ARRA News Service
News Blog for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. Upholding the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited "smaller" government, free markets, lower taxes, due process of law, liberty & individual freedom. Content approval rests with the ARRA News Service Editor. Opinions are those of the authors. While varied positions are reported, beliefs & principles remain fixed. No revenue is generated for or by this "Blog" - no paid ads - no payments for articles. Fair Use Doctrine is posted & used.
Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year]
Contact: editor@arranewsservice.com (Pub. Since July, 2006)
    Home Page
   

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato (429-347 BC)

Friday, September 04, 2020

Q&A: Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a visiting scholar from the Hoover Institution, met with
the Collegian to discuss current events. Madeline Peltzer | Collegian
by Madeline Peltzer: Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a military historian, and a visiting professor at Hillsdale College. His latest book is “The Case for Trump.” He gave a lecture at Hillsdale College on Wednesday titled “Plague, Panic, and Protests — The Weird Election Year of 2020.”

Q: The past few months have been wild: We’ve been shut in our houses, our cities are burning, plus there’s a big election. What’s going on?

I’m not sure if it would’ve happened like this if we hadn’t had the lockdown and the recession. The average age of these Antifa types is 27 and they’re angry at the system. They’re scared by the recession, frustrated by their student-loan debt, angry that their majors in environmental studies doesn’t translate into jobs, and they see people who are better off than they are and they resent it.

Q: How could that translate into voting patterns come November?

I think it explains why we see these mysterious polls moving black support for Trump from 8% to 28% and Latinos from 22% to 36%. To a lot of minority people, these white kids with their whiny, shrill voices seem like privileged, spoiled brats. And when they see their enablers on cable television, even if they’re black or brown, they tend to be elites too. They may not like Trump but they think he’s gritty and effective and tells you what he thinks and they appreciate it.

I think he’s going to do very well in a way that’s counterintuitive. Mitt Romney and the late John McCain knew how to appeal in the moderate sense, but they actually came off as white elitists. Trump should come off that way because he’s a billionaire white person, except he’s an outsider. Nobody liked him in Manhattan, he has a Queens accent, he dresses funny, he looks weird, and he tells you what he thinks. That seems to appeal to working-class people.

Q: In any other year, defunding the police, burning cities, and looting businesses would be a sure way to lose an election. Yet until just a few days ago, the Biden campaign has ignored the situation, denied it, or encouraged it. Why?

If somebody came from a different planet, they’d say you can easily beat Trump, you just need a working-class conservative black guy or white guy – it doesn’t matter – to talk about class and economic issues and deplore the violence and you win.

But the Democrats can’t do that because they are captive to Bernie Sanders and the young people who make up about 20% of their party who are so hard left. They’re scared of them.

If you look at what they’re being told by their intellectual champions, it’s “looting’s okay, stealing’s okay, every white person is a racist,” and they kind of believe that. They think they’re the cutting edge but they’re not. They don’t understand that most Americans don’t want looting or to stigmatize a whole race and say they’re all racists any more than they want to say blacks have a higher crime rate and therefore they’re all criminal. These people come out of the universities, which are all left-wing, and listen to the left-wing media, and they get bad advice.

Q: What about their strategy to blame Trump for everything?

They think voters are dumb. You can see that in the vocabulary of disparagement they used in 2016: the irredeemables, the basket of deplorables, Obama in 2008 talking about the “clingers” who cling to their religion, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page laughing about the smelly people at Walmart. So they have a contempt for them and they don’t realize that these people are very astute and they listen to things and they remember.

Q: What impact, if any, do you think the party conventions will have on the election?

If you looked at the polls before the conventions, there was an insidious but incremental gain for Trump. Part of that is because the news cycle is changing a little bit. The virus seems to be on the downswing of its second spike, quarantine has been redefined as putting kids back in school, the rioting is losing its appeal, Kamala Harris didn’t do much as Biden’s vice-presidential pick. The natural cycle that was so anti-Trump is starting to change. And so the two conventions each had a task: the DNC to stop that momentum and the RNC’s to accelerate it.

After the two conventions were over, there wasn’t a wide margin, but the trends have continued. The polls that had a better record last time around but weren’t as prestigious — the Emerson poll, the Trafalgar poll, the Daily Express poll — they’re showing the race is dead even.

There are two reasons why this matters. One is that Democrats are terrified of 2016, when the polls they count on now betrayed them and the polls they ridiculed and couldn’t be true were accurate. In their way of thinking, lightning cannot strike twice. The second thing that really bothers them is that Joe Biden should have never been their candidate. He’s not cognitively able to do it and they know it. They were given a great gift with the quarantine and lockdown. He was a half-candidate, a Zoom candidate. The only way you could force him to get out and run is to get the polls where Trump at least appears to be nearly even, and that’s what the RNC achieved in their convention.

Q: Every year people say this is “the most important election of our lives.” Do you think it’s true in 2020?

I think it’s one of the top four or five most important elections. If Biden is elected we’re going to have a socialist agenda and we’ve never had that. Every socialist, whether it was Eugene Debs or Samuel Gompers, never got close. This time, they’re coming in the back door because of Biden and they can actually take power without having a majority support them. Kamala Harris basically ran as a socialist and nobody wanted her.

So what would that look like? If the Democrats win the Senate and get rid of the filibuster, which they say they will, and they keep the House, I think the first thing they’d do is pack the Supreme Court with six liberal justices. They’d abolish the Electoral College without amending the Constitution. They’d change the First and Second Amendment through court orders and executive orders — I can just imagine what it’d be like to try to buy a gun or what it’ll be like on campus to speak freely. They’re going to try to do something structural, not just political.

So yes, I’m really worried that these are revolutionaries and in a normal year they’d have no chance, but because of COVID, the lockdown, the rioting, and Biden’s lack of mental capabilities, you could see our first socialist in history.
----------------------------
Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T Madeline Peltzer

Tags: Q&A, Victor Davis Hanson, lecture, Hillsdale College, Madeline Peltzer To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 4:30 PM - Post Link

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home


View U.S. National Debt

Don't miss anything!
Subscribe to the
ARRA News Service
It's FREE & No Ads!

You will receive a verification email
& must validate you subscribed!

You Then Receive One Email Each AM
With Prior Days Articles / Toons / More


Also, Join & leave conservative posts & comments on
Facebook.com/ARRANewsService


Recent Posts:
Personal Tweets by the editor:
Dr. Bill - OzarkGuru - @arra
#Christian Conservative; Retired USAF & Grad Professor. Constitution NRA ProLife schoolchoice fairtax - Editor ARRA NEWS SERVICE. THANKS FOR FOLLOWING!

Action Links!
State Upper & Lower House Members
State Attorney Generals
State Governors
The White House
US House of Representatives
US Senators
GrassFire
NumbersUSA
Ballotpedia

Facebook Accts - Dr. Bill Smith
Pages:
ARRA News Service
Arkansans Against Big Government
Alley-White Am. Legion #52
Catholics & Protestants United Against Discrimination
End Taxpayer Funding of NPR
Overturn Roe V. Wade
Prolife Soldiers
Project Wildfire 4 Life
Republican Liberty Caucus of Arkansas
The Gold Standard
US Atty Gen Loretta Lynch, aka Eric Holder, Must Go
Veterans for Sarah Palin
Why Vote for Hillary (Satire)
FB Groups:
Arkansas For Sarah Palin
Arkansas Conservative Caucus
Arkansas County Tea Party
Arkansans' Discussion Group on National Issues
Blogs for Borders
Conservative Solutions
Conservative Voices
Defend Marriage -- Arkansas
FairTax
FairTax Nation
Arkansas for FairTax
Friends of the TEA Party in Arkansas
Freedom Roundtable
Pro-Life Rocks - Arkansas
Republican Network
Republican Liberty Caucus of AR
Reject the U.N.

Patriots
Exchange
Links

Request Via
Article Comment

Links to ARRA News
A Patriotic Nurse
Agora Associates
a12iggymom's Blog
America, You Asked For It!
America's Best Choice
ARRA News Twitter
As The Crackerhead Crumbles
Blogs For Borders
Blogs for Palin
Blow the Trumpet Ministry
Boot Berryism
Cap'n Bob & the Damsel
Chicago Ray Report - Obama Regime Report
Chuck Baldwin - links
Common Cents
Conservative Voices
Diana's Corner
Greater Fitchburg For Life
Lasting Liberty Blog
Liberal Isn't Amy
Marathon Pundit
Patriot's Corner
Right on Issues that Matter
Right Reason
Rocking on the Right Side
Saber Point
Saline Watchdog
Sultan Knish
The Blue Eye View
The Born Again Americans
TEA Party Cartoons
The Foxhole | Unapologetic Patriot
The Liberty Republican
The O Word
The Path to Tyranny Blog
The Real Polichick
The War on Guns
TOTUS
Twitter @ARRA
Underground Notes
Warning Signs
Women's Prayer & Action
WyBlog

Editor's Managed Twitter Accounts
Twitter Dr. Bill Smith @arra
Twitter Arkansas @GOPNetwork
Twitter @BootBerryism
Twitter @SovereignAllies
Twitter @FairTaxNation

Editor's Recommended Orgs
Accuracy in Media (AIM)
American Action Forum (AAF)
American Committment
American Culture & Faith Institute
American Enterprise Institute
American Family Business Institute
Americans for Limited Government
Americans for Prosperity
Americans for Tax Reform
American Security Council Fdn
AR Faith & Ethics Council
Arkansas Policy Foundation
Ayn Rand Institute
Bill of Rights Institute
Campaign for Working Families
CATO Institute
Center for Individual Freedom
Center for Immigration Studies
Center for Just Society
Center for Freedom & Prosperity
Citizens Against Gov't Waste
Citizens in Charge Foundstion
Coalition for the Future American Worker
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Concerned Veterans for America
Concerned Women for America
Declaration of Am. Renewal
Eagle Forum
FairTax
Family Research Council
Family Security Matters
Franklin Center for Gov't & Public Integrity
Freedom Works
Gingrich Productions
Global Incident Map
Great Americans
Gold Standard 2012 Project
Gun Owners of America (GOA)
Heritage Action for America
David Horowitz Freedom Center
Institute For Justice
Institute for Truth in Accounting
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Judicial Watch
Less Government
Media Reseach Center
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Right To Work Foundation
National Rifle Association (NRA)
National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA)
News Busters
O'Bluejacket's Patriotic Flicks
OathKeepers
Open Secrets
Presidential Prayer Team
Religious Freedom Coalition
Renew America
Ron Paul Institute
State Policy Network
Tax Foundation
Tax Policy Center
The Club for Growth
The Federalist
The Gold Standard Now
The Heritage Foundation
The Leadership Institute
Truth in Accounting
Union Facts



Blogs For Borders

Reject the United Nations

Presidential Prayer Team

Thousands of Deadly Islamic Terror Attacks Since 9/11


FairTax Nation on FaceBook
Friends of Israel - Stand with Israel
Blog Feeds
Syndicated - Get the ARRA News Service feed Syndicated!
ARRA Blog Feed

Add to Google Reader or Homepage

Add to The Free Dictionary

Powered by Blogger


  • To Exchange Links - Email: editor@arranewsservice.com!
  • Comments by contributing authors or other sources do not necessarily reflect the position the editor, other contributing authors, sources, readers, or commenters. No contributors, or editors are paid for articles, images, cartoons, etc. While having reported on and promoting principles & beleifs beliefs of other organizations, this blog/site is soley controlled and supported by the editor. This site/blog does not advertise for money or services nor does it solicit funding for its support.
  • Fair Use: This site/blog may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as provided for in section Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. Per said section, the material on this site/blog is distributed without profit to readers to view for the expressed purpose of viewing the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. Any person/entity seeking to use copyrighted material shared on this site/blog for purposes that go beyond "fair use," must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
  • © 2006 - 2020 ARRA News Service
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.