America’s Greatest Military Humiliation | Victor Davis Hanson

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If you break this deal, we're going to kill you." And there had been a problem. Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on Jack Fowler. Lucky man, I get to ask Victor the questions. I'm confident you would be asking him if you were here. Here's the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayna Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He's a Senior Contributor. Hello Victor, Senior Contributor at the Daily Signal. He's wearing an official hat there, there you go, Victor's website is the Blade of Perseus. You'll find it at victorhanson.com, $65 a year to subscribe if you want to do that or just stick your toe in the water 650 a month, and you'll be able to read the exclusive articles and see the exclusive videos Victor does every week, just for the Blade of Perseus. You'll also see the link to his forthcoming book here, I think three weeks away now, that counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, okay. So today is Sunday, August 16th, we're recording two shows today. This show will be the show up on Tuesday, August 18th, 2020, six and as usual, a ton of things to get Victor's wisdom on Jason Arde, the Cambridge Fabulous Professor who was found dead in his apartment. I think he's 40, roughly 40 years old, so a lot of upper or over that and commentary that he has essentially been lynched, socially lynched. We have a New York City counselor that is, I'm not sure she's a counselor, she's a state rep, but totally in favor of shoplifting, it should be legal, California homeless stories, we have Terry Moran, the former ABC reporter admitting that he was, had a story on the Wuhan lab that was spiked, but this is, he didn't say anything about it five years ago, but he's coming out about it now, Mangione pleads, Fifth Anniversary, the Afghan bug out, so those are the topics we'll get Victor's wisdom on today and we'll start with that when we come back from these first important messages. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school sophomore, Cali Keeler was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Many afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of alliance defending freedom, Cali is bravely suing the state over a policy that not only allows males to compete in girls high school sports, but doesn't require schools to disclose that information to female athletes or their parents. Don't let schools put gender ideology over the safety of girls in sports. Your support today can help fight for Cali and other athletes like her, and for a limited time, your first gift to ADF will be doubled by a special matching grant, well funds last. Text Hanson to 83848 or go to join ADF.com/hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. The Daily Signal, by the way, is also the home of Victor Davis Hanson in a few words, so you should catch that four times a week, Victor does that terrific 8-minute or so video, nugget of wisdom. Victor, with the book coming here in three weeks, I assume you're getting a multiple requests for you to come on shows and talk about it, so I want people to be beyond the lookout for such. Let's start off with Jason Arda, Victor, I hope I'm saying his name, right? We talked about him on a recent episode, he's 41 years old, he resigned from the University of Cambridge. I think within the last two weeks, over the controversy that his resume was just a total fabulous concoction, but he is now dead, he was around dead in his London home, but I want to read to, I'll just start off with one, how about that? The infamous Xavier Kennedy, I forgot, I can't remember his name either, I can't remember anything. Professor Kennedy of the Boston University Anti-Racism Center that raised $50 million that vanished somehow, that's that is, that's the same Professor Kennedy, here's how he should be. You have to be a racist and to stop racism as I recall, you've got fire with fire, I guess, I stust stealing from that book. Here's what he wrote yesterday, which is actually today, the death of Friday of Jason Arda, a 41 year old black scholar, blah, blah, blah, hits close to home. His death left me so devastated, I have no words. In the news broke, but I woke up this morning with words, I'm reading this from his ex account. To be a prominent anti-racist black scholar is to know you are a target, almost totally surrounded by resentments, prominence is relative, you can be prominent at your at your university in your field, in your local community, in your nation across oceans, as a prominent black scholar, you know the attacks haunt and hunt you like a lynch mob. And then one day the attacks are at your door. It goes on and on, Victor, this other commentary of similar, he was killed essentially by, I guess, people like you and me, Victor, anyway, your thoughts. Why does Professor Kennedy have to say he's a prominent black scholar? Do we always say he's a prominent Latino scholar, a prominent Chinese scholar, a prominent gay, I guess we do. We say he's a prominent white scholar, what does it matter what color a person is, unless you're trying to leverage your race for our special treatment as Professor Kennedy. He shouldn't be very quiet because he rode that post George Floyd rioting and took advantage of it. And then he was charging people what, $20,000, $30,000 for Zoom, consultations with him. He got a $50 million grant, I think, grants pearl at Boston University where he completely caved the black studies program. So he doesn't have a very spectacular record. The thing, it's really bothersome about this is, Cambridge University came out when they hired him and said a number of lies. They said he is one of the most impressive scholars, not black scholars, not scholars present 42 years old. And then they said he has a dynamic memoir coming out. He had no real publications. It was known when they made that statement that over 100 passages in his dissertation had been lifted. It wasn't that people went after him because he was black. It was because he was black that he got leeway and laxity that no one else did. And what is the worst thing is that the left now is blaming anybody who told the truth. And they said, well, if he had been white, no, we know what happens when people who plagiarize our white. Stephen Glass, remember him, the Newsweek journalist? They made a movie about him, how embarrassing he was. He was like our day. He invented all sorts of stuff. Stephen Ambrose at one time was probably the best-selling World War II historian in the world, or maybe even historian in general. He had written in a multi-volume biography of Eisenhower. He wrote about Custer, he wrote about the Continental Crane system. He got, he did, yes. And then when he hit it big with his D-Day book that coincided with the anniversary and people lauded him, he had been a hardcore leftist. I heard Stephen Ambrose speak at Stanford University when I was a graduate student as I recall. He came in and bucked skins. I think at that time he was the first tenured professor to be fired. in history. Before Bruce Flankin, or contemporaneous with it, for just dire tribes, he was obsessed with Nixon. Then he reinvented himself, and I give him credit. He wrote popular histories at people, and he created genuine interest in World War II, and he was the foundational force behind the World War II Museum, which is an excellent museum in New Orleans. I think his son has been prominent in carrying on his legacy. But the fact of the matter was, he was a plagiarizer. He wrote a book called, I guess, Wild Blue Yonder about the bombing crews in World War II. He lifted whole pages from a scholar who got very little recognition and had done all the research. He just lifted it. He was exposed, not by some leftists, not by the conservative weekly standard. That was the end of his career, essentially. He died shortly afterwards. Then people went back, and they said, "If he did it here, did he do it there?" He did. He had interviews in his footnotes for the Eisenhower biography that could not have taken place. The people involved, he said, that he interviewed, were not there, or the interview location was not available, but he made that up. I think he said he spent over 100 hours with. Yes. It was actually two hours, yes. As an example of that, yes. Yes. He was destroyed, and it tragically led to his death. I could go on and on. There was a guy, Michael Belissaris. He had various Belissari or Belissaris. He won the Bancroft Award, and he made the argument that the founding fathers were mistaken in protecting gun rights, and we shouldn't honor the Second Amendment, because nobody really had guns on the frontier. Can you imagine that? How did he know that? He said he went meticulously through wills and testaments, and there were never mentioned that you handed your gun down to your progeny. Well, I mean, everybody's like saying, "Well, Americans don't have garbage esposals in kitchens either, because they didn't mention them in their will." It was a ridiculous, but it just soared, and they gave him the Bancroft prize, and then people started digging, and they looked at his footnotes, and they couldn't find these priceless rare documents that were even irrelevant, but they couldn't find them. Then he said they were in a library archive, because I believe it was in San Francisco. I don't know why it was in San Francisco. Then he said there was water damage, and he kept lying and lying and lying, and then finally, he was a man of the left. He was white, and after they yanked his prize, and he couldn't come up with a documentary, it was the end of his career. So, Professor Kendi, it happens to everybody. We don't always apply that to black scholars, so you're completely wrong. You've got it flipped. If Claudine Gaye had been white, she would have never got tenure, and she would have never been president of Harvard, and she would be fired right now for plagiarism. Absolutely. Martin Luther King was one of our great Americans, but he did plagiarize his thesis, and nobody, everybody said, compared to the great things he did, the plagiarism is a minus, but he had more pluses than minuses, so we're going to forget it. So, don't give us that lie that because you're black, you're focused on. He was focused on, because he made a career out of bragging about his superhuman feats that denied the laws of physics. How many marathons did he say he ran in 30 marathons? That would kill anybody. Thirty-three days. I mean, he ran 600 miles, that he had brain cancer. No, he had testicular cancer. No, he was paralyzed in a coma, in a wreck. Everything he said was a fable. He had no distinguished scholarly record at all. He was glib, young, good-looking, African-American guy who wowed everybody, and why did he, I don't think anybody killed him. There have been people who, Stephen Ambrose did not commit suicide. Stephen Glass did not commit suicide. People who are exposed, clotting gay did not commit suicide. So, first of all, attention towards some person's misadventures and misdeeds is not the equivalent of culpability for their own deaths. When you commit suicide, that is your death. There can be factors that are on, on kind that led you to it, but everybody makes that decision to live. He didn't, and he didn't because he created a mythical kingdom of his various exploits that was completely without a foundation based on sand, and it crumbled. And when it crumbled, it took everything from him that he had never deserved. So, if you are going to attribute culpability and I don't, but if you do like Professor Kennedy does and the left in Britain does, there's two culprits. One is Cambridge University. Remember this vice president? Remember that statement she made that he is one of the great researchers of his era, and he's going to be Lynch Penn, and he's brilliant. That was all fabulous. And so, they built him up. They gave him pass after pass after pass. They assured him that his lies and his exaggerations and his fables would not not be checked, not be fact checked, would not hurt him, and it fed his ego and narcissism, and he lied more and more. Almost everything he said was on true. We never knew who said he couldn't speak until he was, what, 11? He couldn't do research. Oh, I have a book, I have a book deadline, Jack. I can't, I have a sudden aphasia fit. I just can't write right now. That's why, but I can do podcasts and I can write email, but I can't write. I just can't do it. So I got to get, you know, and so the second culpable party with Simon and Schuster, they knew when they solicit, and they heard about this at Cambridge. They wanted to get in on it. Most memoirs by academics sell at most 2000 copies. If he was a, had notoriety, which they helped gen up, then maybe he would have sold 10,000. That would be quite something, 15,000. Usually, I'm, I'm just giving a ballpark figure, maybe $3 come back to the author on a hardback sale for $40 or $30 and my experience. And I have published with Simon and Schuster under the free press rubric. Okay. So at the most, that book would have made $30,000. There's no way in blank that that would have made 1.4 million. They advanced, that was a gift. So once they were out 1.4 million and once they had read the 45 page proposal that they accepted, full of what they knew were lies. And once they looked at the manuscript and they were shocked because the brain cancer turned into, to stickular cancer and the paralyzed and the auto accident, everything was changed or even more embroidered. So what did they do? They didn't pull it. They didn't pull it. They came up with an alternate theory apparent. They went ahead and published it. And the publication date was just a few days before he killed himself. In other words, at a time when he was embarrassed, apparently, and was going quiet or saying that he was making mistakes, his publisher wanted the 1.4 million dollars back. And I surmised they thought, you know what? This is no longer an academic book that we're subsidizing because he's black and that's in academic circles that will sell I don't know 10,000 copies. There's so much free publicity that this is going to be a fantasy novel almost. People are going to buy this just to look at all the crazy things he said because he said he ran these 30 marathon. They want to look at this and laugh. So at his expense, they wanted to get back their advance and they went ahead and published what they knew were lies. And I think that had as much to do with his suicide. If anybody is culpable, it's Cambridge University, the left in general, who created this racist system that we obsess over person's superficial appearance and the corrupt New York book world that gave him that 1.4 million dollar advance. Well, Victor, I have a few related questions off of this side of company. You've raised some questions from me about plagiarism and other things, so I'd like to ask them. to you. 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Cove pure is what you put between that track record and your family's water. Now, go to covefure.com/vdh and because you're a listener or a viewer of the show, you can get $250 off for a limited time. That's covefure cove.com/vdh. And we thank the good people from covefure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. And salute. Delicious. Delicious. All right, Victor, my friend. I'm just curious. I don't know that I've ever asked you this. Have you been plagiarized? Have I been plagiarized? It depends on I'm going to be Bill Clinton. I've had this happen numerous times to me, especially when I started writing political commentary that had a conservative been. And here's what I mean by that. I wrote a 200,000 word book. The other Greeks that tried to explain the rise of the Greek city state from the from the perspective of a new type of family agriculture, intensive wheat, barley, olive, and great growing. And I did meticulous research. I went to Greece. I looked at hillsides. I looked at inscriptions. I did archaeological work. And I was a graduate student that I incorporated. I looked at epigraphic evidence. And I went through very obscure text that no one really looks at. Some of them are untranslatable. I looked at the tsars of the Greek language, 54 million words, and did word searches on keywords. And so I wrote this book. And it was a military, social, agricultural account of the early city state. And I noticed that after that book was published in 1993, I had started writing op-eds for the Wall Street Journal. And within six years I was writing. It got a lot of attention. The book did for an academic book. You see University of California Press bought a whole package my Western way of war. The other Greeks were for an agriculture. But this is what I'm talking about. I noticed that classicist would mine that book for the sources. So they would write something like, if they were critiquing me, they wouldn't say something like Hansen has shown, I mean, Hansen has, they'll say something like, there were an average probably somewhere between 10 and 15 acres of the family farm and it included intensive practices like irrigation, maneuvering, pesticide control at a level, a grafting that had not been seen in the dark ages, footnote. And then it would say, it would take all those sources that I had found that they were not aware of, and they would put them as the footnote, and then they would put a clarification. Unfortunately, see Hansen other Greeks for a wrong interpretation of this. And that was very frustrating. It's still frustrating. I see it in Greek warfare a lot. I went and made arguments about the shield was around so it would relieve the weight on it. You could put it on the shoulder or I made a new thesis about the butts by all these and you'll see you'll see all the primary sources that I found and then you'll see. However, Hansen's interpretation of these sources or my interpret, Hansen's differs with me on this, but he should not be believed or something like that. Or Hansen, this was before Hansen became a political activist, stuff like that. So yeah, that's the form of intellectual dishonesty. Anytime that I am reading a book and I see a primary source that I'm not aware of, and what I do is I cite the person's book in connection with the primary source. Either I do it explicitly or implicitly. In other words, I'll say the Eucidities book 3, 4, 2, Heratis 6, 1, 2, C, Paul Cartley, something like that, Laconia. I always do that. Well, two other things come to mind from your when you were discussing the death of Jason R. Day 1 is about Simon and Schuster. And I see the book behind you, the counter-revolution. And we've talked about this very prolonged process you went through to get this book to put. But you, your experience as a writer, and let's say you're a conservative because you are, you are, you get no breaks like I would say Jason R. Day got to be. There's no way you would get, no, I have to say, I can tell you that University, California bought three of my books and then they made a decision to do the paperback edition of Who Killed Homer that I jointly wrote with John Heath. And John Heath was a brilliant writer and I date a great debt of gratitude to him. Anything that is engaging or funny, it's a humorous book. It's a critique of academia. I think most of that came from his sense of humor and his elegance as a writer. But when you see Press bought it, somebody who was criticizing the book called them up on the left and said you can't publish this book. So then the then editor caved and wrote and said we're not going to publish it. But unfortunately for him, they had already sent me the initial corrections proof proofing, you know, editing. And in the margin, our editor, who was supposed to be an advocate for the book, would write things to the editor in chief as if we didn't weren't going to read how stupid can you be and said this is stupid. How, look at these clowns and just the whole thing was commentary. I've never seen anything like it. On the other side, every time I've written a book that has been political such as the case for Trump or this book, the New York publisher basic books I think has done me a favor. They have gotten a very, very good editor who doesn't agree with me politically, a person of the left. And that person goes through and tries to destroy almost every argument I make. And what that has done is that has given me a good idea what might be weak or what critics haven't changed the argument, but I have tightened it. And I thought, okay, this person says this, maybe I need to have more footnotes here or maybe I have to have more evidence. And that's good for a scholar. It's good. When you see a conservative author that publishes with a major public Alfred Kanop, the ones that I publish with are Random House, Double Day, Alfred Kanop, The Free Press, Basic, and Bloomsbury. And then University Press is like Princeton Press or University, California. Okay, all of those are center left, but it makes a conservative author if they can get published, and I've been an outside reader or referee on wonderful text that weren't published because of their ideology. But if you get to a certain level and they think you can make money, they don't care what politics you are. And so my point is if you're a conservative author, they go, it's kind of like Donald Trump in the press. They they have vetted him with five lofts. They're not going to find anything else. They have gone through every aspect of his life in a way they never did with Obama or Biden. Part of the Biden's problem was they didn't do any of that. And then all of a sudden they said, oh my god, he's senile. I didn't know that. So part of our day's problem jack is that no one ever did that to him. There was no concern. They should have given his memoir to a conservative great editor and said, can you find any weaknesses? And that that person might have been over zealous, but that over zealotry could have benefited him as it has me. And that doesn't mean your water down or moderate. I don't moderate my views if I think they're correct. But I had an editor basic books. I didn't agree with one of his editorial suggestions, not one. You know, when he said, oh, January 6 was in a full pledge in Syracco, it wasn't. But what I liked about what he did is if I said there were was 27 FBI informants and I cited a news account in Fox News, he said give balance. So that made me go out and look and see if the New York Times or Boston Globe in the footnote. And that was that was helpful. It was frustrating, but I thought he was a professional. And I appreciate it. But Jason Arda didn't get that and left us are authors don't get that. So they are more prone to to be frank plagiarism because the left wing publishing world, whether at the university press level or the tradebook have a monopoly on it. And they favor left wing are authors. I just like to read what Cambridge I just saw this in my notes. This is what the Cambridge University highest administration officials said when they hired him. Jason Arda is an exceptional scholar of race inequality and education. He will contribute significantly to Cambridge's research in this area. I don't know how he had no record of that. And to addressing the underrepresentation of people from social economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Now, they don't mean that or they would talk about the cockney white poor of northern Britain in Liverpool or Manchester. So here's the qualifier. Especially those from black Asian and other minority ethnic communities. And a final praise. We are so lucky to have you speaking directly to Jason. You are the best in the world in terms of the research you do. Can you imagine that the best in the world? Cambridge University along with the Oxford Prides itself as being on the top 10 English universities in the world. And if you look at the Times education supplement, which is done in Britain. And I think has a British prejudice. They rank I think one and three. I think eight out of the ten or American universities. But they believe they're better than Harvard or Yale or Princeton. And they may be given the scandal that all these schools. But the idea that in any field, if you what they call or the King's Professor, Regis Professor of Greek Regis Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge, are at Oxford. You were considered in the English speaking world, the world's expert. And when you look at what those people, I know those people, some of them. And you look what they've done. They have done things that no one else could do. They have taken a text of Aristotle's lost work on comedy and looked at fragments all over references to it in the ancient world when they had the text. And they could from these fragments and commentaries and papyrus, they can reconstruct the entire argument without having the text in a believable fashion. So when you say when I see Regis Professor, I know there's politics in those appointments. Yes, I know there are all people on the left. Yes. But there is a quality there. And you know what they've done? They've destroyed that. They've absolutely destroyed that. One of the best scholars in the English speaking world of Greek history and especially Spartan history is Paul Cartley. He's a man of the left, but he has the highest integrity. He's a great scholar. And he's a Cambridge professor. And everybody know, I think that he should have been Regis Professor of history, but he may there might have been some political input that he wasn't. But my point is what does that do when you say you're a professor of Cambridge at Cambridge University? Now given what they just did, it lowers, it just taints the entire university. What do you do when clouding gay is a plagiarist and she was present at Harvard and she can't answer basic questions of anti-symmetism or even we even repeat the policy of Harvard University toward anti-symmetism and from a congressional committee. And so it has diminished the reputation. When you have the, when they go out on a limb and they say something they know is not true and they say it for political purposes, it taints all the work of great people at Harvard or people like Paul call all these great Cambridge scholars for that, for this person to say that Jay, he was the top in the world in his field of racial prejudice toward black academics. Does he really believe that? Does he think that this Tom Sol who was African Americans written over 50 books? Nobody in America ever gave Tom Sol in a 1.4 million dollar advance even though just his name alone will sell 50,000, 60,000 copies before it's even out. He's that marketable and author. He's brilliant. But you think they would ever say, would you come to Cambridge and offer him a job? No. It's like Clarence Thomas. Did you see that the yesterday he's in hot water now because he gave an interview in what he said that conservative justices are not proportionally invited to speak at and higher education's premier law school. And though he did say his alma mater, Yale, he said he had never been invited to speak at Stanford. And of course they were outraged and said, well, you can come to Stanford. We just, we, basically, we never got around to it. But how many, 35 years? Yes. Yes. And what happened to the last conservative second highest court in the country, the appellate so-called circuit federal judge, Judge Duncan. Do we all remember him? He was invited to speak at Stanford law school. He never finished his speech. He was shouted down. People yell, I hope they blank your daughter. The DEI officer at the law school hijacked the lecture with a pre-prepared statement took over the podium and then blasted him as insensitive. And then he barely got out alive with armed guards. That's what the treatment was at the University I work at. And so the idea that they would spontaneously on their own initiative say, wow, it'd be really great to have Clarence Thomas speak. He's one of the most distinguished judges on the Supreme Court. Let's invite they have never done that. And he was right to point that out. And then they get anguished and said, well, we have, I think there's three conservative now three conservative law professors at Stanford. Remember Stanford University's law school gave us Sam Bankman freeds to parents, one who was a bunler. And the other, both of them were mentioned in the indictments, not that they were co-conspiracers, but they were investigated because some of the money that he made through shady deals had resulted in them having a multi-million dollar home as you remember in the Caribbean. And there's been a lot of scandals about law professors at Stanford. But I won't get into them. But decide, so this is what is really frustrating. If the left wants to be prejudicial and biased, that's okay. That's their business. But when they get out and then they embarrass themselves and karma or nemesis strikes them, then they get outraged and start calling everybody a racist for telling the truth. And then they lie. And they're not disinterested. Remember the reporter who first was interested in this, the veracity of our day's history asked some questions, or I think he just asked. And cops eventually showed up at his house charged with harassment of some sort. He wasn't charged legally, but it was D.I. is one of the great veins of our age. It's got it in because it is over racism. I work at the Hoover Institution and if you came from outer space and you walked in and let's say you interviewed all the senior fellows and then you looked at their scholarly work and you wanted to rate the top 10, there's no question in my mind that there would be Tom Sol, Condoleezza Rice, Shelby Steele and Kyron Skinner and they're all African American and they all did it on meritocratic considerations and they continued to do it. So there's no need for it. In fact, it hurts black scholars. It really does because you can see that if you didn't have DEI, maybe just maybe Jason Ardai had talent and maybe just maybe instead of weaving all of these fables, he would have stayed back home and worked in the library and tried to write a magnum opus that was erudite and scholarly and impressed people. But then, of course, if he had done that, I don't think that Simon and Schuster would have given him 1.4 million dollars. Remember, he said he ran 600 miles. He said he was, I think he said he was one of the world's great England's great pooled players, billiards player. If you look at polls just 20 years ago among the public, what are the most esteemed professions? Professors were in the top five or six. They're way, way down there, like 25%. People have lost complete faith in them because they've seen them now testify before Congress and they've seen the titles of books they do and they see their children who come home Thanksgiving unrecognizable after being brainwashed and they see how mediocre they are. When you have the presence of MIT and Pennsylvania, University of Penn and you have the Harvard president and representative Stefanik carves them up in what, 90 seconds and reveals them as dense intellectually dishonest, that has repercussions on their university. Everybody knows that, after George Floyd, every employer you talk to said within three years of George Floyd and the abolition of the SAT test and the comparative ranking of GPAs based on the quality of their high school institution and the admissions policy that ensued and the great inflation that ensued, everybody said, I just don't think that a Harvard or Yale or Princeton, I think a lot of them are, but it used to be that was a stamp that this person was analytical, could write and speak with perfect fluency and was widely knowledgeable about the world around them. That's not true. And it's not true because I say it's not true. It's not true because employers in law firm and the need to be spoken. Mark and spoken and they say, as I keep saying, as one person told me, I'd rather hire somebody from Georgia Tech or Texas A&M because they're better trained and they're not politically active. Well, Victor, we've got a few more topics to try to get to, but first to our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations and policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth, every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse though, they prepared for the correction and that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement are reallocating. Part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. 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Once again, Victor Davis-Hanson in his own words. Victor, I should just stick this in here before I want to ask you about Terry Moran, the former ABC reporter. But before that, any thoughts about Manjion pleading guilty to murder and stalking on federal charges? Do you have any thoughts on that? I don't know. Well, the great time lapse between his targeted assassination and the fact that he was going to be in court and held accountable was considerable, what a year and a half, two years. And in that time, he became a folk hero, and he may have convinced himself he was innocent on some bizarre theory, but that was the most open and shut case a person could see. They had videos at all stages of his Odyssey to the assassination locale, and everybody knew it was him. They had pictures of him. They had the evidence of the gun. They had everything. So then they were made, but remember, he was a folk hero. There were people that Washington Post, former Washington Post reporter who said he was sexy and good-looking. They had an opera or a little type, some kind of musical named after him in San Francisco they put on. And then nobody really ever examined him. Brian Thompson, the CEO, was a United Health. He didn't even have a United Health plant. There was no connection between, it wasn't as if he had staged for cancer and then United Health turned him down. It wasn't that way at all. He just picked out the biggest healthcare conglomerate and then called in or wrote a letter tricking them into saying that he was a donor and he needed the location of this donor's conference. And then he went there to execute him and he did. And so now he had his lawyers made a big mistake, though I think, because when you listen to them, they were defiant. They were rude. They were argumentative. And then they played guilty and they put him at the mercy of the judge. And the idea is that because he killed somebody in New York, which is one of the few states that says, if the federal crime, I guess the conspiracy to cross the interstate lines to commit murder, trumps the state offense, simple murder, premeditated first degree murder, then there is no state liability, double jeopardy, whereas most states will not say that at all and you can find different statutes in the federal case and in the state. And they often do that. They often say, "Will handle the first degree murder charge. You handle the conspiracy to commit her." But he was in a special case. And so he wanted to play pre-guilty because he thought he was going to go to a federal prison. And he didn't know what the state was, but he had a pretty good idea that if he pled guilty first, his lawyers did that the state would have trouble, given New York, to find another felony and put him in where, rikers are. I don't know where they would put him, but it wouldn't be as good accommodations if I could use that horrible term good for a murder than he will get at a federal prison. And so that was what they were banking on. But they were so obnoxious. I wouldn't be surprised if that federal judge sentenced him to what he deserves was life in prison without the possibility of parole. Because that was just a clear pre-meditated murder. There don't no ambiguity about it. And he can say that he was hurt or you had this or that. And I don't, you know, I had a health issue. And I imagine when I looked at the surgery bill, I looked at the blood transfusions, I looked at the anesthesiologist surgeon oncologist radiologist. I think 50 pet scans, cat scans, MRI scans, x-ray scan, you name it. I think in the last two years, both before when I was misdiagnosed and after the operation, I must have had a million dollars in medical. And I had been very careful not to go the doctor all that much and try to stay healthy, no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, exercise every day. But my point is this, when I except for one scan that the doctor ordered because he felt the other one was too old and you could not operate if there was an evidence of a metastasis. Even though I'd had a PET scan three months earlier, they said, you know, just to play it safe, we've got to make sure that if we're going to spend this investment and go in and take out this big tumor, it's not in your brain and you're, and then they said that was too close and they, but even then they gave me a whole process to appeal and I appeal and I think I won. I haven't heard since. But my point is this, United Health Care was good. They honored all of the premiums that I pay, which in addition to Medicare got it's about tripled what it was when I first had retired and I reached Medicare's coverage. And then I had Medicare plus. And so my point is that he killed somebody that represents a company that provides medical insurance to a lot of people. And they're not in a notorious for turning people down arbitrarily. I mean, I'm sure that if this cancer comes back and there are experimental immunotherapies that might treat the mutation so far, they don't exist. But if they do discover one, it'll probably be something like $20,000 a pill or something. And I'm sure they'll object and I'm sure I'll appeal if I choose to take it. So, but the point I'm making is it wasn't based on egregious behavior by United Health Care. It wasn't, he didn't even have United Health Care as I understand it. It was just a murdering a symbolic emblematic figure. And then the irony was this was a trust fund spoiled brat. And Brian Thompson was a middle class guy who worked himself up through the ranks to be a CEO. So there was a class element to it. May all people on the Mangioan site get what's coming to them Mangioan himself. And Victor, I assume you've seen some of these stories of some of the groupies who are now even in the in the last two days or so attacking Thompson's widow who was not percolated up. I've never seen any report about her being out there in public looking to become a victim even though she legitimately is a victim. But the maliciousness of these people deserves a long term doc, the doxing karma gods, I hope for some people in their lives. They should wait. I mean, they should ask themselves along the Canadian border do Americans say, oh my gosh, this is a horrible system. I'm going to Canada for my Nevy placement, my hip replacement, my open heart surgery. Or do they be in Canada say, I'm going to die with a 11 month waiting list and I got to get into Detroit or I've got to get across into Wisconsin or something or into New York. Because if I don't, I'm going to be very ill and they're going to put me on a Nana and suicide assisted suicide. Yes, the main program. Yeah, 7% of all best, I think in Canada, no. Yeah, Canadian health care is great if you're healthy. If you're not healthy, you're in trouble. So yeah, are likely to be come soil and green. All right, Victor, we're going to talk about Terry Moran and maybe if we get a little time, we'll make the time, the Fifth Anniversary, where did I hate using this occasion, but five years from the Joe Biden's, Afghanistan bug out. We'll do that when we come back from these important messages. Every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the American story, but not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. This interactive guide equips American citizens with the tools they need to enjoy the sites that depict some of the greatest moments in our nation's history, analyzing them for historical accuracy and provides resources for families or educators planning to visit from Mount Vernon to Independence Hall to Gettysburg and more Americans deserve transparency and sites that steward our history faithfully deserve our gratitude. The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites invites every American to rediscover the places and stories that define our nation, whether it's across the country or in your backyard. Visit historicsites.heritage.org to start your adventure today. We're back with Victor Davis Hanson and his own words on the Daily Signal Network. We are talking on Sunday, August 16th and this particular episode will be up on Tuesday, August 18th. Terry Moran, Victor, was in the news a few months back, maybe just a year back. I remember that now. Yeah, he lost his job, he was fine, he was whining. I forget about the particular thing. I remember it because I mentioned it in one of my shorter podcasts. He said he got so frustrated that he said that Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, remember, there are world-class haters, and people got outraged. They said, "Wait a minute. How about Joe Biden?" He called half the country garbage. He called them semi-fascist. Remember that phantom of the opera speech when he went on that rant? He called them chumps. He called them "drages." Obama called them "klingers." He'll recall them irredeemables and deplorables. CNN reporters said that he had more teeth in his head than all the people at a Trump rally. Peter Stroke wrote Lisa Page that she could smell or he could smell the Trump supporters at Walmart. There has been nothing but hateful dialogue. What did they think? And he said that Donald Trump was a world-class hater and Stephen, and that was then Trump was in office, and they said, "You know what? This guy has sued Stephen Oples for lying about him. He sued 60 minutes for editing. We're going to have more." And they said, "You know what, Terry? You're not worth it. You shoot your mouth off, and we're not going to keep providing cover for our reporters to editorialize and spout off and use their ABC credentials to further their prestige. We're not going to do it because it costs us too much money." And so that's why he resigned. And now we learn that he is the proverbial kettle calling the pot or pot calling the kettle black, because he didn't have, in his own admission, very high journalistic standards himself. He was doing a, I think, a 15-minute long version report on the origins of the virus implying that there may be some legitimacy. This is five years ago. There may be some, something to be said about that it was crafted in Wuhan lab as opposed to some, you know, disease pangolin walking around. And supposedly ABC's producers sent the script to Fauci, and Fauci said, "You can't do it." So he's saying now five years later, "You know, Fauci was so involved in control of the media." Why didn't you say it at that time? Because he was a coward. He was terrified. And he only, and I guess he says it now because he's fired in Fauci or the ABC or somebody can't touch him. But we forget, when AOC said, you know, all that was woke one and all that stuff, that doesn't excuse all the damage. As I said earlier, I watched, I watched these people try to destroy J. Bacharia, Martin Coolendorf, and Dr. Gupta. I watched them try to destroy Scott Atlas. And it's not enough just to say, "Well, we were a little jealous." We kind of knew that it was at the lab. We kind of must up their hair a little bit. But, you know, things happen. No, you tried to destroy people's career. You took a $50 billion grant apparatus, and you picked those who would further your lies and gave them grants, and those who independent critiqued you punished by turning down their grant applications. And then we had, and once you did that, Fauci, and you went after people, and you were saying publicly just the opposite of what you knew privately. You said privately, Scott Atlas is probably right about this, which children are not susceptible very much more than to the flu with COVID. You were out trying to destroy them, and they tried to wreck people's lives, and they did wreck people's lives, emotionally, financially, and every aspect of the word, they were bullies. And why I feel that he's a tragic figure, Dr. Fauci, [BLANK_AUDIO] and I feel bad that he's 85 and his house that he built is crumbling upon him. He did more, his plight right now pales in comparison to the 8500 soldiers that had careers that were ruined because they said we don't react well to vaccinations. In general, this is a new MRNA, genetic engineering type of vaccination. We would, we'll do whatever you want us to do, but we're not going to be vaccinated and they drum them out. And when they drummed them out, they were letting in 10 million illegal aliens in four years, 10,000 of them a day without any questions. Oh, are you vaccinated? You came up from the tropics. You came from Ecuador. Oh, we don't ask those questions. We only go after our military people. So that's the kind of craziness that these people inaugurated. And they would do it again in the next epidemic. Absolutely. On the journalism side, Victor, I feel there should be a punches pilot school of journalism because his famous line to Christ is what is truth and these folks, they just don't care about truth. They care about power. So that's exchange. I looked at the other day between Francis Collins at the NIH and Fauci right in the days after the news that the COVID virus was spreading and they're worried that there are machinations to fund it and to go around US law by engaging serotonciously with gain and subsidizing gain of function research to create a virus. They were paranoid because they knew that they had helped create something that could kill millions of people. And they were determined to not just to hide that fact, but to blame other people for daring to suggest that Anthony Fauci would ever circumvent the law when he did. And he knew he did. And he knew he could have saved a lot of lives if he had said on day one. We don't know exactly the truth of where this thing came but there's good evidence, much better evidence than a pangolin-bat theory of trans-animal to human transmission. That this came from a level four biology lab that had international cooperation with it. And we're going to self-examine our own roles in this. But from right now, we have to be very careful because this is a manufactured, highly contagious disease that was crafted to infect people in a way that even nature cannot emulate. And they could have told us the truth and we could have held China responsible. Instead, he was defending the WHO, H-O, and China. He would defend the China all the time. Right. In fact, a lot of the levels like China, we know those pictures when you saw these Chinese police knocking on the door to make sure the people were isolated and they didn't answer. They took out a little welder and welded shut the door. So they couldn't get out. Everybody, I remember reading things that people thought that was great. It was kind of like Tom Friedman. Remember when he went to China and he saw that the subway was cleaner than in New York and the new airport and he said, they're doing something that we, you know, they don't have an opposition. They're just, he didn't go to the 1 million Wager labor camp, of course. Oh, well, Ray Dalyode was the same thing in a business. You're studying, right? I don't know what to bring. I shouldn't bring him up. Victor, Victor, it's a handful of people could have said, you know what, we're culpable to some degree. Or the alternative is millions of people can die. And they've chose the first option rather than the first. So let's, let's close out today, Victor, by just remarking that it is five years from, I don't know if it's today or yesterday or the last five years we're roughly around that. Joe Biden commenced the bug out of Afghanistan. I don't remember any of the generals at the time or any military leaders saying, I'm resigning because this is just going to be a horrific outcome for the United States and for the world. But Biden did what he did. He praised it. This was great. Look what we did. And your thoughts, five years out, Victor. Well, it was the greatest military humiliation. And I think as great or greater than the 1975 flight from the American embassy in Vietnam of the last few American advisors troops and Vietnamese and the boat people that followed. We had been there 20 years. Joe Biden reportedly, allegedly, wanted to get out by 9/11 because he was going to broadcast that he was the first president to end the misadventure he thought in Afghanistan. And we should remember at the time that Donald Trump had negotiated a withdrawal down to about 3,500 troops. And he was going to take the $300 million remodeled Bagram Air Force Base, which was defensible, I think 60 or 70 miles from Kabul. And basically, control the air space of all those critical nexus of power, whether it's Pakistan, India, China, Russia. You had this huge, recently remodeled base. In addition to that, we had just put a billion dollars into the American embassy, a billion dollars. And Mark Milley spent the summer along with Lloyd Alston misinforming in Fauci style to us. And they assured us that the, what, 350,000 person Afghan army was viable. Don't worry, it's viable. And it wasn't. So once they heard that we wanted to get out and get out quickly with no conditions, and we weren't going to do it from Bagram, which they couldn't touch, because they would have had to go out in the country and surround that place. And there's no way they could have entered and disrupted the flights. But once they heard it was going to be in Kabul, and once they knew that we were going to run away, and once they saw that there was multi-- the figure is controversial. Top figure I've seen is 50 billion, the lowest is 7 billion. But it depends on the cost of transporting those weapons over there, maintaining them, and replacing them, et cetera, and the maintenance personnel involved in storing them. But whatever it was, it was a multi-billion dollar gift of some of the latest weaponry from small arms, to machine guns, to rockets, to helicopters, to heavy trucks, to armored vehicles. And we gave it to the worst terrorist in the world. And they opened a terrorist mart, so to speak. And those weapons have been showing up everywhere that they're selling to their fellow Islamist terrorists. And it could have all been avoided. It could have all been avoided. And they lied to us repeatedly. And that one incident coupled with DEI, at the same time they were doing that, they were testifying at Congress, the head of naval operations, that had the joint chiefs of staff, the Army chief of staff. They were all telling us that they were reading Professor Kendi, keys in the news again, audience. They were reading his books, and there was systematic racism in the wake of the George Floyd riot. And they were going to ferret it out, and they could assure Congress that they had fully implemented diversity, equity, inclusion. And the result of that humiliation and no contrition about it. And the DEI knew protocols that would, what, privilege, race, and gender, and sexual orientation over merit, in terms of recruitment, promotion, advancement, et cetera. All of that led to a 40 to 50,000 person shortfall. And as soon as we got a confident military again, and as soon as we dropped the DEI racial prejudice and sexual prejudice and gender prejudice, as soon as we did that, guess what? We more than met all of our recruitment. But there was one other footnote to this, Jack. That was the point of August, 2021, that Joe Biden had had a honeymoon. He had been kept away during the campaign. Nobody had saw the level of cognitive decline. They were just starting to see it. He was in carefully scripted, Jen Socky, press conference. I'll circle back on that. I'll circle back on that question, Stonewalling. But after that, he never got over 50% again. And then they started reading what we were doing. We had a $80 million gender studies program at the University of Kabul and a traditional Islamic society. We were like, we were British colonialists trying to not bring the rule of law in the end of Sute and India, but crazy stuff. And then there were George Floyd posters we saw on the streets of Kabul that we had sponsored artists. And then I think he went to the website. I guess it was superimposed, a pride flag on-- I don't know if it actually flew. you could go to the Web and see it on the U.S. embassy in an Islamic country from left wing our left wing people who lecturers on cultural sensitivity and so it was a misadventure and he wanted to get credit for taking it out at the expense of the safety of our troops and the interest of our national security and 13 people died and then in our retaliation Mark Milley and the hierarchy lied and said it was collateral damage it was not there were not people killed that were civilians there were and the low point for me is when that plane took off again and again and people were hanging from the wheels and grabbing trying to you know falling off on the tarmac and then a spokesman for the army came on CNN I was watching and he said and I want to assure you that when they that when they're in the air and when they land they're going to have culturally appropriated food we're going to have a Mediterranean Afghanistan gourmet meals for them and one of the reporters I don't know who it was but said have they been vetted do you know well I mean yes they're their their contractors assistance or they were they weren't they weren't vetted at all in fact there were American contractors and pro-american Afghans that were left behind a lot of those pro-american Afghans got murdered because they couldn't get out and we took some people who had terrorist ties on the plane there was no it was just the typical Biden border operation you know what I mean just like the border just on joke yeah and it was really humiliating that was an idea of that and and for these you know they tried to lie about it they said everything went well it was planned but they couldn't hide that from the American people and he never regained 50 percent they tried to say well Trump was the one that that ordered us out when his last few no Trump had told the Taliban I know where you live we have satellite imagery of all of you if you break this deal and try to go after a biogram etc we're going to kill you and there hadn't been there hadn't been a problem maybe some of it listen we'll say and it's a legitimate well-victor we have no business over there anyway you can't create constitutional government out of a medieval tribal society and one American life is not worth it not even one losing one American life is not worth trying on all the billion and that there's a point but it could have been scaled back carefully not the way it happened and it really hurt our deterrence because everybody should remember who was watching this Vladimir Putin was and so Vladimir Putin in his little notebook said hmm Biden disgraceful humiliating withdraw from unlike our withdrawal from Afghanistan which was measured they couldn't even do this oh and number two Biden also said for me to knock off uh hacking of American institutions if I were to do it at least hack stop hacking nonprofits not stop at all in all costs just the nonprofits and the humanitarian targets oh and uh Putin's little book said oh he put a hold on offensive weapons that Trump had approved you can oh here's another thing I'm looking at Putin thought he said that he would react accordingly whether it was a minor or major invasion so we'll just invade and say it's minor and he won't do anything so he destroyed American deterrence and it started with Afghanistan it was no accident that in February just a few months later this was in mid-August of right where we are now 2021 in February 24th about six months later he went into Ukraine well uh it's quite a consequence of a I think it just showed again victor to me anyway I think Joe Biden kind of hates America in his heart somehow I don't know I know I can see how he can think that but if you said to Joe Biden do you detest America you probably go wow detest what what me and I tell you about you know corn pop let me tell you about that he I don't think he he's rational I don't think he was ever cognitive I think he was a wax and effigy and they looked at that 2020 field and they the insiders the political the policies tumors and the donors said they're not going to vote for Pete Buttigieg they're not going to vote for you didn't build that drill Elizabeth Warren they're not going to vote for that comedy Bernie Sanders they're not going to vote for Spartacus this is pathetic we're gonna get rid of all of them uh in the next round of uh caucuses and primaries and we're going to start with Clyburn's going to get the black vote out and we're going to get Joe Biden and calling in and say you're just going to sit there and play good old Joe Biden Scranton the moderate of the 1970s and just stay in your basement and don't open your mouth and let the Obama people run the show again and let them try to have the third term they always dreamed of which was going to be radical socialist progressivism and that's what we got well folks we've come to the conclusion near conclusion of today's episode and as ever we have many many comments and we've gone through on YouTube rumble victors website the blade of Perseus I have a few here from from YouTube um Chris Russ 9861 writes I love how VDH has such respect for people who work with their hands a competent treaty as pearls and rubies the same with people who clean places and do caring work I do I think could I add could I add an editorial very quickly to your show uh who do what you want I'm having a got uh I had my house we wired but I we had a dog go under the house and he either bit or broke apart a vestigial it wasn't nob and two but it was something we had overlooked a 1950s romance it doesn't have the third ground so the guy who did the original thing uh went under there and I can't go under there yet I used to I kind of lived down to the house for years fixing things but he wants to take out all he's found more of the because the house is kind of big and he's gonna address it but he was you know he was all dirty and so I thought you can't do this you've done it so much or kind of he's very big it's hard to go under there although it has a three-foot crawl space so I decided because I admire people who are electricity to spend some money and have if what you call encapsulation so I call a company up and they came out and they're going to clean the entire um crawl space and rake it I think fumigate it and then put heavy duty 20 mil sheathing there so that my friend will can he can wire the house and not get filthy dirty and worry about mice and rats and stuff and it's sealed it's sealed from the outside so and he's going to put lights in too so that'll be good see what good your dog's did finding these problems for you yes I love love your little spiked spiked did that yeah then user VC 7 WL 9 mm 2 L that's a mouthful rights do fans of vdh like myself ever talk about how awesome his impressions are they just capture the essence of whomever he's impersonating and he just doesn't care would be so great to have dinner with this guy you're that this guy and then finally this is a little longer but you were talking about savings on a recent episode in Barbara 63 297 writes when I was 16 about my first car my aunt's 1964 Plymouth Belvedere this was in 1969 I wore those are great cars I think they had a flat six didn't they I know the the valiant did and the dodge dart well she writes I worked and saved every penny I could in 1971 I bought my first new car cost 3200 I paid half cash and financed the rest I followed that pattern of buy and save for the next vehicle down the road it seems to me that for a very very long time now people truly can't save on many of them just don't know how or have the discipline to save that first new car was the only vehicle I've made payments on after I sold that one I paid cash for any and every new vehicle I bought over the years I think the will or know how to save and live more frugally to reach your goal is going or has gone by the wayside the old saying you appreciate things more when you had to work hard to attain them is absolutely true instant gratification was not the norm when I was younger that's that's a that's a that's a very good that's a very good thing to say I had an old used Volvo 544 they look like ladybugs and my twin brother and I owned it and we wanted to get it painted there was somebody called Earl Shive do you remember that national car for $99 $25 yes it was $49 that they I think it peeled off right after that but we got it painted and my grandfather came up to me and he said I bit my Welsh grandfather. He was one of the most law-biting moral people I've ever met. I like my sweetest grandfather, but he liked to drink once in a while. He was a sweet, but Reece Davis was a wonderful man, and he came up to me as a victor, victor, victor. How much did you spend on that? You're a student. You should be saving. I said, "Why should I be saving?" And then he said, "You know, the price of raisins was $30 in the depression, and I had a sister and a brother who owned their third, and I borrowed the money from the bank to buy them out. At the same time, the price of raisins crashed. I had no money until I made some to World War II, but I didn't pay off the mortgage until I was 60 years old. I did it by saving, we had roast beef once every two weeks, and when I moved in here in 1980, I opened the closets. I never really knew. They had balls of string. They looked like basket balls. People would say, "It's always useful." And then you see Christmas wrapping stepped up that they would get. Yes. Did my wife live in your house? Closed pins everywhere. So anyway, he said, "Victor, there's. I learned too late in life, the world is divided into two groups of people, those who receive interest and those who pay interest." And those who. You don't get a lot of money by interest. I think it was 3% or something then, but you don't pay people. You don't rent money. So please, be very parsimonious and save money as soon as you can and get interest, but don't pay interest to people just for immediate gratification. And I said, "Can I still have my paint for my $49?" So that really. And then my family would call me the scrounge when I was landscaping the cells. I'd go out and pick up rotted in post, you know, from the vineyard. They would rot out. They were redwood. They were put there in the 20s. When they would rot it out, we would be placing, we'd throw them somewhere. And I would cut off the rotted tips and then use them as, you know, like curbs for garden. And then broken vows was cement. I would use that them, kind of the vows I put in the ground as a plantar. And so I thought it looked really great. And one day a farmer came in and it was kind of. I love gardening. He said, "So this looks like a junkyard cast off farming thing." When you're at the supermarket, Victor's the guy with all the coupons. Yeah, and I bought my first car when I was 41, I think. New, new. I'll never forget it. It was a Dodge 50 little imported pickup for cylinder. I bought it for $6,600 on time. I just get hand me down some Mrs. Fowler, so some day I'll buy a truck or something. All right, Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared. I want to thank. I got a bunch of emails this week from folks who enjoy civil thoughts, which is what I do for the Center for Civil Society. You can get it yourself. Comes out every Friday email. Newsletter 14 recommended readings. Totally free. Not selling your name. How do you get it? Go to civilthoughts.com. Sign up there. If you're on X, go to Victor's Handel at VD Hansen, Facebook, VDH's Morning Cup. Also there's the Victor Davis Hansen fan club, Terrific People. And once again, the blade of Perseus, the addresses, VictorHansen.com, do subscribe. Thanks again, Victor for all the wisdom you shared. Thanks folks for watching. Listening will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.