The Traditionalist: Looking for Straight Talk

Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler as they talk over the new COVID strain, Black Friday, China’s image and power, Black Tuesday in Greece, the non-citizen voters, and Joe Biden’s Thanksgiving on Nantucket.

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6 thoughts on “The Traditionalist: Looking for Straight Talk”

  1. Did the Bishop also tell you that the Greek language has never changed and that if Homer walked into the Piraeus today he would understand every word? I’m fine with the emperor coming back if it’s Lucius Artorius Castus.

    Joking aside, what role does the idea of “face” play in the CCP’s continuing desire to force apologies and never apologize? Is that a question for a sinologist? To what degree does Xi’s tentative embrace of a neo-State Confucianism shape CCP policy? There is a western way that impacts all aspects of the European diaspora. What about “the eastern way”? (Lower cases intentional)

  2. Hanson wasn’t the first person to stake out the subject of America’s withering citizenship. Twenty-five years ago the late international reporter and syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote Americans No More: The Death of Citizenship. She lacked the publicity machine – Stanford and Hillsdale College – which now plugs Hanson’s work as well as the full-throated yelp of the Internet, which didn’t exist at that time. Hanson usually has useful observations to make, especially since they’re based on the classics. While extolling him do not forget those who came before, such as Georgie Anne Geyer, an excellent writer and reporter when it was still a worthwhile profession.

    1. Thank you for sharing the name of Georgie Anne Geyer. Can’t wait to read her work.
      Also it makes perfect sense what you said, the erosion of American citizenship started in the 90s…during Clinton years, with unbridled immigration without integration….

  3. The Communist Chinese party’s business are so embedded in American business there is no way to separate then now . . .

    1. That was the plan, but we never figured out how to leverage them back. No one has since the age of gun boat diplomacy because elite Chinese thought has always pushed for trade to take place within a Han-centric tributary framework. Just like international law is inimical to grand flow of elite Chinese thought since time immemorial. Too bad classical Chinese and even simplified written Mandarin is so hard for non-first language speakers to learn! We might not keep repeating the same basic mistakes if we were as familiar with their philosophy and culture as they are with the “west’s”.

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