Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Twenty-first-century America was on a trajectory of gradual decline—until it began to implode.
Was the accelerant the COVID-19 pandemic and unhinged lockdowns? Or was the catalyst the woke revolution fueled by the 2020 summer of exempted rioting, looting, arson, and violence? Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?
Now with the election of Joe Biden, what had been a fast-tracked decline has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country.
Our largest cities are becoming uninhabitable—dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The challenge is not just rampant crime, but the realization that if you, the citizen, are stabbed, shot, or beaten up on the street, the perpetrators may well be exempt from most punishments. And the victim either will be forgotten in his misery or, indeed, blamed for bringing such violence upon himself.
Urban schools are not places of instruction anymore. That fact is accepted by teachers’ unions, whose operative principle seems to be that the more hopeless the idea of educating urban youth is understood to be, the less burdensome the workload, and the greater their hazardous duty pay.
Urban chain stores are closing down on the principle that if police cannot or will not stop consumer violence and theft, then consumers there should not have any store to buy anything, anyway. If there is no store, how can it be looted or shop-lifted?
The only mystery remaining is how long these Democrat-controlled, racially charged, and corrupt municipalities can sustain their budgets and pension commitments with increasingly declining revenue. One can tax the well off, and perhaps even gouge them as California does. But one cannot insult and ridicule them in the process. Being highly taxed is one thing, being highly taxed while hated is quite another.
How eerie that medievalism—defecting, urinating, fornicating, injecting in the street—is relabeled “homelessness—as if the problem is merely a shortage of apartments or tent cities. Somehow cities developed the notion that it was crueler to be told not to pull down one’s pants and defecate in the street than it was for a pedestrian to step into infectious human excrement.
In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit.
One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?
To have a “border problem,” one must have a border. The United States has no southern border.
Upwards of 7 million illegal entries since the Biden inauguration are proof enough of that tragedy. Mexico brags that 40 million have come into the United States. It urges them to vote Democratic. And it relies on still more illegal entries to ensure yearly increases in its current $60 billion in remittance income sent from its expatriates in the United States. The donors apparently grow fonder of Mexico—the more they are safely distant from it.
America could close the border tomorrow and actually “make Mexico pay for the wall” by simply slapping a 10 percent export tax on all remittances sent to Mexico. Or we could make it illegal to send money out of the country if one is receiving federal subsidies and aid. Or we could fine employers for hiring those who are here illegally. Or, as a deterrent to future illegal entries, we could immediately deport all who illegally entered and reside in the United States—if they came within the last five years, or if they have a criminal record, or if they are not working and are on public assistance.
The result would not just be a restoration of American sovereignty, and decline in spiraling social service costs. There would follow better relations with Latin America and Mexico. Both treat us with contempt as a hectoring weakling because, unlike themselves, we do not believe in our own physical space, our own borders, and our freedom to do as we please rather than what others tell us to do.
Abroad, our allies and neutrals are distancing themselves from America—France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, Turkey, South Korea—on the Ukraine War, China, the dollar as the global currency, and our popular culture.
Why? Our increasingly former friends conclude it is now dangerous to ally openly with the United States and for a variety of reasons:
1) They see the once indomitable United States as weak—as a possible liability rather than an asset. After China’s balloon surveillances, the Afghanistan flight, the inability to achieve strategic victory after intervening in Iraq and Libya, the current embarrassing Pentagon leak, the Anchorage mini-summit, the woke obsessions in the U.S. military, and the inability to ensure its military is well-staffed, apolitical, and equipped with the world’s most plentiful and cutting-edge weaponry, allies assume that the United States will not necessarily win any intervention it undertakes but may well drag them down with it.
2) The United States may suddenly turn on an ally, demonize it, and refuse to meet with its leaders, as Biden gratuitously maligned Saudi Arabia and Israel.
3) America asks allies to join its cause of the day regardless of whether it is in those nations’ own interest. So South Korea, Japan, India, or Egypt do not believe boycotting Russian oil or openly selling Ukraine weapons is necessarily in their interests.
4) Our woke revolution is so volatile, irrational, and unpredictable that allies never know when they will be accused of being homophobic, transphobic, racist, or sexist and treated accordingly—or whether the United States will be eternally crippled by internal woke dissension and civil unrest.
5) The allies do not believe the United States can keep secrets, especially after the latest leak. From the Dobbs draft leak and the Comey leak of a confidential conversation with President Trump to the Vindman-Ciaramella-Schiff impeachment psychodrama leaks to Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, leakers and “whistleblowers” feel there are few consequences to leaking classified information (unless it is embarrassing to leftist administrations), or indeed leaking to the media to overturn institutions and presidencies.
America must reform the entire Pentagon process of spending and appropriations. It must end woke and identity politics, ideological indoctrination, and return to a meritocracy. It should prohibit retiring generals and admirals from revolving into defense contractor boards and lobbyists. It should finally enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits active and retired high-ranking officers from publicly attacking their current commander-in-chief. It should charge leakers with felonies and prosecute perjury. Had the government done that with Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, James Comey, and James Clapper the accruing deterrence would have discouraged others with lower profiles.
Biden is on schedule to run up a $2 trillion annual deficit, adhering to the Bush, Obama, and Trump legacy of unfettered spending. In Biden’s case, he insanely printed over $4 trillion at a time when labor participation rates were already in decline, COVID-suppressed demand was returning, and transportation and production interruptions were reducing supply. He raised taxes, increased regulations, cut projected increases in gas and oil production, and canceled energy projects. The result was the highest inflation in 40 years, near-record energy costs, soaring interest rates, the largest modern percentage of debt to GDP at 130 percent, the greatest debt in our history at $33 trillion, and stagnant GDP. All that and more prompt the current Chinese-led effort to dethrone the dollar as the world’s currency.
The remedies are agreed upon, but the needed medicine is feared more than the disease. Our elected leaders know we must, but never even attempt to, cut spending, reduce the size of the federal government radically, simplify the tax code and reduce taxes, deregulate, recalibrate Medicare and Social Security, develop our mineral, gas, and oil resources, and require labor participation for able-bodied entitlement recipients.
Never have Americans spent more on K-12 and higher education and never have they received less in return. The education industry is woke and nonmeritocratic. Research is diverted, sidetracked, and polluted by ideological commissars, endangering the U.S. lead in science, math, engineering, and the professions. Even scientists have become deductive, starting out with a preconceived woke conclusion they feel will win influence, grants, and notoriety and then scrambling to warp evidence to fit it.
The solutions are straightforward. Tax university endowment income—and lots of superfluous and harmful programs will vanish.
Stop federal student loan guarantees, and soaring tuition and room-and-board costs will decline to the annual rate of inflation once universities must guarantee their own student loans.
Require universities that receive federal funds of any sort to honor existing laws from the Bill of Rights to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That would end segregated dorms and graduations. The next time administrators at Stanford or San Francisco State either aid or ignore student efforts to shout down or disrupt speakers and suppress free expression, their institutions should quickly be fined by the U.S. government or have their federal funding yanked.
If SAT and ACT entrance tests are being abolished, then they could be rebooted as exit tests required for a bachelor’s degree analogous to a bar exam. With such minimum standards, we might ascertain what, if anything, students had learned upon graduation. College graduates should be able to choose between an academic master’s degree or the school of education credential to teach K-12. Most would flee the latter option. Right-to-teach laws and the end to mandatory teacher union dues, along with the end of tenure and its replacement by five-year contracts with required minimum standards of achievement, would all bring some accountability to what is now an entirely unaccountable profession.
Race is no longer an accurate barometer of either victimhood or legitimate grievance. If “affirmative” action were to continue, it should be based entirely on class considerations, not the current system of Elizabeth Warrenesque fakery or delusions that the elite children of Eric Holder, the Obamas, the Duchess of Sussex, or LeBron James are in some need of compensatory privilege for college admissions, appointments, or hiring.
Because America is now multiracial, with untold ethnic and racial agendas, and countless and contorted collective grievances, it is impossible to sort out victimizers and victims. Junk the entire illiberal and patently illegal system of racial discrimination, and there would be an organic return to merit, and with it, race would become incidental, not essential to American identities. After 1964, it seems Orwellian that liberal institutions could continue to assign dorms by race, segregate graduations, and impose racial requisites to participate in special programs.
America’s former strength—the most transparent, accurate, and trustworthy elections in the world—have descended into its greatest liability. In the space of a mere eight years, and especially in reaction to radical political changes made under the cover of the COVID lockdown, we have gone from 70 percent of the electorate in most states voting on election day to a mere 30 percent. Yet the ballot rejection rate somehow diminished, with the flood of non-Election-Day ballots that overwhelmed accustomed audit and verification.
Election night is a mere construct. It is mostly meaningless. Local, state, and federal election results are stalled and descend into days, weeks, and sometimes even months of bickering, counter charges of ballot tampering and fraud, ballot harvesting and curing, and a loss of confidence in the integrity of the final result. Debates mean little anymore, once a large portion of the electorate has already voted. No wonder deceased candidates can win. Gaffes are now determined by whether they occur before or after the majority of voters has cast their ballots.
There should be a national uniform standard that allows states to set their ballot procedures—as long as they result in 70 percent of the electorate voting in person on election day.
America is in a similar position to where it was in 1861, 1929, 1941, and 1968—only perhaps worse, given in all those cases, there was at least a president and Congress that identified and reacted to the crisis, whereas today our elected government is what caused the crisis.
You, Mr. Hanson, cannot recognize that the Intentional Destruction of the United States is being done “ON PURPOSE!!!!!! ON PURPOSE!!!! ON PURPOSE1111” 1963, My Political Science Professor showed our class these “45 Goals of the Communist Party USA to Destroy America”. You, Sir, act, talk, & write as if you have never heard of read about these Goals. Why is that?
IMO that final sentence in Professor Hanson’s article indicates he is well aware all the ills of this nation are being pushed “on purpose” by the Left and even helped by some republicans in government. Those who no longer have concern for the US citizen, only the power and riches they may accumulate.
I think Mr. Hanson can see whats going on in this country. Like a good teacher he is asking if anyone else can see it too. Take heart, there are still good people in this country willing to fight the good fight.
In 1960 i recall, as a student at College of Puget Sound then soon to become the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma under Dr. Thompson, attending with a workout mentor a meeting in a Boeing Plant office in Seattle near Boeing Field that was put-on to warn citizens of the Communist Party’s agenda for the US. I do not recall many details described there these years except the warning for our education system and for our entertainment industry. The audience almost filled the room.
The presentation was sobering. But later it always made me wonder why the advice was not heeded. It seems to have been a small group of citizens trying to warn a wider group of very busy people working to survive and thrive after WW2. That was my guess and it provided me a reason to learn a bit of the fall of previous civilizations. Toynbee and his wife and others were interesting but work & family required a more immediate demand and that reading waxed & waned throughout the years. Then along came Professor Hanson with his crystal clear descriptions and obvious courage and the old fascination was rekindled. Clearly, the left has momentum and is widespread. Conservatives clearly lack the coordination of the left and also its fire in the belly. IF the globe does switch from the dollar to the yuan that will be the last sign. Were we younger, indeed, I would search for greener pastures. (no reference to AOC’s agenda). Tina Turner did.
Yeah, not one peep. Highly suspect
I don’t see where Mr. Hanson argued that it wasn’t “on purpose“, he merely argued that this was the current condition as he sees it, didn’t he?
Actually, I’ve heard VDH suggest it may well be deliberate. Some others in the news are starting to accuse the Left of this once unthinkable, also. This gives me reason for some optimism. In times of war we must call a spade a spade.
I always loved Bill O’Reilly and his O’Reilly Factor. I agreed with about 90% – 95% of his positions. One thing that I disagreed with him on was something he said about 10 – 12 years ago. He referred to Barack Obama as patriotic. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. Anyone that wanted to fundamentally change this country, as he admitted, I thought could not love this country. It is as simple as that.
In office, he created a Muslin refugee crisis in the Middle East. Angela Merkle took in about a million of them, as did many other European countries to a lesser extent. How are those people fitting in? Not too well, from the accounts I read. Why could not humanitarian aid be available to them in Safe Zones in the Middle East? Yet, this sensible, logical, option was not utilized.
I suspect that Obama wanted this crisis. He did little to reign Al Queda and its burgeoning caliphate. Trump was able to end it within a few weeks by simply listening to his generals.
Why would Obama want this crisis? My suspicion (and that is all it is) is that he wanted to create a Muslim diaspora. What better way is it to spread Islam thorough out the West. I suspect future generations (of non-muslims) will look back on his actions with great regret.
Middle East refugee crisis was created under President Bush (43) with invasion of Iraq. Obama was forced by neocons hawks like late Maverick McCain and senator Graham etc. to engender regime change in Libya, Syria with resultant refugee crisis. Thanks God, Obama resisted the neocons call to invade Syria on his defined red line. Otherwise we would be caretaker of Syria today.
I agree with most of your statement. My belief is this was a long play and everyone was playing the game regardless of what letter they had after their name.
Your first sentence is based on fact. I would not challenge your 2nd sentence because I am not familiar with the facts, but do not recall Obama being forced to do anything by Republicans. Dems had control of both houses of congress during his first two years. As for your 3rd sentences it is ill advised by any president to set a redline and then ignore it when it is tripped, as Obama did. He could that enforced it without invading Syria, as Trump later did his his 57 or 59 missile strike.
As for the refugee crisis, it did not, as you point out, begin with Obama, but (in my view) was greatly accelerated under him. I remember well the steady advances of the caliphate, and the subsequent human fleeing it caused. I was visiting Germany in 2015 and witnessed the mass peaceful street protests of Angela Merkel’s very liberal policy of allowing unvetted Muslim immigrants into her country. I continue to not understand why their basic needs could not have been met by establishing safe areas in the Middle East until the caliphate could be destroyed.
Obama showed little interest in establishing safe areas, or destroying the caliphate. Rather he chose to hamstring his generals, instead.
Thank God that Trump listened to his generals and in a matter of weeks the caliphate was decimated. God bless him for it.
You forget about Muslim Turks as Gastarbeiter in Germany after WWII. You forget about Muslim and black African immigration into France. You forget about immigration into the UK from its former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia (primarily India and Pakistan). President Bush was only a small part of what we have today.
Yeah thank god for Obama……
The Democratic Party has evolved over time from an organization that addressed traditional American values from a liberal viewpoint to an organization dominated by progressive leftists bent on governing as the vanguard of the people. The destruction of American institutions is accomplished by undercutting traditional values and destroying the concept of citizenship. Read his latest book, The Dying Citizen. He addresses your point in detail.
Absolutely. Understanding Jefferson’s comments make clear the tyrannical take over has been happening since the 60’s . We need to put him back on a high pedestal to watch over us .
I suggest you read the article again, paying special attention to the last paragraph. I think Mr. Hanson is well aware America is being destroyed ON PURPOSE!
Anyone that believes it’s not an purpose is blinded by their ideology. Victor ain’t one of those.
That is true and I am certain he does realize it because he is the smartest person in the room.
I am I in despair as I look upon your beloved country. The world needs a strong, politically healthy America. I and my husband are hoping the USA can pull back from the brink. I take hope in all the people who have decided to make a stand and fight for American ideals but corruption and evil are across the land this is going to be a long and arduous battle and more people need to find the courage to challenge these ideas especially at the local level. We must all do our part. I thank you Dr. Hanson for the example you set. Watching from across the pond.
If only more in the USA and around the world recognized what you do!
Thank you.
WE need to act to repair it. Lamenting while sitting on ones derrière’s will fix nothing!
Pray for us and do not despair. There are alot of good people in this country willing to fight the good fight. Good always wins over evil, it just takes time and perseverance.
Watching from up north, I heartily second your sentiments.
Amen.
There is lots to laugh at with our current, poor excuse of a president, but none better, that when he gets fired up, trying to imitate the Great Winston Churchill, but all the while stumbling on the words written for him on his teleprompter.
It is especially enlightening to hear the fool read the prompter’s footnote instructions. No wonder citizens of other nations, including those with intent to take us down.
Going by Doc Hanson’s lists of degeneracy and decrepitude things ain’t gettin’ any better, only worse. Here’s another stick for that cold fire: Dr Naomi Wolf speaking at Hillsdale College about the vile cruelty of Pfizer in the use of covid\vaccine to speed up the destruction of western culture.
Steve Bannon helped Naomi Wolf put together a large organization of experts who analyzed the formulation, manufacture, and effect of the Pfizer vaccine. What they pulled out of the propaganda fog is detailed in this hour-long presentation. I can’t tell if Naomi Wolf is controlled opposition or an honest woman. To me, her big hair and her manner of speaking are off-putting. Either way, what she presents (with primary source documentation) is genuinely astonishing. The level of depravity she describes engenders rage.
NAOMI WOLF AT HILLSDALE COLLEGE:
https://freedomlibrary.hillsdale.edu/programs/cca-iv-big-pharma/what-s-in-the-pfizer-documents
To the list of malaise drivers I’d add usurpation of law-making by exec branch snd agencies; congress must retake its role.
Another great article from one of the finest minds of his generation.
Last line: whereas today our elected government is what caused the crisis.
Hands up if you believe today’s government was “elected”. Last person to leave the room kindly turn out the lights & lock the door.
Ron and Nikki say much the same thing; so, despite expectable avoidance/suppression/distortion/attack attempts, there is hope.
Professor Hansen, I have the utmost respect and admiration for your knowledge and expertise. And your willingness to be outspoken about your beliefs. That may not be so safe especially in California. You bring very interesting history for the people to realize that “if you don’t pay attention to history it is bound to repeat itself”!
You interview with Tucker yesterday was great. You were calm and collected and gave clear and concise answers!
“America could close the border tomorrow and actually “make Mexico pay for the wall” by simply slapping a 10 percent export tax on all remittances sent to Mexico. Or we could make it illegal to send money out of the country if one is receiving federal subsidies and aid. Or we could fine employers for hiring those who are here illegally. Or, as a deterrent to future illegal entries, we could immediately deport all who illegally entered and reside in the United States…”
How about ALL of the above!
When one looks at the history of Europe, Asia, and the middle East, one sees that one thing stands out among all those wars. True, for many countries these were wars of conquest but often justified by religious ideology. The Thirty’s Years War ended when it became obvious that Catholics and Protestants would never love each other and could only hope for tolerance between them. Our civil war was fought on similar grounds, an ideology of states’ rights to decide the course of slavery and the ideology of union rights and the end of slavery, although few northerners went to war in the face of death to “Free” the slaves. What we see today on the left and far left is an ideology elevated to that of a religious belief. We cannot talk about “Climate Change” (really the old AGW argument) because its adherents have assumed a religious attitude and treat any debate as an indictment against their precious belief system. Woke politics, BLM, all that clap trap which cannot stand the light of reasoned debate all assume the religious mantle of true believers and woe be those who dare question their beliefs. But what did you expect from the “God Is Dead” crowd, a need to erect a god in their own image and a mighty piss poor job of doing so.
So we might well ask the question: How do you convince a “True Believer” that his religion is false and his god never was? The world has been pondering that question for a great many centuries.
You listed some very practical remedies to correcting what ails us as a nation, Victor. But in my view you left one out, that should have been listed in capital letters.
IT IS THIS: All candidates for office, whether it be local, state, or national, can only accept contributions from those individuals (definition: must have a pulse–i.e., no union or corporate money) that are eligible to vote for them.
Private money intended to alter the political process (e.g., vote counting, voter registration, etc.) would be prohibited.
Under my plan lobbyists would still be permitted, but their influence would be determined of the number of voters they represent, not their check books. They would have no check books as far as the political candidate is concerned.
Finally, campaign contributions to a candidate would be subject to some reasonable cap.
Just think if such limitations were actually in place
Imagine if the restrictions that I suggest were in force during the last election cycle.
Would the likes of George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg have more, or less power and influence in our elections?
Would we have more, or less, radical mayors and district attorneys?
And best of all, would our elections be more or less in tune with the wishes of, “We the People”?
I know in the past I have made this suggestion elsewhere at The Blade of Perseus, but since it was ommitted in VDH’s remedies, I thought I should bring it to our collective attentions.
Thomas O’Brien, the problem isn’t a lack of rules. It is the enforcement of even the simplest things. VDH makes the point over and over that our legal system is no longer applied equally, and the bias is applied so that political opponents, those who support the sort of things you mention, are targetted. The treatment of the J6 rioters is a perfect example. Much of this stems from simple incompetence, but you must posit malice to explain the solitary confinement absent any statement of charges followed by extraordinary sentences that have been unleased on these foolish people. These are the judges and prosecutors that you seem to think will cooperate in resurrecting your utopia. They are as much of the problem as the weaponized enforcement agencies.
I think you point out some very valid concerns, Robert.
I’d saw it is a two part problem. Your points fall under part two, in my view.
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals has come to fruition, promoted and enabled by the Democratic Party.
Dear Dr. Hanson:
I see no evidence that LA or any other city regrets becoming another Detroit. In fact, they actually seem to desire it. As for those moving out of largely their own creation to greener pastures, they seem quite committed to repeating the same process in their new location. Just one observation!
Victor, God has blessed you with the wisdom of Solomon. I believe your even smarter because you do not have 700 wife’s and 300 concubines. I pray that God reads your articles and I make them a prayer to him to deliver us as he delivered the Jews from Egypt. We could dress you as Moses to lead us, he was about your age.
These Democrat-run cities and States were already bailed out by the Biden administration:https://nypost.com/2021/03/10/massive-1-9-trillion-bill-is-a-bailout-for-blue-states/
Who’s to say that they will be forced to reform? So long as they have the corrupt Federal government to turn to, subsidized by the money-printing Federal Reserve, and actual working taxpayers in Red States, they will continue to financially steal from the Nation as a whole.
A center right County councilman in a radio interview last week advised listeners that the Fed Gov gives this Pima County $400k per week for use for the illegal aliens that cross what used to the US southern border. $400k per week. They are probably others.
Victor,
You should read Alex Epstein’s Fossil Future. He persuasively argues for more fossil fuels, not less
He demonstrates why climate change anti impact posture will negatively impact human flourishing.
Seems like all we can do is wait for the downfall and see what we can resurrect from the ashes.
Classicist Hanson must understand that cultural epochs have a lifespan of about 500 years. Rome lasted about 500 years after the birth of Christ. 500 years later the Church split into East and West. 500 years later, Luther sparked the Reformation. We are now 505 years post-Reformation. The post-Reformation cultural epoch is collapsing. It’s institutions no longer serve their founding purposes, and it’s people no longer share the common bond of Faith (Christianity) of its cultural foundation.
No merit required. Just a guaranteed income or position. Governance in our major cities is a charade and employees are turned into actors going through their motions…but the money keeps flowing with lugubrious displays of concern.
The US and China are trapped in a symbiotic relationship that also has components of Sado-masochism. China wants to torture us but not kill us off completely because it needs us economically as we are by far its largest trading partner and the basis for its wealth, influence and power. In return, it has given our elites the blueprint for modern totalitarianism that incorporates capitalism instead of failed Marxist economics.
Meanwhile, China is aggressively undermining and destabilizing our society to keep us dysfunctional and codependent by flooding the country with deadly drugs or their components, necessitating an open border and the cooperation of violent Mexican drug cartels. They are brainwashing impressionable and vulnerable children through the hypnotic grip of social media, tailoring algorithms to destroy their minds and corrupt their young souls. Nothing is done about any of this because China has flooded the country with money, liberally doling out billions to colleges, corporations, finance, even agriculture by purchasing farmland at outlandish prices. Our elected officials in both parties have been bribed into silence and inaction. So no, I don’t see a way out for this country and I think it will continue in its downward spiral. Our only hope is to stop China’s accession to global supremacy, which seems futile, or pray that it will somehow collapse internally but there are no signs of that happening in the near future.
That relationship was created by the Federal government, particularly by the DEMONCRAT party that profits from the relationship. Republicans also have their greasy paws in the cookie jar particularly China Mitch.. That’s why they despise the Great MAGA KING as he can’t be bought and they don’t have anything to blackmail him with, no matter how hard they try.
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I asked Professor Hanson wether any society so deeply decayed as ours has ever rebounded. I know he hadn’t time to answer me, but I see no evidence the myriad reforms described above are attainable.
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I have heard you comment more than once regarding the revolutionary left wing of the 60’s being made up of young people while today it’s University administrators, big business executives, etc. I don’t view that as curious at all as I believe they are the same individuals. The same young people who protested and made left wing demands have now grown in age and and authorities.
Victor, I am empathetic to your dilemma of describing what we know to be true, but avoiding stating the most contentious basic facts, perhaps to defer rather than avoid the eventual result of your insightful and comprehensive treatise – these that encourages citizens to stand up together to save their civilization, never mind their country, state or city – But if stated plainly, would result in your denunciation, cancellation and then ‘pariahic’ status in common civil society.
Our Eutropian failure began with our elevation of a single man from speaker at a convention to untouchable, Nobel Prize winning without achievements while leader-to-be of the entire free world, Barack Obama! It was a reflection, and resulted from John Kerry’s own souless distaste that awarded that plum introduction, and Kerry’s fevered dreams have benefitted beyond his dreams as a result.
May he and their despicable Cabal with such venal hatred in their hearts for our country suffer the same Damnatio memoriae when goodness eventually returns to our civilization.
No way you are going to win fighting by Marquess of Queesbury rules. You need a goddamn Patton. This from today’s American Thinker, obviously inspired by VDH.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/with_the_barbarians_in_the_gates_we_may_need_our_own_barbarians.html
Not sure Patton would be adequate. I would like a Sherman marching to the sea. And a C in C that would let him do his job.
Powerful+and+compelling+VDH.+A+must+read+for+all+American+citizens+and+especially+our+policy+makers%2Felected+officials.+Time+is+running+out+on+our+founders+experiment.
The ground work for American decline was put in place during the Obama years, and then fully accelerated during the Trump years. Various US government agencies, whose historical mission was to create chaos, discord and upheaval within foreign countries in order to install America friendly puppets, began openly colluding with business, particularly media, to do the very same thing in the homeland. America could never be defeated by an outside enemy, rather the only way she could be destroyed is by her own hand and that is exactly what is occurring as I write this. The US national security apparatus, enabled by captured politicians and corporations, have been intentionally destroying this once great country and the evidence is all around us.
Comments and proposed solutions from intellectuals such as yourself have been proclaimed from the rooftops all my life and yet my despair only grows as I see the clear, common-sense approach you espouse is ignored by almost everyone. A leading historian such as yourself is surely aware there is no precedent for a civilization to right itself after the inevitable decline begins to snowball down the slope apart from catastrophic collapse. We are in the rapid decline phase of our evolution as a country as you noted and history and the book of Romans chapter 1 both tell us it is inevitable.
] One thing I know about is the homeless problem, so I will just reply to this quote from your article:”How eerie that medievalism—defecting, urinating, fornicating, injecting in the street—is relabeled “homelessness—as if the problem is merely a shortage of apartments or tent cities. ” The human species is not equipped mentally or physically to live without shelter. Most other animal species seek some sort of shelter as well. Some build rather complex shelters involving dams, or complex tunneling. It is traumatic to be in a homeless situation, and statistically the life expectency of a homeless woman is only a couple of years. For homeless men its a little longer. This trauma can create situational mental illness. The hardships of homelessness can lead to drug addiction for obvious reasons. The nation has been in a fairly well publicized national affordable housing crisis for about 5 years. Rents everywhere have tripled and more. Insecure housing where people move in with others, two families in a studio apt. is something I have seen in my semi rural area, other temp. arrangements, are sad but common. The price gouging rents are a huge and very real problem. People are going to work from shelters. But not a word is said about the price gouging landlords. Instead the victims of the gouging are demeaned and criminalized. Sensible price controls are desperately needed.
Price gouging rents? And what would you have landlords do – charge less rents than their competitors for the common good? Apartments rental rates are a market – just like other markets.
Are grocery stores and gas stations all gouging their customers by increasing their price lists?
Landlords buying single family California (goes for all the West Coast, and probably beyond) with a 20% purchase downpayment (an enormous sum at today’s prices), are still bringing in less rent (even as high as they are) than is needed to service their loan. In addition to that they also pay property taxes, insurance, and maintenance. In addition to that they must factor in a vacancy factor, although given the strong rental market, tenant turnover is low.
Well, why would anyone place easily a $100k, or more, down on a house, that can be destroyed in minutes with an 8.0 earthquake (coastal California), and deal with the risk of lousy tenants? The answer is that they believe in the long run they can make good money on their investment and sweat equity. The key is the word “long run”. It takes many years for rents to rise sufficiently just to service the loan. But after several decades and thousands of dedicated hours dealing with rental matters, a good profit can be made.
I understand why tenants do not factor in all that I listed. They are beings squeezed, and its gets only worse for them. Homeownership (not talking about landlording now) is the way to go. One must have a viable plan on how to do it, and then being will to make the short term sacrifices (penny pinching), so that they may benefit the long term gains and financial security that comes with home ownership.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns , That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make, With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life…But that the dread of something after death {Of the USA}? A leader, a leader – my kingdom for a leader.
Mr. Brownell, I believe that was not the point of this paper. It is where we are NOW and WHAT can we do. He does address the Government created it, that in itself says volumes.
I for one am sick and tired of the derision afforded to my great city of Detroit Michigan. we do not have near the crime of New York nor Chcago. our Governor is surely lacking in some ways but our Chief of Police have done their job. pick on L.A. and Baltimore. Give me a break.
I was listening to Mark Levin’s podcast with BDH as his guest on 4/16/23 when the podcast was hacked and some weird game like screen took over. I tried a second time and the same thing happened. I think you are getting too close to the truth getting out!
In regard to my comment on homelessness: I am not saying that there aren’t problem addicts or some mentally ill in the homeless population. But there have been group homes and apt.complexes with structured programs that have been shown to be effective for people with long term problems previous to their homelessness. All of us need a home, home being a place where we can truly be ourselves within the bounds of law. Without this our development will be stunted. For those who have been unable to make rent, there should be sheltered transitions into housing asap. But none of this will come about without price controls. I worry when will housing assistance become unable to sustain the burden. The wait lists in many places are decades long. Via the housing subsidies, the entire country pays for the landlords’ price gouging. In my semi-rural almost all White area, people, esp. seniors, are suffering.
From the Communist quote, “We will destroy America without firing a shot”.
What would the federal government be with no tax increases and running a $1 trillion budget surplus? (Thus, to pay down the federal debt.)
I, and like-minded other Americans, are amazed at the idiocracy that our nation has become. I’ve tried to find the reasoning behind the collapse and the speed that it is happening. My conclusion is that God is judging this country. He is sovereign and He is using our corrupt ‘leaders’ to sow their evil. ‘We have abandoned the ‘Old paths’. We have become our own gods.
If one studies the eschatology of the prophetic books of Scripture, there is mention of the great fall of Babylon. I’m wondering if that could be the United States.
One thing is for sure….many are believing the ‘Great Delusion’ in droves.
Well, if all that is true, it may be notable that numerous (real) scientists are now very concerned about the potential for the Cascadia and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates destroying Western Washington, Western Oregon, a large portion of Western California within a few years. That intersection is losing lubricant that will increase the plate stress. When it strikes, it will be of Biblical magnitude ala that of 1700 AD.
You addressed nearly all of my concerns and well. Thank you. I am also underwhelmed by the judges that are unable & unwilling to recognize the corruption & fraud in our elections. I had felt certain they, the judges schooled in the Law & the Constitution, would set things right. My great fear & sadness welled up when blindess effected the judisary.
And yet, Chicagoans vote in another version of Ms. Lightfoot. Inexplicable. Thanks you Dr. Hanson. Some of us hear your cry for the beloved country. It’s maddening to see it slouch towards destruction.
With all due respect, and I do read and agree with your commentary on the failing American Experiment, but paraphrasing the Founders, this Constitutional Republic is only for a moral and religious people. What I find lacking in your writing is pointing out the abandonment of the citizenry of first principles including flouting the God given Ten Commandments leading to widespread corruption and the devaluation of human life. In my opinion, lawlessness and corruption are simply symptoms of the disintegration of civil society, not the root cause.
True. You could alternatively simply assess the 2 sigma portion of the normal distribution of the US population against the 7 sins of man. Outcome? Calamity.
Methinks that it’s not about America’s decline, but about Western Globalist’s furthertude,
Good luck to all!
This may be the spark so sorely needed:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/17/budweiser-releases-new-pro-america-ad-with-iconic-mascot-in-wake-of-anheuser-busch-mulvaney-controversy/
This is NOT to say everyone should go out and down a pack or two.
You cannot state the obvious more plainly than this but despite the absolute clarity of our observations and arguments. our leftist friends become more and more entrenched in their hate-based marxist tribalist teachings. They remain stuck in their amygdala and cingulate gyruses while accusing the cerebrum of being racist, sexist and homophobic! It is true the state of ‘demoralization’ described by Yuri Bezmenov in his 1985 interview. What he describes as the next steps of chaos and revolution almost seem inevitable. It’s a good reminder of the fact that all humans will behave similarly in similar situations. This is true thoughout history. It also illustrates the fact that the only thing that has made Americans different than our relatives in all of history is the principles enshrined in the founding of this country through our DOI and Constitution. This is the reason the left attacks them so vigorously. The only hope is that we have enough capital left with Gd or our high power to pull us through this latest crisis. Given the history of humanity and their irrational passions, I am not very optimistic.
There is no turning it around…one world form of Goverment just around the Horizon…for each individual now is the time to choose whom you will serve will it be the creator lord God Almighty
thru his son Jesus Christ or will you serve the God of this world who has blinded the hearts and minds
of the formidable majority of the worlds population The anti christ will soon emerge and then its too late.
Self evident decline of America can be reversed. With pen and paper make your local and state legislators aware your support depends on their actions. Self defense is the right of everyone in America. Any defendant who is acquitted because he was defending himself must be completely reimbursed any and all expensed from funds of the prosecutors. Before a Grand Jury case is presented to the the grand jury the prosecutor must be able to disprove self defense defense was not the case with evidence of criminal scheming which led to the crime..
The New York City bodega operator whos crime is defending himself. The Uber driver whose crime was defending himself when a firearm was pointed at him while the mob surrounded his vehicle .
The young man in Wisconsin.
I read these fine VDH pieces w/a high level of dread because solutions seem so out of reach. Politicians, & Republicans specifically, are unable manage anything. For 40Y I’ve voted for Republicans, & they’ve always disappointed. Frequently corrupt, often inept, they are frightened, enablers of Democrats, and squanderers opportunities & power when they finally achieve it. I’m also just strait up disappointed with America itself. Doesn’t anyone wanna to make a bunch of money anymore? What the hell?
Amazing and brilliant analysis.
The emergence of Trump as a viable political winner is what triggered the US’ rapid fall from prominence. I mean, Donald f-ing Trump was elected president for god sakes! Talk about a moral decline.
Victor Hanson thinks that corruption (tRump) is the answer to the problems of the USA. I think Dementia has struck this fake scholar.
It was not Trump that precipitated the fall, rather it was the left’s 24/7/365 without merit attempts to take him out. Surely, had there been one iota of proof the ethically challenged Andrew Weissman
would have gotten his rocks off to be able to order a 3:00 a.m swat team to Mar-A-Lago.
Mr. Hanson, you are correct, perhaps to the last letter. But those in power are not only the cause of these crises, they meant to cause them. The lie is the point. The chaos is the point. The destruction is the point. They are protecting themselves so they are safe and in power once we all reach the other side (transformation). To recognize and respond we have to start there: know that you are being lied to by people and systems that are very good at it. There will be a response by the higher authority, and we need to be prepared to participate, whatever that should look like. My best advice is to be agile, humble, prayerful, and ready to be surprised. Courage will be there when you need it.
There is a mental illness, a deep delusion that grips half the electorate. I see it even among beloved family and friends.
What would have been minor differences of *approach* to a problem in the past (crime for example; “rehabilitation vs. deterrence? Let’s discuss it”) have been transformed into an unending series of unbridgeable gulfs.
To the left, choosing to murder your own pre-born baby is a sacred civil right. If you even deign to question this so called right, you should die. On this issue, even my otherwise hard-right Republican-voting wife says you should die – for opposing abortion *politically*.
The bonds of family or friendship are subsumed at every turn into the exploiter-exploited formula of Marx. There is literally *nothing* left that isn’t part of this delusion. No institution, no single simple thing is without a victim-victimizer dual-use of flaying the skin of civil discourse from the body politic.
I’ll invent one right now to illustrate how nothing is off limits; take the humble traffic light has no white light showing only colored lights. It’s a perfect metaphor for white supremacy; hiding in plain sight while still running the show. See how easy it is to invent delusional conspiracies? Never mind that it’s a brilliant invention created by a Black Man from Cleveland.
We keep fighting the symptoms and not the disease. We have to lay bare the fact that the endless varieties of Marxism are champion by those with a very specific mental illness.
Reminds one that one of the many incompetents in the Biden gaggle argues that freeways and off-ramps are racist.
Something is out of kilter. It’s too much when biology, genes, DNA are denied for a social construct. It’s as if a large group of individuals present as a whole with symptoms of delusion.
America is ill not dead but her fate lies beneath A Sword of Damocles which has been placed there by short sighted ,petulant and arrogant purveyors of irrational thought driven by the perverted Ideology of Cultural Marxism!
The foundational principles and values that have been responsible for the creation of Western Society emerged from the growth of Christianity and it’s concept of Individual Freedom! Individualism and the power of the individual to determine his own destiny was an idea that exploded and brought power to The People and death to many top down Totalitarian Governances! From the new power millions were lifted out of squalor and depravation and countries began to reconfigure politically based on Christian Ideology. Concepts,beliefs, science, math, art, music and every other aspect of life began a 2000 year march through the old institutions and the birth of a Belief System that held it’s followers in abeyance by it’s guidelines,rules and expectations! It’s followers have been bonded together by their expectations of and behavior towards each other.Like a harbor wall holding back the raging ocean Christianity became a Bulwark and stood defiant against all those who posed a threat to it’s existence!
That existence is being challenged again and Cultural Marxism has created a surreal world of total opposition to the guidelines, rules and expectations of all Christians in it’s quest to destroy it’s influence and then to supplant it with A Godless Communist Tyranny!
When I got a difficult problem to solve, whether it was designing a program or start the planning of an effort to change an organization’s culture, the steps are:
(a), Make the assumption that a solution or path to a solution exists,
(b) Identify what the major, and minor, obstacles stood in the way of a solution, and then,
(c) Assuming that was a good objective to pursue (not necessarily a given) and assuming that those were really a complete list of the obstacles then what approach will get us on the path to solving the problem.
Oftentimes, we found we missed something, some read on the problems, and then we’d have to (d) given the progress made in step (c), review the overall approach and the basic assumptions about (b) and (c).
Sometimes, following that process takes mere hours and sometimes it takes… longer… but the process, whether it’s a planning a military campaign, starting a SW development, or planning an organizational change process, always follows along that path.
I always start with Step (a), that is, make the assumption that a solution or a path to a solution exists. We have to believe a solution or a path to a solution exists, period.
I guess I doubt whether the majority of the people on the conservative side of the battle have the belief that “it can be done” mentality to the extent that we’ve gone into apathy on this issue and we no longer really try, we just list the problems.
I can believe that there was a lack of integrity in the recent Chicago election results. My upscale precinct voted in an alderman who is communist and has had past lapses in financial integrity. Our new mayor has had past lapses in financial integrity and has never struck me as having good credentials. I feel like democrats are little lemmings who vote for anyone who is a democrat just because this is what they have always done. But I still believe the vote has been skewered.
Stop whining, for one. The changes we are witnessing were driven by leftists and globalists for whom borders are an unnecessary and onerous inconvenience and they are happily about their social engineering and you can keep your complaints and your voter’s ballot to yourself while grown-ups are talking and doing business. With a ‘B’. For another, be honest. NAFTA has not dies and now there is talk of the North American Union. There is also talk about competency and net efficacy to be able to regulate or defend or even manage anything with an aging Congress and a senile senior citizen in the oval office whose family sprouts another corruption scandal pretty much daily. See gatewaypundit.com for the details.
The informed electorate needs to start showing up for work, providing we still have one that can withstand and decipher the contents of the corporate MSM propaganda stream…globas, plobatizeners, and the beatings WILL continue LOL
Great essay, Victor. I was unable to read this until late in the day. I’ve also enjoyed reading the multitude of comments that have been posted. It is one of your best articles and one I will show and share with family, friends, and anyone else that will take the time to read. I appreciate the tremendous detail and effort you put into this. May we who have been silent do what it is right.
“Or was it perhaps the deranged fixation on removing Donald Trump from the presidency and destroying the rule of law in the process? Or all that and more?” This is a comment that Victor Hanson makes that shows what an idiot he really is while pretending to be such a scholar and someone with solutions to problems of USA while being a supporter of the biggest problem the USA has, mainly Donald J tRump. How can someone who claims to be so intelligent and have all the answers be such a hypocrite and be so incredibly stupid. The biggest destroyer of the rule of law and all society norms is none other than tRump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Many years ago a friend was in a mental institution and when visiting him I heard this saying by the staff to the souls in confinement when things would get prickly and i say this to you sir” Take it down the range” way down the range!
Very good comparison.
Still, it reminds one of the problem of persuading toward better thinking skills.
It requires some humility and a desire to understand.
Many of them possess neither; they are legion.
I am at a loss. I am demoralized and pessimistic about America’s future. I think that we all are confused and misguided and eventually we will suffer for it! God/Mother Nature Help Us!!!
Since America appears to be headed toward self annihilation, what will the world be like post the destruction of America?
If the internet is the Great Library, possibly a Dark Age.
Flashpoints and problematical eras — 1861 …… 1929 …… 1941 …… 1968 — in the linearity of time there is certainly a sort of paradigmatic recurrence or cyclicality.
And in such times — survival/revival or decline/demise — what decides ?
If we look to world historian Arnold Toynbee (A STUDY OF HISTORY, 12 Volumes), his assessment is one of “challenge and response”. Wherever the challenges may come from, and whatever they may be, survival/revival of a culture, a civilization is decided by the actions of the people by way of their leaders (who may or may not be government officials).
World historians Will and Ariel Durant (THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION, 11 Volumes) came to a similar conclusion: “When a group or civilization declines, it is through …… the failure of its political or intellectual leaders to meet the challenges of change” — THE LESSONS OF HISTORY (1968, repr. 2010), page 92.
Of course, then again, over and above all this, there is — or at least there can be — the actions of God to nudge (or in the aggregate, shove) events and circumstances in one way or another. Historians don’t deal with this, except perhaps peripherally — it’s not their province. And these days the theologians don’t deal with it either.
I keep thinking of Sulla, who smashed the norms of the Roman Republic in an attempt to save it. Lincoln did much the same, but the written Constitution contained and constrained the breakage. It might take something like that to solve the problems.
Of course this is on purpose. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, the only way you could get everything wrong, is if you tried. And they are trying. Less govt is the answer, less bio labs, less corruption, less military industrial complex, etc. and MORE justice. Where is the justice? Lying under oath, not protecting the Constitution, the border, etc. Everything is corrupt.
As if voting matters anymore?
The USA needs to die, and the world will be better off without Usury, Sodomy, and Abortion being forced upon it by economic sanctions and rifle barrels.
I am ashamed that I wielded one of those rifles in service of US corporate foreign policy. War on terror…lol.
The country my family and I have served is dead. Its ideals discarded, its foundations broken, its founding people diluted and atomized, and its faith only held by few people who are regarded as backward bumpkins.
I love my people, but my government is Evil.
America delenda est.
“Put not your trust in princes and in sons of men in whom there is no salvation-when his breath departs he returns to his earth and on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he of whom the God of Jacob is his help, who’s hope is in the lord his God…”
Who are you to say what needs to happen? The penalty for a false prophet in Levitical Law was stoning.
If you’re so ashamed of your country, gather your resources and your folk and move to a better one.
The camel’s nose got under the tent in 1913 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. At that moment our government began controlling the American economy, and thereby, American life. It only took 100 years to bring us to this point. There’s no way we can last another 100.
Ok. But the government is set in place by the people and their representatives. Are you saying that the Deep State began or reached fruition in 1913 and has pursued a policy of ruin down to the present day in spite of elections and changes in the two parties? Could you flesh this out more?
Americans are moving away from God although it is biblical principles that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were based. The new God of the Left is the federal government and we have almost 2 generations indoctrinated in Marxism through our public schools. We must take back our Country at every level but that means standing up and speaking out. Approximately 40% of Christians do not vote. If we continue to stand by and hope others will step in and make corrections, we are doomed. We have to engage in government at every level to make changes. Lastly, our Founders gave us Article V in the Constitution to allow the States to propose amendments. We need amendments to impose fiscal restraints, limit government overreach and get term limits (go to the Convention of States website to learn more).
I agee that the root force behind this decline is matieralism, greed, lust, pride and other sins, of which communism is one sterling example. I think VDH would agree.
The Republicans have been a great proof to the world that the homeless in America are not the only ones with their pants down.
Go to conventionofstates.com. It’s the only legal Solution to get our Country back. We are doing something. Show up, Stand up and Speak up.
One option for solving our border issues is to hand anyone who doesn’t have one, a social security number. Then they’re paying into the system, and they’re on record, like everyone else
Great job, thank you!
Dear Victor,
Congratulations on your latest masterpiece! How’s that working for you, put you any closer to keeping the farm for another Hanson generation? No? Sorry, so it’s still Dad-1, Vic-0? Pathetic!
I gave up following you closely years ago because you weren’t trying to fix anything, only prove how exalted you were as a conservative progressive. I keep checking in, though, hoping for change. Now, I see you’re at the top of your game: endowed chairs at the most prestigious conservative institutions, 15,000 words a day in the best media, two of the best acolytes to put the best shine on your most casual thoughts, assignment to the nation’s most critical Commission, and even a pay-bar, wow!
But you haven’t done anything to fix Hoover’s lack of focus on fixing itself, or its colleague institutions, or their pitilessly bare conditions, or their egregious seven-figure base salaries, or the Trump Shane, or the 1776 Commission, or the middle class, or anything America. Epic-ally f***ing pathetic!
I was working on the Berkeley campus to set up a new research division for the AEC during the 1960’s free speech protests that old white man Clark Kerr single-handedly turned into riots and the birth of the New Left by lying to the protesters, arresting them, and mocking them with a full-page piece in the San Francisco Examiner, the same protesters who have now gained the power and are destroying America because they see no other available path forward.
continuing:
I know this was before your time, but you are a certified historian. What have you done to fix any of this? Pathetic!
You’re the world expert on Ajax’s, Shane’s, Le May’s, Patton’s, etc., and their epic achievements, but you focus on their disgusting inhumanity, rather than their exceptional ingenuity in fixing things, to make sure that you and your parents aren’t tagged with the same “tragic” brush. So now, the memory of our Sgt. Bilko-, Dr. House-, and MacGyver-type heroes has disappeared, and is magically being replaced with sagas of nubile Chinese maidens defending humanity from giant, evil, earth-shattering Eagles. Great job, Victor, but I don’t see how that saves the farm, either. Pathetic!
But one of your latter-day, very rare, real-life Bilko’s has studied the breed, rather than exploiting the skill, like your Shane’s and Patton’s have done, and has made some astounding discoveries that could have had your name attached, like how to replicate the Founders’ generation expertise to really save the American era, California, Selma, our patriot industry’s institutions and leaders, your sorry butt and legacy, and maybe even the farm.
But this isn’t about making or breaking Victor, this is about managing the life cycle of Golden Ages and Renaissances, especially America’s. Can you park your arrogance and paywall at the door and give me an hour to tell a few war stories about how this ex-staff sergeant (I barely outranked Bilko) … continuing
continuing
(I barely outranked Bilko) “saved” SLAC’s Crystal Ball detector, the Rad Lab’s HILAC and IMRD, Amdahl-Jujitsu’s corporate DASD farm, the Air Force’s Training Command, and even one “dumb-Mexican’s” motor-pool junkyard shop next door to Moffett on Bayshore, so we can get going on saving the next presidential election?
Or do I charge ahead without you and “accidentally” overstate some of your “failings” explaining how you are the poster-child for why Liberty died on our watch?
No cutesy badmouth, blackmail, over-statement, or name-dropping, Dr. Hanson, just desperation trying to intrigue the only person I know of who can qualify, wordsmith, and publish what I’m completely confident can save America in time to do any good.
Can you please give me one hour. I will meet you anywhere any time, and buy your lunch. If you give me a fair hearing and really don’t believe I have anything worth pursuing, I will give you $500 for your time, and not trouble you further in any respect. I’ve just checked that you screen these before posting.
Respectfully, thank you for your consideration. Let’s call me Titus Lucius, for now.
Well done, two-Legger. A tad melodramatic, but well-done. May Yig consume your soul last when he arises in his serpentine glory to restore his people.
Ever-lurkingly,
Serpentor of the Third Circle, Keeper of the Shiny Thing
Ok. Who gave Wes the ‘shrooms?
I think I saw this in an episode of Hannibal Season 3 (the one with the Uppity Grad Student). Just remember Jack and Sami: observation is participation! And… maybe don’t eat anything at any of Uictor’s parties for the next month…
A Late To the Party Grook – will it be read?
America in decline, what can we do?
The answer is clear, but the actions few
Reduce the taxes, break up the unions too
Mandate charter schools, and more police to pursue
Reform the Pentagon process and end the wokeness
Return to meritocracy, and fine those who leak this
Lower the deficit and cut spending too
Regulate and simplify the tax code anew
Education needs fixing, end the woke and the fuss
Require universities to follow the laws in trust
No segregated graduations, no shouting down of speech
End tenure, make teachers accountable, and practice what you teach
Victimhood isn’t race, remove the racial biases
Affirmative action based on class, not ethnicity’s guises
With a return to merit, race becomes incidental
And with it, grievances become immaterial
Elections need uniform standards, 70 percent in person
Ballots verified, no delay, no confusion worsen
America is in crisis, like 1861 and 1941
But this time, the crisis is caused by our own.
very simple. Much talk about our U S & world problems. No solutions!! A vast change for freedom is coming.