Join Victor Davis Hanson and co-host Sami Winc as they discuss a CIA whistleblower saying there were payoffs made to hide the origin of Covid, Chuck Grassley warning the GOP about their desire to defund the FBI, the loss of an F-35 fighter jet, the latest in the Russell Brand drama, the historical background of the Vietnam War and the ideology of a farmer.
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Two comments. Thomas Sowell’s new book, “Social Justice Fallacies”, focuses on the remarkable diversity of human cultures in today’s world, and how this makes the homogenous utopia presumed by the woke Left utter nonsense. His discussion of honesty, for example, makes it clear that this is not a widely shared value. We take so much for granted. These distinctions between cultures are ignored at our peril. Victor’s story about his Hobbesian neighbor suggest that this perhaps was his first encounter with the full richness of human society. But this doesn’t make farming a zero-sum game. Engineers revolutionized farming practices with gasoline powered machines at the beginning of the 20th Century, albeit at some cost to the poverty previously enjoyed by the 90% who devoted their lives to growing food mostly for their own consumption.
My second point is on the Vietnam war. Norman Schwarzkopf’s book, “It Doesn’t Take a Hero”, makes it clear that some mid-level officers were diligent and focused on leading their troops, but there was another cohort who simply punched their tickets by pretending to lead while enjoying catered mills at the headquarter golf club. He stuck with the Army and managed to help restore some honor to the institution, but the golf-course ticket-punchers have prevailed as demonstrated by the current crop of imbeciles.
Thomas Sowell is a treasure and Victor has been very lucky to count him a friend. “There are no solutions just tradeoffs.”
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Col. David Hackworth, deceased, wrote an insightful book about the Vietnam War from the aspect of personnel flaws and leadership. ‘ABOUT FACE”.
Hackwrth started as a young private in post WWII Europe in a spit and polish command. It defined his military ethos.
His critique of the military as an active duty commander in Vietnam cost him his career, probably 2 or 3 stars and almost his freedom. He, based on the book and his post military journalist career, make him a highly respected figure.
His book is the first place I heard the term ‘ticket punchers’ (officers whose career choices were predicated mainly on their rank advancement probabilities). Hackworth despised this class of. careerists and many succeeded to the country’s loss. The Obama administration favored making flag officers from this type of careerist. It’s the polar opposite of a meritocracy and helps understand the Afgan retreat, the current military culture and our dismal military future. Trillion dollar budgets, wokists in charge and future defeats. SF can’t win wars alone and LGBTQ philosophy will cause unnecessary casualties.
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Anthony Herbert, “Soldier” by Herbert and James Wooten in 1973, also makes for interesting reading. But the book was written to defend Herbert’s credibility which was attacked by Sixty Minutes, and others, in 1972. Given our recent experience with coordinated media/government smear campaigns, I tend to believe Herbert a bit more than I would have three years ago. Our bug-out in Vietnam in the face of the NV invasion should also enter into any thoughts about Herbert and what was going on in our country at that time.
You should research the life of Victor D. Hanson
before making comments worthy of AOC…
The recipe for Humble Pie
is within the ingredients…
Tracey Anne Nelms, I merely suggested that Victor’s encounters with his nasty neighbor might have been his first introduction to this particular aspect of human behavior. The water war occurred sometime in the 1980s. Victor’s stories make it clear that in this time he was becoming only too knowledgeable of the dark sides of humanity with the many difficulties he had to deal with on the farm and with the care of his aunt. He clearly learned a great deal from all this. His reflections on his life and times suggest that these episodes were important to him, and I’m sure they contribute to his views today, which we both appreciate. I did not intend to criticize Victor over his candor in expressing his surprise at having to deal with such behavior. Looking back on my life, I was more like Candide. Confronted with outrageous behavior, I tended to presume it was a passing phenomenon, of no significance. I now can see that this metastasized into the “Social Justice” movement and the Marxist takeover of our public schools.
In 1970 our Superintendent, Vice Admiral Calvert, addressed the seniors (first class Midshipmen) about, among other subjects, how we got into Viet Nam. He said that it was just his opinion. After WW II, two allies came to us with a problem. Our good allies, the Dutch, were getting thrown out of Dutch East India (Indonesia). We knew that they would join NATO and told them to go pound sand. Sukarno threw them out and established an authoritarian regime associated with the USSR. Eventually, with the help of the CIA (he didn’t reference this part), he was replaced by Suharto and placed in house-arrest for the remainder of his life.
Our not-so-good allies, the French, were getting thrown out of French Indochina. We wanted the French to join us in NATO. And look what a boon to NATO they became. So we got involved.
Part of the ideology of Victor’s farming community was privacy, it was taboo to cross onto another’s property, so much so that one day Victor raced across a neighbor’s land hoping not to be spotted.
This desire for privacy seems to be a human trait for thousands of years.
“Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor’s house,
lest he have his fill of you and hate you.”
Proverbs 25:17
Fauci said, in 2017 regarding the Trump administration: “this administration will have to face a virus” !
What is the source of this quote?
Love this man! He is a National Treasure! Thank him for having rational wisdom and he’s teaching us. Listen!
Victor
What are your thoughts about hacking/virus being a “special” threat to UAVs that might be defended/adapted to better with manned systems.