Join this weekend episode with Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc to take in a bevy of topics: Kevin McCarthy’s record so far, IRS whistleblowers, an ethnic Indian, would-be “white supremacist” Biden assassin, biased Google searches, and the legacy of hard work on the farm.
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What happened to the commentary on battles and wars?
On Farming: right at the beginning of our present form of government, we had two visions of The United States. Jefferson, who Uictor seems to be channelling here, wanted a republic of gentlemen farmers who could eventually transition away from slave labor. Hamilton wanted an urbanized and merchant based system. Much of US history reloves around the tension between these two ideals. The East Coast, being shaped by glaciers, is less than ideal for farming and lands itself to mechanization and trade. This forced farmers westward from the earliest phases of colonization. The middle of the country is great for crops, but the thin soil creates its own problems. On the other hand, it has large, navigable rivers which support trade and the attendant growth of Insurance and then financial institutions more broadly. The West Coast has the best crop land and climate if it can be irrigated, but it also is ideally situated for trade. In short, US geography is ideal for an urban, trade and finance centered economy with crucial pockets of large-scale intensive agricultural. Geography is on the side of the Hamiltonians and their vision of representative democracy based on economic stakeholders rather than farmers. As I always say, take a leisurely stroll through New England sometime with Jack. Pay careful attention to the stone walls, old mills, and especially the cemeteries.
As cities grow, farmland goes. Example: Silicon Valley use to be chock full of orchards.
Which requires more efficient farming or an extended supply chain exchanging machine made goods for food from less urbanized areas.
It’s Leticia James pronounced let-ish-a.
Sorry, it’s been bugging me for the last month that you’ve been saying it incorrectly.
More importantly. I can really relate to what you said about working for the family. My parents owned an apartment house thar we lived in. I learned how to write checks and rent receipts at 8, I was painting at 10, installing wallpapers at 13. Apartment clean outside, minor plumbing repair, preparing apartments for rental until I was 21.
I live on a farm now. We lease out most to a local farmer. But we have an acre and 1/2 with fruit trees and we sell chicke, duck and Turkey eggs as well raise Turkeys for Thanksgiving. My son has lived with us for months at a time while he works up in the area. As I was working in the garden today. I thought about how wrong it was for us to never have insisted that our son work as I did,unpaid for my parents all my life. Instead we let him just play video games every day n night after work.
I worked a pt job went to school and then college and still worked for my parents even after I had my first two children and was married. My husband was dragged into the family business as well for reduced rent in one of the apartments.
It turned me into a very different hardworking mature beyond my years person, than my 10 yr younger sister who was 12 when they sold that city house and moved to the burbs. I am eternally grateful to my parents for the work effort it gave me that is not present in my sister.
Farm stories are
Loved your story, my childhood was not as rough but I still had jobs to do around the house as my mother died when I was young and my older sister at 11 was working in a beauty parlor cleaning.
I had to make dinner while my friends were out playing after school. Didn’t realize at the
time what a blessing it was. My father managed to keep us and we didn’t wind up in an orphanage.
I am so grateful for you Victor and especially for the times you talk about your family and how hard you.all worked. I lived on a dairy farm and we would probably have considered lower middle class but we were a happy family most of the time. You are a wonderful man and brave to say things that could make trouble for you – especially when you are on Fox News In the evening shows. I am trying hard to be upbeat and fervently hope the republicans can turn this country back to it’s roots. Keep up what you are doing but watch your back. I would be heart broken if anything bad happened to you.
Oh, Prof Hanson, your farm talk makes me reminisce. I was a NYC kid and we had a gorgeous 1760 saltbox with old red barn Upstate, on 13 acres in the middle of dairy country with mostly German American farmers surrounding us. My parents sold when I was 6, but I have more specific memories about that enchanted place where we spent summers with our mother while our father was in the city than at any other time in my life. We rented out our open fields, which were either cultivated with corn or pasture land for the cows, who we watched every afternoon at 4:30 climb the dirt road back up to their stalls. There was a poultry farm up there, and my sister always came back on her bike from a mission to buy eggs with 6 out of 12 broken. My Italian grandparents sometimes came up from Queens to help my mother with her enormous vegetable garden behind a crumbling freestanding stone wall with tiger lilies along it. I had to come out at night (at 4 or 5) to water it and be bitten alive by mosquitoes. Succotash and canned tomatoes for the winter. We had a dammed up brook where I learned to swim with water snakes peeping out from the stones. Your mention of “freeranging” particularly touched me. While Mom cultivated flowers everywhere, leaving fields to clouds of daisies, wild strawberries, etc., we sisters shed our clothes and set out for hours beyond the dam on an almost dry July brook, naming stones, spying tadpoles, blue black hornets, dragonflies.
Yeah. This is the life. Gosh, I miss it!
widespread abandonment of a consensus definition of a woman …
summarily vaporizes the need for Title IX subsidies afforded female sports
spent lithium batteries, aged composite wind-power blades & expended solar panels …
critically overwhelm landfill facilities
doubling down on mandated recognition of pride ‘month’ ..
trivializes one-day observances of American independence & remembrance of our war dead
strident indifference to the teaching of U.S. history enabled thru the sacrifice of our forbearers ..
gives birth to generations of self-indulgent snowflakes reverent only to a destructive narcissism
the storied doctrine of unintended consequences frequently arises to smack sense into even those most devoutly divorced from reality