Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler who discuss the Trump indictment and its consequences for and reflection in our political culture. VDH then talks about the hardworking culture of the ranch including a sceptic tank “excavation” following a party.
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Arguendo, Trump is guilty, is convicted, and imprisoned. As a former President he is entitled to Secret Service protection. How ridiculous is the image of Donald Trump in a prison jumpsuit walking around the exercise yard surrounded by multiple armed Secret Service agents in black suits and sun glasses.
My Dad’s family had money during the Great Depression and they taught him to tip, to reverence manual labor, and to do things for himself when practical. He watched the money dwindle as the family died or moved away as a poor kid in a big house in a rich neighborhood. Using grunt labor and smarts, he rebuilt the family fortune, almost dying several times in the process. He made sure we learned manual labor, tipping, charity, and to treat everyone with respect. A younger friend of mine just remarked that I can talk to just about anybody with ease. I guess those lessons are finally bearing some visible fruit. Course, that kid’s already most of the way there at 30 and doesn’t realize it yet. Some people learn faster than others…
King Solomon made a wise ruling when the two women both claimed the same baby, although one woman’s baby was suffocated by the mother in the night. When Solomon said, ” Okay, we will divide the baby in half,” the real mother said, “No, let her (the one whose baby had died in the night), let her have the baby rather than destroy the baby. Solomon saw through the envy and dishonesty of the lying mother and awarded the baby to the child’s real mother. We need the wisdom AND
power of Solomon right now. God help us.
Pr. 15:33b – “Before honor comes humility” from septic work. Thanks for establishing objective evidence for your spirit of patience and humility. 🙂
We must all earn our standard of living, even if we borrow wisely or foolishly. We must all earn respect, eventually, as it is too hard to steal. How does San Fransisco plan to repair the damages done by Reparations?
Best wishes,
George (friendly amateur heliochromolgist. ;))
Broke my heart Victor when you were talking about your family turning their back on you but don’t worry God still has your back and I said a prayer for you.
from this podcast your statement re the greatest generation was magnificent:
“…they were capable of anything because they had nothing.”
so profound yet so basic about the human condition, since forever, and unfortunately in our too soft of times too easily forgot, or never learned!
thank you always, VDH! … you remain a national treasure, particularly on this darkest of days and what’s happening in a crumbling once great NYC, today.
long time listener and reader – D Gehrig MD
I’m a new listener for Mr. Hanson’s podcast (first heard on Megyn Kelly’s) and look forward to his calming voice daily to explain the political chaos. As a Christian, I know the world will continue to worsen until Jesus comes, but in the meantime, I will enjoy your strong, direct wisdom of truth. I also enjoy the casts about history and farming as well. What a blessing you are to society. Big hugs!
I abandon my friends when they try to scold me in public for my political views. I didn’t pursue my daughter-in-law and granddaughter after she told me it was “problematic” that I read the Wall Street Journal and watched Fox. She has come around, and the one friend apologized to me for her actions after a couple of years. I will not pursue people who are not interested in me.
Ditto
Certainly enjoyed your podcast today. Your humorous rendition of farm cesspool blockages
brings back many memories of my youth on the farm as the second oldest of 11 children.
The drains and toilets were regularly NOT DRAINING. My father did not have your Dad’s patience! God bless you for all you do!
The fact is that our Constitution is only suitable for a religious and moral people, and that ship has sailed … and sunk. What does VDH recommend as the next move for non-woke Americans?
Seems important.
On this sad dark cloudy day, perhaps, this will lighten your heart.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mg_albQOyvA
Victor and Jack,
Great examples of the disparities within our justice system. The courts are now an arena where laws are not applied equally. When future judges and lawyers come from law schools such as Stanford, our country will become like any other corrupt 3rd world nation. The left have taken over the courts, our schools, and government. They encourage division amongst colleagues, friends, and families, irreparably damaging these relationships. Another goal of these leftists is to take over our economy, cause it to crash by reckless spending and destroying the banking system. I worry about an eventual implementation of a CBDC. Thank you for a tremendous podcast and the lively banter. It gives me a smile.
I don’t believe the data from polls. Here’s what I believe based on my own, empirical observations: the majority of people are ignorant as to what’s truly going on; either that, or they like seeing the nation go Marxist. The left starts brainwashing kids in preschool & continues through college. Wokeism is taking over the nation.
Yesterday’s reading in my course of self-study:
De re publica quid ego tibi subtiliter? tota periit; atque hoc est miserior quam reliquisti quod tum videbatur eius modi dominatio civitatem oppressisse quae iucunda esset multitudini, bonis autem ita molesta ut tamen sine pernicie, nunc repente tanto in odio est omnibus ut quorsus eruptura sit horreamus.
The whole letter 41 (II.21) Cicero to Atticus is timely reading
I think we’re getting closer to a second Civil War.
If only. I think we’re going out with a whimper, not a bang, my friend.
I give Victor 5 stars for all his work and love his discussions about growing up–and the many and varied jobs he has performed over the years. I was one of the top students in my age group in a town of 200,000, but upon entering the University of Michigan learned that even though I may have been in the top few percent in high school, I was nearer the bottom of that group in college. I was amazed and impressed with the abilities of people like Victor. One person I especially recall was our first-string quarterback who looked like Adonis and was a 4.0 engineering student.
Victor, your example @22:46 of a parent of a whiny, spoiled punk kid, whose response to that kid’s behavior is to say, “Well, I’ll do the same thing!”, makes me respond that that parent doesn’t know how to be a parent. He sounds like a Boomer, or the child or grandchild of a Boomer. What the whiny spoiled punk kid needs is a short, sharp shock, as the British call it. A swat on the rump, if he’s younger, and complete lockdown, if it’s a teen. No devices, no access, what parents used to call being grounded, before the Boomers rejected the collected wisdom of every generation that came before and decided that they’d be their children’s pals.
Also known as a smack upside the head.
And in the case of the punks at Stanford, the legal and procedural equivalent.
By the way, the scenario is the same as it was with the Sixties punks, except now, the administrators are themselves punks, children and grandchildren of the Boomers. But though they sympathize with the punk kids, they are just as afraid of them as the administrators were back then.
There is no such thing as demeaning labor.
I can understand the laborer who is anti-intellectual, only a stupid intellectual is anti-labor.
Being educated doesn’t make you intelligent.
Many degrees are awarded to people who have only been exposed to knowledge.
It’s been said that only 5% of people think, 15% think they think, and the rest want a slogan so they won’t have to think.
Victor and Jack,
When you arrived at the part of the story about tipping I went right over to my phone and tipped my water delivery person on the app.
I live on a farm and after seeing how bad the filters are for our water both the well filter and the house ones. We went to water delivery service.
My dad was 10years older than my mom so with 9 kids and The Depression they knew about poor. My parents owned a house that had 4 apartments. From the time I was 6 or 7 I was incharge of sweeping all the steps, graduated to cleaning apartents, painting wallpapering, minor pluming repairs and taking care of the furnace every night when I came home from my outside job. I delivered newpapers at 11, bagged groceries at 15 and I was still expected to clean and paint apartment’s. I was never paid for this work, it was just expected as part of the family business.
I even had to turn my tax refund over to my parents once I started to drive to pay for me being on the insurance. I was better for it. It gave me work ethic, responsibility to my family and to our shared sucess. My grandfather came to this country at 9 years old, he was almost sent back to Poland alone as he was a hunchback. His uncle had to come and sign a bond that my grandfather would not become the responsibility of the US. My dad had to leave school at the end of 6th grade to deliver ice to support his family. You get a lot out of those important life lessons. Like valuaing the physical labor of others.
Great show as always,
Admirable.
Does the legal community have no shame?
It is their law schools that hire the radical professors who teach critical legal theory. Eg. Yale Law School.
It is their deans who allow students to insult and shout down conservative speakers with impunity. Eg. Jenny Martinez of Stanford Law School.
It is their judges who deny habeas corpus rights to J6 defendants and ensure unequal justice to conservatives in large swaths of the country. Eg. Judge Emmet Sullivan.
It is their district attorneys who go after former presidents and leading presidential candidates with one bogus law suit after another, while allowing violent criminals to run amok. Eg. Alvin Bragg.
It is their U.S. AG who politicizes his office and abuses his power. Eg. Eric Holder
It is their law firms that refuse to represent conservative clients. Eg.
It is their bar associations that either try to sanction lawyers for questioning the 2020 election or reinstate disgraced lawyers who alter evidence in order to frame innocent people. Eg. New York Bar Association
We no longer have an authentic system of justice.
Such an interesting phenomenon.
Described also in “Decline of Nations” by Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.
Oh here we go with the WW2 generation worship again. VDH that was the generation that raised you godless hippie boomers, afterall it’s not like you dope smoking free loving anti war commies came out of nowhere.
Sadly the origins of the American Left can be seen even back then.
Hearing VDH simp for his father who evidently raised VDH to think MLK Jr. was essentially the 13th disciple when even back then MLK Jr. flirtations with commies was known. His most well known followers are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, you know the man by his fruits, MLK Jr was a shyster and your dad sounded like a violent liberal moron and your mom was proto-feminist woke.
You’re only over on our side now because the left finally crossed some line for you but we don’t want ANY return to the “good ol’ days” because they are what birthed now because they would eradicate the liberal menace back then.
Jack Sintullo: Who are “we”? When did the “menace” begin? What do you want to move forward to? The WWII generation endured mass trauma and unprecedented government intrusion into their lives from cradle to grave. There was no way they weren’t going to pass that on to their kids and their kids on to their kids. Setting Civil Rights aside (attacking MLKJ just limited your pool of sympathy to about six guys with bedsheets), what should we do at this point to reverse the negative fallout of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War?You placed your bet, now you gotta show your cards.
You sir, are an NPC. Robot goes beep beep boop.
Psst! They know not what an NPC is here! Oh how the generation gap divides you short-lived two-leggers…
Tea-baggin’ you all,
Serpentor of the Third Circle Keeper of the Shiny Thing
Good job with the pronouns, Wes.
My guess is that they average age of the readers on this site is 65+.
NPC would not be a common idea here. You must be watching Scott Adams.
The first paragraph is essentially accurate. Besides, if the website didn’t want “angry readers,” then they wouldn’t post the comment (as my comments on other websites about 9/11 are never posted). A generation became passive because of material prosperity, and lost moral supremacy. The ‘greatest generation’ is quite the humble epithet.
The pantheon of American gods are evidently Jesus, Washington, and MLK, Jr., since they are the three men whose birthdays are national holy-days. For further proof of the communist revolution’s success, we now have two independence days: the first in June, the second in July . . . The national motto is no longer “out of many, one” but “in god, we trust” — which god does the bureaucratic deep state worship? Once we had no men on our coins, living or dead, and had only the idol of one woman, Lady Liberty. Then we stamped graven images of men, ostensibly presidents, idols, onto our increasingly worthless coins, to whom do they belong? Now we also have images of women, not presidents, on our coins.
A first step would be to get serious about the value of work again, by getting serious about the value of our currency again: return to the gold and silver standard, and abolish the Fed permanently, after the dollar has disinflated and finally deflated to pre-1913 purchasing power. Who in Congress today or tomorrow would suggest such a thing? The global usury system is too profitable. Just my two cents.
The United States exists because of the global usery system and expanded in the colonial era because of it. No usery, no insurance industry, no bank system means no 13 colonies.
I have something to add to your last paragraph.
First and foremost we must recapture our educational system at all levels (Like Gov. Desantis and Gov. Young are now doing with school choice.). Teach our children and young adults serious factual history and civics about our country. Teach them critical thinking. Teach them how to recognize the tricks of demagogues (Where would the Dem. Party be without demagoguery ?). Thoroughly expose (so as to inoculate them) them with the tripe that we know the leftist marxists try over and over to sell the ignorant (There is a very good reason why the left does not want to debate issues with conservatives), and be sure they know how to challenge it with personal conviction.
If we do the above in our educational institutions, the youth (they are our future) will know that American is special, that it is worth fighting for, and that they should always be diligent, so they do not lose (as we are so close to doing now) the gifts given them, through wise leaders and patriotic sacrifice, by those that came before them.
If we do NOT recapture the educational systems, then we will be forever (as long as we are able, anyway) be playing catch-up, and that is a very futile task.
To use a plumbing analogy: It is like having a dripping pipe under the kitchen sink. Rather than fix the leak, we are just mopping up the puddles of water, over and over again.
It is very hard for me to take this man’s post seriously.
I, on his behalf, apologize to VDH and all his civil readers/contriubutors for his degrading (to himself) post.
I posted below in agreement, Thomas.
I resent your disrespectful comments to VDH. And I am an Independent. With classical left leanings. You should respect all beings. There is even a place on here for people like you. It’s called ‘Angry reader’ comments.
Ditto, Anna. After completing my post, I thought of the “Angry readers” option that Jack had open to him. That would have been the proper site for Jack to post the views he expressed. Like I stated earlier, I really have a hard time taking it seriously. Some people just find satisfaction in wanting to stir things up. Jack may well be among them. I suspect he finds our constructive posts quite dull.
This is the only site that I regularly post on. It is an outlet for me to express myself about my thoughts on the state of affairs of our country and world, and to read the thought provoking posts of others. I so appreciate this venue and those that post on it. They, almost without exception, make thoughtful, articulate expression of their views.
I have been listening to Victor’s podcasts for the past six months and enjoy and appreciate the depth of insights and context he brings to the topics of discussion, but it is his uncanny ability to roll up an issue and state in clear and simple terms that represents the situation is what I love the most. Victor did it again: suggesting the responsible parent and irresponsible teenager as a metaphor to the current struggle between the conservatives and radical left revolutionaries.