The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Is Dragging America Back to the Dark Ages

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world. One part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and  progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period. America has never been richer, more technologically advanced, or more capable of solving basic problems—yet its cities are increasingly plagued by crime, disease, homelessness, and public disorder and members of it’s “progressive” class continue to excuse blatant killers, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”  The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites: Visit https://historicsites.heritage.org/ to start your adventure today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision, to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca.

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In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murder. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal. The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2006, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world. Maybe we're progressive, regressives, and I don't mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that, One part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing, but the other part is regressing and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period. Remember, the medieval period was roughly that area in time after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, roughly 500 AD to around 1,300 to 1400 to 1400 AD, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance.

In medievalism, we often talk about primitivism after the destruction of the classical world during the dark ages, the early medieval period, and it's characterized by epidemics, bubonic plague, typhus, typhoid, smallpox, terrible sanitation and urban centers, They had forgotten the Roman use of sewage and aqueducts. There were open borders. There were national states popped up that couldn't defend themselves. So you saw castles and walls pop up all over the European countryside in a way you had not during the Roman period. In cities, they were walled, towns even, and the gates closed at dust to prevent gratuitous crime.

But at the same time that this was happening, you had some. of the greatest works of literature in the Western world. You had Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Dante's Inferno, St. Thomas Aquinas with the Summa Theologica. If you look at the architectural expertise and scientific knowledge of architecture, it was progressing at a geometric rate when you look at the huge cathedrals at Seville or Cologne. I should remind everybody that around 536 Santa Sophia was created the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, it would be the largest church in Christendom for a thousand years. And everything from the mass production of crossbows to eyeglasses were a product of the medieval period, even as I said, the daily lives of most

people were wretched. Now let's switch to the modern period. All of us now can call anywhere in the world in seconds on our iPhones. Anything you want to know past, present, future, you can just get on a cheap computer and ask an artificial intelligence from the many free platforms. You can watch movies, you can watch entertainment on satellites. Anything you want is at your fingertips. The nation itself is exploring space. We're getting close to conquering cancer. I can attest to that. computers allow you to speak without, you can write without even speaking. You can compose, unfortunately, you can pose a whole term paper or a book with AI. You can make a movie with AI.

Yet at the same time that's happening, look at what's going on in Berkeley here in California, or Los Angeles. We're seeing outbreaks of medieval diseases that we thought had been conquered years ago, given our sophisticated knowledge of sewage and water treatment. We had typhus breakout in Los Angeles. We had leprospirosis, a rat disease in Berkeley. You look at the homeless camps all over our major cities. You see people just out in the open, fornicating, urinating, defecating, injecting, drugs.

There's tons of feces that have to be removed. It's so strange in this modern medievalism. We have sophisticated researchers. that go into a hospital in Chicago or go to a cancer center in San Francisco and have to check the bottom of their souls to make sure they don't have feces as they go into their space-aged laboratories. It's really funny. In the medieval period, public hangings and beheadings were sort of public events

that people came flocked out to see. Is that any different than our glorification of murders? There is a difference. Luigi Mangione, They named an opera after him in California. The killer of Charlie Kirk brought people jubilation. I won't even get into Lindsay Clancy, who strangled her three children and became kind of every woman to the feminist left.

At least in the medieval period, they knew that the murder had done something wrong and was being punished. In the post-medieval period, we are glorifying that murder. And that's really striking to do that. And so what I'm getting at is we are at the most regulated, the most advanced, the most modern, the most scientific society in history, even as we can't solve problems that were solvable and the medieval period would have died to know the solutions that we have and in our hands to make sure we have clean water, to make sure there is no crime, to make sure there is no disease, to make sure that people don't defecate on the street, but we don't do it. We willingly don't do it. Now, the question to finish is why. We have an elite that has embraced a very toxic ideology throughout history, and that is mandated government sanctioned, a quality of result. And they have divided, therefore, to further

that ideology the world into victims and victimizers, an arbitrary classification. sometimes based on class, but increasingly on race. And once they identify someone as a victim who's not responsible for his plight, then it's the duty of the society to allow him to express himself. If you have a lot of teenagers who want to loot a jewelry store, then you say, well, they were hungry, and they needed food. If you see homeless people living on the street, then it was because something the majority culture did to them.

And the result of that is when people engage in very dangerous antisocial behavior and elite will tell the rest of us that they're not subject to law enforcement or they're not subject to the laws that apply to the rest of us. But there's two really pernicious addenda here. Number one, the people who do this on the left who believe this mandated equality in a binary of victim and victimizer are, never subject the consequences of their own ideology. Nancy Pelosi's home is not surrounded by homeless people. Jane Fonda doesn't have to trip over people injecting when she walks outside her door. The Hollywood stars in Malibu who champion the homeless have very clear security. You can't get near their homes. In other words, we the lab rats is upon whom they experiment. And there's another reason as well. It's not just that they experiment on us and this ideology is not applicable to

itself, but more importantly, they believe that they are morally superior because most of them are agnostics, are atheists. They have lost their God, but they have found it in sort of a post-enlightment, caring, abstract though it be, to victims. And when you put this religious element to it because it makes no sense to allow medieval diseases and medievalism to dominate your cities in crime, filth, homelessness, but they do it. They feel morally superior, and it gives them meaning in their life in a way that we, the majority, find not just not morally superior, but morally repugnant. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge.

In Washington, high school's sophomore, Callie Keeler was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Only afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of Alliance defending freedom, Callie is bravely suing the state over a policy that not only allows males to compete in girls, high school sports, but doesn't require schools to disclose that information to female athletes or their parents. Don't let schools put gender ideology over the safety of girls in sports. Your support today can help fight for Callie and other athletes like her. And for a limited time, your first gift to ADF will be doubled by a special matching grant, well funds last. Text Hanson to 83848, or go to join ADF.com slash Hansen to have your gift doubled.

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