Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
We should remember the now modern proverb of Nixon-era economic advisor Herb Stein to the effect that what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on.
In some sense, the country for recent years has been cruising on the fumes from prior and likely better wiser generations and institutions. In 2024, the tab for our current apathy, toxic politics, and incompetence will come due.
So next year we will likely see the climax to a number of current dangerous ideas, events, and forces, which finally will either overwhelm us or be addressed and remedied. We live in a Neronian age but can recover if we first understand how we got here and the nature of the suicide we are committing.
In 2023, it became clear, to even the most loyal supporters of the Biden administration, that the U.S. has simply lost or indeed forfeited American deterrence abroad. Our enemies do not fear us; our friends do not trust us; and neutrals do not care either way.
After the 2021 Kabul debacle, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in the Middle East, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea, many of America’s opportunistic enemies drew conclusions and adopted strategies that would have been previously unthinkable.
Either adversaries will be so emboldened to start regional wars—an impotent Iran now brags it will block the entire Mediterranean—or a United States will be shocked into action and have to deter Iran, the Houthis, and Islamic terrorism, while dealing with an opportunistic China eager to annex Taiwan, and Russia determined to finish off Ukraine.
Those challenges will force the military to staunch its recruitment hemorrhaging, rectify low morale, and rearm. Such rebooting in turn will require discarding the woke agenda, stopping the DEI proselytizing and virtue signaling, and returning to a meritocracy focused on military preparedness and battlefield efficacy.
Since January 2021, the Biden administration has flagrantly and unapologetically dismantled federal immigration law. It destroyed the border as we once knew it. It has already greenlighted more than 8 million illegal entrants—with another quarter-million entering each month.
No one in government has offered any projected costs to states and federal agencies of offering health, food, housing, legal, and education subsidies to millions—who broke the law by entering the U.S. and continue to violate it while residing unlawfully here. Is that the sign of a promising American citizen—that the first thing he does upon entering America is to break his host’s law?
Incredibly, no one has even explained to Americans why millions of illegal aliens are exempt from the vaccine mandates, background checks, and adherence to the law that is demanded of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. We will soon demand “real” IDs of American citizen airline travelers, while we fly illegal aliens all over the states without any identification?
In fact, those who blew up the border can’t honestly even explain to the American people why they did so. Was it to ensure future (or even present) political constituents? Cheap labor? To ensure higher taxes to pay for more government services and to “spread the wealth?” Obeyance to the diversity/equity/inclusion lobbies? To make up for fleeing blue-state population?
The United States has now exceeded, both in real numbers and in percentages, all past numbers of non-native born American residents—at a time when civic education, the idea of the melting pot, and adherence to assimilation have never been more under assault.
In 2024, either the border will close, or the United States will suffer radical political realignments, sheer chaos in our major cities, protests from Americans furious over the complete flaunting of federal law by their own elected officials, and a likely impeachment of Joe Biden for deliberately forsaking his oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”
The October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and premodern massacring of nearly 1,200 Jews—and the virulent anti-Semitism that swept our elite campuses and big cities even before the October 27 Israeli Defense Forces’ retaliatory invasion of Gaza—was a wakeup call about the racialized hatred and anti-Semitism now endemic on the Left.
Campus protestors dropped the prior protestations that they were not anti-Semitic in their hatred of Israel. Instead, they now call out Jews by name. They disrupt their homes and businesses, regardless of their views on Zionism. Pro-Hamas protestors feel free to harass Jews, and with impunity and arrogance chant genocidal chants promising the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.
The main campus culprits for these sudden unabashed hatreds are tripartite. First, wealthy, mostly white leftist students—increasingly as ignorant of history as they are arrogant in their zealotry—feel it pays psychological and careerist dividends on campus to mouth orthodoxies of hating Israel and de facto siding with the Hamas killers.
Most have no idea of the Hamas charter, where flows the Jordan River, or what the British Mandate for Palestine or the Balfour Declaration were. Few of the loudest could never even find Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza on a map. No matter: being heard and seen on campus hating Israel is considered a necessary fad like 1970s bellbottoms or pet rocks.
Second, huge numbers of full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern visiting students and green-card holders, along with Gulf-fueled and endowed faculty, assume that they are exempt from any legal consequences. So they often deface the federal monuments of their hosts, shut down traffic, swarm Jews on campus and in the street, break the law, and battle with police—with absolute impunity.
Third, just as startling are the undisguised hatreds emanating from radical diversity/equity/inclusion students and faculty. As the declared oppressed, they too feel exempt from any charge that they are mouthing racist and anti-Semitic venom, as they conflate Israel with the now maligned stereotyped “white” people.
The apogee of such extremism was evident in the congressional testimony of three ethically challenged Ivy-League presidents. They reminded the nation that no campus president would unequivocally condemn, much less punish, any anti-Semites on a campus, who openly called for the destruction of Israel and its Jewish population. And they lied about “free speech” constraints on their punishment of mainstreaming anti-Semitic and genocidal threats—given they routinely expel, censure, and variously punish all sorts of “hate speech,” but only if it is directed against their own DEI constituencies.
All this is not tenable.
Our top universities are facing a perfect storm. Declining pools of students, crushing student loan debt, spiraling tuition and room and board costs, administrative bloat, defecting donors, and the public’s distrust of such people being entrusted with their children’s higher education, will all soon lead to a general reexamination of the very need of these universities in the first place, at least as they are presently constituted.
Their racialist admissions, hiring, retention, and promotion protocols are destroying meritocracy. Their mediocre curricula, grade inflation, and campus polarization have convinced the public that they are no longer deserving of the many taxpayer indulgences that shield campuses from market realities—such as massive federal research grants and subsidies, tax-free billions of dollars in private donations, tax-free endowment income in the tens of billions of dollars, and taxpayer subsidized $2 trillion in student loans.
So insulated are these atolls of privilege that they cannot recognize growing public anger over the damage they are doing to the country. Iconic Harvard University cannot even fire its DEI president Claudine Gay, despite serial instances in her own past of plagiarism (which prompted Harvard’s sycophantic board to defend her by embracing a new euphemism— “duplicative language” as if to signify the tiny clerical lapse of stealing the ideas and prose of others).
In 2024, radical changes in university administration and values will begin to be made, or higher education will face a reckoning from the public and a newly elected government.
Currently, Colorado has tentatively removed Donald Trump from its 2024 ballot on the specious grounds that he is an “insurrectionist.” Thus, the state insists that he is subject to the 14th Amendment, Section 3 clause of 1868, that calls for the disbarment from future government employment or service those former federal officials and employees who had joined the Confederacy.
Aside from the misapplication of the spirit and letter of that post-Civil War legislation, those responsible for erasing Trump know that he has never been charged with, much less convicted of “insurrection.” And he never will be.
They understand that half the country knows the January 6 “riot” was the work of unarmed, overzealous, and buffoonish protestors, who broke the law by entering the Capitol, but otherwise had no master insurrectionary plan. And the majority surrounding the Capitol did in fact obey the president’s call to protest “peacefully” and “patriotically.”
The left privately understands that their latest weaponization of government follows their “Russian collusion hoax,” their “laptop disinformation” farce, their two politicized impeachments, their performance-art Mar-a-Lago documents raid, and thus are all part of a systematic degradation of our campaigns, elections, and political customs, tradition, and discourse.
A jaded public knows too well that such punitive measures never applied to the 2016 Hillary Clinton crimes of destroying subpoenaed emails and devices, or the FBI’s illegal alteration of FISA documents or its contracting out social media to suppress news stories, or its hiring of a foreign national Christopher Steele, who compiled a fake “dossier” to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump.
A majority of Americans further know that had Donald Trump not chosen to run for office in 2024, state and federal prosecutors such as the publicity-seeking and partisan Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis would never have indicted him.
All privately know that the entire Biden family, including the President, could just as easily be indicted on state and local felonies, but the Biden consortium finds itself exempt both for its leftist ideology and its current control of the Department of Justice.
What then do the campaign and election of 2024 foreordain?
We will be in entirely new and completely dangerous territory. The likely Republican nominee who currently leads incumbent president Joe Biden will be for most of 2024 the constant target of a coordinated state and local Soviet-like effort to destroy his candidacy before the voters can even vote for or against him in the November election.
The United States 2023 annual budget deficit is about $1.7 trillion; the nation is burdened by a $34 trillion national debt—even though the federal government since 2021 has raised all sorts of new income and excise taxes.
The era of printing money, zero interest rates, “modern monetary theory,” and spending wildly is drawing to a close. The mounting interest on the national debt is now crowding out optional but soon essential annual federal spending. At some point soon, one generation of Americans is going to have to exercise spending restraint or accept a continuing decline in its living standards.
In sum, in 2024, we will either see the destruction of presidential electoral politics as we have known them or a complete repudiation of lawfare. The current new normal that the party in power indicts the leading candidate of the opposition is not sustainable or compatible with the idea of America.
Either the military will have to deter dramatically our growing number of opportunistic enemies, or it will descend into something like the French army between the world wars—plagued by ideology, ossified brass, corruption, mediocrity, misplaced investments, and bankrupt strategies.
If there are not radical changes in higher education, our Ivy League and self-identified elite campuses will go the way of Bud-Light, Disney, and Target—once premier brands reduced to red ink and laughing-stock caricatures.
The United States is cracking under 8 million illegal entries; it cannot sustain another year and 2 million more illegal entrants—or a total of 55-60 million foreign-born residents, with no idea of how many are U.S. citizens, illegal aliens, or green card holders–or how many are employable, or free of criminal records or in need of massive federal and state subsidies.
In 2024, the U.S. will begin to see that to meet its spiraling debt, it will either keep inflating its currency, or slash spending, or raise even further taxes to the degree that even the lower middle class will have to pay 50 percent of their income in state and federal taxes, or renounce its debt, and thus go full-Third World.
Will we meet these challenges or ensure the ongoing decline?
If what we saw after October 7, or the wild and out-of-control reign of weaponized local and state prosecutors, or what we watch nightly on television at the border, or the paralyses we witness abroad of our military, or the breezy way in which our officials promise groups here and abroad billions of dollars in easy money, continues into 2024, then the country as we knew it will become unrecognizable.
Fantastic read and all scary but true!
“THE LAST WORD”
by MATTHEW ARNOLD (of the 1800’s)
(as best I remember it from 1967, as a Freshman at the U. of Del.)
Creep into thy narrow bed
Creep and let no more be said
Vain thy onset, all stands fast
Thou thyself must break at last.
Let the long contention cease
Geese are swans, and swans are geese
Let them have it how they will
Thou art tired, best be still.
They out talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee
Better men fared thus before thee
Fired their ringing shot and passed
Hotly charged, and broke at last.
Charge once more then, and be dumb
Let the victors, when they come
When the forts of folly fall
Find thy body by the wall!
What poignant words that I have never heard. Thank you for enlightening me to Matthew Arnorld.
Thoughts from the past, salient then and now.
As always Victor, on the money. Not just America, but the Chronicle of Western society.
And I fear that, even though Trump returns to the presidency, that our nation may descend into leftist-inspired chaos. We desperately need a change of heart, but I just don’t see any sign of it happening.
I believe that God (of the Bible) sent Obama as our President for Judgment against our sins. Obama was instrumental in organizing the ME wars, the destruction of the family (homosexual marriage), the race bating, which he along with Rev Sharpton is well versed at. We better wake up, and it better start with us Christians. We must repent.
Yes, it was a sad and scary outlook on the facts. But it is just more regurgitation
of the stuff we all ready know having watch the degeneration of the county over the past 30 years and now the collapse happening the past 4 years.
I do not believe there is any political solution in any shape or form. We are so far beyond that exit we are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. Judgement and destruction have already been pronounce on the country. Personal repentance is one’s only hope for there will be no changing what has already been decided by the Almighty on the nation. It is time to wake up and realize thinking otherwise we are deluded and in for a shocking and tragic surprise. Cheers!
A curmudgeon of my acquaintance has been saying for years: “We are not going to vote our way out of this mess.” Take that as you will. I agree with him.
You are spot on Balaam.
Inspired by Dr. Hanson’s books, I wrote my own, “As America Crumbles: A Grim Chronicle Exploring the Evil Source of America’s Catastrophic Decline,” in a search for all evil. I fear Dr. Hanson is one of the few people who truly understands how horrid the future might end up being unless we stop what I call the Sovietization of America.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CQR71WN3
The “parade of horrible” listed have all been predicted in the Bible. Victor Hanson isn’t telling us anything new. The world with it’s wars, crime and savagery will become increasingly worse. However, all is not lost. God provides a way of escape. He will save his children from “the wrath that is to come”. ITS CALLED THE RAPTURE OF THE SAINTS. Washington D.C. will tell those still here that we’ve been abducted by aliens or some other narrative (LIE) they think will be believed. But Washington D.C. will be glad the Christians are gone because FINAL CONTROL will become much easier on the complaints that will still be here.
Merry Christmas, VDH and family, and all of the like-minded fans.
Love the essay. IMO, Herb Stein’s observation of “what cannot go on (without destroying the nation), simply will not go on” will be realized sooner or later. But a democracy collectively ending “what can’t go on”, depends on there being a responsible electorate. IMO we are absent that, and our national fate is instead his implied prediction of humiliation by economic and social diminishment necessitated by natural selection.
So let me get this right, ‘what can’t go on won’t go on, and America will be great again’.
No, my dear Mr Hanson your article totally ignores the forces of the real controlling interests of America, and the ‘developed’ World, and it is not ‘we the people’, nor the bought and paid for politicians of both ‘parties’.
It is the corporate triumvirate of Blackrock, State Street and Vanguard funding and enabling the WEF and that detritus of human excrement, the failed European experiment and its cancerous three letter acronym parasites. ….. too much? Not by far!
If you really want to write an interesting and prescient article about what is going to happen to the United States going forward, you should write about the imminent disintegration of the former, but never really, ‘United’ States because regardless of the hope and hope there is no going back.
The wonderful country that I so much admired, dysfunctional and problematic as it was, is no more and will never be again.
Understand that and then look at the future without the banality of a statement, such as ‘that which cannot go on, will not go on’
America has become the true Bonfire of the Vanities as have we all.
America has fallen to the globalists WEF UN agenda 2030. Americans won’t act until forced into boxcars, but most won’t even act then.
“So let me get this right, ‘what can’t go on won’t go on, and America will be great again’.”
No. You did not “get this right.” How on Earth you gleaned “and America will be great again” from what VDH wrote in black and white is a mystery. That is not what he said AT ALL.
“…depends on there being a responsible electorate…”
Then we are truly finished, we have such an evil country that almost half of the voters supposedly vote on one issue, killing unborn babies. They are willing to destroy the country so long as they can continue to murder their children.
The rot in institutions is deep. It did not happen overnight and will not be remedied in any meaningful way to save this country in 2024. The stage is set and history is going to play thru. There will be a lot less to read your words this time next year.
VDH – God bless you for your sharing your thoughts about the state of our country. I am in total agreement with your analysis and will continue to pray for the reckoning that is so needed in the very near future.
Amen
We need a divorce. Cessation may be the only option
I think you mean secession.
Thanks Victor for a small candle of Hope in a pretty dark landscape. Could someone tell me what percent of the 2024 vote will be mail in ballots?. Do you suppose Ken Langone will actually write in his wife’s name if Trump is the nominee? When will Republicans learn that with Democrats politics is a blood sport…. Lose graciously, really?. “They lived through it all. They saw it all. They learned nothing.” Tellyrand (paraphrased roughly).
Christmas Day should be a time for joyous celebration for those of a Christian Faith, the renewed faith in childhood nd youth for many more, and a sense of wonder still to behold for those more advanced in years. I said should be but I have my doubts this morning. America has awoken to find lumps of coal in its stocking and a dread of things to come. The future has become even more uncertain than it was during the cold war. At least we thought we knew who was the enemy, the existential threat even if our younger generations begged to differ. But fear of the future rather than surety of our capabilities to act in the future overcame us. It became easier to look inward and find all manner of fault in our selves, to seek radical solutions that seemed new to the world never realizing that such solutions had been tried in one variation or another and always failed. We looked to the future to show us the way while never glancing back into history to review the lessons we never bothered to learn. This new year will bring the consequences of our own hubris.
Good post. Don’t forget God. He will act in accordance with His agenda, which we know not. But we can pray about it. That doesn’t excuse most of us from needed action in our own right. God helps those who help themselves so get on with it! My own “trivial’ activism is praying outside abortion clinics, but whatever your call, please discern it and get on with it beginning with prayer, and for many ending with it as well.
Victor:
Lead us out of this. You are our Moses!
The “parade of horrible” listed have all been predicted in the Bible. Victor Hanson isn’t telling us anything new. The world with it’s wars, crime and savagery will become increasingly worse. However, all is not lost. God provides a way of escape. He will save his children from “the wrath that is to come”. ITS CALLED THE RAPTURE OF THE SAINTS. Washington D.C. will tell those still here that we’ve been abducted by aliens or some other narrative (LIE) they think will be believed. But Washington D.C. will be glad the Christians are gone because FINAL CONTROL will become much easier on the complaints that will still be here.
Quite the read for Christmas morning. I have 2 thoughts to add. In 2008 America elected a president in what many hoped was an act of racial healing. After 2 terms and to this day both he and his wife never miss an opportunity to pick the scab of race to insure that America’s original sin is always front and centre and is never on the path to healing. The second and by far the most important thought is election integrity. Unless & until it is impossible for a party to determine the outcome of an election by any means other than a free and accurate tally of eligible voters nothing else matters. Merry Christmas. Roll Tide.
Dear Mr Hanson, thank you for your insightful article. Really hard to know what the outcome is going to be. These issues are much more serious than the public, at large, realize.
God bless all the work you do. One of your biggest fans!!!
What I see coming is a total take-over by Communist. Young gen.z and millenials will lose their parents endowments and pensions. No more Starbucks, no more same sex couples, no pedos and back to work until they are totally useless. The older folks who will fight back, guerrilla warfare, will live a terrible existence.
AMEN. Thank you for eloquently expressing many legal citizens’ thoughts. Remember, God wins in the end.
God helps those that help themselves.
Thank you. As always an apt description of the symptoms that ail us. But the overseeing cabal of Marxist globalists that are causing these symptoms, as they attempt to destroy our nation, are the roots that need to be identified and exorcized.
Love to see the Military bring back the DRAFT.
They will Bob, they will draft all these illegals, give them weapons, have them kill every American, especially older ones who cost the Government in having to pay benefits such as SS, Medicare and certain pensions.
I could see the Marxists doing that, no problem!
So we’ll said. “Cruising on the fumes of prior”. Just love reading your work. Concise, articulate, and most importantly Truth. That talent was developed through many, many hours of hard work and dedication. Virtues today frowned upon. You are a gift to us Mr Hanson and I am deeply grateful for you and others like you who care. I wish you and your family, and your family of readers, a Blessed Merry Christmas.
VDH’s mastery of history provides the foundation of this excellent editorial. Indeed, 2024 will prove to be consequential…let’s hope that it reverses the multitude of awful and destructive pathways that we are currently on.
Here is hoping that a similar year-in-review from 2028, 2029, 2030 will show that the country REJECTED the Left’s descent into chaos.
I’m thinking that the country is already unrecognizable.
Yep. This didn’t happen overnight. And I don’t mean that it started with Obama. We are merely at the latest stage of a process stretching back at least to the last 2 decades of the 1880s, when the ideas we would call progressivism were brought back to America from Europe by academics studying there, especially studying in Germany. Since then, it’s been a more or less steady process, sometimes accelerating, sometimes slowing or even pausing. But never reversing.
Compelling and frightening.
A majority of Americans should realize by now that if Donald Trump had not won the 2016 election, indicating the surprising ‘power’ of the populist movement in the US, NONE of what we are currently seeing would have been happening at such a breakneck speed. We are currently watching the backlash of a frightened, and overzealous ‘ruling’ community that wants to ensure that the American people have no voice in the future of this country.
The robot summary:
“2024—the Year of our Reckoning” by Victor Davis Hanson in American Greatness touches on several key issues facing the United States. Here’s a detailed summary with bullet points:
1. **Economic and Political Challenges:**
– Hanson cites the proverb of Herb Stein, suggesting unsustainable practices will eventually end.
– He argues the U.S. has been operating on the successes of previous generations, and in 2024, the consequences of current apathy and toxic politics will be faced.
2. **Global Deterrence and Military Challenges:**
– He asserts that the Biden administration has lost American deterrence abroad, citing events like the Kabul withdrawal, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Chinese spy balloon incident.
– Hanson predicts either emboldened adversaries will start wars or the U.S. will be shocked into action.
3. **Military Reforms:**
– The need for the military to address recruitment issues, low morale, and rearmament.
– Calls for discarding the “woke agenda” in the military and returning to meritocracy and battlefield efficacy.
4. **Immigration and Border Security:**
– Critique of the Biden administration’s handling of immigration laws and border security.
– Discussion on the implications of illegal immigration and lack of enforcement.
5. **Societal and Racial Tensions:**
– The issue of anti-Semitism, particularly on college campuses and in relation to Israel.
– He notes a rise in racialized hatred and anti-Semitism fr
I respect Victor David Hanson as the premier historian of our generation. He pin points where our country has come to and where it might go. I pray that the ‘holier than thou politics’ will evaporate. I remember when my dear friend Louis told me that “wars are won by deception”. At the time, I was startled by the statement. Now I look around and see that it is true. I pray that the lost souls pulled from homelands, brainwashed and delivered to our border will one day find their way home or make a peaceful loving home in America. I pray that their inevitable anger will not destroy this beautiful land. They have been deceived and so have many citizens. Praying this blessed Christmas.🎄
Merry Christmas Victor. Fervently, I hope you are right and… thanks for the small candle in a pretty dark place. Tom Sowell does not see the possibility of the corrective you suggest. [Uncomon Knowledge}. Could someone tell me the percentage of no-id mail in ballots in 2024? Do you think Ken Langone will actually write in his wife’s name if Trump is the Republican nominee. When will Republicans learn that for Democrats, politics is a blood sport [David Horowitz] – no quarter and no hostages. Or will our fate be summarized by Talleyrand: [paraphrased, but not inadequately cited I can hope]: They saw it all. They lived through it all. They learned nothing.
Merry Christmas Doc Hanson. I admire appreciate your relentless hard work. I offer you and your readers 2 links that relate to what you’ve written for us today.
1. Hard-copy proof that our U.S. Federal Government is selling our republic down the river as fast as they possibly can: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mass-migration-blueprints-reveal-ngos-carefully-planned-us-migrant-invasion-report
2. An early-American history report from journalist Don Surber: https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-most-american-christmas-ever
Here’s hoping that before too much longer, enough of us U.S. citizens will snap out of this bizarre state of somnambulance we’ve been lulled into by federal bureaucracy & walking-dead media, along with our own luxurious ignorance. LORD! Help us make the turn.
It’s unrecognizable now.
Absolutely! I’m 74 and feel I’m living in a completely different country than the one I grew up in. And it ain’t a better one.
The country is already unrecognizable. I’m 57 and this is the first time in my life I’ve paid this close attention to politics. It’s also the first time I’ve felt happy about being “old” but where I wish I were older to no have to live through the consequences of what I’m seeing today. I’m sad. I’m depressed. I’m frightened at the rabid attacks of the left and the lack of response from the right. I’m considering becoming an independent, but will rally behind whomever the Republican candidate is (really hoping it’s not NH; she’s scary).
Thank you, Dr. Hanson, for this outstanding summary of our current woes, despite being too late for Thanksgiving conversation!
I agree 100%, superb writing!
Sir, I watch you on TV telling the world about the situation here and abroad. I listen to every word and try to tape your appearances. Thank you for imparting your brilliance. I wish this current regime (I can’t call it an administration) would listen to your wise words and warnings. God bless you!
[Quote]. In fact, those who blew up the border can’t honestly even explain to the American people why they did so.” [/Quote]
They did so as one step towards destroying our country, if not Western Civilization as a whole. (Before you can build a new “World Order” you have to destroy the old one.)
Start with opening the borders to allow as many people into the country as possible from as many different cultures as is possible.
Create divisions within our country to tribalize us and set us against each other and the new arrivals.
Change what is taught in our educational system (e.g. implement Mao’s plan of eliminating the “4 Olds:” Old Ideas, Old habits, Old culture and Old customs).
Spend money and create an unsustainable, guaranteed-to-collapse financial system.
Attack free speech.
Catastrophize, dichotomize, fear-monger, demonize . . . and etc.
Use street mobs when necessary.
Your comments best of all I’ve read because you are “spot on” when you described what has happened to our educational system (4Olds) and what has happened to free speech.
I vote for remedy.
Thank you Sir. Always excellent and very much appreciated…
Frightening and True VDH. Turning back to God is the only amasser w a revival.
Year 2024 will be an ethical and political maelstrom wherein the mainstream media will be sucked down into its own Vortex of Thought:
Within the gyre of life self-centered,
Spins mental debris long since splintered.
This maelstrom of memories stretches and lengthens
Until a breaking point is reckoned.
Do bad dreams, and sins forgotten,
Lurk in minds long roiled and rotten?
And where is the relief from nocuous nightmares,
Vexing romances, and unanswered prayers?
When does the circle of life bring closure,
And will it end in full disclosure?
Life is too short for questions long.
And it should not end like a tragic song.
Nice summary of current state of our country. Can you also propose a positive way to move forward, without the divisive rhetoric, name calling, and what if’s? America is great because Americans are great, and will always rise to the occasion. My hope is everyone votes, in overwhelming numbers. That is how we change things, here and abroad.
Another great, spot on post.
I fear you are right. From an economic perspective I have believed for the past 5 years we will be the cause of another global depression by the close of this decade. 2021 through this year has only accelerated our path towards depression. If that occurs, a massive social upheaval will occur, and the real possibility of another civil war is high.
Bless you. That’s all I can say – bless you. That some people can still clearly see that what happened in Israel two months ago has only one side, is a blessing. It should not need to be, but this is where we are.
Although I’m not sure what happened is “pre-modern”? You might review the murder of perhaps 100,000 Jews in Eastern Europe in the 1920’s, together with the public raping (sometimes to death) in some towns of every Jewish woman and girl, as a terror tactic. I would think the 1920’s are modern times. Perhaps “modern times” is more of a vision than a reality.
VDH, I find your photographic ability of instant recall of people places and events combined with your ability to articulate with an economy of words and such clarity, the thinking of the average person (I’m Australian) and in such a calm an measured way, most refreshing. The way you communicate your thinking and ideas places you head and shoulders above the pack.
So well said about this gift to the free world and all freedom loving God fearing folks world wide our beloved V.D.H.
Mr. Hanson, you possess a high degree of presence that others should embrace and love. Thank you.
More brilliant observation and analysis from VDH! God Bless you Patriot!
I completely agree. I would just add that part of that realignment needs to include justice for the thousands of political hacks in the deep state who have lied and perused illegal investigations and persecuted half the country. I would even argue that justice for some of our media hacks in the form of libel suits needs to happen too. In short, we need to win against the evils of our time and punish those who are in fact the real authoritarians.
From a 92 year old. Wish it were not true, but it is.
Indisputable truths. We must become patriotic Americans once again. Forget “woke, DEI, Green” distractions and come together as in WWII and not squander the legacies provided us through the courage and sacrifices of the greatest generation. Thank you once again Dr.Hanson.
i am 75 and i say the country is already unrecognizable and i’m talking about just three years ago. that these cretins garnered 81,000,000 votes would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
death to tyranny.
Your intellectual words are cheap. Take some action if you want real credibility
While you may think his words are cheap, without VDH writing this intellectual article, there are many people in this country (plus those around the world) who would never know what is truly happening here. There are only two legal actions most of us can take to influence change: 1) run for office; or 2) vote. I don’t think VDH is inclined to run for office (plus I think he is more powerful doing what he does with such aplomb). However, I am positive that he will vote which is a credible action and one all of us can participate in doing.
What needs to be done cannot be said out loud.
Very well said.
Your anti-intellectual posturing is pointless.
What action could he take that would have a greater effect than what he’s currently doing, which is clarifying and spreading these thoughts, which can then galvanize millions of people to action?
Great article as usual. Today, I just want to say Merry Christmas to you, Victor, your family, Jack and Sami. I live in a small Adirondack town where a great many citizens are nourished by your work. My father was on a destroyer in the South China Sea in ‘44. My wife’s father was on a sub in the Pacific during the same time period. Our stories of service are the rule in the North Country and not the exception. On this Christmas day, it is important for you to know that we appreciate your work and your sacrifices for our great country!
I’m not sure what is in our future, but it doesn’t look good. Several stories have been written how a Black Swan event will alter our elections on a greater scale than COVID.
Many armed Middle Eastern men and others crossing our borders illegally daily. There is a plan in the works to destroy what we know as “The United States of America” by both domestic and foreign adversaries along with the globalists.
We’ve lost our way as a God fearing nation, which we alone are responsible for. I pray for a positive outcome for our country and to hold those in power accountable for their actions.
Why would any rational/religious country in the world want to be politically motivated or compelled by a now “Woke” country such as ours? Or The West for that matter?
I am literally crying out loud. Thank you for being you. I adore you more than I can vociferate. When did truth become evil, and evil become truth?
There is not one paragraph in your article that I feel safe discussing with anyone. I made the “mistake” of bringing up the obvious 6+ years ago. The reward, no friends and family.
Prayers for you and your family every night… for years. You are hero of our time.
Thank you sincerely,
T
Isn’t he fascinating to listen to? Everything he says seems to be exactly on point. Too bad Trump can’t be so eloquent.
Thank you, Victor, for just being fucking awesome!
Jesse
Professor Hansen,
Your insights derive from your academic excellence. Perhaps you would consider adding to your encyclopedic grasp of history and language with a bit of physics. I am lately taken by The Principle of Least Action. As applied to behavior, it explains much of human dysfunction. Here is a link to Sabine Hossenfelder’s explanation of the physics of “least action.” Since it works on electrodynamics, the brain is subject to “least action” no less than a ball thrown from point A to point B and looks like an unavoidable form of laziness. This ‘defect’ in human functioning is alluded to by Hannah Ahrendt: “Failure to think is the source of evil.” Thinking requires the expenditure of energy and is, thus, NOT described by “least action.”
What can we expect being led by a person (Joe Biden) who has dementia !!! He needs to resign immediately and replaced! Of course who could do that? KAMALA? The dhims are in a pickle as there is no one on the left who would be capable IMHO!
Mr Hanson such a tremendous writing only you are so capable of doing!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS sir…Always look forward to seeing your writings sir!!!
Great WW2 talk in SCR, about Nov 2019!
Shook your hand, just prior to start.
Thanks, so much is not commonly known that you tell us !
—
If Nancy Pelosi was an R, Trump would still be president. She set
the game plan, tore up his speech, the rest is her Trump take down
legacy…
We print voter ballots and drivers test in many languages,
deleted civics and history in K-12, and all the rest in your
above, plus foreign born and illegals, can live here, in their
own community, like being in their own country….not in America, of
being an American…. all speak and some think want their own laws,
laws from where they came, but applied here…..
—
All you type, say, videos, are not used by those who believe as you do, those
in congress, who would agree with you, could use a lot of what you give us,
words so effective, like in all the above….
Thanks for what you have done, and do to restore the sanity that has so many
with TDS, all they feel is their hate for Trump, pure emotion, logic and common
sense gone since they hate 45 so much.
Thanks !!
Pete
Sir,
You write with a sage like quality. There are a number of countries noted in Bible scriptures, none of which includes the United States of America. The USA is no where to be found in the Holy Bible. The country who had or has, the greatest military known to man? Not mentioned. The country that protects Europe, Taiwan, Japan and others? No where identified in the Bible. The country that has sent the most missionaries of the Biblical Gospel message of salvation to foreign countries? No where to be found. How about the country that brought the world far and away the most inventions? Not mentioned.
So this begs the question, WHY?
When a country is so blessed from the very beginning, founded on Biblical faith and truth by its forefathers and then in the 1900’s begins a slow departure from the faith, taking God out of the colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, the town square and governments at all levels. When God, in his foreknowledge, understood the fall of American Morality he said OK. You have made your choice and it’s not me. The USA is now reaping what is has sown, the judgment of God.
“If what we saw after October 7, or . . . then the country as we knew it will become unrecognizable.”
“… will become unrecognizable.” Nay, dear Victor.
Right you are, about almost every thing you write and say publicly. HOWEVER; that you do not recognize that your combination past (“knew”)/future (“become”) tense statement about the VERY PRESENT condition of America as seriously and profoundly UNRECOGNIZABLE ALREADY, must be the stumbling of an overly fatigued mind.
Take a vacation. I will loan you my BayCottage.
Mary, there are no ungrammatical conflicts of tense in that paragraph so unfortunately, you do not qualify as a grammar snoot (“syntax nudnik of our time” – see David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster”, pp. 66-127). Spend some vacation time at your BayCottage yourself with Garner’s “Modern English Usage”.
Another spot-on article from VDH. The only ingredient that he failed to mention, as always, is what God will do. He does not believe in God, at least, that is what I’ve taken from much of what he writes or says on his programs. If the nation continues to negate moral necessities, divine punishment will come simply because an amoral or immoral society destroys itself or, depending upon God’s intervention as judgment, is destroyed. As a biblical scholar, I find VDH extremely weak in his understanding of the entirety of Scripture. He’s a brilliant man, but so was Aristotle. Ignoring God disarms humanity of moral endurance and ultimately its own eternal demise!
I didn’t know that about Victor.
You express so succinctly what my spouse and I try to express to each other in our worrying for 2024 and the years beyond.
Yes. 2023 has indeed been worrisome nationally/globally, and 2024 may well be worse. Yet positive counter-valences beginning in 2023 may strengthen. If we can survive this next year, will 2025 be better?
I agree completely. It’s tragic to see America today. In my youth never would I have believed we would be as we are today as a nation. The elites are unified in a common ideology that is dedicated to ending the Republic as we have known it. There is no effective opposition party. It’s up to the people. And they are divided by lies and a common destructive agenda by big media, big tech, education. It probably won’t be long before it will be illegal to be a white male in America. Advances have been made in my lifetime by women, blacks, gays. But instead of leading to a greater assimilation into the culture, these have decided to dig in, and push harder to advance even more radical agendas. I don’t have a lot of hope about America.
https://politicalmoonshine.com/2023/12/22/the-fatal-fifth-column/
Read it, then read it again, take notes, add to it. Then share across all platforms…
MAGAA1st
11b
“…the country as we knew it will become unrecognizable.”
Pretty much their whole goal now, isn’t it? This is a planned collapse.
100% on point. Many Americans talked about these same issues for decades. I personally talked about this since 2008 and no one paid any attention or intentionally laughed at and ignored these issues as laughable. I believe this has been the sole intention of the left for over 60 years. Look at what happened to President JFK after he spoke out about secret society’s in one of his last speeches before he was assinated.
Victor, I love (LOVE) what you have to say. I agree with you 100%. If someone has 2 brain cells to rub together and an ounce of integrity – then they will also agree with you………
I saw a poll yesterday that 57% of the Hispanics thought Biden was doing a good job. Over half this component of the population is cheering the destruction of the border and the “reconquista” of the southwestern United States. If you want to see what is in store for women in the United States as this proceeds, web search for “therednotemovie”. Notably this has been censored off US corporate media.
Everything you listed here is so true and yet so many don’t see the dangers in any of it, which is hard to even begin to fathom. Mental Illness has been so on the rise that it has millions to not be able to think straight at all, or even be willing to back-check their own thoughts. I am convinced our nation will not survive any of this and I wonder if any of those who support any of this will think when the end starts to approach us?
The truth is that the character of the country was our strong-suit, but now that is even gone and hatred is driving all of this. Our universities are in shambles and I am surprised that so many parents are still footing the bill for all of this “indoctrination” that is dangerous to the core. The fact that universities can’t even police their own wrong-thinking leaders is dangerous and irresponsible.
I fear for those of you under 40 as many of you have no idea what you have unleashed upon yourself. Those of you under 30 who think these rampant protests are some right you must hold so dear are going to find out how wrong you are when you even approach retirement age and have absolutely nothing to show for all your self-righteousness. You will find yourself ultimately at each other’s throats mad about your lot in life. You will have gotten your way and will suffer greatly for it.
Spot on.
Why don’t they just do what they have done before? Eliminate all and start over.
If you vote Democrat after this crap, you’re anti-American.
Dear Victor,
I have always enjoyed your insights. Your articles are thought provoking, accurate and objective.
Unfortunately for all of us, humans constantly lie, cheat and steal if for no other reason than personal gain. Looking around ourselves (now), it is the worst nightmare possible and something I believe can never be fixed with an election (or 10 elections). The bureaucracy, corruption and dishonor is too far entrenched.
People call it “lawfare”, but I refer to it as “no law at all”. There is no more law. We have members of Our house and senate, who stand in The People’s House and lie with complete impunity. Public officials who lie under oath, all without penalty or punishment. They launder Trillions of tax dollars back into their own pockets. Corrupt courts and judges, law enforcement which operates identically to “the mob”.
You cannot plant new trees in an old forest, the growth is anemic. Nature (of which we are), routinely burns the forest to the ground, so a new, healthy and vibrant forest can succeed. It is why governments since the beginning of time are disposable.
Thank you sir, I really enjoy your factual views and observations.
scott
Understand, at the bottom of it all, the American Left wants 1-party rule. They were denied it in 2016, and they have been impatient for it since. That is why any means necessary is fine with them today.
Victor Davis Hanson, the historian and philosopher, puts it all in order. What a blessing.
A significant, but very noisy minority may believe the nonsense the rest of us despise, and fear is playing out in America today. Their delusion is not our delusion.
We clearly see the error of their ways and seek to rectify their abject dishonesty. We do so in our own lives and within our community. We do so by calling out the decadent ideas from the radical left.
* Hamas is not a victim, they are barbaric aggressors.
* Israel has a right to its sovereignty.
* It is immoral, unethical, and a sin to single out any ethnic minority and harm them. Didn’t these Leftists learn about Hitler and Stalin? Never Again.
* Woke, ESG and DEI are parasites on mankind.
* Reform Education. Force competition with independent Charter Schools. Get the federal government out of it all.
* The federal government has got to be controlled. Demand that federal employees and politicians adhere to the Constitution.
* Politicians have got to stop the spending.
* Politicians have got to stop putting us into debt.
* Federal regulators have to be controlled and reminded that they work for us, we pay their salaries.
* Stop our government from committing suicide through Green Energy. If it’s going to work, then private businesses will get it to work. Stop forcing it, stop subsidizing it.
To get to the bedrock of the issue, all the delusions we see playing out lead to control by an elite. That is
As always, VDH hits every mark squarely. Every word is true but will likely be ignored by the radical leftists who control our country and are on their way to destroying it. Even if half the voters wake up in time to want to vote the scoundrels out, those in power have thoroughly indoctrinated their erstwhile followers to hate-hate-hate Hitler Trump and will never vote him in. They have perfected their techniques of finding enough mail-ballots and stuffing boxes to win. I fear for what my progeny are facing and hope I don’t live long enough to have to deal with the disaster to come. VDH gives me some hope that others will face the truth as well as he does.
But besides that, Mr. Lincoln…how was the play?
Victor forgot to mention the state of healthcare. Without group insurance through employment there are not doctors that accepts the individual plans or “Obamacare” grade policy. I can’t even find where to get a physical, colonoscopy….
RE: 2024—the Year of our Reckoning
…gotta luv an optimist (& no, not kidding), ‘cuz this country’s goin down.
To my knowledge , VDH has never mentioned the FBI embedded in the Trump supporters or the fact that when Ray Epps , whilst wearing a Trump cap , instructed Trump supporters to create an insurrection, it was the Trump supporter’s who chanted , “Fed, Fed, Fed, Fed” .
In regard to VDH’s elucidations of the current state of the US military’s wokeness and The US educational system’s anti-Semitism it would be advisable to note that this is not a black swan event but rather a carefully orchestrated plan/effort deployed over decades by the “Deep Plate (armor reference) and the “Deep SLATE,” (school blackboard reference). If your unfamiliar with the Frankfort School’s influence on US institutions for the past 100 years, for starters, see https://illinoisfamily.org/education/frankfurt-school-weaponized-u-s-education-against-civilization/. The other 2 puppet masters contributing to the demise of the US education system are, of course, the Chinese and the religious institutions, See ya around campus!
Impossible for us to return to what America stood for and once was. In the early 1930s, Dr. J D Unwin nailed it when he said once a society’s generation no longer supports marriage where the man is dominant and rules his family, the society destroys itself in just two more generations. Boomers began toying with feminism, GenX men embraced the fallacy of the ‘strong woman,’ and Millennial men despondently allow women who have lost their minds, to rule in their place. Patriarchy creates order and prosperity. Feminism creates chaos and mental illness. Not budging from this truth.
Now that we have years of predictions based on extrapolations, the prevailing outcome is that it is to big to fail. Our lives will just be worse. I think there was hope in an “end”, now its just indefinite slavery with weekly pep-talks saying… ‘you just wait,….it’s all coming down”. Hope you all are ready for backpedaling from the conservative right , as another year of managed crisis prove that it doesn’t make sense,… because it doesn’t have too, just shut up and get back to work.
No doubt this will be the last Christmas as we know it. Next year at this time we will be in the dark ages if our nation last that long. And if America goes so does civilization. It is the laws of physics. One can not defy the law of gravity for ever. This is just cold blooded reality!!
Remember when George W. Bush had a comprehensive immigration plan worked out with sane Republicans and Democrats, but had it crushed by the same MAGA nuts supporting Trump’s sedition? Good times, not to mention a lost opportunity.
You must have a scrambled brain. When George W. Bush was president, Trump wasn’t involved in politics in any way and there were no “MAGA” Republicans. Your brain must have been addled with all the woke crap going around you~
You actually make it seem really easy along with your presentation but I find this
topic to be really something which I feel I might never understand.
It seems too complicated and extremely extensive for me.
I’m taking a look forward in your next post, I’ll attempt to get the hold of it!
Thank you Victor. We so enjoy your ideas and appreciate how your mind works. Little did Americans realize that Christianity was vital to our national sovereignty. This cultural construct established the altruism and the idealism that encouraged a certain mindset. In the West, a transcendent God is put first, above man. That God gives us laws in the form of 10 Commandments (our first laws). These laws show us how to behave and give the moral authority to God. He becomes the only innocent victim allowed (in the form of Jesus Christ). The rest of us are mere sinners, limited human beings, expected to do our best within our limited capacities. The Armenians came up with this brilliant twist on the Judaic Tradition. The virtuous population that it created allowed for democracy and capitalism to develop and flourish. These social constructs would not exist without the ethical and idealistic population that Christianity formed (see Adam Smith). Without ethics and morality, based on a transcendent God, all we get is narcissists with their rampant greed. Hopefully the West will realize that this story, this religion matters. There has never been a free society without it.
Greetings Mr. Hanson,
Your articles are always very well written, your speeches always well spoken.
The America you spoke of is gone. Has been gone a long time.
The marxists openly began their “long march through the institutions” almost a century ago, and they made their end goals quite clear. Their “long march” is now complete.
The days of “voting” our way out of this are over.
What used to be our southern border is not being over-run by “migrants”, a literal invasion is taking place. Estimates as high as over 10 million, since Biden was installed. A few million of whom are military age males; they are not coming for landscaping jobs. They are being brought here to build an army, and they will be used against traditional Americans.
There are no “conservative” political figures who can or will “save America”. The fix is in. Corruption and treason are the order of the day at the highest levels, throughout the agencies and institutions, academia, corporations, etc. For those who still think “voting” will save them, remember what Josef Stalin said:
“It is enough to say there was an election. Those who cast the ballots decide nothing. Those who count the ballots decide everything.”
Aptly titled article for what will probably be an epochal year.
VDH consistently puts it all together, forcing a proper overarching review of the situation, rather than discussing an element of the whole. The best statesmen have always done the same (Think the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, Churchill). And if they can add an element of poetry, the wind beneath the wings that touches the human soul, they have employed the English language to maximum and powerful effect. Reagan, the Great Communicator, achieved effect by saying things that needed to be said, but at a time when geniality sufficed. Easygoing nature is insufficient in today’s crisis situation, as it undermines the message by downplaying immediacy. When your house is on fire you do not take time to frolic. Resolute is the posture needed today, manifested not boisterously, but calmly and steadfastly. Whatever is perceived on the outside, what must be seen on the inside is steel (“Those Men of Iron,” said Abe, referring to the Founders).
Without doubt, the qualities of guardedness, heedfulness and wariness are necessary in the conduct of battle, but it is a postulate that should be accompanied by the succinct response of Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Belgium, who became a hero to the world for his defense of Belgium during its sufferings after the German invasion in World War II: “When prudence is everywhere, courage is nowhere.”
Victor, this is a good review and yes half the country would not agree with you. Why, because of apathy and the main stream media does not report it that way. Enjoy your 2024.
We do live in interesting times. eegle
If you did not see this coming. Yuri Bezmenov ( Russian defector) warned you. Watch the interviews,
It’s still up on you tube and rumble. Reread Franko’s comment Dec. 26
Dear Victor, There’s Only 1 Path 4 All Red/White/Blue Americans: CreateAGreatAmerica.com 2 MakeAGreatAmerica.com 2 Make America Great Again. Creatively Yours, Russell Warren Kukla
When I came to the part that Biden can easily be indicted but has not a wise truism came to me. We have met the enemy and it is US.
Looks like the Fourth Turning is now.
Unquestionably believe that which you stated. Your favorite reason appeared to be on the web the easiest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I definitely get irked while people consider worries that they plainly do not know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top as well as defined out the whole thing without having side-effects , people can take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks
This non-Marxist citizen of Australia (America’s most reliable ally since 1917), who believes the survival of Western liberal democracy is only possible under strong and informed US leadership, is grateful for VDH’s always persuasive assessments and wishes him good health in 2024.
Victor,
America is set to go into war. I have asked American’s if they believe we will go to war soon. Surprisingly many have said no. I believe the war started in 2020. It happened when we woke up to hear that a bioweapon was released from a lab in China. People were running to their local Costco frightened buying large amounts toilet paper, masking up, no longer wanting to go to work. People were coerced to take a shot, threatened that they would lose their jobs, and many did. This is when the war started.
America is not prepared for the terror attacks that will take place in America due to the open border crisis. Soon Governor Abbotts’ cries will resonate with every single American. As they will understand the true reality of why it is essential to protect one’s home and border. In Mexico, while people wake up to go to work, a dead body is found randomly on the streets. This will be something Americans will see soon. No child is safe anymore walking the streets of America. Young boys and girls will be victims of perverts and killers. The Biden Administration willing allowed for US law to be broken at our southern border. That is a crime. Our local CBP across the states have advocated their stress of lack of resources and concerns. When President Biden went to visit the border, illegals were cleared out of the area, so that media outlets could display a false story.
Continue…
Continued
Today people in America don’t understand how free they truly are. As they wake up to go to the local Starbucks coffee shop and order their specialized drink. They ready themselves to go to work, hearing and listening to the stories of the day thinking that someone out there is taking care of their country for them. When American citizens fail to actively partake in their country’s current events, blind themselves to researching the news stories they read, they shut off their source of information. This is a mistake, one of heavy consequence.
Americans across the states must be willing to stand up for their principles and to fight against those that oppose America. If a Palestinian person on American soil can push and assault a Jewish American, the Jewish American (or any American) must be willing to push back. Americans will not be pushed around any longer in America. We must stand and defend our principles. Or our nation will no longer be. The US government will not come to our rescue. When a crisis happens, it happens in our backyard. The police officer who has been defunded will not make it to our homes on time to save us. It is us the American people who must defend ourselves from the tyrants who are destroying our nation.
It appears to be 6 of one and a half a dozen of the other. If we do something about the dire straights that our nation is in we could undermine the stability of our nation. If we don’t do something about the dire straights that we are in we could undermine the stability of our country. So what do we do?