{"id":12241,"date":"2020-03-10T13:43:09","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T20:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12241"},"modified":"2020-03-10T13:44:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T20:44:49","slug":"california-is-a-cruel-medieval-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-is-a-cruel-medieval-state\/","title":{"rendered":"California Is a Cruel Medieval State"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance\u2014gender or race\u2014has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don\u2019t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A paradox ensues that Californians both have a high, indeed smug, view of themselves and yet do a lot of damage to their fellow human beings. Their haughtiness is based largely on the reality that Silicon Valley, sandwiched between Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, became the birthplace of the global computer, internet, social media, and a high-tech revolution. For progressives who deprecate the capitalist lifestyle, having a lot of money still allows one to say one thing and live out the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The state\u2019s multi-trillion-dollar companies have hired tens of thousands of seven-figure, mid-level executives and computer experts who assume that life in the California coastal corridor is a birthright paradise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The resulting tax revenue bonanza to the state allows one-party-rule to rid California of the old bothersome Reagan-Deukmejian-Wilson working- and middle-classes by embracing not-in-my-backyard zoning, identity politics, anal-retentive regulations, steep tax rates, utopian green agendas, open borders, and decriminalization of things that used to be felony offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, the bigger and wealthier California became, the more the rich sought to privatize their lives and to give up on public services, the more the middle classes left the state, the more the poor from Mexico and Latin America crossed the southern border illegally, the more its schools deteriorated, and the more its infrastructure ossified and became decrepit, from century-old power transmission towers to pot-holed and jammed highways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amgreatness.com\/2020\/03\/08\/california-is-a-cruel-medieval-state\/\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance\u2014gender or race\u2014has returned to the premodern values of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3br","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6598,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/medieval-liberals\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":0},"title":"Medieval Liberals","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Unlike classical liberals, the liberals of today hew to doctrine in the face of the evidence. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 A\u00a0classical liberal was characteristically guided by disinterested logic and reason. He was open to gradual changes in society that were frowned upon by traditionalists in lockstep adherence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Left&quot;","block_context":{"text":"The Left","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/liberalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/beautifully-medieval-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":1},"title":"Beautifully Medieval California","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Gates Close at Dusk At about dusk, I close two large metal gates to my driveways. The security lights come on, and I enjoy intramural life. I am not protecting my dogs from coyotes, although there are many in the vineyard, but rather the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;California&quot;","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7203,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-inquisition\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":2},"title":"The New Inquisition","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Content Agency\u00a0 What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs? Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity? Or, if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Second Term Policies&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Second Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/second-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9505,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/medieval-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":3},"title":"Medieval America","author":"Megan Ring","date":"October 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Town Hall \u00a0 Pessimists often compare today's troubled America to a tottering late Rome or an insolvent and descending British Empire. But medieval Europe (roughly A.D. 500 to 1450) is the more apt comparison. The medieval world was a nearly 1,000-year period of spectacular, if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11752,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-virtuous-can-never-be-guilty\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":4},"title":"The Virtuous Can Never Be Guilty","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Since ancient times, it has always been scary when moral auditors audit their own. Or as the Roman satirist Juvenal put it of male guardians entrusted to shield chaste girls from randy males,\u00a0Quis\u00a0custodiet\u00a0ipsos\u00a0custodes?\u00a0(\u201cWho will watch the watchmen?\u201d) When humans sense that there\u2019s neither an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Progressivism&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Progressivism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/progressivism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8085,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-campus-as-california\/","url_meta":{"origin":12241,"position":5},"title":"The Campus as California","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media\u00a0 Campuses are becoming the haunts of the very wealthy and the poor, with little regard for any in-between \u2014 sort of like California. Let me explain. Lately lots of strange things have been in the news about college campuses \u2014 from the Rolling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Women&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Women","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/women\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"college_anarchy_graffiti_1-19-14-1","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/college_anarchy_graffiti_1-19-14-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12242,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12241\/revisions\/12242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}