VDH's Blade of Perseus

From A Polite and Ernest Semi-Angry Reader:

Dear Mr. Hanson,

I am a senior woman from Michigan, snowbird over the winter in Florida. I am so sad these days that anything written by either side is vituperative, mean spirited, and anger provoking. Your 10 new rules by radicals could have had a much nicer tone. Frankly, I think you are way off base by taking such an exaggerated view of all your beefs. It irritates the left and inflames the right. Ugh. I would appreciate it if you would rewrite that article with a gentler approach.

I have grown up respecting the two party system, and want it to survive in the most healthy fashion. My husband and I have great friends on both sides of the aisle, but it is not easy these days to have a civilized conversation, so we just avoid anything political. That is very sad, because growing up in a “mixed” family, we had wonderful disagreements, and we chewed on lots of issues without drawing blood.

Hopefully that will happen again. Please help that happen.

Respectfully,

Anne Roberts

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Dear Polite and Earnest Semi-Angry Reader Anne,

I don’t think my 10 rules are “beefs,” but simply descriptions of a new America, in which debt is not really considered debt; whether laws are enforced fully depends on the social/cultural context; and wokeness is a new religion. Do you disagree? If so, please explain where and why. When we owe $25 trillion in national debt and borrow $5 trillion over 2 years do you think it is more important to warn the country about the danger of insolvency or to keep silent so as not to “irritate the Left” or “inflame the Right”?

You and I grew up with a conventional two-party system, I in a Democratic household of the JFK brand.

The 8-hr work-day, Social Security, civil rights, disability insurance, meritocratic admissions to preclude racial prejudice, secure borders to ensure entry-level good wages, fair housing—all this was the Democratic Party until the 1970s/1980s. And even in the 1990s a radical child of the 1960s, Bill Clinton, could at times be reasonable (see the Democratic 1996 convention platform on illegal immigration and speeches on it by the like of Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.) He was responsible with Newt Gingrich in working out a way to reduce budget deficits.

But we have now two new parties: a hard left socialist/progressive movement that appeals to the very, very wealthy, the corporate elite, woke minorities—versus a middle class, populist working-class party that wishes to retain traditions and customs and seeks to appeal by class rather than racial interests. The former Party has created the cancel culture, the boycott culture, and the transformation culture. It is at war with the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The ACLU is not the ACLU of the 1960s but something quite different. The Left, not the conservative party, wants to alter the Constitution and ancient customs, by ending the 9-Justice Supreme Court, the filibuster, the states’ laws concerning national voting, a 50-state nation, and far more—largely because it feels its agendas do not win 50 percent support, whether the Green New Deal, open borders, reparations, or changes to the Constitution.

In my experience, conservatives usually don’t bring up politics, or like to argue; theirs is more a live and let live attitude. In most families with political tensions, the more leftward demand “discussions” and seek to prompt political debate, and see politics as more important than friendships.

Politics is part of life not an end in itself. Traditionalists don’t hunt down officials at their homes to “get in their faces” or metaphorically “bring a gun to a knife fight.” So I don’t think your admonition is quite as symmetrical as you think. Look at the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney; both were reduced to caricatures of greedy, white capitalists. Trump was a creation of pent-up anger, it is true, but the anger was that of taking punches in a world where the Left had weaponized Wall Street, Silicon Valley, professional sports, academia, foundations, Hollywood, entertainment, and the corporate boardroom, etc. What is the political message you receive before a NBA game, or from a new Hollywood movie, or within a new commercial, or in a college president’s letter, or from Facebook’s rules?

I do think we can all avoid unnecessary animus. I try not to attack any writers/thinkers in personal terms and avoid naming them wherever possible, but do insist on replying to those who engage in attacks. Otherwise, the untruth is never addressed, much less corrected.

I wish a return to the old bipartisan give-and-take, but whether we like it or not, the country is moving in one direction of massive debt, larger government, less personal freedom, more tribal tensions, open borders, less meritocracy, and less civility—and most important, as I pointed out, a general decline in knowledge, given the watering down of K-12 curricula. Consensual government will not work when citizens do not know much at all of their nation’s origins and history, and feel their country is sinful and innately flawed at its beginning.

I appreciate your kind advice, but beg to differ this time. I try to give rational spirited critiques that can remind people of what is going both well and poorly. Simply hoping for the good times to return if we all forget our differences won’t work. If history is any guide, the smiling ostrich with his head in a hole will only empower those who have very focused and quite dangerous agendas.

Respectfully,

Victor Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Just appearing this week in the news are stories that our elite colleges have sent out letters of admissions. White applicants at many universities have been accepted at historic lows of about 28 percent (of a population base of 68-70 percent), despite the supposedly cherished tradition of ‘proportional representation.’ 

Will the most aggrieved at the new racialist discrimination and reduced slots be the suburban, bicoastal white liberal professional classes? They put a high premium on the quality and branding of their children’s education? Did the Left, then, strangle many of its own? 

Continue reading “Eeyore’s Cabinet: The Obscene Word “Merit”” →

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

Any nation’s well-being—as Americans know from their own illustrious history—hinges on only a few factors. Its prosperity, freedom, and stability depend on its constitutional and political stability.

A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military.

Perhaps most important, however, is a first-rate, inductive educational system. Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm, often dependent on a reverence for the past, along with present secure borders. 

The ability to produce or easily acquire food, fuel, and key natural resources ensures a nation’s independence and autonomy.  

Unfortunately in the last few months all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have now been put into doubt. 

Read the full article

Victor Davis Hanson // Internet Interview with Urs Gehriger

While the American media swoon over President Joe Biden, historian Victor Davis Hanson is ringing the alarm bell. He warns that the radical Left has captured the White House and is on the march. Former President Barack Obama promised a fundamental transformation of American democracy. Now, from behind the desk of the Oval Office, his former vice president is fulfilling that pledge and “is trying to divide America by race.”

What a difference a new president makes — on the America media. Next week marks President Joe Biden’s one hundredth day in office, and the fourth estate is rapturous with praise. Under the 78-year-old Democrat’s leadership, America’s reputation in the world is soaring; humanity has returned to Pennsylvania Avenue; and the “former president who shall not be named” is a distant figure mercifully banished to his palm lined fortress in “COVID America.”

Historian Victor Davis Hanson disagrees.

In his vivid retelling, Biden is no less than a modern, political “Dr. Frankenstein.” Among the horrors Biden has wrought is “an illegal immigration monster that is now it’s out of control.” Hanson argues that the Swamp veteran is cynically playing “the ‘race card’ to divide America” and entrench the Democrat party. On foreign policy, Hanson warns: “Our friends can’t count on us, and our enemies don’t fear us.”

READ MORE…..

From An Angry Reader:

Vic, I read your opinion piece today in my local Naples Daily newspaper and I had to wonder why the paper published this absurd piece of crap. Didn’t they realize that only right-wing crazy assholes work at the Hoover Institute!

I apologize as I realize right-wing and crazy assholes are synonymous. Your article is full of lying bullshit. Are you sure TRumphole didn’t write this for you?

I mean really you accuse President Biden has not kept our laws, but you say nothing about the whiner who got his fat dumb ass kicked by Joe. You attack immigrants for your typical stupid claims while again say nothing about Americans who refuse masks, maintain social distances and Bitch about vaccine passports!

You’re a fucking asshole and I’d defalcate not in the street but in your so could spew more shit!

Sincerely,

Bill McMaster a former CIA analyst and manager

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Dear Aggrieved Angry Reader Bill,

Your analytical and managerial skills result in a high Angry Reader score: no detail or evidence to support your venom, plenty of profanity and crudity (crap, assholes, bullshit, ass, shit, Bitch, f——g, the neologisms (TRumphole), the strange vocabulary (defalcate [“embezzle”] for “defecate”), the usual misinformation (Hoover Institution, and general incoherence (“and I’d defalcate not in the street but in your so could spew more shit!”). All that earns an 8.5 on the Angry Reader scale. If your Angry Reader rant is a really the work of a former top CIA official, then perhaps it is valuable to readers in explaining the careers of some of its hierarchy such as John Brennan.

As for your argument, there is none. So I’ll quickly reply to the silliness. Newspapers select op-eds they purchase from syndicators to spark discussion. In some sense your rant is a form of discussion, so their intent was realized. I would imagine that if you went online and tabulated Hoover fellows’ campaign contributions there were more donors to the 2020 Biden than to the Trump campaign.

I’m not sure what you call “right-wing”; 15 years ago the Democratic Party advocated legal only and diverse, meritocratic, and measured immigration, but then again Obama himself ran in 2008 on secure borders, opposition to gay marriage, and a balanced budget. Please cite where I “attack immigrants.” Opposing illegal, massive, and non-diverse immigration is not an attack on “immigrants” but support for legal immigration. I imagine I live in an area with a far higher immigrant population, both legal and not, than in your own region.

While it is certainly true that red-states were more reluctant to impose complete lockdowns, you could at least try to make the argument that Florida and Texas fared far worse, case- and death-wise than locked down states like similarly sized New York—well aside from the greater economic, social, and cultural damage to New York than in Florida and Texas. But, of course, you cannot. I don’t see how the infection and lethality rates in Michigan, Massachusetts, or Connecticut are arguments for the blue-state, complete quarantine paradigm.

As far as vaccinating, there are two groups who so far show some resistance to it; one are conservative traditionalists who feel it impinges on their freedom or do not trust government assurances of safety. But the other are minority groups, especially African-Americans who likewise are statistically hesitant.

So there is no real political pattern here that you insinuate. I have always supported vaccination (and was vaxed the moment my age group was eligible), wearing masks where reasonable, and keeping a distance from others while indoors at the zenith of the epidemic. I wish BLM, Antifa, and LA Laker fan base had followed such guidelines when they violated all those protocols—ironically often supported by some health care officials who signed petitions claiming the protestors had good medical reasons to violate the quarantine leveled on all others.

Lots of Americans have immune challenges and health issues. They have good medical reasons not to be vaccinated. And the idea that we would reduce them to second-class citizenry is not feasible or desirable. The likelihood that herd immunity will be achieved with 80-85 percent of the population vaccinated or with antibodies will allow small populations with either medical or religious reasons to avoid vaccination not to pose an existential threat to others, especially when a new generation of pharmaceuticals are on the horizon that offer hope in rendering symptomatic COVID-19 to flu or cold status.

Sincerely,

Victor Hanson, a former farmer and CSU professor

An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill

The U.S. media initially burst out in applause at the “sweeping” and “tough” sanctions the Biden administration imposed on Russia on April 15 under the title of “Imposing Costs for Harmful Foreign Activities by the Russian Government.” Targeted are activities that “undermine security in countries and regions important to United States national security; and violate well-established principles of international law, including respect for the territorial integrity of states” (meaning Ukraine).

The Biden justifications for the sanctions are the presumed Russian interference in the 2020 elections, Russia’s hacking and cyberwarfare, the disinformation activities of the Russian military, and other hostile acts not enumerated.

One additional sanction justification has been dropped, embarrassingly, at the last minute. The U.S. intelligence community can no longer assert with sufficient certainty that Russian forces offered rewards to Taliban fighters for killing U.S. soldiers. The sanctions document declares: “Given the sensitivity of this matter, which involves the safety and well-being of our forces, it is being handled through diplomatic, military and intelligence channels.” In other words, “Never mind” — although these supposed Russian rewards played a substantial role in the 2020 election campaign.

The Biden sanctions also prohibit U.S. financial markets from dealing with primary issues of Russian sovereign debt. This action will raise the cost of public finance to the Russian state.

Read the full article here