A Classicist Farmer: The Life and Times of Victor Davis Hanson | Uncommon Knowledge

Victor Davis Hansen back at the ranch on uncommon knowledge now [Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson Victor Davis Hansen a classical scholar at the Hoover institution a journalist on Fox News and on his website the blade of Perseus and we come now to today's program a farmer here in the San Joaquin Valley of California Dr Hansen has published more than two dozen books including a war like no other his definitive account of the Peloponnesian Wars and his most recent volume the dying citizen Victor I ordinarily welcome guests to the studio but you permitted us to join you here in your house so thank you for welcoming me thank you for coming to Selma a pleasure so um let's talk about this place yeah your family came to California from Missouri yes about the turn of the last century over a century ago around 1900 is that correct oh no it came my great great grandmother Luciana Davis came here in 1871. really from where from Missouri they were on the they were in a southern area of the state and they were northerners and after the war they saw an ad for land and they took the newly built trans Continental railroad to San Francisco and they hired a buck board and they just came out here and there was no town or anything and there was a Artesian Pond which is still here and they said when you say they came here they came here to this place in 1871 yes and they bought the railroad was given sections where only about two miles from the railroad and they were they bought it for four dollars an acre from the railroad and they were given 30 years to improve it or the railroad could take it back and then we had the famous muscle slew and the octopus by Frank Norris you know the whole railroad scandals of taking land back when they should know but that was only eight miles from here really the muscles food tragedy all right so keep going from Missouri how long have they been there I haven't oh I that's been I'm fifth generation so we're fifth generation in this house yeah fifth generation in this house yes so who's the oldest generation can you you can remember your grandfather yes so I grew my mother was Pauline Davis Hanson not three sisters and she was here and then her father was Reese Davis and he was my grandfather I knew him really we're very close he died when I was 21. he was born in the bedroom that I'd sleep in in 1890 and he died there in 1976 at the age of 86 and his wife Georgia way Davis died at 93 there and my unfortunately there are three daughters my mother and aunt died very early comparatively and then he had a father Cyrus Davis see and Cyrus Davis was he came he came he was born here and he came his mother was Luciana Davis so that was my my mother's great grandmother and Davis to me is a Welsh name yes there were Rhys Davis was 100 they were all 100 well and where did The Hansons come into the picture well they were a different family they came from London Sweden and they came about 1890 and straight from Sweden to here uh they stopped in Chicago on the way for about a year all right and there was a town called Kingsburg and it's still there it's a Swedish town and there was about 30 Elders that came next Kingsburg colony and he was one of the first in fact if you go to Kingsburg California today there's a Municipal Park and that was his Ranch his farm and he gave part of it and sold part of it to the city in the 1940s and there's a monument Hanson corner there of all the Hansons that fought in World War One were you when you were a boy were there still people around here who spoke Swedish oh yeah I could go down with my grandfather we'd walk down Kingsburg and we'd go to Swedish funerals yeah he died nothing for the next hour yeah he's dead yeah he worked hard and then you go to their house and there's butter cookies and rice crackers and they drank a pot of coffee and they say you look at each other and stare and say yeah he died yeah he worked hard my mom couldn't get along with them and she loved them but they were very not not tough not talented conversationalists all they wanted to do was work it was like you know you Saturday morning my you work all week you get home from school you work on a farm and my dad would say this isn't an old man's club what are you doing here with we're sitting down at 7 30 in the morning on Saturday morning we played football last night it's time to get out and work time to work up a sweat it's all so we do when when I'm trying to we are now seated in Fresno County yes and three miles from Selma and five miles in Kingswood all right and the last time I looked up these figures which was I had confessed this a couple of years ago but Fresno County was the most productive agricultural County it is in the entire United States my dollar amount of their of their several billion dollars a year of produce comes from this one County yes they could not have known that in 1971. well they at there were ads all over that this was if they had water and there was no water so that this was considered the best soils the best uh oh so people knew that or yes that's what knew them here they said you could plant figs they tried everything they tried peaches they tried uh figs they tried and then they settled on the Armenian Community introduced uh after the massacre the Thompson the raisin Gray a man named Thompson we find it and that created the word Ground Zero of the raisin industry at least we were it's kind of faded now but this was perfect climate to grow grapes and dry them on the ground is raised so I I all this area that's almonds now was raisins until 20 years ago all right so can I go you've been here you and your family have been here for five generations I'd like to go if I may just get a sentence or two from you on each era yes and of course we'll come to the eras you remember yes John Steinberg made California during the Depression yes famous were the old time did the old-timers tell you what it was like during that time my mother was born in this house in 1922 and she told me that when she was nine years old there were 40 relatives living here they would go down to the Selma train station and they'd get a letter that somebody lost his job cousin on both sides and they lived in the barn they lived in the Packing Shed and they had a big communal pot and they all worked and some of them didn't leave till 1939 so until about 20 years ago I would see these people show up I didn't know who they were they would be in their 80s and they would drive by and say oh Victor your grandfather took us in he had land and he had he didn't have any money but we worked and we lived there and they knew the place better than I did one person said you know if you go into the house over there you'll see where I carved my initial so it was pretty I remember all these stories from the depression and then we come to the to the war yes as I recall now you and I have known each other a long time and I'm I'm reaching back to conversations with Snippets of conversations we have but as I recall your dad and a very close Uncle an uncle to whom you were close my father and he had a first cousin whose mother died in childbirth and whose father was blind so they adopted him they were like brothers Victor Hansen and they joined the Marine Corps together and then nobody knows what happened in 1904 they went to University of Pacific they were on football scholarship they were the two ends on the football for Alonzo stag was a coach and they joined the Marine Corps of swedes on the football team yes and they were pretty big about six three two twenty and one of them hit his officer they got in a fight and then they decided the judge decided one of them had to take the blame so my dad took the blame so they transferred him and they said my dad as he reported the story so the judge the military just said we're going to fix you there's a new B-29 program in Nebraska they all crash and they all die it's every Spin and you're going to go over there and be one of the first to be crashed and killed and then Victor stayed in the sixth Marine Division and he was on Guadalcanal training and then he went into Okinawa and was killed on the last day of Sugarloaf Hill my father survived the training went to tenyon and flew 40 missions on a B-29 over Japan over Japan and he won the Air Force medal he was equivalent to Silver Star he had a burning Napalm bomb caught in the Bombay and he climbed out and got it and it was blowing up the crew and he crashed they crashed landed twice on Iwo Jima so nobody thought he was going to live and everybody thought Victor that war was winding down and Victor got killed and William lived and then his father Frank was gassed in World War one and so I remember my grandfather with disabled he broke horses for a living and that's he on his little Kingsburg Ranch but he had wheezing he died from cancer from the phosphine gas when he was 79 from tumors and then so did your dad when you were a boy you were born in 1953 yes the war is very close until 1953. did your dad talk about it he did but my this is what I remember these weird people would show up like there was a guy named the pilot Allenby that saved him he was the most brilliant pilot on Kenyan and he would come in with a jump truck and he was a junk salesman here yes he would drive in to visit and he would say and he was all covered with dirt and junk and my dad would always lecture that man was the best pilot in the U.S he flew 40 missions with us he went to Korea and flew 60 and then another guy would come he was a navigator this guy was a Jewish guy from Harvard he was a brilliant mathematician he got us through because he figured out how to get home in the dark and he did that and the message I got was all the guys that had all of the attributes to keep them alive didn't do too well in civilian life and that really was a message my father said you know every single trait that'll keep you alive being audacious Reckless Brave being is not what makes you money so he was kind of bitter about that because there was a lot of people he knew that got deferred and his brother kind of got killed his first cousin adopted brother and then my mom's first cousin who came here he got killed on D-Day Holt Cather and then Belden was a good we all loved Belden he was a cousin and he got dinghy fever in the Philippines and he was mentally you know he got 108 he almost died so he was he would come out he had nowhere to go and so and then my uncle was in Alaska he got wounded so we would have this table this table and they'd all be around and it was so funny they'd say well you know the b-29s won the war and they said no we didn't we stopped them in Alaska and then somebody would say no no no it's World War one was the war they'd all kid each other about who had it the easiest but they were all combat veterans and wounded a lot of them so now here's they go from Farmers it's still the if I'm trying to get my chronology right this Ranch and these towns are dominated by your grandparents generation through the 30s and then the 50s and 60s so you're named after your father's cousin who died yeah when I turned to eight they opened up this old locker and they said here's his briefcase here's his baseball bat here's his baseball uniform here's his diary now let's see if you can be the man he is oh and my grandfather my dad said to me I don't want you ever to lie I don't want you to we'll see if you can be the because he was straight A student he was just very handsome guy everybody liked him and then my grandfather who was very Swedish and he would say oh that's a you'll never be like the first Victory he was such a good boy nobody could be that way so I never drank I never smoked I didn't get into the drug culture and I thought oh my whole life was I have to be as good as this guy never met and then I wrote an article once about him dying with you yeah well I wrote an article and all of a sudden a 93 year old man called up called me up and said I was this commanding officer in Okinawa I said you're still a lot this was 2000 I was at the Naval Academy as a busy professor and he said would you like his ring I said ring and he said well we we carried him down he was dead he was the last person to die we we cut off his ring he was swollen and we called from San Diego I called your grandfather this has been 1945 this is 2003 and his this thick Swedish accent said I know want I don't want to talk about the Marine Corps I don't want to talk about I'm done so we kept it I said what happened to it he said on my mantle I'll send it to you in the mail so he did um as you grow up your dad is not working the ranch he becomes an educator he your mom is a lawyer she becomes a judge I mean they they move away from from my grandfather had a very strange idea he had three daughters and one was severely crippled Lila and she couldn't do anything so he said there's no men to help me and so he mortgages Ranch in 19 late 30s and he sent my mother to Stanford she got a ba at UOP and then she got another B8 Stanford and then she got a law degree at 1946 and then her sister got it had to have been just it was crazy unusual it was and this everybody thought that he was nuts they said Reese Davis mortgaged his place to sin to give a girl an education a girl to go get a ba and JD and then or LLB in those days and then his Sid the sister my Aunt Lucy got a ba and Ma and then she was a community college professor then my mom went out to work and they there were no jobs unless she wanted to be a legal secretary they wouldn't hire she went all over San Francisco so she came back married my dad and she was a wonderful mom she she raised this until she was 40 and then one day she they opened a court of appeals she went up she did very well and she was the legal the head of the legal team for the judges and then a night when she was 49 they appointed her the first uh female second Superior Court judge in Fresno female and then four years later she was the state appeals Corps I think she was the second woman in the state she had a great career and then she died that family had a cancer Gene so she died at 67 of her brain tumor her sister died at 49 a breast cancer her other sister died at 61. all the females and my own daughter died when she was 26 so if you go back to the lineage of six Generations about 75 percent of the women died very early and we're all worried about all the women that are still alive you know because it's weird young Victor leaves The Ranch at Selma yeah to get an undergraduate degree in Classics from UC Santa Cruz so you leave here you go up over the mountains to the coast to UC Santa Cruz and there are two questions that come to mind immediately why you grow up I'm looking out the windows and I see almonds but it used to be fruit fruit trees Classics how on Earth did that happen well farming my father had looked in a map and he said your brother this is a new campus it's cheap there's no tuition you see Santa Cruz it's supposed to be hard to get in you're all three going to go there and you're all going to win a house we'll save money there's no tuition so I said okay so my brother went there but he didn't know it was crazy it was a hippie count so when you enroll what year are we 71. okay your mother was there in 69 my twin brother happened and we went there and my father dropped me off and the first thing he did he went into the co-ed dorm and he said two people are fornicating in the shower and there's a guy next to you on your door with all the drugs with prices on them and this place is crazy and are you going to be able to handle it I said yeah so I I had kind of short hair and I took a class from a guy named John Lynch he's a wonderful professor and he said we I just came from Yale PhD we're starting a Greek and Latin you're doing a good job if you would study Classics in this new program you would get your whole education paid for someday so I came home and seemed good so I said what do I have to do he said I have to go to Yale and take Greek intensive for the summer I did I was 18 with graduate students I came back that was your first time to cross the country yes first time out of this area except for Santa Cruz and then I took nothing I took advanced placement in high school so I had no GE so I took literally every single course at UC Santa Cruz was in Greek and Latin language so I took 30 or 40 courses and then I went to Greece for a year on a scholarship Victor when you got to UC this may sound like an important question but did you already know you were a smart kid no no because I I was in Selma High School and there were I was with some really bright Farmers kids I mean some of them went to five or six of them went to Caltech and my they were brilliant mathematicians and then I didn't study that I mean I got good grades but it was pretty wild most of my friends were Mexican-American or poor white here yeah the Oklahoma diaspora it was very poor area and you had to fight it was just football and girls and fighting and cars and I was I didn't quite fit but I did have to learn how to defend myself and my friends were all I still hang out I'm going tomorrow and having uh breakfast at six with a highway patrol people so I I and then I went to Santa Cruz it was just a shock because these were wealthy kids from Pacific Palisades and Palos Verdes they were all very left-wing my parents were conservative Democrats so it was it was and then after three years John Lynch came to me and he said well you're going to get your PhD and I said I don't even know what it is he said where do you want to go and so we said there's two philology problem uh Stanford and Harvard our philologist you know Greek well so I went to Stanford they paid my whole way for I went to American School of classical studies and I got a 26 there were no jobs for white males with Classics degrees so I came back here let me let me read to you from your book fields without dreams this is a book you published in 1994 quote in May of 1980 I came home to Santa Cruz from the Stanford University Classics departments so you've got your doctorate from Stanford you drive down the coast to the house in Santa Cruz that you and your brothers shared got in the car and without notifying anyone drove to Selma from the coast with that three hour drive I left contemporary culture for good or so I thought and would have wanted close quote you had a degree in Classics from Stanford University and from this point an academic career would have been open to you anywhere in the country and you drove back to the house we're sitting in now and began working this Ranch well my mom called up and said she was living in Fresno at that time and had this house and she said your grandmother's 93 your grandfather died can you take care of her for a summer I drove down I took care of her and I started farming I saw my twin brother was working very hard here you'll get this all together and he was trying to hold it together and my cousin was coming and I said I would help and then I didn't have any money and there was no money it was during the Depression really of the bad 70s and Carter Carter Administration and so I went to the local high schools and that they said no you're too qualified we don't want it I went up to Fresno State I never been to Fresno State and they said Classics we don't have a Classics Department we don't want you so I started farming for five years and then I kind of became I don't know what an anti-social there was I there was a 12-month period I did not leave this place I did not even go into town I grew my hair long I grew beard and I just did the worst jobs I could think of pesticides herbicides I like to work alongside the Hispanic workers because I we did piece work so I would go out and try to prune and see what would be a fair wage and then I would go out and work with them and I would pick them up and bring them home and they they were they were brilliant guys they'd say hey Victor if you're so smart why did you get a stupid degree at that place called Stanford now you're doing just what we do I said good questions so I was considered a pretty big failure in my thesis advisor was very disappointed in people like that he would call and say a bad idea so it was the best thing that ever happened to me but I still okay you didn't have money I understand that I can I'll buy that for a year or two but then the 80s begin the economy begins to recover and you had a Stanford degree yes and and you went to Fresno State and they didn't want Fresno State eventually what did you do you talked your way into a job at first yeah I do why did you stop there and start calling Cornell or Harvard or I was I had written I was very lucky there was there a conscious rejection of the world of some would you go through some kind of hippie phase or what was it what was in your head what were you thinking it was a right-wing happy face I published my thesis Warfare and agriculture so I had a book out and it was very well reviewed so okay let's stop there I'm on I want to take you through this yes your early books Warfare and agriculture it appears in 1983. yeah you're still working this Ranch so you had time yeah to take your thesis and I am sure that before was published by a commercial house an editor wanted you to make adjustments to an academic thesis it comes out it's Warfare Agriculture and you argue that to understand Greek Warfare a scholar had to understand Greek agriculture ah so now this Ranch is in your thinking yeah explain that argument well everybody said that the peloponnese the Athenians were devastated because there were olives and Vines were destroyed and I had grown up taking trees out and I had some olives I had some Vines so every time I'd see a passage in through cities in Greek I'd go out and try to pull out an olive tree or try to take out a Vineyard you know with different types of hand tools or we had we used to plant cover crop the barley and oats I tried to burn them and see at what point they would be combustible it's very hard to do and I went back through all of Greek literature I said this is crazy it was they didn't it's exaggerated they didn't it was a psychological tool to intimidate an agrarian society it's really hard to rip up all of you yes and so when they say everything was destroyed in the second invasion of Attica then you start looking at Wills or speeches of people who have property and it's not all destroyed or you go look at the archaeological remains of houses it's not destroyed or you see that internal contradictions within a historian it's just what you would think and that was kind of new that that so that that worked well but I didn't translate that into a uh a career I went up to Fresno State and I asked each year I knocked on the door I could teach and then finally one of the professors who was German had one Latin class so I begged him and at the end of the semester they said you're done and then I gave a lecture and the doian of the McClatchy family Phoebe McClatchy clutch is a newspaper publisher yes they were very big in this area and she came up to me she said why are you not teaching I said there's no money so she wrote a check for Cal State Fresno for twenty one thousand dollars that was my salary and I had one shot for a year and then I caught four classes and then the next thing I knew I got a chance for a tenure track I wrote another book and then I found a brilliant guy who was in cattle ranch Bruce Thornton your closest friend and I we hired him and the next thing it just took off we had all poor Hispanic and poor white and Southeast Asian students we had Latin Greek and we had brilliant students and when I at 50 I quit but I did it for 21 years and we had six professors and and it's still there the program some of our former students got phds and they run uh back if I made to this Ranch in your thinking you write the other Greeks in 1995 and in this book you argue that the emergence of the Greek city-state which is distinctive for private property consensual government only possible because of the existence of an agrarian middle class explain that argument well most classicists you know the classics they're literary and they talk they read Sophocles or Aristophanes it's the the elite and they're wonderful pieces of literature I that was some of my specialties but when you start to look at who were the people fighting hoplite Warfare they were farmers and when you start to see how they describe battles they all use agrarian metaphors and similes you know that it's like picking a side through wheat or it's like smashing grapes that's a frame of reference and when you look at the Countryside you start to see that it was parceled out in equal you can start the Greek countries yes and then when you see the Ecclesia that met on the penins and you can start to see there were sloths so it was sort of all the people who have equal slots on the countryside are going to be in the Phalanx a grade and they're going to be equal in the and the assembly so it was reverberation so it was a political a agrarian and a military Triad and it starts with the land yeah and the funny thing about it was there had been some brilliant French and German Scholars at the and then turn to the 19th century that had said things like this and they were kind of neglected and this was a time during when I wrote this it was the Heyday was Michelle Foucault Dairy Daw post-modernism so I went back I could read French pretty well but not Germans but I spent a whole year and a half reading these great books and I learned a lot from them and I I was very lucky that Donald Kagan from Yale was at Stanford that year and he and I would talk every afternoon about it and I had a thesis advisor who I don't think was very fond of me but he started to specialize in this area and so I would I would and then I wrote you know that book was a little self-indulgent I remember the editor said you've got footnotes in the text you got footnotes at the back of the book and you got footnotes at the bottom I don't want any more footnotes you've got 70 footnotes and 30 text but it was supposed to be a popular book but I kind of hijacked it and turned it into a scholarly book uh the land was everything which you published in 2000. and now you're making an argument that starts with this Ranch and you're not talking about Greek culture you're talking about American culture quote we are not starving in this country I have no worries about our food supply under corporate conglomerations but we are parched and hungry in our quandary over how to be the good citizen this is your theme 23 years ago explain that argument I was very worried that I started when I was teaching and being around young people that I started to meet people who had no physicality in other words they were this was right at the beginning you're still teaching at Fresno yes but I was still farming and at the same time and they if you said to some of my students go go chainsaw limb or go fix a lawnmower they couldn't do it and when I grew up everybody you know took apart cars and tractors and and we were always told when I came back from got my PhD I said I walked I drove in the yard I didn't tell my dad I was coming back and he said what are you doing here I said I just I'm done I'm done I got the degree did you go well where's your graduation I said I didn't even go to it and he said okay well then you're going to go down there and I want you to wire the dehydrator I said I don't know how to do it well said if you can read Greek you can you know do a dehydrator and I'll get down there and one person in my family is very literary I won't mention his name but he said something really cute he said you know Dad knowing Greek is he quoted I think Johnson he said it's like a dog that uh looking at its hind legs and walks on his hind leg it's impressive but nobody really knows what it's for women preaching I think too so anyway it it uh I I thought that it was very important for people to be able to do physical things mental things and then be a citizen involved in voting and participation farming was really good about that because one day a person would come in a banker and he's come over here and he said okay Victor I want to know exactly the production per acre and how much are you spending on fertilizer Herbalife and you and you be on a spray rig and you'd say I got to get two pounds per acre I got 40 pounds on the spray rig I've got a dilution of one gal and you'd have to be a mathematician the next day you would have to driving Stakes all day Vineyard Stakes all day long when you're brutal back or you'd have to tie up young Vines just on your knees and you look down you say I did 15 I'm tired and there's 200 more so it was really good you were using your mind and your body all the time and you weren't making any money and so you'd have these existential questions that insurance guy that just came in probably made fifty dollars an hour just being as new you know as new Mercedes and I'm out here working and this year we lost 42. thousand I told the banker this and he said yeah Mr Hanson you paid twelve dollars an hour for the privilege of being on that tractor in 105 now how does that feel I said are you going to be stupid are you going to be smart you have no business farming if you're going to lose 40 000 and pay for the privilege of driving it okay so Victor if I may let me let me the importance of the land runs through all your work as I believe we've just demonstrated and you feel it as you have just demonstrated so let me push back a little bit and give you just 90 seconds of my own family history my mother grew up on a farm and her grandmother started each day with an ax chopping kindling for the wood burning stove and she was still do I saw that with my own eyes when I was a little boy that was still the way my grandmother started the day and when they had a chicken it was my grandmother who picked up the ax and cut its head off and my mother and her sister were never permitted to touch the ax or to get up and learn how to help with the milking because their mother had decided she was not going to equip them with skills that would turn them into Farmers wives they were going to move into town because Farm life was hard and it was lonely and we see the at least in this is northeastern Pennsylvania maybe that was different here maybe it wasn't lonely you sound the way you talk about it it was a community but back East there was a mild between each Farm so the argument on I'm testing on you and I take my life in my hands as I say this because you or you uh is that you're romanticizing it Victor that the reason we have so many that the reason during the 20th century we went from 90 of the workforce in agriculture to whatever it is now six percent in agriculture one percent in agriculture is that people found better options they got off the farm because they wanted to yeah I okay absolutely and the the the productivity per acre from when my grandfather farmed until when we did it increased six seven times so every time that happened it freed people out to be neurosurgeons and computers so that's was great but there was a paradox by it the more agriculture was able to free people from the drudgery of the land and give them a Cosmopolitan and more affluent experience the further and further they got away from reality so it was a double-edged sword so when you have this whole generation and and you can see in the dying citizen I look the age of marriage from 23 is up to First Age of marriage is up to from 23 to 27 first child is from 26 to 33 for Homeowner is from 31 up to 38 and the fertility rate has crashed from 2.1 as late as 2 000 to 1.6 and so what we're doing is we're not inculcating the idea that a man and a woman marry they have children at least two to replicate the species they have an autonomous house they're independent and they have some autonomy and freedom from government or the corporation and that was what farming taught you and we've got people who don't know anything about the physical world I would go to Farmers Market I did that for 10 years I would get enough with my kids in an old van and we go to Santa Cruz or Monterey and we pedal fruit and people you drive up over the mountains yes and finally our children that was the best thing that ever happened to them they hated it but when they were 16 one of them would get in the van that was 16 and he'd have 14 and 13 year old kids with 3 000 pounds of fruit on a 15 year old van and drive it over Pacheco pass and set it up and those kids would come back with three thousand dollars and they would apologize if they stopped and got a hamburger and splint too much and my it was just wonderful what happened but it was it was hard my son was a he learned how to drive with my yeah he taught him how to drive a forklift he was over working on the coast I won't mention Home Depot type of store a car a truck drove in they needed to be loaded no everybody had to be certified with a little vest he was just sitting there the truck driver was mad he just jumped up and masterfully unloaded the whole thing in the truck and they fired it because he was not certified even though he'd done it for 15 years as a kid he grew up on one so that kind of you're right it's very lonely out here we I always ask that why am I putting money in this house why do I still live here because I go each week to another Cosmos you know Palo Alto is just the opposite and everything is different everybody acts different and then I'm here and everybody will say here why in the hell you go up that crazy Place Stanford I get up there why in the hell do you live out in the middle of nowhere I drove through Fresno once man I would never live there and so it's like schizophrenic it's been that way through undergraduate graduate it's just the polls there's nothing more antithetical than the coast of California than the farm and there's nothing more antithetical in the farm but if you had to choose one or the other you wouldn't hesitate for a second now I'd live better Loop here all right so the people I see every day or the my insurance salesman the police I know are mostly people I went to school with and they're mostly Mexican-American or they're poor white kids and they're all very successful now but they're they're very loyal to you they come talk to you they don't care what you do let's talk let's talk about this community then yeah Selma is the Big Town that's nearest about twenty thousand years yeah it was six when I was there here's from your 2019 book the Case for Trump Selma then quote I'm quoting you for a century 1880 to 1980 Selma was a prosperous multi-ethnic and multiracial community of working and middle class families of a cohort of about 250 graduating seniors in 1971 that's your high school class only about 10 or so of us went away to four-year colleges most found no need to leave Selma they did not all right here's Selma now again I'm quoting you Selma's remaining native poorer whites ethnics and second and third generation Mexican Americans who would not or could not leave are not culpable for the vast transformations in the city's economic social and cultural landscape they're once prosperous and stable community did not deserve to erode close quote something went wrong for the people of Selma and it wasn't their fault what was it that went wrong well when we decided that we were going to because of technology and Communications we went globalized so the people on the two Coast are are West toward Asia the East toward the EU people who had skills that were Xerox or overseas law media Academia entertainment corporations they made more because their markets went from 330 million to 6 billion 7 billion and all of a sudden and I saw it as a person I would be writing columns in 2003 and somebody from you know Youngstown Ohio would write me a fan letter and then all of a sudden people from Korea and Japan and China you know what I mean you had a global so your Market increased your personality academic journalism but the point was if you had muscular labor that could be replicated or a business you were done for so if you were not vertically integrated and now I'm looking at 360 right now around here I can tell you that there was no we were the largest farm and it was 40 60 80 acres and it was self-sufficient and they raised the Wonder these very stable families nobody we didn't have a key to that there's no key to this house when I grew up there was one constable go forward upright Harvester that built sophisticated machines uh that would go up and down to load Jets went broke Del Monte went broke calcan went broke fujan fuhof trailer went broke all of these businesses that are my high school kids would go and make it very good wages that they were wiped out they were offshored or outsourced or they left and then these Farms were conglomerated so that one or two people I mean the largest farm I ever remember in high school was a guy's family that owned 400 Acres that was that was the big operation I know everybody around here is either owns or is renting out to somebody that owns 12 to 15 000 Acres and that means that these farm houses when you look out they're still there but who's living in them these are people who either are renting from town or they're from they've just crossed the border because it's cheap to live out here or they're hired people but they're not autonomous families that are socially economically viable so what's the difference the difference is I go out here and I spend most of my Saturday and Sunday picking up trash I mean just people come out and I'm not talking garbage I'm talking sofas television sets Etc I we had a person because people use a corner of your land as adult yes they do it everywhere they don't have money they're just renting a house they they're not aware of the protocols I don't know who they are I find a dead dog with a rope around its neck from dog fighting I go over here the SWAT team is over there they've got 15 people within 13 gangs I go over here I'm riding my bicycle I used to ride my bicycle a dog barks jumps up bites my leg open I come to the door there's three more dogs that come out and bite me all over the people don't speak Spanish English they close the door I call the sheriff you know I can't deal what you deal with I call the pal I you deal with and finally I say I'm going to write a column about it all then they deal with it and I have to have the dogs locked up for 30 days I don't know if I've got rabies or not and these problems were all solved in the 19th century here I can remember my grandfather saying when they got rabies vaccination for dogs or they got Mosquito Abatement so what it is now it's wild west time in California Center and it's okay can I connect you so it sounds to me there's no Community left no Community all right so heck neat example but before the before the internal combustion engine you have a huge industry based on horses blacksmiths and carriage makers and harness makers and then in the space of a couple of decades Henry Ford comes along and this industry collapses so that that's too bad but economic developments happen and there are winners but there are also losers that's nobody's fault that's just the way free market economies develop so what I want to ask is to what extent is what happened here in your lifetime in your seeing simply something that happened and to what extent was it the result of conscious bad policies it was this idea that um I'll give you an example to illustrate so the market collapsed with raisins it went from fourteen hundred dollars to 440 in one year a ton and ton and one year so from 1400 to 440 yeah okay so wow that year a year before we cleared eighty thousand dollars that year we lost 250 000. so they had a person from the Reagan Administration and the raisin administrative committee because everybody was complaining they wanted and he's and I was 26 farming I was all dirty I went there and I asked him I said why do we control the market and why do we subsidize our NATO Partners who are dumping Greek and Turkish raisins below the cost of production that you can buy in the United States cheaper than American raisins even and you already said he said this is a win-win-win for everybody I said would you please explain that he said the consumer will get cheaper raisins the less money eventually that I said no some made raisins are two dollars a pound no matter what it is no no no it'll go down and the number two our competitors will not be able to sustain that subsidy I said they will if we're paying for their defense budget and he said no no and it'll make you be more competitive that's how the system works now you may not think you can make it about 440 but maybe you should sell out and somebody will get you know he won't have to turn his tractor at the end of the row he just makes a big thing and he will find economy of scale so this is why the market works and I said I said this I won't mention names because the families are still here this man blew his brains out I went to high school with him and to make sure that he killed himself he hung himself he shot himself and he put his car up exhaustion in his garage the other man who was a ditch gender he killed himself and I said I know a whole generation of farmers that were wiped out did it have to be that way and you know he said well if you don't want to study economics you don't know anything I can't help you and I said well why don't we do it to you why do we need you why do we need a raisin administrative committee once if you really believe in free market just wipe it out and we'll just go have a free market but I said the problem with all of you guys is you always give people lectures who are the losers and it never you're never responsible for the consequences of your own ideology and that's so I think it was I'm not saying that you've got to go to the French model and have expensive food and gourmet food but this idea that you just wiped out the Bedrock of the foundation of American democracy it was 96 of the people who were there in 1776 were farmers right and there was a certain code a shame culture or code self-reliance and when when you look at our major cities what's going on today you get the impression that people are not grounded in anything they don't know how to work physically they don't understand they should be autonomous they look for government for not just for help but for their existence Victor can I still on Selma what happened in Selma different book of yours you've written so many books I can't quote them all 2003 you write a book called mexifornia quote sociologists call a small cohesive town like the old Selma a face-to-face Community as a small boy I used to dread being stopped and greeted by 10 or so nosy Selmons every time I went into town now I wish I actually knew someone among the many that I see today Selma is an edge City on the freeway of somewhere near 20 000 Anonymous souls and it is expanding at an unchecked Pace almost entirely because of massive and mostly illegal immigration from a single country Mexico close quote all right Reagan signs and amnesty in 1983 but not just an end 86 the Simpson was always 86. it's not just an amnesty it also includes enforcement measures which are never used never you George W bush tries to deal with immigration Donald Trump promises to build a wall and in fact he's builds something under a hundred less than 100 miles he achieves a temporary level in Immigration he'd never repair 500 miles of the old wall all right and under Joe Biden well as we sit here today rule 42 is 10 000 came out illegally yesterday just yesterday and it'll be more tomorrow immigration so hard for up for us there's two handles many people who benefit from illegal immigration start with the Republican corporate City of Commerce Landscaping meat packing Hospitality hotels restaurant farming they love cheap labor they have forever they like some of the hardest working people in the world are from Oaxaca Chiapas and mikokan the southern part indigenous people the poorest of the poor they don't even speak Spanish no some of them don't speak Spanish I found that out 20 years ago when people would speak okay so they come up here they work very hard it's it's like heaven compared to where they were and then they are 40 they're heavy they have injuries and then they say okay go to that's the federal dialysis go to the Medi-Cal do this and we need another replacement for you 18. where they work how they work with no concern that was on the right on the left they said we have a bunch of issues say Joe Biden and we can't get a majority on our crime issue we don't they don't like our prosecutors they don't like our open border they don't like the way we approach race they don't like our energy policy so we can't win unless we do two things we've got to control the institutions media Academia Hollywood entertainment the corporate boardroom K-12 Etc they do that pretty well the left and they say you know what we flip the Reagan ation Pete Wilson California doesn't exist at it and we've flipped California blue we flip Nevada blue we flip New Mexico blue we flip Colorado blue and we did it by driving out the middle class to go to less tax places but we brought in 20 million illegal aliens so now we have in the United States the highest number of people who were not born 50 50 million and before you think I sound xenophobic we take in in 2019 the last year we have we took in one million legal legal and I think that was great these are people who wait in line to come to this country and what do we do in addition to the 1 million we open the Border we let in people who the first thing they do is break the law the second thing they do is break the law by residing the third thing they do is break the law by trying to find some kind of identification and we do it because the left wants constituents and they think they're going to come in there's going to be amnesty which and they're going to vote and they're going to if they don't vote they need health they do they need education they need food they need shelter it's it's more subsidies that's more workers that's more federal government it's more taxes this is what we want with the Lyft loans and then we have the Mexican final and the in this Mosaic the final tester is the Mexican government and the Mexican Government wins wins when the largest source of Foreign Exchange is 60 billion billion dollars it leaves California all these states goes to Mexico to support families and who sends it people who by and large have federal state local subsidies so the California taxpayer the Arizona taxpayer the Colorado pays a lot of taxes people get help and subsidies and they free up two to three hundred dollars a week and they send it to Mexico so Mexico will not help its own indigenous people and then Mexico sees wow and I'm quoting now directly from president obedor the other day he said well it's a beautiful thing we have 40 million of our people in in the United States now and there are expatriates well yeah they're a lobbying organization and he said and they should all vote remember he said they should all vote democratic so Mexico feels that they have a safety valve you don't march on Mexico City if you're in Oaxaca you go into Selma you send money back to the Mexican Government so they can continue their racist practice of ignoring indigenous people and then they have an ex-patriate that waves Mexican flags at soccer match they love Mexico as long as they don't have to live there and it's a win-win for the corporate right the left wing and here and the Mexican Government and who's the only person who says this is very destabilizing we're kicking veterans out of the military because they won't get vaccinated and we let in six and a half million illegal entries since Biden and we didn't ask one of them if they were vaccinated or if they were going to be vaccinated or if they were infected with covet not one we don't know whether we have nothing about them I'd go into SFO and I see it once in a while I come in a lot from a different country if a guy does not have a passport and says he forgot it they take him in a little room and they make him sit there where they either find some idea or they send him back I've seen people being escorted to go back on the flight home you go down to the Border they just walk across so they're treated better than people that are can be citizens that don't have a passport it's the most insane thing in the world and the the beauty of this system is we know how to integrate assimilate an intermary immigrants we do it better than anybody if they people come legally they come from diverse places all over the world so they don't conglomerate in One Tribe and they have some a modicum of either skills education or language fluency but you bring a whole group of people from one place and the fifth and most important part the host has to Believe In The Singularity and exceptionalism of his country he has to have confidence he has to say to himself I didn't ask you to come in my country you chose to come in my country you're a guest now this is called the brutal bargain you can keep your language your Customs your fashion your food at home but when you're in the Public Square you're going to learn English you're going to be learn our traditions and you're not going to come with grievances against your hosts upon arrival that's what we all we did was pretty brutal right I can remember my grandfather saying I'm so tired of these swedes they all say it's Swede was so good I remember swedes just a bunch of rocks that's all it was if they love the rock so much why don't they go back so that was the attitude of the Immigrant and so I see Spa I see you know there's a talls of confidence because I go into Selma and I see a lot of entrepreneur Mexican-American people and I see a lot of people who come up and they're very conservative and I actually believe that's the only hope in California that about half the population is now identifying as Hispanic but they're intermarrying uh and they are taxpayers and they're saying to themselves why do I have to give up my natural gas stove I think there's two I don't like people bursting into the Catholic Diocese and telling us about transgender protest I I want a good police force so they have they haven't been corrupted by the luxury and affluence of the by Coastal Elite yet and so I have confidence that it'll work its way out but it didn't have to be this Victor last last questions again from your book the land was everything quote to Aristotle man was tame only to the degree that he was occupied independent only as long as he owned property man realizes the dangers of his own natural savagery only through his attempt at physical Mastery of the world around him close quote does it have to be agriculture no if Aristotle were here today would he would he say well coding or writing or teaching they can all tame our Savages yes or no yes I think so but I think there is one difference what he was trying to say was because that was his only frame of reference because 90 people they had to they took nine people to farm for 10 people to live 90 percent but what he was trying to say is that it was autonomy autonomy autonomy so what I'm getting at is if you're an independent coder or you're an independent producer or you're a freelance camera or sound person then you're scrambling you're independent and that creates a different mentality than if you're working for a big conglomerate some of us will do you know I was working for one at Cal State Fresno but to the degree that a person can carve out an existence where they're not just checking in eight to five and learning about the retirement and they're taking risk and sometimes they'd agree to which their income depends on their health and sometimes they got the flu and they've got to work that creates a different type of citizen and I think that's when the genius some of the most brilliant people I've I've met two types of people in my life that are absolutely brilliant one is the 7-Eleven owner I go in there I talk to those guys I know inventory they know security and they know pricing they know the competition and they I don't know how they do it I couldn't do it and every once in a while I'll talk to a trucker especially when I was a young kid when they were working and those guys are they knew out they were mechanics they were mathematicians about the price of fuel they were really rugged people and any any you don't need everybody like that obviously you need people at the DMV but to the degree you have a large minority who are independent they provide a check on the rest of us they go to a school board meeting I say just a minute just a minute I don't like this critical race Theory stuff whether they're like they're they're outspoken because that's how they are in their life you don't want everybody to be like me a teacher you work for a conglomerate the land was everything one more time last question here your idea I'm quoting you your idea is only as good as your will and ability to see it enacted action action do things the more abstract liberal and utopian your cat the more difficult it is to live what you profess the farmer of a free Society solved uniquely the age-old Western dilemma between reason and Faith by using his reason and intellect to husband and direct the mystical world of plants even as he accepted the limits of Reason by experiencing every day a process that was ultimately unfathomable yeah you water those almonds you put the fertilizer on them and when it comes right down to it it's still a mystery when those blossoms appear in the spring okay your idea is only as good as your ability to see it enacted is there any way back if not to more Family Farms than to that mentality it's hard to know because it requires kind of a tragic view of the world that you can't control everything and our problem in our society is that any little grievance or a little Misfortune were so self-absorbed that we want to blame somebody or we want it to be perfect or we're so close to Utopia we're so materially affluent we get angry when we don't live to be 90 and die in our sleep we had a Santa Rosa Orchard over there and we did everything right Plum Orchard 1986 or something and we were really on the edge with the bank and I had done all these figures and I said you know what if we get 700 pack outs and the price can stay at 10 bucks we'll pay off the loan and was and we have the best crop we've ever had and most of our neighbors don't don't it's going to be a great year we we spent a lot of money we fertilize we thin and guess what does it ever hail in May why would it hail in may we were going to pick on June 10th and then May 28th this big black cloud came right over there from Santa Barbara it came and it literally stopped right above the Orchard and for 10 minutes it hailed and when it was gone every single beautiful Plum had pits all over it and was ruined and who do you blame but the point is you get to the point where you say that happens and it's not my fault but I can't control things but I'm going to do things that it's not going to defeat me so I'm going to have a backup plan on it that's how you look at things and you know that's I've had situations in my life where I thought people were unfair to me or I didn't get a job or I didn't but I never thought of suing somebody I just thought you know what that's there that's what they want to do let them do it I'll go around the other way I'll do something else so you have to be that that attitude that you know we all die and you've got to have this tragic view that it's a very adverse adversarial world out there and I think people if they don't have that farming experience or Trucking or whatever it is they get told by the society and their parents that they can Shield them helicopter everything is going to go right and you can see it with these University students they're so bright they're at Harvard Yale Stanford and they melt down you know when they don't get their way and they just start this is so unfair you think you know what I would like to take you and give you you know an eight foot tandem disc and just say go down there and disc for seven hours and see what happens it's not going to be all right you're going to hit a Vine you're going to overheat the this blades are going to break and you're going to have to deal with it but they don't have to deal with anything and that's why I'm really worried because just to finish when you look at this whole culture we're creating in the 60s we had the Ugly American remember we all the corporations were going abroad and telling everybody we have an ugly American now we go overseas and we say to the Greeks and the Israelis and the cypriots you're going to end that East Med pipeline just cut it off that it was really valuable it was going to help you because we think it's it goes against our idea of global warming and you know what those people on in Kabul University we're going to spend 700 million dollars you're going to have a gender studies program and we're going to fly the pride flag in a traditional Islamic Society over the embassy and we're going to have George Floyd we just go around the world now and and print this whole woke culture on all these different groups of people and because we think it's so Advanced and sophisticated utopian and radically egalitarian that we have the moral superiority to do that and because we just have to control everything and it's this this this group of people that comes out of this affluence of Urban University life and they get into government and court and you know you want to say to them screw you how do you know that you're any better than these other people who do you who are you to say that the Afghan people have to have a gender studies program maybe they don't want it maybe maybe you know there's not a lot of homeless people in Kabul maybe when you go down to I don't know Saudi Arabia there's not people injecting defecating fornicating and urinating on the Streets of San Francisco where do we get this arrogance that this we're we are so much better than it we are good but I think we've had so many people that have never been questioned and they've never had any adversity in their life and they've been pampered and there are Elite and they want to control Our Lives you're not going to have a natural gas stove that's just wrong I've decided that it's over with go tell a guy who is living in a shock one quarter mile down the road he's got a big natural gas stove outside that he cooks on or you know you're going to have 550 a gallon in California because we don't want you know Carbon you know in the air go tell a poor Mexican guy that's driving to San Joaquin in a 1962 pickup that they have no sympathy or empathy and that's what's really I get really angry about the elite affluent educated classes in this country they are so self-absorbed and narcissistic and they want to be they're Messianic they want to spread these ideas all over the world and they should start at home first I would say you know what go over to Afghanistan and do all you want all you have to do is one thing first you've got to be able to walk down San Francisco streets Market without getting feces on your feet and without being shouted on and you have to drive get on the New York subway for five nights without having a problem when you can do that then go lecture the world Victor Davis Hansen the fifth generation to own this Ranch in the San Joaquin Valley of California thank you thank you for having for uncommon knowledge the Hoover institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson [Music]

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 1,215,867

Keywords: uncommon knowledge, hoover institution, peter robinson, victor davis hanson, hoover senior fellow victor davis hanson, stanford hoover institution, hoover fellows, farming, california farming, 19th century, elections

Id: U9o-68M0bCU

Length: 67min 3sec (4023 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023