This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mola, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in

Louisville, Kentucky.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Eilie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

He earned his PhD in Classics from Stanford, and since that time he's enjoyed a distinguished teaching and academic career.

He's widely published the author of dozens of influential books

including a history of World War II,

various titles of military history.

Professor Hanson's scholarship has earned him numerous awards including the National Humanities

Medal and the Bradley Prize.

He has also served as a visiting professor of military history at the U.S. Naval Academy.

He is taught at Pepperdine University in Hillsdale College. His

latest book, The Dying Citizen, is the topic of our conversation today. Victor Davis Hanson,

welcome to Thinking in Public. Thank you for having me.

Your latest book, The Dying Citizen, even by its arresting title, makes quite a claim.

Indeed, it's a historical claim, it's a moral claim what's behind that title well a

couple a lot of things the first is that the reminder that citizenship is not the

norm in civilization.

It came very late to civilization 2,500 years ago,

7th century Greece, BC.

And it's fragile.

...