to that right after these important messages.

At a time when Americans are more divided than ever, Connecting America is a place where everyone can gather and express their opinions with no disrespect.

And what better place than a Jersey diner to host this show?

Because where else but a diner can you find a buffet of opinions, ideas, and real connections?

Connecting America, a brand new national program that aims to truly connect everyday people and is dedicated to showcasing ideas and embracing civil conversation.

We'll also include amazing ways to improve your fitness, health, and nutrition, revive your spiritual self, and give your home a makeover.

Connecting America streams live every weekday from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

Eastern Time.

Our program is led by a group of award-winning journalists, including me, Jim Rosenfeld, plus Allison Camerata and Dave Briggs.

We'll also hear from America's psychologist, Dr.

Jeff Gardier, and former Fox News senior foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg.

Join us wherever you get your podcasts.

If you're like me, you have a lot of product on your bathroom counter.

Well, I have found the secret serum.

And it's Vibriance Super C Serum.

The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and even dark spot reducers.

Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients, including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results.

Simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion, and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance.

I just began using Super C Serum last week and I love it.

My skin feels so much better, soft, moist, and fresh.

And by the way, it smells beautiful like the orange blossoms outside my kitchen door.

Give it a try, and you'll love it too.

And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund.

Go to vibrance.com/slash/victor to save up to 37%

off and free shipping.

That's Vibrance.

V-I-B-R-I-A-N-C-E.

Vibrance.com slash Victor.

And we'd like to thank Vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

So Victor, My old stomping grounds national review.

There's a gentleman, I'm not sure who this is, Richard uh boss hart

and he has a piece um that came out right around christmas it's titled it's dei or bust

for the american college of surgeons he's written about this before

at at nor and he makes a case as you know dei is starting to get a black eye um this pushback there's even some places where where DEI administrators are being fired.

It's a long way to go.

let me read this.

He writes, and yet, despite what's seeming that the trend seems to be evading,

and yet the American College of Surgeons has grabbed onto the ideology of structural racism and just won't let go.

After embracing anti-racism and DEI in 2020 and promoting the ideologies at the 2023 Annual Clinical Congress in October, the leadership of the ACS, the American College of Surgeons, is seeking to further embed anti-racism and DEI in the college and into surgical practices.

They've created something called a toolkit that they're forcing surgeons to

follow.

And the author of this piece says, the toolkit

is an exhaustive, some might say exhausting.

compilation of everything related to pushing the narrative of systemic and structural racism as the source of disparities, including minority representation within

the American College of Surgeons and clinical outcomes in minority surgical patients.

Blah, blah, blah.

Not blah, blah, blah.

I'm not attacking the article.

I'm just going to stop reading that.

You know, Victor,

it's been a while since we've...

uh talked about this but uh um that that dei would come into something that really

has to be about meritocracy and not about anything else.

I mean,

who wants to have brain surgery by somebody

that really shouldn't be practicing brain surgery, but for other reasons?

Anyway, your thoughts about this, Victor?

Well,

everybody, when they looked at woke or affirmative action, then when we went into

DEI and woke, they all said, well, it's in the English department.

Who cares?

I think the English English department matters.

So what if people are not learning King Lear and Macbeth and

they're reading Professor Kendi?

Big deal.

But that

was bad, but the problem was it was an assault not on the English department, but on the whole idea of meritocracy and standards.

And it was a commissariat.

It was a Soviet idea that you were going to inject ideology into the evaluation of performance.

And the goal would be to be an enforced equality, now redefined as equity on the back end, equality of result.

And that would require a lot of coercion and government, power, money, leverage.

And that's what we have.

And now it's intruded into

United Airline pilots, military efficacy.

And by the way, they have lowered standards.

For example, when you put women in combat, you have to lower the physical requirements.

And then they said they weren't going to do that, and they have done that.

And the same thing is true now about medicine.

We're going to use criteria, and it's happening.

It's not that this is going to happen.

This has been happening since George Floyd, where we've had radical recalibration of medical school.

We get to the point now that I had a very well-known, I won't mention his name, commentator write me and say basically his son, who went to a very distinguished school, applied to 16 medical schools and could not get into one.

And that's the story I've heard again and again, based on the fact that these people are white males and they're very good.

And so there's been,

we're going to now, but you know what's weird is

I can tell you that when Barack Obama has a serious medical incident or Joe Biden has a serious medical incident or Professor Kendi has a serious medical incident or Michelle Obama has a serious medical incident.

She's going to call everybody around, and she's not going to ask for the race, sex, sexual orientation of the surgeon to save her life.

She's going to ask, how many surgeries does this person have?

What is his record?

That's what they're going to do.

But that's not going to apply to other people because they have means of getting around the very system that they've created for us.

And I think it's frightening because

it's something that

everybody should remember why the United States works.

We were the only country that had this Constitution whose natural evolution,

from the very beginning, it said all men were created equal in the Declaration.

There wasn't a mention of race in the Constitution.

The natural expression of the Constitution was the evolution.

Not to change the nature of it, but just to reinforce the idea that if you applied the Constitution in its innate form and didn't try to massage it or interpret, just here it is, that it would include equality.

And that's why people came here.

And it gave them a chance to have an idea, an invention, a discovery where they could not be censored.

They couldn't say, hey, you're a Catholic,

you can't invent the phone.

Hey, you can't do this.

And we did this with blacks for a while, but we got over it.

And

we said, in addition to that, come to the United States.

You can have your own company.

If you're Elon Musk, come over here.

We want you.

If you look at the number of immigrants that came legally, they came here for one reason, that they felt there were restrictions, ideological or racial or religious.

So what's wrong with the Islamic world?

Every time you get a very talented person, he butts up against fundamentalist Islam or an autocratic government in Syria or, you know, somewhere like Iran.

That's the problem.

And you can't fully express your idea or your new invention or something.

There's always going to be a bridal, not here.

That's why we were the, and communist China suffers from the same malady.

If you butt up against the hierarchy in Beijing or Communist Party ideology, you're going to be in trouble unless you bribe your way through.

But here in the United States, it was...

We're going to be the marketplace of ideas.

Just come over here, and if you have a better idea, based on its logic or its utility or its efficacy, you're going to succeed and you're going to be compensated in a very lucrative manner.

And that was an engine of opportunity and dynamics.

And now we're doing exactly what we said that we would never do.

We're destroying that entire vision, that entire protocol.

We're saying, you know what?

Whether you have an idea or an invention or a skill or training or education is going to depend on basically the color of your skin or your gender or your sexual orientation.

Sorry, that's just the way it's going to be because we're going to engineer a society that's,

I wish I could say proportional

representative, but it's not anymore.

It's repertory.

Imagine if that was the mindset 100 plus years ago.

George Washington Carver would have been the wrong race, right, to be in.

What do you think the mindset would be if it was the NFL and the

NBA today?

You just said, you know what?

The NFL is too black.

I'm sorry.

It's not, we don't, we just systematically discriminate against Asians and Latinos.

Whites are underrepresented, but not as bad as Latinos and Asians.

There must be something fundamentally racist.

No, no, it's just, what is it?

Tell us what it is, why they are not being represented on the very lucrative playing field like African Americans.

Is that where you want to go?

And we can do that with all sorts of things if you want to government engineer things.

And it's very deadly when you do, because we have historical precedents for people who tried to do this.

And they didn't all start out like Pol Pot and Stalin.

They all started out with this stuff.

We're going to make it fair.

We're going to get rid of the aristocracy that oppressed you.

We're going to have equal opportunity for the peasant.

And then it gave, it descended into this.

So, yeah.

Did you see that Project Veritas or it was James O'Keefe?

I don't know if he did it under his own auspices.

They caught the IBM

executive about

exec donut about white males and stuff.

Oh, and about Asians.

Asians are

not a minority.

Something to that effect.

Yeah.

I couldn't believe that this whole thing, there were

I don't know if you saw that shot of Asian students at Harvard protesting with a placard that said something like, we're not the ideal, we're not the ideal minority or we're not the good, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, right.

As if don't patronize us and say that we're being discriminated.

We are left wing.

And you're thinking, okay, if you're left wing, then you're happy with DEI and you've been systematically discriminated against at Harvard based on your record versus the number of Asians that get in.

If you don't want people to object to that, that's fine.

But I thought that was suicidal to say that.

Hey, Victor,

with the new year here, the happy new year, all listeners,

now is the time to start working on those new year's resolutions.

Field of Greens makes sticking to healthy New Year's resolutions easy.

Field of Greens is the simplest way to get the daily recommended fruits and vegetables or veggies, however you want to say it.

And it tastes amazing.

Every fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was was medically selected by doctors to support your vital organs like heart, lungs, kidneys, and immune system.

For our listeners, Field of Greens is giving you 15% off your first order when you go to fieldofgreens.com and use the promo code VICTOR, V-I-C-T-O-R.

Do that to get 15% off your first order.

Visit fieldofgreens.com.

Use the promo code Victor.

That's promo code Victor, V-I-C-T-O-R at fieldofgreens.com.

And we thank the good people at Field of Greens for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Victor, do you remember?

Remember when you were a little boy

back in the Eisenhower administration?

Yeah.

There was that famous Christmassy movie, Laurel and Hardy, The March of the Wooden Soldiers, and it had that theme song of toy land, toy land, Little Girl, and Boyland.

Well, that is not the case anymore, not at least in the state you live in.

Now, California has passed a law finding stores

with more than 500 employees that

doesn't have a quote unquote gender-neutral children's toy section.

That law kicked in January 1st.

It was signed by Gavin Newsom.

I just, is this what our

democracy/slash republic is about?

I think everybody's at, when they're listening to this, they're asking them,

Jack, well,

I don't know anybody who's demanding this.

Who's demanding this?

Who are the people who are demanding it?

Is it 10, 20, 30, 40 percent of the population?

And why, if somebody wants a gender-neutral toy, is there a demand?

Is that why they're reacting?

Or is the corporate boardroom leading the public or is the public leading the boardroom and if

there can be I don't think anybody has a problem with transgendered as us

or us a new franchise right with that stuff but why do they always have to when there's no popular demand for it why do they have to go into target and put you know what they did before, cod pieces on children's underwear when there was nobody who wants that?

And I don't understand that.

I don't.

And it's, I guess,

if we want to be analytical, where do you follow that trail?

Do you say, okay,

there are people in corporations that are

subject to pressure from the trans community?

Is that it?

So they go to a boardroom and he said, hey, you know what?

I think we got to get ahead of the pack and have transgender toys.

Okay.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

We'll promote you.

Is that how it works?

Or is, oh, I was in New York the other day and I saw a big demonstration for trans toys.

Okay.

I saw one for cod pieces on children's swimming suits.

Okay.

I just don't think that's happening.

I don't think people are saying

we're going to beat the hack.

We've got to get

Dylan.

Malvoni or whatever's what was his name?

Mr.

Bud Light.

Yes, Mr.

Bud Light.

We've got to get him out there because if we don't, you know, Coors is going to beat us to the transgender punch.

I don't think that happens.

I think all of this stuff is top-down, dreamed up by people who come from where?

You guessed it, the university.

And

these little atolls all over the United States, these campuses are turning out this entire DEI machinery.

It's like a little assembly line, and it's designed to go into every fabric of a society, from commercialism to buying and selling to department stores to the military to surgeons.

It's an ideology and there's no public support for it.

There's public support for tolerance.

If people want to be somewhat different from

the normal, fine.

But don't push it down people's throats all the time and have this agenda when you don't have any, there's no public support that's demanding that.

The other thing that's really important to think is they always fixate on the misdemeanor because they cannot deal with the felony.

So they're telling America, the big problem right now in commercial

retail is there's not enough transgendered items.

It's not an epidemic of smash and grab.

It's not a multi-billion dollar theft loss that's destroying the retail industry.

It's not looting trains down in the Port of LA by criminal gangs.

It's not supply chain that makes you can't get an echo diesel part.

I got it in.

It's not any of this.

It's transgendered,

not enough transgendered items.

And therefore they think, well, I solved that problem and I don't have to worry about 30% empty retail spacing and impossible

real estate market for stores in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Francisco downtown.

That's how it works.

And I go back to Mayor Bloomberg, your former mayor, when the snow was so bad and he couldn't, remember that he couldn't get the streets.

And what he did, he get a press conference and start talking about super outlawing supersized soft drinks.

Yeah.

It was so

damn important to them that I not have a

big gulp from 7-Eleven.

Not that I drink big gulps, Victor, but hey,

we've talked a lot in recent

podcasts about

Claudine Gay and Harvard and the academic community.

And you just mentioned it, but there's a piece I think worth getting your thoughts on by one of your

colleagues at Hoover, Neil Ferguson.

He's written a piece called The Treason of the Intellectuals.

He did that that for the free press.

And I'd like to get your thoughts on this, Victor, right after we, well, when we come back, right after these important messages.

So you just got back from summer vacation.

Maybe you might have even had to book two rooms because of your snoring.

Some vacation, huh?

Snoring can be an underlying cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even memory loss.

Here is my advice.

If you want every night to be a true vacation, you need to get yourself Zipa.

That's happy Z spelled backwards.

Zipa is a doctor-designed mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward, but is also the only device with a patented tongue seat belt to keep your airways open and the snoring away.

The snoring can stop as soon as the first night.

Zipa was proven in a 600-patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units.

From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition Pink Zipa.

Not only will you save $10,

but Zipa is on a mission to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another $10,000 to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Go to zyppah.com and use the code PINK

or text Victor to 511-511.

Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we trust by visiting zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Remember, ZIPA is happy Z spelled backwards.

Text fees may apply, and we'd like to thank Zipa for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing your home titles, and your equity is the target.

Here's how it works: criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has been transferred out of your name.

Then they take out loans using your equity and even sell your property, and you won't even know what's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.

So, when was the last time you checked on your home title?

If your answer is never, you need to do something about it right now.

And that's why we've partnered with Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim.

Go to hometitalock.com/slash victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million-dollar triple art protection.

That's 24/7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.

Please, please, don't be a victim.

Protect your equity today.

That's home titlelock.com/slash Victor.

Back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Let me mention first, Victor, that to our listeners, and we have a lot of new listeners.

Thank you, those who have been with us for quite a while.

Our rankings recently have been pretty significant.

That's because of the wisdom you share, not because of the mumbling questions you're asked by me.

But

people should be visiting.

your website, The Blade of Perseus.

The web address is victorhanson.com.

If you're a fan of Victor,

you will find that there are things you can't read that he's written anywhere else.

There's nowhere else to get them except at The Blade of Perseus.

And to read them, you need to subscribe.

That's $5 gets you in the door.

$50 discounted for the full year.

There's plenty of stuff there.

Otherwise, links to the archives of this podcast, links to Victor's syndicated column, American Greatness essays, other appearances.

But if you go there right now, you'll see the time, and we're recording this on

one of the last days of December, although this particular podcast is out the first week of January.

There is an angry reader

piece that you responding to this lunatic who's written to you.

We're not going to get into it.

But it's, holy crap, she just,

you spent all day writing about the many ways in which she could stand Victor Davis Hansen.

And you reply in kind to her.

I get a lot of those.

I get more.

The volume of hatred has gone up.

Not that I'm a wounded fawn.

Everybody gets it, but it's increased exponentially after

October 7th.

Yeah.

I got some today.

Sammy sent me an email with a bunch of them.

and said, are you going to reply to this or do you want to talk about this?

It's always the same.

Well,

their evil has, and it is evil, has been exposed.

So I guess they're just going to let their freak flags fly.

But

Victor, some of the people who fly their freight flags are considered intellectuals and scholars and academics.

And back to what I mentioned before, The Break, Neil Ferguson has written a piece, the Treason of the Intellectuals, and he bounces this off a French philosopher writing in the 1920s, Julian Benda, who coined that phrase.

And he's looking at at the time how

European academics were beginning to play what you call a pernicious role in European politics.

And that Nazi Germany,

Mussolini's Italy.

So,

and they were profoundly influential at the time.

So Neil writes about,

he asks the question, you know, a century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction, leftward instead of rightward.

But it's ended up in much the same place.

The question is whether we, unlike the Germans, can we do something about it?

So he asks a, poses a question there, Victor.

And also, I must say, though, I almost bothered me a little bit, like leftward rightward like the the nazis were they were national socialists i kind of misses a little something um

uh comparing socialists to they were

they were environmentalists and vegetarians too yeah

well he makes it hitler's a big vegetarian and environmentalist

Yeah, and couldn't smoke in his presence, et cetera.

Yes,

a non-smoker.

And

they were socialist.

They were national socialists.

That was the reason for it.

I think Roger Kimball wrote an introduction to Binda's Treason of the Clerks or Treason of the Intellectuals.

But he was trying to warn about the onset in the post-war nihilism of France.

I mean, they lost a million people in World War I.

And this was the birth.

While he was writing this, it was a whole revolution in what we had just talked about, post-modernism, post-structuralism.

It would be formalized in the 80s by people like Foucault and Derrida and Lacan, except with Soisure, the Swiss linguist earlier.

But it was a rejection of norms.

And I guess they would say, well, norms gave us World War I and a million dead in the trenches and Verdun or the Psalm in the case of the British.

Everything was under examination, so paintings were no longer impressionistic even.

They were modern art.

They were throwing paint on the canvas.

Or

poetry now had no rhyme, it had no poetic language, it had no meter, and there was no rhyme or logic.

When you ended a line, you just wrote out a sentence and chopped it arbitrarily and you threw it on the canvas, your text, that was a poem.

And

everything,

sexuality was no longer, you know, monogamy or

chastity, All these were archaic terms.

The war had helped destroy that, especially in France and Weimar and Germany.

But England escaped that a little bit.

There was Bloomsbury and all that, but it escaped that, a lot of it.

But

Binda was trying to warn people that eventually, when you destroy these norms and there are no absolutes,

then you're basically turning your lives over to these false gods, and these are going to be invariably authoritarian.

And so you have to have some moral absolute in your life.

But when you just, what he was trying to say is they look at everything in terms of power.

So rules and laws have no natural ethics or humanity, or they don't come from a God.

They just reflect the people that have power.

And I've used that metaphor before, but you know,

it's against the law to steal a silk tie

because poor people don't

you know rich people don't steal silk ties but poor people don't have them so maybe they need them same with a candy bar or didas or any of that and that that's what this frankfurt school came out of this this whole theory idea and critical theory we created these arbitrary racial distinctions for white people to set up and then they created these stereotypes in this legal system that ended up with a disproportionate African American.

It has nothing to do with culture, nothing to do with behavior, nothing to do with anything, but it was about power.

And that's and sexuality is about power.

It's not about love.

It's just power relations.

And so he was trying to say these are anti-liberal and they take all the beauty and all of the nobility out of art and literature and they play these little word games in these tiny little universities and they're dangerous because out of these universities come these larger ideas

that infected Europe.

And we saw what happened in Italy and Germany from it.

And we saw what happened in the 1960s from it.

And they almost destroyed the university here.

I think they have almost.

And that came out of French postmodernism.

that was sort of like this.

The other thing I think is important is that Binda is like Raspaugh, and he's kind of a notorious guy, Camp of the Saints, that was kind of a dystopian novel that everybody said was racist, but it's not, it's more than just race-based, it's kind of apocalyptic, or Raymond Aran, or Camus,

or any of these French intellectuals who are not socialist or communist.

They're always really brilliant people.

They have to be to function in France.

And usually they're tried by fire.

And they're experienced.

They know how to argue.

They know how to write.

And,

you know, it's Jacques Barzon dawned a decadence.

Same thing, a French intellectual came out to the United States.

So

Pierre Minot, yeah.

Every time you see a French intellectual that's on the right, they're pretty brilliant people.

They really are.

And Camus was that way.

He wasn't a man of the right, but he was a sensible person like Binda.

And

the other thing is, I mentioned a little bit with Sammy, it is true that these pernicious ideas that lead to thousands of people killed, whether they're advanced from the universities, you know, like Heidegger in Germany

or wherever they're advanced.

Remember Paul de Man, the big Yale postmodernist who turned out to be a complete Nazi sympathizer during the war.

But when you look at the politicians,

they're all from the upper, upper classes, and they all were very well educated.

And I'm talking about,

relatively speaking, Pol Pot,

Shea, Castro,

even Mao was from an upscale peasant family,

better than the alternative.

Lenin, very wealthy.

Trotsky, very wealthy.

Marx, pretty wealthy.

So

I think everybody's got to realize that the university is a very explosive, dangerous place.

It has a lot to recommend itself, but out of that,

it attracts some very, very wealthy, privileged people who feel that they're not going to change their everyday life because it's too good to give up, but they're going to compensate by creating an ideology.

It's going to be very destructive for people.

And they're going to mass that selfishness on their part with a worldview that I'm for the people, the hoi for hoi poi,

and I'm for social justice, and I'm for diversity, equity.

You can really see it.

A lot of the BLM people, Hannah Nicole Jones and Ms.

Quellars, and the architects of BLM,

you can really see that they were not poor people.

They were educated, they were privileged, and they were destructive.

And they did a lot of damage before they,

in the case of the founders of BLM, absconded with the proverbial money.

Yeah.

And we just talked about Karanga.

He's another good example, the Kwanzi guy.

They're all very dangerous people and they're everywhere.

We see them come and go.

They come.

Kendi came out of nowhere.

Tanahisi Coates came out of nowhere.

And then all of a sudden they cash in and they do all this.

Cash.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like they win Powerball almost.

Seven-figure with cash in for all of them.

Hey, Victor, I know we're pretty crushed today for time for this particular episode.

So we're going to have to

wrap it up, but I'm going to spring something on you quickly because it just came to me and I just wanted to mention it.

Of late in the last few weeks,

someone we both know, Douglas Murray, I think because you said something about Britain before,

he has been so damn good writing and reporting from the middle, from

Israel, and also taking on that, gosh, he tore a new one for that, I can't remember his name, the lefty Turk Senjuk, something like that.

Douglas Murray is really

a treasure now, and he's really become very important to defending the things we believe in.

So

anyway, I just felt like saying that.

If you want to say anything quickly to wrap this up, let's

he's been very good.

He and Bruce Thornton wrote the best books on

the

flaws or what's happening to Europe demographically and ideologically.

Bruce wrote a really great book.

So did he

about Europe.

But he's been very good

in comparing in very explicit graphic detail what Hamas does versus what Israel does.

And I think

I've tried to write a lot about that, but all these people that are protesting just have to ask them some questions.

And they don't ask these questions just for the reasons we're talking about power and settlers and victim and victimizer.

They're not talking about humanity.

They just, all they do is they look at a situation and they say, which is the side that has been more successful?

They don't even say more successful.

They think that success was stolen from somebody else.

But the Israelis have more power.

No, they don't.

There's only 10 million of them.

They're in a sea of 500 million Arabs.

And had they conducted their society along the premises of Syria or Iraq or Lebanon, they'd be extinct now.

But they were antithetical to the region around them that gave 10 million people a quality and a prosperity and a security that is inexplicable had they adopted the normal values.

But they just look at that and then they just block out everything.

They don't say to themselves, who mutilates, who decapitates, who incinerates, who desecrates, who mass rapes, who uses shields, who kills prisoners, who rapes hostages, who takes hostages, who sends missiles every single day into civilian areas with no texting about civilians, with no leaflets like the IDF does.

Who goes out in the street behind somebody that's crippled or as a human shield?

They don't ask that.

They just say, who has the power?

And they got the power because they were bad.

And the people who don't have the power are good.

That's why they don't have power because they're good.

No, they don't have power because there's a lot of reasons why they don't have power.

And that's not because they're good people in Hamas.

And they're weak because they do certain things that turn people off

and are counterproductive.

And final thing.

I've been wrestling with this question of the Gazan people because when you read about this latest

New York Times, about it wasn't just Hamas people that were raping Jack.

They were people who brought along machetes.

Hey, I hear Hamas has broke into Israel.

Give me the machete.

Take it out under the sofa.

I got to get in on it.

I got to get over there and rape and behead some Jews.

That was kind of the attitude.

Five or six hundred of them.

And then when you see the people who were brought back and the treatment of the crowd, they

yelled at them, spat on them.

And then when the hostages were released, they swarmed the

Red Cross Crescent ambulances as if they wanted to attack the, they voted for these people.

So

it's a two-state solution with these.

So, yes, I hope that we get relief to the Gaussans, but this idea,

and when you see the manifestations of the Gazan cause here in the United States with people yelling and screaming about killing Jews and destroying Israel and wearing masks and breaking the law and hitting policemen and blocking normal commerce and swarming roads and making people late for flights.

Maybe somebody should sue them for,

you know,

I don't know what you would call it, but it was destroying people's lives.

I mean, we go after everybody else.

Maybe it's interstate racketeering.

And people could sue for the damages if they lost a kidney because of that.

I hope and sue the leaders.

But there has to be some concept.

We're not going to find justice

under the Joe Biden administration.

No, we're not.

No, no, no.

We're not.

And there's going to be no justice.

And there's going to be no normality because he is a puppet who is being run

by

the hard, hard left.

And the hard, hard left is now Barack Obama, who's saying, you know what?

I wanted to get re-elected.

I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to get a big Netflix $100 million contract.

I wanted to get four mansions.

And I couldn't have done that had I been Mr.

Revolutionary.

But now I got all of that.

I'm a wealthy man.

I have mansions.

I'm worth several hundred million dollars.

And life's very good.

And I'm going to dial it in, just like I dreamed once it was the ideal.

I'm going to dial in my radical agenda to this facade called Joe Biden.

And that's where we are.

Well, Victor, one last thing as we close out out today, and thanks for all the wisdom you shared, my friend.

And thanks for those who, no matter what platform you listen to the Victor Davis-Hanson show on, thank you.

Those who are on iTunes and Apple can leave zero to five stars, and many most leave five.

Thank you.

Some leave comments.

Here's a comment.

I listen to you often.

I'm 91 years of age and keeping up with the current discussions.

Your words are of great value and are only a few available to the listening ears.

I am thankful for the many years of sorting through to find truth.

Thank you, Mary, Mary 93.

So, Victor, good old Mary's.

Loving listening to you and

you're important to her, still gleaning truth.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, everyone.

Yeah, thanks to those.

Oh, visit civilthoughts.com.

Sign up for the free email weekly newsletter.

Hi, Jack Fowler, write.

Thanks very much for those who do that.

Victor, God bless you.

God bless us all.

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

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody.