Locking Horns In Politics

Hi, I'm William Googe, a Vuri collaborating professional ultra runner from the UK. I love to tackle endurance runs around the world, including a 55-day, 3,064-mile run across the US.

So, I know a thing or two about performance wear. My go-to daily short is the core short from View.

It's perfect for my daily run in the gym, strength training, or even when I'm taking a day off, relaxing, doing some stretching, and recovering the best way I can.

Check them out by visiting viewery.com/slash William.

That's v-u-o-r-i.com/slash William, where new customers can receive 20% off their first order, plus enjoy free shipping in the US on orders over $75 and free returns.

Exclusions apply, visit the website for full terms and conditions.

Hello, ladies, hello, gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hanson Show.
I'm Jack Fowler, the host. We are recording on Sunday, June 4th, 2023.
Happy Pride Month, Victor.

I didn't like that tone of your voice. It seemed to me homophobic.

Excuse me, transphobic. Well, I have maybe I'm both.

I'm

biphobic.

Hey, Victor Davis Hanson, who just spoke, is the Martin Enely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky. Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

His official home on the World Wide Web is the Blade of Perseus with the web address of Victorhanson S-O-N.com. And we'll talk more about that later.

We'll begin today's podcast by getting Victor's thoughts on some matters political involving Chris Christie and Donald Trump and political crudity.

And let's get Victor's thoughts about those things right after these important messages.

Ever notice that everyone always wants more of a good thing? More rewards, more savings, more special offers?

Well, when you become a new member of the Shell Fuel Rewards program, that's exactly what you get. More.

Join today to save 10 cents per gallon on your first fill, 20 cents on the second, and 30 cents on the third. Then enjoy everyday savings afterwards.
Want more?

Then head to Shell where members get more. Offer ballot from 421.25 to 1231.26 at participating shell locations.
Offer must be redeemed within 60 days of registration. Limit 20 gallons.

Restrictions apply. Visit fuelrewards.com/slash join25 for more information.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance. As a business owner, you take a lot of roles.
Marketer, bookkeeper, CEO.

But when it comes to small business insurance, Progressive has you cover.

They offer discounts on commercial auto insurance, customizable coverages that can grow with your business, and reliable protection for whatever comes your way.

Count on Progressive to handle your insurance while you do, well, everything else. Quote today in as little as eight minutes at Progressive Commercial.com.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company.

Coverage provided and serviced by affiliated and third-party insurers. Discounts and coverage, selections not available in all states or situations.

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

Victor, I must admit, before we get into these topics, I want to encourage our listeners to listen to the most recent podcasts you've done, which I haven't. I have to read it again.

I haven't listened to them yet, but I'm excited to.

You and Sammy discussing recent political matters, and then you also had an interview, you interviewed Heather McDonald from the Manhattan Institute.

So, I strongly encourage our listeners to catch up with those, Victor. I want to present to you a trio of political items that you can take apart as you wish.
One has to do with crudity,

and that's my word. But this is Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost was at some concert in Washington, D.C.
the other day. And from the stage,

he said

F,

but not with the F, with the four letters,

Ron DeSantis.

And my thought here, Victor, is that we have just seen an increase in

vulgarity, crudeness

from our political leaders that kind of defies the

hopes and dreams and we had that all our leaders would be people like Washington and Lincoln. Then we have Chris Christie announcing

that he will be running for president and the object of his effort will be to attack Donald Trump, who he used to advise, allegedly. And Victor, the third thing is to me a little weird.

It's Donald Trump appraising this past week the announcement that North Korea will have a seat on the World Health Organization, which all our listeners know about the WHO,

not the band, but

the band of Marxists. It's actually run by a freaking Marxist

and who might actually

obtain...

rights

to be given to them by the Biden administration unless somehow Republicans in the Congress can stop it to almost have some fiat role over American health policy. But who

has a North Korean on its board? And Donald Trump

praised this. I never understood the Trump and North Korea

kissy face stuff. So another example of it.
Victor, three stories there. What are your thoughts on any or all of them?

Well,

let's start with Congressman Frost. There's so many things about that that are disturbing.

So he gets into this concert. He's a congressman.

He's from Florida. He's from a heavily

Democratic district, obviously. And he starts saying F, F, F.

And you know, what I don't like about it is this.

In the 50s, 60s,

F was a working class word, blank, the boss or that, but it was a, it had some effect because of its rarity. What it is now is just a filler word, a fillip.
And you know what gets me really angry?

It's it's voiced by elites.

Oh,

when they twitter, tweet or they do, they just add it like they're really psychodramatic, especially women use it a lot. And it has lost all currency.
You know, what the, you know, this kind of stuff.

That's the first, and it's, it's kind of to me, it has the same repugnance as this new phrase, Jack, y'all, you know, that southern

somewhat black patois. When you have all of these nasal-voiced, skinny-armed, left-wing

inhabitants of the swamp in Washington or university campus, and they go, hey, y'all!

Or you have very wealthy, elite black people who have never been to the south and do not live in the inner city, and they all have to say, y'all, as if that's going to give them some kind of fee days.

And so it's like the F word. It means nothing.

And so this guy just mouse off and it's just a further incidence of crudity. And, you know, this is going to be more controversial, but we have really lost the ability

because of the systematic destruction of civic education in this country to inculcate with American values and traditions the legal immigrant and the second generation immigrant.

And we saw that with Ms. Mohammed, who was born in Yemen, and she comes over to this country country

and she is the beneficiary of financial support. She gets a law degree, and what does she do? She gives a 24-gun blast at her host, country that took her in.

And when I listened to that speech, I thought, well, what's the alternative? The wonderful...

calm country of Yemen and its renowned treatment of women or the lack of racial prejudice in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia? Or is it the status of women in, I don't know, Iran? Is that what you'd like?

So, in this case, this guy's mom, I think, is Lebanese and his dad

from Haiti.

And so he's a son of immigrants. It used to be when you were son of immigrants, you were hyper-American.

But when the host lost all confidence in their own values and thought it was mean or culturally appropriative to

i guess indoctrination to allow immigrants and their families some

idea of what america was before they got here and why they got here then you get this type of stuff and we see that with the squad to talib and aoc when they have second generation they they don't have they feel that they have more affinities with their parents country than their own that that's bothersome about this guy The other thing, Walker Mann, and

Donald Trump goes back to a characteristic of Trump, one that I've never felt comfortable with, and that is to the degree Donald Trump

forges a personal relationship with a foreign leader and the foreign leader reciprocates in a friendly manner, then he transmogrifies that one-on-one until diplomatic success. So in his case,

this guy,

Kim,

was threatening the West Coast. Remember that in 2016, 17, 18? And Trump comes in and says, you know, little Rocket Man, I've got a bigger button than yours.
And all the left went crazy.

And then Rocket Man got paranoid and China told him to shut the blank up.

And so

They exchanged letters and they got to be friendly.

And friendly as you can be if you're the president president of the United States and you're a thug, the head of a nightmarish communist gulag.

But out of that, then Trump,

he doesn't contextualize that at all. He just says he's a good guy and da-da-da-da-da.
And he's not. He's not.
And if he had,

if he had have said, screw you, Trump, then Trump would have said, you know,

he's a nightmary Stalin-like dictator of a failed state. And that's, that's something something that Trump, it can be a strength because he has no preconditions on diplomacy.

So he can make strides, like I think he did with North Korea. He didn't give up anything except the idea that he wasn't going to blow them up if they kept threatening us.

And we got good behavior out of it. So I'm not criticizing him, but when you predicate everything on personal loyalty to his

Godhead, Then you get in domestically like his attack on Kaylee McInnan, you know, his former press secretary, who we used to go up on that podium and just get attacked for one hour.

And she would ex temporary

fight back. And then when they asked her for proof, she'd flip open her notebook and rattle off data.
And she did a really wonderful job. She had

preventative breast surgery for breast cancer at that time. She looks kind of frail sometimes.
And all of a sudden, she

downplays the lead. I don't know whether it was inadvertently or not, the actual margin of Trump's lead in Iowa were DeSantis from 40 to 30.

And then suddenly,

Trump says, let the rhinos and the globalists have her and calls her Milk Toast.

It just,

why do that to somebody? So that, so for people like me that are strong Trump supporters, we have been,

you just don't want to see that and you get tired of it, especially when there are alternatives. And then Chris Christie, well,

I heard Chris Christie right after he was elected, and he spoke at a Hoover event. And I don't know if you remember that period of what was it, 2013, 14.

In that period, he was sort of like the ideal governor that Rick Perry was. Remember, Rick Perry was going to sweep the field in 2000?

People were so excited that he was exactly.

And the same thing with Chris Christie. They said, you know, he's in New Jersey.
He got elected. And then he started to let his ego get control of him

right before the midterms. Remember that hug he had with Obama?

Excuse me, that was actually right before the election.

The election itself. That had to do with the hurricane.

And that was unnecessary. And then.

And then there was the bridge call.

I don't know the full truth of the accusations, but the idea that he shut down a bridge over personal pick and there were people people in emergency vehicles that were affected was bad.

And then there was that damning picture of, remember when the beaches were all shut down and he had his state residence and he's out there on the beach?

Oh, during, and he's got this sort of rotund figure that it looked, it wasn't a flattering picture. It was a picture of self-indulgence, both

enjoying himself at a time that his state was shut down. And then

a guy like that shouldn't be seen at the beach in the fashion that he was. And then what I got most angry about, if you remember the first debate,

he and Giuliani and others.

We're talking about 2020 now. 2020, yes.

And I had written

before that and after that debate, I had written and said, do not underestimate Joe Biden.

And by that, I didn't mean that he was cognitively all there, but I meant that he would take a week off and sleep 14 hours a day and get on a new nocturnal schedule, nocturnal for him being like eight at night.

And probably they would the day before pump him up with previgin and Adderall and everything, right?

And for a brief moment of one or two hours, he would be coherent. And I had said that.

And then I thought, you know, when Trump got in the big argument and they canceled that third debate, remember there were all the evidence that was it named Steve Sater or whatever the guy was named, forgot his name, and CNN had been lying and said that his account had been hacked when he wrote Scaramucci for advice about how to moderate the debate.

And he said, oh, no, that wasn't me. And he lied.
And so there was a lot of pressure on Trump either to get out or to modify the rules.

And I think what he did, when they canceled the third debate, he should have demanded an extension from an hour and a half to two or three hours.

And I think that would have done Biden in because I don't think he could have done it for more than an hour and a half. But instead, they gave him bad advice.

They said, be rude, interrupt him, rattle his cage, destroy him in the first 15 minutes. And who was that? It was Christie and Giuliani and a few others.
So they did. That's what he did.

And he came off as a bully. I thought he did.
I thought he had, and

that being said, I thought he had a wonderful, he clearly won the second debate. He didn't do that.
He rattled off facts and figures and made Biden look silly.

And the problem was that given early in mail-in voting, by the the time of the second debate, 50 million people had already voted. And so he really got taken on the debates.
But what I get him angry,

Christie hit some of the cable network news as a commentator and tore Trump apart. You remember that for the first debate? And I'm thinking, USOB,

you counseled him.

to do this and now you're on critiquing your own advice when it blew up in Trump's trump's face not that trump was you know exempt from criticism because he didn't have to take the advice so i i'm not a big fan of chris christie and we know what he is he's a drone kamikaze he's a torpedo that's going to blow up so he's going to get on that stage this august and he's going to try to do what to trump what he advised trump to do to biden he's going to interrupt he's going to yell he's going to do like he and he's got a huge ego he blew up the the marco rubio campaign when remember he said all you can do is recite the same thing and that was kind of a very it was true but it was very cruel in the way he did it and he and so after that everybody thought wow

he's kind of a

he's a kamikaze man he's a suicide bomber you gotta oh boy and when he announced that he's gonna run all these left-wing commentators were just giddy trump he's gonna go after trump he's gonna blow trump up he's gonna do this and then the other thing is, I.

Can you imagine the nicknames

Trump would give him?

I know. I know.

We won't.

But I think there's a bit.

I think

Trump abuses the idea of disloyalty, but disloyalty is a little different than ingratitude. And Mike, what I'm saying is that Christie was done, finished, kaput.

He just did terribly when he ran for president. He was obnoxious.

He was repulsive in the way that he treated people. Nobody liked him.
And he had no constituency.

I think he left the governorship of New Jersey with the lowest polls of any incumbent governor in modern polling history.

But my point is that

he worked for Trump. Trump brought him in.
Trump. tried to rehabilitate him and then he turned on Trump.
And, you know, Trump says, you know, Kaylee's disloyal. No, she wasn't.

If you work for Trump and you do, and your tenure is over, and you can go ahead and do what you want.

You're not beholden to him for the rest of your life.

But if you are working for him and he is saving you from oblivion, and then you immediately in this same time period turn on him and actively try to abuse him.

you know it's it's not like kaylee missed me remembering 10 points on a poll This guy went out and actually tore apart Trump. So I could go on, but he's not a favorite of mine.

I think the polls reflect that he's not a favorite of anybody's. Yeah, one other thing

maybe

not as bad as

the Obama hugging right

days before the 2012 presidential elections. Do you remember when

Frank Lautenberg died? I think it was Frank Lautenberg.

And he appointed

as governor, he appointed a Republican whose name I totally forget. I think he was the Attorney General of New Jersey, but he appointed him for a short term.

He could have appointed him for a full, like a two-year term, but he appointed him for a very short slice because he had this

act going on with Corey Booker. He was very afraid that Corey Booker was going to challenge

him for governor. Yeah, I remember that.
And so, Republicans could have had

a Republican senator for an additional like year and a half representing New Jersey. And instead, they had just a few months because Chris Christie was worried about that guy was a

attorney general, but you're right. He was a nobody, right? Nobody ever heard of him.
Right. He just stuck him in there.

Yeah, which is, but it was still, it was like, wow, there's a vote. And

so Chris Christie's concern for

broader interests and needs of the Republican Party or conservatism,

you know, I heard him in Washington. He spoke to, as I said, a Hoover group, and we were told he was going to speak for.

20 minutes and he had all these conditions that he had to be somewhere and there would be no questions.

And he was going to, he was a very busy guy. This was at the height of his popularity right after he got elected governor.
And he was the new governor.

Remember, he was a Republican that could win in a blue state. He was a hands-on policy wonk.
He, he knew how to, the end, he was an old tough prosecutor, all that stuff.

He was, you know, he went after Jared Kushner's father and all that. Okay.

I went there and he went on and he went on and he went on and he went on and he went on and he went on. And the 10 or 15 minutes a lot, it was like 45 minutes.

And finally, they were saying, stop already. You know, he wouldn't stop.

So

I don't want to be petty, but

his sole purpose

is to draw blood from Donald Trump. And enough blood that the other sharks on the stage will then turn on Trump and devour a limb here or there.

But he has to be the first one

to be able to draw blood. And that's his role.
Right. Period.

Oh, no. He has another role.

And that is if somebody else should win a haley or desantis or somebody then he would be rewarded with some type of cabinet position but i don't think a de santis would appoint him

gosh well i'm not going to make role comments

all right victor well thanks for those uh political uh observations on those matters we have a few more issues

to uh bring up. And one of them happens to be of our teachers unions and how they really dominated the policymaking related to COVID.
Some new evidence has come out.

And Victor, we'll get your thoughts about this story right after this important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Before we get into this next topic, Victor, I'd like to remind our listeners to visit VictorHanson.com.
That's the Blade of Perseus.

That's Victor's official website.

You know, roam around the website. You'll find links to all sorts of things, Victor's other appearances on other podcasts or radio shows, links to his books, at least descriptions of his books.

I think you can link on

the case for Trump, and it'll actually take you to Amazon that you could purchase it.

Something about that in a second. But you should subscribe.

And one of the reasons for doing that is you will find when you go to the website, there's a lot of stuff that Victor has written as ultra articles, important

stuff that you can't read unless you're subscribing. It's $5

a month, $5 to get in the door, $50 discounted for the year. So subscribe and you will be able to access all this.
exclusive wisdom that Victor's writing strictly for the Blade of Perseus.

As for the books, I really like to recommend with Father's Day coming up. I don't know if Victor, we're allowed to talk about Father's Day anymore.

Maybe

it'll be forbidden soon enough.

But while we still have it, it's coming up. And if your dad or grandfather or whatever is a military history buff,

do check out the books section on the website.

Get some interest there. You'll find, I'll just name three books that I think you should then go to Amazon and consider purchasing.

And one of them is Victor's The Second World War is just a terrific bestseller.

Carnage and Culture, The Savior Generals. There are many other books Victor has written that are related to military history.
But if some that Dad in Your Life is a military history buff,

think about something Victor's written. So, Victor,

let me find, I have to find my article here about this. Here we go.
Here we go. This is a headline from the Daily Wire.

Texts show teachers' unions working with CDC director to keep schools closed. And bear with me, folks, while I just read the beginning of this, and Victor will get your thoughts.

Newly obtained text messages, again, this is from the Daily Wire, show that the heads of both major teachers' unions personally texting then CDC director Rochelle Walensky as the agency was putting together a scientific analysis of reopening schools during coronavirus, with the CDC making a key change that allowed schools to stay closed and appeased the unions.

On February 11, 2021, American Federation of Teachers

President Randy Weingarten texted Walensky, saying that she heard a quote-unquote leak from the New York Times about what was in the CDC's upcoming guidance and expressed concern that it was quote at odds with their discussion end quote they're running with a full speed ahead angle for reopening schools Weingarten wrote she said the Times Center a copy of the internal draft guidance that said quote at any level of community transmission all schools can provide in-person instruction end quote hmm arg Wolensky wrote to the Union Honsho the next day and I'll be finished here in a second listeners Wolensky's agency released guidance that was different.

It said, quote, all schools have options to provide in-person instruction, end quote. That allowed school districts to stay closed while still saying they were following CDC guidelines.

Middle and high schools and virtual-only instruction, unless they can strictly implement all mitigation strategies and have few cases, blah, blah, blah. It added.

So, Victor, oh, of course, Weingarten wrote, thank you

at the the end of this. So what was very important to Randy Guy, Weingarten, head of the AFT, the other big union is the

National Education Association.

You know, she ran roughshod over what I guess was supposed to be medical policy, scientific policy, but it was to appease the members of her union. And that's,

of course, we know.

the catastrophe that's created for America's school children. Yeah, you would think that.
Go ahead. You would think if I was in her place, if I get

an email from some official of the teachers' union and I respond back, then I'm going to have an aide or myself or somebody said, I want to hear from a parents group as well.

But if you don't do that and you're communicating privately in the way that Anthony Fauci was privately with Echo Health,

then all you're doing is substantiating all of these popular suspicions about the swamp, that it's a group of politicians media bureaucrats and left-wing activist groups that are all connected and their primary theme is they're anti-democratic they don't want popular input and so

all of those we've had people at hoover have looked at this question and they have data it's it's pretty

impressive that

we're not going to recover from it very quickly that that two-year hiatus, in some cases longer, where children didn't physically go to a school or the teachers weren't engaging with them one-on-one

was lost. And it was lost at a very important age.

And it wasn't lost for any medical reason because we know now that people from about five all the way up to 18 were in very little danger of getting a serious case of COVID.

Not that it couldn't happen,

but in the case of males, say from 12 to 30, there was a greater risk from the vaccination than there was from a deleterious case of COVID. So

she had no business coordinating with the teachers' unions. And that brings up a final question.

I don't quite get this because I know a lot of teachers. I have a lot of teachers in my family.
I'm a teacher.

But when you get a blank check just to stay home and you can teach on Zoom, well, then that's a joke. It's a gift.
You don't have to drive. You don't have to go into work.

And so as soon as this thing's over, then they all started playing the victim. Oh, my God.

We were under threat of COVID and we're not going to go back. You're trying to kill teachers.

And I thought to myself, you remember that, Jack?

oh, you're not going to put me in the classroom. Oh, we're not going to have.
And I thought to myself, who delivers your washer when it's it's burned out? Some guy on Amazon?

Hey, when you get a fuel pump that goes out on your truck, which happened to me yesterday, who brings that? Who makes it? So

you expect all of the all hoi paloi, all over the United States, get up every morning and cook your waffles at the restaurant and make your bed at the hotel and deliver gasoline at the service station, why you, the anointed one, would not dare be forced to go out in the big wide world and teach kids as you're paid, much more highly paid than the people who serve you every day, their landscaper, the nanny, the cook, etc.

So that gets that union

that unionization really rubs people the wrong way. Why do I say that? Because we know that when state laws are overturned that mandate

mandatory, I should say when they require require mandatory teachers' dues,

the union participation goes down to about 25%, if not lower. In other words, if a teacher is given the chance of not paying $1,000 or $1,200, they will take it and get out of the union.

And I know that speaking as a professor in the California State University system from 1984 to 2005,

for the first period of my tenure, if you wanted to join the California Faculty Association, that was a voluntary voluntary thing, cost about a thousand bucks.

And I can tell you that they were in an impoverished union. And when they would like to have pizza, you know, hey, there's going to be a pizza thing for the Union Friday in the lounge.

And that meant you go there and they had some,

I don't know, cheap Me and Ed's local company called Me and Ed's Pizza. And they had no money.
And they had all these people. And then Gray Davis made a deal with them.

He he

passed a law he was the forerunner of arnold schwarzenegger remember he was recalled 20012

and he mandated that every

and there's 25 000 faculty member give a t a due and that was about

you know, it's over a thousand. So it was over 25, 30, 40 million.
It's more than that now out of your check. And you know what happened, Jack?

Suddenly, instead of asking everybody to show up and so show solidarity and canvas the, they didn't want anybody showing up.

It was private. And they didn't have little meetings of pizza.
They had it at nice restaurants. And then we started, yes, we started getting communiques from them that

just on warning, if we don't have people of color elected to

this committee or this board, we have the right to pick people and override the election. And they started doing things like that.

The next thing I knew, I shouldn't say the next thing, the first thing they did, we had passed a law that said the CSU system shall institute merit pay, merit pay. That was under Pute Wilson.

In other words, and that was striking too, because you'd be teaching and you'd see people who came in maybe for three hours,

three times a week, and they were gone. They were selling real estate.
They were selling cars. They were lifelong tennis players.
They never published a thing. They had terrible teeth.

And guess what, Jack? All of a sudden, they were showing up. And all of a sudden, the doors to their office were plastered with all of their Resgesti.

Professor Smith attended a conference this week in Boston, you know, on the door. And Professor Jones was mentioned in a seminal article in a footnote and that kind of stuff.

And it was just a radical change of mentality because they were so desperate to get a merit pay that they were exaggerating anytime they sneezed. But at least they started to show up.

And

then

guess what? Excuse me, Victor. I think you really knew a professor who bragged about being mentioned in a footnote.
I mean, that

you're not being comical. That's for me.

I knew a lot of. professors that bragged about being mentioned in footnotes.
Wow.

I knew a lot that would like to brag and were never mentioned in footnotes because they never wrote a damn thing in their entire life and they were there 40 years. But my point

was that as soon as

Gray Davis passed the law that said you had to contribute to the union,

almost immediately merit pay was

junked. And then all of that brief spurt of so-called selfless industry for the students and for the scholarly community and for the university community just vanished.
And it was like, it was like,

and then not to be outdone, they had something called retroactive parody or something.

So those of us who had published a lot and got merit pay never got merit paid again, but we had in our pay contract steps.

So there was, you were actually held back while the other people could catch up to you. And so it was, it was kind of like a French Revolutionary Union.

And wow, it was that's that's things things are still that's what teachers' unions do. In California, a couple of things, Victor.

You know, listeners may know that the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 the Janice decision. I've written about it for National Review and some ensuing pieces, Shurnar, but it was a First Amendment case.

But in practical terms, it said any government worker, which means a teacher,

has a right to their free speech, and they do not have to belong to the union. They can opt out.
Actually, they need to be told

when, let's say, you're new and you're applying for a job at Los Angeles County as a teacher, you're supposed to be informed of your Janus rights.

That never happens. And, like with a lot of these important Supreme Court cases, ensuing cases are needed for

the actual enforcement. But in Los Angeles,

the rights of teachers are, in this regard, are suppressed. You're right, Victor, when people are told that they have the right.
Oh, it's massive. And they clear out.

But now Wisconsin was one of the best examples. It was massive flight from the union.

Yeah, and it's in some cases, and not only beyond teachers, I know the Freedom Foundation, where you spoke there, I think, a year or two ago, that's their real passion. And they have helped

essentially politically bankrupt some

government workers' unions, SEIU, and others in Washington state and Oregon. But last thing I'll babble about is that

in California, I don't know this is passed, but I think it's percolating through the legislature, is to give

teachers

a tax credit now. They're so afraid of the teachers leaving the unions and and government workers leaving the unions and therefore killing the cash cow for the Democratic Party, right?

Because that's what the union dues do.

They bankroll the left. They will give a tax credit if you stay in the union, if you pay your union dues.
So I don't understand it.

I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which is always one of, I would rather, and I've had, I think, nine root canals. I would rather have a root canal or even an implant than go to the DMV.

You try to do it all online, but there's certain times they sent me my license stickers, which I paid for my new registration, but they forgot to put the year in.

It's okay.

I went over there and I tried to get a sticker. I made an appointment and it was packed.
And I go to the door and they said, well, how do we know that you don't have two stickers?

And I said, what do you mean? And they said, well, we mailed it out. I said, I didn't get it.
I went online to make appointments.

So my point is I was looking at this woman talking to me and everybody behind the counter, 20 people all over the building, had bluish-purple S-E-I-U-union t-shirts on.

And then on the back, it said strike exclamation point.

And I just said to her, I was kidding, I said, Wow, you guys are

right in front of customers. You're reminding us that you're going to strike as public employees.
And she goes, How, how, how seriously do you want your sticker?

And I said, oh, you really? Yeah. Yeah.
And that was about five or six years ago. And, but I couldn't believe that government employees were wearing union t-shirts.

And I thought to myself, what if you were one of the people at this California DMV office who had exercised their right to get out of the union? Would you still wear the blue t-shirts?

Because every single person had them on. Or would you, you know, it's kind of like when

I won't, I have to be careful here because it involves where I work, but if you have a Black Lives or a Black Pride Day for employees, and it's basically a synonym for Black Lives Matter, and you're all on Zoom during COVID,

how do you

do you put your name there, but not your picture? If you put your picture there, do you have some Black Lives Matter? Matter insignia?

So you can see what we're getting to. It's kind of Soviet in a way that when these unions or these employer groups or whatever group get into the social realm and they try to get

a theme or a political narrative or an activist agenda

publicized, they force it down people's throats. And then everybody reacts in a very frightened way or they rat on.
people

or they say we're scared or we're you know this or we're gonna we're gonna have a pride lapel or we're going to have this for everybody. But if you don't participate, what does that say?

And that's just, you know,

violence is violence. That's what they say.
This all started with the idea of the oppressive, rich, and the 1%, the elite, I get it.

During the 30s and 40s, unions, New Deal, alphabet soup bureaucracies. That was the whole point.

And now it's gone to a Soviet level where these people are judge, jury, and executioner bureaucrats. They have enormous powers over the individual.

They're very sensitive and they go out and try to destroy people's lives that criticize them, whether it's the FBI, CIA, IRS, DMV,

and they're not the friend of the average citizen.

Well, they and they rule the, you know, the government worker unions rule the legislatures in many states. What I can't take is a self-righteousness.
When I was at Cal State Fresno

and they were going on a strike or there were layoffs or there was some question whether we were going to, we had a pay freeze when the state periodically, as soon as it was run by a Democratic administration, it would melt down and it had no money, it couldn't borrow.

And California being California, they would lay off people or they would freeze our pay. And I can remember, I think it was 93, they froze our pay for two years.

So we were working nine months and we were getting about $65,000 a year at that time. I thought that was heaven.
And I would come home on the farm.

And that year we lost about $150,000 and had to mortgage. And we worked, you know, you got to, that was my famous thing when I went to the land bank to negotiate the loan.

And the loan officer, very astute old guy, crusty, hey, Mr. Hansen, how do you like? I just figured it out.
You worked about 3,000 hours, maybe your job and everything.

Everything you made at your job paid for the amount you lost at your tractor. Would you like to teach or would you like to get on that spray rig and pay $28 an hour? How's that? Ha ha.

Well, his point was that you either don't know what you're doing or you have no business in farming, you're losing money. But my point is that I would see people all

around the countryside working like dogs on tractors, forklifts, picking peaches, pruning vine, you name it. and getting very little compensation.

And then I would go up to this place with lifetime employment, tenure, nine months out of the year.

And we had a quote unquote crushing teaching load of four semester classes, 12 hours required in the classroom of the 40 who are supposed to be there. And it was like,

you know, there were wounded fawns. Oh, my God, this is horrible.
This is terrible. Why are they going?

And that's something that's really hurt the academic reputation, this shrill, self-righteous, victimized, oh, don't dare. I have a PhD.
Oh,

I'm on the trenches of social activism. I'm teaching.
I'm threatened.

I could be infected any day by COVID. I just, it gets sick of it.
I don't mind martyrs when they're real martyrs.

So if any of you guys are

18-wheeler trucker and you're driving 18 hours or whatever you have to do, and it's rainy or it's foggy and you're going over the grapevine, I have nothing but admiration for you, but I do not have it for whiny teachers because I've been one and I've been in both worlds.

And believe me, I would rather teach to 58 students in Greek history and spend all semester correcting their papers than climb down in a 15-foot septic tank and shovel crap, which I've done.

And a lot of people do stuff like that.

So I'm really sick of all of that self-righteous stuff that comes out of these unions and teachers in particular victor you're you may have been a teacher you're not a whiny teacher okay i wasn't i was i i didn't have a lot of friends when i was in um i still teach i still teach i teach every at hillsdale i'm going to teach at pepperdyne this year but i i don't like whiny professors and teachers right

um for listeners interested in what's going on in california um broadly but

on this uh union union stuff, I suggest

checking out the California Policy Center website.

They are punching above their weight, but they're, you know, they're fighting a Goliath, but it's a great, a great organization that takes a, puts a lot of attention into these issues.

Victor, let's talk quickly, if you don't mind, and then we're going to take a little commercial break and have one more issue. But I just want to get in here.

I know you've talked with Sammy and we've we've talked in previous podcasts about Bud Light and all this

just the insanity of woke corporate culture. But I did want to get in, get your quick thoughts on this headline.
Bud Light will donate $200,000 to support LGBTQ business owners of color.

This is a piece from looking at National Review from two days ago.

This is the second year in a row that Bud Light is doing.

Let me just read this one paragraph quickly in in 2022 but anheuser-busch announced bud light's partnership with the national lgbt

chamber of commerce and a 200 000 donation to the chambers communities

of colors initiative and anheuser-busch just announced uh the other day uh that bud lights

continued partnership with this entity and another donation of 200,000. So Victor, you know, two things here to me.
I talk about intersectionality

from the left perspective.

You know, gay, whatever, plus, and

business of color

must have a higher

kind. I find it hard to imagine a higher accrediting on the leftist scale, but that it's by Bud Light

doing this in the teeth of it, of the public outrage at what it looks like. Yeah, it's

it's

I went in the supermarket the other day and this little town that I go, and you can see it, that nobody is buying it.

And I guess they think that they've lost that constituency for good, and it represents about 25%.

And because they're a multi-faceted corporation, they can write off Bud Light sales. And while they would rather have the adoration or the approval of the Malibu

left-wing university crowd, or because there is no constituency of transgendered people of color, believe me, there's about one percent of one percent of one percent.

And so they are pandering because they feel that they

may have

not been as enthusiastic about Mulvaney as they should be. After, I mean,

he was kind of almost a terrorist in the sense that he blew up their entire company. And he did it by

not talking about how tasteful bud is, or what a good flavor, or what a good texture, or how well you feel, or what a cold beer. He talked about himself when he did those commercials.

And nobody wants to hear about anybody's self, particularly that guy, because he comes off as a phony and self-indulgent and a narcissist. And his transgenderism is secondary to that.

And then when you go into people of color, I think that is a larger question. And we're reaching,

I think, a critical mass in this country when people are trying to say, okay,

we are a post-racial society. It's been 60 years since the civil rights movement.

We are into the third and fourth generation.

We have people now who are in their 30s coming out of college, into the workplace, promotions, getting to positions of authority that have never,

never

been in any system of Jim Crow.

And the idea that you're going to fault one group of people for eight generations ago. In the present, you're going to fault them for something that they had nothing to do with eight generations ago.

And you're going to reward another group for something they had nothing to do eight generations ago is just insane. In the case of the

so ask yourself this, what if the person said, bud said,

you know, we have a lot of loyal drinkers among the lower middle classes. So,

and we've had East Palestine, so I want to

we want to help reach out to all the lower middle class, poor white people who have been loyal customers, who have small businesses.

So we're going to give a $200,000 grants to lower middle class people of whiteness. How's that? How would people like that?

And my point is: well, that's racist. Well, why?

Do you really believe that a person who's 22 years old in East Palestine has A, had privilege, that he rages all the time, that he's in any way a supremacist, that he has a better life than Oprah or Eric Colder?

Or

what?

So if you're, I guess what I'm saying, if you go down down that tribalist corporate path and you start identifying people of color, and by the way, how do you know who's a person of color?

Is who's a person of color? A guy from Argentina whose name is Mendez, it has blue eyes and blonde hair, trills czar. Is he a person of color? If he has a franchise?

How do you know what makes transgender? The person who in 2000 there was what

20 out of 100,000. In 2017, there's suddenly 50 out of 2,000.
Now there's 5,000. Do we really believe there was an epidemic of transgenderism?

That there were all those many transgenders, 5% of the population that wanted, there's no data for it.

And so I guess what I'm getting at is that this, when they keep lying to us and using this Orwellian language of inclusivity, when it's exclusive, what they're basically saying is: we're going to give $200,000 not

to any of our sexual heterosexual people that we do not want to give. And we do not want to give money to anybody who is so-called white.

And in our infinite wisdom, our superb, brilliant corporate team that figured out and crafted this brilliant ad campaign with Mr. Mulbaney can tell who is a person of color and who is transgender.

And that's the message. And so people are just saying, count me out.

And so if they had 25%

steady loss every week, I think they'll go up to 30.

I think they're corporate people. So they've had their accountants come in with their computer programs and they've already told them that some magic number, 26 per 20, 20, it's going to bottom out.

Because that's an enormous multi-billion.

And then they've had another accountant that says that we can, I've studied 20 of these boycotts and they, they crest to eight months or they, and two years from now, it'll be gone.

That's what they're assured.

But we don't know because this is simultaneous, multifaceted phenomenon that includes the Dodgers and Target and Disney. If you look at what Disney did to its franchises,

the

Pixar cartoon series, they destroyed. They've destroyed the Indiana Jones series.
They've destroyed the Marvel comic book series.

They're destroying all of their franchises by this woke agenda. People don't like it.
Right. And, you know, corporations come and go too, Victor.

If you look at the Dow, Fortune 500 or whatever companies from, say, 1980, then most of them are not around anymore. And why

does Iger

will

persist forever? And then they antagonize the consumer. Think about the Iger idea.
He was successful at Disney in the pre-woke period when they kept out of politics.

And then his successor dabbled with

woke. And then he trashed him from the sidelines and convinced the board to bring him back.
And he was a full woke. And so he has done more damage than his supposed failed predecessor.

And he keeps doubling down.

And

I guess

You keep doubling down and you're going to get a lot of people angry.

And we're going to see

what the ultimate result is.

But if the left and the corporate keep doubling down on identity politics and keep tribalizing us and putting us into gender and sexual orientation, sex, and race, and ethnic background slots,

when they have no ability to either know what the particular historical grievance against the majority is or what qualifies a person to be in that slot in a multiracial society, of which 50 million people were not born in the United States and another 50 million have mixed ancestries.

And it's just the height of arrogance. And it's not going to work.
People are really, really tired of it. Like you can feel it.
You can really feel it. And I'm talking about

you know, Barry Weiss and Elon Musk and Bill Maher and Garrison Keeler, all these people who have been to some degrees victims of it, or they've had friends that have been victimized.

They just can't take it anymore, especially when

you don't qualify class. So when Bud says this, you think, well, what if somebody's got a very successful business and they're very, very wealthy and they were born into wealth? They're not hurting.

That's like saying the Duchess of Sussex is hurting because she's...

she's half black.

Or, you know, that Mrs. Mohammed, I couldn't believe that when she was addressing the

city of university law school and she went on zionism and israel and white supremacy and she had kind of a white shawl and i swear to god that was the whitest woman i've ever seen in my life she was pure she i thought she was an albino she was so white and so i thought to myself now what

What characterizes whiteness in you, white supremacy? So you've got

a law degree from a pretty good school. So, you probably got some type of privilege to get in there.
It's very hard to do. You're an immigrant.

So, you came in to this country and you've done very, very well. And now you're going to be a lawyer with a high income and you're very white.

So, I think you have white privilege if such a thing exists, and yet you're trashing it.

I don't get that at all.

And I guess what she's saying is those guys in East Palestine that have nothing, they have no white privilege. They have white privilege and she doesn't.
She's whiter than they are.

And so

I don't, I think when you start using these, it's so funny how the classifications of the old Confederacy come back.

The one drop rule, the 116th rule about genetic or racial purity, states' rights, nullifying federal law, segregated spaces, segregation in the dorm, segregation in graduations.

It's so strange how the left, to implement their tribalist agenda, they said to themselves, hmm, there's got to be models out there of smart guys that knew how to do this. Well, there is.

There's South Africa and there is the old Confederacy and the Antebollum South, and that's what we're going to do. Maybe Dixie should be the theme song of the left.

No disrespect to my southern friends.

Well, Victor, we have one more topic to bring up, and that has to do with

students and loans and deferments. And we'll get to that right after this final important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen show. Again, we're recording on June 4th.
And, Victor, I had wanted to bring this article up last week when we were recording previous podcasts.

We didn't have the time.

It's a New York, excuse me, Wall Street Journal, op-ed by Michael Toth, who is an attorney from Austin, Texas. And the headline is: The draft student loan forgiveness and college privilege.

So, as we're talking today, Victor, I know

the

Congress has voted, at least the majority of both houses, to

rescind this Biden rescinding of student loans. He'll probably veto it, may veto it by the time this podcast

is aired. There's a case before the United States Supreme Court on student loans.
So this will continue to play out. But there's an interesting case in this op-ed, a broader thing about

students. Let me just read the first paragraph, Victor, and get your broader thoughts.

This is again by Michael Toth. The Supreme Court is considering the fate of President Biden's student loan cancellation plan.
The economic significance of the case is obvious.

If the court holds that it is lawful, it will transfer more than $400 billion from taxpayers to student borrowers.

Even more significant is the foundational question at the heart of the debate: what privileges, if any, should higher education receive in a democratic society?

Victor, this is about more than just this particular case right here and now in student loans, but it also goes back

over more recent American history of

deferments from military service. Why was a student at

Bresno State, why could he have a college student? Why could he have a deferment while the guy down the road who was changing tires did not get a deferment?

What What was it about being a college student that gave you this protection and now gives you,

if Biden has his way, the right to take money out of the pocket of the tire changer? Victor, your thoughts about this.

Well, the idea was that after World War II, we had won the war because of technology and organization,

bureaucratic principles. And so we were going to ratify that and codify it with these new universities.
And they sprung up like rabbits everywhere.

And there wasn't enough qualified PhDs to staff them. So we hired people ABD, all but dissertation.
And a lot of them were, and we created PhD programs out of nothing.

When I got to the university, they had not, the whole faculty was in their 40s and 50s, and they'd all been hired in the 1960s. And they hadn't hired anybody in 14 years.

But they were, I don't want to criticize my former colleagues, but a lot of them were not very impressive.

So, what I, the idea was that we were all going to get a BA, an MA, a PhD, a JD, an MBA, and that would be a little certificate that we were now qualified to do certain tasks.

And those tasks, and there was some logic to it, at least in the science and math. But the idea you're going to get an English degree or sociology degree rather than just study it on your own,

and therefore you're going to improve society, it's not true.

And the idea you're going to go to a university with like-minded people and it's going to be a Socratic experience of give and take in a free and open environment is not true.

It soon turned into indoctrination.

And then you're going to create tenure with lifetime employment and you're going to plead to everybody that you're threatened by the man or the right wing or Christians to suppress your free speech and you need tenure so you can be bold when what happened, 95% of the people were left and the only person who was going to be endangered was the conservative that 95%

of the people who had tenure would go pick on and try not to give him tenure. And so it was

a shipwreck of our dreams. When it got to the student loans, though, it created a lot of really toxic legacies that we're stuck with now.

Once the university understood where the moral hazard was, that

the students who came into the university would not pay as they went, but they could borrow money from the federal government.

And everybody knows that federal government is political and create a very strong constituency, 1.7 trillion. I think now it's up.

The interest is accrued, so it's $2 trillion.

And that said to the university, hmm,

we can offer offer a lot of classes. We can hire a lot of administrative.
We can have a lot of programs. We can have a center for gender studies.
We can have a center for

the study of the other. We can have a marginalized persons.

library. We can have, as Stanford does, 15,000 administrative staff.
And that overhead that pushes the cost of room and board and tuition over the annual rate of inflation year after year after

will be borne by the student because he will get a loan from the federal government and he can just keep paying.

And then once we

discovered that the universities were expanding without any concern for business principles, and the government was ensuring the loan, and the students were not graduating in four years, but six, eight, and half of them who enter college were dropping out, never finishing, And they had an aggregate 1.7 trillion, and some of them 50, 60, 80, $200,000 loans.

And they were not paying them off and they were not being punished. It wasn't like the IRS took it out of their salary.

And it became kind of a cult where you, I think it was right before COVID, it was 30% were defaulting on them.

And so it wasn't half, you didn't have to pay them back. And there was no sense of honor.

And

all it did was, as I said, it shifted the hazard away from the student and the university. And it fobbed them off on the taxpayer.

Had we gotten rid of the federal guarantee of loan, guess what would have happened, Jack? That university would have said to the student, okay.

I know you don't have the 70,000, 80,000 to pay for room board and tuition, but we need that body. So you're going to be get a loan from us us

and then their cfos and these universities would say get that guy off campus he does nothing he doesn't teach he doesn't do any research he's just a busy bossy commissar we can't afford him and then they would have said to the student look

You're going to go here in four years.

These are our 28 majors. This is the average income of each major that we found upon graduation.
If you major in these,

you will be able to, under normal circumstances, get a job with this salary, and you can devote this much to paying us back. If you major in these,

it's going to be very difficult. So we don't discourage you, but you have to have outside income.

That type of dialogue would have kept the campus sane, and it would have been lean and mean, and it would have made sure that the students then would say, uh-oh,

that university is not going to let me default, but they'll go after me wherever I am. So, you know what? I'm not going to take three units here, six units here.

I'm going to get the damn thing done and get out in four years.

And

that would be, that would have been, that would have happened. There was no sense.
I had a daughter who got, she went to the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine after her bachelor's.

And she went to Chile after her bachelor's degree and then to learn Spanish. And then she went there and it was very expensive, women board, tuition, like 80,000.
I didn't have the money. So

I saved up and I paid cash for the first year. And then the second year, she took out a $80,000 loan and I took on extra stuff to pay.

pay it for because she was as long as she got A's and she did, she did very well. And then she passed away suddenly.
And it was right after she had graduated. And the loan, I think it had $12,000.

And I got a letter from it.

And I wasn't, I mean, but did I really want my daughter's memory to be that she was a slacker and had ripped off the government for money? No. So I paid it, even though she had passed away.

I thought I deserved it, the government deserved it. Her memory deserved it.
She worked hard.

I know all these people who are not paying back their loans. And I don't understand the idea behind it.

You take money from the taxpayer who guarantees your loan and you default on it or you don't pay, then the taxpayer is stuck with one-third of $2 trillion.

And Joe Biden then, we have to put, finally, Jack, we put it in context. Where did he dream this idea of? He was looking at the 2022 midterms, and they were forecasting a disaster,

even though the Republicans were incompetent in the Senate. They were looking at 50 seats, he was afraid of.
They were going to lose the Senate. So he started to do things.
Remember that?

He said, Oh, oh, I never said that I did not cancel Anwar. I did not cancel Keystone.
I did not cancel new federal leases. I'm all for transitional affordable fuels.
So we're going to grain

the strategic petroleum reserve. And he did.
He took 30% of it right before the election. He crashed gas by about 30 cents a gallon.
And then he said,

We're going to make sure that if you're in the Army, I'm going to have executive orders. And Robbie says, Wait, boy, you're going to be able to get a subsidized abortion anywhere.

We're going to give you leave. That was another thing that he did right before the election.

And

one of them was student loans. He just said, you know what? By Fiat, I, Joe Biden, president,

emperor, king, dictator, have the right to go into a private business transaction between two parties and cancel it. I can do that.

And he can't. And so

that was all politically driven. And it worked.
I remember talking, I talked to a lot of conservative people.

I won't mention their names, but they said, oh, wow, that is so pathetic.

Begging Saudi Arabia, begging the Iranians, even begging the Russians and the Venezuelans to pump the oil that he tried to stop. And now he's draining.
Everybody's going to see through that.

And then this idea that you're going to pay people to travel to places to get abortions in the military and all federal facilities. And then giving the students, any student knows what that's about.

I thought, no, it's pretty smart. It's pretty, and it's going to work.
And it did.

Not only for the student, but then, you know, there have to be any number of parents who will also

be off the hook if they, you know, if they co-signed a loan. Just a general rule.
As a general rule, we all have to change our view of the university.

It is a petri dish of toxic ideas. It is not an enlightened Socratic.

And I say that as someone who understands that our preeminence in the world is predicated on having superior calculus, mathematics, engineering, the STEM disciplines, disciplines, computer, and that needs a university background.

I think we need things like nursing. And, but as far as the social sciences and humanities, you can either do it in two years or do it on your own.

But the idea that we're going to take four, six, eight years out of young people's lives and put them on these secluded places and indoctrinate them and indoctrinate them and then have these people with tenure who are completely unaccountable and and they are not audited about whether they teach effectively or not, or whether their research is sound, or whether they even do research, no accountability after their tenure.

And then when they commit egregious acts like turning over tables and insulting students on campus and getting violent with them or

hijacking a lecture like you saw at Stanford Law School and disrupting a federal judge, when they do all of that, that that is all immune and and we have to pay for it.

No, that's every bad idea, every bad element of wokeism, critical legal theory, critical penal theory, critical race theory. That started in the university.

The germination from a bad idea in the faculty lounge to destroying people's lives in the real world is about five years.

And so, I'm sorry, but it's not worth the cost anymore. And we've got to come up with alternatives, either have to reform the universities or make new universities, But it's not working.

It's not working. Yeah.

Victor, thanks for your thoughts on that and everything else that you shared today. We've come to the almost end of

today's podcast where we thank our listeners for listening, no matter what platform they do that on. And if it happens to be iTunes or Apple, you can rate the show zero to five stars.

And this show has a rating on average of over 4.9

which is pretty damn good and thank you for those who take the time to do that and for those who also take the time additional time to leave comments which we read

some of them make me cry because they're about my babbling but that's okay i'm not going to read one of those today here's one though from um

let's see which one should i read

uh this one's titled memorial day thanks this is from uh

an Apple podcast listener. Thanks, VDH.
Been loving your podcast for some time now. I enjoy listening to all your conversations on antiquity and battlefield history across all ages.

My dad was a World War II vet in the European theater, also in Korea and Vietnam. In the 60s, my dad was stationed.

In Japan, and we saw a beautiful culture and people. Sometimes I found it hard to fathom dropping the atomic bomb.

Hearing the statistics about the numbers of people killed by the Japanese war machine reminded me that history is always complicated and never fully understood.

This is signed by Can't Find Name Not Taken.

Anyway, Can't Find Name Not Taken. Thank you for the comment and for taking the time to do that.

Victor, one last thing. I would like to remind our listeners to visit justthenews.com.
That's run by John Solomon, and that's the official home of this podcast.

If they're on Facebook, they should visit the Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club. It's not official to this

podcast, but

great people that are there. I think they're about 60 or 70,000 members of that club.
And you'll find all sorts of links to things Victor does.

If you're on Twitter at BD Hanson, that's Victor's handle there.

As for me, Jack Fowler, I write Civil Thoughts, a free weekly email newsletter that I do for the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic, where we are trying desperately to save civil society.

And the newsletter, in addition to being free, has

more than a dozen recommended readings, great articles I've come across the previous week. Here's a link.
Here's a healthy excerpt from the piece. I think you will enjoy it.

Many of our listeners have signed up and they do.

So enjoy it. We don't sell your name.
There's nothing transactional.

So, Victor, again, thanks for all the wisdom you have shared. Yes.
Thanks for listening.

Thank you. And thank you, everybody, for commenting.
And Jack and I, in the upcoming weeks,

we're going to devote three or four shows just to answering all your questions. I'm really looking forward to it.
Right. And Lou, thank this, while we're praising people and the great Sammy Wink.

So thank you all. And we'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.