Anyone who knows Victor Davis Hanson is going to be instantly familiar with this type of picture. Its at some sitting room in some university where an intellectual says, “I want to interview this guy, he’s really smart!” VDH’s IQ has to be north of 140. The man is so brilliant. Any bio on him can tell you his areas. I’ll just say that because he knows the past, he can see the future. As a historian, he’s seen the stupid. He knows what Man is going to do in a certain situation, with certain stimulus. Historical context. Newt Gingrich has it too.
But universities are littered with idiots in the history departments. Why was this guy able to save himself? Who knows, one reason is he is also a farmer. He’s in touch with the real world. He knows what happens when a drive belt breaks on a piece of machinery. What happens when you don’t order the seed in a timely fashion. He’s not a one note ninny with book knowledge as his only tool.
He always puts the news of the day in a word picture so that you can see why its happening and where its going. One of my favorite past examples of his was when he put Trump on history’s timeline. VDH might have used Patton, Churchill and Alexander the Great as examples. There are times when a people know inherently that their societal train is about to go off the tracks if we don’t get the right man in there.
They know they need a “bull”. They know a few people are likely to get bruised along the way. They want a guy who’s going to get it done. Period. That man gets it done, and is then immediately thrown out by polite society. There’s no more need for the ruffian at the ramparts. Polly Purebred has been saved. George C. Marshall is fine for the postwar, but they needed Patton and MacArthur to get us there.
Western Civilization is through. Its over. Put butter on us, put a fork in us, we’re done. Modern Western Civilization is incapable of defending itself. The only hope it had was the survival of the Christian Church. Because salvation (eternal or worldly) doesn’t come through the Republican Party. Its nearly impossible to be self-governing and not be a Christian. That’s the only thing that troubles me, VDH in my casual observations doesn’t have Jesus in the mix, and you can’t have wisdom without him.
But I digress. VDH had the perfect analogy in the video at the link above for something that has caused a riff with a lot of bright people: Trump’s tweeting. Is it good or bad? VDH put it perfectly. Trump’s audacious behavior is the only thing that got him here. A slave to decorum would have been soon crushed by convention. But, there comes a time…
He said Trump was in a ‘circle the wagons’ scenario. Outside that circle were his enemies. The ones who don’t want him to get the train back on the tracks. Those enemies are the media, the Democrat Party, academia, other countries, the Establishment. Those enemies are very capable of taking him down. He can stop them, but he has to quit helping them. And when he tweets gratuitously or mean-spiritedly, he’s helping them. He can’t do that. He has to quit giving them ammunition.
[In the first paragraph I make reference to Victor’s potential IQ. I think I might have something there. One thing I’ve noticed about liberals is that they really are stupid. They do have a low IQ. They do have an inability to reason. Something needs to be explained on how 2 historians end up like Hanson and Gingrich, and the majority end up the liberal morons we have.]
Politics and Religion 