The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: What Would it Take to Destroy the United States?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

What does an agenda designed to hurt the United States look like? Look no further than the past four years under the Biden-Harris administration, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”   “ If you really wanted to, in civilizational terms, destroy the United States, the first thing I would do if I was an enemy of the United States was I would destroy the borders.   “If you also wanted to hurt the United States, you know what I would do if I had nefarious intent? I would keep printing money. And I would call that, in fact, ‘Build Back Better.’”    “ The third thing that I would do, and I think it's besides debt and borders and fuel. I would sow disunity. And I would say that the content of our character is not as important as the color of our skin.” If you can’t get enough of Victor Davis Hanson from The Daily Signal, subscribe to his official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273   He’s also the host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” available wherever you prefer to watch or listen. Links to the show and exclusive content are available on his website: https://victorhanson.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

We'd love to talk. Business. I was looking at the news this week and I thought of an experiment. What if you really wanted to destroy the United States? What if you'd had ill intention for America? What would you do? What agenda would you pursue? And then I started thinking of civilizations.

What was the stuff of civilizations that make them work? It's basically their borders, their finances, their unity, their fuel, their food. What am I getting out? It seems to me that in the last four years, if you had an agenda that was designed to hurt the United States, If you wanted to do all that, you couldn't have done a better job than what we have seen from 2021 to 2025. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for The Daily Signal. I was looking at the news this week, and I thought of an experiment. What if you really wanted to destroy the United States?

What if you'd had ill intention for America? What would you do? What agenda would you pursue? And then I started thinking of civilizations. What was the stuff of civilizations that make them work? It's basic. They're borders, their finances, their unity, their fuel, their food. So if you really wanted to, in civilizational terms, destroy the United States,

the first thing I would do if I was an enemy of the United States was I would destroy the borders. In other words, I would just let anybody come across our version of the Rhine or the Danube, as they happened in 5th century. And that's pretty much what we have done the last 40 years, but particularly the last 4 years. We talked about comprehensive immigration reform as needed to stop the influx, but Donald Trump, before the Biden administration and after the Biden administration, had no such recourse. He just simply stopped it temporarily, and he has now. But what was behind all that? Joe Biden apparently fought that if he let in 12 million people without audits or background checks, would it alter the demography?

Would it give him new constituencies for big government? What was the thinking about it? But it's caused billions of dollars in increased expenses. It's really damaged the inner city. It's damaged the Rio Grande Valley. It's damaged the San Joaquin Valley. We have all this crime spike. Was it deliberate?

If you also wanted to hurt the United States, you know what I would do if I had nefarious intent? I would keep printing money. And I would call that a fact, build back better. And the more inflationary it got, I would say it was going to be the Inflationary Reduction Act.

And in that process, I would borrow maybe $7 trillion within four years, maybe eight, and add to an existing $30 trillion in national debt, 37, so that the interest per day would be $3 billion. That would really hurt the United States. You know what I'd also do? If I looked at the United States and I said, oh, my gosh, They've got almost limitless supplies of natural gas. They've got almost more coal than any European country.

They've got all of this oil. They once had a vibrant, they were the nuclear energy. They were the founders of nuclear power. They have all these dams of hydroelectric. I know what I'll do. I will castigate all about and say it makes either the environment too hot, global warming, or it ruins a natural landscape with dams, or it will kill us all through radiation.

Whatever particular complaint I'd have, I would stop it as much as I could. Dismanoluclear power plants. Cut back a natural gas. Stop full drilling, fracking. Blow up dams rather than build them. And I'm talking about California, for example, where the result would be 40 cents a kilowatt. It would make it unaffordable.

That way, if you did all of that, a quarter of all the people who paid their power bills would default. And that model would sweep across the United States. The third thing that I would do, and I think it's besides debt and borders and fuel, I would kind of so disunity. And I would say that the content of our character is not as important as the color of our skin. And I would go back and reinterpret all of the hard ones. progress of the civil rights movement and sort of get rid of it. I would just say the color

of our skin matters more than anything. And so we're going to hire on the basis of superficial appearance. We're going to have reparations to go back eight generations and adjudicate who might have had an ancestor that owned a slave and who didn't. And then I would say I'm going to predicate graduations, dorms, who gets to go into a dorm, who gets to go into a dorm, who gets to go into a library, a safe space, on the basis of race. But I'm not going to call it racism or segregation. I'm going to call it diversity, equity, and inclusion, and mainstream it. If I also wanted to create disunity, I would say from now on, after 7,000 years of civilization, there are three sexes, not two, and women's sports must include biological males. Not that it was an important

topic, but it would create enormous tension and disunity. What am I getting out? It seems to me that in the last four years, if you had an agenda that was designed to hurt the United States in terms of an influx of 12 million foreigners that were on audit, an unprotected border, a repression on energy, a desire to print money rather than to cut expenses and save money, and, toward a balanced budget. And a way to divide the people, if you wanted to do all that, you couldn't have done a better job

than what we have seen from 2021 to 2025. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hansson for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.