The Traditionalist: Squatters, Larry Elder, Iran, et al.

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show, the traditionalists.

We are recording on Friday, August 6th, 2021.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the director of the Center for Civil Society, the man lucky enough a few times a week to talk with Victor Davis Hanson about his ideas on American politics, culture, and many other things.

Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busk Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, best-selling author.

Go to victorhanson.com.

That's his website, Private Papers.

You will find a link for what's going to be his next best-selling book, The Dying Citizen, How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

That book is out in October, but you can order it now.

Find the link on the website.

Also, you'll find a ton of original content that is published exclusively on and for VictorHanson.com.

Victor, today we're going to be talking about a number of issues, masks, eviction notices, the 9-11 families, anger with Joe Biden, and a few other things.

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We're back with the traditionalist, one of the three podcasts under the umbrella of the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler.

I do this show.

I do the classicist, and the great Sammy Wink does the culturalist.

Victor, today let's start off the show talking about Joe Biden thumbing his nose at the Constitution.

Victor, we've heard a lot of things from the Lovest media.

There are so many threats against American democracy, but I think this is a real threat.

We've had the Supreme Court, five justices anyway, recently say that the eviction moratorium, the national eviction moratorium, was illegal.

But they didn't kill it because it was about to expire.

Justice Kavanaugh did not side with the four other conservative justices.

He said, well, it's going to expire at the end of July.

And if it needs to, if it's to come up again, Congress must act.

Congress hasn't acted, Victor.

It's August 6th, but Joe Biden has acted.

And despite knowing that there's no constitutional grounds for an eviction moratorium, he has empowered again the CDC director to impose this.

This is, to me, craziness.

What's it to you, Victor?

I think there's a number of issues here very quickly.

Number one is Justice Kavanaugh seems to have been so brutalized by those hearings.

in 2018 that in a number of rulings he's sort of triangulated.

I don't know if it's Stockholm syndrome or what, but it's very different than the defiance of Clarence Thomas.

Second thing is,

when does the CDC, Center for Disease Control, adjudicate whether people pay their rent or not?

And I know that that started under the Trump administration as a temporary measure, as did lockdowns and quarantines.

But the very idea that unelected officials with a very checkered record of handling the pandemic, I remember, they couldn't get an accurate test for COVID for weeks, and they initially gave us all sorts of conflicting information about its origins, transmissibility, and precautions needed to prevent getting infected.

That they,

they are going to adjudicate whether you have to pay your rent or not instead of a legislature or a law or an executive enforcing those laws.

So that's one issue.

The second is Joe Biden, I grew up with Joe Biden, who's who's 10 years older than myself, but I grew up with the Bork hearings and the Thomas hearings and hearing ad nauseum, Joe Biden as the legal scholar.

Remember, he lied and said he was among the top in his class.

He was a constitutional lawyer.

Absolutely.

Same shtick as Barack Obama gave us.

And we heard that he was the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee and that Donald Trump, according to his refined expertise in law, was not following the laws, although he never cited anything that Trump did that was in any way comparable to illegal.

And so he decides that he has gotten legal advice, the majority of which say, you know, you have to obey a Supreme Court ruling.

But he's got some minority advice that he says openly

he's going to take and not follow the law.

And it's going to be good because it'll give more time, I guess, for people to default.

So he's basically saying, I took an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

He's not going to do it.

And that's in line with his earlier behavior.

By that, I mean he has completely nullified in South Carolina fashion federal immigration law.

And he will not enforce the law that says you cannot enter the United States illegally and without legal authorization as 2 million are slated across the border in the next fiscal year.

And that is in dire contrast with his policy toward Cubans who he decides to enforce the law with and they're not able to come unless they have legal authorization are indeed Canadians.

He basically has shut down the border with Canada.

And basically, he's saying, as our trusted and most reliable ally, their citizens can't come in the United States because of COVID, but we don't really care whether COVID exists or not because we're going to welcome in 2 million people illegally.

And so if you add that to sanctuary cities that he fosters, that we're not going to enforce federal immigration laws in particular jurisdiction, he's absolutely

anarchonistic.

He's an anarchist.

And then finally, what does this do to all these small people, small business owners, lower middle class people have a room in their home.

They're in Queens or in the Bronx.

They're in Bakersfield.

They're in Dayton.

They've got an extra room.

The kids moved out.

They rent to a college student or they have an elderly resident and they get $300, $400 a month.

And that person says, wow, nobody's been paying rent for 15 months.

I have a bad leg.

I have a bad back.

I don't think I can live on my current stipend or salary or social security.

I'm just not going to pay.

And then that person has to say, please, please, please pay.

And you can see what's happening in that little window when this thing expired until Kavanaugh breathed life into it again.

There were a lot of evictions because people thought, wow, I got to get this guy out of here.

He's damaged my property.

And if you continue on this trajectory, nobody's going to build an apartment building.

Nobody's going to be a landlord because what it means is that the renter has de facto ownership of your property.

I should correct that, Jack.

It's much better to have ownership because you don't have to pay taxes.

You don't have to pay maintenance costs.

You just squat.

You're a squatter.

And the law protects you and hates the

landlord.

All is a larger project of this socialist government that feels that those with money and capital had unfairly acquired it.

And it's the duty of government to depossess them if I can make up a word of what they have earned.

Well, Victor, you know, people think landlords are individuals that own big apartment buildings and are diving into their pools of coins and cash

every night.

But when I was first married, my wife and I, we scraped, say, bought a second house, and that was going to be part of our future.

It was an entrepreneurial move.

If that had happened, if we had been, you know,

30 years later in our life and had bought that house just before this COVID happened, this would have broken us.

I mean, to be denied, just still, you're right, have to pay the taxes, maintenance, et cetera, have no income.

Let me ask you a question.

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

What happens if next month

Billy and Jane that enroll in Stanford dorms decide, you know what?

I just don't have the lifestyle I need.

And mom cut me off.

And I'm not going to pay my Stanford dorm rent.

Right.

And uh they're not going to evict me because i'm oppressed and i appeal under federal guidelines for relief or what's going to happen if private first class joe blow uh you know is at i don't know camp pendleton and he says to his marine commandant i i don't have enough money to supplement My wife and I are not going to pay.

We have a little house that we rent from the Marine Corps while I'm in the Marine Corps.

I'm not going to pay for it.

I don't think that's going to happen.

And again, it's indicative of this ruling class that they're never subject to the consequences of their own ideology.

So I don't think it's going to stand, but if it were to stand

that the squatter or the renter or the occupant rather than the owner or the landlord has true title in a sense to the property and can do things the owner cannot.

And when you juxtapose that to the idea that a person can stay home and not work and make more money than if he were to to be employed, we're well on the road to serfdom and socialism

in just six months.

Yeah, no, it's a destruction of the concept of property rights.

Well, Victor, let's move on.

First of all, I do want to let our listeners know that if they're on Twitter, you can be followed at VD Hansen.

On Facebook, there's VDH's Morning Cup.

It's also a friendly group, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club on Facebook.

You can also find you on Parlor.

Victor, second issue today is masks, and let's take it in two parts.

One is

that schools in the South, schools are already opening, but most schools traditionally open after or around Labor Day.

Groups are forming to protest what they believe is going to be mask mandates for children again, from kindergartens up through, well, colleges are mandating it.

Also, the governor of New Jersey just announced, I think that today or yesterday, yeah, all school kids in masks.

So we have fed up parents.

Their children have to be masked while they're taught the evils of white privilege.

And for all we know, they're going to be forced to be vaccinated.

So that's one aspect of mask madness.

The second has to do with the mayor of Boston taking on.

the mayor of New York City, who's saying, well, you cannot come into New York establishments, restaurants, et cetera, unless you have proof of being vaccinated.

Well, per the disparate impact rules, Blacks, despite being first in line to get the vaccine in New York under Andrew Cuomo's criteria, Blacks have far as a percentage of the population, far fewer have been vaccinated.

So the mayor of Boston is saying, well, you know, so this ban is going to mean blacks can't go to restaurants.

What do you say about that, Bill de Blasio?

It's a little petard hoisting.

So, Victor, we have that, that and we have the parental, mounting parental outrage.

All this over masks.

Your thoughts?

Yeah, we try to find some systemic or deeper cause of all this angst.

And the answer is that

this gain of function human-engineered virus, first of all, seems to be a little bit different than the flu, even the annual mutating flu.

It seems to be mutating very fast.

And we were told that when viruses mutate to continue their species or to survive, they do two things.

They become more infectious.

That is, they have an ability to jump onto a person and enter their cell structure much more quickly, but they could become less lethal.

Maybe the first is true.

It obviously is true, but we're not sure that it is less dangerous yet.

It could be, it could not.

But it tells us something, I think, that we are now in, what, the 15th or 16th month of this epidemic, pandemic.

And I don't think that the great hope of the vaccination of ending it in the manner that we no longer have, say, smallpox is going to happen in our lifetime.

I think this thing is going to continue to mutate.

I'm not sure it's going to be any more lethal, but I'm not sure it's going to be any less lethal.

And it's not very lethal right now for most people.

And I think what we're looking at is that people about 75% of the population will eventually become vaxx and they'll have some side effects.

Some of us, I did, my wife did,

my children did, you did.

I know someone who got very serious side effect, more so than the flu vaccination.

And then you're going to have to have a booster if you want absolute protection.

And you're going to be bullied ad nauseum by the government.

And that's just the way it's going to happen until and if we get pharmaceuticals, some magic drug that you inhale, you take or you drink that would stop this this thing.

But I'm not confident right now.

I am confident that we have enough knowledge of it and protocols that you can, if you're in fairly good health, survive it, and especially if you've been vaccinated.

But all that being said, that's the reality and people can't face the reality.

So when they say that vaccinated people who we know rarely have to be hospitalized and even more rarely die, are going to have to wear these things, what they're basically saying is everything that we've heard, everything we thought, everything we knew, everything we told you is false.

And we don't know what in the hell to do now.

They have no idea what to do.

And they're under pressure by teachers unions, parents, children.

But what they're finally, what they're failing to think of is it is not healthy for young people, for that matter, any people, to most hours of the day when they're outside their home to wear a mask.

The fibers are not healthy.

You don't get enough enough oxygen.

You don't psychologically, you can't see or recognize facial expressions.

It's a cloak for criminality.

If you just said arbitrarily one day, five years ago, everybody can wear a mask for five days, you can see what would happen.

Nobody looks at the downside, the social damage, the educational damage that all of the preventions of COVID are doing.

And I think finally people are just getting fatalistic and they're saying, you know what, I'm going to take my chances.

There's another story today from a John Hopkins doctor that supposedly naturally acquired immunity is as good or better than vaccinated immunity.

So that's just the opposite of what we've been told by the grandees at the CDC and the NIH.

So what I'm getting at is there's so much misinformation that our officials are just reverting to rote.

Wear mask.

Two is better than one.

Don't wear masks.

Socially distance.

When you get vaccinated, you don't have to do any of this.

When you get vaccinated, you're going to have to do all of this still.

They have no idea, Jack, what to say or do.

Well, Victor, let's move on and talk about the sad upcoming.

I hate to use the word anniversary, but it will be 20 years on September 11th since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and Flight 93.

So.

The families, the many, many families of those who were murdered that day or who died that day have been angry at the Biden administration, angry actually at the president, because he had seemed to promise that, yes, there would be, when, if I'm elected, there will be some transparency here because these families want to know, they want some of the records open.

They want to know, yes or no, did Saudi Arabia or Saudi Arabian officials have a role in these attacks that killed my son, kill my daughter, kill my father?

They're now telling the president, stay away.

If there's a ceremony, we don't want you there.

You made a promise.

Keep the promise.

Victor, do they have a point?

Do you believe are the records related, the sealed documents right now, related to who's behind the attacks?

Should they be opened up to some extent or not?

Yeah, I think they should.

I think we all know that.

When we say the royal family had knowledge, the royal family is a construct.

It's 5,000 first cousins, et cetera, et cetera.

So were there elements of the royal family that probably with a wink and a nod knew what bin Laden was up to or gave him money either out of psychological payback to Western countries or protection money that he wouldn't turn his attention to them and their wealth?

Probably so.

Should people whose lost relatives have the right to know that if we have that information?

I think so.

Would it have any deleterious effects?

I doubt it because

once we know what would happen, the Saudis are going to nuke us.

I don't think so.

So it would give, I think it would be, if there was any benefit, and I think there could be, it would tell the Saudis that this is what happened when you flirted with Islamic radicalism or you were the keepers or the instigators of it, whatever term you use.

And we don't want you to do this anymore.

If you do, there's going to be consequences.

But

I just don't think.

I've got to, I'll be frank with you, Jack.

Over the 20 years, I gave the government the benefit of of the doubt.

Maybe that was naivete.

Maybe I inherited it from my parents.

Maybe I was brought up that way.

But I had nothing but reverence even for J.

Edgar Hoover's FBI.

And I thought the church committee's hearings when I was in high school and later on the abuses of the CIA were airing dirty laundry.

After 9-11, I didn't believe in torturing people, but I wasn't sure that waterboarding was abject torture and the information that we gained might have saved lives and the so-called barrier or wall between intelligence agencies set up by Bill Clinton had cost thousands of lives.

Okay, I believed all that.

But, and this has nothing to do with Trump.

When I read that Kevin Kleinsmith, the FBI lawyer, forged a document, changed it, or James Comey deliberately leaked confidential presidential private memos for personal protection or aggrandizement, or Robert Mueller testified under oath that he had no idea what GPS and Christopher Steele were, the seeds and the fertilizer of the whole Russian collusion hoax.

Or when I look at what they did with Carter Page and Michael Flynn, they being the DOJ especially, or I look at when James Clapper lied flat out under oath when he said that he and John Brennan, first John Brennan, said that we had no collateral damage from drone strikes and he never, he being the CIA, never spied on Senate staffer's computer.

And James Clapper said the NSA was not spying on Americans, and they're all lying.

And I look at the retired military, and they've called the sitting chief, whoever it is, Trump or anybody else.

They've used terms like Nazi and Mussolini and Auschwitz-like cages, and should be, I think it was Admiral Raven, whom I have at McRaven.

I have a great deal of admiration for, but he said he should be gone sooner than later.

What does sooner and later mean in election year?

Can't wait for November.

So

I've lost confidence in all these institutions.

And I think a lot of conservatives that are listening have too.

And that's tragic because we know the left either has no confidence in them or only uses them because they have chain of command efficacy and efficiency.

And they want to get, whether it's transgendered operations or gay marriage or women in combat or whatever their agenda is, they feel that they can get it done by bypassing legislative give and take.

But the point is, these people of this generation have so imperiled the reputations of these hallowed institutions that I think people now want all the information to be released and let the chips fall where they may.

Victor, let's back up a second.

Normally on the traditionalists, we don't talk about California.

We try to reserve that for the classicist podcast.

But these new polls that have come out in the last two days about the recall.

John Funn, my old colleague at National Review, has written a summary.

You see these summaries everywhere.

Emerson College poll is now finding that among likely voters, 48%

favored keeping Gavin Newsom in office, about 46% are now supporting the recall.

A survey USA poll has him being recalled by 51% to 40%.

And there's a free fall, it seems, for Newsom among Hispanic Californians.

When he was elected and last elected governor in 2018, it says that 64% of Hispanics voted for him.

Now,

54% of Hispanics in California want him gone.

Any thoughts about these polls?

Yeah, lots of them.

Gavin Newsom has had a terrible record of governance.

Let's face it.

We have the highest income taxes in the country.

We have the second highest, I think, sales tax basket.

We have the highest gasoline taxes in the continental United States.

We have some of the highest property evaluations, so our property taxes are high.

And we have the worst rated, almost the worst rated infrastructure, roads, bridges.

Our schools are about 40th in the country.

We have almost 55, 60% of all the homeless people.

We have one third of all the welfare recipients.

20% of the population, more than 20%, lives below the poverty line.

So you pay a lot of money and you get very little is what I'm trying to say.

Jack, you can't walk into Santa Monica or Venice Beach anymore.

You can't go into areas of San Francisco that are unlivable.

Fresno and Stockton and Bakersfield have ceded large areas of their downtown to homeless people.

A lot of people don't like what he's done.

And then when you add that he's a child of, can I say it, white privilege in a diverse state, and he lives with a very close radius to all of the other white privileged non-diverse movers and shakers of California such as the former senator Barbara Boxer, Diane Feintein, Feinstein, the present senator Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House.

People say, you know what, I'm getting very tired of all these wealthy white Bay Area people lecturing me on what I can do when they go to do what?

They go to the French laundry, they eat.

They get their hair done or brag about their designer ice cream.

People don't like that.

So he's suffering from that.

And then when they look at his long-term record, they were willing to give him a pass because we hadn't been hit by COVID as seriously as other places.

Now we have.

And our death rate per million is getting close to Texas and Florida, but without the upside that our schools have been open like theirs are and their GDP and their unemployment are on the right trajectories and ours aren't.

So people are saying this guy hasn't done what we thought he was going to do.

And then you add another wild card, and that is when he gives these lectures, these Karen-like lectures about, you know, mask wearing and shutting things down,

a lot of Latino parents don't like that.

They are very sensitive.

And I say they, because when I get up in the morning and I leave my home, I don't think it's any exaggeration that for the next 10 hours I'm in Selma, I don't see anybody who's not Hispanic.

I can think that's not an exaggeration when I go to the store or gas station or bank or wherever I'm going, post office, and I talk to a lot of people.

Sometimes people come up and talk to me.

And I can tell you, and I went, most of my friends I went to school with are still alive.

And I can tell you that while there's a great fear of COVID, because it's hit that community very hard, there's also a great anger that they don't know how they're going to function.

because many of them don't have the resources to hire daycare or nannies.

And their children, when they're home, they have to to take off work and watch them or leave them there alone for a zoom and so they're very angry that the schools have been closed they're very angry that these small businesses had no margin of air revenue and so when they were shut down in a way that Walmart or Target was not or Amazon they feel it wasn't fair and

finally

I don't know what to say about this.

The left is always using the WIMP factor when they call the war hero George H.W.

Bush a wimp.

But there is something about the wimp factor with Gavin Newsom.

He comes across is snotty, preppy.

He seems to be a dandy.

He's got kind of a strange voice.

His mannerisms are, he exudes, I think, snobbery.

And I think a lot of people from the lower and middle classes think, you know what?

I don't want to look at that guy anymore.

I don't want to listen to him anymore.

And then when you compound that to

what had kept him in favorable poll range was two things.

The Republican alternatives, to be frank, and I've met them and I like them or heard them on Zoom, Mayor Fulkiner and John Cox, I don't know, Caitlin Jenner, but they're not resonating.

They're not raising a lot of money.

Their commercials are not often on TV.

They're not dynamic candidates.

Larry Elder is.

Right.

And I've met him and I've been on his radio show.

I've talked to him.

He's a very dynamic character.

He's not a character in the positive sense of the word.

He's articulate.

He's smart.

He's well-educated.

He's experienced.

He's a solid conservative.

He knows what to do.

People are starting to think if he were governor, he'd bring in a solid team of advisors.

He's tired of California.

And I think that is hurting Newsom.

And the final thing is that the people who are for Newsom are indifferent.

You know, well, you know, the guy hasn't done that bad.

I don't know if I'm going to vote or not, but I'd rather keep him in than not.

You know, if I'm around on, you know,

election day or if I see the ballot on the dining room table, I may.

I guess I could, a sort of turn in.

The people who want him out, they are fanatic.

They will vote.

They don't like him.

There's a deep visceral dislike of him.

And when I ride a bike in Fresno and I see people out handing pamphlets, believe me, it's not to preserve

Southeast Asians, Mexican-Americans, poor whites, middle-class suburbanites.

And they're saying, please sign, please go out and make sure we get rid of this guy.

So I think there's a 50-50 chance he can be recalled.

If he is recalled, remember, as you pointed out to me, the plurality vote-getter wins, not the majority.

And if there's 46 candidates, Larry Elder could win with 20% of the vote.

Right.

Yeah.

He is the

leading conservative Republican candidate at this point.

So I saw him on fox a couple of weeks ago he very he was really very impressive i like larry a lot he's got he's got a the perfect attitude for all these controversial issues he can get animated but he he's relaxed he's circumspect yeah he's analytical he's likable also gavin hickel is not

no he's he's much brighter than gavin newsom i can tell you that well victor i'm going to spring one other quick thing on you and then i'd like us to talk about uh strategica and its new issue but we've had this contratum in the last week, Joe Biden versus Governor DeSantis of Florida.

How do you think this battle between these two is helping or hurting DeSantis as governor and as a prospective Republican presidential candidate?

Well, I think everybody that's listening knows what happened, that Biden, after his two-hour workday, went to sleep and his wife went to a meeting with staffers and they said, hey, you know what?

Look at even some of the Gallup polls.

Look at Rasmus.

And we've lost 10 points in 10 days.

My God, why are we bleeding?

Oh, it's the border is wide open.

Oh, wow.

COVID's back raging.

Wow, we have vaccination resistance.

Wow, it's critical race theory.

Wow, well, what would happen?

Who did they have?

We don't know whether Trump's going to get back.

Well, that DeSantis seems to be the favorite non-Trump candidate.

And yet, let's look at the Florida infection rate.

Ooh, it's climbing.

And his model had worked better than ours.

But now let's go after him.

Let's say that he's killing people.

Let's go after Texas, Abbott, and DeSantis, Texas and Florida.

Now, the irony and the reality is that when you look at the death rate per million,

I think they're about 1850 and they're almost identical in Texas.

and Florida, about 20, 22 million people.

You compare them to New York, it's 2,700.

So for all the talk of DeSantis and Texas and Abbott, they have a much better record of keeping people alive by about 30% than does New York.

They're about where California is.

I think it's up to 1,700 deaths, tragic deaths per million.

So, they're going after him not because they feel that he's done something wrong necessarily.

They're going after him because he's starting to resonate with Republican voters, and they have come to the conclusion that if he were to get the nomination, and they don't think he will, but if Trump wins, but if he did get the nomination, he'd actually, they think, be a more dangerous candidate than Donald Trump.

So they want to decapitate him now.

And they're trying to do that by going after COVID.

And he's got a very good rejoinder.

All he has to say is, and he said it better than I can say it, and Texans have said the same thing.

If you're so worried about getting people vaccinated and you're you're so worried about a resurgence of the pandemic, why are you letting 200,000 people a month come across the southern border unvaccinated?

One town, 7,000 positive cases when they were finally tested, untested, unvaccinating, illegal, no lawful

invitation, and yet you're doing this day by day for sheer crass political reasons.

And I think that's a fatal issue.

If you look at the polls, my gosh, it's 65, 70% opposed.

You look at Latino, Hispanic polls, it's 55% opposed.

And people don't like that.

They really don't.

This asymmetrical treatment of foreign nationals are treated much better than U.S.

citizens.

Well, Victor, we have a few minutes left.

Remind our listeners to visit VictorHanson.com.

There are links there again for your book, The Dying Citizen, coming out the first week of October.

A link there for subscribing to to your week in review email newsletter.

It's a great piece up today.

We'll talk about another podcast.

It's Eeyore's Corner.

Trumpistics.

That's all I'm saying.

Just the headline.

We'll talk about it another time.

But so on Hoover Institution website, which is hoover.org, I do recommend our listeners go there.

Every month or so, you oversee the publication of Strategica, which is an online journal.

Issue 74 just came out, and it's about Iran's nuclear program.

And you have collected a number of, well, that's typical for what Strategica does.

You pick an important issue and then a number of interesting and smart people write long, some short, but some longer essays talking about this.

So Iran's nuclear program, the prospects of a new Iran deal, can U.S.-Iranian relations be remade?

These are...

just some of the pieces that are appearing in this new issue of Strategica.

Victor, would you want to give a kind of a general summary about

what's been written about in this new issue?

Yeah, what I try to do is, and my managing editor and assistant, David Berkey, is we have about 30 people in the Strategica group, the Military History Working Group, it's its official title, and they're in the military, they're in Washington think tanks.

They're authors, they're historians, they're op-ed writers.

They run the gamut.

And we meet twice a year, and then we bring in invited speakers and we have particular topics.

Will Iran get the bomb?

Will China invade Taiwan?

And then what I try to do is have absolutely no censorship on their viewpoints as long as they defend them rationally and analytically.

So in this case, about the Iran deal, whether we should get back in it or not, or whether it's viable, I have strong views, namely that it's not.

And it was always a pathway or trajectory for nuclear proliferation acquisition on the part of the Iranians and giving them that money under the Obama protocols, 400 million, remember, at night on pallets.

All that did was end up in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas, and we saw what happened after that.

So I had ideas, but we try to get a shorter version essay, slightly different, maybe even antithetical, another, then a historical backgrounder.

In this particular issue, we have a very comprehensive examination of Peter Mansoor, a retired gifted colonel, and I think you could characterize it as a review of the deal, sympathetic perhaps to the Obama administration's original signing of the deal, critical of Trump, but now in summary and retrospect, more inclined to say, you know what, this regime in Iran cannot be trusted.

And to go back into the deal would show weakness to be exploited rather than deterrence that they would respect.

And then we have the always interesting and volatile, but absolutely brilliant Edward Lutwack.

I've met a lot of people in my life, but very few who have flashes of brilliance like he displays.

And he's not cynical, but he goes through the entire angle-by-angle Iran deal and comes to the obvious conclusion you'd be absolutely insane to go back into it and is very pessimistic about the idea that Iran will voluntarily not have a nuclear weapon weapon and that we have a rendezvous with some pretty scary stuff down the road.

And then we have Ty Rostein, who is an emeritus professor at the Monterey School, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.

And he has a very different take.

It's more, let's put ourselves in the shoes of Iran.

Let's see if we can work something out from the point of view that all nations have legitimate views on self-interest and they feel threatened and they have security issues and maybe we can accommodate them in a way that would be fair according to world standards and would serve their interests and be persuasive to them that it was in their interest not to get a bomb, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's a little bit antithetical to the two prior essays.

But all three of them, when put together, I think give a person a really good background on whatever issue you're looking at concerning the Iran deal.

And more importantly, each member, when they come to a meeting, writes a 300-word take.

And then I try to envision three or four issues in advance.

And so when they come over the next six months and present these required little essays, I post them or we post them on the subsequent four issues.

So we have a lot of auxiliary little takes on.

Some of them are really good.

All of them are really good, actually, about the Iran deal.

And I'd say this, I guess in finishing, I'd say the consensus is that that is not just an illiberal authoritarian government like Russia, or even maybe, you know, Venezuela or Cuba.

It's something different.

It's a revolutionary, theocratic, anti-American, anti-Western government who feels that it will achieve lasting legitimacy and get even with the Sunni majority.

in the Middle East and finally return power and influence to the the shia persian minority

by either wrecking gulf monarchies or destroying them and especially it will inherit the mantle of islamic supremacy for the entire region by being the country that as i think roth and johnny said destroyed the one bomb state israel when he said you know the best thing ever happened was half or 55% of the post-war Jews all went to Israel because basically they're all there for us to take out.

So this is a nightmarish regime.

We've got to remember that.

Well, Victor, again, that's hoover.org and go there or just Google Strategica, or don't Google, use another non-Google search form.

Strategica, issue number 74.

Victor, that's all the time we have today.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts and wisdom on things political and cultural.

Encourage our listeners to also check out the classicist and with Sammy Wink, the great Sammy Wink, the culturalist.

Visit victorhanson.com, private papers.

Please do consider, if you listen on iTunes, leaving a five-star review for Victor and actually maybe leave leave a written review.

We do read them and we do appreciate those, especially those who offer up some ideas for questions.

And that's about.

it thank our listeners this is jack fowler and thanks for listening to the victor davis Show.

Thank you, Jack, and to everybody who listens, and we hope to join you in a few days with our next podcast.

Thank you again.

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