Victor Davis Hanson: Europe’s Immigration Crisis Is Reaching a Breaking Point

They let in a million immigrants. Where are we gonna put them? They're coming in from the Middle East and Asia and they have two things that characterize them because we know that from the United States and we know it from Europe. I hate my homeland there was no freedom prosperity or security so I want into your Western country. I want a house or housing. I want legal counsel for immigration. I want food support and then once I get all of this I'm going to riot, demonstrate on behalf of Gaza or the West Bank or any Arab country, Muslim country. I will not go back to. Why don't you go back since you love it so much at a distance or is it you only love it when you're away from it? Well hello ladies and hello gentlemen and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal. I'm Jack Fowler, lucky man I get to ask Victor the questions I am pretty confident you would be asking him. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He's a senior contributor at the Daily Signal. He is a best-selling author. His current book, The Counter Revolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the Magna Movement, remains on the best-selling lists in America. Makes great Christmas gift folks. Yes it does. Thanksgiving too. Halloween while we're at it. Yes. Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus, is found at VictorHansen.com and you should subscribe. When you do, you'll read two exclusive articles every week that Victor writes. For The Blade, one exclusive video, tons of other free stuff there, links galore. Blade of Perseus, VictorHansen.com. We are recording on Monday, October 5th, 2026. This episode is up on Thursday, October 8th. Victor and I have hinky schedules so we've we've managed to stick this one in. You have some travel coming up. We both have day jobs so but anyway we make it work. So Victor, today I think the breaking news from from yesterday, the elections in Brazil, where it seems like the left is backpedaling now. There's going to be a runoff. What else do we have? We have a Gallup poll on a really low percentage of Americans think college is worthwhile. You may have some thoughts you want to share about the midterm elections, plus a ton of other cultural matters. And we'll get to all these things when we come back from these initial important messages. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I have a new book out on September 8th of this year. I think you're going to enjoy it. It's called Counter Revolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. It starts right after January 6th and it details the lack of popularity of Donald Trump, the invective that he endured, the five civil and criminal trials, the effort to get him off the ballot, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the two impeachments earlier, one in which he was tried as a private citizen, and yet he came back. How did he come back and why did he come back? I explain in the book how he defeated his primary opponents, how he was outspent, he had a hostile media, and he defeated the Democratic machine and Kamala Harris. It starts on January 6th. It ends pretty much now in May of 2020. What's the title about? Donald Trump is not a revolutionary. He's not a revisionist. He's a counter-revolutionary. This time around, he is not addressing just the symptoms of the progressive project of the last 50 years. He's talking about the causes, not just an open border, but how to stop illegal immigration entirely, not just crime, but sending the National Guard in to make sure cities are safe, not just an Iranian nuclear threat, but ending that threat that seven other presidents had identified but did not act on, not just addressing the transgender issue or the Green New Deal and all of those issues that were so dear to the Democratic Party, but ending them, defunding NPR and PBS. So it is a counter-revolution to unwind and to roll back the entire progressive project of the last 50 years. I think you're going to like it. It's pretty interesting. It chronicles the greatest political comeback in our recent political history. Thank you very much. I'm Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. Folks, we are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. There's also another show, Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. That's four times a week at the Daily Signal. That's about nine, 10 minutes. Victor, let's let's let me I'll gather my thoughts here on on Brazil. But first, what do you have to say, want to say about the midterm elections, which are now a month off? Yeah, I can't understand them. They're kind of strange because the polls, which I am I'm deeply, deeply suspect of, have supposedly, the left making inroads in red states such as Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, even Nebraska. Tom Cotton's in a close race, supposedly. And of course, Texas. But if that were true, that they're so strong that they're revealing power, even in red states, then you would think that all the blue and purple states would be secure. But when you look at a purple state like Michigan, Mike Rogers is neck and neck with Elsa or a blue, solidly blue state like Maine, Susan Rogers is Susan Collins, excuse me, is actually a point ahead. And of all polls, the New York Times poll and Michelle Tafoya in Minnesota is doing pretty well in the polls, left wing polls. And then the governorship, of Oregon, the crazy left wing governor is neck and neck. So I don't quite understand either one or two things are wrong, that the polls are way off. And that's what Dick Morris keeps claiming, that Donald Trump's approval rating is 48 or something. And the Democrats only enjoy a 2% generic, not 7 to 10. So it's very bizarre that there would be such divergence. It doesn't quite make sense unless there's something going on. And the news about the Trump administration, you can always tell whether it's good or bad, depending on what the left has focused and fixated on. In other words, have they expanded their net of criticisms? No, it's still the same old, same old. Gas, gas, gas. Trump, Trump, Trump. Iran, Iran, Iran. But that has a shelf life. I know gas is really hurting, but people do believe that it's going to end because they knew it was low at the beginning of the war, and it will be low after the war. It's just a matter of they don't know how long the war's lasting. So it's not like the Iraq war, to take one example of 2006, when gas at that time, you know, it got up to what was the equivalent today of about $6. I think it was $3.50 a gallon. But the oil went over $50 a barrel, which was unheard of at that time. But that was because we were in the pre-fracking days, and we were importing about 60% of our oil from 55% from the Middle East. But that's not true now. So I guess if you look at the expanded picture, Latin America, we saw the election that you just mentioned with Bolsonaro's son, the father has been trumped. He is a victim of lawfare. And they put him 27 years in jail. He couldn't quite kill him, but he's in jail. But his three sons, he's got two in the legislature, and then his other son is in the runoff against Lula. Actually, and just to be clear, he came in first. He's leading. Yeah. But they need a runoff because he didn't have a majority. Yes. And the parties that were behind the two leading candidates, were mostly center-right. And a lot of people have argued that that was due to Trump's elimination of a highly partisan, really pernicious USAID that was aiding groups that were supporting left-wing candidates throughout Latin America. But the point I'm making is, now you're down to Paraguay, which is changing, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Cuba. Nobody's talking about that. But everybody kind of senses that. And Cuba's probably going to implode, too. And then when you look at the Middle East, I don't hear people say Iran is winning anymore, not with these strikes. economic strikes against them. The boycott, the secondary boycott, the freezing of assets, they're hurting and it's not sustained. I don't know when it will end, but it's not sustainable. They are becoming poor and poor geometrically at a geometric rate every day. So all of the news on the economy is good, all of it, with the exception of gas prices that have spiked inflation, but not as high inflation as you would think. You would think it would be 5% like Joe Biden's average, but it isn't. It's probably a little over 3%. So something is going on and the news is pretty good and the voters, I think, have absorbed that. And the Democrats, I think, are getting a little bit unsure of whether they're going to take the Senate or not. They thought it was in the bag. And now I think they're a little worried even about the House. And one last parenthesis, Steve Hilton had an internal poll that he paid for. But internal polls, in my experience, are more accurate because there's no purpose lying to the candidate unless they're completely just fabricated to build up momentum. But usually, you have to look at prior internal polls. And we had an internal poll come out that Hilton, mentioned that had him down 15 points a few months ago, and now he's within five points. And that makes sense if you saw the debate on CNN with Becerra. He was wooden. He was sort of like Joe Biden without speaking. He's just, he's an apparat. He's just nothing. There's nothing there. And California is getting worse and worse and worse. All the news in California is bad, bad, bad, everything. And we talked about it last time, these two new laws about reparations. The last thing we need to worry about right now when our roads are lethal, when we have 20,000 approximately illegal alien truck drivers, when we can't rebuild the Palisades, when the taxes were the highest in the country, we're facing deficit. There's 100 billion plus fraud that we've uncovered. We're short water. Oil refineries are leaving. 300,000 people a year. We're short water. We're short water. We're short water. The last thing we need to know is to how much do we owe 3% of the population of California that can't really all prove they were even descendants of slaves. And we were never a slave state. California had no role in the Confederacy whatsoever. There was never a slave allowed in California. It seems like the movie industry has left the state also. Yes, it has. The movie and the defense industry, a lot of people have left. It's hard to do. It's hard to do. Everybody should remember that. I'm sitting here in the morning in October, and it was hot, 100 yesterday, but it's about 70 degrees. I was on the coast in the mid-California coast near Cayucos and Cambria. It was beautiful, and it was packed, people there. Everywhere you go in California, it's pretty beautiful naturally. What we have done to it or not done to it is a problem. Well, Victor, let's talk about a topic you and I haven't talked about in a while. You and Sammy may have, but it's the Ukraine war. Now, the numbers, I saw a report earlier today that in September, Russia had, I think, 45,000 or so casualties. And so far, I'm not sure how, you know, 1.5 million casualties for Russia since this war started, between 450,000 to 500,000 deaths. Yes. These numbers are just shocking and nuts. It's 10 Vietnam almost. Piling up. Almost. Nine Vietnam. Any thoughts on what's happening? Yeah. Russia, because of the drone attacks from Ukraine and because of the rearmament of NATO and because Trump, they thought, oh, we're going to die. We thought would bail them out. But in fact, the United States is rearming at an alarming rate to Russia. And China is vis-a-vis the West getting weaker. Russia is getting desperate. And if they were smart, they would say the 20% of the Ukraine that we stole and the Crimea, we will give back 15%. We'll give back 5% and you can build a wall. And we'll just call it even. And then he can go back to the Russian people and lie and say a great patriotic war, blah, blah, blah, blah. But he's not going to do that. And the problem is he's escalating now. So if any head of state goes to Ukraine, he tries to show them that he can kill them. So the German chancellor was there and he tried to take out and he damaged one of the main bridges that connects Kiev across the river there. And he reportedly attacked with a drone a robotic factory, a land robot drones in Estonia, I think it was. Or maybe it was Finland. Estonia, though, I think. So he's starting to attack countries outside Ukraine and he's warning leaders that if you go there, if you're a high profile person, he's going to try to get close to you, if not attack you. And he had one of his foreign ministers say that he hopes that he can resolve, that Russia can resolve it without nuclear weapons. But I think that, I don't know, they have their second, they're either the first or second as far as their arsenal. They don't have air defenses like we do and we're getting better at it, but it would be a catastrophe. So the better this thing, the sooner this ends is the better. And Ukraine is not sustainable either. It's lost about 25, 27% of its population has left. And the Europeans are getting tired of subsidizing it. The United States is getting tired of subsidizing it. They haven't had an election in five years. There's charges of rampant corruption. And that doesn't do well when the West wants to say that this is a war against totalitarian fascism versus liberal democracy. of the West. So it's a complete mess. And yet I think most Americans, even those that don't like Zelensky would say it's better that Ukraine survives as an autonomous country than is incorporated in Putin's Russia. Yeah. Well, just the meat grinder keeps grinding away. And thank you, Joe Biden, for your creating this. If you're a president, if you're a president and you say, what would you do if you're asked, what would you do if Putin invade? Well, it depends on if it's a minor invasion or if you're worried about hacking and cyber attacks, you go over to Putin and say, hey, if you're going to do this, just kind of, you know, don't hit the humanitarian sides or, you know, if you're going to freeze offensive weapons that have been approved by Congress to Ukraine. And he does all of that. So he sent the signals and he offered, you have to remember, the worst thing he did is the first week of the war when they were turning the tide against that decapitation attempt of Kiev, he offered, remember what he said? We can fly you out, Zelensky. So he was a disaster. Yeah. And Barry O also. Hey, Victor, to our viewers, to our listeners, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. And today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. 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, though, they never went away. They waited for collapse. 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. Physical gold, not a speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters here at Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. And that's why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and longstanding relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and our viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. If you believe, as we do, that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 844-844-7000. 844-790-9191. 844-790-9191. Or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191. 9191-844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view when we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Hey, Victor, let's talk about Fort Hood, which we've mentioned recently in a recent podcast, but here's the headline. I think this is from the New York Post today. Fort Hood jihadists faces death. Washington must purge its policies of lies. This is an op-ed by Reed Rubenstein. Bear with me here, folks. 16 years after his deadly rampage at Fort Hood, the Army is preparing to formally recommend the execution of Islamist terrorist Nidal Hassan at last. President Donald Trump, when he receives that request, should swiftly order Hassan's death. That would be necessary justice, but it will not absolve our government of its years-long policy of lies and euphemisms surrounding Islamic radicalism that empowered Hassan to kill 13 service members. Fort Hood was not a tragedy. Rubenstein was a lawyer, and this is, he recounts part of Hassan's record before he went on his rampage. He says he had the honor of representing his victims, his victims, Hassan's victims in a lawsuit. We threatened to sue because the government knew Hassan was an incompetent doctor and a terror threat, but they chose not to act. His hatred for Americans was well known. During his Army medical training, he spouted justifications for suicide bombing, defended Osama bin Laden, and said his religion trumped the Constitution. His business card read Soldier of Allah. Victor, your thoughts on. He should have never, he should have been drummed out for instance, insubordination and he was mentally unstable, but the key to this, the subtext, the key, whatever you want to call it, the Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, who had been in charge of Iraq operations at one point, said, after condemning the attack, he said, well, it would be regrettable that if this, one of the problems with this, or it would be just as much a catastrophe if we lost our DEI, if we lost our DEI programs because of this. He killed because of the DEI General. He would not be in the Army had people been free to evaluate his pathetic record on meritocratic grounds. The reason they could not is because people like you instituted the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion program that exempted people from the consequences of their behavior based on their skin color, religion, sexual orientation, gender. That's what happened. Thirteen people were butchered because of that. A huge number of people were wounded. They were all disarmed while he was armed. And yet the Army is culpable, at least if the symbolic head of the Army, the de facto head of the Army at the time said he regretted that Hassan may have endangered the DEI program, which ironically, allowed him to endanger lives. And so, yes, I think if he killed, butchered 13 people and there's a death penalty on a military tribunal, he should, and he's been convicted, he should face the death penalty. By the way, given the problem with lethal injections, somebody wrote the other day, I don't remember who it was, that the most humane way and the least chance of having a problem was not electrocution. It was not lethal injection. It was the firing squad. That if you line up 10 trained marksmen and they all shoot in the heart, the person will die very quickly. So I'm just, and that's what I'm saying. - Yeah, there's been some percolating, I don't know if call it cultural debate on lethal injection as a kind of, lethal injection has been going on for decades now, but it is kind of a, the humane, the precious humane, maybe woke way to kill people. I would think, Victor, the most accurate way to execute someone is a guillotine. - Although it's a little bit macabre to see a person's head rolling on the ground. - It may be, but that's-- - And it reminds one of jihadism. Whereas a firing squad, you don't miss. And it's 10 bullets to the heart that explode the heart in minutes, seconds. And it's been used, it's tried. I think it has the least number of accidental, I don't want, what's the word? Accidental survival. Now you're in an Orwellian situation where they miss the vein, they hit the arm. So you've got all this poison in the muscle tissue that will probably eventually kill her, but she's on life support. And then you say, well, let's spend all, let's get her so she's well, so we can try it again. Is that what it is? I don't understand. - Yeah, well, that's what kind of reminds you of the paths of glory where one of the guys who was sentenced to death was knocked out and he had to be revived and kept alive in order to be executed. - Reminds me of "Breaker Morant" where they're facing a death sentence and the Boers attack the prison and they're the only people who can, they're such good soldiers. - They fought. - Yeah. - They fight and save everything and then they say the people are gonna execute them. - Yeah. Well, let's talk one other, since we were just talking about Fort Hood, keep on the Islamic, Islamicism, if that's a word, track here, the U.S. has removed its bombers from that Royal Air Force Base, Fairford. That was where five or so suspected Islamic terrorists were going, wanted to blow up some place. - Yeah. - And they got on planes, et cetera. And they're out on bail. But I, Victor, I think this is more than just a little story. I would think if I'm the U.S. government or the military, Pete Hegseth, I'm saying, what the hell has become of our- - I think that's what it is. I mean, I've been watching some of the British news action and they're confined to one topic. Do you think, do you think, do you think that this means they're not going to, they're not going to bomb Iran because they don't find our bases conducive, so they're pulling back? Or do you think this means they will be bombing Iran because we will not be able to place constraints and say they can only use it for defensive purposes? No and no. The reason, and Jack talked about it right now, is if you have an ally that is essentially unarmed, which Britain is, and you have these, this multi-billion dollar fleet of B-1 bombers and B-52s, and they have all strategic capability and they detour people from attacking Britain. And terrorists apparently had a dry run. They wanted to see how it would go. And they got pretty close. Had a farmer not sparred, a female farmer, and the farmer had not spotted them. But the message to the United States government was, there's no security at this shared RAF U.S. base, we think. And then a few days later, two things happened. One, it was announced that one was an Iranian-British subject and people had suggested, the prime minister had suggested that Mr. Bernoulli, Barnum had said that he had ties to the Iranian theocracy. Okay, that was, the second was they let them out. So what was America to do? They were gonna say, you can't trust these people because they have such a large Muslim constituency in their cities that either you don't have security around bases, or in a democracy, they have such political clout, they will elect leaders that will leak security to jihadists, or they don't care about our security, they don't like us. So let's get away. And I think this, if you look at very carefully about what Trump is doing, everybody says he shouldn't be pulling. He's basically saying this, there's a pattern to all of this. South Korea has a very left-wing government. It's been very critical of us in Iran. So he said, well, I don't know why we have 50,000 troops there. Maybe 5,000, maybe now. Maybe we should take some out. Germany has been very critical of us. And so, well, in Poland, let's start with five and put them in Poland. Spain has been very critical. Well, we poured billions of dollars in this base, but maybe we should just get out of there. Same thing with Britain. Whether it's Sturmer or Burnham, that's the same left-wing socialists on reliability. And you can't deal with that government. sign yet that that government's going to be gone. Maybe if they want to invite us back in. But Trump's attitude is that we don't want to spend billions of dollars and take criticism to protecting people who won't protect themselves. And it's got Europe in a tizzy. If I were the Australian government, left-wing though it is, I would be very worried because they emanate a lot of anti-Americanism, and they are as vulnerable as you could be. They're right next to China. I went to Australia once for about 12 days on a tour. I was debating a good friend of mine, Joe Jaffe, at the time, and it was during the Iraq war. And a defense intelligence person in Canberra came over to me, and he said, I just last year was on a flight with a Chinese person. And- Yeah. As we were flying across the continent to Perth, he said, every time, you know, on the outback, they have sea of this, kind of like the sea of the moon, they're dry, and there are depressions in the terrain. The Chinese didn't really know that yet with their cell. He said, where's the water here? He had memorized the map. And where's this? And where's the tungsten? And where's this? Where's the oil deposits? And it was just an inability to hide their conclusion that Australia was huge, full of things that China could benefit from and had very little people. And that was before 10% of the population or 15% is immigrants, mostly from Asia. So all of these countries are in dire need. They either have to rearm or they have to have better relations with the United States. But I think what their attitude is, is that they have to rearm. And they have to have better relations with the United States. And that attitude is, we're waiting for another Obama or Biden, because what we like about them is, we criticize the United States, they pay all this money and defend us, and then we smooths up because we're both leftists. And we tell them, when we don't like the United States, it's not you, you're the exception, not the rule. And Trump says, no more. He's not going to do that anymore. And I hope Britain understands. And those debates that little debate we saw with Tucker and Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the things that came up about it is that Rees-Mogg was explaining to Tucker how undefended Britain was. And he said, I think at one point, and correct me if I'm wrong, readers, that the NYPD had about twice the number of combat troops that you could send anywhere at the moment. NYPD did. And he was basically saying, we can't defend ourselves. So I think this is the reaction to all these people. It really applies to Canada. I'm going to do a podcast with a Canadian this week about this issue. But if you think about it very quickly, he's going to have a special relationship with China. That's about, I guess, 15 or 20% of its trade, which is, we know how China, we know how China treats inferior powers militarily and economically. So he's saying, well, we're going to have a special relationship with China. And I signed a pact with a devil that is going to exploit it. It already is. It's sending aluminum and metal below the cost of production into Canada to get around our tariffs so that Canada will keep buying it, buying it, buying it, buying it with an artificial product of vehicles that are dumped in our markets. In Britain, the best-selling car, I think, is a Chinese knockoff EV of a Range Rover. And everybody wants them because they look just like Range Rovers and their EVs, et cetera, et cetera. But the British auto industry, especially after you saw that Jaguar commercial not too long ago, is in. Oh, my gosh. Yes. It's kind of like the Nike commercial. It's kind of like the Bud Light. The left destroys everything it touches with its on-mitus touch. But anyway, the point I'm making is Canada I have never seen this in my entire life, a prime minister who thought up more self-destructive policies and won't even listen. So now they have a steel company. And he says, it's the tariffs. No, it's not the tariffs. That steel company in Canada cannot compete with companies that are importing Chinese steel below the cost of production and using it instead of Canadian steel. And then he says, once we have this relationship with Europe, we're going to lead. America will not lead. So they're going to lead. Can I ask him a question? Mr. Carney, I'm nobody, but I would like you to reply if you would ever reply. So you're going to lead and America will not lead. I suggest the following then. You should say, we want to lead. And he's very angry because if you are a resident of Florida with a condo or your owner of property for vacation purposes, and you're not an in-state resident, you're not an in-state resident, and DeSantis doesn't care whether you're an American or Canadian, but that's the desired destination of Canadian snowbirds. So DeSantis passed a law that increases markedly the property taxes of out-of-state homes. And he did it for one purpose, to relieve or eliminate the property tax for in-state residents. I'm not sure this is a good example because it'll start a chain reaction, kind of like redistricting. So I guess they're going to say that every single person in America shouldn't own a condo or a house in another state. We'll see what happens. But he passed it off as this was against us. This is another war of aggression against Canada. So that they can help Americans. And no, it wasn't. It was against anybody who wasn't an in-state Americans included resident owner dash whatever. And then I was just to ask him, so you want to lead and the United States doesn't lead. You want to divorce and couple with the EU. Okay. You have these fantastic claims to the Arctic. I mean, they make sense geographically, but you have 80 jets and they're 45 years old. So tomorrow, if I don't know, China or Russia takes a little icebreaker and puts them in a condo or a house in another state, a flag on your possessions, it's ours. Or if they just steam through the Northwest Passage and start putting flags on the Northern shore, who are you going to call? Who are you going to call? Ghostbusters? Are you going to call the United States and say, I didn't mean it. Would you please send a carrier task force? Would you send about, I don't know, 500 F-35s, F-18s, F-15s, F-16s? No, you don't even think. And then you're talking about, well, we're going to retaliate if he does that. Well, why don't you retaliate? Why don't you say, we're going to take all 1 million Canadians home. We don't like your work-free, visa-free residence for six months. Or why doesn't he say, well, we're going to apply the same things to you that DeSantis did to us. Oh, wait, you already do do that. If you're not a resident of most Canadian provinces and you're an American and you own a home in, let's say, Toronto or Montreal, you pay a markedly higher property tax than does a Canadian. So what DeSantis was doing was copying your program. But he is so dependent and he's so a beneficiary of this unique relationship. 75% of his trade comes in, 98% of it almost tariff-free. He gets free defense coverage of all North America. He gets free six months visa where you can work. It's not the same as what American going in. He's got a million of his own people living happily in America. His kids live there. His portfolio is there. He went to school here. And suddenly he's demonizing us as worse than communist China. He's not even going to win this by whipping up national sentiment. He's going to win this by whipping up national sentiment. And we all hate Americans. You in Alberta and you in Quebec, you remember you're more Canadian now. You might not have been a little while ago, but you hate America as much as I do. They don't. They're still going to vote for an autonomous trajectory, not full autonomy, but a trajectory that will go there. And I kind of blame the Canadian. I love the Canadian people, but if he's their president and he's got a 72% approval rating and, And you can see this as plain as day and you're already $35,000 less per family per capita income. And of the 30 plus industrial westernized nations in the world, you have the lowest GDP. And in the last 26 years, the United States GDP and per capita income has gone up about $38,000 more than a Canadian. It's not working. It is not working. And your dollar is weak and everything about them is weak. And yet they want to. Their housing seems outrageously expensive. Mrs. Fowler and I sometimes watch. Yeah, they let in a million immigrants. Where are we going to put them? Million point two every year. Where do you put them? And the government's spending billions of dollars on health care and housing for people who hate them. They're coming in from the Middle East and Asia. And they have two things that characterize them because we know that from the United States. We know it from Europe. I hate my homeland. There was no freedom, prosperity, or security. So I want into your western country. No, I don't speak your language very well. No, I have no skills. I have no capital. But I am DEI according to your own rules. Now, when I set one inch into your country, I demand the following. I want food support. I want health care. I want educational subsidies. Got it? And then once I get all of this, I'm going to riot, demonstrate on behalf of Gaza or the West Bank or any Arab country, Muslim country. And if you say to them, well, if you love these countries so much that you've left, whether it's India or any of them in the Middle East, and then you criticize the country you come to. Do you see two fallacies? One, why don't you go back since you love it so much at a distance? Or is it you only love it when you're away from it? And then number two, if you don't assimilate and culturate and integrate and you come to these places that you, by your own feet, have voted as culturally, economically, politically, and socially superior, then why wouldn't it turn into the country that you left behind? And then where would you go? To the United States? So if you want to leave the Middle East or you want to leave the system in India or communist China and you want to come to Canada, but you do not want to embrace Canadian values, but you want to embrace the ones that you romanticize and your own enclaves, and that enclave is going to function as you did there. And you're not going to like it. I guess you're not going to like it because you left it. I think I mentioned that before. I had a very good friend. And I'll just say his name was Raul. In fact, that was his first name. And I went from grade two, Jack, to grade 12 with him. And when he came from Mexico, in grade two, we were seven and he was 11. And so he was the greatest athlete in the world. Everybody thought he was a god. Are you kidding? No. But he was four years older than everybody. So he was very proud. And I saw him the last year that I was teaching at Cal State Fresno. I went to a baseball game that my son was playing in. And his son was playing on the opposite team. And he saw me and he came over and we talked. And I said, I thought you lived in this one town, which is notoriously full of gangs. And it's not diverse. It's about 95%. And he said, I moved. And I said, well, where did you move? And he said, I moved to this other town. I won't mention the name, which is 70%. And then I moved. I said, why did you move? I moved because of the schools and because of gangs and because of crime. I said, yeah, but don't you feel more culturally sensitive and at home? No, I don't. And then he said, California is going down the tubes. And I'm going to move to Oregon. And I said, well, what about the other town? And he said, well, I'm going to move to San Diego. And I said, well, I'm going to move to San Diego. And he said, yeah, but don't you feel more culturally sensitive and at home? And I said, yeah, but don't you feel more culturally sensitive and at home? No, I don't. And I said, well, what about Oregon? No, I don't. And he said, well, what about Oregon? There's a wonderful guy at Hillsdale. I won't mention his name to embarrass him, but he had me prep. I did an hour and a half with Larry Arndt, one of my favorite people, the Hillsdale president. And he was asking me how I was, and I was trying to explain the bloodbath, and he interrupted me very politely. People at Hillsdale don't interrupt people. When you take a breath, they politely interject something that would be helpful. And he said, you mean Signatera? And I said, yes. Well, he had colon cancer, and he gets the same test. And so I said to him, do you tense up when you, it's 90 days and you've taken it, and you get the result and you go on, and the first page doesn't tell you, and then you go to the second, it warns you to da-da-da, you know, your physician, you might want to talk to him. Then the second one, it says da-da-da-da, you want to go to it. And then in little tiny letters this big, it says not detected. You know, it doesn't, it blasts out the light. It doesn't say warnings, but it doesn't say negative, negative, negative. Maybe it will be. It deserves a brass band. Yes, maybe it'll be positive, positive, positive. But it's very stressful. Same as getting a CT. When I got my first, before I could get operated, you had to have another PET scan and another CT so that it was worth the effort to operate on you. In other words, it wasn't in your, in this particular mutation, they thought, well, it's, he's had it so long and it's been misdiagnosed. It might be in his brain. It might be in his pancreas or liver. So you had to have both. But what was interesting is I, uh, they said, you're, you're fine. It's, it seems confined only to the lungs. So we're going to go ahead with surgery. But then I read, I read it and it said, uh, new nodules have appeared in the right lung in the, and some of them are bordering on the edge of the lobe. I either ready to break out and there's a new one on the left. So I thought, oh my gosh, that's it. I'm done, done for now. It's in spread to the other lung. It's in the airways. So for a week or two, I was really depressed. And then right before the surgery, I asked the surgeon when I got the re he got the results. He said, we're ready to go. And I said, but I it's metastasized to the left lung. And he said, you know, I was really worried about that. So I saw that in the oncology. So I went back cause I never saw it on the left lung. So I'd looked very carefully. I could not see it. So we, I said, well, what happened? He said, go online right now. It's been amended. So I went on and it said the nodule that appeared in the left lung was actually in the right. All that unnecessary, unnecessary, all that unnecessary. Well, thank, thank you again, uh, Angel, Angel Raphael for, uh, interacting. Raphael helped me. That's the thing about medicine. I'm not faulting modern medicine. It's just, it's, it's not a science. It's an art. It's an art. Yeah, it is. And some are better than others. Okay. Well, Victor, we have to take a break. And when we come back from the break, since you brought up higher ed, we're going to go and go there. But I do want to say the things you were saying about Britain, if you went to Britain, you might be, uh, arrested. And I think you've seen these headlines about John Cleese, the, yeah, the other day. Yeah. And he's bracing for, for a, a confrontation, uh, in that, in the debate between Tucker and Mogg, Tucker made the statement. There was some truth to it, but it was completely exaggerated. You said, but Putin doesn't do what Britain does. Britain is jailing thousands of people. I don't think they're jailing them. I think. I think they're arresting them and then charging them and then letting them out for bad, for impolite postings on social media and Mogg said something to the effect, well, they're throwing people, Tucker, they're throwing people out of windows in Russia or they're blowing them up on planes or they're poisoning them inside the UK with plutonium. And that just, it's like water off a duck. He just, oh, okay. You know? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Tucker bite. All right, folks, we're going to, uh, delve into the Americans decree declining, vastly decline, declining impression of higher ed and Mike Rowe, uh, talking about the necessity of muscular labor. And we'll do that when we come back from these final, important messages, many Americans going to have a big wake up call. We have never seen net migration as high as it has been in the last few years this year, there have been more. There are more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. Britain is facing a migrant crime epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are. Why would you let in millions of people who are unvetted if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it. Demographic replacement. England's a blueprint for America. It's coming. Yeah. It's just a blueprint. Thousands of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country. Not all cultures are the same. You cannot ban Shadia. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. The Immigration Crisis. Watch now on the Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel. Okay, folks, we are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. We're talking on Monday, October 5th, and this episode is up on Thursday. October 8th. Let me throw these two things together, Victor, and you comment en masse. So Mike Rowe, who you were you were on his show recently. I like Mike Rowe. I've always liked him. Yeah. All of his warnings, he was like a voice in the desert, and they've all come true. Yeah. Well, he's commenting here on a national report. It's called the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, found that the US is expected to face roughly 1.7 million skilled trade jobs opening each year through 2035, while training programs are producing only 55 workers for every 100 needed. So that's one thing, and maybe a savior to this in part is how Americans increasingly think college is bupkis. So here's a new Gallup survey, three in 10 Americans think a college, only three in 10, 21%, I should say, think a college education is very important. Four percentage points below last year's reading. The previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978. As recently as 2013, more than twice as many US adults, 70%, said college was very important. There's lots more data points here, Victor, but yeah, why am I going? Why is my kid going to college? Well, the old argument was no matter what, you do, Jack, you'll be a better electrician or you'll be a better plumber if you know who Socrates was. But today, that argument has boomeranged back on the universities because if it is true and there is some truth to it, all you have to do is go on to Hillsdale or any other reputable conservative college and get an online course for free, and you will get better instruction that you will be. In other words, the country, that poll, when it says only a third think college education is worth it, what does that mean in the real world? It means something like, Billy Smith says, "I'm 18, my parents went to college, but do I really want to borrow a quarter million dollars at six or seven percent to go into a classroom?" And have some guy go, "Well, you know, today the United States is racist and sexist and homophobic, and I'm here off topic on a course, let's say, in, I don't know, U.S. Civil War history." They don't teach Civil War, so I should say just American history. Do you really want to pay four or five hundred dollars per class for four years and hear that stuff from people who are saying that stuff, partly because they're left wing, but partly because they're lazy and don't know anything, and it's easy to proselytize, easier to proselytize than to inform, and people say, "No." I think we've had, what, 45 colleges close, and it's an epidemic. I think the University of Tulsa is trying to slash their tuition almost by half. What's funny about it- Yeah, Victor, they're not- Yeah, aren't they- Well, they're not all tiny little Catholic colleges, for example, Syracuse is in deep trouble, Clemson's in deep trouble, so big, big brand names are- What's weird is, for years, other voices in the wilderness said, "You've doubled the number of administrators." In Stanford, there's more administrative staff than there are students, and so the Wall Street Journal claimed two years ago. So if you're going to bloat your. and you're going to be ideological. Bloat your staff and ideological, then people can't afford it, and the only reason they afford it was they were taking out loans at the federal government back. But when the federal government said 1.7 is enough, 1.7 trillion is enough, we're cutting back. And we're not going to subsidize you with 30 or 40 or 50% surcharges on federal grants that you pocket. And we're going to look at your endowment, maybe start out with a 1% tax or something. Suddenly they said, okay, we can freeze inflation. We can freeze tuition. And they just look around there and they know that guy doesn't do anything. She doesn't do anything. He doesn't do anything. In fact, it's the other way around. That person monitors faculty. That person gets in the way of everything. That person's a loudmouth. Get rid of them. And that's how they can decree. It's the administrative staff that can. It's not the janitors. It's not the electricians. It's not the groundskeepers. It's the administrative former professors with bogus degrees in sociology, social science, psychology, et cetera. And they can really cut a lot. And they'll have to cut a lot because the demography is 1.7, which is the highest in the Western world, I think, except for Israel. And there's not enough 18-year-olds in the cohort. And when you're going to lose not 50% as usual, but 75% or 66%, you're going to have. You're going to have to attract them by cheaper prices. If they were smart, they would say the following. We have an endowment. We're going to guarantee all of our student loans at the rate of inflation. And we're going to try to get you out in four years. And we're going to try to have majors that will make a salary sufficient for you to pay us back. And then the moral hazard would shift. And the United States would be off the hook. And they would be lean and mean and responsible for their own ideas. And they would be responsible for their own ideas. And they would be I'm very happy that your dogs agree with you, Victor. Yeah, Spotty. Excuse me, that was Spike. Spotty's now in dog heaven. Well, we'll all meet Spike someday or Spotty. Hey, Victor, layered into this, if I may throw one other thing, is not only the ideology and the administrative bloat, but the increasing, I think, ignorance and stupidity. So here's a headline. Well, a guy named Steve McGuire posted this on X, the head of the philosophy department at Williams College. And Williams is a place where, you know, oh, you went to Williams, a small elite brand name, right? A New England-y kind of liberal arts college. Now, the head of their philosophy department downplays the pedagogical, excuse me, I added a syllable, value of writing. Here's what he wrote. What if we are mistaken in treating writing as the highest cultivation of thought? The evidence that supports this belief is thin at best. Writing can be useful, cognitive scaffolding for memory and self-regulated learning. But the notion that it is the best process for developing thinking skills is a fairly recent idea, traceable to the 1970s, writing across the curriculum movement. I don't know, Victor, what are we supposed to do? Shadow puppets or juggling? I don't understand. I think that's a surrender to AI. I think the faculty says, we can't do term pay papers or we can, yeah, you can get around it. All you have to do is have people come into your class for an hour and then give them one essay question that, and then say no cell phones allowed and have them write in class, in a blue book, an essay question. But you don't want to do that because it's hard to read their writing and, you know, multiple term papers. You can just kind of put little checks on the side, see me later or something. But you can get around AI, but you don't want to do it. And then the other problem, of course, is when you talk, I'm always astounded when I, see, I said when you talk and I change topics, it doesn't sound that grating, but it would in writing. Everybody's astounded when you do a podcast and you see the transcript and you say, oh my gosh, what a stream of consciousness. But when you write, it makes you think exactly and logically and it's down there and you can, alter it. You can't just say, when you write a column or a book, you can't say, well, I didn't really mean that. I was just thinking of things off the top of my head. That's kind of like Tucker does in his interviews. Tucker, to get on that, was a very good writer. I used to read him. You did too. He was a very good writer. If he would go back and write a weekly column, I think it would really help him because he would rediscover that ability that he had. And then he couldn't just say, I, you know, somebody today, very well-known writer, said, have you seen Tucker's? And it was a series of all the things he said that can't be true. And he knew they couldn't be true. They were factually wrong. Maybe 30 of them. But he wouldn't do that if he was writing, because that would be a matter of record. And it makes you, it makes you think of things and put them down. And then you have, they have to be in an elegant, you can't say, you know, of course, like, like try writing in a column with the way people speak, like, like, you know, like, yeah, it doesn't work. Where would we, where would we get any of our great literature if there wasn't writing? And people are going to say, well, Victor, we have AI and soon we're going to have, you know, dioramas that are live and we're going to have three-dimensional people speaking. And yeah, they're going to be speaking. And hologram VDH. Yes. So writing makes your brain, it's a mental process that sharpens your analytical skills and acuity. It really does. And I think I, I can write something off the top of my head, a column within 30 minutes, but it takes me two or three hours to go over it again and again and again and again for style, for grammar, for vocabulary variety, for repetition, for fact-checking. And you don't do that when you're talking necessarily, but if you do write, I think you're, you're, you're talking and your oral presentation is improved about it. I know when I go to do interviews and people say, do you need talking points? I usually say no. And the reason I do is because I've written, you know, when you write two a week, you're, you're writing what, eight a month and you're writing about 90 a year. And so you're bound to have written about one of the questions that comes up. And if you do that year after year, you just, your little brain goes, your pea-sized brain says, yes, I can answer that about the California water project. I've done two columns. Now let me remember what I wrote, but you can remember what you wrote much more easily than what you said, because it's down there. So it's an ancient art and we need to preserve it. And lazy professors who don't want to correct papers and they don't want to be objective and merit- bureaucratic don't like it. Victor, I take, uh, I will disagree with your claim of a pea-sized brain. Maybe a can of peas-sized brain, but not pea-sized. So Victor, we've come to about the end here, uh, but I will read a few comments that people have kindly left thousands of them on YouTube and other platforms where this podcast appears. One is from, uh, Lease1801 writes, Victor, I've been listening to you for years and your podcast is my absolute, must listen. I get so excited when I see that you are appearing on a podcast or a show, but please do not go on Piers Morgan's show. It is beneath your level of intelligence and integrity. We need your voice for many more years, God willing, and we can't have you spiking your heart rate, heart rate for a D grade, hot mess of a show like Piers Morgan. Wasn't he the editor? I mean, wasn't he the editor in chief of the Daily Mail? The Daily Mail? Yeah. Yeah. I used to see clips of him. I don't know what he's doing right now because he's- I think he's on a morning show. Yeah. What he's doing right now is he's getting normal people and then he gets some crazy person. So he wants to talk about the democratic socials of America. So I'll be the person who's opposed it, but there's a lot of people in the democratic party that would give a rational answer, but he puts on this crazy professor, say, you got your head up Trump, you're in and you're not better than Canada, Canada, and the GDP is not 31 trillion and China's got a bigger, it's just, I don't know why he does that. Although you want to talk about China and then, you know, I'm a critic of China. Well, there's other people who are learned that might want to defend China, but he doesn't want to do that. He wants to get somebody who is in the West who says, Mao didn't, he never, he never killed anybody. That's a lie. I know I'm, okay. And then you want to talk about the Middle East and why would you get a professor who can't speak freely from an Arab country, then start lecturing the Israelis about freedom where you can and then is very rude. And so that's what happens. He always tries to get somebody within the two sidelines of normality. And then he brings in a complete kook who will and interrupt, and then you're, it's live theater, but it, Yeah, it's a Jerry Springer flavor to the proceedings. Buckley brought in crazy people like Eldridge Cleaver and George Wallace, but at least the debates, he had certain rules and they never got out because he wouldn't pay the person, as I remember, unless he didn't pay them until after they appeared, right? I didn't know he even paid people. Yeah. Well, sometimes he did. They demanded money. So my point is he could do that. I don't know why he doesn't do that because I think he would get a bigger audience. Yeah. Well, I have two other things I want to read here, Victor. One's from Carol Reeder, 1556, who writes, just read Mr. Hanson's newest book, Counter-Revolution, and it is awesome. I downloaded it on my Kindle app, but I'm going to buy a couple of the hardbacks to give as gifts. Thanks for all you do, Victor Davis Hanson. I pray you continue to feel better. And completely recover from your recent illness. You're an American treasure. No, Victor, you have to be permanently ill. And then Annie Powell, 2012, writes, I have his latest book. I actually have most of his books. My goal is to get all of them. I absolutely adore and treasure Victor Davis Hanson. Yeah. And there's so many other people that write things of the same nature. So anyway, thanks, folks, for taking the time to do that, to write, to leave a comment. We try to get through them all. And thanks, folks, who subscribe to Civil Thoughts. Do you want to do that yourself? You haven't done it yet? Go to civithoughts.com. Sign up every Friday. You'll get email, my weekly recommendations of interesting articles I've come across the previous week, 14 recommended readings. You're going to love it. We're not selling your name. It's totally free. Sign up. Victor, thanks for all the wisdom you shared today on all the humor, and we'll be back soon. With another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.