Farms, Universities and Businessmen
Update: 2025-01-16
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Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler to look at Hoover’s legacy, Stewart Resnick's farms, the presidency left in shambles for Donald Trump, how red-state universities are still DEI infused, the worst VP-pick in history, Zuckerberg’s convenient mea-culpa, and Classics in education.
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00:00:00
One of my favorite traditions is choosing New Year's resolutions.
00:00:04
We all get the opportunity to start the New Year fresh, set goals,
00:00:09
and tackle new and exciting challenges.
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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Victor Davis Hanson show I'm Jack Fowler.
00:01:49
You are here to hear from the star and name-sake, Victor Davis Hanson,
00:01:54
who is the Martin and Ili Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
00:01:59
and the way Namarsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.
00:02:03
He's got a website, the blade of Perseus.
00:02:06
VictorHanson.com is the address. You should go there regularly and you should
00:02:11
even be subscribing. Later on, I'll tell you why.
00:02:15
We are recording on Saturday the 11th of January.
00:02:20
This particular episode should be up on Thursday the 16th.
00:02:24
My Victor and I have talked in our recent episode and he did talk with the great
00:02:29
Sammy Wink prior to that about the terrible fires in Southern California and the
00:02:36
knuckleheads and malicious people who have whose policies and
00:02:41
inactions have brought that all about.
00:02:43
I did want to talk about one or two other things related to that.
00:02:47
Then we have so much about corporate DEI, Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe if we even have
00:02:52
oh, red state of Ohio, letting their universities just be DEI
00:03:00
epicenters, if you will. So it's so much to talk about and we'll get Victor's wisdom when we come
00:03:05
back from these important messages.
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We are back with the Victor Davis-Hanson show. We're on Rumble now. By the way,
00:05:45
these podcasts which are come from just the news.com John Solomon's website.
00:05:51
We also now record them. Video record them and I think folks may be enjoying that.
00:05:58
Some folks are asking questions about Victor's hat. I know.
00:06:01
Corrothers. Oh, this is Corrothers' Pompets.
00:06:04
I have a bunch of people come up and give me hats all the time.
00:06:09
There are lots. This is from a very good local irrigation.
00:06:14
And then I have another one from guard to talian.
00:06:18
They're another irrigation company.
00:06:20
And then I have one from compost farms.
00:06:23
Firm and compost is farm. So I have a lot of them. I just wear them.
00:06:28
I must have 20 of them. I just put them on before I come on.
00:06:32
I'm out of the so-called annex.
00:06:36
The former manger or barn manger that I grew up in that's now an annex I call it.
00:06:44
And it's cold. It's been very cold here so my skeletor head gets cold.
00:06:52
Well, well, you're also wearing a Hoover jacket.
00:07:01
I wonder what I'm going to do.
00:07:01
Yes, I am. And I get this free every year.
00:07:04
If you're a Hoover fellow and you teach, we bring in people.
00:07:09
It's a wonderful program developed by...
00:07:12
I'm glad you asked me about Scott Atlas.
00:07:14
You all know the Zara to Trump on COVID.
00:07:18
And in Josh Rao and they created this program to bring in undergraduates from all over the country.
00:07:25
And they call it boot camp.
00:07:27
And then they're there for about a week.
00:07:29
And they get a different view on economics, politics, strategy, history from Hoover Fellows.
00:07:35
And they don't just self-select conservative students.
00:07:38
The point is to give a different view to liberal students as well.
00:07:43
So I'm wearing, I have about five of these that I get.
00:07:48
And I don't try to wear them in public where I live.
00:07:52
Okay.
00:07:54
Because if you wear something that has Stanford on it, somebody will come up to you and say,
00:07:59
"Oh, you think you're better than everybody, huh?"
00:08:01
Well, on our last recording, Victor, you were talking about the idea
00:08:08
with that Donald Trump who's being given, as we speak, the middle finger by the state legislature,
00:08:15
that he has the, of course, know it all when it comes to construction.
00:08:19
Why not ask him to cooperate with him and have some, essentially, a Zara to help with the clean up
00:08:27
and rebuild the devastation there.
00:08:30
And it reminds me, while we were talking, I didn't bring it up in the episode,
00:08:32
but that the place you work, the Hoover Institution, is named for a man, Herbert Hoover,
00:08:38
who was such a person who took on calamity and actually there are hundreds of millions of people.
00:08:47
I can't imagine there's someone who has more consequence for people living today than Herbert Hoover.
00:08:54
He's a wonderful person. He's, he's most famous for World War One relief.
00:08:59
And I think he was FDR's, excuse me, Calvin Coolidge's secretary of commerce.
00:09:08
It was Converter's secretary.
00:09:09
And he did such a wonderful, he was considered a boy wonder in the 20s.
00:09:13
As he went over to Europe, he was, he came out, he was in pauvres, she was in orphan.
00:09:18
He was the first student to graduate from Stanford University.
00:09:22
And he married a very brilliant woman, Luhan.
00:09:28
Some of you know his great-great granddaughter, Margaret Hoover, who was on Fox,
00:09:33
and also has the PBS, not PBS, but firing line, but New Henry Hoover, of which we used to have a
00:09:43
building named at Hoover, translated a lot of Latin text of metallurgy. And she was quite gifted,
00:09:51
but he had nothing. And he went to Mexico and all over the world as an engineer and geologist,
00:09:58
geological engineer, and he made a lot of money. And then he, at a very young age,
00:10:04
volunteered to go over to Europe and he did two things. He saved millions of people by organizing
00:10:12
food relief and the famine that happened after the preside treaty. And then why he was there,
00:10:18
that of course the Bolshevik revolution occurred. And tens of thousands of so-called white Russians,
00:10:26
no, that does not talk about, that does not refer to their race. It refers to their royalists or
00:10:32
tsarist allegiances. They use white instead of red communists. Well, they were fleeing, and many
00:10:39
of them were fleeing from records of tsarist Russia. And so he started the Hoover Archives,
00:10:47
and then that created a tradition of collecting their papers after World War I.
00:10:55
And then communists, defectors, people who rejected communists, social nets, people,
00:11:05
as they came from Russia, they went to Hoover and donated. Now I'm on the 11th floor of the tower,
00:11:11
but I think it's floors four to ten are just solid archives. It's the greatest in America,
00:11:19
the greatest archival depository of papers about the transition from tsarism to communism,
00:11:27
and later communism, especially World War II. When I did the Second World Wars, it's got a lot
00:11:34
of information there, and Herbert Hoover was a wonderful person. But there were great people,
00:11:41
great men out there that could take on great tasks. There are a lot of, I have a lot of colleagues,
00:11:45
I mean, you have people like John Kogan, John Taylor, John Cochran, Michael Bosch and Josh Rao,
00:11:52
who are expert economists that could really offer their services. There are people
00:11:58
in education, in political science, and in Leohanian, you know him. He's wonderful. And people
00:12:12
like that that study Californians problem and would be, but the left doesn't draw on the Hoover institution.
00:12:19
Well, let's talk a little more about California, Victor, and then Gosh, we have Joe Biden
00:12:27
with Aziz heading out the exits, giving Trump an America, the middle finger on immigration.
00:12:34
But first, I saw this very interesting headline. It's in the news, of course, it relates to water and
00:12:41
fire in California, and it's from the Daily Mail, the pistachio billionaires who guzzle more water
00:12:48
than all of fire ravaged Los Angeles, the Rezniks, Victor, any thoughts about their some there?
00:12:55
They seem to be part of the democratic establishment. Well, they own something, it was started as paramount
00:13:03
farms in the early 80s. They're not farmers. They weren't originally. They're very wealthy,
00:13:10
Beverly Hills investors. He and his wife. They bought Fiji water, you know. And they decided to
00:13:19
invest heavily in the west side of California, not where I am, the east side. Well, there is no water
00:13:25
table to speak of. It's down 500, 600,000. And it depends on this water transfer from the aqueduct.
00:13:31
And the long and the short of it is they were very visionary in the sense that they understood the
00:13:38
land is worthless unless you have federal water and that federal water in the aqueduct coming from
00:13:44
northern California for agricultural purposes was designed around 1960s and 70s when California was
00:13:54
about 15 million people. And as the years grew, San Jose started taking water out of the aqueduct.
00:14:01
San Luis Obispo did, Santa Barbara did, and there was less and less water for farming.
00:14:07
And that coincided with not annual row cropping. Or there was cotton or tomatoes or
00:14:14
row crops. But people started in the almond boom of the 90s started to plant permanent crops. And
00:14:22
that was very important because not because as alleged almonds take all this water or they take
00:14:29
about three acre feet. So does cotton, so does grapes or tomato. But the difference was they were
00:14:34
permanent crops with maybe 15 to 20,000 in acre and investment. So if you cut off the water as they
00:14:42
periodically did during droughts, you didn't just lose that year's cotton crop. You lost the tree,
00:14:49
the investment and everything. So they began to understand that and they began not just to buy land,
00:14:57
but you can buy water rights. In other words, the acre feet in an open market, water district to water
00:15:04
district trades water. Some water districts have more and they have less demand, some have more
00:15:10
demand and less water rights. It's all about the water right you have that's gifted in or written
00:15:16
in in the early, sometimes it's early 19s, but it's mostly after the Central Valley project was started.
00:15:23
And so they owned their water rights and they began to plant heavily in almonds and pistachios.
00:15:32
And those became in 2014 the price of almonds had gone from a dollar 50 all the way up to 440
00:15:40
a pound and the break even was two dollars. So you were making 250 a pound and the production had
00:15:46
gone from 2000 an acre up to 3000. So think about it, you get a 3000 pounds per acre and you're netting
00:15:56
after all your expenses say two dollars a pound is 6,000 an acre and profit and you have 100,000 acres.
00:16:07
So you're making 100 at a thousand an acre you're making 100 million. So 600 million and profits.
00:16:18
If you own 100,000 acres which they do, I think they're up to about 120. I think they're second only
00:16:26
to JG Boswell but somebody's going to call and say you're wrong or you're right or something. Boswell is
00:16:31
very big in the Tolerary Lake Basin but the difference is this is what I'm trying to get out. The
00:16:37
difference why people talk about paramount farms and now it's called I think the wonderful company
00:16:43
is that of all the west side agribusiness barons there's all these third and fourth generation name.
00:16:51
You know John Harris for example, wonderful man, wonderful company, large but not nearly that
00:16:58
large but a philanthropist for 50 years and his dear wife Carol just passed away, one of my favorite
00:17:06
people in the world. She was a wonderful person but people like the Harris family or the compost family
00:17:15
you know Tony Comples and a number of them they used to be you know the Peck family or Russell Giffin
00:17:24
Boswell Salier but these were old names but Resnik was not, he was an urban person who came in and
00:17:32
used off farm capital to buy farmland at the perfect time right before, right before they cut off the
00:17:41
water and he bought water rights as well as planted nut trees and pistachios now and commons. Well they're
00:17:50
not they're not good right now but until five years ago as I said he made billions of dollars out of
00:17:56
this. The other difference was not just that he was a newcomer he was not a sandwich, he never lived
00:18:03
where he farm. A lot of these guys either live in Fresno or they live out there but he lived in
00:18:08
on Beverly Hills like it. The other difference was he was on the political left. These guys were pretty
00:18:14
conservative. I have to be very careful because I'm not trying to disparage anybody but for there
00:18:21
was a time that anywhere I was asked to speak on agricultural matters between Bakersfield and Fresno
00:18:29
and I still am whether it was on water policy or democratic politics and cutting off water or
00:18:35
I appeared with Devonoon as a couple of times are on farming. There was always a resident representative in
00:18:42
the audience and they always I felt asked costal question and so I don't have any innate dislike of
00:18:54
them. They're the biggest nut grower in the world, the greatest biggest almond grower in the world.
00:19:00
They have a million square foot almond processing plant. They have absorbed, they have a I think it's
00:19:06
a plum granite juice, they have feed you water and they're a big stalwart of the Los Angeles
00:19:14
Democratic donor class. But if you Google, Resnick or Paramount Farms are wonderful. You will see
00:19:28
all of these left wing attacks on them because they have control of what you're referencing.
00:19:33
They have as much right to water as say two or three million people in Los Angeles do.
00:19:41
That is a little bit misleading though and unfair to them because the land itself the water
00:19:49
they have originally is based on the acreage they have. So they're allowed to sell it but if they
00:19:55
sell it they won't be able to farm is what I'm saying. And so the land the land and the water outlost
00:20:02
outlast all of us. If you believe that it's in California's interest to be the world's leader
00:20:11
in pistachios and almonds both domestic and exporting and that those are very healthy crops.
00:20:18
In the case of almonds you can have milk and butter and oil almost everything and to a lesser degree
00:20:28
pistachios then it's good to have that type of industry in California and the industry comes with
00:20:34
rights to grow it out of the aqueduct and therefore they were the most astute in
00:20:43
fine excess water for farming and now they have banked it. But I'm not sure that there's just
00:20:51
anybody for non-agvocultural purposes they may be but I'm not aware of it. Well there's water to
00:20:56
be had in other ways and the taxpayers proved money to build reservoirs etc so I don't
00:21:05
whether these folks are left or or. We wouldn't have any of these discussions as I said they had
00:21:10
just built the temperance flat and the sites in the lost panel's grandies reservoir and gave us
00:21:16
5 million acre fee. It's all sold and funded. They've all done the environmental studies that
00:21:22
it's not high Sierra it's kind of scrub low land you know 500 to a thousand feet maybe even less.
00:21:30
You could be easily done you could easily expand Millerton Lake and do it. You could do the
00:21:35
sites reservoir. You could you get another San Luis reservoir right down the aqueduct from it.
00:21:40
You know just requires skill the imagination. The only thing I would like to say and this is this
00:21:46
applies to California but I am starting to worry that even if we had the will we don't have the
00:21:54
expertise and by that I mean our schools of engineering and the people that are admitted I'm not sure
00:22:01
they're admitted on always merit-cratic grounds. I don't I think the curriculum of DEI has permeated
00:22:08
the sciences now and I think people are evaluated on criteria other than engineering and I think when
00:22:15
you're hired and you're an engineer there are criteria that are not merit-cratic that govern
00:22:21
your tenure and your advancement and promotions and I think they're also just so we dependent on
00:22:30
computers that somebody else has done that they don't have the skill. They don't have the skill
00:22:37
to do the engineering to craft such a sophisticated water system. It's kind of like medicine too. I'm
00:22:43
not sure that some of our new doctors have the skill of the old people. Yeah. So we don't want
00:22:51
ground surgery at all but we certainly don't want a 10 years from now when the I we haven't been
00:22:55
able to go to the moon. I guess we decided it wasn't worth it but I'm not sure if we if something
00:23:00
happened to Elon Musk I don't think we could go back to the moon. I don't think NASA could do it.
00:23:05
Well Victor we're going to talk about Joey Biden but first I want to take a moment for
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Victor, a little more me talking which I know is like fingernails on a blackboard for some listeners but
00:24:21
somebody waiting to do. Here's a headline from Politico. Biden extends temporary status of nearly
00:24:30
one million immigrants ahead of Trump deportations. The Biden administration announced Friday that would
00:24:36
be January 10th. It would extend temporary deportation relief to nearly one million people from
00:24:42
El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela just stays before Donald Trump and just the White House
00:24:48
with a vow to restrict the program. Victor this is a big big middle finger your thoughts.
00:24:55
Well, it's trying to destroy the plan of Donald Trump oil and gas by putting
00:25:03
the largest acreage in history in one fell swoop off the development of rare earth minerals which
00:25:11
people for our electric vehicle industry, for oil, for gas. I thought he liked Europe. He tried to stop
00:25:19
the liquid natural gas terminal. I thought he really liked Europe and he would like to help them
00:25:24
but he's making it very hard to develop more natural gas and then to liquefy it and ship it to Europe.
00:25:33
He doesn't want that. When these presidents do that nobody's ever done it quite like he has.
00:25:39
Why didn't they just do it when they were president so that the natural assumption the logic is they
00:25:44
didn't do it because the people didn't want it and they wouldn't get elected or if they were a one-term
00:25:49
president and they're one-term left to go. They didn't do it because they thought that it would
00:25:55
create a backlash where they would either lose the midterms in the second term or they would lose
00:26:02
than their chosen candidate to follow would lose but he doesn't care and he's out. So his whole idea is
00:26:12
I cannot stand Donald Trump and I hate Donald Trump more than I like the American people. So I'm
00:26:17
going to sell off the wall. That'll screw him but in more illegal aliens. I'm going to put people who
00:26:23
already have been adjudicated. They should be deported. I'm going to stay that deported. That'll kind
00:26:28
of like those sand in the gears. That'll take him another six months to unravel. I'll put all this
00:26:33
land off. That'll take more time for him to go to court. All my liberal appointees will sandbag him
00:26:39
in the judiciary. I'll sell off all the wall. That'll means he'll have to buy it at three times, four
00:26:45
times the price given inflation and we can then get my left wing media to show how expensive and
00:26:51
wasteful it is. So that's how it's and we've got a pardon. I pardoned 1500 people. A lot of them are
00:26:57
killers and maybe some of them will have crime during his tenure and it will embarrass him. I've got
00:27:03
a lot of people off death row. I pardoned Hunter and I will guarantee you, Jack, there are more
00:27:13
pardons to come and he didn't roll that out. He was ass at the other day and he wouldn't roll it out.
00:27:20
But just ask yourself this. If you were Liz Cheney right now and you had been appointed to a special
00:27:31
select committee on January 6th and usually you would have one less member than the Democrats and
00:27:39
they had deliberately for the first time in the history of a House of Representatives denied the
00:27:44
minority leader Kevin McCarthy at this point. Representation partly because Liz Cheney was the
00:27:51
consultant as a senior Republican with Benny Thompson and you only had two people she and Kiddensinger
00:27:59
and they were there as they had voted to just voted to impeach Trump and they had no political
00:28:07
futures and they knew that a lot of the records that they acquired the phone records, the interviews,
00:28:19
the tapes, the videos, the transcripts were very embarrassing and were not used in the investigations
00:28:27
because some people testified in a way that confounded their intent that they would testify and
00:28:33
that stuff is reportedly missing right now or if you were Liz Cheney and you did call up Cassie Hutchinson
00:28:42
and you did try to to coach her testimonies in a way that her lawyer would not have allowed had
00:28:51
he known that you were stealthily contacting her and that could in theory be used by your opponents
00:28:58
to suggest you were witness tampering. I think you would want a pardon. I really do and if you were
00:29:05
Jim Biden or Joe Biden's sister or Joe Biden's niece and for these years that $20 million was not
00:29:15
all swallowed up by Joe Biden. It was dispersed to grandkids to all of them Ashley, and therefore they
00:29:26
were either in a conspiracy or racketeering a federal prosecutor might suggest to hide the nature of
00:29:33
that income and not to pay federal income tax on it because to declare it would mean it existed
00:29:40
and we saw that with Hunter. They got Hunter on the four originally and they got him on the tax
00:29:48
and they were going to let him go but they still had the tax that he was pardoned for. He'd be in jail.
00:29:53
So I think they're going to want pardons for them. Whether Joe Biden himself would want a pardon,
00:30:00
I don't know, but he has criminal culpability too. What's ironic about all of this, he is setting
00:30:10
the stage for himself. So if you're a local or state prosecutor and you've seen what local or state
00:30:18
prosecutors have done to Donald Trump and Joe Biden leaves office and he has been
00:30:24
arrogant trying to destroy Trump and you're a Trump partisan. There might be some people who would
00:30:33
what say tit for tat and wage law fair against Joe Biden not that they would necessarily win given
00:30:40
supreme court rules and except but Joe Biden is going to be a private citizen. He's not going to
00:30:44
be running for office and he's got a lot of I think criminal exposure and he's he's going to be 83
00:30:52
years old and does he really want to spend the next four or five years spending his ill gotten
00:30:58
millions of dollars from China in legal fees to like Trump had to do. So I think he will there will
00:31:05
be people around him if not him himself. The other thing I think is he's worried about and this
00:31:11
came after during that reckless period of Joe's first year where hundreds lawyers when they cut the
00:31:17
sweetheart deal got it in part by threatening to call Joe Biden the president to testify and to put
00:31:26
him on the spot to either lie under oath and for his son or not to testify and then there was the
00:31:34
paint with your nose and blow the paint on the canvas and sell it to he was acting in such a reckless
00:31:40
manner it was almost broadcasting as I said earlier I am reckless I was the bagman I took all the blame
00:31:48
for the family consortia you all made fun of me I you all got a good laugh about being being naked
00:31:54
and showing my genitals on the laptop you all got all my discussions of sex we get that but you took
00:32:02
the money from my dirty hands and you think you're all going to be better than I am and that that's
00:32:07
in the the laptop that that attitude when he says I pay I pay dad's power you know I
00:32:14
Mr. Big Guy and 10% and nobody he didn't nobody always doesn't appreciate what I'm doing so I think
00:32:22
there's a sense there that when Joe Biden has to be very careful that if he comes out of office and
00:32:31
people prosecutors look at some of this stuff he might just want to pardon people around him the
00:32:36
family so I think there'll be pardons for the family at least some members yeah well Victor we'll
00:32:44
take a little change of direction here we'll talk about DEI and whatever some other corporate
00:32:53
activism I corporate ideology we'll do all that when we come back from these important messages
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We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show recording on January 11th Saturday this episode is up
00:36:07
on Thursday the 16. A lot of stuff may have happened in the intervening period Victor I forget when
00:36:15
Biden's giving his farewell address maybe that will have happened between these dates of course
00:36:23
you'll cover it with the great Sammy Wink maybe sponsored by Jell-O I understand Victor has a website
00:36:31
the blade of Perseus you should check it out folks and you should more than do more than that you should
00:36:36
subscribe excuse me Victor's you'll find his weekly essays or American greatness is syndicated column
00:36:46
archives of these podcasts Victor's other appearances Victor's books some Victor's just I don't
00:36:53
know he's a kaleidoscope of just so much activity it's mind-boggling but he does write two pieces a
00:37:01
week for the blade of Perseus their ultra articles are exclusive to the website he also does a video
00:37:07
every week so if you would like to be part of that do it's five bucks a month 50 dollars for
00:37:14
the year discounted that's the blade of Perseus victor Hansen dot com Victor I'll come I'll put
00:37:22
these both together here's a headline meta meta which is the old Facebook and Amazon ditch
00:37:32
ditch DEI programs as tech giants move away from quote-unquote woke agenda and then kind of related
00:37:40
black rock that which I think has more money than any other entity in the world black rock exits
00:37:46
climate activist group after pressure from republicans black rock was being tormented rightly so
00:37:54
I think by eleven republican uh state attorneys general black rock victor as far as I could in my
00:38:01
opinion was it was trying to blackmail the rest of the uh corporate community into following
00:38:08
yeah I in the green agenda I think they're going to have some legal exposure because when you give
00:38:14
your money to an investment concern there's all sorts of statutes and that their purpose is to try
00:38:23
to return a reasonable profit on your money but if they're using their money for their own social
00:38:29
welfare agenda whether it's green or DEI or whatever and the return is not what others have been
00:38:36
getting in the case of black rock it hasn't and but more importantly in a way to mask their lack of
00:38:43
competitiveness they are trying to get through contributions or pressures on legislature legislatures
00:38:53
federal and state to require other people to be as incompetent as you are uh with mandates about
00:39:01
investment then yeah then it's it seems to me that racketeering or conspiracy they're going to be
00:39:06
looking at it the whole thing about the whole DEI and DST and all that stuff it's a race now
00:39:14
because now everybody's liberated because of what you see every single day whether it's a police
00:39:22
chief and New Orleans or you see the DEI crap uh and what happens they see the real results of DEI
00:39:31
and then they saw it uh you know what you saw mr. me yorkas they saw mr. buddy jig
00:39:37
they looked at that cabinet they were all incompetent every single one of them the energy secretary
00:39:43
what's in Jennifer Graham huh she didn't even know how many barrels of oil we we we pump
00:39:49
they were put there for their race and gender uh and it so there's this anger now at it
00:39:58
there's another thing that's going on that the upper middle class
00:40:02
Asian and white communities that are highly educated professionals
00:40:07
and who are left wing liberals they have been sending their kids to get branded with these names
00:40:15
Harvard Sanford Dale do better and they have not been getting in under reputory admissions
00:40:20
there's not enough room to get your kid into Stanford when they're taking 9% of white males as they
00:40:26
have been doing so you get angry you and there I talked to some of the it's that if I could sum up
00:40:32
their attitude it's I am so liberal and I've supported all these DEI and then they DEI me
00:40:38
me of all people me my children I did not have a child to be on the altar of DEI that's not going
00:40:46
to be sacrificed and and they're starting to turn off so now it's just a race and DEI and you
00:40:52
look at the salaries they've gotten so it's now merged with a lot of scandalous questions one of them
00:40:57
is the rate of tuition increases as accelerated higher than the rate of inflation and when Stanford
00:41:05
has 15,000 staffers and 16,000 students graduate and undergraduate people start looking at this
00:41:13
administrative bloat and so far they can't talk about it because a lot of it is DEI hundreds of
00:41:20
these people who as I said they're not just expensive they retard efficiency by putting their
00:41:27
everybody's syllabus or research or hiring or promotion so it's a race now and the races
00:41:37
between people who say you got to stop this it's destroying the country it's creating cynicism
00:41:42
it's destroying meritocracy it's racist we're a multiracial society you cannot possibly favor this
00:41:50
group that group against each other versus you're a racist you're a racist you're a racist you're
00:41:56
homophobic you're sexist the old fallback is a monology argument to intimidate people so they're
00:42:03
so as I said earlier with Karen Bass as soon as there was a member of congress so this is directed
00:42:10
her because she's a proud black woman I don't think that that argument is going to prevail that
00:42:16
the majority is now seen so many problems with DEI and suffered directly from it that they have
00:42:23
no constituency and you know what the irony is it's going to be the best thing for the beneficiaries
00:42:29
of the program I mean it won't be for the careerist and the untalented but for people who are really
00:42:35
skilled who made it entirely of merit and are brilliant legislators and I'm thinking of people like
00:42:42
Byron Donnell's you know of Florida our actor like Denzel Washington for people like are I
00:42:49
think Clarence Thomas is a great judge I really do and for people like that it's wonderful because
00:42:57
then it takes away any suggestion that their race mattered when it really didn't because they were
00:43:03
as good or superior to people of other races and genders so I think it'll restore the idea that
00:43:10
whoever is occupying a position made it on merit and you won't have that tinge I mean I read Michelle
00:43:19
Obama's Princeton thesis Christopher Hitchens the late Christopher Hitchens said Victor I'm
00:43:24
going to write a column about that and I have a copy I'm going to send it online and it's written
00:43:28
in the language other than English so you're a philologist and you know Greek and Latin come
00:43:33
back and see if you any of your classical or modern languages you could decipher and I read it
00:43:38
and it was all about forming communities of resistance and support among alumni to help
00:43:45
black students at Princeton and it was just incomprehensible the vocabulary that syntax it was just
00:43:53
and so I don't think that anybody who wrote that under normal circumstances would have been
00:44:00
admitted to Princeton I don't think clouding gay given her plagiarism would have been admitted I
00:44:07
don't think anybody in their right mind in the democratic party would have picked Kamala Harris
00:44:12
who was a plagiarist we forget that Jack she was a plagiarist she plagiarized I don't think
00:44:19
anybody would have picked her if Joe Biden terrified after George Floyd when use their usual suspect
00:44:25
representative clayborn threatened you know we after George Floyd we want this and this and this
00:44:34
if you want our support in the prime he promised to pick a black woman and then he found out it was
00:44:40
basically Karen Bass I'm serious Karen Bass he considered or Kamala Harris that's a toss up actually
00:44:48
actually marches those she is incompetent Stacy Abram the government the election denial
00:44:56
is par excellence yeah yeah so I hope it died but he's sake yeah well we're a very dynamic society and
00:45:08
there's 335 million of us and there's about 50 million that are the smartest most capable people
00:45:17
in the world I'm not one of them but 50 million I see these are scientists doctor and they are the size
00:45:26
of a major European country geniuses and these people keep us competitive and the other thing is I'm
00:45:33
I'm against illegal immigration I have big problems with H1 visas that are but when you start to
00:45:40
get the top people like Elon Musk I spent this whole week interviewing junior fellows for where I
00:45:48
work at Hoover these are people who are offered five or 10 year you know what I've discovered after
00:45:53
looking over 900 applications what the United States is draining the talent of Europe
00:46:02
at the very high levels I have been looking at the files and interviewing people in artificial
00:46:10
intelligence cyber warfare sophisticated history national security education I would say 50 to
00:46:19
60% of the people that I look at are all from Europe in other words they're people that were trained in
00:46:24
Europe Oxford Cambridge Heidelberg Munich Sorbonne the top of the top they feel that there's no
00:46:33
chance for advancement or enrichment or upward mobility in these socialist stagnant failing states
00:46:41
so they've come over here for a postdoc at Harvard Stanford John Hopkins something and now they
00:46:46
want to stay here and they're applying for these jobs and they are as good at or better than our
00:46:55
Americans I would say not better but as good but my point is the Americans that are in this pool are
00:47:01
brilliant and when I talk when I've been interviewing this historians about to see people we had a
00:47:11
I just interviewed a person he has a 10 10 languages 10 another person
00:47:20
from Germany fluent French fluent German fluent English fluent Russian and then a very sophisticated
00:47:28
analysis of grain markets and right it was just brilliant it's what I'm saying so we are a very
00:47:37
dynamic society and as long as we get meritocracy and people know that there's not going to be a
00:47:44
Gavin Newsom over your shoulder a Camilla Harrison competent and you can come here and make money
00:47:50
and be recognized for your talent like Elon Musk we're going to everybody in the world is going to
00:47:55
come here and as long as they come legally and they're at the very elite and they don't take a job
00:48:01
away from I don't think they should take it away from the American working classes at all right but
00:48:06
the very elite I think it benefits the country well there is that visa we've talked about in the past
00:48:13
we shouldn't go down this rabbit hole but invest in America you get a visa of some sort but your
00:48:19
investment has to create jobs so yeah if you come here and you're brilliant and you add to America
00:48:25
and part of that you got to add to America you got to like America yeah these people that I've
00:48:30
interviewed seem to love America what's not to love I'll tell you what's not to love there so we
00:48:38
continue on DEI a little pause I have a little pause the low hanging fruit of DEI targets we've talked
00:48:48
about this in the past let me just preface this by saying governor of Florida Ron DeSantis who
00:48:59
got quite attention two years ago when he replaced the board of new college Florida has done that
00:49:06
again with the I think it's the the University College of Western Florida it's in the panhandle
00:49:14
and he's he's replaced the board they are significantly to turn this
00:49:19
not Hanwa call it hellhole but anyway to to turn it into a good a good institution so we have a
00:49:30
governor in a red state with an opportunity to do something that is going to upset the left but
00:49:36
he's doing it anyway okay great now we have other red states one of them is Ohio and here's a headline
00:49:42
from the daily mail the public college in a deep red state that blows 13 million on DEI and fighting
00:49:50
whiteness let me just read the first three little sentences from this article the top US public
00:49:55
university in a deep red state blows through 13 million a year on its huge diversity team a shocking
00:50:01
study shows auditors say Ohio State University's diversity equity and inclusion team is so bloated
00:50:08
its salaries alone would cover tuition costs for 1,000 in-state students at the main campus in Columbus
00:50:14
open the books dot com which tracks public funds lifted the lid on how such college DEI
00:50:21
chiefs is James Elmore and Keisha Mitchell earn an eye popping 300,000 each year about five times
00:50:28
a typical Ohio salary victor there are these states governors legislatures are in control of
00:50:37
republicans and yet this crap still goes on yeah and it's much more than the 13 million you pay out
00:50:44
in their south territories their centers you see because if you're a say a professor of classics
00:50:49
our history or english our computer science then this person calls you up and says we've noticed
00:50:56
that you didn't have a diversity hiring statement so when you run your searches you have to insist
00:51:02
on every candidate explaining I thought we went over that I thought we were done with the McCarthy
00:51:09
loyalty oaths of the 1950s but these are basically McCarthyite loyalty oaths only there it's not fair
00:51:17
to McCarthy actually they're worse and you have to demonstrate in your statement not your expertise
00:51:23
in teaching or scholarship but how you in your own personal life have further diversity equity
00:51:29
inclusion and then your syllabus shall reflect that commitment to diversity equity and inclusion
00:51:36
and that that slows down and screws up and causes so much anger and bitterness that you have
00:51:44
somebody over your shoulder who's an incompetent so if you're teaching Renaissance history and this
00:51:50
DEI guide doesn't know what the word renaissance is and he says hey by the way I think you need to
00:51:56
or Native American Renaissance figures in your class it's it's it's driving people crazy
00:52:04
and I don't think you know Ohio State is a one it's I think it's the second largest university in the
00:52:12
world after not the system I think you see system in California's but single campus Ohio State
00:52:19
maybe the University of Texas but it's a very important it's an excellent university JD Vance you
00:52:26
think that you know he's right there so that they're doing that there is a travesty there's
00:52:34
other one other thing that I think everybody should keep in mind about all of these administrative
00:52:38
positions a stick they're they're all growing too much people don't want to teach and they get more
00:52:45
money for and I think they should get less so if you're a full professor of computer science
00:52:51
you should get more than the assistant provost but there is no school that gives you
00:52:59
EDD is a doctorate in education but you're not going to be an administrator in the arts and
00:53:05
sciences with that degree maybe education but still there is no degree called provost I'm a PhD
00:53:13
in being a provost I am a doctorate of dean ship I have a masters and school administration those
00:53:23
are different at not major but there isn't DEI so what I'm getting at is this I don't like administrators
00:53:31
in general because I've done 40 years but when I dealt with a dean of humanities the dean of
00:53:38
humanities had a PhD in English literature or Spanish literature when I dealt with the provost
00:53:46
the provost had a PhD in mathematics if I dealt with the president at one time she had written a
00:53:54
book about the reformation that's not true of DEI so all of these administrators that faculty
00:54:02
have to deal with have taken time off from scholarship and teaching and gone what we call gone into administration
00:54:10
sometimes they come back out rarely they rotate but not DEI they have no other skills they have no
00:54:17
other skills their degrees are in either if they are in a legitimate subject like history or English
00:54:24
it's something like the diversity of this or the equity of that so they have no other purpose
00:54:29
on that university other than to be a commissar and so that's why it's going to be so hard to get rid
00:54:36
of them because if you say that you're going to go into the UC system and cut by 20% all of the
00:54:43
assistant deans and you're going to only have a dean and one assistant not five then those people
00:54:48
will go back to the classroom and they will teach science and biology you can't do that with DEI
00:54:55
when you cut those people they have no reason to exist in the university because they have no
00:55:00
marketable skills they have no scholarship they have no I mean even Claudine Gay if you look at her thesis
00:55:09
you look at her plagiarism once she was fired from Harvard and had she not been a black woman I
00:55:21
don't think anybody would hire her as an academic even though she was tenured at Stanford and went to
00:55:26
Harvard she has a political science degree but the political science degree was a joke but even
00:55:33
she had a political science degree that and she wasn't a DEI administrator but I just don't think
00:55:43
there's any I don't know what's going what are you going to do with I don't know how many of them
00:55:47
there are now after George Floyd I would imagine there's 300,000 of
00:55:53
and they're all making two hundred thousand dollars and there and there's no reason to have them as
00:56:01
what I'm saying there's all there's the there's every campus has an office of civil rights there's
00:56:07
discrimination and under the new Supreme Court rulings that you cannot use race as a criterion
00:56:13
for admissions or hiring or tenure or retention then they really have no because they can be sued
00:56:20
they can cost the university a lot of money and they already are cost the universities a lot of money
00:56:26
when they try to inject racism into the hiring process when it's illegal to do so
00:56:30
well they they stink in the K through 12 system also Victor and some of them will find jobs if
00:56:38
they if they can be booted in the world of leftist philanthropy which has millions and billions of
00:56:47
dollars and yeah I wasn't if I if I was head of the Rockefeller board or the Ford board I have with
00:56:53
some I wouldn't have any I mean they have no respect for the donor intent they all know that that's
00:56:59
what they're doing at the Ford foundation the Rockefeller foundation is not good enough is not
00:57:04
well wanted them to do they have hijacked those foundations and are using the per the money that was
00:57:10
made through capitalism for anti-capitalists and DI purposes yeah but even that
00:57:16
would you hire a DI person that had had been let go because there was no woman university and
00:57:23
would you what expertise would they have a county investment development I don't think so because
00:57:31
their purpose is training program and get a job some other yeah you'd have to say I no longer
00:57:39
I'm going to question and bully people to determine whether they're systematically racist or not
00:57:46
or insidiously racist or implicitly racist we have to always have adverbs and adjectives remember
00:57:52
because they can't say that because there's very few racist around so there has to be systematic
00:57:59
everywhere like error you can't see are insidious implicit something like that let's let's take
00:58:14
a little break the final break and when we come back Victor we'll talk about one of your
00:58:18
favorite people Tim walls and maybe one of my favorite people if we have time Michael man
00:58:26
we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages
00:58:29
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01:00:11
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01:01:10
we're back with the victor Davis Hanson show victor here's a headline from the college fix
01:01:23
which I love the college fix which is overseen I must say this by the Student Free Press Association
01:01:30
which is run by and founded by John Miller our buddy and John runs the journalism program
01:01:36
at Hillsdale he's just a great great guy anyway check that website out folks at the college fix
01:01:42
Minnesota may deny licenses if teachers don't affirm LGBT identities here's the story current
01:01:50
and aspiring teachers will need to ensure they are sufficiently in support of LGBT agenda in order
01:01:57
to have a license to teach in Minnesota under rules set to go into effect this July Minnesota's new
01:02:03
standards of effective practice require teachers to foster an environment that ensures student
01:02:10
identities including sexual orientation that they are historically and socially contextualized
01:02:16
affirmed and incorporated into oh my gosh this is such freaking please please what did I do to you
01:02:23
why are you torturing me uh these have been of course supported this is worsen very manual
01:02:28
governor walls remember remember the the Panamanian Norega Norega and they wanted to torch
01:02:37
barricaded him in his house and they couldn't get him out they didn't want to kill him and
01:02:42
that was kind of controversial so they blared Barry Manell music into it well this is what you
01:02:47
should read to Norega yeah anyway I surrender I'll do anything just stop it please uncle
01:02:56
yeah uncle our favorite uncle Tim Walls you have thoughts about this I don't think this is
01:03:01
necessarily surprising about this he's the he is the I think in my lifetime I'm trying to think
01:03:08
I can remember uh major candidates I was seven years old when Richard Nixon and I think
01:03:17
him the Cabot Lodge was his when he made Nixon Lodge and then there was JFK and Lyndon Johnson
01:03:26
Johnson was I wasn't and then there was Johnson and Humphrey and I can go all vice president they
01:03:33
still do if I'm pressed none have been as bad as that guy he was a complete buffoon he had ruined
01:03:42
Minnesota he looked everything about his career he lied about his military record everything
01:03:49
he couldn't speak he had this kind of what herky jerky almost adrenaline overload that he was he'd
01:03:59
go out there with he was he shouldn't wear he's a kind of endomorph that shouldn't wear tight clothes
01:04:06
and he did and it was kind of embarrassing then he would swing his hands and do everything and
01:04:12
you saw the look on Camilla Harris is like oh my god I know that I couldn't get Josh Shapiro
01:04:18
because we're all anti-Semites in this party but this guy it's not that he was going to
01:04:27
ensure his Minnesota we didn't need him to get Minnesota now that I picked him and the world
01:04:31
seen him we might lose Minnesota and they almost did so everything about him was an ongodly disaster
01:04:39
and you know when Trump addressed the the mayor's the other day and then they attacked DeSantis
01:04:48
as you lied and said that and he said you know you if a Republican mayor had gone to Africa
01:04:56
or a Republican mayor who had a governor had done that you people and he really dressed them down
01:05:02
but you think a minute if you look at just three to three I'm just doing it from big states
01:05:09
or maybe three or four so you take Tim Walts and Minnesota governor Pitzer or Pitzer and Illinois
01:05:17
Hocal New York and Newsom in California you could argue that all of them had at one point richer states
01:05:28
more investment money and you can pair them with their counterparts let's say DeSantis
01:05:38
in Florida, Abbott in Texas, Youngkin in Virginia does anybody in the planet really believe that
01:05:47
that left wing blue model has enriched and helped the lives of millions of people compared to the
01:05:53
alternative and what why does why don't people just say to themselves why are people leaving the
01:06:01
blue former Union states highly industrialized where all the great universities were Massachusetts
01:06:10
New York, Michigan and why are they going to the old Confederacy that had struggled with segregation,
01:06:22
Jim Crow, lack of internal development, deindustrialization, the bitterness of the Civil War
01:06:30
in Florida, in Tennessee if you had said 50 years ago, say a 1970 hey Victor I'll tell you what
01:06:41
my 65 when I was a kid I'm heading out I got to leave California for Tennessee man I can't wait
01:06:49
to get to Kentucky I've got to go to the Panhandle and I there was a million people left from Oklahoma
01:06:56
to California if you when I grew almost to the whole town if you were white had a southern accent
01:07:02
but if you'd said then hey you guys we got a hard head back to Oklahoma where there's a land of
01:07:09
freedom and promise we got to get out of this awful California nobody would have believed you
01:07:13
right so they took paradise and they made it into purgatory and the people in the south had a lot
01:07:20
of things against them and they made it paradise and people what they made the necessary adjustment
01:07:27
how can you argue with you hall figures how can you argue with the x influx and exit you can't
01:07:34
the people vote with their feet and they're leaving this paradigm and we're going to get a lot of
01:07:40
people I think that will leave from Los Angeles they already had a housing shortage where you're
01:07:46
going to put 200,000 people I don't understand maybe they're going to move in with friends I don't know
01:07:53
and who's going to build the build the rebuild it and it's not going to work I think it's going to be
01:07:59
sort of like Watts or the inner city it's just going to it's not going to recover for a long time
01:08:06
they have that on the internet I was watching if you read a Pacific Palisades Dresden
01:08:12
he was chema right next to each other they're indistinguishable they look almost indistinguishable
01:08:18
and it's Gavin Newsome yeah Gavin Newsome it turns out that Gavin Newsome and Karen Bass
01:08:28
and Miss Keonez and Kristen Crowley they are more dangerous than a B-17 full at napalm they really are
01:08:38
they have done more damage or as much damage one night's work Victor I meant to ring up before about
01:08:48
while we were talking about the I and met all these companies backing off and I know you talked
01:08:52
with Sammy about Mark Zuckerberg but just I just want a quick thought from you and maybe we have
01:09:00
a little time left to talk about Michael man but Zuckerberg this thing that came out okay we all
01:09:04
saw him you know we're changing our ways with the content adjudication etc etc and going down
01:09:13
to Mar-a-Lago but this thing this story that what motivated him to be concerned by the editing
01:09:23
process within then Facebook was that he he had a picture of himself having knee surgery and it
01:09:30
didn't get enough shares I mean the ego of somebody that that motivates my me in a hospital bed and
01:09:39
nobody's really sharing it a lot something's wrong with this so yeah now he tells us I wonder why
01:09:44
Mark can I ask you Mark why all of a sudden now moment in history do you go on the Joe Rogan show
01:09:52
and you tell the United States public the largest audience spoken that the Biden administration
01:10:00
was calling you and threatening you and screaming at you not to report the news and to censor
01:10:09
the news before the election and why are you telling us now that the FBI intrusively came into your
01:10:16
company and part or poor Mark without resources I was forced to do it and if you're going to be
01:10:25
give us what in the Nixon era we call the modified hangout why don't you tell us the whole hangout
01:10:31
why don't you on Joe Rogan said I wish Joe Rogan had said well Mark now that we're coming clean
01:10:38
why did you give 419 million dollars in 2020 to absorb the work of registrars in these key
01:10:44
states just tell us why and why now are you telling me all this and the answer is well I guess it's
01:10:52
because the Google guys and mosque and Peter Till and Dresan and Horowitz and Jeff Bezos they've
01:11:03
all gone down to more local and I'm I'm odd man out and I have another worry and that worry is this
01:11:12
that I know that when Andreessen went to a meeting he walked out of it because the Biden
01:11:20
administration announced these are the winners of the AI that we have approved and these are the
01:11:26
losers in the startups and I know that's true because they did it with me and therefore I know that
01:11:33
they set a precedent of government threatening Silicon Valley magnets like myself to be left
01:11:40
wing and they went after the throw all the pressure from Washington was directed for one purpose
01:11:46
to destroy Donald Trump in the 2020 election and afterward and therefore Donald Trump is in power
01:11:54
now and he knows that so I know that he's going to act in the way if not like Biden maybe in the
01:12:02
way that I would if I were he therefore I'm going to trap down and humiliated fashion and put my head
01:12:11
on the guillotine platform and say please don't chop it off and that's what they're doing all of them
01:12:17
and the other thing they're appealing to it's very brilliant what they do everybody should
01:12:22
remember what Silicon Valley people do they they have it down perfect when there is a Republican
01:12:29
president like a bush or first Trump they go over to Washington and they say look we are
01:12:36
a free market Milton Friedman types you've got to help us don't regulate it's it's exactly what you
01:12:42
want up from the bootstraps to panoras temper with this wonderful capitalist system and then when
01:12:50
they get a Democrat they say we are for the people we want more higher talent than it won't hurt us
01:12:57
as long as you don't hurt our ability to make money we don't care how much taxes we have
01:13:01
it's the regulation we're worried about but please and they play both sides of the of the fin
01:13:06
and now they've got even a better attack if they're going down to Donald Trump and they're saying
01:13:11
those damn commie Europeans they're trying to destroy an American company and try to put speech
01:13:19
codes on us and sue us and saying that we're divisive and they're going to tax us and and and we
01:13:27
you know Donald Trump you're a patriot like we are and you've got to protect your American brand
01:13:32
and I think Trump will be very receptive to that and he'll say okay what do you need they have
01:13:37
social media they have telecommunications and there's hi guys I'll screw with them and they
01:13:43
know it was the irony about getting back to irony they know that if they went to Joe Biden and said
01:13:47
that he'd say screw you unless you help me and they would go to Donald Trump and they know that
01:13:53
for all the blunder all of the bluster all of that bragadaccio when it comes to it he will help them
01:14:00
because not because he wants anything because they're Americans and he wants to make sure that Americans
01:14:06
are treated pre-immotely and they know that and he's not going to call them into the room and say
01:14:13
Donald Trump is not going to call Mr. Andreessen in the room and say there's only going to be seven
01:14:18
AI companies are going to be allowed to make it or he's not going to call cash betels not going to
01:14:23
call uh Zuckerberg up and said look I'm sending over 20 agents I want you to monitor still anything
01:14:30
that's opposed to Donald Trump and they know that that's what's weird about the left they know what
01:14:36
they've done and they project they know they've adopted fascistic tactics so they call other people
01:14:42
fashions that's kind of it's kind of amusing though you know I have a personal history with
01:14:48
a Zuckerberg style you do I do well I won't mention her first name and I but his sister got a Ph.D. in
01:15:00
classics and of course she wrote a dissertation on Ism's analogies feminist this women's that very
01:15:08
hard left and of course if you're the sister of the fourth which is man on the world you're not going
01:15:15
to need to get a job but she attached herself to classics at Stanford and then with her huge amount
01:15:22
of money she bought an online classics magazine and she hired her own staff to publish her stuff and
01:15:30
people like can I just say like what kind of classics what kind of material essays would be in this
01:15:39
magazine like something I'm just making up the titles that would reflect what I read when I
01:15:47
would do it the systematic racism big base painting in the fourth century are the transgressive trans
01:15:59
sexual nature of the statuary of the garden goddess Artemis or manly Artemis a profile in
01:16:10
divine sexual non-binaryism things like that but in the course of her online grants she published
01:16:20
either she herself or attacked me a lot as a co-author of who killed Homer which
01:16:26
days seven years ago made the following argument that most research narrow nobody cared about teaching
01:16:39
they didn't care about students they were indecisable and they were now woke and they were going to
01:16:45
destroy the field of classics and at one point they would rename the field and they wouldn't
01:16:52
require Greek anymore and everybody said this was crazy these people are nuts John Heath and
01:16:56
Victor Hanson are insane they're racist they're sick and she was one of those people so she used to
01:17:02
attack me for writing that book and at one point I had to reply I replied to it and I said if you're
01:17:10
such a leftist and if you're such a progressive and if you're so used to the other I got a proposal
01:17:21
for you I came to Cal State Fresno 1984 and there was no classics program there was just one
01:17:26
class of Latin so I spent 20 years of my life trying to introduce the ancient world grammar syntax
01:17:33
and not just the ancient world but using the ancient world to ensure that poor whites but especially
01:17:39
because the majority of the students were minority mostly Mexican American and Southeast Asian
01:17:44
to make sure they were competitive and had the same opportunities that people who went to prepsicle
01:17:48
had so I taught four to five courses a semester no TAs and I gave anywhere from three to ten
01:17:57
independent studies so in a typical year I would teach introductory to Latin
01:18:04
Escalus in Greek or Sophocles maybe third one survey of Greek history 75 students and introduction
01:18:12
to the humanities 70 students so I'd have 200 students and I had corrected all the papers and then I
01:18:21
would have classic students so I'd give a class and Greek independent study and Lissias
01:18:27
independent study and Greek composition independent study and Latin composition
01:18:32
independent study and the New Testament independent study and comparative grammar Greek and Latin
01:18:39
so whatever so I said I wrote this and I said you know if you could really help people that are
01:18:45
under if you really are a classist and you really believe in the ancient world you could help
01:18:50
think and I have a little blueprint for you could go to Cal State Bakersfield please relocate you
01:18:55
don't have to live in Menlo Park in a big mansion go to Bakersfield it's a beautiful city it's
01:19:01
outperforming Fresno now and start a classics program at Cal State Bakersfield and they would fun
01:19:08
but if you with all why don't you give a few million dollars and you're working for freed out work
01:19:13
for free bring your teen down there and start tutoring minority kids and give them a leg up so that
01:19:21
when they graduate with the bachelor's or master's they can give lectures without notes their grammar
01:19:28
is superb they have wonderful vocabularies and sent that's what I taught students to do give lectures
01:19:35
without notes everything and you know what happened like after hijacking this I won't even name
01:19:43
I won't give her her first name or the name of the she destroyed it she just said well I'm done
01:19:49
with that that was my funny little thing for a couple of years and now I'm having kids I don't
01:19:53
have to work and my brothers got this big thing and I'm going to just go be a consultant with Facebook
01:20:01
and by the way all of you people that I heard you're fired you are fired and I'm going to
01:20:08
I save the magazine and now I blew it up by wouldn't want to be you I wouldn't want to see you wouldn't
01:20:14
want to be you and that was it the consequence of dealing with victory in this way I don't think I
01:20:25
had a hand in it I don't think I had a hand in scene but I do think that she realized that people
01:20:33
thought she was full of it and I from what I understand she didn't treat her employees very well
01:20:40
and they they were really upset because they had gone to work for and they thought they were building
01:20:45
this hyper-funded magazine they would be on the cutting edge of letters in America and it just
01:20:51
destroyed it but who knows maybe she's resurfaced well Victor that was a great great
01:20:59
more than an anecdote well I should say one last thing is when when John Heath and I wrote who
01:21:05
killed Homer 27 years ago it got so many people angry and she was still angry 23 years ago I think
01:21:13
that one class is this is really funny posted to all the classes in the United States that she was
01:21:25
so angry but the reason that she was so angry is she had a theory that the sent because she was a
01:21:32
philologist like we were and she was an expert in writing styles that John Heath and Victor Hanson
01:21:39
were the unibomber and she published that yes that we were the unibombers we were the same
01:21:47
incendiary type people and classical philology was just as important as unibombing stories
01:21:55
and that that she had read the manifesto and the manifesto this is before we knew who they had
01:22:03
published it I think before the manifesto was exactly like our style so we must have written it
01:22:12
the walls to eternal I think Jody bottom member Jody bottom he wrote an article about how we
01:22:18
relevant the whole thing was but I got the only thing I I've never sued anybody in my life but I had
01:22:23
so many you know people lawyers that were just eager to sue her for defamation and and they had
01:22:30
this chat list and of course I think we were the only two conservative classes that were
01:22:36
outed or were not apologetic about it I'm not that John was conservative but he was principled
01:22:42
uh did you know did you know David Galertner at all I did yeah I mean one of the victims
01:22:51
I don't think he likes to call himself a victim by the way I had a I've corresponded I
01:22:56
really liked him yeah but the point I'm making is that then it came out and they said
01:23:01
accessist somebody pointed out well John we wrote the second edition
01:23:06
and John Heath had one of the funniest wits I've ever heard and he he wrote part of our we apply
01:23:12
and he said we are so impressed not only is she a philologist and an expert at deciphering
01:23:18
writing style she's also clairvoyant because she was able to say that we wrote who kill Homer under
01:23:26
the influence of the of the manifesto before the manifesto was even available to the public
01:23:32
so we had either been communicating with mr whatever his name was or we yes Zinsky or we had
01:23:43
imagined what he would write and therefore we were influenced spiritually or psychically and it
01:23:50
was so it was really funny and it was and then she said she had called the FBI and reported us
01:23:59
and then everybody said you know there were all these people that were reminding her that
01:24:05
might have been a felony to uh call and deliberately give a false so then what do you do
01:24:12
so then she went back on and said well maybe I forgot I didn't really remember maybe I didn't really
01:24:18
call the FBI report you as a as a uniform let me is she the kind of person if you've met her you
01:24:24
and didn't know who she was or she that you would think that something's off with this lady or
01:24:29
was she a nasty um blankety blank who was since I'm not mentioning her name I would say both both
01:24:39
but you got to remember that I mean that was a very tiny field of 5,000 professors and it was
01:24:51
dying it was dying and the people who were killing it the field were not going to stop killing it so
01:24:58
then this guy from Fresno State comes along a guy from Santa Clara and they don't give a crap about
01:25:03
you know what I mean yeah them and they just look at the field and said yeah I'm from outer space
01:25:09
and I'm looking at you people and you're killing the Greek and Latin languages as they're taught
01:25:13
you're writing in a language that no one can understand you're trendy you you're forsaken this
01:25:20
great tradition of famous historians and classicists at archaeology you're you destroyed empiricism you've
01:25:29
taken it over with racist that and who cares about whether some goddess was transgendered or all
01:25:38
that stuff so they didn't like it and we were funny they thought that I mean we weren't like
01:25:45
dead serious we were serious but the way that we presented the argument was kind of funny and we
01:25:50
made fun we would quote them you know and John had a good part about Homer we said this is
01:25:57
this is sexist Homer this is this is transphobic Homer this is homophobic and then we would
01:26:06
quote from their interpretation of the Odyssey deep down inside a penalty is the victim of a sexist
01:26:14
mindset that makes her at the quote loom all the time why he gets to flound her around with
01:26:21
Circe and Calypso why she dutifully is not yet emancipated to see that her real all that
01:26:28
crowd and it was funny and who killed Homer should if I assume it's still in print is it
01:26:35
I'm very lucky that all I think every book I wrote or 26 of them except two
01:26:39
are still in print mexico for you is still in print yeah a lot of them are western were revised
01:26:48
addition within with an update but you need another project Victor like you need a whole
01:26:52
well there was a guy who wrote a book not too long ago I won't mention his name but it was about
01:26:57
the status of classics and he interviewed John and I and he was actually I thought even though he
01:27:03
was of the left I thought he was very fair and he will has a chapter in and it's it's not
01:27:10
lotatory but it's not critical either it was more or less they tried to give an honest appraisal
01:27:17
and everybody squashed him and went insane and revealed it was on one hand on the other hand but it
01:27:24
was it was we were trying to say that five thousand classicists need ever all the help they can get
01:27:32
and enrollments are going down we have to be populist and we have to do this and that and when
01:27:40
we said things like they're going to eliminate Greek nobody thought they would but they did it
01:27:44
they did it Princeton just recently as a classics you can be a classics major Princeton and no
01:27:49
no Greek yeah well the suicide of the west happens in many every year when I would high I had a one
01:27:56
time six people full time and when we had higher for these positions I just noticed by 19 I got a
01:28:05
PhD in 79 80 and we had to be able to write and Latin and Greek and you had to be able to
01:28:12
sight read that means you don't you can read it without a dictionary some authors but I noticed
01:28:20
these students couldn't and they were coming out of the best graduate schools so at one case I just
01:28:26
to ask a student I said you're gonna have to teach Latin and I know that we have students that are
01:28:31
not prepared but I would like you to read so I handed the person in question a page of from
01:28:41
Cicero's Civil Wars and a page from a classical order called Lissius and he has a
01:28:49
famous speech called on the cripple who a guy is a welfare cheat so I asked the could you just read
01:28:56
one paragraph of Latin and Greek and then read it out loud translate it and then tell me how you
01:29:02
would explain this to the class and it couldn't do it and they got angry and then I they filed they
01:29:10
wrote me an email and said we're gonna file a complaint with the American Phil logical association
01:29:16
that you're not allowed to ask you're not allowed to quiz students in a formal manner like that
01:29:22
so I apologize I said okay I'm sorry I just needed to know if you knew Latin or Greek because you're
01:29:28
from one of the top four classics departments in the United States you're so mean Victor and there
01:29:33
would know there was no play dough or a safe space or I don't know I don't know I was young and I had
01:29:48
energy and it's kind of naive and stupid all right well we will talk about Michael man and other
01:29:54
things another time I want to thank you got off track on that no this picture it's not off track I
01:30:01
mean but many people listen to this show for many different reasons I do love the classical world I
01:30:07
was the best thing that ever happened to me to learn Latin and Greek and be a classics major
01:30:12
undergraduate and PhD I love the feel I wrote extensively I'm still I'm gonna write a history of
01:30:17
my next project after I have two books I'm signed up for right now but the third one
01:30:23
if I can get these two done in a year or two is I'm gonna write a biography of a pamananda's my hero
01:30:30
well um we I think it'll hit around to discuss it might be a bestseller Jack everybody's saying oh my
01:30:38
God when is the next when is the first biography of a pamananda's coming out I can't wait to get to
01:30:43
the bookstore I I I don't know any books since I've been we've been doing this podcast Victor I
01:30:52
don't think any book you've done hasn't been a bestseller so you're on a streak okay I want to thank
01:30:58
everyone who does take the to whatever reason brings you here you're love the classics you love
01:31:03
military history pictures analysis of California whatever thank you the audience is big and getting
01:31:10
bigger people some people who listen on Apple take the time to rate the show which you can do zero to
01:31:15
five stars and practically practically everyone gives Victor five the 4.9 plus average over 7,000
01:31:23
people have done such some people leave comments too one is I I don't know who wrote this one it's
01:31:29
short and it's titled my favorite conservative voice and he writes or she writes years ago my favorite
01:31:36
conservative voice was Bob Novak then he died so it was my favorite so my favorite became Charles
01:31:41
Kraut Hammer then he died there was Rush Limbaugh then he died and then he died I don't know about
01:31:51
that I guess I'm gonna if I die this year it ends up with hanging there Victor I hope the person
01:31:58
is not saying Hocus Pocus Marada you are my favorite conservative commenter I have to I must say I had the
01:32:06
God's been very good to me I I knew Bob Novak and Charles Kraut I have a personal
01:32:12
buffer I met Bob Novak once I like to be as a prince of darkness that's what they call him
01:32:19
they call him the prince of Chris Caldwell at who I like Chris Caldwell too that's his son Bob
01:32:27
his father I didn't know that he was a Catholic convert wasn't he he was and he was he had a
01:32:35
brain tumor it was very unfair he got an auto accent and people had suggested he was reckless but
01:32:40
he actually had an ostoma that was undiagnosed I think he I bumped into my few he came on a national
01:32:46
review cruise and he couldn't have been better his wife was lovely and then I bumped into a few
01:32:53
times and all those guys I met all those guys I used to on two occasions I had lunch with Charles
01:33:01
Kraut Hammer he was on the Bradley Prize Committee twice and I had he was he was the most humble guy
01:33:09
and his wife was just delightful wonderful person and he was I really liked him and then I I got to
01:33:16
know Rush in the last four years really well we texted almost every night the last two years I like
01:33:23
Rush Limbaugh I really did just I like I believe sometimes he'd write me I'm like why is Rush Limbaugh
01:33:32
writing this I know it two in the morning how about at west west toast time I would be asleep and I
01:33:38
get a text eleven o'clock two o'clock in the east and I said to him once a Rush what do you have
01:33:46
against white people he said what do you mean I said I you just everybody around you is black
01:33:53
or Hispanic and he said I never thought of that they're just people and are the best people I could
01:34:01
ever they were wonderful he just loved everybody he really did yeah and they liked him too good guy
01:34:09
when I'm fighting God bless him well Victor we're going to go out right now except except that I'm
01:34:17
going to say please go to civil thoughts dot com and sign up there for the free weekly email newsletter
01:34:24
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show have subscribed and they enjoy getting it so that's civil thoughts dot com victors website the
01:34:43
blade of Perseus Victor Hanson dot convict you've been terrific as ever thanks folks for listening
01:34:49
we will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hanson show bye bye thank you everyone for
01:34:55
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01:35:05
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can lead to monumental impacts hence their generous giveback of 25% to clean water conservation
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and faith based initiatives start 2025 by raising your mugs to a new year filled with purpose
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head over to wired then the number two fish coffee wired to fish coffee dot com today and make 2025
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a year, you aligned your coffee with your values.
