From a Not Angry Reader, Mark Shipp

Dear Victor Hanson

A dear friend I met in work-related scenarios once explained that he grew up in a family of dedicated Democrats but that he’d had his eyes opened by listening to Mark Levin on talk radio. It made me curious, so I kept that name in mind. Not long after that I discovered that Levin had a new program on Fox News.

I first saw you on his program shortly thereafter
… a few years ago.

Now, I read everything I can of yours. And I listen to every interview I see offered on TV and online.

I never cease to be amazed at how incredibly adept you are at boiling down to easy-to-understand explanations all the complex problems the socialists have brought upon us in recent decades.

Thank you and may God bless you for your invaluable contribution to what’s left of sanity in this crazy country of ours.

Sincerely,
Mark Shipp

Dear Not Angry Reader Mark Shipp,

Thank you. I agree with your assessments of Mark Levin. Can I relate an anecdote about Mr. Levin?

My late daughter (https://victorhanson.com/susannah-merry-hanson-obituary/) worked as an intern for a summer in Washington at a prominent institution/center at the front desk. Although she and I did not discuss what I did for a living, and she was at that time in her early twenties and not interested in politics, she had to monitor and list people coming and going into the center, and so often remembered their names.

She called me almost daily that summer in Washington and often asked who these people were, and then unknowingly recited the names of very prominent visitors in the conservative movement whom she had encountered.

Once out of curiosity, I asked her who was the rudest and most curt with young intern strangers like herself (no comment here on the luminaires in the off-putting category), and, in contrast, who was the most affable and considerate.

In the friendliest group, she immediately said “Mr. Levin.” I asked her his first name and she right away said, “the nice Mark Levin” and went to explain how kind he had been to her and had asked her name and did not make the connection with me. She then said, what does Mr. Levin do? (Again, she did not follow politics either in radio or television.)

After she tragically passed away from a rare, sudden onset of an acute and lethal disease, Mark Levin was one of the first people to contact me, and I have found him one of the most wonderful people in private in the entire conservative universe ever since.

Susannah worked at USC in development as a biographer, who prepared CVs and talking points on visiting dignitaries for high university administration officials. I once asked her the same thing about meeting pleasant people at her job there. She without hesitation replied, “Mr. Nikias, whom I think is the president. He is nice to everyone, humble, and considerate.”

I’ve always remembered those assessments, which I found to be completely accurate. (In this regard, one of the greatest blunders that USC has ever made was the woke dismissal of Max Nikias, one of the great USC presidents of the last half-century.)

As far as simplification, sometimes I have been criticized in book reviews for breaking things down too simply and too repetitively. I think that habit developed from 20 years of teaching classical languages at CSU Fresno to non-traditional students, who were very bright, but often poor, working full-time, and the first in their families to go to college. So, I got into a habit of repeating themes in literature and history, although in different ways and formulations, to ensure the important ideas and concepts were mastered. I note that past book editors, to the degree they make major edits in my manuscripts, tended to cross out entire paragraphs and write “repetitive.”

Even at 70, I must learn to write more in the terse Attic style of Thucydides and Tacitus, and less in the florid Asiatic mode of Isocrates and Livy.

Thank you for your kind note.

Sincerely,
Victor Davis Hanson