S8 Ep586: 4. Author: Victor Davis Hanson. Title: *The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America*. The focus here is on the "unelected" administrative state, which Hanson claims operates beyond democratic
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
4. Author: Victor Davis Hanson. Title: *The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America*. The focus here is on the "unelected" administrative state, which Hanson claims operates beyond democratic correction. He uses the "raisin administration committee" to illustrate how bureaucratic agencies can seize the fruit of a citizen's labor. The discussion explores the "Deep State," defined as a permanent bureaucratic class that holds contempt for elected officials and citizens alike. Hanson describes "La Resistance" within the government, where officials like James Comey and Andrew McCabe allegedly used their power to undermine a presidency, viewing themselves as "heroic" resistors rather than public servants subject to the law. (4)
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Baxter with Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution. |
| 0:08.0 | His book is The Dying Citizen. |
| 0:10.0 | Who administers the state? |
| 0:12.0 | Victor devotes a good deal of attention to the unelected, |
| 0:16.0 | sometimes known as the administrative state. |
| 0:19.0 | It's also a way of thinking about people who are beyond correction |
| 0:24.5 | because they are empowered by the executive branch or the judiciary branch |
| 0:29.3 | or sometimes by Congress. |
| 0:31.7 | Victor, the unelected are everywhere all around us. |
| 0:34.5 | You had so many examples, but the one I celebrate is the raisin industry. |
| 0:39.6 | Your 120-acre farm in the Central Valley. As of 1983, you were farming raisins. But did I know |
| 0:48.6 | that there is something called the Raisin Administration Committee? What is that? And what does it mean about being the unelected? |
| 0:57.4 | It's a Depression-era relic to set prices for raisins. And the way it works is you don't own |
| 1:06.1 | the great vines on your own property if they produce raisins. And most varieties, they're single varieties. |
| 1:13.6 | So if you have a raisin variety grape, then the government owns it. |
| 1:17.6 | What that means is when you cut the grapes and you put them on the ground |
| 1:20.6 | and you dry them on paper trays or now they do it on the vine, |
| 1:24.6 | and you collect them, you stack them in your yard yard and you truck them to a processor that washes and stems them. |
| 1:32.3 | But the government says they own those raisins and they will arbitrarily decide what percentage |
| 1:39.3 | will be sold in the United States. |
| 1:42.3 | They call that free tonnage. And then reserve tonnage will be kept |
| 1:46.3 | off the American market. And that means it can be given away as food for peace, or it can |
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