Victor Davis Hanson: Is Marco Rubio the GOP’s Best Bet for 2028?

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. This is our Friday edition. We're doing it a little bit early and Victor is on vacation this week. So we're going to answer questions that our viewers and listeners have sent in. So I've got lots of questions. I'm trying to get as many in as I can. Everybody out there, but I can't promise everybody. And you're not putting in the questions that start with the f-word, the s-word. No, we don't have anybody who's really angry here. I think most of them are just- We have someone, but they're not included. They're not included here. Especially the Israeli article I wrote. Hating Israel fatigue. Oh, no. Did you get a lot of anything? Yeah, it's a lot of people. Got angry that I said that it's getting more and to just blame Israel for all the ills of the world without self-respecting. I'm looking at other countries and other perpetrators of much worse sense. All right, but no, we have- whether the DSA agenda as it's proposed is looks more or less like the first government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. And then Rubio versus JD Vance for 2028. So stay with us for those questions and we'll be right back. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school software, Cally Kula was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Only afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Cally 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 Cally 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. Welcome back. Dr. Davis Hanson in his own words and for you who are new and to remind other people, Victor is the Martin Newly Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website. The blade of Perseus, please come join us here. The URL is victorhanson.com. If you would like the exclusive ultra material, it is 650 a month to give it a try or $65 a year. I have a comment. I had a letter from someone on an email. Why are you using this term blade of Perseus? What is it? Is it just, and I said in Greek mythology, the Gorgon Madusa, who turned people to stone if they saw her snaky hair, was killed by the hero Perseus who used a shield to see the reflection and then guide him by beheading her and she represented the forces of darkness. It is an arrogant assumption that we hear in our audience or the blade that's going to cut that Gorgon's head off, that the Gorgon represents all of the dangerous ideas in the West today, particularly in America. It's our duty to decapitate those ideas, not a person. I must say, I'm going to be careful. Some of the people that I've seen on the anti-ice protests, they look like Madusa. They have the hair that's really strange looking and they have that makeup and they scream in yellow. I wouldn't want to decapitate them though. No, of course not. We do have some questions in these next two days on civilization and the prognosis for the future or how to face the things that are happening in Western civilization, but that's not our first question. Let me get to the first question, Victor Davis Hanson. This is from Jack Moses and he wrote a longer letter, but I'm going to read the part that is the question concerning the ideas of abolishing the Senate and presidency, making the federal government a unicameral system as the democratic socialists of America are proposing. How close is this to the first United States federal government, the Continental Congress, a system that was deemed to be inefficient and ineffective as a form of government already? You know, that's a very good question. I think what he's saying is from 1776 to the ratification of the Constitution in 18, 1787-88, we had the Articles of Confederation, Continental Congress, and then the Articles of Confederation. And each state of the newly formed union had one vote. So they had the 13 delegates and they discussed matters of revenue taxation, but they couldn't do anything because, "A, there was no judicial branch and B, there was no executive branch." And it was a unicameral legislature. The funny thing about it was there was no precedent of that system in the long history of constitutional government that began in Greece. If you look at the Spartan Constitution, if you look at the Roman Constitution, you look at the Creighton Constitution, you look at the Florentine, there had always been a upper house. That's where we get the word "Senator" from Sinex. We get senile from it. Older people, over 30, the Roman Senate, and then there were the tribal councils, or in Sparta, you had the Garusia, that's a Greek translation of Sinex, older people, the old people, and then you had the assembly of all free males. In Athens, you had the Ecclesia, all males, and then you had the bullay, the upper house. The principle was that you had people who didn't have to run for election periodically in the archives every two years, but every six. You can be 25 and be a representative. You've got to be 30 to be a senator. You don't represent the people. You represent the people as represented by the state. The census determines how 435 people in the house will, how many people they'll represent. I think it now, it's about 750,000. So the democratic socialist or mad, because they say, "Well, a senator in California represents 20 million people, and the other one represents 20 million people. And Wyoming up 425, 50,000, they only represent 250,000." So they have more cloud, but they're not representing individual people. They're representing the state as an entire entity, and because they're older and they're not directly up for re-election every two years, they're supposed to be more sober and judicious. In other words, the fiery house represents grassroots populism. Then the Senate, "Well, I don't know if I want to sign that bill because I have to take into consideration the whole state and the union," and that's the principle. So when they had a unicameral just to everybody voting, one vote, Continental Congress dashed articles of Confederation without a Supreme Court to rule whether that was permissible. Everybody in the Continental Congress said, "How many people want to crown Washington as a king?" If he had probably said, he would have said no, but that might have passed. But a Supreme Court person could have said, "That's contrary to the law." So they want to abolish the presidency, and they want to abolish the Senate, the bicameral western tradition of legislative government. So the questioner has a really good point. What he's saying is they want to take us back to the articles of Confederation. But why would they do so when it failed? There was no power. There was no executive. They were just squabbling. It was just a mob. The answer to that is they don't care. They want a mob. They want everybody just going in there and screaming and yelling, and there's no sober, judicious people trying to say, "Wait a minute. Wyoming has some interest here. Montana is an entity. Utah has rights. No, no. We're just all going to be whatever 51 percent anywhere in the country. dictate. We don't want to present it. to veto what we do. So if we want a 20% tax on the wealthy and we pass out, we don't want the present saying, no, no, no, you've got to get now two thirds of the override in the Senate. Didn't we see the upshot? Maybe everybody didn't see these pictures of that Angie Nixon who was a representative in her own assembly and they were doing something she didn't like. So she got a bullhorn out and started walking around the room yelling at things. Yeah. She's a bit of robbery. She's what we call in classical Greek at Demogogos, a fiery leader of the people. Supposedly, I think she's originally her family with some Haiti. She's kind of like the new Jasmine Crockett. In this sense, she cannot finish a sentence without blaming white people. White people did this, this, this, this, this. Even Rolk Khanov, you notice how he's changed lately. He was, he was on Fox as the sober and judicious Democrat for a while. And then when he saw that was no longer working, now he's a socialist radical. And he said the one of the most reprehensible things he did, there has been a woman who hung herself an African American and was ruled a suicide. And then there was a missing person that showed up with a with a rope around her neck. I think there's been three. So he gets on there and says there's an epidemic of black people being hung. This is reminiscent of lynching and we need to have a national role with all due respect. About 85% of all black males that are killed or killed by other black males in rare interracial, rare interracial murder. It's about six to eight times depending whether it's first degree, second degree, etc. More likely that black people kill white people than white people kill black people. If you're referring to hate crimes and you want to look at proportionality of the demographic, white people who represent 67 to 70% do not account for 70% of the perpetrators of hate crime. Black people who represent about 12% of the population represent about 25% of the perpetrators. So and Jews that represent about two to three percent now who identify as Jews, maybe four or five who are parents were Jewish. They represent in some states like New York 50% of the victims and they almost have no evidence that they're perpetrators of hate crime. So here's Rokana against all the statistics just clawing on to three isolated incidents that probably were suicide and he's suggesting that we're back in the clan period and he's doing this because he wants to run for president and he thinks he's going to get the DEI socialist vote. And he thinks he's safe because the population is highly educated and the district in California that elected him is a Bay Area affluent district and he's worth his and his father-in-law's worth a quarter of a million a billion dollars and his children as I said earlier have golf courses and their trust funds and their names and his wife drives and even a stood arrange over 190,000 his wife drives. Everybody I know who's had one has they're not mechanically reliable and there was that one Chevy model or four that looks almost exactly they copied it you know what I mean it looks exactly like it and every time I see one I think it's a range over I forgot that it's not a it it has a topical name for it but why not just buy one of those it's reliable. Yeah exactly. All right Victor this is a question I've been interested in there there were a lot of people who wrote in and they basically were in support of Rubio for at for 2028 presidential and we're kind of on the right in the Republican Party in Aquandry because Rubio does look really good to a lot of people a lot of our audience and JD Vance not as as appealing and the one writer that I'm quoting from said he's inexperienced and inauthentic political so the you get a vibe from him or at least the audience is getting a vibe that he's less genuine than Rubio less experienced than Rubio less authentic you know he I don't know if you've noticed that but what are your thoughts on those two. Well I think they're talking about recent polls I don't trust any of the polls because they're all slanted I do not believe right now that Pete Buttigieg is pulling ahead of both Rubio and Vance that's not possible but the Emerson polls said that Rubio polls anywhere from three to five points higher than JD Vance does against punitive 2028 Democratic Buttigieg AOC Newsome etc okay so there's a sense now that his name keeps coming up and we have to ask two questions why and what are his strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis Vance why they come up are twofold Vance has been in the news a lot for what he says in other words Israel can't kill itself out of Lebanon or he says that we're looking for the moderates in Iran and they haven't gone down well with people. Rubio is increasingly like because he doesn't he doesn't give gratuitous statements about philosophy or ideology or he's not hawking a book right now giving an example Kimberly Strassel the Wall Street Journal opinion column who might like him respect she wrote kind of a nauseous column saying you know what Trump's problem right now is the economy is pretty good but he's not getting that message out unemployment inflation is slowing down GDP is good foreign investments good record these new technologies were preeminent why isn't JD Vance out there in the stump rather than hawking his book or going to hungry to help Victor Orbana in losing cause and then a whole team of mega people attacked her so then she replied so he's out there saying things but Rubio Trump I'm just add Libby now Trump says well I want to get that Chinese Hutchinson related company out of the the excess and entry and all and I'm going to sound off and play back on we're going to get out of the Panama Canal and just take it Marco go down there and so Marco goes down there and says you know what Trump is mad I don't know if I can handle him but there's a way out for you guys you don't want the Chinese we don't want them let's just kick them out and get closer than ever because the whole tide of South America is going and Central America is going conservative pro-American you don't want to be in the last outpost moderals gone and that worked and so same thing about Iran same thing about Israel they call him in and because he's he's got 15 16 years in Congress as the senator 12 maybe so that's why he is in the news for doing things JD's and the news for same things and his doing things have worked out and JD's same things have been controversial so then you look on you put JD Rubio in a side by side column and this is in direct reference to what the questioner ask JD has only been in in politics two years it was an amazing leap from being holding no prior office to becoming a US senator no city council no state legislature no congressperson but his still his experience in politics is two years Rubio's is seven or eight times that six or seven times number two JD did a wonderful job when in the vice presidential debate and he was on leave she appeared about 60 70 times he was there on media every day so the people who said why is he on the 2024 ticket when you're going to win Ohio his state anyway be he's a white male like trump and see he's probably to the right of trunk on maggot issues so you're not being inclusive and he's proved them wrong because the trump people said yes but he's a masterful debater and he will slice up newscasters and Tim wall and all that prove true so he helped win Rubio had a debate and he didn't do too well in 2016 if you remember and then when he replied wants to the state of the union I think it was Obama's he had a drink water and he looked nervous that was young Rubio so JD seems at one point compared to the earlier Rubio, the better debater, the better ad hoc extemporary. Then you go to experience, Marco Rubio would have never said that Israel can't kill its way out of problems in Lebanon. He would have never trusted the Iranians. He wouldn't believe there's a moderate there. He's tough guy and he's not so. I don't want to say naïve. And then here's the other, we go to the next fourth criteria. JD is vice president. So the vice president usually inherits the ticket when the president's termed out. So it's very hard for someone who was not an elected official to run for president. So Rubio would run as a secretary of state, not an active senator. He would be the vice president. What's my feeling about where people stand right now, given that all of the news about Rubio has been good and the media has turned on Vance and we have one other taboo subject. And that is when Rubio said a year ago that he would defer to Vance and he had no political aspirations and Vance was first in line. We did not have the Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor, Green, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, apostates. In other words, they were all. I'm not. I'm not being unfair. I don't mean that every single one of them. But collectively, at various times they were at Marlago. They were on Air Force One. They were on the campaign. They were hardcore MAGA supporters of Trump. Now they're hardcore opponents of him. And they fairly or not, Tucker's son worked for JD. JD is seen fairly or not as the right side of the MAGA base. More into tariffs, more into protecting the white working class, all of those issues. And those are the issues that this group of people that I talked about were champion. So, it presents a dilemma if he were to be the nominee in 2028. And given that all the people I just mentioned are very critical of Trump, would they come out for JD or would they hold him accountable for supporting Trump's war or whatever? I don't know. But that group will not be as large as Rubio's group if Rubio can maintain the base. In other words, if Rubio were to say, they were lost anyway. You don't want Thomas Massies. He couldn't even get a nomination in Tennessee of his own party as an incumbent. You don't need Marjorie Taylor Green. She couldn't even run for re-election. She was out. You don't really need Tucker. He just barks at the moon now. He says all these crazy things. You don't need Nick Fuentes. You don't need Candice Owen. I don't mean that JD wants them, but maybe they would favor him or Trump. So, although Fuentes made fun of JD's wife. He was horrible and said that she was Indian and all this. Rubio then would say those guys are 2% of the demographic of the Republican Party. Most people agree with Trump. I'll get all of those. I'm not going to be tagged with those type of supporters. Moreover, I will get a huge Hispanic vote. Trump got it 49, but I will hit the trail and I'll talk in Spanish and I'll give them a hard pro-capitalist, anti-communist riff and tell them all the stuff we did in Latin America to flip governments to pro-American and to close the border and help people get competitive wages, that kind of stuff. So, it's going to be an inevitable. I think it's going to be a nasty fight. Unless Rubio just says, you know, I think he's about 58. I don't know, I haven't checked. Or maybe he's a little younger. He can wait eight years, but the way we're going now, there's a lot of centrifugal forces ganging up against the mega movement and you want to expand it. You don't want to double down, hanker down and get it smaller. Yeah, you don't want to collapse. Well, Victor, let's welcome back our sponsor, my Patriot Supply. Food security should never depend on perfect weather, flawless supply chains, or fully stocked grocery shelves. Extreme weather and drought can hit crops. 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I know in other ads I've read that they have huge 5 star reviews, 10 million or something. I don't know, that's probably too much, but anyways, lots of 5 star reviews. Okay, Victor, so let's turn to Trump's detractors. I'm going to say they at the beginning here and he will define who they are in just one moment. So this is Alistair McLaughlin and he says, why are they doing this? Surely they know what they are doing will destroy the USA, Europe and thus the world. I refer to all those who oppose President Trump and his agenda from Thune, Tumandami, Pelosi, Newsom, the Greens, Net Zero, the LGBTQ XYZ plus transgender maniacs, open borders and Islamic supporters et al. They must know that their agendas, if implemented, can only lead to the destruction of the world and the inevitable collapse into a dystopian hell. What are your thoughts on that? They do it because they don't think they themselves are subject to the consequences of their own ideology. What do I mean? Nancy Pelosi has a Italian Palazzo in Napa and she has a big mansion in San Francisco. She does not believe that her open border illegal alien policies will do the following. She believes that she might have a gardener who is illegal, a cook, a house cleaner, that's fine. But she does not think that when she flies back and forth to Washington, the pilot is going to be an illegal alien. Like a lot of people worry they are going to be on the freeway and they are going to be hit by an illegal alien. She doesn't worry about that. If she does, she is going to be in a big range roper and number one, and the same with alien Omar and the same thing with AOC. So they don't think that an illegal alien criminal is going to attack them like they 500,000 of attacked other people. They have security at Washington and they're watched. They don't believe, I mean, think about it for a minute. All of the San Francisco popular leaders that were elected from the Democratic side gave us the homeless problem. They gave us the illegal alien problem. They gave us the high taxes and they gave us the flight of people out. But ask yourself, former Senator Barbara Boxer down in Rancho, Mirage, you think that she worries about homeless people? Do you think she worries about high taxes when she's making all that? You think that the late Diane Feinstein with a lakefront mansion at Lake Tahoe and another mansion in San Francisco. Do you really think that she worried about the price of gasoline? I don't. It was more cosmic about, oh, am I going to live to 90 in a green world? Do you think that Gavin Newsom and his $9 million home? I don't think that he worries about his high tax policy. Does he think a force fire is going to burn it down? I don't think so. Does he think somebody's going to break in and kill him? No. Does he think he's convoy is going to go down to 99 and a legal driver who can't speak English on a big semi is going to destroy it? No. So they create all of these scenarios. And the question that I think the person is asking is, do they do it to hurt everybody else chaotic? They just are. Do they really believe that they can pander to the lowest common denominator appetites and get power? So if you tell enough people, you're always a victim, your lives are miserable. I'm here to help you, but the people who are doing this to you or not yourself and not this. It's them. These evil white heterosexual male Christian males. They're doing it to you. And that's how they remain power. And they love power. They love telling people what to do. They love the money. They love the perks. They love everything about it. But they don't they find ways that they don't have to suffer. So I can tell you, when I went to Stanford medical, I was on a long list waiting to get a pet scan. And because I was an employee at Stanford, I got expedited somewhat. I don't want to impune that I was given special preferences, but I watch people come in there from different countries. And when I go to other non Stanford affiliated healthcare, I see people very wealthy immigrants that come in with security sometimes and they get great healthcare. So what I'm saying is Nancy Pelosi doesn't go into the Selma ER and have to show an ID to a police person that's there to make sure there's not a gang role that erupts. She doesn't go and sit there where she's the only English speaker. So yeah, she can talk all along about universal health care and Obamacare, but she's got concierge or special health care. And she knows that when she goes into UC Berkeley, USA for somewhere, she's going to go right to all of these people are elites. I keep, I know people get angry, but I keep telling you that Rokana and Ilyan Omar and AOC and Shavallay and Zoran Mondami and Hassan Piger and L. Syed is no accident. And what was the latest guy and the coach chairman and Brooklyn with a million and a half dollar apartment is mommy and daddy boys, Guillermo, something or something or something, I'm pretty sad deal or something. I don't know what it's name's not notable. Yes, so the point is that's the pattern Bernie Sanders is not poor. He's got three homes. He's a millionaire. And so I don't know what to tell you, but it's not coming from the people as I'm speaking right now, a good friend of mine is an electrician and he's under the house. I've been talking to him today. He didn't say, you know, Victor, I'm under your house is I'm in a victim and I, he says, this was my day off and I want to get some extra income because I want to improve my house at home. It's it's it's a weirdest thing in the world, but that's that's the reductionist. They want power and they think that they're they think their destructive policies will hurt people. They don't like and will not exempt them. So they have no illusion about a utopia that they talk about because they always talk is when they walk through L.A. Karen Bass when she walks through L.A. and sees that does she really believe she created utopia. They have medieval typhus now. No, they don't care. They And their way of thinking and who do those people hang around with, you know what I mean? The reason that we have a democratic socialist party is not because a bunch of people didn't go to college and they were poor or neck. We have a lot of affluent white and Asian young people in urban areas that have college degrees with massive student loans and they think in their glibness and their indoctrination from college where everything was free. Once you pay. Oh, I'm going to go bowl. Oh, it's free. Oh, I'm going to go see the doctor. Oh, it's free. Oh, I'm going to go to the latte bar. Oh, it's free. Well, I'm going to go to the gym. Oh, it's free. Oh, I'm going to go. Everything is free. It's socialism. And I can't remember when I was 18 and I had to go into the bookstore and I wrote a check for a book. The books for the class. It was $15 and I wrote a $15 check and I said, Oh, my God. I only have $90. Why do I have to pay for my books? I was free in high school. Everything else here is free. The food. Once you pay the minimum. It's all free. Or at least you can find some of it that way. Yeah. So that's what it's all about. It's about power and they're exempt from the consequences of what they do that were lab rats. They're the guys on the white codes. That might also the fact that most of the DSA or a lot of large portion of its population are young people. That's how she found out that there was a higher incident of miscarriages or young men were pretty much exempt from the ravages of COVID, but not exempt necessarily in some cases from cardiovascular autoimmune problems from the vaccinate. You think if he had a grandson who was a young man or a granddaughter who was a woman who was pregnant, he didn't call him up and warn them. I do. If he did. Yeah. All right. Speaking of Fauci, let's go to a question from Hong in Curtis. And they listen to your podcast. And here's the question. I had a thought. Do you think they meaning the Jim Jordan's commission or no, sorry, Rand Paul's committee. Do you think that they mishandled the release of Fauci's diary doing so before his Senate hearing, if they would have held it until after he testified, could they possibly have asked the questions they did and then sought prosecution? I'm not sure. If you remember the Iran Contra testimonies. They had given immunity to all in North. In the judicial to testify. So when the Congress came in and asked him all these things, he just put the he sometimes he played the fifth and sometimes Brendan Sullivan as lawyer said, wait a minute. He has no, he's already been excused from criminal exposure on these topics. So there's always a conflict between the legal system and the congressional system. Because one or the other can offer pardons that the other one doesn't accept. And the rules of evidence are much different. But I think the questioner saying, well, he said this stuff in his diary. And then he's the diary proves that he was either lying in the diary or he was lying to us. And and don't you think that they should have gone after the stuff in the diary first before they exposed and gave him a chance to plead the fifth. But the diaries not a legal document. He didn't sign an affidavit. So if a DA is looking at this and they're thinking, hmm, you said that one mass, two mass, three mass were important and they were all and this was contrary to what you said in your diary, or you said in your diary, Scott Atlas has a good idea about shutting down, keeping up the schools open. But I shut them down. So you were lying. You said, no, you don't understand what the diary is. It's not truthful. It's me venting what I do in my diary is I expose, explore different ideas. I say, well, and Tony, I think you call himself Tony's book. Tony, what would you do this day and maybe I did what would happen if I was thinking what would happen if I had fun to the lab. Then I would kind of make you know, he was he would say that it's not on. I do swear on the God and I mean, tell the truth only to nothing but the truth. So I don't think it can be used in any venue to catch him in line except one. And that is the power didn't cover. So if Rand Paul said to him, you said that the virus came from in your opinion from my bat or a penguin, but in your diary was clear that you thought they were, which is it. And are you lying then or now we want you to say something. He wasn't going to say something under oath. His idea was, well, I'm not going to, I'm going to take the fifth because this is not now covered a new statement could be perjury. And so he was basically saying, I'm not going to answer that. And he also is basically said everything in his diary was just idle speculation. Did he actually say that? I didn't know, but that's the attitude that he talks about. Which was a private document. Why is why anybody writes stuff in their diary. Yeah, that's what his legal team is basically said. All right. So let's then turn to the Abrams Accord. and Tracy Mitchem says, "Can you address in one of your podcasts the Abram Accords?" It's, I always say Abrams Accord, but it's the Abram Accords. Abram Accord? Yeah, Abram Accord, sorry. And Accord, it's history and how Trump giving Saudi Arabia a nuclear energy is affected by it. And would you also address how this decision can affect, can affect the November elections? That's a long question. Well, so far we were told that the Gulf states were about ready to accept them when Trump went out of office in 2021 in January. And I think was that the Sudan or one of the, there's three or four countries. And then we were told Biden kind of out of spite, kind of ridiculed them. Remember that when Biden came in because of the Saudi government's involvement in executing a journalist, the Khashoggi murder, Trump, I mean Biden said he wanted nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. I think he said it was a rebel, renegade or a legitimate government. And then during the 2022 midterms, he wanted to get the price of oil down. It got up to almost $5 a gallon. We had 9% inflation and he went over to Saudi Arabia and said, "Maya, call for me, I'm maxima. Call for me, I didn't mean it. Can you just pump a bunch of oil and I'm going to drain the reserve and we get down." And they said, "Sorry." So that wasn't going to happen during Biden. He didn't want to give any credit to Trump. Trump comes in and he's thinking, "Well, Iran is the enemy of you guys. They were basically the Gulf states and the moderate errors were saying you got to take care of Iran and we'll join the accord." Well then he didn't. I mean he bombed successfully after 38 days. Everybody thought he would continue and go home. We started talking, negotiating, and the Arab Gulf said, "You can't talk to these people and we live right next to them." It's kind of like a neighbor. They're crazy and you call the police and the police go in and they arrest them and they perp walk them out to the grass and then they have no cash bet bail. So then you say, "Then the police come back the next day and say would you lodge calls again because these people are doing it again?" And you say, "I'm not going to do that because I live right next to them and you come out and you don't put them in jail and I'm sitting next to them and they're going to start paying me back." So that's what they're telling us now. Either finish the job and neuter them or we're going to cut deals with them to stay alive and that's kind of ruined the Abrams Accord and then there's also an alternate theory and I don't know how much credence we should put into it. But there are people riding the following. Even though Israel is going over to the UAE and other places and manning iron dome anti-missile and iron beam, iron beam, they are installing those units in the Gulf to protect them and they've done a wonderful job and they've saved a lot of billions of dollars in infrastructure from thousands of Iranian rockets. So de facto, we never thought we'd see that, but there are people who think the Gulf states and the moderate Arabs don't want the elimination of Iran. They want the diminution so it doesn't threaten their existence but as a fellow Muslim country, crazy as it is, it is a bulwark against the West. What am I getting at? You remove the theocracy, you put the Pavlovis son in for a year, he has elections, they elect a pro-Western government that's secular and all of a sudden Iranian women are wearing shorts again and people are protesting again and it's like a Western unplayed. Kind of like Israel and the Arabs don't want that because it's infectious. So there's a group that feels that the Arabs want Iran to be theocratic anti-Western but weak, but not eliminated and not secular because it's too close to them and that's too dangerous. It's like putting Las Vegas next to them. Okay Victor, so let's go ahead and take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit. Completely we're going to talk a little bit about Homer and Hizid, stay with us and we'll be right back. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. I have a new book out on September 8th of this year and I think you're going to enjoy it. It's called Counter-Revolution, The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the Maga Movement. 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 Marlago, 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 Camila Harris. It starts on January 6th, it ends pretty much now in May of 2026. 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 Garden 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-Hansen for the Daily Signal. Welcome back. Victor Davis-Hansen in his own words. You can find Victor on social media. His handle at X is @VDHansen and at Facebook he has a Facebook page called Hansen's Morning Cup so you can get the latest updates there with him. So Victor I have a question for you. I had lots of questions about Homer and the Odyssey so I'm going to try to collapse them all at once. I have a review coming out in the next issue of new criterion 5,000 words on the movie. Yes. I'm going to collapse them all into Fred Lamasters. He's asked several questions. Do you want me to put the questions all of them first or just go one by one rapid answer? Okay. So here are his questions. Was there an actual Homer? Number two, where did the written down version of this? Let me do it one by one. Let's go. First Homer. Yes. There were bards that are associated with people being blind because they couldn't function so they had astute memories and they developed the technique of oral poetry, memorization of folktales which they could change through type scenes or repeated formula. Swift footed Odysseus Achilles, long suffering Odysseus. They would plug those so they're trying to tell the long story, 12,000 lines. It takes a day and a half to recite the whole thing orally. But as they're thinking, do I put the psychops this time first or do I put Calypso, then they can just rattle off ten lines of filler, how to build a fire, how to build a ship. It's going to be the same, repeated. That full people before they knew it was composed orally because they said he repeats himself. He's not a very good poet. So there was a Homer and we know his name and not the other bards of the prior 500 years because he lived contemporaneously with the city-state ascendance and, more importantly, the development of writing and using the Phoenician alphabet. There had been a script, linear B, but that was a different script for the Greek language. So in other words, when he was singing and handing, he got the story from his older generation and all the way back to about 12, 1150 with a collapse of the Mycenaean palaces. Then you had a dark age and you know what happens in a dark age. walk around and they have, you know, commerce collapses. The fertility rate clapses, agriculture clapses, they're poor herders and shepherds. And somebody falls in, and he's in a folos tomb. Who built this? He walks by my ceiling, there's cyclopian walls, a cyclops built them. He sees scripts, middle-inner beat tablets, maybe in a grave, he digs up by accident. He's digging on his farm, and he finds mycenae and armor. Who were these people? Well, they were the gods. This was when the gods walked with man. So they elaborated these tales, and we know there was about 15 different tales. There was the sack of Troy, there was the nostroid, the return of all the heroes, and it didn't end well. It didn't end well. Agamemnon was killed, Ajax died of suicide, diametes, Achilles. They don't end well, and that shows you that as mycenaean lords, they did not end well. But as the dark ages continued from 1,100, 1,900, 800, they became exaggerated the tales. We actually have names like Achilles on linear beat tablets as mycenaean lords. So those tales were exaggerated, and the last generation in that oral tradition, somebody wrote it down. So that was Homer, and he was probably the best of them, because it's hard to write down papyrus. So they limited resources, and they said, "Let's write down the Iliad and the Odyssey." But we had the whole epic tale, but we know the epic tale from later references. It starts with a so-called "Rape of Helen," or that means the capture of her by mentally Paris, and then the flight, the first nine years of the war. Then the wrath of Achilles, which is the Iliad, and then the Trojan horse into the walls and destruction of Troy. And then the return of Odysseus, the return of Agamemnon, and then the telemaca's stories. All right, so let's go to next question. Next question, I think you might have answered part of it, but let's get it out there. Where did the written down versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey come from? Was Homer the recorder, or transcriber of these ancient poems? Did he write them down? That's a controversial question. When I was in graduate school, when you read Albert Lord or Millman Perry, it was considered purely oral poetry. And Millman Perry in the 1920s, a famous classicist, went over to Serbia, Daesh, Croatia, and he saw oral boards barged up in the Balkans, and he said to them, "Can you give me some songs?" And they recited, not in hexameter, but in a metrical pattern, with formula, with type scenes, and then he said, "Tell me a way to poem about me." And it took him a little while, and they said, "Once upon a time came across Albert Lord that many wisdomed Albert Lord." And they showed their repetition. So he wrote, "He was a student of Millman Perry me," and Millman Perry and he then said, "So when I was a graduate student 50 years ago, everybody thought they were purely oral." Since then, people said, "If you go back and look at oral poetry, it's hard to get that level of detail by memory and by formulaic." So they might have had prompt cards because it was the age of writing and Homer. Basically he wrote a little thing down it, said cyclopsine, then colipso, flashback, etc., because they're so intricate with flashbacks ahead and back in time. And so I think it's 90% oral poetry. He might have had, Homer might have been semi literate, but the generation contemporaneous with Homer are shortly after wrote that poem down because it was so wonderful. And after about 750, 700, that text did not change much. So that's why we have his name and not his grandfather's or as the earlier generation of Bards. Your next listener is asking for a translation of Hesiod, Roger Thompson. What's the preferred translation of Hesiod? I think he's referring to works and days. Yes. Well, Hesiod was a contemporary of Homer. He wrote somewhere between 650, 700 AD. He was a be-ocean, an inland poet. And he wrote a poem about a little village called Ascrow, up in the mountains near Mount Cathairan, I've been to Ascrow, and it's called the Erga-Kai-Hemera and Greek, the works and days. And it's about the length of one Homeric chapter, about 850 or so lines. And it's about two things, the days and the works. And it says, this is how you make a wagon. This is what you should do. It's a didactic poem about when, if you're smart, per se, as he's talking to his brother, then you'll get the weed in at this time. And this is how you store things. But it's also a moral, the other part of it. And it is, don't trust people in town. Don't trust crooked people on deals. But it also gives us a flavor of what contemporary Greece was like in the rural. So when I wrote the other Greeks' story about the beginning of the city-states from an agrarian point of view, that was my Bible. I went through word by word. It is written in Homeric Greek, Ionic, Dash, Boesian, dialect, not that hard to read in Greek, and I grew up with Richmond, Lattimore, remember, he was the University of Chicago professor and translator. And he translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. He translated Hesiod, it's a wonderful translation. Hesiod also wrote something called the Theogony, kind of a pedigree of the gods, telling us who was married whom and who did this and that. And then he had a colleague David Green, G-R-E-N-E, kind of spelled, I think he was Scottish, Emma Gwinner. And he translated the, in addition to Lattimore, he translated the works and days. And he was an active farmer and a Greek scholar. And I like that translation as well. So Richmond, Lattimore, or David Green, Richmond, Lattimore was kind of the giant of translation. He kind of dominated the field for 30 years. He translated all of his team of whom my advisor, Michael Jameson, translated one of the tragedies of Euripides, but they kind of dominated. The universe Chicago had all of the Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod and all the Greek tragedies in series. And they just sold like, that was what everybody bought, the Lattimore translation. And I don't think they've ever, I don't think translators have ever, Robert Fitzgerald was more poetic. So the problem with translations are, are you going to be literal and say exactly what Homer did? If you do that in English, it's going to be kind of clunky or can you be impressionistic? And should you, should each English line represent one Greek examiner line, you know, a titanic examiner? And what type of language is that compared to Greek? Is it exalted? Is it the Queen's English or is it Cockney? And you have to find that level of English. And there's about six different things that are mutually incompatible. So the translator must err. And Lattimore aired on the side of being literal. So if you read the Odyssey, the Iliad or Hesiod, I think you get a 95% accuracy of what they actually wrote, if you read somebody like Robert Fitzgerald, it sounds more melodic and more, maybe in the spirit of that poem. So we got lots of questions on the Iliad and the Odyssey translations. So the best translation are Richmond, Lattimore and Robert Fitzgerald, I still believe that Emily Wilson is the one that Nolan used for the audits, I don't know her, I know of her work, she's a Princeton classics professor, was a bold new translation, but it's not, it's colloquial and it's kind of from a feminist, modernist point of view. Yes, and which brings me too, sorry, Fred Lamaster's last question, is the movie version of the Odyssey worth seeing? So, it might be you, it is in one level, it is kind of like Batman, there's great special effects, Caribus, the whirlpool is pretty good, I didn't like the Cyclops, he looked like a naked Rodan figure, Cersei didn't look beautiful and sensual, she looked like she was a frumpy 55 year old. schooled, Calypso, who is also sexy and central, just sort of sits on the beach and yeah, yeah, yeah. Athena, which is powerful and she always appears in the form of mentor or mintes that wise, she's kind of like his alter ego psychological. Lots of therapy. And then Odysseus, who is a product of the heroic age and is proud that he outtriced the trojans and made them bring in the horse. That's not in the Odyssey, by the way, that's in the Aeneid. And he offended the gods who's mended by eating the cattle of Helios, Son of a Poseidon. So they all get shipwreck. Well, he kind of rose along with the crew and he's kind of like, wow, I tricked Portals in on. I feel kind of guilty. And I abused Hospitality with the Trojan horse. He's not a confident guy. He's the enter. He's conflicted. He's problematic. He's a modern neurotic creation. He's like Batman returns with Batman. Well, am I good or bad? Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of a free-lancing villagilani, but I kind of do good, but I've got to leave the city and think this out. And the Mediterranean is an exciting, sunny, brilliant place. And the jeans, bright blue. And if you're in there, sometimes it can be really windy and dangerous, suddenly. But this is like a Scottish downer, reminded me of Emily Bronte novel or something. You know, it was wintery and dark. And boy, there's some beautiful ruins, not ruins, but castles at Nopleon and Plamutzi and Monobasia. And you look at Game of Thrones, you know, Dubrovnik. But these were like wreck, Eileetian, Scottish, you know. And then I'd like the idea in the Odyssey. There's a nobility of dialect because these are nobles. Game of Thrones, I don't want to just keep referencing it, but when you see some of the creepy guys on the streets of the cities and they speak at Cockney English. And then when you hear Circy talk to her brother, it's the Queen's English. But there's no differentiation in the movie. They're all Americans at the mall. They're accents. You mean in the Odyssey? In the Odyssey. Yeah. In the movie of the Odyssey. There's no difference. And the gods are the biggest problem. The gods in Homer and Greek mythology are big humans. And they don't die, but they're petty. He didn't give you enough sacrifice. I'll hit him with a thunderbolt. And these are kind of neurotic mysticals in your side of your brain or cosmic force. You don't see a real Poseidon causing these problems, which the Greeks believed did. And then finally he got this idea from Xenia as the Greek word for hospitality. So you guest friendship. Somebody comes into your home and he knocks on the door and says I'm traveling to the Delphic Oracle. Come on in. Here's some leg of lamb. Here's an apple. Here's some wine. Sleep in the corner. That's Xenia. But in this movie, it's an overarching theory that he creates. So that Odysseus violated the rules of Xenia by sending a gift into the walls of Troy. But it's not a gift. It's a weapon. Or they go into the cyclops and they steal the wine. Or he violates it by not giving them a nice welcome. So everything is reduced to that. But in truth, if you could talk to a 8th century Greek and said, hey, Ajax, Agamemnon, Odysseus, if we build this wooden horse and put a bunch of warriors in and leave it on the beach and then take off and we fool them to take it in the walls and at night they break out and open the gates. Does that violate Xenia? And they said, are you crazy? Of course, it doesn't. You don't have Xenia with your enemies. That's a brilliant trick. That's a strategy. I'm a Greek word. So there's a guy, Everett Wheeler, a classicist. He, I don't think, is a big fan of mine. But over the years, he's criticized a lot of things I've written. But he's a very careful scholar. He wrote a book called, basically in the title, Military Trickery. And he shows that that was a completely acceptable idea in addition to Hoplight Protocol. So the movie has all these flaws, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. So is it fair to say that if you're looking for the Odyssey and interpretation of the Odyssey that's consistent with Homer's writing, it's not a good movie to go to. How about since movies are intended to be entertainment, were you entertained? Just like Batman and ancient clothing. I like Batman. We turned. I thought those, I thought Chris Vernalyn's, it's funny. A lot of his earlier scenes and his movies, he duplicates again. And I mentioned that once before when you saw Dunkirk and they're trapped in that hall and the bullets come through, he's taken that very scene and made it into the Trojan horse where they're trapped in the Trojan horse and swords are plunged in the sides. And he's taken that gloomy, from Batman, that gloomy, I don't know what you call that atmosphere. It looks kind of dingy and he's used that in this. And he's taken the idea that Batman as a conflicted hero and unsure of himself, makes him more human and he's done that in space with Odysseus. All right Victor, so we have one more break to take and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about sanity and civilization. Stay with us and we'll be right back. 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 a 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 historic sites dot heritage dot org to start your adventure today. Welcome back. Victor Davis Hansen in his own word. So we've got some very broad questions here at the end about Western civilization or the civilization as we see it now. This question comes from Brad Woods and he says your analysis of civilization has been spectacular in your podcast. So he says the analysis is excellent but some advice on how to maintain sanity and a civilization in decline would be immensely helpful. How do we stay sane in all this Victor? I don't know. I feel sometimes we're living in the fifth century AD watching. We're all in fortified enclaves like St. Augustine and the force and it's all coming to an end watching the Roman Empire fall. Then I think maybe we're in the sixth century with Justinian age and we're building Santa Sophia and we're building the Justinian law code and we're reforming we're saving the empire empire meaning the civilization. It's hard to know but you everybody each according to the station has to be an advocate for for civilization. I'd mentioned this before I was at I was at in town at Home Depot and I bought some stuff and the cart was there and I looked around there's all the carts were all scattered and the place you put the carts was 150 yards away and it was very hot and I thought I'm just gonna leave it here I thought if everybody did that it's just a breakdown because that's how people steal them so I went all the way over and did that and and when I walk around the farm I pick up trash when I the other day I was driving it into town and I saw a piece of metal right on the side of the road and I picked it up threw it away every every little thing you can do to preserve the civilization is a weapon against chaos and decline. And I don't know what's killing us is not being too mean or too rigid. It's too therapeutic. When you look at what is on the streets of Los Angeles and you see those tents and homeless people injecting, fornicating your, urinating and defecating and you hear that typhus is exploding and you see what it's done to the brilliant work of prior generation. It's a crime against nature and civilization, what they're doing. And we didn't have that problem when we were so called primitive before. We always make fun of the past, but they didn't do that. They had what they called hobos that rode the rails and camped out by the railroad tracks, but they didn't go into the cities. And so, and yet they tolerate that. And they tolerate that because that's a mechanism for them to feel morally superior to somebody else at somebody else's expense. Karen Baus can talk about how wonderful she is and how you may, but then she goes into that beautiful LA mansion free, but she doesn't care about how a young mother and two children will step on a needle in a park, McArthur's Park. So yeah, I don't know, but every single thing you can do to be lawful, there were times I had no money and I never cheated in my income tax. I always thought, you know what, file it on time, pay everything. It's not fair. California is killing us. But when I hear people, especially a lot of immigrants, I know, and they just, everything is in cash. Victor, go to the bank and get cash because I can't do the work unless you pay me cash. If I were to say to Stanford, I need cash because that's double what I would make because I'm paying about 54% of my income in Obamacare, social security taxes, prescription, social security, A and B, federal income tax and California 13 something. If I just said I want cash, nobody would think that would, the whole system would, but why do we have to pay cash for everything to get people to work? Yeah, it's a black market because they don't. I'm very happy that he got rid of the tax on tips, but I'm not sure people paid reported all their tips is what I'm saying. I don't think it's going to make that big. We're 40 trillion dollars in debt. We're a new way of calculating that. I thought I was really 32 trillion, but 40 trillion, how are we going to get out of this? If everybody's not paying taxes and they're on 50% of the people in California don't pay income tax. And yet they always, when I hear all these people saying, no, it's horrible and these people are doing this and doing this and they're going to cut this. What do you want compared to? We're spending 50% of our budget on entitlements, half the people in California, half the birds are on Medi-Cal 40% are on Medi-Cal. And everybody's, oh, you can't get health care. You can't get health care in Europe. You can't get health care in Canada, but believe me, I think since I had this cancer misdiagnosed last year and this year, I must have been at 20 different places. Doctors' offices, labs, X-ray, CAT scan, PET, surgical operating rooms, intensive care, you can name it. And I can tell you that there were a lot of people there who had zero amount of money. I would say in the last two years I've heard five different languages spoken that people didn't speak English and they got everything paid for. And I get a letter every six weeks from Stanford Med and it says, and I get a status about what you owe. And it says, if you can't pay this, we have ways to help you. Please contact us. And this is the private Med Center. So I don't, this whole idea that there's a limited amount of cash that Elon Musk owes us all this money and so does Jeff Bezos, but not Rokana and not House on Piker, just these other people. And we're going to melt them and we want more stuff. Every time I listen to one of these socials, it's, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. And then I think, well, why do I give you anything? House on Piker, you've got a million dollar home on a porch. Why, why, why, why don't you go out and donate your time and clean up the needles and Los Angeles, you know? I, so the society is it's going to have to, it's going to go broke right now. And then when it goes broke, it's going to get nasty because you get people who are completely unable to take care of themselves. And the whole race thing has got into a tribal. They have no idea about the historical problem with identifying by your race. That is the great vein of identifying primarily by your race or your religion is accounts for about 60% of the death and wars. And this idea that you're going to go around and say, I don't like these people or I'm, I'm black or I'm Chicano or I'm Asian or I'm or it doesn't work. And it's a very pre-civilizational idea. It's very dangerous, too. Because it's very, everybody's fatigued about this. So tired of somebody getting up in Congress on the evening news and saying, I did this and me, and I went this and I went this, especially when they only been here in one generation, you know, that's where I get really tired of it. Nixon, when I hear her, it's always these people did this to us and we're not going to take it anymore. And I need this and this and this and this or Chivalier or this. I need reparations. It'll never be solved. I'm warning you unless reparations or we're warning you. We're warning you. What are you warning me? You don't have to warn me, you know. So don't come over to our country and then try to dismantle it. If it dismantled it and you had your way, it would look like your country. But we're not your country. We did things differently. So don't come over and take advantage of it and want to destroy it like you did your own country. Well, Victor, I would ask this last question, but given what we're just talking about, it's going to be a little bit hard. We can end here or as you want. So Thomas Roost says, what do you think is the likelihood that the divisions in American society can be healed peacefully? I don't know. I'd say I'm hoping 70%. It comes in its periodic episodic. It's not always this way. You know who I blame more than anybody? Barack Obama. Because he was our first black president. He got more white votes. Let me say that again. He got more white votes in 2008 than white John Kerry did four years earlier in 2004. And yet as soon as all during that campaign, it was spread the wealth. Then Michelle, downright mean country, never been proud before until Obama Barack was nominated. They raised the bar on me. They always do this to me. And then Trevon's a son that I never had. And we all know the police deliberately go after black males, all lies. And before we knew it, and then he did something that I keep reiterating. We had affirmative action. It was kind of a joke at Cal State Fresno when I taught because I had a lot of students from India. And they'd say Professor Hanson, I tried to get affirmative action, but I'm darker than this black guy in your class. People make fun of me sometimes when I wear my traditional beard or something. And I get nothing. Or it was kind of a joke where I had people from the Arab world. And they'd say, I come from North Africa. Can I say I'm an African? And they couldn't, you know what I mean? But then he redefined that. And he said, I'm not going to have a 12% black constituency. I'm going to have a 35 or 30%. I'm going to say anybody who's not white is a victim. And they can get all sorts of, we won't call it a criminality. We'll call it diversity. So suddenly class didn't matter. So I started looking at academia. And I started seeing all these people getting jobs on diversity. And I'm thinking that guy, that woman's dad owns 7,000 acres. That guy right there, his parents are both orthodontists. That, you know what I mean? But he's diverse. And it was all racial instead of class. And Obama did that. And he gendered up and he gendered up. And then he had Eric Holder. He unleashed my, I'm the, I'm Brock's wing man. Remember that. And he just unleashed it. And then he and then he had a need of done his communication director. Oh, my hero's mile. And it was just out of control. And it was racial, racial way. and it got so that Michelle, they put her on ice. If they let her out within two seconds, she revert to spec. It was race, race, race. Here's a woman who did not earn. I don't think on her SAT what she would have got. Would she have gotten into Princeton if she was Sally Smith who was blonde and blue eyed? No, from Kansas. And she got into Harvard Law. She got a lot. And I don't regret her about it. She's bright. She's well spoken, but she should have some idea that people were trying to make the effort to rectify past prejudice. And then when she got a law firm, but it was always this isn't enough. And these people look at me and they're racist. And then she would try to encourage racial animosity. And I don't know how you stop that. Except the only thing I can tell the questioner to finish is everybody-- I hate to say it, but not that there's not racist now, but the word racist has lost all of its currency. So if you're not acting in a racist capacity and someone calls you a racist, you should just say, go ahead, I don't care. Or what you say has zero effect on me, zero effect on me. And-- Yeah, you should just double down on whatever position you're taking on whatever issue it really is. Well, I had a person call me-- I have to be very careful what I said and said, we don't think your podcast should be sponsored by Stanford anymore, Hoover. And I said, why? And I said, well, you're plain dixie. And you're glorifying confederate slavery. I said, no, I'm not. I'm playing the battle him other republic. My eyes are seeing the glory of them. That was what Sherman's troops sang when they went through Georgia free slave. It was written as a biblical support of the union abolitionist cause. And I said, well, we don't know about that. Well, we don't want you to continue. And I said, OK, fine, the best decision I ever made because I got a new audience. And I like my audience. And I hope they like us. But the point is, if I said, oh, I'm sorry, if I didn't know the battle him other republic might offend people, who's going to do that? So we all have to stand up and say, we're not going to be bullied by a bunch of half-educated people. And we're not nothing to apologize for. And you can tell that because Ilya and Omar chose to come here. AOC chose to come here. Shabalye came here on her own volition. And Mondami's family were pretty well off with a mansion or a state on Lake Victoria. But they came here. Hassan Piker's family came here. El Sayyid came here. My lot came. They had a lot of-- they didn't want to stay in the Middle East. They didn't want to stay in Somalia. They didn't want to stay in Puerto Rico. They didn't want to stay in Africa. They chose to come here. Now, why did they do that? Because somebody before they even came who has now dead planned the interstate highway system, or built the California aqueduct, or built the Hoover Dam, or who died at Ibujima, or who charged right into a volley of Confederate bullets at Shiloh. And I'm not going to write all that contribution off and listen to these people, not in my lifetime. I even going to tell them, you are an ingrate. And you owe all these dead Americans that you slander that can't answer to create this wonderful country that drew you here. And you're parasitic because you take, take, take, and you criticize, but you don't give back. And you say that you're morally superior because you're interested in social justice. We've seen what your social justice is. It's on the streets of Los Angeles. It's in the murder rate in Chicago. It's not being able to walk until recently in Washington, D.C. It's letting people out three or four times that are here illegal every day that kill or rape some innocent person. It was final rant. There was a story, and I don't know if it has any credence. I think Benny Johnson, the conservative activist blogger, somebody sent it to me. And he made the argument that one of the reasons why the deportations are going up is ice is getting stealthy hell from blue state sanctuary cities. In other words, as the midterms and the 28 elections are coming out, and as people see these high profile murders of innocence by illegal aliens, and we're seeing them every day, or why they see truck drivers unleashed with the aren't qualified to drive, they think this is a border issue, even though the border's closed, and it hurts them. So what they're doing is, if you follow what he's claiming, is they do something like this. I'm a governor of Washington, or I'm the mayor of Denver, and I hate ice, and word of sanctuary cities. But by the way, there's a couple of murders we just picked up, and our judges will probably let them out, and they might kill somebody or hurt my campaign. So would you please come over at four o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday when they get out on bail and grab them, because they're here illegally. I don't know if that's true, but that's what he's-- that they're able to deport a record number of people because they're getting implicit help selfly, though it be, from Blue State official. So on that note, which is a little bit optimistic, thank you, Victor, that the very end there, that at least we know that people are interested in law and order. After all is said and done, we'd like to thank our audience for joining us, and thank you, Victor, for all of the-- Thank you, sir. Everybody for listening and viewing. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson, and we're signing off.