From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The Internal Decline of the United States With Victor Davis Hanson

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

A shrinking military and decreased patriotism are just two of many troubling shifts recently seen in America -- but are we too far gone to return to 'the good ole days' of the country? American Military Historian, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, and Author Victor Davis Hanson joins Sean and Rachel to discuss these seemingly un-American trends, and why there's still reason to have hope for America, even when things feel dark.  He also talks about his latest book, 'The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation,' which examines how civilizations have perished and why modern societies are not immune from the horror of "a war of extinction." Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. It's great to be back at the kitchen table, and it's great to have somebody we really admire, and so many people admire on our show today. Of course, that's Victor Davis Hanson. He is someone who has spent so much time dissecting and studying the classics. His latest book gets into military history. He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. And of course, he's a trusted commentator at Fox and other outlets. And he's the author of bestselling books like The Case for Trump. And his most recent book that I'm so into is called The End of Everything, How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. It is a must read. And we're just really looking forward to picking your brain, Victor Davis Hanson. Thank you and welcome to the kitchen table. Thank you for having me.

So The End of Everything, Sean and I talk a lot about sort of the end of empire here in America. I know there was too much. And there was also a recent social media trend that was viral about all the men, especially who were talking about, you know, Rome, how many times men think about Rome in a day. And I don't think it's a coincidence, the moment that we're living in. So maybe you could just break down for us a little bit about the book, but more in the context of the moment we're living in. What can we learn from your book that can give us some insight into understanding the moment we're in? Well, very quickly, civilizational erasure after war is

very rare, but it happens. And I looked at four cases, classical Thebes, Carthage, the end of Christendom in Asia with the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, and then Cortes' destruction of the Aztecs. And I was surprised that there was a continuity. And then in the long epilogue, I suggested that maybe human nature hasn't changed so much and that these rules apply to the present. And all of these empire states, city states, they all had delusions that they were as strong as they had once been. And they had ruled vast areas of territory, or in the case of the city-state of Thebes, most of a regional area.

But they were not doing that now, and they were talking about the past more than the present. They talked about the great Theban histories and myths of Antigone and Oedipus, but not how big their walls were at the present. Or in Constantinople, they talked of Justinian or Constantine 1,100 years earlier, but not whether the Theodosian walls were still adequate. The other thing is they were very naive about the situation they were in. They thought that they could deal with their invader or their aggressor. They had no idea the caliber of person who Alexander the Great was, or Scipio was, or Cortes was, or Mehmed the Sultan. They kept thinking that there's always going to be allies on the horizon to bail them out. And that very sad to read about the last

days of Constantinople. Here are all these Christians on the walls and they're looking out at the Dardanelles and they say, any minute a Genovese or a Venetian fleet is going to sail up the Dardanelles and save us. And that was never going to happen. So it's a story about external aggression, but it's really about internal decline and the naivete about it. And just to finish, that internal decline has similarities across time and space. Financially, they were all, for all practical purposes, not in very good shape. They had inflated their currencies. They were at the mercy of debtors. They were debtors at the mercy of lenders. Their militaries were not what they once were,

and yet they all had glorious military traditions. They bragged about their technology. They thought that they were superior, and yet they had no idea that the enemy has either borrowed it or improved upon it when they arrived outside their walls or into their borders. They, in addition to that, they didn't understand that allies predicate their loyalty on strength, not on so-called tokens of friendship. So in the case of, let's say, Carthage, they kept saying the Macedonians will come. They're going to attack the Roman army from the rear. No, they're not. They made a cost-to-benefit analysis and found Carthage Monty.

So all of those have, I think, contemporary echoes. And I was struck in the epilogue. I counted all the existential threats in today's world. I mean, I had no idea that Recep Erdogan has threatened to annihilate the Greeks, the Kurds, the Armenians, the Cypriots. We know about Kim Jong-un. We've had about 30 people on the Russian side say that they would like to use tactical nuclear weapons soon. We have Iran exudentially threatening Israel. And it was eerie about the responses to all that. Pakistan's threatened to use nuclear weapons in a preemptive fashion against India. And they're all dismissed.

Or they'll say it can't happen here. Or they would never do that. Or this is crazy. Or we're the United States. Or we made the post-war order. So there's a lot of the naivete and the denial. And then when you look at our, finally, when you look at our $35 trillion in debt that we're servicing at 5 and a half percent sometimes. And we're spending more on interest, about a trillion a year than on the defense budget. We're short 45,000 troops. We've

been humiliated abroad in Afghanistan, the Chinese balloon, this meat grinder in Ukraine, no border. So there's a lot of things to worry about in the present because of what's happened in the past. Yeah, you know, Victor, you mentioned, again, the finances, $35, $34 trillion in debt, declining military, thinking your technology is superior to your adversaries. All those ring true to what we're dealing with today. And what's frustrating for me is it seems, and taking it to present day, we've had some pretty smart people in our government. We had some of the best and brightest minds who understood history, understood some of the risks of major debt and not staying on top of a great American education system that was a feeder into new technologies,

making sure we had a strong military, which had one one objective which was to be a killing force that hopefully you would never use because it was a deterrent and it seems like if you look at those who serve in government today being one who was in congress for uh for nine years they um they have a lot of qualifications but it has nothing to do with the topics in which we need them to address in government. Again, they may be transgender. They might be gay. They might be some minority group with radical ideology. But we have, I would argue, really stupid people who don't understand history running the U.S. government, who don't see the parallels between what's happening in our country and the history that you bring up in your book.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think I'm most worried, and this happened in Rome in the 5th century, even in the 4th century A.D., they were not able, even though they had 70 million people, they were not able to draft people into the legions anymore, and they were no longer an international force so if you were in in the 21st legion on the danube and they said you've got to go over to north africa they wouldn't go in other words they had they were speaking german rather than latin or they were speaking a gallic dialect up on the rome rather than latin and they were marrying

they were having families they were on the border but they were not loyal to rome rather than latin and they were marrying they were having families they were on the border but they were not loyal to rome and they and they wouldn't so rome was starting to fragment when we look at i was looking very curiously the back the pentagon is just in a complete state of a denial of why these 45 000 troops are not joined they keep saying well kids are fat or we have to compete with the private seconds, and there's not enough workers, or they have too many tattoos, all of this stuff. But that's been true for a long time. But when you actually look at it, and you can find the figures, it's not Latino kids. It's not black kids.

It's not gay kids. It's not women who are signing up at less numbers than in the past. It's almost all white males from the middle class. And then that begs the question, does it have anything to do with Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley in 2020 saying that you people suffer from white rage, white supremacy, white privilege, and we're going to run investigations in the military? And they did. Of course, in December, when they found no such cabal, they quietly suppressed that. And then when you look at the DEI on retention, promotion in the military, and then you look at the 8,500 that they drummed out, who most of them had natural immunity

from acquired COVID cases, and we lost those. And the result, and then you compound that with the force multiplier of what happened in Afghanistan. And you can see these people are not joining. And what's ironic about it, I went and looked at the fatality records in Afghanistan and Iraq. And this is a military. I got in big trouble from a lot of generals and admirals, either publicly or privately, wrote me and said, you should be ashamed of yourself counting fatalities by race and gender. Of course, they count that for everything, except they don't want to talk about it when it comes to wounded and dead. But when you look at it, it's about 73% in Iraq and

about 74% in Afghanistan. In other words, this one demographic that they have alienated has left places like Nebraska or North Texas or Bakersfield, California, and gone to the worst places in the world at Kandahar or Fallujah. And they've died at double their numbers in the demographic. And yet those are the very people that they've ostracized, alienated, and insulted. And that's really, I don't know how they're going to get them back, but I hope if Trump can win, he can get rid of the DEI, get rid of the racial obsessions, get rid of the crazy vaccine mandates, and get those people back because they are the people, the one demographic that enjoys, for a number of reasons,

they enjoy being in the worst places and fighting for their country under the worst conditions. And now they're gone. Yeah. There's a long history. There's like sort of family history about joining and there's legacies about it. You know, my co-host, Pete Hegseth, was targeted by the military. He was in the National Guard serving around January 6th, and he was targeted as a potential white supremacist, I believe because he had a Jerusalem cross tattoo. And of course, they were obviously targeting and purging, and we're seeing the consequences of that. The other part of why people aren't joining is because of stupid wars. So I remember Tucker Carlson. I don't know if you saw this interview, Victor, but Tucker Carlson interviewed

a UFC fighter from Arkansas. His name was Bryce Mitchell. And he just said, listen, and he's a fighter. He's exactly from the area where, you know, military, you know, there's there's a long history of people joining the military. And he said, this war in Ukraine, I don't understand it. I don't know why our leaders put us in this place. I will not fight for Ukraine. Now, if war comes to Arkansas, I will fight to the death for Arkansas, but I will not fight for Ukraine. I don't know what that situation is about. And so you mentioned earlier, you know, the naivete of these other civilizations that had gone under. And certainly there's naivete among our leaders, but there also is so much hubris. And that's the word that comes to my mind when I think about Ukraine, and particularly at the moment we're in right now.

I don't know why we're in Ukraine. I don't understand how that is of interest to us in terms of the amount of money and treasure that and resources that we've expended there. about it. American weapons are being used by the Ukrainians and they're being launched into Russia, in this case at a beach in Crimea, by the way, and killed people. I mean, it's just so reckless. When you talk about these situations that can just end a civilization, are we in that moment, particularly with Ukraine and this idea that we want to make Ukraine part of NATO, and we're willing to do what we're doing right now and risk a nuclear war, World War III? Yeah, I mean, I talked about that in the epilogue of the book. Vladimir Putin has 6,500 nuclear weapons. And he has said repeatedly, and I'm no fan of him, nobody is a fan of him, and he invaded Ukraine.

But what he said, essentially, if I could summarize it, he said during the Cold War there were proxy wars, and they had third parties, Vietnam, Korea. But no one used a proxy to attack the homeland of their main adversary. And when they did, Khrushchev trying to go to Cuba, as you remember, and use that proxy to attack us by putting nuclear weapons pointed at. We almost went to nuclear war to stop that. So whatever a person thinks about the Ukraine war, the idea that we are fueling the ability of Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia

who has nuclear weapons has never happened before. It's very dangerous. The other thing is weapons are not Ukraine's problem. They have 42 million people, 12 million people have left the country. The average age of their soldier is 42 years old. We insanely told them two years ago they needed a big offensive after their heroic defense of Kiev. It completely failed. And when the New York Times said in August, that was eight months ago, that there had been 500,000 dead, wounded, and missing on both sides. And if you tabulate that ratio per day after now, 28 months, we're getting close to the Battle of Verdun, a million dead, wounded or missing. And this administration, it wants some kind of strategic isolation of Russia, and it's willing to use the last Ukrainian to achieve it.

The other thing very quickly is it's entirely incoherent what it tells us. And we have two wars going on, one with our strongest ally, Israel, who's fighting people that are existential enemies of the United States. Ukraine doesn't have nearly the historical ties to us that Israel does. And what does Biden do? He says to Israel, you must be proportionate. Now, you mentioned Crimea. He doesn't say that to Ukraine. If they kill people on a beach, he doesn't care. He says to Israel, you have to have a coalition government.

Netanyahu should hold elections soon, and you have to have opposite. He tells Zelensky, I don't care whether you suspended habeas corpus, cancel elections, or canceled political parties. He says to Israel, we want a ceasefire now. He says to Ukraine, do not have a ceasefire. Do not have a ceasefire. And it just boggles the mind how inconsistent he is. And then finally, we all know what the peace settlement is.

Everybody quietly says it, and then no one says it out loud. And we know what it is. If you told Vladimir Putin there were majority-speaking Russian populations in Crimea and Donbass when you took them in 2014, Obama did nothing. Trump did nothing about bringing them back. Biden did nothing. Trump did nothing about bringing them back. Biden did nothing. That was never the agenda of Europe, the United States, to forcibly get those back because of their checkered history and disputed sovereignty. If we in the West said to Putin, after all of this tragedy, you can have those, you all have

them, but now you can institutionalize them, They're yours. All we ask you to do is to go back to where you were in February 24th of 2021. You can tell the Russian people that due to your efforts, you got a formalization and institutionalization of Crimea and Donbass, which Ukraine was never going to get back. of Crimea and Donbas, which Ukraine was never going to get back. And then we could say, and you also made it clear that Ukraine will not be in NATO. And that was your achievement. Then we could tell Ukraine, you're like Finland in 1940. They invaded you. You heroically kept your autonomy. And you can tell Russia, take Donbas, take Crimea, just go back to where you were in February. We promise we won't be in NATO. And you can have a demilitarized zone along the Crimea-Donbass border. And I think that's about as best as you could get, but it's something you could work for.

And every time you say that, and I've written a couple of articles about it, people on our side say you're appeasing Putin or you're selling out or you're rewarding his aggression but they don't come up with an alternative they really do believe they're gonna militarily defeat Russia and that's not gonna happen they don't know it is they don't have the manpower they have 40 they used to have 41 they're down to about 29 million people. Russia has 140 million. Their GDP is 10 times Ukraine. They have 30 times the area. And you can't talk to these people in the Biden administration. And you want to say to them, since when was it your, since when was it an American policy

to take back Crimea and the Donbass? You told us, you know, you wouldn't react unless it was a minor invasion. You asked to get Zelensky out when Russia was hacking. You said, please don't attack hospitals. You weren't, you weren't, that wasn't your agenda. Trump said, I don't, I'm not going to go and fight a war to get the Donbass back. And Obama didn't do anything other than in Seoul, South Korea. And he said to Medved, tell Vladimir that if he'll just give me space for my last election, I'll dismantle missile defense in Eastern Europe.

And he did exactly that. And Putin behaved. And it was a deal. That was an impeachable offense, if you ask me. But nevertheless, suddenly everybody says, we've got to get these back. And I'm thinking, whoever said we had to get them back? No one. We'll have more of this conversation after this.

The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. And the cost to America is over $100 billion spent on Ukraine. And it does beg the question. And also potentially triggering a greater conflict that we're not going to be able to handle. No doubt.

But if you're Zelensky, if you're the leadership of Ukraine, you have to see the writing on the wall. People don't want to volunteer to fight. They're conscripting people into the military, grabbing them from villages. People with Down syndrome even. And you have to see, hey, a pathway to peace is probably the best pathway for us. And that they're not pushing Washington to do that. For me, it begs the question, is this a money-making scheme for Ukrainian leadership? The elites in Ukraine must be making a lot of money, and their horizon, their aftermath after the war looks pretty great because they've got a ton of cash, though they've devastated their country. Otherwise, this makes no sense that Ukraine would go along with Washington on the prolonged war. Is that what

you think is happening? Because, I mean, we've been seeing that on TikTok and all kinds of social media, the villas being bought, the money being siphoned away, and Congress doesn't seem to be able to know where anything is is yeah everybody is making money on defense uh contractors are defense lobbyists are retired uh officers who lobby for greater aid to ukraine what's very scary is that and they all do it all of our administrations do it they say well we're going to do 170 billion dollars there for student uh amesty. We're going to give $500 million to illegal aliens in California. We're going to talk about reparations for a trillion dollars. We're going to give Ukraine another $100 billion. They never say, where does the money come from?

You know, when Eisenhower said that in the Korean War, he said, we're going to increase the fleet and we're going to give this amount of money and this is how we're going to pay for it. And either cut or you've taxed and that's what's really scary and they got away with it as long as we had zero interest but when the interest went up we've tripled the amount that we have to service on our debt and so it's not affordable and the other very quickly the other thing is we have created a very strategically dangerous situation where that old Kissinger paradigm that China is no closer to Russia than to us, Russia is no closer to China than to us. We put into this axis of evil China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And I think Iran has, they're all nuclear.

I think Iran probably has the bomb or could get one very quickly. And nobody seems to be worried about it. And all these other countries in Venezuela and a lot of African countries, most of the Middle East, they look at this axis and they think, wow, China's fleet's growing. America's is sinking. China's all over the world, America got kicked out and left $50 billion in weapons in Kabul, America's turned on its own ally, Israel. They think, I don't want to be with these people.

They're going to get me killed. I'd rather be with the new rising sun, so to speak, not the sinking one. And that's really dangerous. You have not been following, I guess, the news or the science, Victor, because these are not real threats to America. The real threat is climate change. That's the existential threat that faces this country, which is why we can forget these new alliances, these new nuclear-armed countries, and go along our merry way trying to eradicate fossil fuels in America but not in China. I mean, we want to glean our military fleet from our tanks to our ships.

This is the stupid stuff these people talk about. And no wonder no one respects us or they trust us. It's very scary, too. I don't know. I mean, under Trump, he began to enforce the law of gifts to universities from foreign countries. And they found out where I work. China had given $50 billion to Stanford and Stanford had hidden that. And then Bessie DeVos fined them. And now they're not fining them. But something is going on with China. I mean, there's 30,000 military age males that have crossed illegally in the United States just this year.

They're buying a quarter million acres of farmland adjacent to strategic locations. They're sending the Mexican cartels enough fentanyl to kill 100,000 Americans, and then they come in circular fashion, they come back and launder that money for them into legitimate Chinese enterprises. And then, just 10 miles from where I'm speaking right now, they found a bio lab in Reedley, California.

And when they went in there, there was HIV, there was malaria, there was malaria, there was COVID, there were genetically engineered rats. There was no way that that was a so-called testing service. They were doing very, they were storing pathogens. And this person had ties with the People's Liberation Army right in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. You know, Victor, I talked about that on Fox, that bio lab. And the second I did, Media Matters, which is run by George Soros, ran all these things trying to say that I was crazy and that it wasn't really that. I mean,

so within our own media, you have this corruption of people like funded by George Soros. And these people clearly don't have our country at heart trying to tamp down those stories so the Americans don't find out about it. But this story too, Victor, we stumbled. There was an astute, I think, city or county worker who saw an air event coming out of what they thought was an empty building. They stumbled onto the lab. And it begs the question, how many more

of these Chinese labs are actually in the country? So many things are happening that we have no clue about. You're absolutely right, Sean. This particular lab was in Fresno. It's about 30 miles, 20 miles north of me. And they had found that, and he had moved it to Reedley because it's a small agrarian town about 10 miles from here. And it was actually in a packing house where I had worked in the summer. And the weird thing about it was it was in downtown. It was right in the middle of town. And this county worker just happened to be driving by, and he saw this drain vent having water come out of it. And then he went and looked in the window, and then the city of Reedley started to investigate,

and then they called the California EPA, and then it was silenced. The federal EPA came in, and they wouldn't discuss it. They wouldn't let people have access to it. And it just begs the question, why do we give this special exemption to China? We're not supposed to talk about the lab leak, which everybody now knows was true, and all the people who lied to us at the highest levels of government had conflicted reasons to do that. They were subsidizing gain-of-function research.

But it's really scary because China is the most brilliant propagandist. They are trying to weaken us. And then when anybody talks about it or criticize, they either play the race card and say, you have a history of racism against Asians, or they are dealing with people like Hunter Biden or capitalists or people who have financial ties with China. And that's what's up. I don't know how we, we really have, I hope if Trump were to be elected, I want to think the first thing he should do is demand reciprocity with China. And we should just say to them, you're not going to have 350,000 students in this country. Well, you'll have the exact number of students as we have in your country. And he's going to have to do that with the Middle East, too. There's no reason in the world we

need 250,000 Middle East students on all these elite campuses. We don't need their money. Well, I think that that brings us to, Sean, I have a couple topics we want to get to, but I want to wrap this up because obviously if you're listening to us this is this you can't deny where this is end of empire stuff and yet um i've been you know watching many of your interviews um reading what you have to say you still remain optimistic in that i do um you said there's still hope like it's not it's not over for america and and is that hope donald trump um if it's not over for America. And is that hope Donald Trump? If it's not Donald Trump, what happens to us? So kind of give us the end here of the story of what you think can happen.

I think there's three reasons for hope. One is that the essentials of a civilization we have, we have, and there are about four or five things. We have the longest constitution, it's under stress, but it's the longest democratic, federally public constitution in the world. It still works. We have the greatest agricultural sector. That's the second building block of a civilization. We're cutting off water in California. We're taking land, but we still can do it.

We have the greatest amount of natural gas and oil in the world. We were at one time the architects of nuclear power. We can do that. We have some of the richest technological and science areas in the world. These universities that have completely become bankrupt, if you look at them very carefully, universities that have completely become bankrupt, if you look at them very carefully, it's mostly in the sociology, history, liberal arts, dash studies. We still haven't contaminated completely, at least, physics, math, engineering, the professional schools, although they're trying to. And then fourth, people want to come in here because they see that it's the freest and most secure country.

So we can still salvage it and we can have a renaissance. The problem that I see with it is that the left, they know their agenda is unpopular. They know they may lose the election. But their attitude seems to be, we so destroyed the border. You've never had 10 million people here who were unaudited. It's going to take you guys a long time to do what we did. You're going to have to find them. You're going to have to deport them. We're going to fight you everywhere. We're going to call you racist. And they're saying, you know what? We drained the strategic petroleum reserve. We canceled Keystone. We canceled Anwar. It's going to take you a long time, you guys, to undo how we fundamentally transformed your country. So it's going to require somebody who says, you know, I want to be hated. I want to be disliked, but I'm going to go and undo all this stuff. And I'm not going to stop.

I wonder who that could be. Sounds like a holy person. Yes. I'd like to be hated. Yes. I'd like to be hated. Yes, I like to be hated. So I have that hope. We need that hope. You know, you talked about America's farmland. There's something about you that Sean is very jealous of, Victor.

It's true. And it's not your giant brain. It's the fact that you are. I'm a little jealous of that, too. A little of that, too. But it's that you come from a farming family. And Sean is an aspiring farmer. I am.

Oh, you are. I've seen some land. I've started to plant. I've got raised beds I've been doing this year. I've got bees, Victor. I talk way too much about my bees. One day, Rach is going to let me buy a farm somewhere close or somewhere far away. But I think there's something that we've lost in this country that you had growing up.

Yeah. How do you grow your own food? How do you raise your own meat? How do you know where your food comes from? And I think there's something very noble about that, something very empowering about that, which is why we see all these homesteads that are popping up around the country. And there used to be a whole bunch of liberal granolas that were sustainable and organic. And now you see all these conservatives doing the same thing because I think we don't oftentimes know all of the garbage that's injected into the meat and, you know, all the chemicals that are put on our vegetables. But also there's something like I noticed in Sean, Victor, that, I mean, he's his happiest when he's out there, you know,

getting his hands dirty and checking on his tomatoes. And there's something about working with the women. No, you're absolutely right. I left graduate school at 25, and I came back here where I'm speaking because my grandparents were, you're absolutely right. I left graduate school at 25 and I came back here where I'm speaking because my grandparents were, they had 180 acres and I farmed the whole thing with my twin brother. He dropped out of graduate school and we didn't have any money. I always say, if you want to farm it, don't quit your day job. And that's true. Yeah. Don't quit your day job. But I, then I went back after five years to academia.

But my wife was telling me the other day, I've had some health issues. And she said, you never had one health issue when you were farming. Because it just has a clarity. You're doing physical work. You're using your mind. You're not inside. You're on your own. You don't have to get up at 3 in the morning and fly somewhere.

You don't have to deal with this or that. And so that's one good thing about it. It's a very healthy lifestyle. The other is I had four siblings that lived here, and we had 12 children, and we kind of free-ranged them. And so they would get up at 6 in the morning, and they would, like, head to one of the houses on the corner of the ranch, and we'd let them go.

And then they would meet at 8 o'clock to work on the packing house. And it gave them – I have a 42-year-old son. When he was at Cal Poly, he was only 18, and he grew up on a forklift when he was 5 or 6. And they had to get trained to use a forklift at this place he was working at and none of the kids could do it so a big semi pulled in and he was in a hurry and my son was eating lunch sitting down on the dock and he wasn't allowed to touch the forklift and there was nobody there so the guy yelled at him and he jumped on the forklift and he unloaded the entire semi of cinder blocks in five minutes.

And the guy goes, wow, you're the only guy I've ever seen here that knows what he's doing. And they all had jackets on it with little tags that says certified to drive forklift, which was basically go as slow as you can and don't take any chances. And then he got back and the supervisor came out and fired him and said, don't ever do that again. We could be sued. And then he got back and the supervisor came out and fired him and said, don't ever do that again. We could be sued. And he got fired. And I said, I called him up because my son was really upset. I said, wouldn't you want to reward that initiative? If he was reckless, he could. No, we don't like people to do that. So, but what I'm getting at is when you raise kids and they get independent and they don't get scared of things, they look at animals and the wild, they can,

they develop an independence and autonomy on a farm and they do physical work and it doesn't become boring. You know, every time their friends would come out from town and I'd say, you guys have to tie up young vines. My kids would start going, they go, well, we'll be done at this time. And they'd calibrate how much. And the kids would go, oh, my gosh, my back hurts. I've done 10.

You mean there's 90 more to tie up? And it's so boring. It's monotonous. And so it was very good for them. I think it helped them a great deal. And that's why I still live here, even though I rent the place. All my siblings sold their share. So the 180 acres is just 40 in the original house. But I'm speaking today from our house that my great-great-grandmother built in 1870.

That's amazing. I have a lot of good memories. I think it's been very good for me. And every time I go, my wife says to me, very good for me. And every time I go, my wife says to me, well, you're going to be 71. And every time you get on a plane, you have to go to an interview, you have to debate, you get lost in a connection, you come back, you get the flu, you get the cold. But every time you stay here, you're indestructible. You're healthy. What are you growing on the farm? You're indestructible.

You're healthy. What are you growing on the farm? Well, we used to have plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes, and raisins. And then we had 20 acres of organic fruit. So our kids, I don't know if I, I think they probably put me in jail today. But when they turned 16, they had an old telephone van that we bought. And they filled it up with 3,000 pounds and they would drive the 200 miles to Palo Alto, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and sell at farmer's markets. And I don't think, I mean, it was kind of crazy to have two 16 year olds in charge of

two 14 year olds driving on these high, you know, over the pass of the coast ranges. But after they all sold out, I just pulled everything out and planted almonds. And so I have 42 acres of almonds. And I have a guy that does the work, rents. But we live right in the middle of an almond orchard on all four sides. I love it. That's awesome. I don't have a farm, but I'm right in the middle of an almond orchard on all four sides. I love it.

That's awesome. I don't have a farm, but I'm accused of child labor at my house with all my kids. Don't worry. But it's not farm labor. But just to put a button on that, you see your productivity, you see things grow, and there's something real about growing things, And you see the fruits of your labor. So different than like this AI world we're living in, this social media virtual world. And, you know, I used to do lumberjack exhibitions and competitions.

And I did a lumberjack exhibition once. I think I was in Indianapolis. And it was the the national conference for faa future farmers ffa future farmers of america and i was like these are the greatest kids you know they were like they're all they're all like they were young i mean whether they were 13 14 15 like they're all driving combines and they all can fix they're all talking like what they can fix and i was asking i just as came up there, we let them practice tree climbing, which is a little, well, slumber jack sport, but we won't go into that.

But I'd ask them, you know, what they do on the farm. And I was amazed at the amount of responsibility and the things they knew how to do and all learned on the farm. And by the way, they were all strong too. Like you shake their, these little, these young kids hands. And I'm like, it was like gorilla grip. I'm like, and they're calloused hands. And again, I think we used to have a country of young men and women who knew how to work and knew how to fix things themselves. And that's now a thing of the past. And maybe some of these kids that are being raised on these little farms,

homesteads, will bring some of this back. How is it changing America? Yeah, well, I think one of the biggest mistakes I think we made was subsidizing all of these universities because half the kids in there are not learning anything. The average, 50% of all people who enroll at a four-year college never graduate. And those who do take six years, take six years to graduate. They have over a trillion dollars in aggregate debt. And most of these majors now, studies majors they don't, they don't know anything.

And we're sure if these kids, you know, we had this old house had a knob and tube wiring from the 1910s. So two years ago, we wired the entire house and to watch these two guys do it on weekends for two years, they were like scientists. They traced all the old wires. They figured out all the circuits. And I had to pay them a lot. And I said to them, you guys are making more than any of these graduates at Stanford that go, you know, at 80, they were making $150,000. They were so good at it. And that would be the best thing in the world, that if we started to redirect half of our youth into technical job training, plumbing're not working. They have a lot of time. They're coddled. They don't know very much. And they have this insulted idea that a Harvard, Yale, Stanford degree is going to mean something to them. They'd be much better off getting out of

that. I think the only thing that saved me is that I would drive up to school and then I'd be at Stanford and then I would drive home and I'd say to my parents or my grandparents, hey, I got an A in Greek composition. And they'd say, there's something you've got to go weld out there. You just left it. That's nice. Now go do some work. Yeah. Do some real stuff.

My grandmother would say, well, the cesspool is overflowing, and the guy can't come out for two weeks, so you're going to go get the pump, and you're going to get a hose, and you're going to pump it out in the vineyard and not tell anybody, then disc it under. And I thought, I said to her. That's how we really think about you, Victor. Well, I remember that. I was at the bottom of the cesspool covered with a Honda pump, and my grandmother was telling me, she called me 20. I was at the bottom of the cesspool covered with a Honda pump and my grandmother was telling

me that's she called me 20 I was a twin 20 that's a great job you're doing and I said this is illegal this is unfair and she said just keep going keep going you're doing a good job that was good for it was very so I guess when I went back to school on Mondays, it was everybody would say, were you studying? I'd say, no. What were you doing? I was, you know, running a raisin dehydrator. I had to go disc 40 acres or something. And my advisor would always say, you know, he actually wrote, he's deceased now, so I can say it.

He said, someone showed me his recommendation, my thesis advisor. And I really didn't, I couldn't get the job, and it said he was one of the quickest to finish the program. He had no problem with the academic, but he's not an intellectual. He just looked at the French and German exams as a way of reading French and German, but he doesn't speak them. He doesn't go to the opera. He doesn't do symphony. He's not a real intellectual.

He's not a well-rounded Renaissance classicist. And he has this obsession with going home and doing things that are counterproductive for his career. How could you ever get a job with a recommendation like that? You're destined for failure, Victor, if we look at your piece of work. Well, the last topic we want to talk to you about, Victor, is I had the pleasure of speaking with you on the telephone not too long ago. And we've had you on the show before. And we always love to get your opinions on school, which, by the way, I think your balance of real world stuff versus the ivory tower is exactly why people like you. There's a

common sense about everything that you talk about and how you analyze it. And I think that's why people trust you. I think deep down inside of us, despite all the crazy stuff that's happening in America, there is a common sense gene in there that's still alive and kicking. And I think you exemplify that and you and you expound on that. And we're really grateful for that. You and I've been talking about universities. And, you know, there are universities and then there are places that actually, you know, and the kind that indoctrinate and there's some that actually educate you and give you the kind of classical foundation that you need to analyze the world that we're living in, like we did in the first

part of this interview. And I've been trying to get this list from you because you expounded on, you gave us a list the first time we had you on the podcast and we took it to heart and our own daughter ended up, we went from, you can go wherever you want. And our first one went to the University of Chicago. The other one went to University of Madison, Wisconsin, ended up dropping out. And then the third one, by the third one, we we got it right. And we said, here's here's the VDH list that you can pick from. No doubt with the Victor's after we did the podcast with you, we were talking about, you know, universities and which ones are the best ones where truly get an education. And after the podcast, we literally sat down and said,

we're not going to do this anymore. And we picked the, it was like five or six schools that she could choose from. That you had mentioned. I said, you can go anywhere. That's fine. We'll help you. But if you want me to pay for or help pay for school, you can pick from these five or six.

And guess what? She picked from the five or six because she couldn't go to school without her help. And she went to University of Dallas, which was one of your your recommendations yes that's a good school very good school uh when i speak at these places it's just you know when i speak at saint thomas aquinas um or i speak at saint john's or i speak at hillsdale i go to Hillsdale every year. It's just like walking back into what America used to be like. The students, first thing you notice is that nobody locks their bike on campus. When you have questions and answers, they don't give long lectures to you. They just ask the question.

The questions are very informed. The people are very polite. And it's just a different – when I go to a, I don't do it anymore. I've stopped the last five years. I've kind of retired from going to Berkeley or speaking even at my home place. Because you know what it's like. The students are rude. They disrupt.

They don't know anything. They boo. They editorialize when you're giving a lecture. They'll never ask a question. They just give you a rant. So these places have, I think the value of them is that they're holistic. They see education as citizenship, being engaged in voting and being aware of issues, being kind to people, religion, a moral code. And it's a pretty holistic education. I teach also a graduate class at Pepperdine's.

I'm doing it in the fall on World War II and leaders in World War II, but I do it by Zoom. But I do go down there three or four times for three or four days. And even though it's a graduate class, I noticed that those students are the same. They're very different. They're very polite. They're interested in learning. You never hear a thing, well, United States was a racist country that killed all these people in World War II, that kind of stuff that you hear on campuses. And they have a range of reference. So you don't have to say, okay, I mentioned General Grant. General Grant was a Union general. Or you say, if you go to any of these elite schools and you talk, and you say Patton or you say Napoleon, they don't know who they are.

They have no idea. A Harvard, Yale, Princeton student. Especially since the George Floyd, the last, I think that's a big story that they've suppressed, that once they got rid of the SAT scores, now most of them are quietly trying to reintroduce them. They let in three years of students that, according to their own standards, they would have said to you three years ago, we wouldn't know what to do with these students given the curriculum. We expect people to have this type of preparation.

But it was very interesting how they destroyed the very requisites that they bragged made them an elite school. And then when they got these students of all different backgrounds and couldn't do the work, then they hit it and they either watered down the class or they inflated. Yale gave 80% of the grades were A's. Stanford's about 65. And they introduced new courses. And now quietly they're saying, uh-oh, three years of this have let the cat out of the bag and the the employers now are seeing what Stanford students know, and they don't like it. And they'd rather hire a tech from Georgia Tech or Texas A&M. And so we better get back to basics. So I think there's some hope there.

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of parents who, they spend a lot of money. I mean, school's not cheap any longer, which is a whole probably other podcast we could do on the rising cost of colleges and universities. But parents put a lot of money in, kids go into a lot of debt, or they did before Joe Biden wanted to take all the debt away. And I think a lot of parents are stunned when their kids come back from one of these state universities or one of these elite universities at the thought process and the viewpoints that their kids come back with. And as you know, Victor, we put our heart and soul into our kids. We want to raise good little human beings that, you know, carry on. And again, parents are shocked at what comes back. And I

think more parents are now thinking not just what is the best credentialed school, what is the best school for my child where they will be enlightened, where they will get a great education. And so what factors do you think parents need to look at? When they go visit a college campus, what do they want to look out for? What are some warning signs? And what are some really positive signs when you try to help your child determine where is the right place to go

to try to find some enlightenment as opposed to some indoctrination? Well, I even do it for myself. So if I'm speaking at a campus, I usually go to the bookstore and I walk along the orders. You can see the books, they have little tags. So if I see an English course and it's the construction of gender or bisexuality and X-Men movies. Or I see, you know, Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, King Lear instead.

So I try to see if they're staying to a traditional great books curriculum. If I look at history and it's the oppression of Asians in World War II versus the Normandy campaign. And that is a tip off. And then I often go and look, you know, I just do it online. Sometimes I look at the faculty and I see if I recognize any names or even if I don't,

what they're publishing or what they're in. Faculty are very, actually very candid. And so they will say, I professor smith dash uh owens and i work in the intersection of gender racing and bisexuality and i'm studying uh false consciousness in medieval europe and the oppression of transgender people. When you see that stuff, and you will see it almost every day, you just know you're in the wrong place. And I also try to look at the president sometimes and the virtue signaling. So I'll give you an example.

When Pepperdine called me and said, we'd like you to teach at the School of Public Policy we get one other we get one chance to teach at Hoover on our day off so I said I could do it one day it's a long drive I'll do it in Zoom but let me look at your faculty so I looked at all the faculty members I looked at the current dean and the past dean Jim Wilburn and Pete Peterson they were wonderful people and then I drove down there I looked at the books dean and the past dean, Jim Wilburn and Pete Peterson, they were wonderful people. And then I drove down there and I looked at the books, and it was right out of the 1950s in the sense that I knew students would, and then I sent my daughter there, and she confirmed that, that it was, you know, who would ever think in that beautiful campus in Malibu, subject to all those outside forces, that there would be an enclave of traditional education?

And there is. And same thing, walking into the Hillsdale campus is walking in through, I feel like I opened a door and I'm walking in the 1950s. Everybody's polite. They're well-dressed. Everybody's polite, they're well-dressed. I think I might have told you when I first got there 20 years ago, I was riding a bicycle late in the afternoon. I stopped by my office to get stuff.

For some reason, I left my bike right outside the door. It was unlocked. I went home. I didn't even remember it. And I said to some, I called the security and I said, I think I left my bike. And they said, don't worry about it I'll be there nobody takes anything here I said well I didn't lock it and he said nobody locks it here so the next morning great I didn't get over there till 10 o'clock it was exactly in the same place with all the other bikes and that thing would have been gone

in a nanosecond at Stanford yeah you also told also told me, Victor, that one of the things you do, and I actually, as I went to all the different universities traveling with my daughter, I think we looked at three or maybe four, I think about three, you said to look at who they're inviting for graduation speeches, but also who's on the boards that they have different speakers coming in. That's another clue. Why should parents look for a classical school? Because University of Dallas, Hillsdale, I believe St. Thomas, I think, I thought Augustine was on your list as well.

That's kind of down near Ventura, between Ventura and Magic Mountain. It's a beautiful campus tucked away. That was one of the most impressive campuses I've ever spoken at. But when you can see the marquees and you see so-and-so is speaking here, if you go to Hillsdale and you look at the topics that are coming, there are things like the ink spots. Professor Brad Bazir was going to talk about C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, etc. And then you can see there's going to be a conference on what went wrong in the Korean War. There's going to be a conference on the

effect of air conditioning on middle Americans' lives. They're very wide topics, but there's no ideology. There's no just strident ideology. And that's especially good. And when you meet the faculty, they're, I mean, they look, they're, they're not into all these, they're not into all these coalition to end the war or the trans movement or any of that. So it's,

you can, you can, it's very easy that you can, as soon as you get on a campus, you can start to feel it. And one of the things I do too is, but I don't go to as many campuses. I used to go to about two or three a month. But I go to the so-called free speech area and see who is and who is not camped out.

If you wanted to send your kid to Stanford, I would just advise you to go to the free speech area and see who takes over the free speech area and what they're saying. And you will see a Palestinian encampment staffed by some of the richest kids in the world from the Middle East screaming the most anti-Semitic things in the world. Although they do have a little sign as you walk by their tents. It says, shh, be careful. Protesters are sleeping inside. They're so delicate. And again, maybe if you have a free speech zone, you're the center college or university for you, because I thought the whole campus should be free speech. If there's

only free speech in one area, that's probably a problem. Let's maybe talk about, give us some of your colleges, universities that you like. You mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas, Hillsdale, Pepperdine. We like you, Dallas. I think you said there's a St. John's. What else, who else is on your list of some of the good schools that... I was looking at some of the state colleges. So University of Tennessee, I really like Glenn Reynolds. He's at Instapunt. You know him. And he's a professor there. I've talked to him a couple of times about University of Tennessee. One of my close friends who's a Stanford graduate has four children and they were all set to go to the Ivy League or Stanford. And she's looking at University of Tennessee. She put one of her children in Hillsdale.

University of Florida, what Rhonda Santus is doing there. Yes. Chris Ruffo, new college, is pretty impressive. Purdue University is, I mean, it's not too bad. Some of the Midwestern, the Big Ten used to be pretty bad, but I think they're starting to change now. I don't have any confidence, unfortunately, in most of the four-year private liberal arts prestigious college.

You know, Kenyon, Oberlin, I used to. Even places like Gustavus Adolphus or Carlton, they're kind of more like now Williams and Amherst, etc. Those are a complete waste of money. Mount Holyoke, in my view. The California State University system had some good campuses, but that's not true anymore. Cal State Fresno, actually, where I taught, was pretty quiet, and they've got good business and engineering, but I wouldn't. They're like all the CSU.

To be a professor at a CSU or UC, you cannot be hired unless you're left-wing. And they give preference to people on the basis of race and gender. University of San Diego used to be pretty good. They had a pretty good law school. It was different. It's hard to know. I mean, probably the worst reception I ever had speaking was at either UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, and yet I was a visiting professor for three weeks at UC Berkeley,

and I was treated wonderfully. And that didn't make sense. And partly because there was a lot of Asian students, I suppose. But I think that things are changing. I gave a speech at Berkeley, and I had to get security there when I was there. I did too one time.

That happened to me once when I was visiting. It was on the Middle East especially. I do think it's changing, not because they want to change, but because demographically this cohort 18 to 21 is shrinking. We're down to 1.6 fertility almost. And there's been such public criticism of them and they are afraid that trump if he should be elected will start to do things that is their worst nightmare like tax the endowments yeah or start to fade out the student loan program and let let them have their own student loan program backed by their own endowment rather than the federal government. There's been a lot of talk of cutting back the number of foreign graduate students. There's been a lot of talk of maybe even an exit test.

We all give exit. We used to give entrance tests, but there's a suspicion that half the people who are graduating wouldn't be able to pass an SAT. And if they had to take an exit exam, like a kind of a bar exam, but for the BA, I think they wouldn't have time. They'd be worried to teach all these other extraneous courses. A lot of people have suggested that maybe these states have to get, they have to radically change the requirements for public schools. There's no reason in the world why you need a teaching credential instead of, you know,

once you get a BA, you can teach in a private academy, but you cannot teach in public schools. But if you just said, OK, if you want greater instructions, you have a choice. You can go get a master's degree in an academic subject or get the teaching credential, either one. Just like you go to community college within a master's degree. I can't believe that you... That would fundamentally change the whole teaching... It would. It would really emasculate the schools.

Yes. The schools of education are where the... The teaching colleges are run by Marxists and they have a captive audience. And it doesn't make sense, especially a place like California. We have over 200 community colleges, and you can have a master's degree and an academic subject and teach there, but you can't teach at high school unless you have a credential.

And it doesn't do it. And so I think that the national educationists, NEA and all, they're trying to fight that. But if Trump were to get the House and Senate, I think, and predicate a lot of these changes on federal funding, he could make a lot of changes in higher education. And that would be really important for the country because almost every bad idea starts at a university lounge. Yes. We'll have more of this conversation after this. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Victor, do you see that our parents and new students making better decisions? You mentioned there's been a lot of press around what's been taking place on our college and university campuses. more woke institutions are having to rethink, not just because you said they let in three years of unqualified students that can't do the coursework or they've had to dumb down the coursework so

they can actually pass. But are parents and kids doing a better job assessing where they should go and what kind of education they're going to get? Or are they just looking for the credential and still going, I got into Harvard and you know what? Harvard's, you know, I don't care. I'm networking. Right, exactly. Has there been a societal change? A little bit. It's starting to.

It won't really accelerate until the prestigious law firms or Wall Street or the media companies or the big chains say, you know what? Well, I'll just, I think I told you last time, I had a long talk with a tech baron. He just basically said this to me. I don't hire Stanford graduates. I don't hire them because they're not as good in what I want to hire them as a Georgia Tech person.

But more importantly, I hire them, the first week they go to HR and they start complaining. And the people from Georgia and Texas never do that so why would I want to hire one of these prima donnas who's poorly educated and that starts to filter down yeah and so what's happening one of the reasons that we don't even talk about anti-semitism is that in the 1980s up until 90, there was 30% of the Ivy League were Jewish students admitted on meritocratic criteria. And that was true of Stanford and Berkeley. But once we went from affirmative action to full-fledged DEI, which was anti-so-called white, Right. The last three years, Stanford has let in 9% of their 2,200 coming in white males. That was only 180 white males of 2,100 students that were admitted.

9% are white males? Yes. Okay. So 180 of them. And when you want to take out the dean's kids, the faculty kids, the guys whose parents gave a million, oh no, excuse me, 10 million, and the athletes, then you're down to almost nobody meritocratic. And then when you say that Jewish kids are not considered, that they have any traction as, you know, what's happened to the Jewish people, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, they just are branded white settlers or white exploiters. The result is that you look at Jewish enrollment in the Ivy League and it's way, way down. It's about seven to eight percent.

And then when you look at Middle East students, it's just way, way up. And a lot of this turmoil is just the fact of demographics that we've got so many Middle East students that take over these protests. And then these useful idiot students think, wow, these are the cool people. They're there. And there's no Jewish students on campus, essentially, except they're being chased into the library or they're being harassed. And so I think that's been a big change because a lot of people in the liberal Jewish community and Wall Street and the media, they're looking at this and they're saying, not like I say, I wouldn't send my kid there because they wouldn't be educated and they might be indoctrinated. But they have another reason. They say, well, he's not going to be educated and he's going to be

maybe indoctrinated, but he might not be safe at any of these places. And I think that's really hurting them because the left has sold us this bill of goods that we are DEI. We're people of color. People of color cannot be racist. People, victims of racism. And yet the entire anti-Semitism surge is coming from the left, and a lot of it's coming from the squad, the Bowmans of the world, that BLM with that glider poster glorifying murder from the air on October 7th.

And I think that's really hurt these universities, and the presidents cannot criticize. They will not criticize DEI. And the presidents cannot criticize. They will not criticize DEI. They will let them do things to Jewish students at Stanford that they would never, ever do if anybody tried that with a black student or a Latino student. And the parents are looking at that. And I do think it's starting. That's a windy answer.

But if it accelerates, it would be really a wonderful thing for these universities to lose their cachet and have to start over. I think it would be the best thing that could happen to our country. By the way, some positive signs, Victor, that we're seeing. Sean and I have lived in rural Wisconsin for a long time. In his hometown in Wausau, Wisconsin, where we lived when he was serving in Congress, both of those towns now getting, you know, starting little classical schools.

So I think the whole classical school thing, I think it's going to start at that ground level. And I think, you know, the work that you're doing, what Pete Hegseth and I and Sean are doing on Fox and making people more aware about what classical education means, why it's important, probably more important that it starts at that level. And we raise up a new generation of kids who are steeped in this,

are exposed to these ideas, these books, this way of thinking. And then hopefully they'll seek that out at the higher education level, where, as you said, UDallas, Hillsdale, Thomas Aquinas, UDallas, Hillsdale, Thomas Aquinas, even Pepperdine and University of Tennessee, all these places where at least these ideas are being exposed to students. So I just think that you're such a bright light in our culture, Victor. I really believe that. And I think I've said it to you before. I think you're a national treasure. And I just am so grateful for the book you just wrote. I think it's fascinating.

The end of everything. The end of everything. And your last article on why the Democrats are doing what they're doing and how how hard it's going to be to undo it. That was fantastic, too. Thank you for joining us and telling us a little bit about your background, your farm history, sharing that with Sean, who wants to be you when he grows up. That's true. And it's the side of Victor that we don't always get on Fox. Yes. The farmer side of Victor Davis Hanson, which, you know, is maybe the farm culture drove everything. The institution of Victor Davis Hanson really came from the farm.

From the land, from the soil. We saw that today on the podcast. Victor, thank you for being with us. And please thank your wife for giving you an hour of your time to us so we could all hang out together and do this podcast. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Victor. Thank you, Victor.

So I got to tell you what. I knew you would like him more after we started talking about the farm because i i they they what i picked up is they couldn't rattle him right he was he was so based in reality and based on the farm and based in his family that again he's a mental giant but he was never going to be a great thinker because he didn't like the classics and didn't like to go to the opera. And he's a greater thinker because he comes from the land. He comes from the soil. He comes from a farm. And I think when you're rooted in that kind of reality, it just makes you, I think, a better thinker, a better human,

and I'd have to imagine a way better professor. Well, it's so interesting because he's so smart. His ability to go back into history and draw those lessons from history, his mind is so big, and he's clearly an academic giant. And yet he says, yeah, our country would be better if there were just less of that and more of, you know, and I thought that was my biggest takeaway, by the way, that if we stop subsidizing these universities, stop pretending like this is the be all end all. Those who are the cream of the crop, like Victor Davis Hanson, will rise to the top and do that kind of stuff. And then other people will do things that our country still

needs, like rewiring houses and building things and, you know, creating things. And there's all these other things that a country needs. And on top of it, Sean, you know, that he is telling you, I work at Stanford. These kids don't know anything, is all you need to know as you go out with your own kids to look at their own education. I just really advise people, listen to the schools that he's put on his list. U Dallas, Hillsdale, Pepperdine, but even some of these state schools, University of Tennessee, he mentioned. He also told me that at Arizona State University, one of my alma maters, I went to University of California, San Diego for my graduate work, but undergrad, I did ASU. He said you can sometimes find departments that are good. Catholic University, for example, has a really great business department as well.

So there's places you can go. You have to dig in. The tips he gave on who is their graduation speaker? What are the other speakers they're bringing in? What are the books at the bookstore? Are your bikes getting stolen on campus? That must not be a moral place. The bookstore example was fantastic because that's really simple. You go visit a campus and you walk through the bookstore.

And again, Victor gets the joke, right? He gets all the books. But for anyone with any common sense, you can walk through and again, you're getting the gender studies and environmental studies and you'll pick up the woke titles. And you look at it and go, well, maybe the school's not for us. Even again, if you have a free speech block on campus, it's like, well, that's a problem because the whole campus should be free speech. I want kids to debate. I want them to have a conversation

with different points of view and do it respectfully, not just in this one square block, but on the whole campus. Do you know what I miss on college campuses, Sean? What happened to the anti-war protesters? I actually miss those guys. I remember when the Iraq war was going on. Have you been up and watching the news? They're all over these college campuses. Oh, no, no, no. That is all about oppression. And these people aren't actually about anti-war. I'm talking about old school anti-war. And by the way, they existed

on my campus on ASU when the Iraq war was going on. And I shamefully was, you know, believing everything George Bush had said about that. But, you know, there used to be, especially in the 60s and the 70s, true peaceniks on campus. I don't know what happened to those. I can appreciate that kind of dissent. I believe in that. But I think right now, what we're seeing on campus is just, as he said, a bunch of very spoiled kids who were trained up in this DEI, woke agenda, where they look at everything through this prism of oppressor and oppressed, know nothing about history. And frankly, a lot of their stuff doesn't make sense. Like, you know, gays for Palestine. I mean, that stuff doesn't make sense. You know what I mean?

So these kids are so dumb that when you can't engage them in a debate because they can't argue their point. So they fall back on what they've learned in the classroom, which is that you're an oppressor. If you're going to, you're a white supremacist. They have all of this language that they use to try to shut down a debate or a conversation. Because if you actually got them to have the conversation, they would be exposed for being absolute idiots. I also think it's important. You do subsidize things that can be really good in society. Yeah.

That are really helpful to grow the culture. Yeah. And that's why in Hungary you bring this point up. They're subsidizing families. There's not enough families in, you know. And it's working. And it's working. Their marriage rates have shot up.

Their birth rates are shooting up. There was a time that we thought our university system is a jewel. And we should, we should, actually it was, it was the envy of the world and we should subsidize it. We should support kids and their ability to go to these schools, whether it was with grants or loans. And then we shouldn't tax the endowments of these universities because it's all used to build, I mean, this is the building block of a great economy and a culture. That's right. Well, that's not the case anymore.

And I thought he brought up some interesting points to say, you know what? Donald Trump should really look at taxing the endowments. He should look at what we're doing with student loans. An exit exam. If you went to a university and it, I mean, again, there was grants or loans in the back of the federal taxpayer and you can't pass an exit exam. What, what do we pay for? Four years of partying and drinking and being indoctrinated. Oh no, no, no. You can't pass an exit exam. You're not like this

in the school is going to pay for it. By the way, the schools, the schools should be on the hook for if you, if you allow someone in your school and you give them a degree and they can't pay the loan back, that should not be the taxpayer's expense. That should be the university's expense because they shouldn't allow that child in, number one. Or two, they shouldn't have these degrees that are unmarketable in the economy. I do believe in providing scholarships and grants to people who can't afford it. If we're getting the brightest of the economy. I do believe in providing scholarships and grants to people who can't afford it if we're getting the brightest of the bright. So for example, I have heard Victor Davis Hanson talk about... I'm taking my earpiece out of charge. Yeah, it's okay. I can hear you now. I heard about Victor Davis Hanson saying that he had a scholarship to get his PhD and to educate himself.

Well, he was a farm boy, but he was super bright. And so he was identified and he did that. That's what we want. We don't want people to be limited in their ability to get a higher education because their parents don't have money. We want to subsidize that if you're the brightest of the bright. But right now we're subsidizing people based on all these, you know, identities, you know, whether it's their sexual orientation or their color or their race, all of that stuff. And then we're not getting the brightest of the bright at our university.

And then those other people, we have a lot of people, as he said, who are at the university who aren't even finishing because they really weren't supposed to be there in the first place. They were probably meant to go do something else, which is wonderful too. But so we just have all the wrong and perverse incentives going on. Failure doesn't make you happy. If you're not qualified to go and you're going to go and you're going to fail and you're going to have massive debt when you get out, maybe you should rethink it. Right. And we, I've had those conversations with our own kids to go and you're going to go and you're going to fail and you're going to have massive debt when you get out, maybe you should rethink it. Right. And we, I've had those conversations with our own

kids to go, what, what is the right path for them? I'd like them to, you know, if you want to be a plumber, I'm okay with that. I might want you to go, you know, be an enlightened plumber. And so, you know, or just go, maybe go to plumbing school or electrical school. But those are conversations that we should all be having with our kids about what is the right approach. And you do want your kids to be successful, and you want them to be happy in the career choice that they pick. Right. You hear Michelle Obama often talk about imposter syndrome, like that there's a lot of people with imposter syndrome. What it is is there's a lot of people who got degrees that probably shouldn't have been there and maybe got, you know, like, you know,

the whole affirmative action thing. And then in the end, they get a chip on their shoulder because they kind of realize they're not as good as other people in the class. And then why was I there? I mean, I just think at some point, you know, as a nation, we just need to focus on the best and the best, whether it's at the university or the company. You've said to me, Sean, one of your biggest concerns is the banking world, that we are not hiring the brightest of the bright in our banking system. And we're having help them out. And you start to allow all this whole group committed that the 9% of white men get into Stanford. And again, he made a good point at whether it's after you take out the sports and, you know, the guys that gave 20, $10 million for their parents work there, they got like,

nobody's getting in, but for that, that group of white men. Well, and again, this is you, when, when admission is based on qualifications, everyone who comes out, you go, all of them got in because they were qualified to get in and they all did the coursework and we can choose from any one of them because we know that they met certain criteria. But if you don't use merit-based and use other basis, then it's like, well, why are you in? What did, is it because you're a transgender? Did you get in and are you, were you qualified to do the work? Those questions come up and it can be a disservice to those who actually were qualified and maybe transgender, but they'll still be questioned by those who are going to hire them. And I think that's a, that's a disservice to

again, merit-based admission. So again, you mentioned Victor Davis Hanson is a national treasurer and he is, he's an American greatness, isn't he? That's where I see his articles. Yeah. He does write a lot for American greatness, but he writes for lots of different publications. He's not just on Fox. I've seen him on other networks as well. I love his wife is like, you're never healthier, Victor, or happier than when you're here at the farm. This is what wives do, right? Wives remind their husbands to be healthy.

And you're getting fat. Oh, boy. That's last week. Last week's episode. Oh, boy. That's last week. Last week's episode. So I'm trying to say, we came out on the podcast, and one of my colleagues, who I won't mention from Congress, texted me about the fat shaming episode. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. And then he said, like probably most men in reaction to it, he then said, listen, we know who fat shames who. It's the wives. It's our wives fat shame us, which is so true which is the story that that that episode i have a feeling is going to be one of the highest rated the the did sean fat shame rachel on live tv episode i think we the title says something about that i really actually did fat shame you which i tell i kind of disagreed with that title but because i didn't i know but it's you know that's what the world thinks, Sean.

So we put that in the title. But I'll just say after that episode, Rachel's been working out every day. That's so true, actually. That's actually true. I'm going to get in trouble for saying that now too. You know what? I needed to do it. But it wasn't because of what I said because you were inspired by the days of Jillian.

No, listen. There was truth in what you said. No, there was truth in what you said. I did look better when I was working out more consistently. It happened to be with Jillian Michael. But consistency is the key. And that's my problem. I find all kinds of other things to do. And a lot of it is stuff I need to do.

Last night we came home. I was tired. She's like, let's go for a walk. I'm like, okay. So we went for a walk and then I'm like, okay, great. We're going to get ready and go to bed. She's like, why don't we go downstairs

and work out before? And I'm like, this is not a workout day for me, but I went down with her and we actually worked out. I'm like, the drive. I'm an inspiration, I guess. Maybe we'll do an episode in like four months

that's like my husband fat shaming me and it worked. We're talking about this far too easily because, again, I've got to reiterate, I did not do any fat shaming. I think she's very attractive and very hot. I appreciate that, Sean. And you know what else? I appreciate Victor Davidson coming on. Again, he's somebody we really admire. It was a great episode.

It was wonderful to talk to him. And I hope a lot of parents really appreciate that we kept pushing him, as we always do, on the university question, because no one better to assess that than Victor Davis Hanson. Nobody. And with that, thanks for joining us at the Kitchen Table. We appreciate it. If you like our podcast, rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. Foxnewspodcast.com, I think. Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast. You always find us at FoxNewsPodcast.com. FoxNewsPodcast.com, I think. Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe.

Rate, review if you'd like. Share with your neighbors and your friends. When you go have coffee on the weekend, go, I got a great podcast. You should listen to it. That's when it gets to the table. It's easy. It's this guy who met James's wife. Right. You're going to love this. Awesome. Yeah. They're a great example for a married couple. Oh, gosh. Well, this kind of went off the rails. Until next time, thanks for being with us.

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