not wake up, and i hate to say this because a lot of people on the right talk about that biden is not in charge. we are minimizing the problem. whoever is in charge, i do not care, they're going in a direction i do not want to go. i do not think people realize that once we had there, it never lets go. >> to watch the rest of this program visit booktv.org. use the search box to look for sean spicer or the title of his book. >> it is book tv's monthly in-depth program with victor davis hanson. his books include the second world wars, the case for comp and the dying citizen -- trump, and the dying citizen. >> it was in 2004 that victor

davis hanson was first on this program. since then he has written an additional seven books. we have invited him back to speak about those. his most recent book is called the dying citizen and in this book you write that history is not static. civilizations experience dissents comedy towards, and regressions, and abrupt and potions. -- implosions. how do you view our current situation historically? >> a lot of the barometers or the indices of what makes a civilization successful i am worried about. they are all predicated by saying cost additional governments on a sizable middle-class has to be larger than the wealthy and poor combined. we are starting to see untill

2017 he city erosion of middle-class income. -- a steady erosion of middle-class income and debt accrued by the middle class. homeownership falling, the age of marriage lengthening. first child born, we are down to 1.7. the middle-class is being tested as never before. i think you have to have a sense of borders, i would always study what causes wars and it was always over borders. even strategic defense, they were symbols that the culture could come within these borders, common customs traditions that we unite various tribes.

we in the united states are the first successful large multiracial constitutional system in history. i know that brazil and india tried to sell as well but they are far less successful. it is important that people take this idea that your tribal affiliation and ethnic background and race and gender, although that is important to your identity but it has to be incidental rather than essential. judge in a constitutional multiethnic complex society. you have to have a commonality. tribalism is the ancient bane of all constitutional systems. >> go ahead. >> these were kind of organic re civilizational premodern -- pre-civilizational premodern concepts. i think also our elite in a

postmodern and pull civilizational -- post civilizational sense, we have 40% of all americans working for state or local governments. especially in the new york, washington this. we have a lot of people. this is hard for conservatives to hear but i would expand dwight eisenhower's military complex warning to the military industrial cia complex, then we had a lot of controversy about our professional health care. the common denominator is we have people who exercise in my office or person. without necessarily audits. we also have a lot of revolutionaries. we have amendments that

forestall contingency and many have been the key -- foresaw contingency and have been the key. but this idea that suddenly in the 233rd year of our republic we will get rid of our traditions like to filibuster. the nine person supreme court that has been with us for 150 years. have 50 states, 233 years of the electoral college. i am worried about that because of the dangers of constitutional government imploding or regressing. this has been -- globalism is a new variation on an engine -- ancient idea, it is co nfined to the elite.

the idea that there are parts of america that are not in sync with the world and the world provides a more superior way of governance. some of the attempts with the current reset or a lot of american captains of industries and intellectual celebrities have joined the ideas that major nations of the world should get together and set uniform tax policies or tax rates or climate change. we saw that in the paris climate accord. it is a wrong idea that the globalization that started the millennium with economic. it was not the harmonization of the american capitalist system all over the world -- it was the harmonization of the american capitalist system all over the world. you can communicate instantly with people, other governments and cultures would be equally

responsible for world governance. you see a bit of that in the secretary blinken inviting the u.n. look and see in the aftermarket of -- aftermath of the riots if we were a racist country or the international criminal court looking at whether american soldiers should or should not have done something in afghanistan or ir aq. the problem with all of these is that the 190 nations of the world, many are not democratic or constitutional. such a system, many countries would be democratically but at home autocratic. i have concerns about organic tendencies and top-down changes to the system i do not think our wise -- are wise.

>> you think this is a more turbulent time than the 1850's? >> everybody has this idea of person to some and i am a big offender -- presentism. anytime you have a two graphical force multiplier to -- into graphical force multiplier, you have problems. it was predicated on the mason dixon line, a geographical entity and so was the other. barack obama saw that when he gave the democratic speech, we are not red or blue america. i do not know if he followed that in his own governance but the idea that you can go to certain red states and it is a different paradigm than a

certain blue states. that runs the gamut from vaccination policy to mandates to crime to taxation. that is worrisome because in the past, we know where that led. we are getting in nullification that you can nullify our federal law. that is what south carolina did in the 1830's, that led to the civil war. we will not obey federal statutes. we are starting to see it on the left with sage wary cities, about 550 of them -- sanctuary cities, about 550 of them, saying that a lot's not apply to citizens. laws do not apply to our citizens.

we are going to nullify state laws, you can have different -- we have guns that follow the second amendment but they do not follow california's gun laws or endangered species. once you start nullifying a loss because of your superior morality, the body will do it. the difference is that when i was a student at the newly inaugurated santa cruz, protesters were on the outside who wanted to change the systems. they marched on the pentagon, the corporate headquarters. they complained about being shut out of the media. they marched on the anniversary. i washed a lot of protests or people stormed the president's office. -- i watched a a lot of protesters who stormed the president's office.

they are wall street, the mark zuckerberg's, apple, silicon valley, hollywood. this is different, the 1960's, we do not have the power, this is unfair. we want to change the system, this democratic, capitalist system we feel is imperialistic. much of the revolutionary fervor is coming from the top down. from the institutions in control. >> in the dying citizen, you talk about the concept of citizenship and whether or not that is in danger and what a unique concept it is. >> when you go back through time and space, i cannot think of any civilization, by the time that

is later, there is a resident, a slave, a serf. the idea that people can control their own government and elected officials, they can remove them and set their budgets and expenditures and declare themselves went to go to war and not, that is an unique idea that did not take over until greece. probably a little bit later in rome. then it disappears more or less in the fifth century, it pops up again in the middle ages in europe and britain. the net comes to -- then it comes to the renaissance and allotment. -- enlightenment.

it is rare. many cultures have not embraced it. they have arguments against it but the idea in america is it is a national state of things. it takes on an organic growth of its own. it is durable and tough and nothing can ever be better. it is fragile. it requires so much responsibility on the part of the resident and there has to be clear distinctions between people who visit your country and our residents and people who are fully fledged citizens. those distinctions, whether it is the ability to vote or the ability to receive federal help for state help or the ability to go back and forth across the border freely. there almost industry will show -- indistinguishable

between resident and a citizen. i thought we had in the 60 years or so since the civil rights movement that demolished the legacy of jim crow in the south, that the vision of our content of our character was what mattered. when you looked at economic development of nonwhite people in america, it was starting to achieve parity. that is one of the most important rubrics. i looked at groups who are defined by ethnic background and i think white people were number 16, they all had a higher capital income than the suppose it majority.

we were making progress and then now i think we are regressing. people are beginning to look at their tribe and suggest that if the country was not conceived in a perfect nature or did not evolve perfectly or is not perfect now it is not better than the alternative for not even good. everybody suggests -- the problem with tribalism is it never occurs in isolation. it is almost like nuclear, once a country goes nuclear the neighbors want to go nuclear. it is a lot more tribalism and it is a bad word. that's all we get this -- that is where we get this prefix, tribe. people were selected without

consultation with their constituencies or tribal was si, he said everybody looks like me and talks like me is in our tribe. same thing was true in classical attica the territory around athens people thought we destroyed the tribal system and the result was the parthenon in classical democracy, but and i think we had that aspiration in the melting pot but the idea that we're going to go back now. is not going to end well because every single tribe no matter how tenuous those bonds will start reassuring himself. because they'll say well this person doing it this person. it's a little bit different than the idea of repertory civil rights legislation like affirmative action that was based primarily on the idea that this unique stain in our history of slavery and jim crow could be ashwags with help for the african-american community once we created this word diversity. and said, you know, we're gonna enlarge the the pool people who feel.

that they've been impressed by the american system to 30% of the population 35 and it's going to be based on the idea that you're not white suddenly people who were quite affluent from south america. you could be a punjabi immigrant here in the central valley their own 5,000 acres. you could be a taiwanese ophthalmologist, but class no longer matter. and so we had this system where all these groups it was kind of the reification of jesse jackson's rainbow coalition, but they were not economically oppressed and many of them had no history of discrimination within the united states some did some didn't but the point i'm making is that once it started to become based on race rather than a historical circumstances of slavery or class. and now we've kind of reached a norwellian situation where we have you know, very very affluent people in the united states who are suggesting that their race is their focus of

oppression and you can whether that's meghan markle or lebron. but what we're getting to is you're gonna have to tell lebron is going to james would have to tell. a forklift driver in bakersfield say he's 21. he came of age 30 years after the civil rights movement. making minimum wage and there's a lot of people like that in san joaquin valley that i know he's probably dating somebody or married to someone given the demography of california. that's not white and they're the record number of i think very helpful side of intermarriage between different groups. who's probably not married to someone why he's never been eligible for affirmative action. he doesn't have the connections of the elite by coastal class, but you're going to have to say that on the basis of his race. he falls on the oppressor or rather than the oppressed side of the equation and like lebron james. that is oppressed. so my point is not to you know, take anecdotal evidence like

that and make generalizations, but just to say the system of basing. a lot of grievances, but only on race rather than class is not it's not going to end. well either it's got too many contradictions and paradoxes in hypocrisy. and victor davis hansen along with the identity politics versus class warfare arguments that you make in the dying citizen you use a phrase in in this book that i wanted you to explain a little bit and you talk about the cultural hegemony of the elite. what does that mean? well, i think it means that. there was always a hereditary and a natural lead the hereditary elite where people who had money and they had going back to the 1880s or not. it made fabulous wealth the vanderbilt the rockefellers etc, but in the new meritocracy of the of the 20th century, especially the post-war meritocracy we put on i think

undo social economic and political cultural currency on where you went to school. that was the new weather where you were born or how much money you had. it was if you've got to be a or a jd or phd from harvard gayle princeton stanford berkeley caltech and my team and you were rewarded accordingly in whether in government or politics or business or the corporate world the nba cetera, and that was fine because we were trying to professionalize these these fields but the problem was that once you were stamped without brand we didn't have a continuing audit what you were being taught and how sensible you were. so the best and the brightest of the kennedy generation got us into vietnam and the people who suggested maybe we not go into vietnam. we're not part of that by partisan establishment, and we could ditto that with a lot of disasters in american history. and when you look at the actual

universities today, and you ask yourself is the level of undergraduate. education comparable with a reputation. i just don't think it is and i can see you can see that whether you look at people in the media or whether you look at people in business or whether you look at pre-pilled the military and i'm including there in the military academies. what they say and what they do and how they conduct themselves. i don't think necessarily suggest that they have a moral. or educational or intellectual edge on others that haven't been similarly branded with these letters after their name. but that's the great trait now of the cultural league. there is a geographical component because globalization enriched people on the west coast that had windows out to you know, korea south korea, japan taiwan china on the east coast the eu and it wasn't just their proximity to them. but if you had a skill that was

transferable but not replicated abroad by that. i mean if you were in the media or what we're doing right now intellectual discourse or writing or discussions or you were a lawyer or a corporate person or investor or tech or silicon valley magnet then you're audience or you're maybe you could be more blunt you're consumer market. vastly expanded from 330 million to seven billion. and if you did not have that if you were small farming or you were a lathe operator or assembly or are you had a physicality or you were you had your job required physicality muscular labor? or you had timber as your profession you you produce logs or minds or any natural resource. it could be duplicated. then you either lost a job or your pay was cut or your community was sort of nuked

speaking of my own. i'm looking in the interior of california at a community two miles away that has lost its huge trailer assembly plant. it's used cannery. it's used forklift plant, etc. etc. during this shakeout that i'm talking about and then we cute. i think we confuse cause of in fact we said well these people or to opiates or they didn't learn how to code or follow the fracking. fields to the dakota whatever it was, but we never really said well maybe youngstown ohio died because of trade policy or international radical changes that we might in the united states have avoided and we have even a vocabulary of disparagement for people and there that took on a political tent but there was more, you know, the clingers the deplorables the greg's chumps there was more to it than just politics. it was the idea that these were losers and flyover country. and so that's what i mean by a cultural lead i suppose.

and victor davis hansen is joining us from his farm in selma, california, which is where and tell us about the area. well, it's almost a geographical center of california. i'm about a hundred and eighty miles from san francisco and 180 miles. from los angeles. the closest town is fresno, which is about a million people now greater fresno. it's about 18 miles away. and then i'm my town that identify is selma used to be $6. it's about 25,000. it was the fresno county is the richest agricultural county in the united states. it was a and i wrote about that in fields a lot dreams and my last talk with you guys in the 90s, but during this globalization project farms had to be vertically integrated to survive and because so much of it was now export and imported

food coming in and so for to be efficient in the global sense. you needed a scales large-scale economy. and that meant you had to be integrated with maybe at least a thousand maybe but preferably two or three thousand acres and integrated with trucking vertically integrated trucking packing. cold storage distribution shipping and so when i'm looking at 360 degrees around my window today, it doesn't even look anywhere near what it was like in the 1980s. by that i mean we the cassigian family the israelien family the lopez family the co2 family all of these ethnic groups that were our neighbors. they're all gone and by that i mean a corporation for economy of scale has bought their farms the farm houses or rented out to poor people and we simply don't have an agrarian middle class anymore and yet as i as i try to write early i'm not blaming

anybody because the efficiency is was staggering and i'm looking out at my alman orchard that i ran out to a corporate farmer and it's much better farm than when i did it myself. i mean it looks like a park everything is on a computer. the irrigation fertilization schedule is almost automatically administered. there's a scientific regimen to the trees. they the old idea that almonds would produce 1,800 pounds an acre. it's kind of a joke now that they produce less water less fertilization. 3,03200 pounds an acre, but the idea that a family is going to farm them and the kids are going to go out. where can they almond orchard or the great and and then they're going to come in and be a family and mom's going to be in pta. the dad's gonna be a little league coach. they're all going to be on the hospital board and you kind of free range. your kids are all going to talk with the other kids kind of a natural diversity rather than an imposed one where everybody was

a different ethnic that's all gone. i think. are you lamenting that that is gone or is that just a fact of life? well, i understand that. couple things happen to people when you get older you look back nostalgically. and you say it was so much better there. there was no crime. nobody had keys to their doors. and you kind of if you walked across your hundred acres and got on somebody else's property. he probably asked you to come over and have a coke his parents did when you were young. race or ethnic background was not really i mean there were stereotypes and cruelties. i'm sure and i heard them but it was sort of a well of the japanese guy farms better than you then he's better than you. it was a meritocracy. and yeah, i i lament that i lament the idea that farming is no longer necessarily. social or cultural in other

words the idea from the greeks on were was that the combination of muscular labor and intellectual activity that farming requires at least homestead or agrarianism requires is gone. and many of the people who were the best farmers now, i don't think have ever driven a tractor as many of them. not all so i lament that fact, but i also understand that. food as a percentage of the budget until recently had been increasingly more plentiful more diverse and cheaper and that's because of the scientific technological breakdown breakthroughs and agriculture and research partnerships with corporations and universities. and as i talked about earlier the economies of scale, i guess if i put all that abstraction and verbiage into a a paradigm if i look out here when i was young we had trees lining all of the alleyways not because

they've added anything, but they were shady and they were picturesque and people could walk through them after dark or you could ride a horse through them or a bike or whatever and we had hills all over it was one of the earliest form parcels in 1870 by my great great grandma. but when it was sold off and we i wrote about that and feels about dreams i had four siblings three brothers and then two cousins that were virtually my brother and sister all of the all of that was sold off except what i have now 40 acres. and what and obviously nobody wanted to farm that way so the hills were leveled the trees were ripped out the alleyways were demolished and they were put on a computerized grid and synchronized with other other phone that had been in the middle in independent farm. so now the original 135 acres if you looked at a picture, it's part of a large.

a large large multi hundred acre almond complex but the idea that anybody it's very hard. it's not the same walking through it or it's not the same. it's not visually a very nice thing. it's neat and clean. that's perfectly square. it's like a factory and i'm not trying to privilege my own experience. i think a lot of people realize the same thing happens with small businesses. when they become target or walmart, it's much cheaper. it's much efficient to even cleaner maybe or more we more it's highly regulated. but you lose something there. you don't know that people you're talking to it's just an exchange of merchandise and currency. there's no cultural aspect of going to the store and talking to the walnut more clerk and the way you used to do with a family owned food market. victor davis hanson's book mexifornia first came out in 2003. it's been updated throughout the years including this year. and in that book he writes. we are at the last frontier of

cultural democratization and limitless mass production where for the first time in history entertainment fashion and media are economical understandable reachable, and apparently enjoyed by everyone regardless of race age or gender. why was that important to point out? i think what it meant was that. all of the all of the considerations that made unique cultures small town america. states that were different from one another turning on the television and hearing and a boston accent a southern accent. a michigan accent a different types of dress and customs. that was all being harmonized and we were losing it since of regional community and everybody needs some you do not want to

identify by tribe and therefore it's very important for people to have football teams that they still do but they have to have something that is unique and if you're going to harmonize the entire country so that if i leave fresno and i go to charlottesville or i go to charleston or i go to burlington. i still see this exact same applebees or mcdonald's in the culture is pretty much the same then you have to have some. some transcendents and that would mean the united states so you're going to have to then say, okay. this is the 21st century. this is a 20th century. we're in a modern era. we're all interconnected and the united states as a unique and exceptional place because we're interconnected with the world. but what we're doing is were harmonizing first at the regional level then the state level then the united states and now we're doing at the global level and people or just part of

a an adult. it conglomeration. they don't have any sense that there's anything unique about the meaning indeed. the word exceptional is wrong with it if you don't have a border if you don't have a unique idea about who you are, i don't mean on a shavonistic or aggressive sense, but just a confidence that that you have achieved something and it that you've created a system that works and you have pride in that system and that people participate in that system and get along and i think that's it. that's it in real danger. i mean we don't have civic education anymore in our schools. not not and i can give you an example again. i know people don't like anecdotes, but i went to a school and i can see it out my window that was about 95 mexican percent mexican american and i did not go to the rural farm school where it was more diverse. my parents were strong truman democrats and thought it would be it would be very good to go to the school that represented

the people who lived around you we lived a little closer to town than most farms. and i can tell you that. it was a brutal bargain, but we we learned grammar and we learned english. we learned american history. and the majority the vast majority of mexican-american. students there went on to do quite well, i mean they run that they're in city council. they're in government. they're in private enterprise. they're very successful. i mean you talk to them. they feel a lot of their success was that they were given the tools. that is everything from diction to grammar to vocabulary to mathematics to compete with people who have far more economic and cultural advantages than they did today and for i think my parents because we were kind of in addition to that. we were self-school, but my mother i she grew up in the bedroom. i was speaking at and my grandfather had no sons and one

crippled daughter who had polio, but he was worried about what would happen the farm. so he mortgage's farm in the 19 late 30s and sin is two girls to stanford for both. undergraduate and graduate degrees. so when they she came back here and so to my father who had a degree and there were the first week people in their families to have college degrees, but they kind of tutored us in addition to the public schools. and and so i got a very good education, but she thought that it might be lacking if i didn't. go to school with people that i lived around if i just hung out with farm families. and so we were very poor people mostly there were still people from the oklahoma diaspora not married with steinbach wrote about in this area. not a lot left. but it was a very poor and then the junior high in high school. it's pretty rough high school, but i think they felt. that if you're going to be an intellectual you're going to read then you're going to have to have those ideas tested in the real world. so it was a pretty rough high school junior call high school and rough.

but i did get a good education given the circumstances now, you mentioned stanford university. what's your connection with stanford today? i i'm a senior fellow. that's somebody who is attached to the hoover institution there. it's an independent research. i shouldn't say independent quasi-independent. it has its own governing board and endowment but it's become it's i think it's evolved into a sense that it's like the medical school or the law school that it's a professional entity that's attached to stand for and then you're out audited or you're expected to do research and popular dissemination of that research. so and you're if you and then you're tenured through the stanford tenure process. i i've been there i retired from cal state fresno where i was a classics professor. since i in 2004 and then i teach

i taught for 17 years at hillsdale college. i take a month off in the summer that's been reduced a little bit to two and a half weeks. and then i teach hillsdale right when they start right before the hoover starts up again in after summer, and i guess i would i graduated from stanford university in 1980 with a degree in classics. i had an undergraduate classics so i had a long history with the university my cousin who was sort of grew up as my sister. she went there to her son went there as i said, my mother went there my aunt went there. and i had kind of an ambiguous relationship with stanford and the one hand i thought i got a superb graduate education. there was no doubt about it. it was one of the most rigorous classical education you could imagine it was almost brutal, but it was a was pretty good. and my mother got a great legal education there. so we had a lot of respect for

especially the quality of education, but there was always a sense that stand for sort of lacked the connection with the real world or the people at stanford thought they were of a certain. i don't know they had a sense of. and what you and i were talking about earlier. they were the credential grandes of california, or maybe the country. and i don't know if that was always worn out so i had an ambiguous relationship and i still do with it. i don't. too well necessarily with stanford, although i have a lot of close friends tom saul shelby steel. people like that at the hoover institution in the national review last april you wrote this today's universities and colleges bear little if any resemblance to post-war higher education. instead imagine a place where the certification of educational excellence the bachelor of arts

degree is no guarantee that a graduate can speak right or communicate coherently or think reductively. yeah, i wrote that after talking. i didn't just write that to ben. i talked to a lot of very successful ceos and business people who hire from our elite colleges and they all said the same thing to me and i think it's worn out if you talk to faculty about grade inflation. etc and they all said the same thing that our top universities are graduating people who cannot express themselves. cogently or coherently. they their vocabularies are diminished. they do not write as well. they don't have the same computational skills and yet rather than being aware of that deficiency. they're more confident in advocacy than ever before is one person put it arrogance and

ignorance or a bad combination and i think you can really see it when you suggest to the university they might make some changes. if you said to the university, well, you know what you've had tenure all this time. since you're early 20th century incarnation as a modern university, but have do you really have intellectual diversity? as it made people speak out. it's one of the most oppressive atmospheres for free speech is the first amendment honored at all universities. why do we have in this 21st century? why are we regressing to having separate graduations theme houses even the selection of roommates on the basis of race. why are we becoming so illible? maybe we may we should have faculty have a five-year contract and say this is what i'm going to do over the next five years, or maybe we should say, you know until recently you thought the sat and the act were

merocratic criteria, which you could judge the inferiority or the superiority of a high school education. so somebody said they had a 4.0 you said well, we don't know how to trust that high school. so we're gonna have you also take the sat, for example, why not have an exit exam because maybe we don't trust the quality of your education. so everybody who got a bachelor's degree would then be sort of like a bar exam just take a regular wouldn't be very hard take an to standardized stress to see if you really learned anything and the universities of course as in the case of tenure are very critical of that or why don't why don't we say to young people that want to teach you've got your bachelor's degree, but we're very worried about the academic content. in classrooms, and that part of that is the preparation of teachers. so you have a choice. we don't want to dismantle the educational system. but if you do not want to get a credential which has a lot of a lot of emphasis on technique or

administration or social issues, but you want to hone your academic skills. you can either have a one-year master's in english or history or math or you can have the credential but either one as it's true and parochial schools are community colleges will be fine and when you propose that to both universities and state education boards that there's fewer why don't we say whether fair or not or whether wiser stupidly universities have become political entities if you look at the political affiliations of faculty or administrators, why don't we just say you know what because it the the non-partisanship doesn't exist anymore or at least there's not diversity of partisanship. why don't we just say that after a one or two billion dollars you're endowments taxable. just like and you're you're spending so much money, and the treasury is not getting a lot of it in taxes, and we don't really think you're a non profit

anymore in the sense of being politically unbiased. so if you were to suggest are i finally i don't want to pick up too much time. but what if we said to the university once this federal government transferred the idea of moral hazard and your students. were borrowing their money with federal guaranteed loans. and this is now 1.7 trillion in debt and during this period on average you raise tuition higher than the rate of inflation. and given that they're all there is also some question a about the quality of graduate at the quality of educations that that the graduates express and some worry on their part that the university has lost interest in them when they graduate and their degrees are not necessarily transferable to a profession. why don't you back your role in other words you have these

enormous some cases the best schools have multi-billion dollar endowments. why don't you say to your students? we will loan you the money and if you default we will cover the expense. i think if they did have that hazard then. they would be very careful about their budgeting and administrative bloat and things like that that have contributed to the shocking rate of growth in tuition room and board at these colleges and universities. and in fact, it was in the 90s you were writing about the changes in education with your book who killed homer. yeah, i was worried about in classics. i felt that. what had happened were two things one was it was generic? it wasn't political it just that we had 5,000 classes in the united states and 90% of them were people who were teaching four or five classes and i knew a lot of them. and they were advocates for the

profession or the idea of western civilization or grammar and syntax or beauty and literature or they were teaching homer and translation. they were teaching beginning latin, but they were devoting their entire lives, but they were kind of hoi polloi. they were the people that no one really cared about they didn't make a lot of money many of them were part-time contingent faculty and then at these elite schools, we had a few that were very teaching very very few classes and the idea was that they had to teach very very few because they were doing seminal breakthrough research. and yet when you think about classical studies and who did what whether it's schliemann's really the invention of archeology or michael ventress decoding linear b. or millman perry who i think proved. i think you could argue that. he did prove that the homeric poems were composed orally or

george grove who wrote the first really documented professional history. of greece and especially athens who is focus on athens all of them had one thing in common, they either two things in common. they were either not classicist or they were renegade classes. but so we had taken that tradition and we've said that we're going to pick a few people and they're going to be very specialized and this was on in philology and in theory, this was during the heyday of lecong dairy dahl foucault very different than the woke trends today. it was the postmodern moment and we had a lot of people so when you looked at phd theses or you look at classes were being taught they were titles like the transgenderism of the apollo call or the rhetoric of manhood or that the gender. i'm not deprecating the value of these areas of exploration, but they were dominant and they didn't translate well into the

undergraduate curriculum much less to the general public. so when i would go into a bookstore i would see books on the ancient world that were very popular but none of the authors were necessarily classes. they were intellectuals freelancing intellectuals or writers. the tom holland so to speak of or the adrian goldsworthy's of classics. they didn't have these positions and the other side of the coin was that we were getting very political as was the university in general so that book was suggesting. why don't we be more populist? why don't we put more concentration on undergraduate teaching wasn't we have more public outreach you try to convince people of the value of of greek and latin languages. and why don't we acknowledge that people who do? very specialized philological research are very valuable

epigraphy textual criticism manuscript traditions. we need that continuing research and we need larger research in areas of anthropology and sociology accepted but let's not make them into deities. why don't we say that these people are important and the undergraduate teachers are maybe a little bit more important because without them there's no field that's subsidizes the people at the very tall. and that got there was no constituency that book by john heath and myself. i mean the people who were part-time teachers felt that they objected nor they liked the book people would you know not for higher them and people who were doing specialized philological research fell on under attack theory that fell on talk people who were very very left-wing felt longer attacked and they had good reason to feel that way i think but the general public i think got the message, but unfortunately. in the years since that book was

published. i think things that we worried about have gotten worse. i mean princeton university just announced that you could become a classic major graduation. i should say as a classics major without taking any greek. and now classics is in a another controversy and it's not the postmodern controversies of the 1980s or the mary left with not out of africa martin bernal controversies, but it's a more fundamental existential should there even be classics? is the field glorifying western civilization, which is pathological and toxic supposedly, so maybe we should abolish and i'm serious people want to abolish classics in total the problem with that is the people who want to abolish it. feel that they're comparativist of some sort historians or literature people and they're tenured so they would gravitate to interdisciplinary programs

and all the many hundreds and even thousands of part-time latin teachers and greek teachers and assistant professors of plastics would be out of a job. well, we're pleased that you joined us for this month's in depth program scholar historian and author victor davis. hansen is joining us from his farm in selma, california. we're going to begin taking your calls in just a few minutes. here's how you can get through and talk with dr. hanson. 202 is area code 748 8200 if you live in the east and central time zones 7 4 8 8 2 0 1 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zone and if you want to you can do so here. this is for text messages only 2 0 2 7 4 8 8 9 0 3 make sure to include your first name and your city if you would and if you can't get through on the phone lines or still want to make a comment try us on social media

email book tv at c-span.org at book tv for twitter facebook and instagram. we'll begin taking those calls and texts and tweets a minute. dr. hansen is the author of 22 books. this is his second time on in depth one of the few guests who have appeared twice on this program is first appearance was in 2004. we've invited him back to talk about some of his more recent books some of those more recent books include mexifornia, which first came out in 2003 but has been updated over the years. the second world wars came out in 2017 the case for trump 2019 and the dying citizen is his most recent book which we've discussed a little bit. at length today dr. hansen when

it comes to the us and immigration, first of all is mexifornia. a book about immigration or is it about assimilation or neither of those? it's both. there was two themes in it. the first thing was that legal immigration. is wonderful because it enriches the culture. and it makes native american people born in the united states aware of how lucky they are and it so-called and i'm i'm just now voicing traditional support for it puts them on their toes. so what i mean in the real world is that my family was here in 1870, but by 1970, none of the people that were farming were except one neighbor was so-called white of the original homesteaders they were either

armenian or mexican american or punjabi. or in one case greek and what it meant was they came with nothing or less resources and they work very hard and there was the idea that you could learn from that workout. they can then maybe people who had been here a long time and that was a traditional. reason and also there was the idea that if somebody risked life and limb. to come the united states and start from scratch then maybe that's a natural aristocracy of people. they're not the complacent. they're not the well-off. these are people that really are going to work and they have talent and has not been recognized in their own system. the second half was if you let people come in illegally. and the first act that they commit is a breaking of the law by crossing the border and the second is residing illegally then often a third act will be to find identification that's illegal. i'm speaking to someone i think

on three occasions has had my identity stolen. and i think i can make the argument with some somebody was here illegally. and if the immigration pool is not sufficiently diverse and if the people coming are all without capital or experience and many of them don't know english and don't have a high school diploma. and if they are arriving when the host has lost confidence in the melting pot that's sort of adopted the salad bowl at each particular ethnic group should maintain their cultural identities paramount. and if they're being sent sent is a good word. it's a transitive verb by governments who want remittances and we have now 30 billion dollars sent back to mexico another 30 decentral american and in a very cynical fashion. it's the largest source of foreign exchange for latin

america countries involved in immigration and if it's sort of a safety valve that people say in oaxaca state who are dissatisfied as indigenous people with their treatment by the mexican government in mexico city and the mexican government says one why don't you leave then you don't have really internal reform to the same degree if everybody who's upset just goes the united states. so all of these things then are contrary to the idea of diverse immigration legal immigration. immigration where people come into a country and we say you made the choice to join us. we are enriched by your culture on the periphery. and what is a periphery music fashion the arts literature acceptable, but we are not we're going to absorb you that's kind of a harsh term. we're going to integrate you.

we're going to assimilate you into the uniqueness of american life that you chose to join and that would be constitutional government a free market economy a racially blind ideal an independent judiciary quality of women a multiracial society that requires a lot of work in tolerance all of those values and we're going to impose on you the immigrant and we're going to make a distinction between people who come here legally and want to be either legal residents. citizens and those who break the law and so that's what the book was arguing. and unfortunately it said that we the host have lost confidence in our powers of the simulation and integration and we don't ask enough of the immigrant and we have too many vested interest. we have corporate entities that want cheap labor and they kind of exploit the immigrant we have

foreign governments who exploit the immigrant we have immigrants them. we have people for political reasons who want on assimilated constituencies or constituencies of particular. they feel political they can flip a state like, california or nevada or colorado or new mexico maybe arizona from red to blue they feel that they have enough immigration. so all of these constituencies see in the illegal immigration system something for them, but i don't think it necessarily benefits either the illegal immigrant. no, i'm not supposed to say that word, but that's a good latin base word for somebody who violated the law when they arrive. and i don't see what if you're gonna have illegal immigration. you're going to have so many paradoxes and hypocrisy is that the system won't work and you can see that now in the southern border. we're asking four and a half million americans that work for the federal government.

and the military many of them have covid. and have antibodies but we're saying to them you're going to have to be vaccinated keep your job, but we're not asking the same of non-citizens who are crossing unlawfully in the southern border and that's not unexpected. that's what you'd expect with a system that's been into institutionalized the last 25 years. last question from me before we go to our callers and viewers. we often hear here in washington about president's hosting historians in the white house to talk about history etc. have you ever been invited? the white house. yes, sir. i was invited to the bush white house when i got the 2007 national humanities award there was a ceremony. that year and there i think there were three winners and then i went to a christmas party in 2007. but i haven't been to the trump

white house, but never never one of those off the record discussions with his oh, yes. yes. i have i had during the bush administration. was kind of funny where else not to discuss things. i don't know if i'm violating that pack or not, but there was a wide range of views and they there was i don't know i wouldn't want to mention all the names of the people. they were three or four or five historian and they were not just conservatives. they were centrist and thinking one or two cases progressives and there they talked before about 9/11 initially and then the wisdom or ignorance of going into afghanistan into iraq in what you should do when things got bad in iraq, so that went on for once a year three or four times, but that was off the record i think and we were asked at least i tried to abide by that request not to mention that you'd been to the white house because i think some of them

said well, i'm in the white house and i'm people are listening to me. i think one. journalist at one point said something that why would anybody listen to a raisin farmer from selma, california that taught at fresno state so somebody heard about it didn't come from me. well, let's think they were listening to us. i think just wanted to get views one thing that president bush did was he asked everybody to recommend books everybody recommended a book and then the two or three times you came in over those years the next time. you were there. he actually read the book and discussed it with the person that recommended in front of the other. and what was a book that you recommended to president bush? yeah, and that i think didn't show a lot of imagination. i said just read portions of beauty's history. and then i mentioned i think winston churchill's second world war.

but there were others especially on. i can't say one person who is a good friend of mine who ordered xiaomi was there and he gave a lot of recommendations about this. modern islam. and recommended one of his books. i think the president read well, let's hear from our viewers and callers glenn is in freeland, michigan. you're on with author, victor davis hansen. go ahead glenn. um, thank you all very much big fan dr. hanson, and i'd like to ask you about that current state of so-called mainstream media corporate media specifically as an example on the lakeisha wisconsin incident where there was the what was pretty obviously a domestic terrorist attack and the holiday parade there and the alleged murderer one. look at is social media history,

and it's pretty obvious. hey glenn, i apologize. we're getting a little far field here. did you could use this succinctly ask your question? um, yes, wondering since the corporate media the mainstream media so-called is so the vast majority of it is so obviously one-sided now in the left distraction. do you think that will have any effect on the history of the future so to speak? thank you, sir. i think we got your points. victor davis hansen well, i think everybody wants both views so i try to look this empirically. and so if you go into the internet, i think you can find a wide diversity. of opinion with one exception and that is if you post something that is controversely

conservative. versus controversely liberal you're probably going to run into trouble much more frequently with the auditors to facebook or twitter if you're going to run a google search, i think if you do it enough and i do it a lot. you're gonna find that there's a pattern that the results will more likely show liberal than conservative findings or matches, but more or less you can find there's a lot of concerted sites, so i'm not worried about the access to information in that sense. i am worried about six trillion dollars in market capitalization and silicon valley and i think people on the left are right are starting to come to an agreement that it represents something like the 19th century trust that they have monopolies they buy out in absorb all of their competitors. they use enormous amounts of money to affect the way that we vote and they massage certain.

procedures as we saw in mark zuckerberg's 414 at 15 million and i think a lot of people on the left say i know they give more money to us, but they're monopolies and i think people on the right say we bought this for so long that their free market entrepreneurs and their buccaneers and this is good creative destruction, but now they're becoming so i think there's going to be some action there if i look at the larger spectrum and by that i mean, if i look at the network news. if i look at cable tv. you have fox news on the right. then you have msnbc and cnn the left and i think it balances out because fox has many hours a greater market share than the two combined. but when look at network news, i don't see diversity public tv. i think i'm obviously c-span. i've been a big supporter. brian lamb was one of them. i think one of my favorite americans so i think that public

tv and things like c-span do a good job of trying to get people of diverse views, which is essential. i'm not sure that national public radio being blunt does as well. the print papers washington post new york times chicago tribune ella time san francisco. they're not diverse. so there's a how does that translate very quickly into the real world. that means if you have a very controversial and this is what's happening. unfortunately when you have these court decisions that mentally immediately become weaponized. so i don't think that white on white violence at kenosha was necessarily a referendum on racial pathology of the majority culture. i understand that mr. blake had been shot, but that had been fairly thoroughly investigated and that had not been a civil rights issue with the federal government. and and so that writtenhouse trial for some reason because of the media the way that they

massage and hyped and focused on that trial it became a referendum on race, okay. then not more than 50 hours later. we had the waukesha killings. that you could make the argument if you wanted to as a media seemed to want to do fixate on race you could say that mr. brooks his 20-year career of career felonies. had hays history of not only anti-semitism but white anti-white expression on his social media and some of his songs and even called for violence against whites and he had killed six people and they were people not mainstream spokesman for blm, but maybe self-appointed who suggested that this was the start of a revolution minor official democratic said, this was karma there were people who felt that that was perhaps racially

motivated, but the point is there was much more credence to that argument than there had been a kenosha and yet that story was not just smothered but smothered to the degree that when you looked at the washington post to take one example, his name was not even mentioned days after the violence. it was almost as if a car was responsible because car crash and wakosha, waukesha. collision suv hits people as if it was on auto parts, so that's the sort of thing that happens when you don't have a diversity of opinion in the major news, and it's causing it's not in the media's interest because you have such hostility toward it by half the country and when you start looking at things like the juicy smaller. trial, i don't want to weigh in because it's a trial and i just warned about that, but i'm talking about the initial. the initial reaction to it where the media was almost.

unanimous that this was a racial crime when there was clearly evidence that it was ambiguous to be kind. and i could go into the duke lacrosse matter or could talk about the covington kids, but there's a pattern that when a certain story emerges. the mainstream media we could use that term tries to weaponize it for political advantage and even sometimes the facts don't bear it out. i think to be more specific i think a station like i mean foxes had some problems so as msnbc all the network news-how, but cnn is in a special category as we saw with the chris cuomo departure firing. and it's had some whether we call talk about cathy griffith or some of the comments that were made by some of their editors that were pretty gross or some of the departures and resignations. they've had because of bias. yeah. i'm really worried about it. and i think it's not healthy for

a constitutional state. to have the mainstream deliverance and so there are if you are conservative and you're thinking well, i can't find out what's happening. you can find out on the internet. and you can find out if there's other avenues from radio, but it's it's much more difficult and i'm not just saying this. i mean it's the shorenstein center on that does media research at harvard. i think six months into the trump administration found that 93% of the news coverage of trump was negative in a way that had not been true either republican or democrat and prior administration. sandy is calling in from priest river, idaho, sandy. you're on with victor david hansen. oh great. what a pleasure and thank you see stan and professor hansen for what you do? also professor nelson. thank you for not attending the

redundant definite article to quite beloit my question. is concerning timeby among other things one of the signs of civilizational collapse that she points out is loss of faith in the elites by by the many and you know, he i may be extrapolating on his point here, but i tend to see the reaction on the fringe left and right as being two sides of the same coin, you know, the the right tends to look towards the past as a golden age that never was and the left looks towards. a idyllic future which can never be you know sandy tell you what,

let's let's go with what you've laid out on the table there loss of faith in the elites. views of the left and right victor davis hansen now, i think there's a compromise position and i think when you look at the founding, let's say of the united states. it is true that the majority. or the vast majority were white males which were representative of the time. in the united states, that is the people who had privilege and money and education. and that was not going to be inclusive but what was odd and i say odd because it didn't happen very where else we judged the past not necessarily. by the values of the present all the time because we have the benefit of hindsight and technology and moral development. but when you look at other places in the world, there was a simply no document like the declaration of independence or the constitution. because they had built in with

them a implicit idea that you could in case of the constitution with him you could amend and change things if you went through a constitutional process and the declaration said all men were soon as it said all men are created equal equally endowed then you know what that set off a logical trajectory to equality where we were are now political quality of opportunity, so i think it's good to acknowledge that there were people or people the sins of america are the sins of humankind. what makes america different is that there was an effort to institutionalize a method to change and redress and improve and i don't see it very much else in the world. there are things in the past i grew up in a household were. my mother had gone to stanford

university pacific. got a va got another ba at stanford university got a law degree at stanford university in 1946, and she was offered a job as a legal secretary. and came home and she went all over gotten her a little car and drove all over the sound and know what not one person would hire her. even though i think you could argue that she was the first one of the first superior court judges and for in fresno county. i think the second and one of the first appellate court judges that was female and did a very good job, but so there was institutionalized bias that had to be overcome. and so i'm not looking back at the past but the same token as we talked about earlier. there was a stupid also a stability to the society. i can tell you if i lost my wallet in selma, california i had about four people. call me within. seven or eight times. i've done it and say. where where are you? i got to deliver it to i had a

couple people hand delivered it to me if i were to do that today, and i've had that happened twice. believe me. i have to run to the phone before i get charged on everything so collectively as a society we were progressing but individually, i don't know whether it's a lack of religion or moral instruction. i'm worried that we're regressing politically and you know, what technological progress as he's the greek poet said seventh century bc you often get moral regress. so when you look at the moralists of the ancient world, and i'm talking about the acidities or tacitus or swetonious or patronus in a way. they're convinced that affluence and leisure tend to be to bring with them decade what they call luke's or luxury or decadence. and so i think the big problem we're having now. is that this modern sophisticated society? it doesn't have a lot of

muscular labor. it doesn't have a lot of appreciation for how hard it is to to do certain things and there's an expectation or a sense of entitlement. i know. when my grandfather came home and said my god, they took a cataract out of my eye. can you believe that i can see? and now that's a routine operated operation, which is good, but we don't have any appreciation how difficult that operation is. and so i think we all have to take a deep breath and say, you know, we want to have the federal of the past the individualism as we progress in this sense that we if the system needs to be changed to be to ensure a more quality of opportunity it can victor davis hansen, everybody along with myself is wondering. how do you lose your wallet so often? how did i lose it? yeah, it sounds like you lose your wallet quite often. well, i'm 68. okay, but i'm i if you talk to people who know me they say that

i'm terribly absent-minded. all right, and i'm like right now looking for my keys that i drop somewhere or i i threw away by accident in the trash and it had a lot of important keys on it. so i'm fortunately i think i've saw the problem though. i got one of these little they're called tiles that i put into my wallet and it has electric beep on it. and so i've left it once in the car under the seat. i guess i thought i'd lost it, but i found it. but i sure. i'm surely. i'm sure i've lost it more than that in the last 68 years, but i've had been very lucky. i've had at least six occasions in the 70s and 80s were people called me, but i haven't had one in this millennium the two or three times. i've had it. almost immediately cars one. i don't know how people charge $500 of gas in two hours, but that's happened to. let's hear from jane and joshua

tree, california chain, you're on with victor davis hansen. oh, thank you so much. i have to just say i'm i'll give you some background just briefer. i went to a junior college and there so i can learn to write a term paper. so my colleague my high school education really did not serve me. well, we're about the same age mr. hanson and then i went to berkeley uc berkeley and i was a honor student but you know had no there was no direction, you know, i i they gave me the choice of american history as a basic one class that i had to take and or i could choose california indian history, which i did choose and was absolutely fascinated by but i kind of want to go back out. i want to say that i've been getting my college education from book tv and american history tv, and i literally have books transcribing conversations because i'm just so fascinated by things that i wouldn't even think i would i mean herbert hoover last night in the middle of the night talking about his

his education his upbringing idea of simplicity and frugality in public service without personal gain, you know, but you know going back to washington's farewell address worried about factions and my i'm absolutely really really really concerned about our upcoming elections because the idea of nullifying federal law. where in oklahoma, i guess in florida, there's like no we don't have to we don't have to answer to the fed to to washington. we are isn't that what the civil war was was based on. hey jane a lot out there on the table for dr. hansen to respond to all kind of respond to the last as i said earlier. the problem with nullification is that when either side wants to nullify they seem to assume that the other side won't want to. so if you're a state and you decide that you're going to

nullify a federal law for the revolves around elections, or we've always the endangered species act. you're going to say you're doing it because california or new york or illinois is nullified federal immigration law. and then they're going to say you did it. so you either either all follow the federal system. or none of them do but there's no concession in our system to say well, we're morally superior to this person. so then we get an exemption because we answer to a higher god or something like that. so that's important as far as voting. the constitution is very clear on that in national elections. it it says that in national elections the state shall have primary responsibility although from time to time. the federal government can come in and by that they meant things like suffrage which happen the 18 year old vote, which was nationalized. so i think what's wrong now is

that people don't read the constitution so people on the right say that the federal government cannot cannot determine how a state runs election at all. it can with a national law. that involves from time to time, but it cannot go in and say to a particular state. you your state has to have both. first and last names are only one first name our address that's up to the states are your you have to have an idea or you did not have an id. so i think that's the difference and it was kind of a balance of the founders did it's worked pretty well. what the great crisis i think right now is whatever your political persuasion is that in 2016. we went to 40 million mail in ballots. and absentee ballots in other words 40 million were not that was about. 42% no, it was even less than

that. but a large percentage of them were not cast on election day and almost immediately hillary clinton, although she alleged that there had been russian collusion and the election was not legitimate. we're forgetting that we had a lot of celebrities who came in and said you've got to contact your electors and they should not vote according to their state mandates. we had jill stein sue and try to overturn the election. this is sort of soon. we had stacey abrams in georgia question, okay. so people question, but it was partly because we didn't have confidence in the auditing of election day. then we had the 2020 election and i do think that donald trump lost the popular vote, but when you have a hundred and two million people that we never had experienced this ostensibly because of covid but 102 million 63% of the electric did not vote on election day in some of them.

voted so early that tradition on american politics the presidential debates. i think when we had the second debate 60 million people had already voted it was irrelevant. so that's a new challenge and when you had some states who had traditionally had rejection rates of four three to five percent of the ballots, but when you swarm the ballots, and their rejection rate because of inadequacies or defective ballots goes from three to five percent to point three to point four by a magnitude of 10 then you have real loss of confidence. so i think in this next election, we've got to decide whether we still have election day as a primary way of expressing support we do fine, but if we're going to go to male ballot, we're going to have to be very we don't that we don't have so many male and and so many absentee ballots that it's almost impossible to adjudicate all of them as as legitimate and that's what the the arguments is right now tom livingston emails

in from springfield, virginia referencing your 2018 book the case for trump. he says is there a case for trump in 2024? everybody's asking that question left and right. on the right and conservatives and traditionals. i think i know a little bit better. i think on the left people are torn but from a different way on the left people are thinking i can't stand the guy. i don't want him to be president but part and then other people say but he's probably given our own bleak prospects. he's the only person who will unite the left again, and we can and we can get so angry out him that and he's probably the only guy we think we can because we beat him more. and we beat him twice in the popular vote. so i think the left is torn between wanting him and not wanting. the right is torn too there about half the people say i like well, i think most of them if

you look at polls 90% so they like the energy in independence. they like sort of a jacksonian foreign policy. where you go after baghdaddy you go after solomani you go after isis eliminate them if they could use that and sanitized word. but you don't have optional military agation engagements on the ground. you don't go into syria and try to adjudicate kirks turks versus kurds etc. okay, you don't go into libya. you don't go into lebanon. you don't go back into eccentric etc. and they like the idea of flyover country needed to be reindustrialized to trade policies deregulation. they like the tax balls. they liked the results of it low and inflation pretty good gdp. very low on employment. people complaint like myself or some critical op-eds about the spiraling debt wasn't as big as it is now, but it was any time a republican spends a lot of money. it says a bad example because

then they lose credence because they're the party or supposedly a physical sobriety. although i'm not sure that's true anymore. so they say we lie. everybody says they like it, but it's broken down and half the people say you can have trumpism without trump by that they mean well, we don't have the facebook detours or the twitter cul-de-sacs or the gratuitous insults. and the other half said no, no. no, you don't understand romneyism will come back mccainism will come back people. do not you they control they being the left control so many institutions you need an attack dog. who's 24/7 say, you know what i don't care about myself. i'm gonna go after them and it's it's you know, what hob said a war of everybody against everybody. so that's where they are. i think realistically so i don't sound wishy washy, if trump wants the nomination. i probably i think more likely than not he's probably gonna win the nomination.

if he wins the nomination. i think people will say well. if he sticks if he gets even rather than just mad in other words, he has a detailed agenda and he doesn't make some of the alma rosa like appointments or steve bannon type appointments, but he's more professional. he's more wisden. is that going to happen and then the other house didn't know that can't happen characters. yes, and i haven't taken the position on that my recent that i voted for him was that i thought he was the first republican candidate that was able to appeal to a constituencies that hadn't two things. he appealed to the middle classes in a way that we publicans hadn't he didn't say, you know, you can't reach 47% of the population because they're on the dole with mitt romney have or he didn't say as john mccain. he bought all the crazies are coming out to vote. and i thought that was wise and he was starting to you know, he got a cut for republicans.

he got a high level of minority support not a lot but more than in 2016 a 2012 and i think he was starting to craft the idea. that whatever your particular ethnic or racial background is you have a commonality. of middle-class concerns about the price of energy the your job prospects wages fuel costs job futures nationalism populism, and that was a very good thing for republicans. i think a lot of people on the left were worried about that that he was tapping into constituencies on the base of class rather than race. so there were certain things. that i think explain why he won the electoral college. well, let's hear from randy and slaughter, louisiana. hi, randy. there dr. professor hanson, i really have enjoyed listening to you. and well, i appreciate you if you do it in such a calm

articulate manner and pointing out these things and i looking forward to getting your book. in fact, i like to get all the books to tell you the truth. thank you. thank you for calling in randy. we appreciate the comments cornelius and alexandria, louisiana. you're next. you know dr. hanson, how you doing there? i'm african american. i'm a big trump supporter. i look forward to reading your case, but i've got a good question for you. i was telling the call screener. we have a baptist college here named louisiana christian university and pineville, louisiana, which we're sister cities, alexandra pineville. so will you be doing a book tour on your newest book? are you do book tours to all the different colleges and universities? i'll take my answer off there. god bless you. doctor you, thank you, you know, i i did one the book came out on

october 5th, so i went to new york for a week and then i i did a lot and now i've stopped one of my concerns for the book to honest. is that we put so much emphasis on amazon, and they i think they're run by computer logarithms or something, but the book came out in october 5th this number two and number three during the day on amazon, but then 48 hours later. it was out of stock and it stayed that way for over 10 days. and so if you wanted to buy the book even though they had according to the publisher basic books thirty thousand copies on hand. i don't know if the supply problem. but there was a sense and when you look at are books that are coming out i think this week by scott atlas or peter navarro's out. there's a sense that that they want to we want to know why they're out of stock and i think my book today is out of stock, even though there's thousands of copies have been printed. so i think we need more diversity in the book selling

business that support independent bookstores support barnes and nobles and alternative. i have nothing i buy a lot of great deal of things on amazon. i'm not bashing amazon, but i think that however, they adjudicate out of stock or ratings or whatever. they're not necessarily they've lost the trot that trust of a lot of authors especially on the conservative side. so try to have a diverse. i wish we had more diversity and and the merchandising up books and victor davis hansen is published by basic books. he's been with that. publisher for a long time. it's part of the haschet group philip in los angeles. good morning to you. thank you very much the fan of yours, dr. hansen of two poor question. one is as a conservative trump support of living in southern california one. how do you view the command of what community heights that the left has in terms of so many

aspects of our culture including education media. even sports now it looks as though to try to get hold of the military and my second part related to that also is as a citizen of california. is it hopeless to be a conservative republican? thank you. i'll take my i'll take your answer while flying. particularly for that question. that's all a lot to answer. i i well when you look at california ostensibly, let's be honest. there is a super majority and the two state legislatures of democrats. there is no statewide. no attorney general or control or governor lieutenant governor, who is republican. of the 53 congressional districts representatives, i think 11 or republican and so yes, it is a monolithic state. and there are pockets of conservatism in the san joaquin valley and the inland empire and especially in the sierra, nevada

and up north so geographically about two thirds of the states are is conservative, but two-thirds population-wise from berkeley to san diego miles inland is liberal. so any whatever that the we know that from this the south one party system, it's not a healthy system. so it's good to have a two-party system. we know that whenever you don't have by people are not adjudicated and challenged bad things happen. and so i'm worried about that, but i think the way i am confident though, because i think what's happening is? that the left said diversity is our future and demography as our future and they welcome illegal immigration and they demonize a lot of the middle class. and they were happy and i'm quoting almost literally i quote him in one of my books a very prominent silicon valley entrepreneurs that we want people to leave california. they're the wrong people here

bill. kristol said that why don't we just replace people that are the wrong people and bring in new people. so there was a sense of that immigration was welcomed legal or not for political purposes, but what's happened is especially with latinos if i could use that's an improper term. i know it's very big but mostly mexican-american people and a lot of african-american people. is they're looking not at the border. they're not looking at the rhetoric of california politics are saying themself. why am i paying the second highest electric bill in the country why i am the highest and the the electric service is not reliable. why are they dismantling diablo canyon nuclear plant when it's clean, it's efficient. it's got a good record and prices will only go up. why haven't we built a dam when in 40 years when we don't we've doubled our population and we're

short of water. why do we have the highest gas taxes? the highest gas prices? why are schools rated 45 on test scores when they're well-funded they used to be seven and eight why is there infrastructure if you go down the 101 or 99 if i why is it so decrepit when we have the highest income tax rates. we have the highest. it's a one of the highest baskets of sales taxes or property tax rate is somewhat moderate, but the evaluations are so high that you pay enormous property. what i'm getting now is you pay so much to get so little and these so i'm very confident and most of the people that i know in my hometown or not so-called white, but they're very conservative or traditional. i don't conservatives right word and they say, you know, i don't really care. just because people who look like me are coming across the border illegally in texas. i'm not wedded to that policy. i'm more worried about my my

american citizens that may be exposed to covid because these people are not vaccinated or when they come to our schools. how are we going to pay for it? so i think classes starting to reassert itself in california and when you start to look at the powers that be in california, we're talking mostly about this again, six trillion dollars of market capitalization in silicon valley. it's where cal tech usc berkeley ucla stanford all the universities and the spinoff industries finance. it's all on the coast and a lot of those people are very very wealthy and they're kind of insulated. on the ramifications of their own ideology they tend to put their kids in prep schools or parochial schools and yet they're very pro-union and they're against for teachers and they're against charter schools or they don't believe in water transfers that the lifeblood of the san joaquin valley, california aqueduct or but they're dependent on hitch catchy. or they don't mind 27 cents a

kilowatt because they're temperate climate 65 to 75 year round. that's not like it is here, you know dense fog today very cold and 108 in august. so i think a lot of people are waking up to that and i think we're in the cusp. i think you're gonna see things that nobody would believe in the next 10 years in california a political a real diversity of political opinion that we don't have now. well victor davis hansen in your book the case for trump you refer to progressives as a monolithic rainbow coalition. what does that mean? yeah what i mean by that is if i were to go to most universities and i would say in class. i really don't if i was asked and i wouldn't go off topic, but if i was asking an interview or people knew my opinions. and i were to say that i don't

like racially segregated safe spaces, or i don't think that young people should free-select their roommate on the basis of race as does as happens. say it the clermont colleges at least one or two of them. i don't believe in separate graduations as you separate ceremonies. i would be in big trouble. and that would be monolithically among the left. i wouldn't if people there were classically liberal democrats agreed with me. i don't think they would voice her opinion. i can tell you that i'm not being theoretical. the stanford faculty senate focused on neil ferguson the historian scott atlas the medical advisor on covid to the president and myself in a way that they didn't bring similar scrutiny to other people who you know, it said some pretty controversial things. i think our crime was to be in the national news or something that suggests that the liberal orthodoxy was flawed because i

couldn't quite see what the what the complaint was, but they chose there was a motion to investigate us in particular and they were institution and generally even though the hoover institution. i think you can make the argument. it's pretty much 50/50 politically now. so it's it's monolithic and i i think you saw that with very wise at the new york times. she was dismissed. you can see that bill maher is under enormous attack because he's a apostate so is dave chappelle? and yet there are apostates larry summers with severely criticized. and yet everybody says, you know the republican party. it's monolithic. it's not it's got all different groups have never trumpers and trumpism but not trump and trump and trumpism, but the democratic party is being controlled by this ideological. it's almost a jacob and movement

of a small ideological base and the old bill clinton democratic leadership council people are terrified of and so that there's not a diversity of thought it's monolithic and all these issues if you're if nancy pelosi or bill clinton or hillary clinton our chuck schumer said in about immigration that it should be legal. it should be diverse. it should be merocratic. and it should lead to assimilation. as they did. either in 92 or 96 at the democratic convention. they would be ostracized from the party and politically ruined today. victor davis hansen you write often for a group called the independent institute. but you also left national review after 20 years saying quote. i think they were happy to see me go. why do you say that? yeah, a couple of things the i don't i'm not affiliated with

the independent institute. that's one of i guess 40 or so people who pick up my column. and one of my columns i write for american greatness is syndicated and the other one isn't. and they can either be a syndicated buyer or have some liberal newspapers that buy it as well. not many but a few and then i have a regular column for american greatness that they can buy. so i've never written anything for them. but i see that they're buying it a lot because i have that question a lot. i get jewish world reviews and other one that seems to and so i get a lot of people say why are you writing for these particular ones? i'm not really i'm writing a syndicated column. that's for the chicago tribune under the aegis of american greatness is the home for the first publisher of and then it goes out the next day and then i write one exclusively for american greatness and then as far as the national view i was there, you know, it was very funny in 2001. they had dismissed and cult of

writing a calm basically that we should i don't know what it was. i don't want to. say something is not entirely accurate, but she'd written a controversial or article about retaliation against saudi arabia because they were the home of the majority of the and they decided not to run it in any way. i got a call from the editor then rich lowry whom i didn't know in 2001 on 9/11 said could you write for us a call? and we need something very quick. we've had to dismiss someone and i ended up being there for 20 years and i wrote two columns a week. for 20 years and then i first excuse me 11 years and for nine years, i wrote and i didn't miss a call and that meant that you know, i had a ruptured appendix and libya i had a kind of a catastrophic bike accident or whatever it was. i made sure that the first thing i did was get my column to the national review and then sometimes to call but i could see that.

there were changes in the national review and i and i didn't think the big break came. i think they would say during the trump years when i thought that and i didn't vote for trump in the primaries. but i think when they wrote that issue that said the case against trump and that was their issue. and it looked like the majority of the republican party was going to nominate him then as the flagship conservative magazine. i thought they should have two the case for trump the case against trump. and i voiced my opinions on that and i was in a distinct minority and then on other suggest, i think i was a little critical. on the covington kids where some people i think tweeted something and said something about that that they were somehow culpable or they were wrong or mr.

phillips. was a distinguished combat veteran and all of these things that were inaccurate. we had disagreements and then as trump got became more controversial. they became very i think they were they felt that i think if i were to be fairly characterizing they felt that he represented in the modern time that john birch society. that william buckley had ostracized from the republican movement and they felt that in the spirit of that. as the continuation of buckley policies it was their job to excise trumpism but my problem with it was that 91% of the republican party had voted for him and that he had brought eight to ten million people back into the political process. and the republicans would be frank and i'm not exempting donald trump. but i mean they had not won 51% since 1988 of the presidential vote and they'd lost seven out of the last eight popular elections.

and that was at a time when they won very well. they did very well the state and local level under the obama administration. they picked up 1100 offices. but there was something wrong that they were not appealing on class terms to a lot of working people that the democratic party seemed to have given up on. so i didn't understand that and i i think i parted amicably i haven't been i mean there was one article where somebody asked me and i said, i just didn't think it was my job to be the internal auditor of republican thought i'm not i've never been a registered republican. i was a democrat and an independent although i vote for me more republicans than not. but i don't know i just felt that. that i was a problem for them and i think if people were to look at what i wrote versus what was being written. this is before 2000 20 january 2021. i think i did say a voice my

warning that after 2021 january 20th. that the assumption that joe biden was old joe biden from scranton and would reflect a moderate temporary silver judicious bill clinton type of what they could get behind as an alternative to the bombastic trump. was not going to happen that it was going to be a hard left agenda and i think if you look at the currency of national view today, it's on the forefront of criticizing the bite industration. i think raises the question. where they surprised or not and but i have no animals toward them. i mean it was it's a wonderful they have i still i still go to it and read a lot of articles. i just think that bet on this issue. unfortunately, it became kind of the issue. and i didn't feel like i think

there were people. that we're not happy that i was there and i didn't want to i didn't want to be i wanted to be happy. let's hear from michael in wyoming michigan michael. thanks for hanging on you're on with victor davis hansen. thank you very much. i'm conservative by nature social moderate. i'm a survivor of childhood traumas, and i'm a product of overcrowded and underserved education. i'm 58 and still working at educating myself. my question is your opinion and your understanding of mortgage backed assets. they're being traded on wall street and their effect on home prices across america. thank you very much. god bless you, and i don't know you, but i love you. bye anything to comment there. yeah, that's a very intelligent question because i think whether we talk about mortgage back back assets. or we look at this unsustainable scenario where we have an annual inflation rate, i think in

october at an annualized rate. it went up six percent and made people are suggesting that at the end of the year could be seven or even eight and yet the interest rates for mortgage loans or one or two percent. what we're doing is we're encouraging people to buy houses that are overpriced and the supply versus the man is way out of synchronization, and so people are buying homes that for prices that are not affordable but because of the interest rate they're buying into it, which is okay because some of them are 30 year loans at we want 2.8 percent, but what happens they lose their job they have almost no equity whatsoever in those homes, and then we have people who are just buying homes because they think they can flip them that and so what i'm getting at there's not all but there's a lot of the conditions that we saw in 2008. it's almost like you know, it's

they set of tallyrans out of the bourbons. we've learned nothing and we've forgotten nothing. so i'm a worried very deeply about our financial situation in general and the mortgage industry in particular that it's starting to resemble 2008 again, and you know, it's just very quickly if you're a middle-class person you work with your tire life. and you say you have $20,000 in the bank or 30 in the old days you might get five percent on it or six percent, but you're not acquainted with flipping houses. you don't know the intricacies of the real estate market and maybe you might or may not have a 401k but you yourself do not know how to invest in stocks. so right now you're getting about 1% on your money, but it's losing. five or six percent annually do inflation. that's and so we're because we're witnessing a massive transfer of wealth away from the middle class to people who are investors and and some of them are just us our neighbors but a lot of them.

you know, is it or on wall street? so we're really getting income disparities and again, it's becomes geographical, too. we're very wealthy enclaves of wealth, but it's not evenly spread out the united states. so i like to see the middle class be able to just say i work hard. i follow the rules. i was parsimonious i saved i've got 35,000 in my life savings and i'm getting five or six percent and that's three percent over inflation, and i'm happy. but rather than i'm being punished for saving i should i'm supposed to go out and invest or flip houses in a way that i have no idea how to do that. i'm speaking of myself as well. i don't know how to do that. well, let's make sure in the last 10 minutes of our program here we get in. victor davis hansen's favorite books and some of what he is currently reading favorite books include winston churchill's the history of the second world war joseph conrad's victory through cities history of the apollo

panezian war john keegan the face of battle kingsley amos. lucky jim edward gibbon the history of the decline in fall of the roman empire. this is what dr. hanson is currently reading andrew roberts the last king of america david mammits recessional and barry strauss the war that made the roman empire. salvador texts into you from new york city given the now almost complete closing of the american mind that alan bloom spoke of 30 years ago. what do you see as a glimmers of hope? well, i think there is a popular. a popular distrust of what i would call technocrats and people who aren't elected and you can see that about the administrators of the school not

the school board, so they're elected but even then they're being recalled, but the idea that we have this professional education lobby and they are dictating to policies and suggest that the parents have no input. on a variety of controversial topics. we saw that backlash and uprising in virginia. that's kind of sweeping the country and i think there was outraged when general milley said that he called up his chinese counterpart. we never had a chair that joint chief even suggests that it just was surrealistic. and i think people had enormous confidence and support and wanted to support dr. fauci. but when he said, you know mask or not viable, but you should wear mouse you should wear two masks or we want to reach toward a herd immunity that can be achieved at 60 70 80 90 percent or i'm against mandates, but i now we have to have mandates or

he downplayed natural immunity, which we know can be in many cases comparable to acquired vaccination community. or he denied even the possibility of gain of function research going on. so we've lost confidence in a lot of our medical professionals. so i think that a lot of people are saying you know, what, ultimately you get back to the idea that the informed citizen especially the middle class. they're not minkins --. they're really independent of columnists thinking people and anytime they concede political power undue influence to unelected people. whether that's in the fbi the cia the nsa the doj. the nih the cdc then you're going to have bad things happen. you have to be constantly vigilant and hold them to account. and make sure that they're consistent and they tell the truth and if you have an official. who goes to congress as john

brennan did or james clapper did and says some are andrew mccabe to a federal investigator and says something that's not true under oath. then they're going to have to be subject to the same consequences that any of the people listening would be if they said something that was onto an irs investigator. next call comes from claudia in san mateo, california claudia, please go ahead. um, hello, dr. hansen. i'm a big fan. my question is pretty straightforward. i'm independent and i am terribly underrepresented by both parties and yet to become a candidate or to grow a citizens congress seemed nearly impossible because both parties seem to have are in lockstep against the average citizen running for office and because they're the ones making all the rules. it feels as though the deck is really stacked against the average middle class and

definitely the poor income citizens. what solutions do you do you think would allow us to get rid of all the entrenched professionals in congress and allow us to have a congress represented by people thank you, claudia. well, you know i didn't believe in term limits, but i'm starting to believe that you that term limits are a wise i did but the problem with term limits, is that a person. goes into the state legislatures as an assembly person than they're termed out. they go to a state center. then they're termed out then they go so that's a problem, but i think term limits are i think they're not a very good solution, but there is there are helpful solution. i think that's important. i think we said we saw people in new jersey and virginia. i think it's good to vote for people who have a different background what i mean by background, that is they don't come out of the political legal nexus. i like the idea of voting for i

mean voting for people in business. i like, you know for and all sorts of businesses farming ranching small business person. i just don't think that a corporate ceo or professional politician or a lawyer as necessarily. the best background for politicians. so i think a lot of people are starting to agree with that or i should say. i'm a green with a lot of people we're seeing a lot more diverse. especially people coming out from the lower ranks of the military. i'm kind of skeptical about people at one three and four stars. adenos because so often they revolve from a corporate board into into government. i mean in they revolve after retiring from a corporate board into government and back out to a corporate defense contractor board, but a lot of the, you know enlisted people and lower level officers are wonderful candidates of both part. mike detroit good afternoon. well, good afternoon.

yeah, i wonder if doctor could hanson could address who and what this democratic party had become because the polar opposite of the world war two generation who raised me and it just seems like they purged everybody who won't go along with their radical destructive agenda and won't put the party above the welfare of the nation. i i think you took the words right out of my mouth i grew up in a democratic. former household my grandparents. were sort of agrarian populist my grandmother got an award when she was 20 restarting the cross of gold's beach by william james bryan and not that i would say that he was a model for what i believe in but the point was they were strong democrats my father. he flew 40 missions on a b-29 his first cousin who was i'm named after who was kind of adopted by his family when his mother died died on okinaw and

we always had the flag out all the time. i mean veterans day you name it? it was on our house very proud of the united states. my mom was the same way and they were democrats. so what i'm getting at is there was no sense. that of conservative or rural democrats and they were very strong civil rights advocates. i can remember when i was 12 years old. we got in the car and drove all the way up to. race cathedral here martin luther king speak, my mother detoured into hunters point because she found a list of african-american people who might not have access they would have take the bus. we picked up three women when we had a very small car and the eight of us drove into grace. we didn't know where to park or anything but time we park we walked all the way up. it was over pack my mom when the door started to close. she literally pushed me in i was the only one of the party who've heard him speak, but they were

they were classical liberals and this idea that today that you cancel somebody out because you don't agree with them or you tear down statues without a consensual vote of a city council or you rename things without any consistency or it's kind of trotskyising. we're we're washing away people or names or ideas that we don't like and we're not doing it in the light of day with necessarily always on a majority vote or through a constitutional means or were berating people or we're suspending free speech or the due process on campuses. so this isn't the democratic party that a lot of us knew victor davis victor davis hanson's most recent book is called the dying citizen how progressive elites tribalism and globalization are destroying the ideas of america. dr. hanson, thank you for rejoining us on in-depth on book tv.

thank you for giving me the chance to do so. i really appreciate it. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast every saturday american history tv documents america's story and on sundays book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors funding for c-span 2 comes from these television companies and more including midco. in midco along with these television companies support c-span 2 as a public service you're watching book tv for a complete television schedule visit booktv.org. you can also follow along behind the scenes on social med