Victor Davis Hanson on grand strategy, immigration, and the 2016 presidential election

from ancient Rome to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with the only man on the planet who can speak with real erudition about all three with us today an uncommon knowledge Victor Davis Hanson uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson Victor Davis Hanson grew up on a ranch in the San Joaquin Valley town of Selma the fifth generation of his family to live in the same house dr. Hansen received his undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz and a doctorate and classics from Stanford for many years dr. Hansen worked the family ranch while teaching at Fresno State since 2002 he has served as a fellow at the Hoover Institution dr. Hansen is the author of more than a dozen books on the ancient world and military history including his classic work a war like no other how the Athenians and Spartans fought the Peloponnesian War and most recently the Saviour generals how five great commanders saved wars that were lost from ancient Greece to Iraq I should add that dr. Hansen's next book the second world wars will be published in September of 2017 dr. Hansen also is if you weren't busy enough writes a regular column that appears in newspapers and on websites across the country Victor Davis Hanson welcome thank you for having me Victor I'm going to quote you to yourself this is a review of a book called Colossus by our colleague here at hoover neil ferguson that you wrote a few years ago Victor Davis Hanson quote those who got it right about America were not Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter but Teddy Roosevelt and Douglas MacArthur we should be natural imperialists given our wealth and expertise yes okay so the United States as an imperial power and it ought to just embraced that role if you looked at the entire quote to my suggestion that you did well I did of course but it's so much more fun just to quote a bit of it the Optive mood should means that by all regional calculations a country without that potential sized military clout should be Imperial and what I was trying to say is that where we exercise enormous hegemonies they're different sort than traditional Imperial we haven't taken anybody's land since 1998 world war two we lost four hundred forty thousand people we gave back okinawa and we gave back most of the land in europe we occupied so we're a funny sort of empire that was my point that by every calculus we should be Imperial s what people do they try to aggrandize their their land or territory their natural resources the United States created that post-war order and then played by its own set of rules and by 1970 was losing out to Japan and Germany and now in some sense China so we're plenty sort of empire let me quote you again Americans are endowed with an exceptional moral sense we are a generous people whose checkered Imperial interventions in the past rarely proved profitable or exploitive so let's talk about let's talk about the one explicit colony we had the Philippines yes well we inherited the Philippines after we defeated the Spanish the Spanish Civil War and then we promised to give them independence in the mid-nineteenth by then I think was 1946 and then we fought an insurrection against the Islamic Morrow's and then World War Two came along and we decided even though it was not if you look at the map it's not on the trajectory to Japan we lost the Philippines we lost over 12,000 soldiers dead trying to defend it then we gave it back to the Philippines but when Douglas MacArthur said I shall return Chester Nimitz and others said that's not on the way to Japan that's and so we lost another fifty thousand casualties trying to retake the Philippines from a Japanese we would have probably been better off just to keep going island hopping straight on the weight and bypassed it but the Philippines for all of the acrimony it's it's never been a possession that the United States tried to exploit take its resources an X divide trisect memory we've been clumsy we've been insensitive but I guess my experience with the Philippines is that famous sign when we left finally Subic Bay it said go home Yankees and take me with you right right and a lot of Philippines wanted to come the United States so eat the Philippines are the engagement that's the closest we come to a kind of traditional colony and yet it costas that's a lot of money and we didn't lives yes and we didn't we didn't go out trying to get it we were stuck with it after Spain was defeated and abdicated and then we didn't know what to do with it and then we had an enormous anti-war movement about even going in and trying to defeat the insurrectionist and then we had sort of a proconsul there and it wasn't it wasn't a happy time in American life people were not excited that they had the Philip place because my two boys and we don't do that very well and we don't take people's land we don't we have an imperial order but it's a post-war order in which we set rules and in terms of Commerce or trade we we allow Japan or Germany or China with much less military power than us to beat us economically and they do okay so let's talk about we're uncomfortable to the extent that we've ever been an imperial power we've been a pretty generous one they're altruistic one there's no evidence that anybody two takes a fair look at American history could a deuce that we have used our power to exploit in economic or other terms any anything that might even be turned loosely in American possession we grant that now this post-war order this America as top nation for some seven decades now the Cold War is over and yet the United States retains something like a hundred and fifty military bases yes we continue to spend so much on our military that we spend more than the next seven defense budgets combined I believe that's the current statistic we out spend and that that comes out of the pockets of American taxpayers yes so the question then is is Victor Davis Hanson pleased that the United States still retains this dominance around the world or would he be in the camp that says with Barack Obama hold on this is we can't we can't continue this without in one fundamental way or another humiliating other people we should withdraw we should seek to encourage other nations to take responsibility for their own regions this has gone on long enough and we should withdraw well I'm not an agreement that we should withdraw but I am an agreement that we have an aggregate of 20 trillion dollars and debt and so we have to be very selective and how we apply u.s. power to set to create deterrence and that's all it's valuable for to create a turn effect so that history's great monsters and they're always there don't don't try to do something stupid once wars are started by weaker powers who have convinced themselves that the stronger either too complacent or they don't want to take the trouble to police the area and they're going to try something stupid by that I mean we don't want China to keep okay expanding this archipelago in the South China Sea China China in the Pacific Victor Davis Hanson quote China believe now I'm quoting a recently column China believes it is finally time to make its military reflect its enormous economic power so one argument is the United States has kept the peace across the Pacific the United States Navy has kept the peace across the Pacific it has permitted the post-war growth of the economy of Japan which is now a rich nation and which has had to spend almost nothing on its own defense it is permitted the Australians don't like to hear this but it is permitted the freedom of Australia which is essentially an anglo-saxon nation surrounded by Asian powers and we ought to do whatever it takes to keep that up argument one argument - oh for goodness sake look at Chinese history they insist when they're powerful on being the great hegemon in their own region but only in their own region they're not coming after us but let them have the South Pacific about it right the point is that there's a number of countries throughout the world that could build nuclear weapons as they do Mercedes or Honda's and they choose not to and they choose not to because they feel that the United States is a guarantor of theirs safety and security Japan so if we decide that it's too risky to put a carrier in the South China Sea occasionally or we don't want to pledge Los Angeles to the security of Seoul then there's going to be a void and the Chinese are going to absorb that and become a regional hegemony just like Iran is trying to do in the Persian Gulf just as Russia is trying to do the former Soviet republics just like Isis is trying to do in the Middle East and the question then is how will that be deterred and there's always deterrence it's just a matter of who's going to do it in at what cost so you'll probably see if we were to withdraw entirely that Japan South Korea Taiwan perhaps even Australia and the Philippines they all have a capability of becoming nuclear and that would deter China if we want five nuclear additional powers and we could say well they're at least democratic although in case the Philippines lately would be quite scary so we can do that so what I'm suggesting is we just don't scare people we have a reasoned discussion and say if you don't want to be engaged overseas these are the likely scenarios that would happen in the vacuum you prefer that or do you prefer maintaining some kind of deterrence does that mean that would we have to do it alone know we can get smarter with regional allies we can make them pay more we can recalibrate NATO but the 75 years after World War two is a an aberration world history it's pieces of parenthesis I'm quoting Plato of all people and war unfortunate of natural order of things and in a vacuum we're going to see that very quickly Iran under President Obama's agreement with Iran this past winter foreign nations ended their sanctions on Iran's nuclear program Iran and return dismantled a plutonium reactor and shipped enriched materials to Russia and also reduced its stock of centrifuges I quote the Secretary of State John Kerry quote Iran was hurtling towards an unaccounted-for uninspected full-fledged nuclear program now at Iran's consent and agreement they have rolled back from that close quote there you have Victor a diplomatic triumph correct no what what's happened is when John Kerry said that he did include that to get that agreement we had to overlook things like spot inspections and the shipping of all in rhenium out of country to be examined by third parties adjudicators but more importantly this was sold as a mechanism to changing Iranian behavior and there were a lot of side agreements one with Elin about ballistic missiles so once that agreement was signed did we see a sign of relationship we saw just the opposite that a US carrier had an Iranian missiles shot at it we had American sailors hijacked on the high sea and taken hostages we have Iranian PT boats that normally normally disrupt the trajectories of American ship warships we had this very strange deal where in the middle of night we sent home four hundred million dollars in cash on pallets and then with the president States said we had to do it because we couldn't wire money and without violating the sanctions of course we did that as well so their behavior afterwards is one of a power like Hitler after Munich and said you know what I have nothing from but contempt for anybody who would believe my own lies and we forget sometimes that what causes war is when a stronger power is humiliated by a weaker power and the weaker power then says I have a special contempt for them because they have the military power to deter me but they choose because of moral cowardice weakness uncertainty not to use it so you think that after Munich Neville Chamberlain would be very popular in the rice day right here what did Hitler say - if I ever see that guy again I'm going to jump on him and jump on his chest and break that umbrella over his head what he meant was British has the British have a bigger Navy than I do they have their Air Force is comparable and yet he's scared of me why because he's a and I'm not arguing that we need to be too you know gratuitously me I'm just saying that when the Iranians look at us and see there are responsibilities and we don't protect our allies or we don't sound suspicious but we're not and going up it for peace at any price to concede to them then they have contempt for us and they've just changed that they're calibrating the trajectory or maybe ten years maybe three years maybe five years but we're living in terms of nuclear weapons you count centuries and if they get a bomb in ten years whether than in three years I don't think it's much much of an advantage for us Russia Victor Davis Hanson quote from the czars to the Soviet communists of Vladimir Putin's cronies there is something about constitutional government and liberal rule that bothers Mother Russia close quote explain that well I just trying to find out if anybody can tell me where there was a constitutional system intact maybe you could argue the czars we're trying to move in that direction at the beginning of the 20th century some naive people thought that Leninism form might be a benign form of communism after the fall of the Soviet Union people said that Yeltsin was going to have a parliamentary system that would be viable but if anybody can find one example of a sustained constitutional system then that would refute my fear but I can't you so deeper question I think why should it be that history that political cultures should be so enduring why should it be we can talk ourselves until we're blue in the face about Russian sense of hostility because of the Mongol invasions the that we can talk about the vastness of the steppe and their how they have over the centuries had to think constantly in terms of their own defense their own defense suspicions of foreigners but for goodness sake it's the 21st century they had a chance at democracy under Yeltsin and it didn't work somehow how is it that history history is so hard to overcome the Middle East it's just what why can't you think there's I could be reductionist there's a simple platitude that might explain that angst on your part and that is that the absence of constitutional government is pretty much the norm outside the West and by the West I mean the culture that originated in Greece and Rome and over the periods of the Middle Ages of Renaissance the Enlightenment morphed into northern Europe and then through the British experience transcended Europe and popped up in places like Australia Canada the dominions and then after World War two was implanted by force by the United States and in Japan and it's an aberration both historically and contemporary Gnaeus Lee so the idea that people will get together and have a unfollow constitutional law by the consent of the governed it's not the norm in most places reject it it has a lot of liabilities but it's better than the alternative but if you don't have any experience with it the only way that it can be implanted is through force and we did it sometimes successfully with Italy and Germany and Japan and Korea but if in the postmodern era and it was working in Iraq for a while we defeated the enemy you humiliated al-qaeda we rid them we planted Americans we put a gun to the head of the Iraqis said you're going to treat everybody in minorities according to proportional representation then we pulled out as if we had pulled out of South Korea say nineteen fifty-eight and said well we don't want to stay in South Korean any longer you can imagine what South Korea would look like today it wouldn't exist right what does Vladimir Putin what next well but I'm our Putin wants whatever people are going to give him so he does a basic calculation is it if going into eastern Ukraine or going into the Baltic States or fifty-one percent more likely to benefit him then he might take the the alternative he wants to Ricans we constitute the former Soviet republics under an autocratic system and his way of thinking the Baltic states are Russian Ukraine is Russian Eastern Europe is a necessary buffer and I'm going to reconstitute that it preferably without war an occasion once and once in a while with war or to the degree that the West in the United States is going to let me do it so again the the China argument all they're interested in is hegemony within their own region Russia nobody thinks Vladimir Putin wants to go all the way to Berlin he's got the Baltic States maybe he wants half of Ukraine maybe he wants all of Ukraine suppose he did reconstitute the old Soviet Union suppose he brought under his pretty direct control every country that was a soviet republic why should we care well I think that the conflict divisions is one in the following way if we want to withdraw and say that's not our business after Libya and after Syria and after Afghanistan Iraq just let them be they're never going to do what we want anyway just say blood and treasure that's one point but the other is that you're going to establish local the use of fancy word hegemonies and you're going to have the Chinese dictating to how people conduct their foreign policy their Internal Affairs in places like Taiwan South Korea the Philippines Japan and that's okay if you want to do that there might not we can do it without a war we can say the same thing with the Soviets that's their natural sphere of influence you guys in the Baltic States you got silicon just forget these little pipe dreams of democracy personal freedom writing what you want you're now part of the Russian orbit we can go into the Middle East and say the people of Syria the people in the Iraq area the people along the Gulf monarchies because they're going to be very vulnerable you may not like the Shia theocracy but you didn't have the money just go that's their area right and we can do the same thing with this new authoritarian movement in Venezuela and Bolivia and Peru just let them do it right and then the question is if we let this this this this and we and we did this before we've done a number of occasions what the questions are twofold is it fair to tell the people of Japan or other people of Barrat Bahrain or the people of Estonia sorry we're just not going to help you you're you're just some of your history's losers that's number one and as you multiply these blocks these end to antithetical blocks at some point do they create a mass and by that I mean just let Mussolini do his thing in the Mediterranean in the 1930s it's number of business if it goes into Somalia who cares who cares who cares if they go into militarize the rhineland and who cares if the soviets go into finland or they divide pulling up with with russian who cares about New Guinea or the Dutch East Indies or French Indochina if Japan absorbs and that's what we did and all of a sudden we looked around we thought wow all of these blocks are getting very big and they're getting very powerful and they all have one thing in common they hate us and they are working on ways to emasculate and we see it at Pearl Harbor on December 11th Hitler declares war and then all of a sudden we go the other way and say we're going to go and get involved we're not going to do like we did after World War one so it's a yin and yang and there's arguments for both but I think over the long haul reasoned engagement and the establishment of deterrence saves lives and is in our interest got it home from abroad to home Victor Davis Hanson quote Rome worked when foreigners crossed through its borders to become Romans it failed when newcomers fled into the empire and adhered to their own cultures yes close quote explain that well historically there's three elements to immigration that adjudicate whether it's failed or successful one is it diverse you when people come into Rome they come into Rome all over from all over the Mediterranean or the eastern world or they just come from across the Danube and the Rhine as they did in the 5th century number two is it measured do people come in numbers that so one immigrant meets ten natives or one person from Gaul or one person from Poland then meets ten Italians and they learn how to assimilate and intermarry and integrate or do they come in masse and create enclaves and then number three do they come under some legal auspices and learn the language and its measured and it's some degree Merrick meritocratic and if those conditions have been met as they have been mostly in American history then it works wonderfully it enriches the body politic people are invigorating by these new people want to be American and they do however if you allow it not to be diverse but largely from one area Mexico Mexico or Latin America then the people are coming are not going to assimilate quick enough because there's not there going to be an end blog and if they do it illegally and they don't know English they have further obstacles to overcome and if it's not Mara Craddock then we have to tell the brain surgeon from Kenya or we have to tell the accountant from South Korea or we have to tell the nuclear physicists from Argentina sorry you just didn't happen to live close enough to the Rio Grande so you can't come you may be legal you may have a skill set that we need but this is not how we're going to adjudicate it it doesn't seem that that's going to be either fair or legal so we need to get immigration diverse from as many different places possible so that you don't get overwhelmed by the one or shake a single and more importantly that one particular group is not used by domestic political parties for their own electoral calculations as it happened in the 19th century and then it has to be legal has to be in numbers that can be assimilated and it has to be a metric rata can dice have a system why we say you can come and you can and we don't we don't have that now Victor The Wall Street Journal this past summer quote increasing net annual immigration by 50 percent a year would increase GDP growth on average from one point seven percent to two percent a year over the next thirty five years it would also mean more workers per retiree reducing the stress on Medicare and Social Security close quote according to let them in it'll be looking on The Wall Street Journal that if that calculus was correct why not let him 50 million because that GDP would go even bigger and the answer is that the Wall Street Journal thinks in terms of profit and loss but not in cultures and social life and stability I came up here yes in other words you're willing to grant that within some range more immigrants might produce economic growth but the other kinds of answer to calibrating certain cost and by that I mean I came up here yesterday somebody who obviously from self somebody who was here illegally was in a semi and flipped it and blocked the entire six lanes of a 99 freeway last week some gangbangers for the first time in the history of my local school shot an automatic weapon and closed down a football game first time it ever happened so there are social problems when you bring so many people and the host us no longer believes in the melting-pot but has rebranded it the salad bowl and we feel it's hurtful unfair not right not to assimilate integrate and intermarry people the tragedy of all this is that people who came in the past ie before 30 years ago and there in my own family who are mexican-american I have a sister in law's Mexican American I have nieces and nephews it worked perfectly they had the same experience the Italian Americans of the 19th century today if I say to you is Rudy Giuliani are the Cuomo's what political party Cuomo Giuliani you wouldn't know you would say well one's Democrat one's Republican because it's it's incidental not essential to their character right because they've been assimilated we don't have an Italian American Studies department and the way that we have la raza nobody and nobody in the italian-american committees community says I'm a member of La Raza with two Z's the way Mussolini said they say they don't do it because they had no need to because they'd been assimilated and you know everybody has this problem my I grew up only my father only bought used Volvo's we had to eat Swedish crackers we had to buy Electrolux vacuum cleaner because you're good Swedes could we were good sweet but your father served in second as my dad I'm high school dad they're all played out Kingsburg is no longer a Swedish community they're all intermarried it doesn't exist anymore and you said yeah you're right and I didn't learn Swedish so the point I'm making is that if we were to go back to that system then all of these this political ethnic chauvinistic identity politics would die on the vine but too many people are invested in it and it's been very lucrative for a number of people's careers the legacy of Barack Obama Victor Davis Hanson quote President Obama has systematically adopted a rhetoric and agenda that is predicated on dividing up the country according to tribal grievances in hopes of recalibrating various factions into a majority grievance culture a majority grievance culture he has succeeded politically but in doing so he has nearly torn the country apart Barack Obama first of all what do you mean by a majority grievance culture well it means that 51 percent of the population feels that they have a grievance against the population and so when you say that gays and women and Latinos and Asians and blacks and people of mixed ancestry and the disabled you can each person you can get nine seventy percent a person can say that my particular identity is essential not incidental to my character and we're talking right now on in when we have riots going on in Charlotte North Carolina in a parent's situation where an African American policeman shot an African American suspect who may probably have been armed with a freakin American police chief and that set off a riot and that suggests that people if they're going to riot in a situation they meaning the protesters what if the police chief had been white what if the the officer involved had him an Asian it wouldn't have made it would have been worse less worse I don't know but we reached a situation in which we're going to have to come to terms with a lot of situations that the president when he came into office he did things that I hadn't seen in my lifetime I've never heard of President presidential candidates a typical white person at least not since reading about it in the 1920s or 30s Woodrow Wilson was the last person to identify that strongly with race I don't you know when you say you enter in I didn't hear Bill Clinton say in the OJ trial well Nicole Simpson looks like the dog second daughter I might have had right in the middle of a trial in a way that Obama editorialize about Trayvon Martin and then you get into the beer summit and all that language created this image that it was okay to identify are your tribal affiliation and that had been something in America we're the only multiracial Society if anybody can find an example and the Balkans or Rwanda or Iraq where it works tell me about it but it's never worked doesn't work very well in India but we're the only ones that worked and it was because for all the problems of slavery and Jim Crow and and discrimination the original European colonists who came to this continent evolved according to the ideas in the Declaration and the Constitution that race would eventually be insignificant and it's hard for majority population to do that but we are evolving in the right direction apparently under Obama we felt that that's impossible so that we are prisoners of our past and it's important that we all identify according to tribal affiliations and that's where we're going right now and I don't think there's any history that I know of where that's going to work out well the way ahead Hillary and Donald Trump Victor Davis Hanson quote broke when they left the White House in 2001 Bill and Hillary Clinton leveraged Hillary Clinton's political career to amass a personal fortune of between 100 and 200 million all in the form of quid pro quo investments by wealthy individuals and foreign governments no other first family has so unapologetically charged banks foreign governments corporations and universities so much money yes yes yes but isn't every thinking person still in favor of Hillary Clinton well they've created a culture in which the the thinking reason and rational person alone is Hillary Clinton and the the buffoon or the fanatic the lunatic are they on hinge just for Donald Trump but regarding that quote the Clintons offered something that no other President X president ever offered Jimmy Carter raised money for his foundation but he was a very simple guy he didn't try to shake down corporations for speaking fees Reagan tried it for a little bit and quit Jerry Ford wanted to go golf in Southern California George HW Bush George W Bush did not do it too much extent Clinton had something that they didn't have he had a wife a spouse who he told people will be back in here right and she's a viable presidential candidate on a way that Barbara Bush or not mrs. Carter none of them were and I'm going to be back here with her as president de facto president and therefore you better invest in her as Secretary of State through this foundation and we're going to remember and so that's that's the font of all their ethical problems they had a premise that was predicated on selling influence for money Victor Davis Hanson on Donald Trump quote the media the pundit acqua see the universities the political establishment Wall Street the big banks that make a wealthy even the Koch brothers and Hank Paulson former head of Goldman Sachs can't stand Trump he should be down by 20 points but he's not why isn't he well he represents an anger at that much too overused word elites elites are people who not just by money but basically have a utopian vision that they feel that does not apply to themselves and they have the money culture and influence and navigate around the ramifications of their own ideology so what do I mean by that Mark Zuckerberg lectures all of us about how a wall is bad and then he builds a wall or tries to build a Maginot Line around his own home or we're told just how terrible charter schools are and you can't do that and Barack Obama purchase kids and Sidwell friends or Al Gore says you know what the planet is heating up carbon is the problem but I'm going to sell my cable channel to gutter and their fossil fuel fortunes and I'm going to try to beat the capital gains tax in a way that John Kerry moved his yacht to Rhode Island to avoid the high taxes he wants on everybody else and it became so an aggregate so large that people got sick of them and so Donald Trump is don't Trump is Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare she's Barack Obama's nemesis and she he's a vampires mayor for the Republican establishment they look in him and they see they see them they don't even see them as if they're nothing and that's because the Republicans of all people allowed the borders to stay open they were they could have stopped the 20 trillion dollars in the national debt they did a noble job trying to stop Obamacare but failed and when a Republican legislature legislature retires in Washington there's no difference between his dinner Democratic counterpart and his eagerness to get rich by virtue of his past office Victor we're taping this six weeks before election day care to call it would you care to call it well I could say that it I'll say two things it won't be a blowout and I think it will be one or two points either one every rational person I don't look at polls I look what bookies say because they they really have skin of the game and they they still believe that Hillary's money her ground game her organization her endorsements and the establishment cannot be beat they also said that about Barack Obama so I'm saying the 50-50 I will say that he also said about the British exit from the year yes they did do that I do say I will say two things one is when I meet people here at Hoover or National Review where I write or any other venue the people who are willing to vote for Trump usually he was not their first candidate and they're very shy about it they don't want to admit it they're sort of like the Bayesian of the body snatchers you really don't know they've been snatched yet they're just quiet or they're in the closet the people who are verily anti Trump it's almost as if there are virtue monger they won't they just want to tell everybody how virtuous are not in my name would I ever vote so I have a feeling that there's it's low yeah I have a feeling there's somewhat of a hidden vote the other thing is that a lot of the editorial ization and the media anger at Trump is predicated on blowing him out if he is blown out by six to eight points then the Republican establishment of opposed him says I warned you he is a disastrous for the Republican Party he did to you what Goldwater did and I'm the pride of the predicate however if he were to lose by one or two points then people are going to say you were the missing Tesla in the mosaic they could have got him elected if Hillary wins of course they're out too so there's a lot of people who are predicated in a Trump blowout and so again ad nauseam he's terrible he's Hitler he stolen one of the fun weirdest things is a so-called Republican establishment Democratic establishment the Washington DC sophisticated nuance people and when you read what they write and very sophisticated historical nuances they say he's Mussolini he's Hitler he stalled on he's a brown series of lecture it's it's a getalife you know what I mean Victor less question here we sit one candidate for president Hillary Clinton is corrupt she's told untruths about her emails she and her husband have shaken down big bet just as you explained and is known to be corrupt the other candidate Donald Trump I think the best construction we can put on it is to say he is just amazingly vulgar and undisciplined and so here's the question is there anything about this that reminds you of Rome in about the late fourth century do you in other words do you look at this country and say from Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump do you use do you get the whiff of decay is there something that's irreversible here in a year 69 ad narrow was narrow of all people was killed and did they find a sister Cicero or do they find a elder Cato or Skippy Oh from the Republic no they had a choice between autho and Galba and vitelli and that's where we are but it's almost as if saying there's a radioactive field here that's been contaminated by a bomb don't go in it or there's an area over here that I think is radioactive you shouldn't go in it that's the choice so we the only way I look at it is we know what Hilary has done we know what Trump is capable of so would you prefer to go where something is radioactive or where something might be radioactive that's what were we we've been reduced to and so are you do you ten years from now could the United States really I mean Nero Nero's gone and Rome succeeds you've got two hundred years of pretty good peaceful times and some prosperity I'll be not just I think brief arrangements raise no is this where is this recoverable or are we on the end day where we always say it's not recoverable but it is Milton Friedman said there's a lot of rot and capitalist democracies that you can expend so yeah I think I think where the issue is not Trump or Hillary its twenty trillion dollars in debt cultural and social and racial division a health care system that doesn't work a failed foreign policy and entitlement industry that's not sustainable and that's kind of those problems have self-correcting mechanisms called chaos and we they're going to have chaos or somebody's going to preempt them and do it and I will say that people are very naive about their past if I were to get asked a progressive who was the best president of the 20th century they would tell me Woodrow Wilson maybe FDR and I'm thinking who has been the most who was the most racist present that was elected in the twentieth century would what was he stopped all integration he wouldn't integrate that we could have had the Armed Forces integrated thirty years earlier his Versailles Treaty what he did at Versailles guaranteed a war in twenty twenty years his idea of trying to undermine and destroy the Constitution through progressive it was a disaster and yet we not only recovered from him but now people look back very nostalgically and say he was a hero so there's a clear choice there's no such thing as they're both the same neutrality whether people want to admit it or not being neutral is not being neutral it's it's like a vegetarian tiger it it doesn't exist you either fifty-one percent or forty nine this is a manichaean election and you don't say Trump is boorish she's got orange hair he's got that fake tan and Hillary has got health problems you say she has a group of advisers and she has a tradition and she has a political party she's an imperfect vessel he has people around him that represent a more conservative approach he's an imperfect vessel but I'm going to vote for which is more conservative or which is more progressive and there's a clear choice Victor Davis Hanson thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge in the Hoover Institution I'm Peter Robinson

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 369,625

Keywords: Russia, China, immigration, presidential election, 2016, Trump, Clinton

Id: IvEXjWJoV-Y

Length: 41min 2sec (2462 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2016