Victor Davis Hanson: The Chinese Spy Balloon, Orwellian Newspeak, and the Top-Down Revolution Engulfing America
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2023
⏱️ 104 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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“I’m just bewildered that these two evil regimes are so asymmetrically treated as we saw with the balloon … Had Russia done that, we would have shot that down the moment it got near the Aleutians,” says Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, and author of a number of best-selling books, including most recently “The Dying Citizen.”
In this broad-ranging interview, we discuss the Chinese spy balloon, Orwellian newspeak, and the woke revolution he sees gripping America.
“When they were trapped about the balloon, the new Soviet talking point came: ‘Balloons came in during Trump. Trump ignored them. Trump ignored balloons.’ And that talking point, it was sort of like the old Roman maxim that a lie travels around the world before the truth can catch up. And that’s how they operate.”
Unlike the protests of the 1960s, this current woke revolution “was staged from the top,” Hanson says. “The left was not marching on the Pentagon. The left was not marching on the campus administrator. The left was not marching on Anaconda Copper or I.T.T. as they had been. They were inside the boardroom. They were inside the president’s office. They were inside the FBI. They were inside the CIA. They were inside the Pentagon.”
Ultimately, we are witnessing the unraveling of Western civilization, Hanson says.
“It’s actually an attack on meritocracy, and the whole empirical system of hiring the most qualified better person for the stability and success of society … Where this ultimately goes … it means that, as you see in Cuba or Venezuela or Colombia, very successful societies start to break down and they can’t deliver the essentials of life because they have a commissariat, a commissar system of ideology trumping empiricism,” Hanson says.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm just bewildered that these two evil regimes are so asymmetrically treated as we saw with a balloon. |
| 0:06.6 | And again, if Russia had done that, we would have shot that down the moment it got near the |
| 0:10.8 | illusions. Today I sit down with classicist, military historian and author of The Dying Citizen, |
| 0:16.8 | Victor Davis Hanson. Everything is topsy-turvy. The wolf obliterates everything. It's destroyed |
| 0:23.6 | liberalism. In this broad-ranging interview, we discussed the erosion of Western civilization |
| 0:29.0 | and the top-down revolution. He sees engulfing America. |
| 0:32.4 | Then they have the audacity to go back and blame these fire generation for doing what? |
| 0:38.0 | Defeating the Kaiser or Hitler or Mussolini or Tojo or Brezhnev or Mao, it's really stunning how |
| 0:48.0 | arrogant and competent and bankrupt this generation is. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm |
| 0:55.0 | Janja Kellek. Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of our podcast, |
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| 2:13.2 | Victor Davis Hanson, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. |
| 2:16.8 | Thank you for having me. Victor, you wrote a piece recently titled |
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