The State of the Union | Victor Davis Hanson

0:00
but my point is if you tell middle-class people you're not going to be able to afford to
0:05
fill up your truck at seven dollars for diesel fuel or you're not going to turn on your air
0:10
conditioning because it's a sin and we're going to make it 30 kilowatt and you're going to be on that forklift
0:17
at 18 and you're going to pay taxes for this guy with a gender studies major at stanford
0:22
on his loan forgiveness you're playing with fire
0:40
professor victor davis hanson is no stranger to this series of conversations
0:45
he's the martin and early anderson senior fellow in residence
0:51
in classics and military history at the hoover institution at stanford university
0:57
he has many prestigious academic posts he's a historian of both ancient and
1:03
modern history he has a particular ability and background in the history of
1:10
warfare he has his own podcast the victor davis hanson show where he speaks
1:16
at length about global and american affairs and cultural issues with a vitality and a freshness
1:23
and a knowledge base that is really impressive
1:29
his latest book is the dying citizen how progressive elites tribalism and globalization are destroying the idea of
1:36
america victor thanks so much for joining us particularly given that you're still
1:42
recovering from covet well all bad things come to an end i hope
1:48
we're all i think uh right around the world very interested in what might happen in the upcoming mid
1:54
terms we've watched the current
1:59
team under biden doing very badly in the polls and the polls seem to be indicating that
2:05
there was going to be a major red wave yes and that the republicans would take the house and the senate again
2:12
now people are saying the polls are faltering the biden administration is recovering
2:18
despite all of the challenges that seem to be in front of it um
2:23
you've had roe versus wade how might that impact at all you've had the raid on mar-a-lago the uh
2:29
on president trump's home by the fbi how are you reading all of this because it's
2:35
so important for america and indeed the world yeah i think there's two issues and one is
2:41
is there are the republicans really stumbling so for example today a poll came out and
2:47
joe biden has dropped and the reuters which ipsy's pole which is considered center left pole
2:53
he's gone from 41 back down to 38. and so there's this kind of media
2:58
because of the passage of his so-called inflation fighting bill and
3:04
the student debt there's not been polling on those issues but they feel that's momentum so it's
3:10
been gender up in the media but when you actually look at biden's polls they've gone down this
3:15
week and when you look at key races that they felt were indicators of republican stupidity
3:22
by nominating people who had no political experience jd vance in ohio
3:27
he's up in some polls blake masters in arizona he's within one or two points in some
3:35
polls uh herschel walker that everybody thought would was a disaster he's actually ahead of warner
3:41
so i i don't think i think it's uh not quite the landslide that they thought but it's going to be a
3:48
big win the other issue is what is the democratic strategy that gives them this confidence and
3:55
if you look at the political landscape no one is talking about an open border and three million people
4:01
crossing joe biden blew up immigration law it doesn't exist in america on the southern
4:07
border nobody's talking about gasoline prices because and their way of thinking if they've
4:12
gone up three dollars and they went down 50 cents that's a cut but they're still much higher and people know that
4:18
inflation went from nine point two and now it's 8.5 but 8.5 is
4:25
extraordinary the fed is going to tighten up people are still this is the anniversary
4:31
week last week was of the afghanistan debacle so they don't want to talk about those issues so what are they doing so
4:38
we had the january 6 commission of which there was no republican on the committee
4:44
who did not vote to impeach donald trump or who had a political future
4:50
the two people on it have no political future at least in the congress and they voted impeached trump
4:57
and that psycho drama then led into the raid on more logo we've never had a
5:03
president's home rated in the history of the country and we've had a series of narratives each one has replaced the other one when
5:10
it ran out of uh credit credit credit graduality and so what i'm
5:16
getting at is they don't want to run on the record the problem is with the republicans that
5:22
they are reactive and so if they were to follow the 1994 newt
5:28
gingrich paradigm in which donald trump or whoever is the nominative head of the party they would say
5:34
this is what we're going to do in the first hundred days should we take the house and the senate this is what we're going
5:40
to do on energy here's how we're going to fight inflation here's what we're going to restore to deterrent foreign policy
5:45
we're going to be very skeptic we're going to let the states divide decide about abortion it's not going to be a
5:51
federal dictate and if they would have the candidates then run on those
5:57
national issues rather than well we did we're not insurrectionist
6:03
you're defaming us we're not fascists you shouldn't have rated this is this terrible so
6:08
they're reacting to news cycles of these melodramas that are concocted and it's taken a lot of momentum at
6:15
least out of them whether i don't think it'll it'll change but at some point some adult in the republican party is
6:23
going to have to say do your worst and we're going to do our best we're going to have a national agenda and it's going to be the
6:29
antithesis of this disastrous two years and we're all going to be on the same page and this is what we're going to run
6:35
on and i think they'll be okay i would have thought politics 101 is to set out a vision you've got to be able
6:41
to say to people we think x y and z are real problems and here's how we're going to resolve them
6:49
otherwise you're defined yeah by your political opponents
6:54
i think at some point maybe i'm being a little extraneous there's a waterloo moment with donald
7:01
trump in the republican party and that is i think people who are running for office are
7:07
going to tell him the 2020 election is history and to the
7:14
degree that there is a legitimate criticism about the outcome it was probably lost in march
7:19
and april when the voting laws were changed and that was not addressed by the republican and right now we need to look at the
7:25
future and each moment that you go back there you play into the fake narrative
7:31
of an insurrection and fascism and that's what they want you to do and so donald trump is going to have to
7:37
decide which is more important to him to be the leader of the republican party
7:44
and to look ahead and not to do what he did in 2020 when
7:50
he fixated on the election he let the georgia races the two senate races
7:55
sort of you know he basically told his supporters that the vote won't be valid
8:01
and then the independency seemed to be distracted so they elected two
8:07
neo-socialists in georgia of all places and so that should have been a warning and so he's going to have to get that
8:13
message to barnstorm the country and help these candidates and not talk about
8:19
what happened and if he doesn't unfortunately for him there's an array of very talented people
8:25
unlike the democratic party there's a a successful governor ron desantis in
8:31
florida there's tom cotton a good senator there's mike pompeo there's nikki haley
8:37
there's marco rubio there's all this talent and they're waiting for an opening and if he doesn't
8:42
take the responsibility to to run on the agenda and to make sure that other people other than himself win this time
8:49
around i think he's going to be in real trouble it does raise the question does it not
8:55
of as an outsider i want to be careful about sounding critical about a major american figure because i'm not an
9:01
american except that this is so important for the world donald trump runs the risk i think of
9:07
a perception that it's what happens to him is more important than what happens to the country yeah
9:13
because this is a crisis moment globally we're at a civilizational moment and what happens in america is unbelievably
9:21
important it is as to whether or not we go under so how does he square that circle yeah there's only one solution to
9:28
the dilemma that you posed and that is he's got two choices
9:35
he can be a tragic hero and say that i had some
9:40
personality excesses that people called me crass and crew but i got this agenda we were successful
9:46
and now i paved the way for a new republican party but the very
9:51
sturman drang of that process made me unelectable or maybe
9:56
not going to be the right and i'm going to write off in the sunset and rest on my laurel or if he wants to say current then he's got
10:04
to shift attention from himself to the agenda i know that he has a great confidence in himself but he can say
10:11
that i gave you this agenda and everybody seems to agree that we have to restore the industrial
10:17
capacity of the united states we've got to be tough on china we've got to have a border that's secure
10:23
we have to have a different foreign policy we have to have responsible monetary policy we've got to pump oil
10:28
and gas and people were not talking about it like i was and now we're all on the same page so as long as people agree
10:35
with this agenda that i have established the personalities myself included are not so important and i think that would
10:42
be wise for him to do that he'd ironically he would get more credit if he would do that but if he takes the
10:47
third alternative and that's what you hinted at and he keeps dwelling on the injustices
10:54
that were done to him he's kind of like a sophocline ajax where the entire play is about all the
11:00
wrongs that people did to ajax all of which were legitimate greatest critics everything he says
11:06
has legitimate grounds but it doesn't matter now the matter is the future of the united states and the world yeah and
11:12
so it really is that big isn't it the problem is the ir he's putting himself into a paradox where
11:18
the effort to get justice even if he were to achieve it would be such a distraction and such controversy that
11:24
his agenda would be overshadowed and there's people all over the united states that need
11:30
that agenda and it would be fascinating to see that agenda
11:37
voiced by a lot of legitimate candidates that he would run against and debate against because it would put the say for
11:42
example the left and the never trumpers in a very strange position because they wouldn't fixate on donald trump alone
11:48
yeah and what would the never trumpers say they say we've been conservatives all our life but the fingerprints of
11:53
donald trump on the agenda made it unpalatable but now he's not there this candidate has these positions that
12:00
we've sort of supported all our life and i would like to see what they're saying my suspicion is they've gone left
12:06
and that would put them in a dilemma because they wouldn't want to say tom cotton ron desantis mike pompeo
12:12
pre-trump these are the people that i would want i don't think they would want them now so there's all these questions
12:17
we want answered and i think the left is there are people on the left that are
12:24
that are warning the left now and they're saying in these quasi-illegal things and blatantly
12:30
illegal and you saw sam harris the left-wing intellectual said you know what it was the laptop was all
12:37
fake uh we we knew that the the objections that it was russian disinformation were fake
12:43
it was an authentic laptop but it didn't matter that the fbi and the dnc and the left
12:48
colluded with social media because there are ends of getting rid of donald trump were morally justifiable
12:54
these means and so they are fixated on donald trump and yet
13:00
there are people on the left in the democratic party they'll say be careful because in your pursuit of destroying
13:06
donald trump's viability you're you're going to empower other people
13:12
that might be more effective emissaries of this agenda see um let me test the theory as i see
13:19
it we're at a great moment of sort of a civilizational moment nothing less
13:25
frankly in the west you've got a situation where
13:31
we're either going to renew ourselves or we're going to have to find a very
13:36
different way of running ourselves and to me i'd have to say if it's a sort of cross between cultural marxism and
13:43
post-modernism that seems to be on offer i'm not sure how that's going to go or frankly we're going to go into decline
13:49
now in those circumstances i think what all those good people in i think this is true in australia anyway i think it
13:56
probably is in america who have disengaged from politics because they're so disillusioned with it
14:01
all they're looking for someone to lead the old line you know where's the
14:07
churchill so leadership becomes incredibly important in this context
14:12
and i think i i'm asking do you see it as seriously as i do or am i overplaying it and b i think i'm saying
14:20
it looks to me as an outsider as though the current president couldn't run again
14:27
if you look beyond the midterms and the people behind him are not really very appealing to the
14:33
american people whereas the republicans you've hinted at it have actually got some
14:39
fairly impressive people yeah they could be two points
14:45
and the easier one very quickly is i think a lot of people would translate your worries into
14:52
the nuts and bolts of or the details would be that donald trump has a unique ability to incite the left and therefore
14:58
there will be billions of dollars and psychodramas and melodramas that otherwise wouldn't exist with a
15:05
republican candidate that would be more easy to focus on the issues
15:11
the second when you use the word civilizational i take that as transnational that meaning
15:17
yes western civilization in general but the english-speaking peoples maybe in particular yes
15:22
we're saying there and what you're saying is that we're at a divide and there's
15:28
half of the western world is saying we believe in consensual government
15:33
small government national defense self-sufficiency and energy and production
15:39
traditional values that have worked and we're not we don't have to be perfect to be good and we have mechanisms within
15:45
our constitutional systems that will adopt for changes that are necessary we're not fixated on race we're
15:51
ecumenical we want people not by we don't care about the color of their skin whether
15:57
we don't care we just want them to be on the same page as far as our values go
16:02
and we welcome legal measured merocratic immigration that group of people is about half now
16:09
and there's another and the other half is saying the united states in particular but the
16:15
west in general is flawed at its birth it's got these elemental sins it'll never recover
16:21
and borders are an artifact of the past it's a racist sexist
16:27
uh xenophobic culture inherently we've got to destroy it there's other paradigms we see around the world of
16:33
socialism or whatever and we're at a point now where the
16:39
latter the latter group the critical group the anti-western group controls
16:44
the corporate boardroom they control i think a lot of big tech silicon valley
16:51
the traditional media social media professional sports hollywood entertainment
16:56
all of the foundations that fund all of these various sorrows projects uh
17:02
da's that don't believe in traditional crime and punishment deterrence and incarceration indictment and so the odds
17:10
uh are with the left they have the money in this new globalized economy they have
17:17
the connections they have the influence they have the reach so to speak all we have is the people the middle class
17:24
and so if you put it that way then personalities are not so important the traditionalists are saying
17:31
we appreciate what donald trump did he was he was a general in in the army
17:37
but we we're not about a general we want gen all generals to appear and the person who's going to be the most
17:42
effective is going to get our allegiance and be and how do we define effective
17:47
it means do not give the left and inroad because you have no margin of error so
17:54
every time you talk about something that they want you to talk about or every time you tweet something that they can
18:00
pass off as being crude they win we don't we at this late date
18:06
given the resources of the opposition we have no we have no margin no laxity we have to
18:11
be serious 24 7. and i think that's what the issue is it's a little it's getting
18:16
each four year cycle in the country it's getting harder and harder for
18:21
traditionalists and conservatives to maintain the civilization and i think that's where we are now
18:28
and it's up to donald trump to decide whether he wants to again to lead the party but if he were to lead the party
18:35
there can't be any of you know you can't say anthony falci throws a ball like a girl
18:41
that's one day out of the news cycle you lose you can't say that liz cheney is an idiot and a corrupt and all of that's
18:48
one day half a day out of the you can't do you're not talking about closing anwar down or you're not talking about
18:54
uh canceling the keystone pipeline these are existing are telling the our closest allies in the mediterranean the israelis
19:01
the cypriots the greeks were against east med pipeline as biden did so there's really issues that are important
19:07
and you can't you can't waste one second it's it's five minutes to midnight in western
19:14
civilization i think my point and i i take all of that on and what you tell us is grave
19:20
and i think needs to be that's why i wanted to come and hear you say it in that way or anticipated you probably would i think
19:26
it's incredibly important that we'd be utterly realistic about what we're facing but can i just tease out for a moment
19:32
you say it's in the balance pretty much evenly divided
19:38
isn't that the case then that that makes it more important than ever that that the traditionalists if i can put it
19:43
that way are led by somebody who's not wildly offensive to the other side that
19:48
they won't flush out quite as much anger quite as much division and that at the same time we'll re-engage
19:56
a lot of the good people who are just so despair you've outlined the dichotomy that is now the subtext of
20:04
all the republican discussions about 2024. yeah and
20:10
one question has been resolved we're not going to go back to we're going to slice social security and right off the the
20:16
industrial heartland they should have coded their losers uh laissez faire creative
20:22
destruction all that stuff i don't think is it viable
20:27
and we're you know that we're gonna have an open border because we need cheap labor for corporate america that's
20:33
so the trump agenda within reason is sort of the orthodoxy now then the question is
20:39
well can you have trumpism without trump
20:46
i guess he would say well can you have sunlight without the sun but the point is
20:51
uh if you had can you have what republicans are saying under their breath i'll be
20:57
candid with you is we want somebody that has the trump fire in the belly
21:03
that will not be a marcus of quinsbury gentlemen like john mccain or mitt
21:08
romney and be walked over but and hands it back in kind to the
21:13
left but does so wisely rather than emotionally and donald trump at times
21:19
was too emotional and he gave his enemies advantages that he didn't intend to but they turned out to be fatal
21:25
almost to our cause not just his so what they're looking now is they're saying
21:31
here's ron desantis harvard graduate he can't be he's got the what the left
21:36
considers a serious education he's been in iraq under wartime conditions he's
21:42
run a state here's tom cotton same thing basically
21:47
and here is mike pompeo same thing they have these sterling credentials they understand
21:53
the left very seriously they seem to have the fire in the belly and we're going to see and if they can emerge and
22:00
avoid and show the same passion how would that be defined i suppose it would be
22:05
nobody's asking them to get 50 000 people a rally but could they get 10 or 20 or have that natural appeal if they
22:12
can do that then they're going to win and i i think but if they don't do that
22:17
then people are going to say i'll be candid again with you and i'm talking about midstream republicans
22:23
they're saying well trump's an sob but he's rso being all we got but if if he's not all we got
22:29
and somebody has the same passion and charm and charisma and
22:35
combativeness and yet it uses it much more wisely and adroitly for purposes
22:40
other than themselves i think they're going to resonate and i think that's what the left is terrified if you notice they're going
22:47
after ron desantis almost as if he's donald trump yeah they're trying to destroy him yeah and there's no mercy
22:53
there's no common decency there's no let's have a debate no it's we want to cancel you we
23:01
we we're going to march there's no debate because the well the left has conceded that the agenda that they
23:06
embrace is ideological and there's no compromise and they don't care whether people pete butterjig said
23:12
that he said these prices are hard and they're difficult for you but they're valuable
23:18
because they're going to make fossil fuels unaffordable and therefore we'll be forced to go to
23:24
and we'll see and we know where that ends up if you look at germany that's where they want us to go they don't care
23:30
about the misery that will entail thousands millions of american families
23:35
if you have ten dollars a gallon gas that's what they want well has this happened how have the democrats the
23:41
party of the left come to the point where the little people and the vulnerable don't matter two things
23:47
happen in the globalized world we woke up in the 21st century and those markets that
23:54
had been 330 million were eight billion seven eight billion there were particular people
24:01
on the coast one looking at the eu one looking at asia who had skills that were transferable in
24:07
a global sense insurance capital investment
24:12
law academia media and they had these huge markets and the
24:18
level of money was staggering yeah and it was all within an intellectual and culturally left veneer this is where
24:24
stanford is this is where caltech usc harvard yale they're on the coast and we
24:30
created this elite left-wing culture and they turned on their own base they said
24:35
you know what the deplorables the clingers the irredeemables the chumps i'm just using
24:41
their language they didn't code they missed out on it and we don't need these people anymore and then the second
24:48
attitude they substituted race for class so they said to themselves
24:54
if you are not white and this was barack obama's contribution it's no longer a 90 10
25:02
88 12 dichotomy black white the historical problem of slavery and the discrimination the racism and now it's
25:08
everybody who's not white it's 30 percent it's the wealthy punjabi immigrant that
25:14
just arrived it's a multi-millionaire um person from hong kong who came it is the
25:21
spanish aristocrat who's a professor of literature they all have grievances and we're going to say that no matter how
25:28
wealthy they are no matter how accomplished they're victims and that's the new dichotomy it's not
25:33
poor rich and we're going to project uh a racism onto the
25:39
the middle white classes that are failing and it was really a contempt for them they almost said
25:44
they lack our culture and values and they lack the romance of the of the of
25:51
the poor but they're basically now the left is the party of the very wealthy the by coastal elite
25:58
and the very poor that are subsidized if you actually look at subsidies what the broad the left is brought in if
26:04
you're a middle-class person your income has been stagnant for 12 or 14 years why entitlements have have
26:12
grown so the the actual income of a family working with two or three children is not much different than
26:18
somebody who's subsidized in among the poor and that that's what the democrats
26:23
accomplished they have a instinctual dislike the new democrats dislike i would even say a venom toward
26:30
the middle class yeah the white working class they cannot stand it and they will
26:35
turn on the hispanic white working class if they feel they're no longer
26:40
they don't have fealty to them at 30 70 to 30 if it should be i don't
26:46
think it will happen but people are saying it could be 50 50 in the next election in terms of the latino vote i
26:51
think you'll see the borders close very quickly can i put a proposition to yeah one way of looking at this is
26:58
a lot of these new elites uh uh despise traditional christian
27:04
faith but in a way it's strangely religious you could look at the transition there was a time when
27:10
there was a sort of a christian sort of predominance that said you know um
27:15
human beings are a high point in the creation and they matter and
27:21
they ought to go forth and make the work world work for them perhaps sometimes they abused it other times they
27:27
stewarded it well then there was pantheism we're just part of nature now man is the problem
27:35
man is the bad guy the evil that's destroying gaia the goddess earth
27:44
and people are the problem so you've almost got this view emerging in the elites that
27:49
it's sort of the old lifeboat ethics thing there's too many of us we're destroying the planet
27:55
um and the real prospect that we'll decide that a whole lot of people don't matter
28:01
i mean this is pretty ugly stuff well it's a result
28:06
again i don't want to stress it too much but it's partly a result that
28:12
if you turn for all the problems the world is having the western world if you look at
28:18
the oppertunces the western citizen has if we define it by
28:23
access to cars cell phones instant communications worldwide video games square feet that they have
28:30
for their house air conditioning they're wealthier than an aristocrat 70 years ago yeah that
28:37
wealth we've never seen this uh level of affluence and leisure and that allows people to think of things
28:44
who are very very wealthy they have no problem satisfying their appetites they
28:49
can go across the world in their gulf stream in that but then they take on these boutique issues well what would
28:55
happen if and this and that and they lose contact with reality where the middle class are worried
29:01
am i going to be able to drive my truck to work do i have enough food for the week can i keep the house warm
29:07
but our elite have com and so they have these theoretical
29:12
ideological agendas and it's also predicated on sort of a soviet idea that
29:20
for us to be true revolutionaries we have to be exempt from the consequences of our
29:25
ideology so if i'm a celebrity i i need to i'm not if i'm john kerry i
29:33
need a private jet that's the only way i can stop global warming if i
29:38
want to have teachers unions and every i have to have my kid in a private school
29:43
if i want to have 30 cents a kilowatt hour power i've got to live on montecito
29:48
where it's 70 degrees year-round if i have to say to people we're going to be inundated pretty soon
29:54
because of global warming and our coastal properties will be underwater if i'm barack obama i still get to have
30:01
martha's vineyard estate and a new place in hawaii so this is kind of a versaille
30:06
wealthy left group that play act like marie antoinette they dress up in peasant garb because they can and
30:13
they're wealthy and they're privileged and so that that explains a lot of what's happened and the the other
30:19
the other idea is that i don't want to be two but we're creating
30:26
the cloud the davos class the great reset group they're basically agnostics and atheists
30:32
and they have lost any idea that the degree to which you act as a
30:38
human in this lifetime affects your soul and it's what socrates said that songs
30:45
are everywhere but they come into reality when you have an instrument to play them but if you if you break
30:51
your lear liar or you break your your horn it doesn't mean the song
30:56
disappears we have a soul it it's manifest only because we have a body for a short time but if you don't
31:02
believe that and they don't they're secular humanists then
31:08
every single issue right now is all that matters it's not whether you lie it's not whether you're
31:15
a good person in terms of traditional say just take one exact christian morality it's whether you were right on
31:21
the issue of global warming you were right on the issue of critical race theory you were right on this radical
31:27
and what is the agenda it's a radical equality of a result if you sum up the woke movement today
31:34
in every aspect environmental social cultural economic it is that any inequality
31:41
anywhere in the western world can be attributed to some sort of exploitation it doesn't
31:47
matter about a person's individual circumstances whether they are aggressively
31:53
a workaholic or inert or lazy or whether they have good genes or bad genes or whether they have a big inheritance or
32:00
whether they have a bad back all the millions of things that we can't we can't control
32:06
in the tragic view so we say to ourselves we want a quality of opportunity everybody gets us an equal
32:12
shot and we'll try to help people that have disadvantages but no it's that person is not like that person
32:20
i'm anointed to adjudicate on the back and i'm going to have an equality of result and i need
32:26
power to do a lot of tough stuff and this is the motto of everybody from
32:33
you know from pole pot to stalin to my it's a bad path and that's what they
32:38
want to do they want the power so they can determine everybody's life you are
32:44
using too much you've got your air conditioner on too much a poor person in fresno doesn't have no he doesn't have
32:49
that so i'm going to take that away from you but i'll keep mine going yes and i'll go out and buy some carbon credits
32:55
somewhere yes with some chunky scheme they always think of that don't they yeah i can have a
33:01
nobody should live in america more than fifteen hundred square feet but i have five twenty thousand square foot homes but
33:08
i have had the carbon offsets that's what they do they dream up these things so that i i feel like they're they're
33:14
creatures at versailles and they're very dangerous and uh it's very hard for us to
33:20
criticize them because they're so moralistic and they're always the right is always i'm for the
33:25
individual and when the individual makes more than another individual my duty as a western citizen is to
33:32
appeal to the better angels of their nature or their religion and or their shame or their culture their family and
33:38
say share it with your your poor brother or your cousin doesn't have enough or help your child or if go
33:45
beyond that with a community or help but they don't trust the individual they say no no we are the state and we're going
33:51
to tell that person we're going to take him away he got that only because he exploited somebody and he didn't have it
33:58
not because he used drugs not because he committed a crime not because he it was
34:03
only because the system was unfair to him there's some truth in both sides but not that's not the truth
34:11
let me test two theories with theories with you then the first is that you've mentioned verse
34:16
i they're playing with fire the social disharmony that will result if we
34:22
continue because i've been in government long enough to see the pattern since the great financial crisis through covert
34:28
and now in the name of arresting climate change we're pursuing policies that are
34:33
indeed continuing to make these squillionaires
34:39
wealthier than ever whilst everybody else's living sanders are being pushed down yeah the marie antoinette moment
34:46
let them eat cake yeah said in contempt resulted in her losing her head yeah
34:52
so we've never these are intelligent i don't suppose i know history because they don't think history matters because history would tell them they're playing
34:59
with fire and they are and so in the united states we had 120 days of rioting
35:06
in may to november of 2020 continuous 35 to 50 people were killed two billion
35:13
dollars of property damage uh fourteen thousand people arrested and
35:18
let go uh fifteen hundred police officers and that was that was exempt from criticism kamela
35:26
harris who was going to shortly be the vice president candidate said the rioting should that the protests should
35:31
and she knew they were violent they tried to storm the white house ground uh nicole hannah jones
35:37
the architect the 1690 said ah theft is not a crime property is not a
35:42
crime if you take somebody's property so we're the left said that's okay we had
35:48
one day of a bunch of bufoonish people who rioted over the election and so they went and that's a threat to
35:54
democracy that was a threat to democracy what they don't understand is not that i want to not that i want to downplay the
36:01
stupidity no i think it was a terrible thing that happened i want anybody who committed a felony to be properly
36:06
punished but my point is if you tell middle-class people you're not going to be able to afford to
36:12
fill up your truck at seven dollars for diesel fuel or you're not going to turn on your air
36:18
conditioning because it's a sin and we're going to make it 30 kilowatt and
36:23
you're going to be on that forklift at 18 and you're going to pay taxes for this guy with a gender studies major at
36:29
stanford on his loan forgiveness you're playing with fire with of going
36:36
after them and then you keep calling them semi-fascist so if you stop and think a minute
36:44
the president united states between 2009 and 16 barack obama said
36:50
these people clung to their guns he just ridiculed them joe biden has called them
36:55
chumps and drags hillary clinton said they were irredeemables and deplorables and
37:02
she made fun of them in west virginia you know cole's going to be we're going to wipe out your livelihood and when you
37:08
call them fascist and uh you have this the fbi members of the fbi
37:16
say how do we stop this president or no or peter strzok says i went into walmart and it smelled like trump people or a
37:23
cnn reporter says i went to a rally and i had more teeth than everybody in this rally and you combine that public or
37:30
kevin kleinsmith an fbi lawyer who forged a document and he writes in a tweet viva la la resistance
37:38
if you if you marry that with an agenda that makes it impossible for people to have upward
37:44
mobility and you you articulate your hatred toward them and you call them if you're
37:50
the chairman of the joint chiefs and you say that you're exploring their white rage or you're the secretary of defense
37:56
and you say that you're going to go in the ranks and you're going to find out who are all these races but you bring no
38:02
data the only data that i know that's race specific is the military always tells us who dies by race and when you look at
38:09
the statistics in afghanistan iraq white males die at double their numbers of the general population
38:16
so when you go after them you said well how long will will they take it they're playing with fire well they already have
38:21
the the recruitments in the u.s army are down 45 percent yes this year and the reagan library
38:30
just did a poll and they asked people you have confidence in the us military it used to be 85 percent it was less
38:36
than 50 percent and the u.s air force academy is not getting that it has a recruitment
38:44
crisis about applicants the applications have gone down but especially the applications that qualify of kind of
38:50
people they want so we're starting to see people say no we have a kind of a rejectionist half the
38:57
country it wasn't just that they're not going to disneyland or they're not watching the super bowl or nba
39:04
they're not joining the military and they're not they don't want their children to police out a man yeah
39:10
they're saying no and that's that's half the country and that was the left always operated on the premise
39:17
that they were the critical intellectual elite and they would look at the system
39:22
and they would poke holes in it but was always the assumption that the system was there that there was
39:28
always some guy fracking oil there was also some guy perched up on 150th floor
39:34
uh washing windows there was always a guy to fix their car put in their granite counter bring in their always
39:40
someone to generate the money so the specialist there was always somebody when you wanted a nation build in iraq
39:46
there was always a guy in rural pennsylvania that family had been four generations from world war ii to create
39:53
a vietnam and he was going to go over there and god knows where and die for this agenda
39:59
and that's how they existed but when they take power
40:05
and they destroy the energy energy industry and when they uh destroy the military
40:11
and when they destroy the reputation of the fbi there's no there there anymore and so
40:16
the people who kept the country running and allowed these people to be professors and lawyers and media critics
40:25
they're the the frill they're the the hair and the nails they're not the
40:30
muscles and the organs of the of the organism and when you start attacking those people that make the country run
40:37
it's not just white i'm not saying white it's everybody of the middle and working muscular classes they ward on them
40:44
and uh and when they you don't want them in rebellion because they'll shut we saw that during the
40:50
covet shutdown when they stopped working or when they uh
40:57
you know and half of them stopped working they couldn't work their businesses were destroyed and then the other half were
41:02
the only people that kept the country going the amazon delivery the guy who kept uh you know he was
41:08
still irrigating the uh the great vineyard the guy who was still out there welding
41:14
so that's who kept the country going and uh we all can't sit in our our house as
41:20
terrified of kova live by zoom and have somebody knock on the door with our dinner and our amazon
41:26
delivery that takes real people and if you offend those people as we're doing
41:32
and uh was the real revolutionary thing in the united states now is the left was
41:37
so obsessed with race it's almost that they're you you hubris brought on nemesis because now what's
41:43
happening you're starting to see a subtle but definite trend that people who the left calls non-white
41:51
feel there's a war against them if you're a mexican-american painter or
41:56
you have 10 people working in your electrician business you don't want people going into your
42:02
diet diocese and disrupting it over transgendered issues you don't want
42:08
partial birth abortion you don't want critical race theory you don't want somebody playing the knock-up game or
42:14
they walk up to somebody and hit them in the head on a street in new york and they're out the same day
42:20
so they're offending those classes and they're creating a new a new political reality of class i think
42:26
is starting to slowly reassert itself and that if republicans are wise they'll be able to take advantage of that
42:32
now the other great danger that i just wanted to run by you it seems to me that these uh highly educated
42:40
certainly by their own beliefs very clever people i can't believe they're playing so lightly really with
42:47
the liberal global rules-based order that has served the world so well
42:54
since the second world war because america's essentially policed it yeah
42:59
the progress around the world and lifting people out of poverty creating opportunity
43:04
spreading democracy until recently has been quite remarkable but it's depended
43:09
upon a strong and cohesive even a coherent american society to do it
43:16
and if you're worried about climate change for example if you really think we're destroying the planet surely the
43:22
worst thing you could do is to put at risk and uh you know it really is at risk the liberal global
43:29
rules-based order the arc of autocracy as some people in my country call it you know who hate
43:35
western democracy china russia iran north korea
43:40
they don't care about climate change they don't care about walk either they don't care about climate change they don't care about any of this stuff isn't
43:47
that the second danger that these highly intelligent people are missing it's very ironic because these remember
43:54
these people are not empirical they're ideologues so once they get
44:00
i think everybody knew that stalinism had failed by 1935 or 36 earlier during
44:07
the great fam it didn't matter he didn't change national socialism
44:13
mao failed but the ideologue does not care we saw that with a virginia
44:19
pushback against the left they didn't care they doubled down on critical base theory so
44:24
in germany as we're talking right now they're going to be burning wood which is the most polluting of all fuels this
44:30
winter to survive we in california have no forest management because we felt that it was
44:36
uh empowering timber companies you know very careful cons
44:41
conservative uh trimming of dead trees and and logging so what do we do we have
44:47
these huge fires these biblical fires and they put more uh fossil fuel emissions into the air
44:53
than cars do but they don't care because it's ideologically correct to have a particular forest management problem
45:01
and so that's where we are there we've created a very wealthy elite
45:06
protected class and they have controls of the influence in the western world and by that i mean
45:15
the books that are published the podcast not this one but there's very few of us
45:20
the media social media network news pbs npr
45:27
foundation all of it and they have a huge megaphone and they have the money
45:32
the wealth if you look at the fortune 400 these are not ancient fortunes based on
45:38
manufacturing or assembly or oil or mining or gas or transportation
45:43
their finance investment insurance high-tech bio media and they're very left-wing
45:50
people they have a global market they're very wealthy they're ideological and they have an agenda that they feel is
45:57
good for us this is their religion as atheists and agnostics they feel we're going to convert these people we
46:03
don't want to do it by the sword if we have if we can avoid it but they're going to do what's good for
46:10
them and we know what it is we've seen their visions it's all of us are going to live in high
46:15
rises and we're going to go to a belt around a city on mass transit we're going to give up
46:20
our individual cars and we're going to use a particular type of fuel we're going to think a particular way we're going to have a
46:27
particular k-12 education and we're going to be the perfect citizen according to them and they don't believe
46:33
in liberty they don't believe individual choice they don't believe that individuals can make better decisions
46:38
than they can as government so they're very scary people and they they're not
46:43
new in history every generation or two they have a new face if this was 1793 we'd be calling them
46:50
jacobins if it was 19 you know 63 or 68 maybe in
46:57
china we would call them maoist and uh if we called in
47:03
and uh after 1945 to 50 in the united states we'd call them
47:09
sympathizers with socialism or communism so i don't know how we defeat them other than the way
47:15
we've always defeated them and that is we a few people call them out and say it
47:20
doesn't work and we're going to oppose you we're not going to put you in camps we're not going to
47:26
violate the constitution but we're going to speak out against you and that's how we've always we have a
47:31
better system we have better values and we care about people and we're humanist
47:38
i don't think that they're anti-human as you said when aoc said that she didn't want children because
47:45
because of climate change and when you tell the left that
47:50
you can't have a society with a 1.3 fertility rate because you'll have a bunch of old people dependent on very
47:56
few young people whose whole lives will be spent taking care of them they don't care
48:02
that they like that the fewer people the less carbon imprint on the environment so
48:08
it's very sad because it's insidious people with phds and jd's and mds and
48:14
mas and bas who are very glib can do a lot of damage
48:20
and as we get older i'm not trying to be romantic or naive but something about a person who works
48:26
with their hands and they combine the mind with the body and they build or they mine or they
48:33
harvest they're they're grounded a reality and they know human human they know human
48:39
limitations and they believe that the world is tragic and you try to
48:45
do your best and if you're not perfect it doesn't mean you're not good well you see that as a farmer you stay
48:51
in touch that way and so do i yeah so on that night once again
48:57
thanks so much for your insights well thank you [Music]
49:14
you