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.

[a little elbow grease]

(Snip)-- "The agrarian basis of our civilization, which he describes in his 1995 book The Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization, is central to our culture. “This is a fact that a lot of people may not recognize today,” he says.

"Farming did not just shape the West economically and politically, by establishing property rights and other institutions of democratic government, but small landowning gave the West a set of moral principles to live by."

“Agrarian wisdom requires self-reliance. If you’re sick, there is no sick leave. If you have the flu, you still have to irrigate. You don’t have a guaranteed income. There is no retirement, no health care. You can’t blame anyone for your failures. If you decide to plant 20 acres of almonds, you have to decide whether to risk the $80,000. If it goes bad because of the weather, you can’t blame the economy. It was your choice.”

(Telling it like it is....)

[Dana1960]

That was very interesting. Thanks for posting it. I had no idea, at least at the time of the interview, that he was a registered Democrat !

[HighSierra5]

Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle who never went to sleep but sees the decay of society while maintaining the virtues of the past.

[Bookshelf]

A Shame Culture would not allow the blasphemy, the vulgarity of everyday speech. To openly and publicly use swear words only advertises how low we have sunk.

[jamaksin]

Giddy Minds and Foreign Quarrels

(An Estimate of American Foreign Policy)

Charles A. Beard

The Macmillan Company, New York, NY, 1939

Pages 14-15,

"Peace societies, associations for the "study" of foreign affairs, councils, leagues, and committees for this and that, with millions of dollars at their disposal, are engaged in the same kind of propaganda, openly or under the guise of contemporary "scholarship."

In fact, advocacy of American interventionism and adventurism abroad has become a huge vested interest. The daily press and the radio, thriving on hourly sensations, do their best to inflame readers, listeners, and lookers with a passion for putting down the wicked abroad. Foreign propagandists, often well paid by American audiences, play the same game. And brash young tom-tom beaters in journalism, who know no history beyond a few days ago, write books on the "inside" of this or that, all directed profitably to the same end. How did we get this way? This is the fundamental question for all of us who are trying to take bearings. ..."

[a little elbow grease]

"That was very interesting. Thanks for posting it. I had no idea, at least at the time of the interview, that he was a registered Democrat!

__________________________

LOL .... I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

The Democrat Party has morphed since he registered.

[Louis Foxwell]

We got that way when we decided we are smarter than God.
We ignore history because it is full of old people with old ideas.
We ignore logic and reason because they are used to set traps for true believers.
We reject morals because they prevent us from doing what feels good.
We follow leaders who promise to give us bright shiny things for our votes.
We hate anyone who makes us feel bad.
We do not believe in God because we are smart.

[PGalt]

BUMP

[del griffith]

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

[Louis Foxwell]

We got that way when we decided we are smarter than God.
We ignore history because it is full of old people with old ideas.
We ignore logic and reason because they are used to set traps for true believers.
We reject morals because they prevent us from doing what feels good.
We follow leaders who promise to give us bright shiny things for our votes.
We hate anyone who makes us feel bad.
We do not believe in God because we are smart.

[Travis McGee]

[Travis McGee]

See 11.

[a little elbow grease]

"That was very interesting. Thanks for posting it. I had no idea, at least at the time of the interview, that he was a registered Democrat!"

______________________

CALLING ALL YOU FREEPER GENIUSES ---

Here is a question that I cannot find the answer to:

FDR lowered the voting age in WWII to 18 --- because of the concept "old enough to die for your country... old enough to vote.

Nixon lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971.

SO >>>>>>>>> WHEN did the voting age go up from 18 to 21 between WWII and 1971?

[TADSLOS]

Saved.

[a little elbow grease]

" .... advocacy of American interventionism and adventurism abroad has become a huge vested interest. The daily press and the radio, thriving on hourly sensations, do their best to inflame readers, listeners, and lookers with a passion for putting down the wicked abroad. Foreign propagandists, often well paid by American audiences, play the same game. And brash young tom-tom beaters in journalism, who know no history beyond a few days ago, write books on the "inside" of this or that, all directed profitably to the same end....

"HOW DID WE GET THIS WAY?"

_________________

LOL ...... I really think you know the answer to that question.

[a little elbow grease]

good answers .........

[a little elbow grease]

EXCELLENT

[griswold3]

fitting, for human nature has not changed in all these years (centuries even)

[DIRTYSECRET]

EBT cards should be programmed to pay only rice, beans, and Thunderbird.

[Badboo]

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.

In this article, you see the lessons and wisdom of the three great men in history that I would sorely love to have but an hours worth of conversation with: Socrates, Jesus, and George Washington. If you could only choose three, they epitomize the the best attributes and foundations of our culture.

Their writings and lives are sacred to me.