Victor Davis Hanson Oddly, as I said, for a lifelong farm laborer, Burton knew almost nothing about mechanics, indeed nothing about anything other than trying to do the physically impossible—like lifting 200-pound plum stumps or throwing up on the truck bed two-foot sections of three-foot diameter concrete irrigation pipe. I think he was the strongest […]
Victor Davis Hanson Burton was at least 6’5’’. He may have been about 55 years old—although he was one of those strange people who were ageless and could have been either 40 or 70. What was not ambiguous was his strength. He was made of solid muscle. Burt, as he wished to be known, was
Victor Davis Hanson There are many attractions—open spaces, beautiful farmland, central location, “diverse” peoples, middle-class traditionalism—in the Central Valley outback. But I am not quite yet a complete fool: there are real costs to being able to run with the redtails and foxes. Dangerous people live out here. There always were such characters, but nothing
Victor Davis Hanson So what happened? In a word, too much astounding wealth and too much abject poverty created a medieval keep surrounded by a village of peasantry outside the high walls. California in general, and in particular the Bay Area, ushered in the greatest concentration of wealth in civilizational history, with some nine-trillion dollars
Victor Davis Hanson Who were to blame for the San Francisco Inferno? Anarchistic leftwing state laws and ballot initiatives that green-lighted criminal activity? Grasping city, county, and state governments that both raised taxes to the nation’s highest levels and passed crushing regulations—and yet gave the taxpayers mediocre services in return? Radical and inept city attorneys
Victor Davis Hanson It should have been impossible to wreck San Francisco. It is the world’s most naturally beautiful city, with perhaps the most ideal bay, harbor, and ports of any coastal metropolis. San Francisco is America’s premier window on the East. It serves as the natural conduit of commercial and cultural exchanges with the
From An Angry Reader: Part Two It is disappointing to me that Hanson is stupid enough to believe that it was a good idea for Britain to start a war against Germany on the flimsy pretext of preserving Polish “sovereignty” over lands that were historically German. After all, Britain did not go to war against
From An Angry Reader: Part One It is disappointing to me that Hanson is stupid enough to believe that it was a good idea for Britain to start a war against Germany on the flimsy pretext of preserving Polish “sovereignty” over lands that were historically German. After all, Britain did not go to war against
Victor Davis Hanson Then about six months after I had discovered them, the weasels had vanished! Or rather their entire hill on the property line above our orchard disappeared with them in it! One day they were neurotically busy as usual, then the next afternoon, two huge war surplus caterpillars were leveling the hill itself
Victor Davis Hanson My grandfather with a sentence or two had dismissed the idea that I could see a weasel, since he saw everything on the farm and had found no stoats, ferrets, or weasels. “Now Victor, I’ve never seen a weasel out here for years. You may. But I bet the coyotes ate them