Andrew Clavin and Victor Davis Hanson dissect Trump’s pragmatic presidency, mocking Bernie Sanders’ socialist book while urging conservatives to embrace his deregulation wins—like EPA rollbacks and Gorsuch’s appointment—over ideological purity. Hanson compares modern leftist culture wars to Rome’s decline, citing tribalism and historical revisionism, then pivots to The Second World Wars, tracing WWII’s shift from Hitler’s early conquests (Poland, France) to global conflict after 1941’s USSR invasion and Pearl Harbor. The episode ends by framing Hollywood’s feminist-driven blockbusters as creatively stifled, contrasting Shelley’s Ozymandias with Judaism’s enduring legacy over Egypt’s fallen empire. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, a few months ago, I told you that if congressional conservatives didn't pass the crappy Trump care bill, that Donald Trump was going to start making deals with Democrats.
You sent me angry letters.
Now it's happened.
Get ready to send me more angry letters because I'm going to tell you what is going to happen next.
Also, we have the mighty Victor Davis Hansen here to discuss the left's attack on our history.
But first, former presidential candidate and socialist Nudnik Bernie Sanders has published a new book for young adults.
Now I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, oh, that Andrew Clavin, he's so funny and creative.
Those wacky, hilarious ideas he comes up with, they just make me laugh and laugh.
But no, I'm actually not making this up.
The 75-year-old Sanders, a man who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union because he just can't get sexy unless he's surrounded by breadlines and gulags, has decided to spread the wisdom of socialism to a new generation of ignoramuses and suckers with a book entitled Bernie Sanders' Guide to Political Revolution.
In an interview with anyone who would still talk to him, Sanders said, quote, I wanted to reach out to all those little whipper snappers with their gizmos and whatnots to pull them away from their bebop music and sock hops long enough to explain to them why socialism is really keen, unquote.
In one chapter called Everything You Have Belongs to Me, Sanders writes, quote, why, Dag Nabit, you young people today have this dang fool notion that if you work for something, you should be able to keep it.
Why, in my day, a fellow understood that all the money you make actually belongs to the state because the state knows how to use it better than you do.
So just don't be such smart Alex and think you know so much when you're still wet behind the ears, you darn rascals, unquote.
In another chapter called Socialism Works in Scandinavia or someplace, Sanders writes, quote, you young bucks think you're so smart.
You think just because socialism destroyed the Soviet Union and transformed Venezuela into a hellhole, that there's something wrong with it.
Well, believe me, you me, you good-for-nothing rap scallions, socialism works just great.
And some of them, they're Scandinavian countries I've never been to.
And if I could remember the names of some of them, why, by cracky, I'd cite some facts and figures about them to prove my point, unquote.
The book was published at the end of August and has already generated some good Amazon reviews from its intended audience.
One review says, quote, I have never read a book before and found it hard because of all the words in it, but now I know that socialism is the bomb, unquote.
Another review read, quote, speaking as a millennial, which means I know absolutely nothing and yet still want to be taken seriously for some reason.
I just want to say, yay, socialism, or like whatevs, unquote.
Reporters for the Daily Wire approached Sanders for an exclusive interview about the book, but Sanders shouted at us from his porch, quote, get off my property, you dadgum juvenile delinquents.
What do you think this is?
A socialist country, unquote.
Trigger warning, I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andrew Clavin Show.
I'm a hunky-dunky.
Life is ticky-boom.
Birds are winging, also singing hunky-dunky-boom.
Ship-cheek, tipsy-topsy, the world is a bitty zing.
Indochino: Tailor Your Suit Online00:02:48
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All right, the Clavenless weekend is bearing down on Florida.
It's not looking good for Florida.
If they tell you to get out, Floridans, get out.
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They're warning you because you need to get out.
So get out if you have to.
It's going to be a long Clavenless weekend in Florida and possibly some other places.
But first, but the thing is, even in the Clavenless weekend, and even when disaster strikes, you want to look great.
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All right, so there used to be a book back way, way back in the day called Nobody Listens to Andrew.
Do we have the cover of that book?
I actually found it online.
They had the jacket of the book.
And the story was Andrew goes around telling, there it is, nobody listens to Andrew.
Andrew goes around telling people there's a bear in his bed and nobody listens to him, but there actually is.
Conservatives At Each Other's Throats00:11:20
So months ago, when they were fighting over the Trump care thing, the Obamacare thing, the conservatives were standing in Trump's way.
And I kept saying, pass the bill.
It stinks.
It's a crap sandwich.
Eat the crap sandwich.
I wrote an article called Eat the Crap Sandwich.
And everybody was angry at me and was writing in, no, our principles are principles and this and that.
And my point then was that Trump is an unreliable operator if you are a conservative.
Trump has no ideology.
He wants to win.
He wants to get stuff done.
He wants to be loved.
He wants to do all this stuff.
You know, you know what a dead metaphor is.
A metaphor is a metaphor you use so often you don't even think about it anymore.
Like the leg of a chair is a dead metaphor because it's actually not a leg.
We have legs, but a leg of a chair is like a leg, so it's a metaphor.
So the metaphor dies.
We often say bull in a china shop, and we don't think about that anymore.
But think about that image for a minute.
A bull goes into a China shop, just running around crashing things.
Because Trump has no ideology, because he is governed mostly by self-considerations, but also the consideration that can be helpful, that he wants to get things done, you got to ride the bull.
If you ride the bull, you're not going to get what you want, but some of the stuff you break in the China shop will be stuff you want broken.
And the Republicans fell off the bull.
They fell off the bull when they didn't give Trump a win on Obamacare.
And they said, oh, well, we want this, we want that.
They didn't understand.
See, this is the way that some right-wing talk radio turns us into children, all right?
It turns us into children.
Like, we lost the election when Trump won the primary.
If you are a philosophical conservative, a small government, cut the debt, you know, reform entitlement conservative.
Let me be free.
Give me my freedom.
Get out of my way, conservative.
We lost the election when Trump won the primary.
Now, is Trump better than Hillary?
A thousand times better than Hillary.
But it's possible that, and would anybody else have won?
I don't think so.
It is entirely possible that Trump is the very best thing that we could have gotten and not that great.
Those two things are not in conflict with one another.
That's the tragic view of life.
That's the tragic fact of life.
And when guys go on the radio and they pound their hands with their fists and they tell you, no, stick to, you can't compromise.
You got to get what you want.
That is, that's baby.
When they talk about good and evil and they're talking about, you know, Donald Trump and the Congress or even Barack Obama, you know, I used to say people would say, Obama's evil.
And I say, that's not evil.
That's not what evil looks like.
You know, and they would say, well, he does this, he does that.
Look, these are little boy words of good and evil and heroes and villains.
It's not that there's no such thing as good and evil.
There is.
It's not that there's no such thing as heroes and villains.
There are.
But most of the time, you don't find that stuff in American government.
What you find is a bunch of clowns banging off each other, doing stuff for their own egos, trying to keep their jobs, playing off their constituency, lying to their constituency to get reelected.
That's the kind of stuff we're dealing with.
That's the real world.
Donald Trump is what he is.
He is not Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz wouldn't have won.
He wouldn't have won the election.
So Donald Trump may be the best thing we could have gotten, way, way better than Hillary, no question, and still not that good.
See, what do you do?
You play the cards you're dealt.
That's what grown-ups do.
They play the cards they're dealt.
And the conservative caucus did not do that when they let Obamacare fly.
So what did Trump do?
Trump invited, you know, Chuck and Nancy, as I guess we now call them.
Now he's calling them Chuck and Nancy.
They came in, and he gave them, he gave away the store a little bit.
He said to them he's going to extend, he attached the debt ceiling to Hurricane Harvey relief and said we will just extend the debt ceiling for three months.
Now, why does that drive the conservatives crazy?
Because it means the Democrats have a stranglehold on the debate in three months' time when the Congress is going to want to go home for Christmas.
That's going to be December 15th.
And so they're going to be in a much, much stronger position.
Trump himself, when the Republicans did this before he was elected and they gave the extended the debt limit for four months, he just said, this is the worst deal in history.
This is a terrible, terrible deal.
But now, suddenly, Trump is talking about, you know, the fact that we're happy.
They play cut number three.
Prior to leaving the White House, I had a great bipartisan meeting with Democrat and Republican leaders in Congress, and I'm committed to working with both parties to deliver for our wonderful, wonderful citizens.
It's about time.
We had a great meeting with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and the whole Republican leadership group.
And I'll tell you what, we walked out of there, Mitch and Paul and everybody, Kevin, and we walked out and everybody was happy.
Not too happy because you can never be too happy, but they were happy enough.
And it was nice to see that happen for a change because that hasn't happened for a long time in this country, for a very long time.
Well, Chuck Schumer was happy.
Chuck Schumer looked like, I mean, you know, talk about dead metaphor, look at it, he looked like the cat who ate the canary, play cut number six.
The president listened to the arguments.
We think we made a very reasonable and strong argument.
And to his credit, he went with the better argument.
And just to finish off the picture, Mark Meadows, the conservatives, all the conservatives just looked, I mean, you know, days, it was only a day before this happened.
Paul Ryan was saying, what?
We're going to get an 18-month extension.
We're going to get, you know, we're going to really do the, what are they going to play politics with the debt ceiling when people are suffering in Texas?
That's the Democrats.
Of course they're going to play politics.
The Democrats are united.
It's only the conservatives who are at each other's throats.
It's only the Republicans, I should say, that are at each other's throats.
So just to finish off the picture, here's Mark Meadows, cut seven.
Typical Washington, D.C., kick the can down the road.
Negotiating with Democrats doesn't normally produce outstanding results.
Okay.
So what's the plan?
What happens now?
And what can conservatives get out of this?
Because, you know, to just go on and on about how unreliable Trump is, after a while, it's like, listen to yourself.
Get the news.
You know, you keep delivering the news.
You keep saying, Trump is this, Trump is that.
I don't know.
I keep saying this, and people, I get letters about this all the time.
I don't care about Trump.
Trump is a fascinating character.
He really is.
He's big.
He's interesting.
He's weird.
He also has been more conservative and was willing to be more conservative than I ever thought.
So I was, you know, when he won the primary, I thought, okay, I lost the primary.
That happens.
You lose in politics.
Sometimes you lose.
Let's see what we get.
We got more.
We're already getting more from Trump than I ever expected.
The thing about cutting regulations is real.
And I complained about this before Trump was even in the picture.
I was talking about how this is one of those boring subjects that nobody wants to talk about, but it's a big deal.
Trump has changed the culture of the EPA from crazy, hysterical environmentalists who want to destroy anybody who even touches a tree, want to do things like in California where we exacerbate our drought conditions to save some fish that nobody cares about or some little thing.
And we treat business as if it's a bad thing instead of a good thing.
Trump, under Trump, the EPA is paring back regulations.
People are, the old EPA warriors are weeping and quitting.
And it will allow for growth.
It'll allow for more business growth and we can still take care of the environment.
So he's really done some good things.
The Gorsuch thing was good.
And, you know, there are all of these guys.
You know, we're going to have Victor Davis Hansen on later on.
And he is one of the sane voices.
I love the people at National Review, but all they do is they keep complaining.
And they keep saying, oh, you know, you keep saying he's better than Hillary.
How long are you going to say that?
It's true.
He is better than Hillary.
He's just not that good.
I mean, I don't understand why, once you've defined the situation, once you understand what you're dealing with, stop complaining and deal, play the cards to get what we want.
What do we want?
We want freedom.
We want less regulation.
We want less government craziness.
We want people to stop telling us who can use the bathrooms in our local school.
We want the government dialed back out of our life.
And we want the economy to do what an American economy does when people are left alone take off.
And that is what Trump is thinking about.
So Trump is looking now.
And by the way, you know, now they'll probably be, he's signaling that there's going to be a DACA regulation.
Basically, all that immigration reform and Coulter must be on the ceiling at this point because it's going to be all the immigration reform that Obama couldn't get through is going to get through under Trump because he's going to start making deals with Democrats because the conservatives stood on their sacred principles and didn't deal with the situation that was right in front of them.
They didn't call Trump for what he was and deal with him as what he is.
So what's Trump thinking about?
Trump is thinking about what he can get, what he can get done.
Because remember, the Republicans have failed him.
They haven't done anything.
They make him look like a fool.
They make him look like he can't accomplish things.
He told everybody he was going to win and win and win, and he can't get any major legislation through everything he's doing, and he's done some good stuff.
It's all been done on his own.
So he wants tax reform.
So now he's out.
I guess he was in North Dakota, wasn't it?
He makes a speech, and he calls the Democrat senator, Heidi Heitkamp, who's kind of a blue dog.
He's voted for Trump, I don't know, about half the time, voted with Trump about half the time.
And he calls her up on stage and he's pitching tax reform.
Senator Heitkamp, Senator, come on up.
And I have to say, you are all in favor of tax cuts, aren't you?
Absolutely.
Well, come on up, Senator.
These are great people.
They work hard.
They're for you 100%.
And we just want their support because we need support.
You see that with what's happening in Congress.
Nobody can get anything through Congress.
We need support.
So thank you, Senator.
Senator Heitkamp.
Everyone's saying, what's she doing up here?
But I'll tell you what.
Good woman, and I think we'll have your support.
I hope we'll have your support.
And thank you very much, Senator.
Thank you for coming up.
Senators, thank you.
Thank you.
So now he's talking, you know, this is a guy who attacks Mitch McConnell, attacks Paul Ryan, but then he's saying the Democrat senator who votes with him 50% of the time, he attacks Flake because Flake attacked him, so he fights back.
But he's giving props to the Democrat Senator because she might vote with him on tax reform.
We don't even know yet, really, what tax reform looks like.
But, but let's just talk for a second, because I really want to get to Victor Davis' hands, and let's just talk for a second about what we as conservatives can get.
What we can get is if he cuts taxes and does and dials back the corporate tax, all this money that stayed out of the country because they didn't trust Obama, because they were afraid of the regulations, they were afraid of his anti-business stances, all that money comes pouring back in.
Cutting Corporate Taxes00:02:29
That's what he's counting on, and the economy takes off.
Why is that good?
Because Trump is still a Republican.
And if things go well, there will be this happiness gas of a good economy going in.
And that means real Republicans, we can start to weed out some of the rhino Republicans that we don't like.
And we have a shot at maybe getting Mike Pence in there after Donald Trump.
So that would be a good thing.
But, you know, it's going to be, you're going to be gritting your teeth a lot because there's going to be a lot of deals with Democrats until, unless and until the Republicans can get their act together and start coming around and giving Trump the wins that he wants.
He doesn't care about ideology and he doesn't care about policy.
He just wants to win and be loved and be a successful president.
They got to give him, they got to play the cards of their dealt.
They got to play the cards of the deal.
All right.
Some of you are out there, I know, you're looking for the meaning of life, and some of you are looking for love.
I am usually looking for my keys because I am the guy who just loses everything.
I really am.
So Tracker, it's T-R-A-C-K-R.
What it is with these new companies and vowels, I don't know, but they left out the E, so it's tracker, T-R-A-C-K-R.
They have this little gizmo.
I will show it to you.
It's on my keys now.
They have this little gizmo, and you hook it up to your phone, and when you lose your keys, you press it, and not only does it make a noise so you can find it, but it also, it's like ways, you know, they have a bunch of network, and it starts to tell you, are you getting closer or are you farther away?
It just says on the thing, you're closer, farther away to your keys.
And the other thing, I mean, the minute I heard that, I thought, cool, but the thing I lose all the time is my phone.
But all you have to do is press the button.
I won't do it right now because I want to get to the next thing.
But all you have to do is press it.
It's called the tracker pixel.
And all you do is press it and your phone goes off, even if your phone is turned off, even if you've turned off the sound.
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It really, I mean, I don't know about you, but when I lose stuff and I'm trying to get someplace, it really does make my blood boil.
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And I've used it.
I've had it now for maybe, I don't even think a month.
I've used it three times.
I mean, I've used it three times.
And that's how often I lose stuff.
So it's the lightest Bluetooth tracking device on the market.
You can place tracker pixel on whatever you tend to lose, and it will help you find it.
Go, here's what you do.
You go to thetracker.com.
So it's T-H-E-T-R-A-C-K-R.com slash clavin to get 20% off.
How do you spell that?
Tracking Devices Disrupt Life00:15:40
It starts with a K and not E-N either.
That's right, it's K-L-V-N-N.
No, it's K-L-A-V-A-N.
So go to thetracker.com/slash Clavin.
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That's thetracker.com/slash Clavin for 20% off thetracker.com slash Clavin.
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You just press the button and there it is.
We got this plugin.
Yeah, really.
We've got the great Victor Davis Hansen coming up after the break, but we got to say goodbye to Facebook and YouTube.
Come on over to the dailywire.com.
You can hear the rest.
You can watch the whole thing right there if you subscribe for a lousy 10 bucks a month.
Subscribe for the year and it's only a lousy $100 plus.
Come on, you get the leftist tears tumbler.
The leftist tears tumbler.
All right, come on over to thedailywire.com.
All right, we have Victor, right?
Yes.
Victor Davis Hanson, the great VDH.
He's an American military historian, former classics professor.
He is a scholar of ancient warfare and he's a former, a farmer.
He actually has a farm in California.
He is a fellow at the Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the National Review Institute.
Great writer, terrific historian, and has a new book called The Second World Wars, which we will talk about as well.
Victor, how are you doing?
Pretty good.
All right.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, it's a pleasure.
It's good to see you.
You know, you are one of the very few intellectuals who did not spend, who has not spent your days picking on Donald Trump.
You have actually given him, you basically see him as a phenomenon more than as a problem.
And you've actually given him, you're the one voice really at the National Review that has kind of supported him.
What do you see that they don't?
Well, I live in the real world.
Not that they don't, but for me, it was never Donald Trump in a mannequin good versus evil, or you have to be perfect to be good.
It was Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton.
Right.
So I tried to be empirical about it.
I just went through issue by issue: illegal immigration, regulations, tax reform, identity politics versus unity politics, economic issues on energy development, fracking, deterrent foreign policy versus sort of neo-isolationism.
And it was, for me, it was a proverbial no-brainer.
And then I asked myself: are there personal flaws in Trump based on the standards we use to adjudicate presidencies that would make him beyond the pale?
That is, would the messenger cancel out the message?
And although he did a lot of things and does a lot of things I don't approve of, given what I know about the personal life or even the semi-public life of JFK or Bill Clinton or Richard Nixon, or even people the sanctimoniousness of Jimmy Carter.
Everybody is a flawed individual.
So I didn't think that the messenger canceled out the message, but I was in most people did not agree with me either at National Review or where I work at the Hoover Institution.
So I have to confess that that view that I espoused was not persuasive, at least in the groups that I have to work with.
I like to work with, I should say.
Yeah, no, I have the same experience.
I mean, I just thought, you know, as I've been saying this morning, you play the cards, you're dealt.
This is, it is entirely possible that Trump is the best thing we could have gotten and not that great.
I mean, that's just the tragic fact of life.
When you're looking at Trump right now, you're looking at the DACA thing, which may end up with basically the DREAMers Act being enshrined in law.
You're looking at the deal he just made with the Democrats.
Do you feel a sense of terrifying betrayal, or are you pretty calm about it?
No, I think that if you prune away all the left and right-wing rhetoric, the immigration debate always boiled down to if you had been here in the United States for a long period of time, two to five years, if you had never committed a crime, if you were not on public assistance, and you were willing to learn English and play by the rules, then the government would say, we're going to give you an amnesty, not for citizenship, but for a renewable green card.
And that would mean that's up to you.
Most people under the 86 amnesties chose to be permanent greenhold cardholders.
If you wanted to be a citizen, then you would pay a fine and it would be a little bit more elaborate.
But in exchange for that, then the left would say, we're going to have diverse, merocratic, and legal immigration, probably at a reduced rate.
We're going to have strict border enforcement, e-verify, probably a wall, and this would be a one-time phenomenon.
And then the Mexican-American and the Mexican national immigrant phenomenon would start to resemble the Italian-American experience of the 1890s to 1930, in which the formidable forces of the melting pot, integration, assimilation, intermarriage, would make it irrelevant your tribal affinity.
So if your name is Giuliani or your name is Cuomo, nobody knows how you're going to vote.
But that's not what the left wanted.
They wanted to change the American Southwest from red states to blue through demographic realities.
And so I don't think that Trump did anything that anybody on the right, if you get Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity and you just say, prune away all the rhetoric, if these people have met all of these conditions, there's going to be a deal.
But the problem is always on the left, because I don't think they're willing to make that deal.
I don't think they're willing to say, let's have legal, diverse, meritic, legal immigration.
Let's build a wall, enforce a border, follow the law, be constitutional, and give up the idea that we can't change the American Southwest into resemble California.
I don't think they'll do it.
And there's another psychological, or maybe I should say a rational fallacy.
If the DREAMers warrant all of our attention, and they're making the argument that these are an exceptional group, the left is, that deserve to be given an amnesty and a green card, then de facto, by default, they're saying that the other 10 million are not.
They don't qualify.
They knew what they were doing as adults.
They may have engaged in identity theft or fraud every day that they were here, just because to reside here illegally requires you to say things that are not true on paper or say things.
But they don't get that.
So if Trump is going to cut a deal on DREAMers, then what is this left going to come back and do with the other 10 or 12 million?
Yeah, well, if you're expecting intellectual integrity from the left, I think, hold your breath.
You know, one of the things that really does make Trump, even at his worst, tolerable, is the left seems to have genuinely gone insane.
And one of the ways they've gone insane is this assault on our history, this thing about the Confederate statutes.
You wrote a brilliant piece about this for national review.
What do you think they're trying to accomplish with this assault on Confederate statues?
Well, notice that they don't distinguish.
They don't say that a good, decent man like General James Longstreet was different than Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Just all bad and all bad in August, September 2017, but not all bad in 2016 or 2012.
And all bad, even though the majority of Americans are willing to, you know, they can put up with a Confederate statue, as most minorities poll that they can.
Even blacks, I think, are 45%.
I say even only because they have a vested interest in this, given the pernicious role of slavery.
So what is it about?
It's about identity politics.
It's about showing the majority culture that they can make rapid changes in the social cultural structure of the United States and that people will give into them if they make life difficult, if they boycott corporations, if they get on the news, if they cause violence.
So we have this propensity now that gay marriage can be a reasonable debate with good parties of genuine good interest.
And Barack Obama can decide in 2008 that he doesn't believe in it.
As he said, he's a Christian, he said, and he didn't think it.
But by 2012, that has accelerated.
So anybody who doesn't believe as Barack Obama did is a homophobe.
Same thing with DACA.
Barack Obama said on 10 occasions, as a constitutional lawyer, I'm not a king.
I'm quoting directly.
I'm not a king.
I cannot do something that's unconstitutional.
By 2012, when he was up for re-election, anybody who had the position of Barack Obama was a nativist, a xenophobe, and a racist.
And so here we are with the Confederates.
Anybody, that issue has gone from, let's discuss it, let's say that maybe we don't want Roger Taney, who was the author of Dred Scott, or maybe we don't want Nathan Bedford Forrest without some type of plaque that explains the other side to them.
But we're not going to go do this with all of our relics.
We're not going to go tell Joan Baez we're going to not allow the night they drove Dixie down that you made millions of dollars on and resurrected your career.
We're not going to play that anymore.
We're going to ban Gone with a Wind.
Or we're going to say Columbia University has to change its name because of Columbus.
So what I'm getting at, long-winded as I am, is that we accelerate these issues by demonizing people, and then we try to make the minority position the majority position by fear and intimidation.
And what we're looking for is one brave, one intellectually honest politician that says, I'm not going to be intimidated.
I'm not going to tear down a statue of Robert E. Lee.
I'm not going to boycott Gone with the Wind.
These are historical artifacts of time and space unique to them.
And I expect we're all adults and we can make the necessary contextualization as needed.
But we're all supposed to be children and then Antipa is supposed to teach us how to act.
I have to ask you, there's one question I have to ask you before we talk about your book.
You know, I always joke that because people have heard of the fall of Rome and they've heard of Hitler, they always assume that every historical event is somehow related to the fall of Rome or to Hitler.
But I have to say that watching our politics right now, I am reminded sometimes of the fall of the Roman Republic, the surging populism versus the paralyzed elite, and just the entire atmosphere of decayed institutions.
Does that ever trouble you as a classicist who knows more about it than me?
Yeah, it does.
Not only the armed gangs and street fighting of the late Republic, Milos and Claudius and Cicero and Caesar and Anthony, but even into the imperial period during that transitional where Augustus and the first emperors were trying to have a principate.
But if you read a novel like Petronius's Satyricon, which is A satire of Roman manners.
And what are the signs that an ancient Roman satirist looks for in a decline of civilization?
One of the things he says is the obsessions with food, exotic food, the obsessions with very expensive purple-dyed clothing among the elite, the obsessions with transgenderism, and the obsessions with bragging on how much clout property influence you have.
The obsessions with saying that you're no longer an Italian, you're Tromalchio, you're from the Mediterranean, that's the wave of the future.
So we have all of these tribal politics, sort of transgendered issues, and it's not me saying it.
It's the ancient mind says that this is a long way from the agrarian simplicity of rural Italy.
And it's unfortunately, as they say, when people don't do muscular labor or they're not concretely tied to reality and they judge their worth by their title or their money or their fashion or their sexual identity or their particular tribe, then you've got a big problem.
Diversity in the ancient world is not an advantage.
It's never an advantage in any society that I know.
It's an obstacle to be overcome.
And the Roman imperial state and the United States are about the only two systems in the history of civilization that were able to assimilate people.
The Ottomans wouldn't, most people can't do it.
They don't want to try.
Japan feels it's got a great model and it has no desire to be like Germany.
Right.
The Second World Wars, why is it called the Second World Wars?
Your new book?
Two reasons.
One is that I tried to show that the first year and a half, that is from September 2nd to 1939 to the invasion of Russia in June 22nd, 1941, there were a series of wars.
That is the Polish War, the invasion of Norway, the Danish War, the invasion of the Low Countries, the French War, the Blitz, the war against Greece, and the Yugoslav, except for the Blitz, Hitler won everyone, every one of them.
And by June of 1941, he ruled an area the size of the present-day EU, a little larger.
And the war was over.
Everybody thought it was over.
He won.
And then he did something that nobody in his right mind ever had even contemplated.
He attacked his most loyal, I should say, neutral, but really it was a partner of the Soviet Union that had supplied him with 20% of his oil, about 50% of his wheat.
And at that point, what had been a small series of borders wars and was not called World War II, it was still World War, wasn't World War I even.
It was the Great War and border wars.
And then three events in 1941, the attack on Russia, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in Singapore, Philippines, and the declaration of war by Japan, Italy, and Germany on the United States, changed it into what was now for the first time, basically almost over two years after the fighting.
Now it was called the Second World War in England, the World War II in the United States, and suddenly World War I became World War I, no longer the Great War.
That was one reason.
The other is that it was so global, and we'd never seen a war underseas, U-boats in the deserts, 28,000 feet above the earth in a B-17 on a battleship, in the resistance in France.
There were so many different theaters that were so complex, and nobody who was fighting in Burma against the Japanese had any idea what the Bulgarians thought.
Or if you were in China and you were fighting the Japanese, you didn't think you were an ally of a Scottish guy and a destroyer trying to hunt a U-boat.
You were, but it was, there were so many different wars, it was hard to unify them.
Scenes Reminiscent of Old Kong00:07:19
You know, it's an amazing way to look at it.
The Second World Wars by military historian Victor Davis Hanson.
Victor, thanks so much for coming on.
I hope you'll come back.
And it's always really a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you for having me, Andre.
I appreciate it.
All right.
I'll talk to you again.
Bye-bye.
Okay.
All right.
And stuff I like.
Yeah.
You know, I'm going to talk a little bit.
I've been catching up on movies.
You know, this is a really interesting turning point in the movie business.
Hollywood has had one of the worst summers ever, one of the worst labor days ever.
They didn't even release a new film on Labor Day.
So many of their franchises, Hollywood, talking to Hollywood, talking about the movie business, the movie business, because there's still TV is really doing well, streaming is really doing well, Netflix has become a Titan.
But they've been living off franchises and sequels and Alien, Transformers, Cars, Smurfs, Resident Evil, Underworld, Wimpy Kids, Andrew.
I mean, these all bombed.
Xander Cage, Nutjob, Independence Day, Ice Age, Ninja Turtles, Divergent, Huntsman, Alice in Wonderland, Inferno, the Da Vinci Code, and the Jack Reacher franchise.
They all tanked, every one of them.
And there's really nothing in the pipeline.
There's nothing coming in with new things.
I mean, even the Pirates of the Caribbean didn't do that well.
Kong, you know, I saw Kong, the, what's it called, Kong's Skull Island, which I really enjoyed.
J-Hay, Jonathan Hay, told me not to see it, so I missed it in the theater.
Yeah, I've been taking it out of him all week because I really enjoyed it.
It's an old-fashioned H. Ryder Haggard type adventure.
John Goodman plays the scientist who's looking for a monster, and he piggybacks on a military expedition into a lost island.
And they come into this lost island, and of course they find King Kong.
And Samuel Jackson is leading the military expedition.
Here's a scene where he goes up to John Goodman and says, What's going on?
You are going to tell me everything I don't know, or I'm going to blow your head off.
Monsters exist.
Yesterday, I was a crackpot.
But today?
You dropped those charges to flush something out.
Who are you?
Ancient species owned this earth long before mankind.
And if we keep our heads buried in the sand, they will take it back.
My agency is known as Monarch.
We specialize in the hunt for massive, unidentified terrestrial organisms.
You knew that thing was out here?
I'm sorry for your men, Colonel.
I truly am.
Get us home with proof so we can send the cavalry.
You know, the funny thing, you know what ruins this picture?
I mean, it's really a good movie.
It's very enjoyable.
It's got a good cast, Tom Hiddelson, who should be the new James Bond.
Brie Larson, who's adorable.
It's got some good plot twists.
It's got great monster fights, really entertaining.
You know what keeps it from being a great movie?
Feminism.
I swear, no, I swear, feminism has ruined more movies, almost as many movies as it's ruined lives.
Brie Larson plays the girl.
That's her character.
That's why you have a girl in these things, because men are better at killing monsters.
They're better at shooting things.
They're better at running through jungles, screaming and throwing grenades.
And the people who want to see that movie are largely men.
Brie Larson is the girl.
One of the things that you want from the girl is you want her to get rescued.
But because they can't do a girl who needs to get rescued, she doesn't have to be fearful.
She can be brave, but she's got to be a little bit more.
She's got to be a girl.
She's got to be a little bit more emotional, a little bit more vulnerable.
Then the hero can save her.
Without that, the hero has nothing to do.
And Tom Hiddelson goes through this picture.
He has a look on his face like, you gave me a great setup scene, so I'm a cool character.
And now I'm doing nothing.
I'm doing nothing.
And Brie Larson's character doesn't make any sense.
And the whole Kong mythology is that Kong basically represents raw masculinity being tamed by the eternal feminine.
It was beauty killed the beast.
That's the last line of the original King Kong.
And they try to get that scene in here, but what is she?
She's just a guy in, you know, with a nice shape, basically.
She's like a cute-looking guy because she does the same thing as everything else.
Feminism murders these movies because it takes away what stories are about.
Stories are about men and women.
Other movies I saw, I saw King Arthur Legend of the Sword, which got the worst reviews ever, but actually is not that bad.
It's a Guy Ritchie film, and you know, Guy Ritchie makes all those smart talking British gangster movies.
So he brought that aura to the King Arthur myth.
It's a lot of mythology.
I found after like about 20 minutes, I was like, I can't remember who's the good guy and who's the bad.
You know, I remember I'm rooting for King Arthur, but that's it.
Jude Law is good.
He's always good.
Jude Law is one of the great actors of the age.
But here's just a quick scene that the black legs are the soldiers and they're hunting for a fugitive.
And they come to King Arthur, who is not now a king.
He's basically an errand boy running a whorehouse.
And so this is a scene from a Guy Ritchie film cast back into King Arthur days.
What's going on?
What's going on where?
You've got some heat on you, Arthur.
Your name keeps coming up.
In what circles?
My mom's sewing circle.
I'm a black leg sergeant, stupid.
What circles do you think?
Now tell me a story about a girl called Lucy, a Viking called Greybeard, and some rebel graffiti dirty in these worlds.
Are you writing a book?
Tell me.
Every detail.
We had a quiet word with a couple of Vikings.
Get back!
Get back!
I said from the beginning, the very beginning.
I woke up.
Then?
Well, then I got dressed.
I went downstairs.
I saw the girls.
Lucy was missing.
Where's Lucy?
She's a good girl.
A nice girl.
She works here.
Then?
Then?
Me and the lads took care of a bit of business.
A bit of housekeeping.
Everything's there should be.
That's the spoil from the boats.
Then?
Then we heard George had trouble again last night.
I'm going to be out the front.
Which George?
King George, Angry George, George the Dragon.
Be clear, Arthur.
Witch George.
Our George.
Chinese George.
Kung Fu George.
Kung Fu George is a character in this story.
So it doesn't make any sense, but it is fun.
And scenes like that are great.
It's basically a Guy Richie gangster film moved to Arthur Age.
Finally, I watched Alien Covenant, which is fine.
You know, the whole point of these sequels is you liked watching a monster rip his way out of a guy's chest in the original.
We'll do it again.
And that's basically what happens.
I don't really care about the mythology.
It's just a bunch of, you know, it's a bunch of scenes that are reminiscent of the old one, kind of pumped up with the new special effects pumped up with money.
It's fine.
It's fine.
But here is the scene that I want to talk about that will bring us to stuff I will bring us to stuff I like.
Michael Fassbender is the, what do they call him? An android, I guess.
He's an android and he plays twin androids, two androids, good android and bad android.
And he's describing how this planet was wiped out.
And here's what he says.
Look on my wife.
Ozymandius' Legacy00:03:35
She mighty and despair.
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck.
Boundless and bare.
The lone and level sand stretch far away.
Byron.
1818.
Magnificent.
But of course, it's not Byron, it's Shelley.
And that is, it's perceived by Shelley, Ozymandius, and that is the stuff I like.
So here's stuff I like is Ozymandius.
Do you have a stuff I like emblem up there?
Come on.
Ozzymandius is Byron's, Byron, Shelley's poem written after they discovered a head of Ramses II.
And Ramses II was one of the greatest of the Egyptian pharaohs.
And they found like a fragment of a statue of Ramses II.
That's what they found.
And Shelley and a friend of his, Horace Smith, had a poem, a contest between themselves to write a poem about this.
And Horace Smith wrote a poem.
Both of the poems had the same theme, which is that grandeur passes away.
And people are proud of their grandeur, but the grandeur passes away.
And Horace Smith wrote a poem which ended with the thought that one day people will come to London and they will see nothing but a fragment of a statue.
He wrote, We wonder, and some hunter may express wonder like ours, when through the wilderness where London stood, holding the wolf in chase, he meets some fragment huge and stops to guess what powerful but unrecorded race once dwelt in that annihilated place.
That was Horace Smith's version of Ozymandius, which was basically saying, one day London will disappear, one day America, we would say, now would disappear, and then we'll just find this statue of Donald Trump, and they'll say, who was this?
Shelley, on the other hand, who was a great poet, wrote one of the classics of English literature.
It's very short.
I will read you the whole thing.
I met a traveler from an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal, these words appear.
My name is Ozzymandius, King of Kings.
Look on my work, see mighty, and despair.
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.
One of the really fascinating things about this poem is Shelley was a devout atheist.
He was a radical and an atheist and a terrible human being.
But Ramses II is one of the main candidates for the Pharaoh who jousted with Moses to let go of the Hebrews, which gives the poem a completely unintended idea of the way some things pass away and some things don't.
Because the Egyptians, as we knew them, are utterly gone.
The Jews as we knew them, they just keep chugging on somehow, somehow.