Here is a video you should watch before next Tuesday’s election. Victor Davis Hanson talks with Peter Robinson in this segment on Uncommon Knowledge from the Hoover Institute.
Is America an imperialist nation? Is there danger if American influence declines on the world stage? What about China, Iran, Russia? Is an open border immigration policy beneficial as compared to what American immigration policy was in the early 1900’s? What are our choices in the 2016 election? Victor Davis Hanson gives great insight in the answers to these questions.
Excerpts from the video:
On American Empire: “We are a funny sort of empire. By every calculus we should be empirical. That’s what people do. They try to aggrandize their land, their territory, their natural resources…….We don’t take people’s land. We have an empirical order, but it’s a post WWII order in which we set the rules and the terms of commerce and trade. We’ve allow Japan or Germany or China with much less military power than us to beat us economically…….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.”
“75 years after WWII is an aberration in world history. Peace is a parenthesis….and war is the natural order of things and in a vacuum of American power were going to see that very quickly.”
On Immigration: (starts at 21:21) “Historically there’s three elements to immigration that adjudicates whether it failed or was successful. 1) Is it diverse? Do people come from all over or do they just come from a specific area? 2) Is it measured? Does an immigrant come in and meet ten natives? do they learn to assimilate and integrate and intermarry, or do they come in mass and create enclaves? 3) Do they come under some legal auspices? Is it meritocratic? Do they learn the language?”
“If the conditions are met as it has been mostly in Americas history, than it works wonderfully. It enriches the body politic. The people are invigorated by these new people who want to be American more than they do.”
“It has to be diverse so one particular group is not used by domestic political parties for their own electoral calculations as happened in the 19th century.”
On Obama The Divider: (starts at 27:05) “President Obama has systematically adopted a rhetoric and an agenda that is predicated on dividing up the country according to tribal grievances, in hopes of recalibrating various factions into a majority grievance culture. He has succeeded politically. but in doing so he has nearly torn the country apart.”
“When the President came into office he did things that I hadn’t seen in my lifetime. I’ve never heard a presidential candidate say “typical white person”….Woodrow Wilson was the last president to identify that strongly with race...”
On Hillary And Trump: (starts at 30:18) “….The Clinton’s have offered something that no ex-president had ever offered….He had a spouse who he said would be back in here. He said she’s a viable presidential candidate in a way that no other first ladies ever were, and I’m going to be back here with her as defacto President, and therefore you better invest in her as Secretary of State through this foundation and we’re going to remember. That’s the font of all their ethical problems. They had a premise that was predicated on selling influence for money.”
“The elites can’t stand Trump and he should be down by 20 points. But he’s not. He represents an anger at a much over used word elites. Elites are people who, not just by money, basically have a utopian vision that they feel does not apply to themselves. And they have the money culture and influence to navigate around the ramifications of their own ideology. What do I mean by that? Mark Zuckerberg lectures all of us about how a wall is bad and then builds a wall or tries to build a Maginot line around his own home. Or were told how terrible charter schools are, and Obama puts his kids in Sidwell Friends……Trump is Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare, he’s a vampire’s mirror for the Republican establishment.”
Related Article – Who Are Those Darn Elites, at victorhanson.com.
Related Article – From Greek Tragedy To American Therapy, at victorhanson.com.
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