At some point, some president was going to have to stop the unsustainable spending and borrowing.
To have any country left, some president would eventually have had to restore a nonexistent border and stop the influx of 3 million illegal aliens a year.
Some commander-in-chief finally would have to try to stop the theater wars abroad.
But any president who dared to do any of that would be damned for curbing the madness that his predecessors fueled.
And so none did—until now.
Not since Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid and mass implementation of the New Deal administrative state have Americans seen such radical changes so quickly as now in Trump’s first month of governance.
Americans are watching a long-awaited counter-revolution to bring the country out of its madness by restoring the common sense of the recent past.
It is easy to run up massive debts and hard to pay them back. Politicians profit by handing out grants and hiring thousands with someone else’s money or creating new programs by growing the debt.
Yet it is unpopular and considered “mean” to spend only what you have and to create a lean, competent workforce.
1776, not 1619, is the foundational date of America.
Biological men should not manipulate their greater size and strength to undermine the hard-won accomplishment of women athletes.
Affordable fossil fuels, when used wisely, are still essential to modern prosperity.
American education must remain empirical and inductive, not regress into indoctrination and deduction. If college campuses no longer abide by the Bill of Rights, then perhaps they should pay taxes on income from their endowments and guarantee their own student loans.
If American citizens are arrested and arraigned for violent assaults, destroying property, and resisting arrest, then surely foreign students who break the laws of their hosts should be held to the same account—and if guilty, go home.
Tribalism and racialism, and government spoils allotted by superficial appearances, are the marks of a pre-civilized society. Such racialism leads only to endless factions and discord.
It is easy to destroy a border, and hard to reconstruct it. And it was not Trump who invited in 12 million unaudited illegal aliens, a half million of them criminals.
Who is the real culprit in the Defense Department—the new secretary with the hard task of restoring the idea among depleted ranks that our race, religion, and gender are incidental, not essential, to defeating the enemy and ensuring our national security?
Is it really wise to divert money from needed combat units and weapons to indoctrinate recruits with social and cultural agendas that do not enhance, but likely undermine, our national defenses?
Who is the real callous actor—Elon Musk, who is trying to prevent the country from insolvency by eliminating fraud and waste, or those who bloated the bureaucracy in the first place with jobs and subsidies for their constituents, friends, clients, and fellow ideologues?
No one likes to fire FBI agents.
That certainly is an unpleasant job for the new FBI Director, Kash Patel.
But again, who are the true culprits who so cavalierly turned a hallowed agenda into a weaponized tool to warp elections, harass political enemies, lie under oath, surveil parents at school board meetings, doctor court documents, and protect insider friends?
Massive borrowing is an opiate addiction that needs shock treatment, not more deficits to break the habit. An unchecked administrative state becomes an organic organism that exists only to grow larger, more powerful, and more resistant to any who seek to curb it.
Yet those who brought the cultural revolution of the last years are now screaming that it is unfair to restore what they undermined. It is as if a patient blames only the tough chemotherapy and not the invasive cancer that it seeks to cure.
Most of the Trump people are not high-fiving firing people. They are not laying off miners or frackers and directing them to go “code” or dismissing half the country as “deplorables.”
The left screams that those who are tasked with balancing a budget and pruning back a strangling bureaucracy are heartless.
No, the pitiless are those who recklessly sought to hire with borrowed money and fire people on the basis of their race, used federal programs to feather their own nests, and harassed and arrested those for their politics.
No SWAT teams are now raiding the homes of ex-presidents.
No one is trying to take a presidential rival off state ballots.
No one is coordinating local, state, and federal prosecutors to indict, harass, and bankrupt an ex-president.
And no president—his dementia sheathed by political insiders and toadish media—is working three days a week, avoiding press conferences, or stonewalling reporters’ questions.
No wonder the current normal seems abnormal to the status quo of the recent past.
Summary of Who Caused the Counter-Revolution? (February 27, 2025)
• Reversing the Decline
• Trump is undertaking a long-overdue counter-revolution to restore the country from its self-inflicted chaos.
• Past presidents avoided tackling unsustainable debt, open borders, and endless wars, but Trump is now confronting them head-on.
• Fiscal Responsibility vs. Reckless Spending
• It’s easy for politicians to run up massive debts and expand government, but difficult to impose fiscal discipline.
• Cutting spending is necessary but unpopular among those who benefited from government largesse.
• Cultural and Social Restoration
• 1776, not 1619, is the foundation of America.
• Biological men should not compete in women’s sports.
• Affordable fossil fuels remain critical for prosperity.
• Education should be based on empirical reasoning, not ideological indoctrination.
• Holding Lawbreakers Accountable
• Foreign students who commit crimes should be deported, just as American citizens face prosecution.
• Tribalism, racial preferences, and government spoils erode national unity and create societal discord.
• Rebuilding the Military
• The Defense Department must prioritize combat readiness over DEI and social experiments.
• Race, religion, and gender should be incidental, not central, to national security.
• Restoring Integrity to Institutions
• The FBI’s past corruption—election interference, targeting political opponents—must be addressed.
• Kash Patel, as the new FB
This was fantastic. Thanks for the read, I agree on all points and will be sharing/referencing it for years to come.
Only disagree to the extent that foreign students should be held to a higher standard, not the same. I was taught to be on my best P’s and Q’s when a guest.
Andre, thank your parents, you were raised well. Kudos to any parent raising a decent human being.
VERY true Andre!!!
WTF???? I posted a civil suggestion/comment earlier today. This form said my comment was awaiting moderation. Fine. Mine was 12th in line.
I received no questions about my comment. The comment was, in effect, censored. Several others were added to the chain. Mine disappeared.
Again, no problem. Your web page and your control. However I thought my comment at least deserved a reply that explained WHY it was censored. I had thought Professor Hanson believed in freedom of speech.
I hope it got posted. Probably just waited because we don’t always get to moderation immediately. Cheers. Sami
Read Lenin’s rules oF order ( All 10) Sempre Fi God Bless America God Bless Trump & his allies
I’ve been a fan of Prof Hansen since reading his book 25 years ago, The Other Greeks, which provided a fresh look at ancient Greece…. Great book.
Such clarity and common, irrefutable sense in this piece. Now we need some governors, incumbent or upcoming, to do the same at the state level. Just focusing on fraud alone, never mind waste, would be a tremendous step forward.
We in MN have 40,000 non-profits! One for every 150 subjects. NH, where I used to live, has virtually the same ratio. Many of these exist to carry out legislatures’ programs. They get the money, but their use of it is almost by definition poorly audited. Govt spending, even at the state level, is so vast that even bloated govt personnel are not enough in number (or motivation) to prevent, find and prosecute fraud. Give authorized private entities the data and authority and incentive to identify fraud in public spending.
Common sense in the North Star state, common sense in the Hawkeye state to your south. Maybe we should “sister up” with the Show Me state and show the rest how we can follow the DOGE federal example and clean up our own home states. We don’t need any help from the EPA to clean up our air and water, the Education Department can’t teach us to learn, the DEA can’t protect us from the scourge of drug/alcohol and tobacco abuse. Thanks for prompting me to consider the small picture, closer to home. For once in a dang long time we in the states can thank the Commander in Chief for setting a good example for the rest of us to follow. Let’s get to work…there’s never a shortage of work, always a shortage of good hard workers b
Alexis de Tocqueville also noted that it was America’s predominant faith in our creator from which sprang strong cohesive families, from which sprang actual representative small government that was in accordance with family values, and in turn saw the need for morality and character and learning to be instilled for the generations to come. 19th and early 20th century teaching methods easily surpass what we have today where students are pushed through and no real demands are placed upon them. Charter schools and homeschooling , where the family is still actively involved is still a refuge where the public school system has failed miserably since God was removed in the early 60s. Throwing federal money at education has been a collassal failure. 40th in the world. God help Donald Trump and his allies to at least begin to turn this around. The definition of idiocy is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Or perhaps the opposition prefers these same low outcomes??
Donald Trump is ” Making America , America again!” Thank God for President Donald John Trump!
Wisdom and knowledge coupled together =Victor Davis Hanson ! Thank you for so eloquently explaining what patriots see and know in their hearts and minds .
I concur! A brilliant inspiring summation. Keep up the good work, thank you from Iowa, home of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, gone forever along with our former position at #1 in the nation in education. We lost our place with the creation of the Department of Education in 1979, about the same time we sold the Panama Canal for $1. Thank you Jimmy Carter. As President Trump quipped, he died a happy man because he lived long enough to see a worse president than he.
Great stuff. My take is the Current Opposition is promoting something other than the United States of America, with no reasonable rationale. Sort of resembles the rants of Saul Alinsky, Frederick Marcuse Karl Marx, Engels et al; which had no basis in reality.
Professor Hanson describes the counter-revolution as “…restoring the common sense of the recent past.” I agree. I only wish “recent past” could be pin-pointed. I would say 1989-90. I frequently repeat in comments here, that every “woke” issue and insult since 2016 has a clearly identifiable 1990’s antecedent that was protested and discussed back then, and whose outcomes were accurately predicted by conservatives — yet the problems were allowed to fester. We should never forget this and never let up the current pressure, ever.
As always VDH presents the problem and cure with IQ and confidence.
Watching for at least sixty years, since my days at Rutgers, the left siding with criminals and accepting crime as a minor result, the madness of that ideology has locked the elderly in tiny apartments, and thrown away neighborhoods as collateral damage. Ranking the crimes of the American left? I put hatred of America first, support for crime second. And let us hope that the still being organized new GOP does not get complacent.
Oh VDH – you continue to be a brillant and insightful and invaluable man!!! Thank you. Sure wish a Representative and Senator would read this in their respective institutions….for the record.
VDH,
Thank you for another excellent post.
I believe that the deep state, has long been in collusion with members of both parties, is best imagined as an anaconda. It surrounds you over time, staying out of sight and moving stealthily until it has you in its grip. Then slowly tightens its coils until it is choking the life out of you. At this point, you have only two choices: either try to negotiate, as others have, and end up as anaconda shit on the bottom of the river, or grab it by the neck, look it directly in the eyes, and with the razor-sharp knife you secreted in an accessible scabbard before you waded in, saw its head off. (You did remember to secrete the razor-sharp knife . . .)
Elon Musk is President Trump’s razor-sharp knife. In this case, the anaconda is more like a hydra, but after the first one or two heads fall, the rest will begin to fight among themselves. There is no honor among thieves.
The FBI “plant” will be:
1. The guy who provides a meeting place.
2. The guy who brings the drugs or beer.
3. The guy who says he can get guns or explosives.
Well, if when they pass a new CR on 3/14/2025 then all of the DODGE savings are out the window…until the next CR, at which point Congress will pas yet another CR.
Hmmm, I think I may see a pattern here…
Thank You VDH.
Trimming waste necessarily includes discrimination about relative utilities of people/programs. It is imperative for those who wield the sword to understand the nature of programs that they trim. Opponents of Trump will take every opportunity to magnify the cost/pain of cuts that are unjust or inhumane. Example last of Rachel Maddow last night to have an Ebola-fighting, US doctor present the claim that directly contradicted what Musk said to the Cabinet, yesterday. The doctor presented a compelling case that Musk lied to Trump and the Cabinet. Maddow destroyed any positive impact that ‘live’ news coverage of the meeting might have had. A positive opportunity to promote DOGE became a PR disaster as Maddow used a live interview to destroy Musk’s credibility.
Personally, I support most of DOGE’s work, but careless, injudicious actions produce more harm than good. Sadly, anyone who viewed Maddow’s program last night might have concluded she effectively borrowed the “truth sword” that customarily has been used by libertarians.
The previous comments have more succinctly than anything I might add other than any well said and thanks.
I am in total agreement with all points.
I do hope the current administration has the benefit of your expertise and incredible knowledge of history.
VDH,
The House and Senate Democrats still foot lock step. We will see change when the Dems start to break ranks.
We also need to see major changes from the Blue State crazies, from there Governors on down.
Essentially the people of these correctly called one party machine states needs to throw the bums out., which is very difficult to do when one party has handed out entitlements and has a state bureaucracy dating back some 60 to 70 years.
One day I will learn to proof read my posts.
I meant to say “vote” not foot.
We knew what you were saying.
If the last eight years have taught us anything, it is that far too large a segment of U.S. media have been actively involved in misinforming voters. Voters in Blue States have been victimized most of all. Their media is the most imbalanced. Even so called conservative newspapers such as the New York Post will bend way over backwards, especially at the local level, to make nice in the crazy Blue sandbox.
I believe fixing our election systems are the key. Dems can’t win on the issues so they have to cheat. Blue states will stay blue until the cheating stops…
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French intellectual studying our nascent democracy in the early 1800’s, commented in the most prescient way that the American experiment could be very successful only until its congress figured out it could bribe the people with their own money. I’m not quoting him directly but that’s the gist of it. Victor I wish you would expound on this theory as I believe it is the root cause of our current situation. Congress has been bribing us for decades in the interest of self preservation.
Hear hear….
I believe it was Madison who correctly identified the “general welfare clause” as a future source of trouble such as we having now. The interpretation of “general welfare” is, or should be, distinct from individual, or specific, cases of welfare provision. For example, disease management, food supply management, economic management help the vast majority in a general way, but public economic assistance, individual health care, ngos and foreign social aid programs help individuals and non-citizens.
Professor Hanson I enjoy you so much as a student – you are a great thinker who teaches by your writing and discussions rationality. As a scholar and expert on history, but especially since you are such a terrific teacher you remind us of what History has taught us. You constantly remind me of the truth – If I can be so bold:
: In 1905 George Santayana published “The Life of Reason, or The Phases of Human Progress”. The twelfth chapter titled “Flux and Constancy In Human Nature” contained the following passage.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” Copied from “Quote Investigator”
Another Very Well Stated analysis of the Far-Left Cancer and their amnesia of complicity. Long road ahead, but what an Awesome Start and Great Assembly of talent in the Administration. Elon Musk is only person that could bring in very talented team of auditors with incredible AI software to make short work of what would have been almost impossible with standard audit procedures. Great American Patriots All !
Well said, sir, as usual. Keep up the good work.
Please offer a few minutes to go on the O’Reilly No Spin News and offer your wisdom to his audience….
If there is no FBI equivalent in England, you are off to a good start.
Yes, what a close call, what a miraculous turn-around from absurdity and disaster (not that everything’s rosy, I do worry about Ukraine)!
And don’t forget about the folks who decided that those whom weren’t vaccinated could be fired, discharged from the military, arrested for paddle boarding in the Pacific, or barred from attending sporting and social events.
But if you were protesting for BLM or some liberal cause you were fine.
Great column, yet the FBI is not quite the hallowed institution you claim. Think back to earlier failures. Little Bohemia, for example. Often the FBI killed innocent bystanders without so much as scratching the criminals they were after. There were scandals like Richard Jewell, the FBI lab, Steven Hatfil, Wen Ho Lee. …
Looking back at the hysterical roots of the FBI, and the crackpot Senator McCarthy, we could have done better without. The FBI was born in my lifetime. It could die in my lifetime. No tears shed.
McCarthy? He was right and the deep state ruined him for it. He got too close to their play house. Now, We the People are behind this administration and have high hopes it can kill the beast. I’m betting they’ll give it a run for its money (sarcasm intended).
Absolutely love what you have said here, do you think there is any chance that we here in England can do the same?
VDH…
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
To answer the question, I think the cause is bigger than any 1 person. Let’s go with BHO, HRC & the June 27th Biden/Trump debate. Also much credit must go to the 2nd Amendment which inhibited if not prevented the destruction of a constitutional republic.
Amen! Thank you, dear Victor, for speaking TRUTH.
Eleanor Venables