3 Responses to “Victor Davis Hanson…”

1. davisbr Says:
   November 28th, 2012 at 3:48 pm

   Yes.

   I would make the argument that you cannot be considered historically literate, nor truly understand the historical underpinnings of the West, if you haven’t read his book Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power.

   That book has done more to influence my recent view of current culture, politics and history than any other.

2. Curtis Says:
   November 28th, 2012 at 3:56 pm

   Excerpt:

   The point was not that Democrats believed any of this racialism, but that it prepped the campaign battlefield to prevent Romney, as it had prevented McCain, from running the sort of bare-knuckles campaigns that Ronald Reagan had run against Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush had run against Michael Dukakis, and George W. Bush had run against John Kerry.

   I hoped there were enough independents to recognize the “high road” strategy Romney used and that they would validate his strategy. It was a wrong hope. It was a wrong strategy. Romney, being unable to comprehend that kind of strategy in its structure and comprehension, needed someone who did. No one filled that role.

   Further, are there any independents left?

   VDH brings it together like almost no one else. He makes it look easy, but it’s not. There’s a lot for healing the anger at the election loss and for renewing the spirit for more battle.

3. RandomThoughts Says:
   November 29th, 2012 at 1:35 am

   As a Californian myself, VDH’s perception of this deteriorating state is so accurate it’s often painful to read.

   This insight about Hispanic/Latino voters (which are 23% of California voters) can not be emphasized enough:

   “Family values” where I live means a sort of patron/client La Familia relationship in which the government becomes the patron and we are the clients who vote for it in exchange for state health care, food, housing, education, and legal help — all means of addressing the injustice that “they” (rich people) have done to those arriving from Mexico. If anyone thinks the divorce, illegitimacy, or crime rates are lower here in Selma or Fresno and tens of thousands of Latino Catholics are just waiting for a nice word to vote for Rick Santorum, they need to have their heads examined. If anyone thinks Latinos in California just want the Dream Act and then, presto, will favor closed borders and a merit-based, ethnically blind system in which education, capital, and skills adjudicate who is let in the legal immigration line, they need doubly to have their heads examined.

   His solution is probably the only one that would work, but it’s extremely unlikely to ever be effected. It would not benefit the Democrats at all (bolding mine):

   The only way Republicans can appeal to Latinos is with what I would call the Italian strategy — close the border, stop illegal immigration, and allow the melting pot and upward mobility to fracture “Hispanics” along class lines, in the manner that no right-wing guy named Mazelli votes for Andrew Cuomo and no left-winger named Petrucci votes for Rudy Giuliani — and neither one speaks Italian, has a kid in the Italian Studies Program on an affirmative action scholarship, or knows anyone who boos the U.S. soccer team at an Italy-America match.

   Tribalism is what the liberals want; the assimilation–the “Americanization”–of immigrants is an anathema to them.

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