What Iran, Putin and China Really Want | Victor Davis Hanson

Putin said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union. What he meant by that was that we Russians ran the whole world almost except for the United States and we want to get back that way. He's an opportunistic person and he thinks anytime I see a weak Europe, let's get the Nordstrom pipeline, let's get them hooked on our natural gas, let's get Germany so anti-American that they're basically on our side, let's resurrect Cuba. Whatever we're for, he is against. Hello and welcome. This is Victor Davis Hanson in his own words and this is our weekend edition. So thank you for joining us. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne University of Michigan. He's a professor at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne University of Michigan. And it's mega Jacksonian policy is before we insert force, is it in our interest? Is it in our interest to remove the Maduro government if he's sending drugs through third parties in the United States, if he's greenlighting criminals and emptying his mental institutions and criminals to send them to the United States? I don't know how many people we read every day are from Venezuela that are involved in horrific crimes. And is he trying to undermine our allies all? Yes. Where you get tricky. So when you look at Iran, is it in our interest to remove a bomb when all seven presidents have said you have to do that? And now they were on the verge of getting one. And was it in our interest? And the answer is cost to benefit analysis. So is it our interest to invade Iran? No. Is it our interest to say we have? Created an alternate government and we're going to send advisers in there and we're going to overthrow. And then we want a government to look like us. Not necessarily. It's not worth the cost. Is it our interest to spend one hundred billion dollars and bomb that horrific regime into submission and to boycott it and to embargo it and to sanction it and to freeze it? And just today, Scott Besant announced a whole new levy of secondary boycott punishments for those countries. Is that are dealing with Iran under the radar? Yes. If you can weaken or destroy that regime without invading it and without killing a lot of people, then remember, they just killed 40. It's in our interest to do that. Is it our interest to do it a long time? No. Four or five months and within tolerable blood and treasure limits? Yes. So you have to be very careful. But in general, when we use force abroad, the Jacksonians say. If everybody just leaves us alone, and remember, Iran has killed more Americans than even Al-Qaeda. Over 47 years, they've killed thousands of Americans in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in our embassies, in our barracks, or they've subsidized people like Hezbollah entities, USS Cole, African embassies, you name it, Jordan. So it's in our interest to get rid of them, but only in a cost-to-benefit analysis. All right. So the criticism that can be made by a Jacksonian of the Jacksonian policy is it wasn't in our interest. And so far, Trump's been very good on that. Well, let's just start very quick. I'll review very quickly. You can't believe anything the left says anymore. It's a completely bankrupt entity. Why? Because Barack Obama killed 500 people. He conducted 500 missions on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Killed three citizens without any congressional authorization. I don't know if that was in our interest or not, but these people who are so critical, it didn't say a word. He bombed Libya for seven months. He hit ports. He hit TV stations. He tried to wipe out the Qaddafi family. He did all of that. He never went to Congress for one second and asked for congressional. He bombed Serbia for 77 days. He never asked for congressional authority. So, I don't listen to anything they say because it's political. If Donald Trump removes Iran, the Iranian theocracy, and there is a people pour out into the streets and they form a new government, and for the first time in 47 years, Iran is pro-American, the largest country in area. And as far as populations, I think it's second only to Egypt. That would be a coup you couldn't imagine. And the left will still criticize it. But on the right, do I believe Tucker Carlson? Well, he said we were going to start World War III when we bombed for 25 hours. Do I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene? Do I believe? No, I don't. Do I believe that Mossad and Netanyahu got us into this? No. Yes. So, I think he was asking for the legitimate criticism coming from somebody who is a Jacksonian. Yes, a Jacksonian, a legitimate criticism. And then so a Jacksonian would just say, you didn't do it. Yes, a Jacksonian would just say, you didn't do it. It wasn't in our interest. I didn't put his last name, so we just go with C. Paul Ward says, would you do 10 minutes on the Balfour Declaration of 1917, origin, original intent, the outcome, pros and cons? Well, you got to remember it was a letter. It wasn't a formal document. It was a letter from Balfour, who was the foreign wartime minister of Britain in 1917. Well, you got to remember it was a letter from Balfour, who was the foreign wartime minister of Britain in 1917. challenge any of our listeners. Tell me one place in the Middle East when Syria fights, Hezbollah fights Syrians or Jordanians had problems with Iraqis or Iraq went into Kuwait. You name any intra-Arab where the power said, all you people in that apartment building, they're the enemy headquarters. We're going to bomb it in 15 minutes. So we text you, get out. Does any of them do that? No, only Israel does that. That's not what genocidal nations do. When Gaza became quote unquote independent, there was about, I don't know, 800,000 people. Genocidal people don't see the population soar over 2 million. In 1947, the Arab population of when Israel was finally declared independent was 10%. It's 20% now. This is a genocidal nation. I can prove it because over the last 70 years, the percentage of Jews has gone down by 10% and the percentage of Arabs living inside Israel has gone up by 10%. That's proof it's genocidal. And I can show you another proof. They have gone into Gaza and they have vaccinated and they have brought food and they supplied all of the water, all of the electricity, all of the diesel, all of the natural gas, all of the gasoline. That proves they're genocidal. So that's the level of argument we hear from Al-Zaeed and all of these people, Hassan Piker, who, by the way, the other day got on stage and sang a song celebrating the gruesome assassination of Charlie Kirk, why this left-wing socialist audience applauded this clown in a Mao suit. It made perfect sense because he was wearing a Mao suit, Mao Zedong, and, you know, killed 70 million people. So he's bragging about killing somebody. And these demented people who listened to him were cheering him on. That's what the left is. And I think people should wake up during the midterm. If you're an independent or a conservative, if you're a Wall Street Journal conservative and every day you hear how horrible Trump is, today there was an op-ed about Trump getting an unnecessary war against Canada. That's all on one issue, just one issue. Canada is trying to triangulate with China and us. So we are saying, do not bring in cheap Chinese parts and interest and then repackage them and reassemble them and send them here and try to undermine us. And by the way, you have a $50 billion. And don't tell us it's all because of oil like the Wall Street Journal. That is thick tar oil right near the border of Michigan, Wisconsin, et cetera. And the idea that they're doing us a big favor by unloading this tarry oil that we have refineries that can refine and pay top dollar. And they're saying that was why we have a surplus. No, we are your best customer. If you cut us off from that oil, try piping it all the way to Vancouver and sending it to the Chinese with your ecological population. See how they like that. Yeah. Well, Victor, we have a sponsor returning, Pure Health Research, one of our great sponsors that is really helping the show. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels, or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, then this message is for you. 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And you just need to head over to purehealthresearch.com, that's purehealthresearch.com, and use coupon code VICTOR at the checkout. Again, that's purehealthresearch.com, purehealthresearch.com, with coupon code VICTOR. And we'd like to thank Pure Health Research for their continued support of the Victor Davis Hansen show. So, Victor, I know that you were just talking on the legacy of the Balfour, and it took us into other, but you, yes, but you were describing Hamas, and they're very much as Iran is for, they are for Israel very much as Iran is for us, their very mentality. So, Johnny DeLapp asks, I would like to know what you think the Iranian religious leaders want to accomplish. Is it a jihad or holy war to foster a second coming of Muhammad? If so, why don't I hear much mention of it? Is there some strategic benefit we enjoy when the religious motivation is not circulated much? Well, they say they're a mystical apocalyptic branch of Shia. Islam, which was always the minority. And they're not Arabs, they're Persian. So, there's natural fault lines between 93 million Persians who have this illustrious history of dominating the Arab world. And they have a different religion for the most part. Although I should say that only 60% of Iran is Persian. There are Kurds and Assyrians. And there's all sorts of other people in it. But they believe that they are the purest of Muslims. And this theocracy believes that because they are the purest of Muslims, and they have a superior Islamic creed to their neighbors, and because they as Persian chauvinist are superior to Arabs, that they deservedly should inherit the crown, not the Saudi's, a guardian of Mecca and Messina. But they should be the spokesperson for all of the Middle East. And so, they have been trying since the Islamic revolution of 1980 to create what they call a Islamic crescent, a Shia crescent. And that means we're gonna get Iran, and then we're going to get the Alawites in Syria that are an offshoot that are closer to Shia than Saudi Arabia. And then we'll have Sunni. And then we'll have all of Iran. And then we'll have all of Syria. And then we'll get Hezbollah to infiltrate and de facto take over Lebanon, which it has. And then we'll get the Houthis, which are an offshoot, not an orthodox, in Yemen. And then we're going to get the West Bank and Gaza through Hamas, which is Sunni Arab, but pro-Iranian. And they almost have it until Assad came tumbling down and until Israel destroyed that so-called Ring of Fire, until we both emasculated it. And then the idea was that we're going to be the ones that take the hit and destroy Israel. That's what Ralph Fingani said, the former president. He said that he was reportedly, he denies that Israel was a one-bomb state. He liked all the Jews being in one place because you could kill them with one bomb. So then they were going to broadcast that in apocalyptic terms, we destroyed Israel. And Israel has 200 nuclear weapons. So anytime they see that a nuclear weapon is on their way, they're going to destroy. And they were willing to accept that. They felt that they were such a big country and such a big population. It was a small price to pay for being the one power who destroyed the Jews in Israel and reclaimed the Middle East. And therefore, out of that reclamation, all of the Shia minority in Iraq, in Kuwait, in the UAE, all through the Gulf, they would flock to their banner. And that's how they feel. And they feel that they're morally and intellectually and religiously superior to anybody in the Islamic world, but also in the West. And they're fanatic. And they don't believe in anything that people should remember about them. That's what they say they are, that they're the purest of Muslims. They don't believe. They follow Sharia law. They don't drink. They don't smoke. They don't charge interest. But they're also the most corrupt regime. So Raf and Jani and all of those people that were in the theocratic elite, they own houses in Britain. They own houses in London and Paris. They've got billions of dollars in foreign debt. They've got millions and it counts. Their kids all go to prep school. Their kids are. professors and stuff in the United States. And so they're also the most corrupt of all those regimes. And they talk about they're wanting to die any minute and be in heaven with 72 virgins, but the elite doesn't want to do that. They want to kill people, but they don't want to die themselves because they're siphoning off all that oil revenue and they're living like kings. That's why everybody says, well, how does Iran sustain itself? Now, today, Scott Besant has this new blockade. He's going to sanction, isolate, not trade, embargo any country that secretly has been helping Iran financially. Well, how can it exist? Because the people are destitute and the elite doesn't care. And so there's a, you know, what I, what gets me really angry, just as a side note, people hate Donald Trump so much that they have endangered their entire reputations. So retired General McCaffrey, who served with his distinction, although he was in a kind of a controversial position after the first Gulf War, when he allegedly kept fighting after the ceasefire, but he was Bill Clinton's drug czar. So he was the one that called Trump, I think he called him Trump. Mussolini or a liar. And he came out today and said, this is basically, we've lost the war because we're going to have to pull out people out of the Middle East because they hit some of our base. Well, we have too many anyway. And if you, he doesn't understand one thing for being a general. Why are all these bases in Syria and in Iraq and in the Gulf and in Jordan? They're not there to protect against Al Qaeda or ISIS. They're dead. They're gone. They've always, for one reason, Iran. You deal with the Iran problem and you don't need those bases there. You can have a carrier coming out. We don't want to be there anymore. We don't need their oil. And then we had Robert Kagan, whom I knew somewhat, and I just worshipped his father. But he came out today and he said, we have to assume that this was the greatest blunder and Donald Trump ruined the Middle East. We've lost the Iran war. Iran will now be, it's so powerful, it's undefeated. Israel's humiliated. And they're taking, they will be the dominant power for years in the Middle East. Is he insane? Does he understand that their nuclear industrial military complex is destroyed? It was 50 years in the making. It was a half a trillion dollars, that they're completely devastated financially, that the whole Gulf world doesn't trust, doesn't like them. The only reason that they're telling us to be careful is they're afraid that we won't destroy them and leave them intact. Does he understand that Israel is now more militarily dominant than any period in its entire history? Does he realize that China and Russia have no influence? There is no Assad regime. There is no Iran that's going to welcome Russians and we're bombing the rail links to China and Russia. We're cutting off their air. What is he thinking? In other words, his hatred of Donald Trump is such that he can't, in a disinterested fashion, you can criticize the Trump-Iran war, if you want to call it that, that he should have, after 38 days, kept bombing and finished it in another three years. But he didn't want to kill any more people. And he wanted to destroy the military infrastructure and then squeeze them economically and hope that people took control. And that might well happen. But this hatred of him, and it's just, he should, all these people should take a deep, deep breath. And I'm talking about Liz Cheney, who was the third voted with Trump 90% of the time until she went completely nuts. And then Robert Kagan, and then George Will, and all Bill Crist. 90% of what he's done on the border with crime, with energy production, with strengthening NATO, with building up the, was what they called for for 50 years. But his fingerprints are on that. And therefore, you have to oppose him and his policies. It's the most Pavlovian, nihilistic response I've ever seen. Yeah, it sure is crazy. Well, Victor, let's move on to Putin then and what his thoughts were. Your readers were asking questions about, how does our enemy think, basically? So, Tim Kennedy says this. I would like to hear from Mr. Hansen regarding Putin's status, coup possibility, maybe, due to the attack on Iran from Ukraine. So, he's saying the Ukrainians are really devastating. What's Putin's thoughts? Yes. Well, remember that Putin said the greatest tragedy of the 20th century was the fall of the Soviet Union. He didn't mean that as a communist. He's not a communist. He's a fascist dictator, totalitarian dictator. But what he meant by that was that we Russians ran the whole world, almost, except for the United States. And we want to get back that way. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, the West tricked us, he believes, into allowing all of these republics to become independent. And our population went from 250 million to 140 million and were weakened. And so, my job as Vladimir Putin, he thinks, is to make sure that we don't have to worry about the rest of the world. And so, he thinks, is to restore the glory of czarist Russia as defined by having the same amount of territory and power as communist Russia did without the communism, but with dictators like himself. So, he thinks, well, we had all this oil and the West had no oil. And we had Venezuela and we were all over the world trying to oppose the United States. We were partnering now and then with China. And that hasn't worked. So, then he said, how do I weaken the United States and reclaim Russian glory? So, in 2008, he went into Georgia and he stopped that separation. And notice what he did. He always goes when a president is weakened. George W. Bush was tied down in Afghanistan, Iraq. And then he went in under Barack Obama. We're not exceptional. A lot of apologies for people. Oh, wow. He's apologizing? That's time to go and take Ukraine and Crimea. So, he invaded them. And then Donald Trump came in. And when Donald Trump said, I have a bigger button than you do to Kim Jong-un, and he sounded crazy, he didn't do anything for four years. And then he had by. If he invades, it's a minor invasion. It's no big deal. It's no big thing. And Vladimir cut off all that hacking. And just don't do it at our hospitals. And we're going to stop offensive weapons. And so, he gave him the impression. And so, he went in and tried to take Kiev. So, he's an opportunistic person. And he thinks, anytime I see a weak Europe, let's get the Nordstrom pipeline. Let's get them hooked on our natural gas. Let's get old Schroeder, that corrupt, obese chancellor. And let's pay him off. And so, he's doing the bidding for us, which he did. Let's get Germany and get them so hooked on our energy and so anti-American that they're basically on our side. And he almost did that. Let's get into Chavez. Let's get communist governments. We don't care whether they're communist, but anti-American governments. Let's resurrect Cuba. Let's do anything we can to hurt the United States and regain our influence. And that's what it is. It's an automatic response. And remember, who was the person who went to, in 2009, went to Vienna and said, we're going to have a reset. And even went to an old, went to a jacuzzi in a hotel and stole the, got the jacuzzi button and boom, we pushed the reset button. And then they mistranslated it as, you know, it wasn't the Russian word. They thought they were going to be cute and say reset in Russian. They even got that. That was their idea to reach out to Putin. And then he was an alligator. Yeah, Hillary and Obama. And then he bit their hand off like the alligator he was. And so that's what he is. He's an opportunist. He just sits there and waits. And he thinks every day, how can I take advantage of and rebuild Russian power? And now he's got a depopulated country of 140 million. And he's got the largest area, even with the loss of the republics, country in the world. And it's full of oil and precious metals and rare earths. And he's got China, the Chinese breathing down his neck who are overcrowded. And there's no internal dissent that would even think to challenge him. He does ask about the cute possibility. Well, I mean, yeah. When that crazy Wagner group objected, he blew him up in a plane when people object. They fall out. They usually just take them up to the top floor and throw them out. Or they take little injector guns and put plutonium in them in London or whatever they do. And then if it gets really bad and he's afraid of a mass revolt, then they bring in Mongolians, they bring in North Koreans, and they use them as cannon fodder and they pay them. Yes. And we just noted in an earlier podcast that the peace party in Russia, the party that would seek a peace agreement with Ukraine, was taken off of the ballots. Yeah, there's never a free election. I don't think there's ever been a free election in Russia. All right, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the Hutu and Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Not Tutsi bar, but Tutsi. Tutsi. OK, did I? OK. The Wat Tutsi dance. We'll be right back. 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We're a subsidiary of The Daily Signal, so you can find Victor's work there, these long-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, and all of the other. We're a subsidiary of The Daily Signal, so you can find Victor's work there, these long-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, and all of the other. We're a subsidiary of The Daily Signal, so you can find Victor's work there, these long-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, as well as short-form podcasts, and all of the other. We're a subsidiary of The Daily Signal. Just to sum it up, it's basically 65% black and 30% gay. And the owners are pretty all radical, a lot of them gay. And it's completely a money-losing proposition and it would cease to exist if it wasn't for the National Basketball Association. The men subsidized it. And the owners are left-wing and the referees are left-wing. And it had their own little cloister and they were very happy losing money and flying on commercial and making $80,000 a year. And no one cared. And then Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and a few white players came in who were really good. And there were tensions because of their race and their sexual orientation being heterosexual. And they started using violent means. To vent. They were venting not because they were worse off. They were venting because they were better off. In other words, like Tocqueville warned us, they would rather all have their little equality with each other and be poor than some people be better off than they are. And so when they saw Caitlin Clark's salary, $20 million, I don't know, and her endorsements and salary combined, she's making $20 million or more a year. They said, that's not fair. We're a black league. We're a gay league. And we have a certain code and we're left-wing. You can't have this person from India coming, Indiana coming in here, Iowa. We don't want that. We're going to rough her up. All these people. And then it turned into the most, it's really despicable to watch it now. They just, it's just, they go in and they try to punch people in the face. They did it to another girl on the ground the other day. They hit her really hard in the face. They, they, they pushed people. They go out in the stands and start arguing. And then they get the league. If you wear a t-shirt that suggests that you might not support biological men, they, they get an owner to go shout in your face. And Mr. Freedom, the basketball player, they just ejected him for wearing. So they had, they don't know what, I guess what I'm saying is they don't have any rules because they said that men that have biological muscular skeletal frame and have male hadn't for most of their life, male hormones and have not had radical transition surgery. They're women. But when you see these powerful men and the ex MBA, and they want to say they're women for a while, they say no. And then you ask them, well, what is your definition? They do have a definition. You know what it is? It's a de facto. And they're saying, just like Ward Churchill, you say, well, Ward, if you say you can be Indian and Native American, well, what's stopping some other guy just saying for today, I'm applying for assistant professorship of anthropology and I'm Cherokee because you did it. And he said, ah, not so quick. I did the whole rigamarole. I wore buckskin and I had a headband and I did, I did all these chants and I married. And so that's what he said. And that's how it works. And I did all these chants and I married. It worked until he was caught. So what they are saying, think about it. They are saying we will let trans people, but you got to go through the whole thing. So Mr. Freedom, you've got to start wearing a dress and a wig and makeup and breast suppressors and crotch suppressors and maybe some female hormone shots to get that beard off. And if you can act like you're a woman, then we might do it. But you, and if you can do that and you look good in a dress and you look good with a ponytail, that's, then maybe we don't really care if you beat the blank blank out of women because you'll be a trans woman. But you don't do that. You don't go through all the trouble. So they rejected his application to be in the draft today? Not today, but they're going to. And all the players will boycott if he does. Yeah. And because he's making fun of them, he's saying, if you can declare your sex or gender, I declare that I'm a woman. But they look at him and they say, oh my gosh, he's going to beat. And the people who are angrier about it are the big girls who have been dominating and fouling and hitting people. And they see this guy and think, oh my God, he doesn't like us. And he'll come in and be the enforcer of the whole league and start slapping us around. One accidental hit will take them out. Exactly. He'll say, I'm a woman. And a woman, if you hit me, woman, I can hit you back. And so that's what they're afraid of. The whole thing is so corrupt. I think you'll see within 24 months, Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, a few other white players, and some, a lot of black players that don't do this. And they're just going to say I quit and either form their own league or, because I don't, when the owners are all left wing and tolerant, and they look at it as a, not as a basketball league, but a way to express their political views. And they censor who can come in and who can't come in. And then they get out as owners. They go in and scream at fans that they don't like. And then the coaches don't even support the players. And then, then give that fever coach, give that profanity ridden, outraged diatribe when people said she didn't defend Caitlin Clark when she was smashed. It's toxic. And then when you see the referees and somebody goes in there and just punches somebody and they say, I didn't see it. And it's so corrupt from A to Z. Yeah. And it's very unprofessional. I think Caitlin Clark should pull the plug and say, you know what? I get beat up and I bring in a billion dollars in revenue and endorsements for the whole league. And you're all flying on golf streams now and you've, you've got great salaries. I'm, I'm tired of being beaten up and called all these names by you guys. Just go get your own little league and call it the, the, I don't know what you'd call it, the trans league or the gay league or the DEI league or whatever you want to do, call it that. But this is outrageous. And I can't believe they're letting them, you're going to see within a couple of years, if they don't do that, there's going to be somebody with a spinal injury or a concut, I mean, a real brain injury. Cause what they're doing is just martial, mixed martial arts. Yeah. If you're in there, they're sucker punches, basically. I mean, they're, they're sucker hitting people that are not ready for it. And that's very, very dangerous. And the weird thing about it is, this is what is even stranger. So rather than clamp down on all this, and you would think logically that publicity, 90%, 90% of the time, it's just what they're doing. And that's not what they're doing. Americans hate the women's basketball association. They've been exposed to it. They've watched it for a year or two and they don't like it because it's so violent and it's racist and it's sexist and they don't like anything about it, but they're watching it now because it's like Lucha Libre. Let me turn on that WM day and see who gets hit and what they do about it. And then the screaming and yelling, it's sort of like world wrestling Federation. It is. It's sort of like world basketball wrestling Federation. And that's right. And that's got a big, it's, you know, they get, they make millions of dollars. That's what they're doing now. They're basically, they said, God, we're getting bad publicity. We've got to talk to our accountant. And he said, yes, you've got terrible publicity and everybody hates you people, but I'm looking at the books. We're never making more money. And it's just keep it up. Keep the racism up. Keep the socking people in the keep the clothes lining people in the neck and stomp them on the ground. Put your hand on their juggler and just keep watching world wrestling Federation, get tips on the best things to do. And show us what the next thing will be. The next thing will be is that all these teams during practice, they'll have 50 minutes for basketball practice and then 50 minutes, how to hurt people. How do you dribble down and then elbow somebody? Or then what, what, how do you step on a person's head? What kind of four letter words should you use? They're all foul mouth to right in front of these kids, that freedom, that Turkish American player was saying, why is she saying this? She walked, that cloud girl went, walked over and said to him, you want to, you're, you're clapping for Sophie cause you want to sleep with her. And he said, I don't want to sleep with her. I'm clapping her cause I'm a fan and what she stands for. And then he got up and the next thing, no, the player starts screaming. I think her name is cloud. She started shouting obscenities at him and then she had to be restrained and then made this whole cycle drama. And then I kicked him out and you know, that was all national. That was all televised. Yeah. And they did it all. Huh? And they kicked him out. They did it all. It's like the world wrestling Federation. It really is. So WNBA stands for wrestling national basketball association. I love it. All right, let's take a break and come back and talk a little bit about Pearl Harbor. and social media. Stay with us. We'll be right back. We must all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. They knew that this would be regarded by the king and parliament as an act of treason. So the people who signed that were basically saying we're revolting against the most powerful country in the world. The Declaration of Independence reminds Americans who they are. Its words are ingrained in our memory. Its virtues are etched into our character. Its principles are impressed upon our destiny. Its signers carved out a new nation in the new world. For 250 years, the Declaration of Independence has inspired their descendants to defend their liberties. Liberty doesn't want paths from one generation to the next through the bloodstream. It has to be fought for, defended, won with every generation. There's nothing more important for which we would give our lives. But history has a way of making the unthinkable seem inevitable. But the Declaration of Independence was never inevitable. The Declaration of Independence is the culmination of one of the greatest political trials and dramas in history. As ideas clash, as armies gather, as the fate of a continent hung in the balance, the hopes of millions wanting independence rested with a small group of statesmen willing to risk everything they have. Their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor. This is the story behind America's Declaration of Independence. The story of how a declaration became a nation. Sacred honor. The declaration that defines a nation. Available now on the Daily Signal's YouTube channel. Welcome back. Victor is found on social media by the way, at X. He is, his handle is at VD Hanson and on Facebook. He has a page called Hanson's Morning Cup. So join him there if your social media is your outlet. Victor, this is more of a statement than a question, but it was so curiously curious to me. I wondered if you had something to say about it. This is from William Clark and he says, I agree with you 100% that the Japanese have never felt defeated after World War II. I had an unpleasant experience with the Japanese mindset. I was stationed in Hawaii and had some time to kill. So I took the water taxi out to the USS Arizona. The boat was driven by a Navy E3 female from Pearl Harbor. She and I were the only non-Japanese women on the tender. I made sure I was the last to disembark. I asked the Navy girl, what was up with all the Japanese? She said they come in droves to pay homage to their finest hour. I was wondering if you had any, that's pretty different, scary. Well, that's not surprising. I mean, Japan is a very good ally of ours. I'm driving to Japan with my Toyota products and they're very well built. I appreciate their craftsmanship. It's been a, ever since World War II, it's been a positive force in the world. And to a lesser extent, Germany has too. That being said, they were both, they're both, Germany isn't anymore, but they were multi, uniracial, unicultural. Japan has no immigration, so to speak. They won't let people in. And Germany did, and now they've lost, it kind of collapsed after the war. But my point is, they're kind of oblivious to how they, they regret World War II and they regret that they killed 20 million people of the 80 million. But they also regret they lost. I can give you two anecdotes. I always try to do anecdotes, but I really don't remember them very vividly. One involves a farmer that I knew of Japanese descent. I liked him a lot. And every once in a while, he stopped by when I was on the tractor and he was in a truck and he'd talk out the window and I'd turn off the tractor. I was disking or something, spraying. And we were talking and he said, you got a degree, you know a lot about, I said, a little bit. And he said, did you know we, they put everybody in camp? I said, yeah, my mother helped Japanese. Japanese farmers, she wrote articles for the local paper how bad that was. And then he would say things like, well, we didn't cause, we didn't cause World War II. And I'd say, yes, I know we didn't. And he said, no, I mean Japan didn't. I said, what do you mean you didn't? And he said, well, you embargoed oil. I said, we embargoed oil because you went into China and massacred 2 million people. Well, that was our, that was an inter-Asian. So we started arguing. My other story is, I went to Germany and gave a lecture for a private company at the Reichstag. It's very, it's an American company and I was treated very well. But the night before I spoke, I went to dinner by myself. I think it was the Four Seasons Hotel, so I remember. And there was a, it was the Four Seasons Hotel. And there was a, it was the Four Seasons Hotel, so I remember. And there was a German group there. At that time, I wasn't really on TV or anything, but somebody said that he read the National Review and he wanted to talk to me. And he was about 85 years old. And he said, "I like your columns." He's a really nice guy. But then he said, you know, he started talking about World War II. And before I knew it, he was talking about, well, you know, the, the Focke-Wulf 198 was, you know, the Focke-Wulf 198 was, you know, much, much better than the Spitfire and the Mustang. I must say, I must include the Mustang. And I said, "Which model?" Does, and you know who invented the jet? And so, and then my other anecdote with Germany is, I was in Crete in 1973 with a couple of guys and we wanted to climb Mount Ida. And there was the 30th anniversary of a German parachute landing on the Ida River on the Ida River and, you know, there was a German parachute regiment that had landed 30 years ago when they were like 18 or 20, so they were 50. And we went into this hotel because we heard all this noise on the street and here was this, it looked like a Munich beer hall. They were all toasting and they were all tan and they were all singing song. I don't think they sang "Deutschland uber alles" but then they said to us, "Would you like to hike with us? That's part of the way." And, they were pointing out places where they had basically gone up to burn villages and commit atrocities but they were saying how well they knew Crete better than anybody. So, I should just add that there were six carriers that surprised attack Pearl Harbor. The two biggest were the Akagi and the Kaga and they were later sunk but Japan is now re-arming and they have a new ship and what do they name it? The Kaga. You would think they'd say, "We don't want to name a ship when we have thousands of names after one that surprised, attacked, and helped kill 2,400 Americans." But, they did. You know what I mean? Yes, that's what you mean. So, let's go to Peter Jensen from Denmark's question. He says, "Do you see an option of lifting social media from a dope level to actual ethical knowledge?" And just to back him up, I was watching this weekend on Fox News. They had some long discussion about how people seem to be surprised that the social media knew that they were getting children addicted to their product. That does not surprise me in the least. In fact, I think they had psychologists in their testing how they could possibly do all these things, you know, early on. It is addictive. It's not just children. I'll be rushed for time writing an article or an essay about it. I don't know how long it's going to take. But it's going to take some time. It's going to take some time. It's got, I think, a website that's really good. You can get podcasts. You can get anything you want. It's all out there. It's just an arena. There's the worst and the best. And you have to be discriminatory. But it turns out that there are certain elements of social media and the internet to include that, that encourage the lowest common denominator. So if you want to comment, you don't have to put your name. You can get that funny little picture. You can say, I'm cow horns and have a little cow smiling. Cow horn says this. We have no idea who that person is. So when he knows he's anonymous, he says things or writes things he would never do. And to get attention for cow horn, then he would use the F word or he would threaten people and then people to reply because it's all anonymous. There's no consequences. It's not like you go in. If that guy were to go into the local supermarket two miles from here and start talking the way he did, he would be flattened or worse. But that's part of it. And the other part is there's money to be made. And the money to be made is clicks. And clicks are through sensationalism or perversities. So there was a story today, I'll give you an example, where a attractive housewife with four children, poor children, she and her husband decided they didn't have enough money. So she got back in shape and they have a special room in their house. They tell kids that there's mom's office and they lock it. And then they outfitted it like a sexy chamber. And then she goes in there and in various states of, on dress and sexual activity, either, I don't know what, they didn't detail it. And then I guess he films it or somebody films it. Then they put it on the internet to titillate people. And then they pay to watch her from subscriptions and then sick advertisers. And they're making a ton of money. And it's not like she could say, well, I, I crochet and I'm going to have a crochet class. That would be better. but she's not going to make the money. And the same thing, uh, you, Candace Owens has gone up in the ratings, but her, her way of, her, she, her mindset or her business model is six weeks with the most crazy sensational things I can think until I'm totally discredited and then onto the next. So this six week period, it is Mrs. Macron really has a penis. Excuse the language. I'm trying to be clinical, even though she claims she's a woman. Here's all the evidence each day. And then they're after me and they're trying to science. Next one. Charlie Kirk was killed by the Mossad and with the help of his wife and all those people. And let's go. And then that that's wrong. And then Donald Trump, dah, dah, dah. And that's how they operate. And Tucker's starting to do the same thing. Yeah. And they get more and more clicks. Yeah. Yeah. I, hmm. Put your finger in the air. There's a big, uh, anti-Semitic crowd. Let me get a guy on. Let me think. I can get a guy on. He's a, he, he thinks that Churchill was the greatest terrorist of World War II. And basically it was a war for the Jews. I'll put him on and I'll say he is the most, uh, knowledgeable historian today, even though he's never written one single published article or book on World War II. He wrote a book on, about Twitter, and that's how it works. So yeah, there's, and it's, and then when you can communicate with anybody and you can send your picture, you can tweet, it's instant. You can just say, I'm gonna get up in the morning. Hi, Bill. I'm brushing my teeth now. And in five minutes, I'll have breakfast. What are you doing? 10 minutes later, I'm driving. And I saw this. Now I'm putting my, socks on. That's how it, it's all banality, but it's a way of interacting without interacting. It's a way of small talk chat with, and the danger of it is you're still solitary. And so it's all extraneous. And so it's a fake reality. And that's why Silicon Valley is so dangerous in this regard, because they try to find ways to enhance that false world, whether it's your new glasses or your helmet, that you wear alternate virtual reality. And you have people who are disassociated with, and they're not. It's funny where we live in the most promiscuous age in America, but the young males today are not having what we would call promiscuous acts anymore to a level they did in the sixties because they don't want to pay for dates. They don't want to take the trouble to meet women. They don't, they just, just want it. You can get, you can do two things. You can get the most raw, sick porn with no cost. And second, you can create alternative AI partners. You can name them. They can talk to you. You can, you can make them look any way you want. It's sick. And it's. We don't know where it's heading, but it doesn't sound good. It's headed to about a 0.5 fertility rate in, at least in the blue states. Yeah. Well, since you're, we'll just finish with, I was going to finish with that, but since you talked about Silicon Valley, Dave Schoaf wrote, and he basically said, I have lots of property in Palo Alto, but I'm not really happy that I moved here and I'm not happy with California. So he says, if you were in my shoes, where would you move to out of California? Well, Bill, it depends on why you're not happy. Are you not happy? Because if you go on university Avenue and Palo Alto, people are urinating, on the street and there's homeless, or you're not happy that you're working really hard and you're paying basically 38% of your income to the federal government and probably 3% Obama and another 7% of a lot, large part of your income for payroll taxes. And then you're paying Gavin Newsom, 13.3%. Are you angry that you get on the one-on-one and you can't move because it hasn't changed much since, we had 17 million people and now we have 40 million people. Are you mad when you get a power bill and it's 40 cents a kilowatt? I think it's all those things. So he wants to get out. Where would he go? That's a good question. Well, I could just quote the figures of where your like-minded people go, because I haven't gone yet, but I know where people go. The three biggest, four, there's two criteria. One is, what state in a cost of benefit analysis gives you the best return on your taxes? And that seems to be Florida and Tennessee, to a lesser extent, Texas. Next criteria is, what state gives you sort of the best return on your investment as much as, as much as can happen close proximity to California. So that would mean, and is not a harsh climate, like Alaska or something. So you, that people looking at those criteria, I would like to go to Florida. I would like to go to Tennessee. I would like to go to Texas, but I have family in California and I kind of miss the climate and I miss the outdoors. So I'm going to move to Arizona, not New Mexico, Arizona, not Colorado, Arizona. And I'm going to move to Nevada, no state income tax. And I'm going to move to Idaho, maybe Southern Idaho, Boise, maybe in some cases, Utah. So that's what they do. And then you're going to be audited for three years. And Bill, if you try to leave, make sure that if your business is in Palo Alto, your properties, and you need to come back to California, I can tell you, as I talked to the all of these people who do it, the state franchise board will go after you because they don't want to lose people like you because you are part of the one or 5% that pays for the 95% and the 50% who don't pay income tax in California. So don't go to an ATM and get $2,000 next time you go out of state back to California. When you leave and you're going to be in California for two or three months, you're going to be in California for two or three months. So don't go to an ATM and get $2,000. I mean, put it at 60 degrees because they will subpoena it. Don't use a credit card because they'll see where you filled up. I only say this not because I've ever done this, but I hear from people how they got caught for spending too much time in California and then being subject to California income tax. Yeah. Well, Victor, that is it for today. Thank you so much for all of your reflections for our listeners and our viewers. Thank you. And thanks to the audience for joining us on this weekend. Thanks, everybody, for listening. and viewing. And we'll be back next week with the usual news and presidential assessments for our Saturday show. Thank you very much. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson, and we're signing off. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.