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00:01:48.000Everybody, welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:50.000With me, I feel like is a teacher of mine, someone who had consumed hundreds of hours of his commentary and content, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.
00:02:01.000We were just talking how I finished your World War II course, and I was blown away by that, and your citizenship course for Hillsdale College.
00:02:09.000Tell us about your book, The Dying Citizen.
00:02:12.000Well, it's not a lamentation or a eulogy for the dead citizen because I would have called it the dead citizen.
00:02:19.000It's the process of dying, and it's an erosion in the traditional prerogatives of a citizen.
00:02:25.000I think it applies to the Western world in general, not just the United States in particular, but it's the suggestion that there's no sharp difference between a resident, legal or illegal, and a citizen, whether that means voting today or engaging in a campaign.
00:03:04.000I think soon you'll be able to hold office.
00:03:06.000So I tried to explain the history of citizenship.
00:03:08.000It was very rare, peculiar, late in history, in the eighth century in Greece, fragile.
00:03:16.000Today, there's only two or three places that can pull off a multiracial constitutional system, Brazil, maybe India, and they don't do it very well.
00:03:25.000I was trying to remind people that unless you invest in citizenship and constantly audit it, it's the aberration in history and it will disappear.
00:03:34.000I think it is disappearing unless we stand at attention and try to do something to save it.
00:03:40.000What is necessary to revive citizenship?
00:03:43.000Well, I try to say we have to reverse the organic pressures on it.
00:03:47.000And one of them is, of course, the erosion of the middle class.
00:03:50.000If you don't have a middle class, then you have a subsidized poor and a very small, powerful, influential, rich elite.
00:03:58.000That's kind of California is the model of that.
00:04:01.000And then you need definable, secure borders.
00:04:08.000You have to be citizens of a unique place.
00:04:10.000And we don't have a secure southern border.
00:04:12.000Two million people came in in the fiscal year.
00:04:16.000You have to gain control like we do of the northern border.
00:04:20.000And you can't revert to a pre-civilizational tribalism where you start, where your identity is, your race, let's put it this way, your race or your ethnic background or pedigree is essential to who you are, not incidental.
00:04:35.000And then the elites on the other side, this administrative state of legislative, executive, and judicial powers within an unelected bureaucrat, a James Comey, a Lois Lerner, it's very dangerous, as we've seen, especially.
00:04:49.000It's growing, especially the media, big government, permanent employee fusion, whether that's defined by MSNBC, CNN, James Clapper, John Brennan type of fusion.
00:05:06.000And there's a tendency now to be very bold about changing the Constitution, whether that's packing Indian Electoral College or the state's superiority or prerogative of making national voting laws or even the customs and traditions of, say, a nine-person court or 50-state union.
00:05:28.000These have been there for decades, 60 years for the states, all for short-term political expediency.
00:05:34.000So in larger historical terms, it's more the Athenian model we're grabbing to, that everybody gets to vote on any given day on anything, and that has the force of law without constitutional guide rail.
00:05:48.000And then finally, we're becoming citizens of the world where our elites on the East Coast feel they're more, have more affinities with the culture and values of the EU, and people on the West Coast feel that economically, financially, they're more tied to Asia than they are the United States.
00:06:07.000If you ask somebody at Stanford or Berkeley or Caltech, what's a restaurant like in Bakersfield or Fresno, they have no idea, even though it's 200 miles away.
00:06:16.000You ask them about where to eat in Shanghai or, you know, Taipei or Tokyo, they can tell you.
00:06:23.000So the people who have real power in this country look outward rather than inward.
00:06:29.000I'm going to ask you about motivations.
00:06:41.000I think it's the most dangerous people feel that they're doing it for others.
00:06:47.000In other words, they don't see themselves as self-interested.
00:06:50.000If you talk to Bill Gates or Klaus Schwab or Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg, why did you put $419 million into selected precincts to warp or absorb the duties of the registrar in key precincts?
00:07:05.000They say, I'm doing it to preserve democracy.
00:07:07.000And by that is they feel that they, being this globalized elite, that they are morally superior, they're better educated, even though a lot of them are not.
00:07:17.000But they have a sense of their guardians, and they just need enough power.
00:07:22.000If they just give them enough power, they can create heaven on earth.
00:07:26.000And we know from the Jacobins in France or the Bolsheviks that these people, for all of their Brotherhood of Man talk, are absolute cutthroats as far as the acquisition and maintenance of power.
00:07:42.000And you can really see it with the Bidens.
00:07:44.000I mean, They were so worried that their agenda wasn't palatable to people that they put Joe Biden in as a thin veneer of a very radical agenda that they know had no support.
00:07:59.000And they thought, you know, it's good old Joe Biden from Scranton.
00:08:07.000And then we can open the border or we can have critical race theory, critical legal theory, or defund all of that agenda, which they know has no public support, but they feel it's good for us.
00:08:19.000So they're delighted that gas is $7 a gallon.
00:08:24.000They can't quite say that like Stephen Chu was saying that.
00:08:28.000But you get the impression that they're not entirely angry, except for the optics of long gas lines in a midterm election year.
00:08:37.000So even then, though, I think, you know, the Germans have kind of renounced their green insanity, but Biden couldn't.
00:08:44.000We still shut down Anwar and no new federal leases and Keystone, even though that would give us two to three million barrels.
00:08:52.000In addition, so they've convinced themselves they're doing the right thing, their ideology, the path of progress, regardless of what's happening around them.
00:09:05.000If you say to Joe Biden and the people around him, the world is short of oil, and the people who are making money off that shortage are illiberal regimes in the Middle East, Vladimir Putin, the Venezuelans, and the Iranians.
00:09:22.000So why don't you just enrich the Alaskans and the North Dakotans and the Texans?
00:09:29.000Rather than fill the coffers of Putin or the theocracy in Iran.
00:09:34.000And they would say, well, we're not going to do that because their power is based on the money from the green base and their ideologues.
00:09:47.000So ideologues are immune from empiricism.
00:09:49.000No matter what you say, it's not going to halt, subvert, impair, change, modify, adapt.
00:09:57.000The mission, the mission is to get all of us onto green power, renewable energy, live in high-rises, have mass transit, and have a few platonic guardians who are exempt from the ramifications of their own ideology.
00:10:14.000So, you know, Barack Obama can lecture us on greed.
00:10:18.000He can lecture us that we've got to treat each other.
00:10:22.000And then he can build three mansions: Martha's Vineyard, Colorama, and Hawaii.
00:10:27.000Sees no inconsistency because he needs, John Kerry needs that private jet and that huge carbon footprint so he can help us.
00:10:36.000Al Gore just has to sell that failed cable station to Al Jazeera.
00:11:54.000So that's really interesting to me, and I want to unpack that for some of our listeners that might not be as familiar with some of the academic arguments there, where you said ideologues are immune to empiricism or empirical interpretation.
00:13:27.000They feel we are so rational that we can tell you that if you listen to us, and we will get racial relations so they're perfect if you just allow us to tell you how to drive and where to live.
00:13:40.000But, caveat: for us to do all that and sacrifice on your behalf, we need certain exemptions.
00:13:47.000That's really interesting, and I would think somewhat confusing to our audience because they say, okay, if they believe they're rooted in hyper-reason, then how do they explain that men can become pregnant?
00:14:01.000It just seems so inconsistent if that's.
00:14:02.000Well, the distinction is to remember that they say they believe in reason.
00:14:08.000That's like all humans, they have religious propensities.
00:14:12.000The only problem is the irony is that, say, a devout Christian realizes that brain surgery will remove the tumor, not necessarily faith healing.
00:14:23.000And they go to a but if they're a Christian brain surgeon, they cannot tell the person, well, when you get in the ambulance, I don't know why it ran out of gas and you die.
00:14:35.000They leave that element of mystery, but not these people.
00:14:39.000Their religion is this enlightened, this sense of enlightenment.
00:14:59.000There's something, an ancient idea of gender dysphoria, where a person is in the wrong biological body, and we've had names for it, transsexuals, transvestism, the idea you want to wear clothes of the opposite.
00:15:11.000And that's been dealt with with medicine for 2,500 years.
00:15:14.000But this new idea that you can construct your gender and be what any gender you wish to be or you think you must be, that's not biologically proven.
00:15:25.000So, we have this Supreme Court nominee and says, Well, I'm not a biologist, as if she can't explain it because it's inexplicable.
00:15:35.000She needs to say, what she needed to say if she was intellectually honest is, I'm not a biologist who could explain it, because a disinterested biologist would say that there is a biological male and female, and there's a small category that have neurological incompatibility, but that's very small.
00:15:56.000But what she's really saying is, I need a minister of transgendered faith, and they could come in here and tell you why you must believe this to save your soul.
00:16:06.000It's a lot about saving souls, because it reminds me so often, I've used that metaphor before of the medieval penance.
00:16:14.000That if you were a sinner, say, in 1500 or 1400, before the Reformation, sure.
00:16:20.000Yeah, when the Catholic Church, well, the church, and you wanted to go to heaven, and you would go to the minister and you'd say, you know, I've committed celibacy, I'm an ursurer.
00:16:34.000And they would write out a contract, an indulgence, and they'd say, five blocks on the dome of St. Peter.
00:16:41.000If you can promise to pay for that, or this church or this, give me 10 acres, then we will write you an exemption and you can go to purgatory for a while.
00:16:49.000And that's what the left does in their way of thinking.
00:16:53.000If you, all these people who are so wealthy in the Democratic Party now is really the poor and the very wealthy.
00:16:59.000The very wealthy have taken exemptions and they've made a deal with their psyches, and that is, I get to live in Atherton or Woodside or the Upper West Side, and I'm going to be completely immune from the consequences of my ideology.
00:17:16.000I hate charter schools when my kids go to prep school.
00:17:21.000I want high kilowattage rates in California, but I live in 70-degree weather year-round.
00:17:26.000I like $10 gas, but I don't drive much, and I have so many I don't care.
00:17:32.000I think everybody should live in 1,500 square feet.
00:17:34.000It's ecologically sound, but I have seven homes.
00:17:40.000And one of the ways they square that circle of not living by what they force down other people's throats is to feel terrible.
00:17:48.000And that means they, you know, they act very left-wing, they attack people, they cancel people, they deplatform people, they ostracize people, they dox people.
00:18:02.000Hollywood, these multi-millionaires in private, come out and try to destroy people's lives.
00:18:08.000And then they say to the poor and the middle class, see, I'm on your side.
00:18:14.000I will, you know, I'll fight the culture wars for you.
00:18:17.000And then after five o'clock, they retreat back.
00:18:20.000It's very typical of history when you see that.
00:18:25.000So using an analysis of history, I'm curious, you mentioned the French Revolution.
00:18:31.000Has there been times ever in history where a very wealthy society decides to embrace this kind of woke ideology, something similar to wokeism?
00:18:45.000I mean, there was a legitimate reason to get rid of the Bourbons.
00:18:49.000And there were a lot of moderate people, and they looked at the British system, and they said you can have a monarchy compatible with a constitutional republic.
00:18:58.000And that was eminently possible in 1787, 8.
00:19:01.000And then you had these cycles of revolution where today's revolutionary would be tomorrow's sellout.
00:20:09.000And so either we're going to have to slow it down, or there's going to be some reaction to it, or there's going to be some hardcore leptus that says, you know what?
00:20:21.000There's so much resistance, we're just going to have to put this in by fiat.
00:20:25.000There's going to be some non-democratic rendezvous, and it's going to be, it's why it's very important that people speak out about it now, because it's fascistic and it's totalitarian, and it's not based on anything.
00:20:39.000I mean, think about how madness, this descent into madness where we don't want to pump oil here, but as I said, we beg Putin or the Saudis to do it, or we make fun of the Border Patrol agents that say they whip innocent people, but suddenly now we're paranoid that people are going to come across in the midterm.
00:20:59.000So we're going to ask for Border Patrol volunteers.
00:22:07.000The title to our homes are kept online.
00:22:09.000An identity thief knows his big payday is as easy as forging your signature stating you sold your home to him.
00:22:15.000Now he'll take out loan after loan against your home, and you won't know until the collection calls start or you get an eviction notice.
00:22:22.000How do you protect your home from title theft?
00:22:25.000Go to your county recorder's office and check your home title every day or register your address at hometitallock.com to see if you're already a victim.
00:22:32.000This is how we protect our most valuable asset.
00:24:00.00060s, you have culture, you got guys wearing beads, you know, saying blank, blank the establishment all over the United States.
00:24:08.000This time, because of the, I think, these major existential issues, globalization has changed the economy, this weird worship of a BA degree, the hollowing out of the interior, this cosmopolitan worship of Europe, whatever we term it, it's starting to be geographical.
00:26:17.000I would say that I'll give you an example.
00:26:21.000I won't mention any names, but I had a guy that's working on a project, a painter, and he's a really great guy.
00:26:28.000And he goes to Stanford Medical School.
00:26:30.000He just asked me the other day why they're so strange up there.
00:26:34.000Or, you know, I mean, if you have a Mexican-American landscaper guy that cuts people's lawn, he has a little bit of smoke in his truck, people feel bad for him.
00:26:49.000But I was behind a guy that came into the Stanford campus, and I just started laughing when I saw that because it was just a clue.
00:26:59.000By the time I got to my office, a person who works at Stanford said they were so outraged they had called to stop that guy, but they were the 11th caller, that Karen mentality.
00:28:35.000You talk to anybody where I live who's a cook or a plumber or an electrician, they'd say, do not leave a billion-dollar embassy in Afghanistan.
00:28:45.000Or as one person said to me, hey, Victor, I've got to ask you a question.
00:28:50.000I was in Home Depot the other day and he said, now, we're going to give the Ukrainians $12 billion in military aid.
00:29:11.000And you think, wow, this guy is Albert Einstein, but apparently there's no Albert Einsteins in the Biden administration or General Milley or the rest of them.
00:29:20.000So I think the limitations of our elite are pretty transparent.
00:30:18.000So that kind of was like that commercial of the Apple, you're too young probably, but 2004, a woman ran in and she threw a hammer through a screen right during the Super Bowl.
00:31:31.000Except those with gold and silver as their backup plan.
00:31:33.000They know that with precious metals in their IRA, they'll be fine.
00:31:36.000Noble Gold has thousands of clients who have safely invested with them.
00:31:40.000Most heard an ad like this and called the experts, not a call center, but specialists who will give you your options.
00:31:46.000And for the month of March, with any qualified IRA above 20,000, you get a three-ounce silver American virtue coin or a five-ounce American the Beautiful Silver coin for anything over $50,000.
00:32:11.000It's so interesting that the credentialocracy is kind of less relevant than ever.
00:32:16.000But I suppose what you're articulating, though, is that that's a source of a lot of the kind of resentment and antagonism in these centers.
00:33:03.000But if you look at his record, I know he was very different on immigration and optional military in China, but a lot of it was doctrinaire republicanism.
00:33:14.000But the Never Trumpers just had a passionate hatred of him.
00:33:39.000And you think, well, it's because he done.
00:33:42.000No, he they compared to their people they put up there, but they represent to them somebody who doesn't fit their criterion of credentials or sober and judicious repartee or whatever it is.
00:33:56.000And so they remind me of people in the French court, you know, at Versailles, the same way, wigs and powder and everything.
00:34:06.000And they're sort of in hollow people that are empty.
00:34:10.000And when somebody says the emperor has no clothes, they get very angry.
00:34:14.000So in closing, here, I want to ask you, Victor, though, I mean, it doesn't sound like this is sustainable.
00:35:36.000Ivy League law degree, and he went to Columbia.
00:35:38.000But when they leak everything, why didn't they leak his Occidental transcript or his Columbia transplant or he was a constitutional law professor?
00:36:21.000Everybody's got, it's going to be, I think if we can survive this turmoil, it's going to be more achievement and facts-based and what you actually do.
00:36:30.000Because the market will kind of, there's still a lot of good things about a free market economy.
00:36:36.000It's better than the alternative, and it's going to start rewarding people for, you know, I see it.
00:36:44.000I'm very strongly against illegal immigration, but I am very supportive of Mexican-American legal citizens, new immigrants who start businesses.
00:36:54.000And that is very encouraging because they don't care about these things, these credentials.
00:37:02.000They just want to go out and they want to work like crazy and be successful.
00:37:06.000And when they see a car, if you were to drive a Bentley onto the Stanford campus, people would make fun of it.
00:37:16.000If you drove it in Fresno, some guy would come up and say to you, where did you get it?
00:37:29.000My dad was a World War II veteran, and he was a farmer, and he was a college administrator, did a lot of stuff, but he always had that attitude, like he was flying a mission on a B-29.
00:37:40.000You know, he'd say, I said, I don't think I can go to graduate school.
00:37:45.000I've only, these guys have had Latin and Greek for 20 years.
00:38:48.000And then finally, tell us about VictorHanson.com.
00:38:50.000I don't think we're going to fracture because the divisions are within families.
00:38:55.000They were in the Civil War, but we still have more in common than we do for a while longer.
00:39:01.000And I think the left, it used to be we're all fighting and let's just calm down and be friends.
00:39:06.000But I think people are starting to see that one side is doxing, as I said, deplatforming and canceling and boycotting and doesn't have, and they're doing that because they do not have majority opinion.
00:39:18.000So every single issue that Joe Biden is advancing has zero public, I mean, not zero, but it's less than 40%, 50%.