Profile in Classics: Victor Davis Hanson

hoover.org ^ | 9/13/12 | Emily Esfahani Smith

[a little elbow grease]

(snips) ---- Victor Davis Hanson says he lives in the nineteenth century—a fact that can get him into some trouble. “Let me give you an example,” he says. Hanson was in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart one day when he saw a young woman struggling to move a big screen television into her Honda. When he went over to help her, he noticed that she was holding an EBT card, a government-issued debit card for cash and food stamps. Hanson told her, “You shouldn’t be using the food card to buy the big screen TV.” She told him to mind his own business. Despite her anger, Hanson persisted: “If you didn’t do that, you would be more self-reliant.” Reflecting on that experience, he says, “In the nineteenth century, this would never have happened—the government giving you an EBT card to subsidize a lifestyle beyond necessities.”

This culture of dependency, a byproduct of the entitlement state and what Hanson calls our “therapeutic culture,” is simply a display of human nature at its worst.

“The Greeks of the ancient world understood human nature,” Hanson says. “They knew that people want freedom and affluence, but that when you combine the two, you can have decadence.” The ancient Greeks knew that virtue required a strong moral order that protected people from themselves—from their own follies and vices. Hanson specifically cites the importance of a “shame culture” in checking human behavior.

We in the West don’t have that sense of duty and responsibility today, he argues, which has serious implications for our political future. Hanson thinks America is losing its spirit of rugged individualism. The welfare state has driven people from the self-reliance that sharpens democracy to the dependency that blots it out. “We are emasculating our citizens,” he says gloomily.

[dontreadthis]

“Senator Harley Kilgore began advocating for a lowered voting age in 1941 in the 77th Congress.[3] Despite the support of fellow senators, representatives, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Congress failed to pass any national change. However, public interest in lowering the vote became a topic of interest at the local level. In 1943 and 1955 respectively, the Georgia and Kentucky legislatures passed measures to lower the voting age to 18.[4]”
wiki

[9YearLurker]

I think you’re confused. FDR lowered the draft age to 18. The voting age wasn’t reduced to match it until the Vietnam War.

[jimfree]

Bunches of great pull quotes. VDH is the columnist I most frequently post in a 10K member FB group.

[jimfree]

I was so fortunate that I went to college at a place when the classics were taught as VDH did. He is one of the very few men in America that I would enjoy spending a day with conversing as we poked around on my farm.

Mrs. jimfree is a Ph.D. historian and a huge fan of VDH. We had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a Hillsdale event in their Kirby Center in D.C. Got a small conversation in with him, but not the duration you ponder. We are planning to take his Hillsdale online WW2 course. We always enjoy a good "lecture date."

[bert]

His book on WW II is intense mixing battles IN 350 with those IN 1944

[grimalkin]

I’ve read that EBT cards can have 2 types of benefits. Food assistance and cash assistance. If someone is on temporary assistance for needy families for example, this money is put on their EBT cards and can be used for anything.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

“The solution to a lot of these problems is reading good literature. I would assign them to read the Iliad by Homer, the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, the Annals by Tacitus, the Leviathan by Hobbes, The Prince by Machiavelli, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon—and, of course, we don’t read enough 19th-century novels, like Joseph Conrad’s books.”

You could assign them all you pleased, but whether they'd be capable of reading those works, I strongly doubt.

[dvwjr]

Because neither President had anything to do with lowering the Federal voting age from 21 to 18 years of age. Neither could the Federal Congress lower the voting age by statute, their only recourse would be to submit a Constitutional Amendment to the several States for approval. Once submitted to the States for approval as the 26th Amendment it took just four months, the fastest approval on record. The ultimate authority, the States, made the decision.

dvwjr

[odawg]

“So why when I go to Wal-Mart, things like big screen tvs don’t get applied to an EBT card?”

Probably referring to the fact that if she had not had the EBT card, she could not have afforded the TV. The EBT card subsidized her purchase of the TV.

[miss marmelstein]

This is my question. Also, why was her card visible to him? I like VDH very much but this made me scratch my head.

[zerosix]

Must have been when Reagan was still a Democrat that VDH became one though lots of folk were, as their parents were so they were when registering.

As both my parents were FDR Democrats. I chose to register as an Independent.

When attempting to vote in a primary, (only choosing to vote in national elections for a few years) I was told I had to pick one or another party to get their ballot.

By then, knew I could never be a Democrat though still didn’t trust RINOs, pretty smart for one so young!

[marajade]

As a former front end casher working at Walmart you can’t use a food stamp card to buy a TV. And Walmart will have occasionally have great deals on TVs that other sellers won’t have.

[AAABEST]

My absolute favorite of his poems.

In just a few short paragraphs he brilliantly explains everything that's happening now - 80 years after his death.

He warned his people - whom are now evaporating his works while they suckle Islamists and Marx.

[Sans-Culotte]

Great interview. VDH makes many of the points he also makes in his books.

[BfloGuy]

So why when I go to Wal-Mart, things like big screen tvs don’t get applied to an EBT card?

I gathered that the woman buying the TV had an EBT card and VDH was questioning why she needed it if she could afford a new TV.

[del griffith]

Not what was said in the story. Hanson told her, “You shouldn’t be using the food card to buy the big screen TV.” He said she shouldn’t be using the food card to by the tv, not if you have a card, why are you buying the tv.

[del griffith]

I had the same question too. If she’s wrestling get a tv in her car, she would have pocketed the card to have full use of her hands. Seems this story is contrived.

[del griffith]

Nope. Not what the story related. It noted: Hanson told her, “You shouldn’t be using the food card to buy the big screen TV.” That’s using the card for the tv, not having the card should negate the tv purchase.

[del griffith]

Maybe it’s state by state. Mine has a cashier pay for the allowable items then pay for the unallowed items through other means.

[TexasKamaAina]

A Shame Culture would not allow the blasphemy, the vulgarity of everyday speech.

Some people dismiss objections to profanity as being overwrought. After all, "its just words." Like you, however, I grow increasingly alarmed at the proliferation of debased and vulgar language in the public sphere.

When I was young I was an enlisted man in the Navy - where profane language was sometimes an art form. Yet, even there, we had boundaries. Language often used among enlisted men was not used in the presence of ladies or officers. There were also distinctions among ratings: you were more likely to hear an expletive from a Boatswain Mate than an Avionics Technician. In other words, vulgarity - even in that environment - was recognized as something that was classless and needed to be curbed. Yet, today I hear words from the mouths of otherwise attractive young women that sailors back then would never have uttered in public.