Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
What binds the new Democratic Party to the new Democratic Socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists.
But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.
When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and DOJ, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.
By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants—without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves.
Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another five million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18 percent of the population.
In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal—and most ideal—state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28 percent of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.
Today, 50 percent of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40 percent of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45 percent of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.
So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives—or is born to immigrant parents—with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left, but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.
It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America—only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.
If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K–12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.
Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely—as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests—and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.
Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation.
In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled.
But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K–12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.
So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them—as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.
Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.
The Left likewise pushed for lower physical standards for the military’s ground-combat brigades so that women, on average far less strong than their male counterparts, could join elite units. Again, the same ignorance and arrogance were evident. Physical standards were based on a century of combat experience in which morale, group discipline, and unit success rested on ensuring that all soldiers achieved a common level of physical strength and endurance.
This neo-Marxist-driven demand to mandate equality—albeit now substituting racial and gender consciousness for class consciousness—requires the destruction of established traditions, laws, and norms. The radical Left’s key agendas—defunding the police, destroying the border, granting mass amnesties to illegal aliens, subsidizing wind and solar energy while waging a war on fossil fuels, and expanding racial essentialism in hiring and admissions—have never won more than 30 to 40 percent support among the general public. Yet the solution was not to ask why, and then to reflect, reboot, and recalibrate in order to discover how the Left had lost public support.
Instead, the solution was to alter or destroy the system that had denied them power.
So communists, socialists, and radical Democrats prefer moving the goalposts. When equality of opportunity was largely achieved, next they demanded a mandated equality of outcome.
With the ascendancy of a large, affluent middle class, the Left, in its eternal search for a victimized class, pivoted and replaced class oppression with racial victimization.
And when there were not yet enough victimized minorities to guarantee a majority constituency of the aggrieved, the Left redefined the victimized to include anyone who was not a white heterosexual male, regardless of income and privilege.
And when the people finally tired of the Leftists’ totalitarian social engineering, the Left sought to change the system by radically altering the way Americans vote, the manner in which government is formed and functions, and, finally, the very demography of America.
The common denominator? Human nature revolts at forced statism, coercive redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. It instead yearns for liberty and freedom.
No matter how much deception, camouflage, or brainwashing is employed, statism, socialism, and communism can never sustain public support. Throughout history, the Left has therefore begun by changing the rules and altering the demography—if not initially through changes to election rules, bureaucratic fiat, and biased court orders, then eventually through sheer violence.
Discussion (19)
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We're entering a new phase in our history unlike one I ever thought possible, and it's quite frightening. Can the center continue to hold, or will our nation collapse into darkness and totalitarianism? The Red-Green revolution is spreading throughout the land and is threatening not only our blue cities and states, but also red states such as Texas. This toxic movement has its tentacles in every institution of power, both public and private. Figures such as Bernie Sanders, who were once relegated to the fringes of American politics, are now thought leaders for a growing national movement. In other words, radical revolutionaries are now considered mainstream. And these changes are moving at near light speed. In 2008, when Barak Obama was running for president it was tantamount to racism to even hint that he was socialist or had latent radical beliefs. This despite his long associations with Reverend Wright and domestic terrorist Bill Ayers. In 1932, Hitler and the Nazis actually lost seats in Germany's national elections, yet within a few months of becoming Chancellor Hitler quickly consolidated power and transformed the Weimar Republic into a socialist police state. As a nation, especially since the Cold War, we have been conditioned to believe that threats to our republic can only be external. And we ignore the growing internal threat at her peril.
Doernofer Michael, I can empathize with your predicament. There are NO Caucasian workers available for property landscaping needs. The workers from south of our boarder are extremely hard working, and in the 30 years I've lived in Florida, has EVER been any different.
Whatever else they are, our tyrants-in-waiting on the left are not reticent to share their modus operandi: “by any means necessary”. They’ve been announcing this and acting on it 24/7 for decades now. They control most of the cultural institutions and what is still called the “media” (actually the propaganda arm of the DSA). They have been acting, we have been talking, maybe writing. We argue reason, facts; that act on power. They are confident, we are diffident. They are winning, we fight rear guard actions. We are one election away from a 1000 year dark age and/or the new caliphate. Either way, individual freedom or agency is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Had someone suggested say, 30 years ago that things would be as they are today, I would have dismissed them as out of touch with reality. How wrong I was.
The imminent task is to stop leftist voting fraud in this year’s November elections, primarily through abuses of unrequested mail ballots. Returning to meritocracy will be a much longer project involving fundamental reform, especially in America’s failing K-12 and higher education systems.
The Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish the presidency, the Senate and the Supreme Court. What do they want to replace these institutions with? The answer should be obvious: A Supreme Leader, a People's Court and a Politburo - together with a wonderful-sounding but toothless constitution.
Beautifully written as always. I refer to it as the “one upmanship of the mentally ill”…”you are getting a nose ring? I am going full National Geographic with ear gauges” “you are gay? I am actually a woman” “you think you are liberal? I am going full commie”. It is all a grand charade. But why do so many fall into line and push such nonsense forward? That is what makes my brain churn.
VDH, As always you are the voice if clarity. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a percentage of our American population under 40 years of age that were not taught in public K-12 schools world and US history factually, Civics, anything about our form of government, or the Declaration of Independence, U S Constitution, Bill of Rights or how and why they came about, our Capitalistic economic system, especially vs Socialism or its parent Communism. They were indoctrinated into ideologies of Socialism/communism as good based on feelings. Rational debate based on facts are dispelled. They are unable to debate, and as a result devolve into personal attacks and violence. So here we are. 30 to 40% of our electorate are illerate, ignorant, passively stupid, or willingly active to allow this nation that fed, clothed and allowed them to be free, to now be fueled for destruction. Oddly, they have absolutely no idea what follows afterward if they get their wish. We do. We've seen it several times across the globe. The song remains the same. It ain't pretty, and they too will perish.
The Leftwaffe owns the votes, courts, major financial institutions, universities and media naritive control. The right better pull something asymmetrical out of the hat or be crushed. This whole thing for the right is going about as well as the war with Iran and the reflective pool. One fiasco after another.
Victimization is the first redoubt of a scoundrel
Prof Hanson, perhaps we should remember Cicero and the end of the Roman Republic..
Chairman Mao instructed us: "Political power emanates from the barrel of a gun." This truth was understood by the founders of our nation. The left wants that power. Will they come and take it? In America?
And this folks is why the Republicans have got to get out in force to vote in November.
Have lived on SF Peninsula my entire life. Fortunate to be employed for 55 years and invested in real estate here. Now as a senior must employ services to maintain properties. Use licensed contractors for repairs, however other cleaning and yard services, go through Angi's List. Best gardener I've had in years is from Guatemala, has been here 5 years, doesn't speak English well, but enough to converse, as I speak basic Spanish. Last year or so, he has shared a lot. His story is incredible evidence of how California is a lost state. Cortez shared with me, his wife (called girlfriend here) so as not to lose benefits. He only works for cash of course, has no insurance except for minimum liability to get his truck registered. He and "girlfriend" with their 3 children live in Section 8 housing, receive food EBT cards (knows all the food banks in Bay Area to get additional free food), get medical through MediCal and kids go to school where they live, just south of Gilroy. He works very hard 70-80 hours a week, makes $ 3600 a week in cash, pays no taxes. He wires $ 8500 a month to his parents in Guatemala. They are holding over $220K for him now. His plan is to work 3 more years and get to $ 500K cash saved, then family will return to Guatemala and retire at 40yo and they will live extremely well there. I know I'm part of the problem by hiring him, however at 74 yo, have no choice, almost no citizen gardeners in my area. Unless the system changes, next generation of working taxpayers, will be nothing more than slaves to the Marxist Socialists in Sacramento
Award-winning quote: "Human nature revolts at forced statism, coercive redistribution, and government-mandated equality of results. It instead yearns for liberty and freedom."
The Leftwaffe has the money, votes, universities and financial institutions. The right can't compete with these overwhelming advantages. Their battle better start getting asymmetrical, or this ends in a cull hunt.
Today’s radical socialists are not democrats. Fetterman is a Democrat. The radical socialists put the word, ‘Democrat’ in their moniker as cover just as Hamas uses schools, hospitals, women and children as cover for their attacks.
Ms Ince - try China, Russia and/or Iran if an ideological foe is required. We need our president to clearly articulate how/why these guys are dangerous.
It is most difficult to perceive a collegiate outcome domestically when 30-40% of our population posture with a 'Facts don't matter' platform and consider, in kindly terms, that those who oppose them are simply naive! Thus TDS is a classic Allopathic construct in sociology when one cannot or will not identify an offensive microbe to then merely reference the civic clinical indicators as a Syndrome for which there is no resolution in accordance with the General Adaptation Syndrome of dr. Hans Seyle, and one lives a life of a chronic inflammatory process. So, our terrain is rich with an acidic environment, a hyper state of electrical potentiation that fatigues the rest of us and causes a retreat behind our individual walls of security with family, friends, food & water, chickens, and the spear of our 2nd amendment to secure and protect our lives....................
Thank you Mr. Hanson. I heard or read "somewhere" (I would attribute if I remembered) that part of the problem is that we no longer have an ideological foe as during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. During that time, there were stark contrasts between the two superpowers, and we consistently stated and reinforced our exceptional values and way of life. Without the ever present contrast, we have forgotten what makes us great, what values and faith require our way of life to prevail.