Posted on 02/22/2025 4:57:01 AM PST by texas booster
What was America like before rapid industrialization and suburbanization, which dramatically altered the way of life in the United States?
Critical race theory and DEI proponents look down on this period in American history, which stretched through much of the early to mid-20th century, saying it was an era marred by “white supremacy” and the “KKK.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth, argues Victor Davis Hanson on this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”
“But what I'm getting is, everybody got together, they were ethnically and racially diverse, there was no prejudice.
Or if there was, it was incidental, not essential to farming. And all that world has been not only gone with the industrial age and corporate farming and the agrarianism that inculcated those values, but we have slurred those dead people, that dead lost generation. We've said that they were sexist, racist, homophobes, and they had it easy, they had privilege, they were supremacists. They weren't. They weren't.
00:00 Introduction to a Lost Agrarian World
01:23 Personal Reflections on a Diverse Farming Community
02:49 Challenges and Hardships of Pioneer Families
04:41 Values and Community in the Agrarian Era
06:37 Critique of Modern Perceptions and Conclusion
07:33 Closing Remarks and Further Resources
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.
He's the 'new' William Buckley sans a Thesaurus.
Yes he is.
Maybe the cities, with people packed together was different, but in agrarian US people worked too hard to worry about differences much.
Just staying alive was an accomplishment.
There is “white Supremacy” simply because there is white superiority. If the Black Lives Matter crowd were truly equal, Africa would be supreme and prosperous
The problem with Buckley, is he used some words which were not well known which made it hard to use his writings to convert others. I can’t think of anything he wrote memorial like George Will referring to Bush as a lapdog.
Both sets of my grandparents were farmers, much as VDH describes .... very meaningful remembrances of those times from him - thanks for posting.
During the 90s, as the Americans of the past kept getting painted as small, petty, hateful, terrible people in movies and culture I started asking people about the old people they remembered from their childhood and invariably the old people they knew in their youth were described as the most wonderful, salt of the earth people, kind, caring, good and decent, old people who were from the 1800s.
Yes, they were. I was born in ‘61, and raised around quite a few folks from late 1800’s. Many hours with Willard, born in the 1890’s, who fought in the WWI trenches of France. He had a shop for tinkering in my grandparents’ barn, and I would happily tinker with him as he would teach me and tell me an occasional story about the Old Days, and some about The War. They were always very kind and protective, and all seemed very wise and practical as well. They also spoke English correctly! Our culture today is absolute trash by comparison.
No kidding.
We have freepers who are still posting, who were born in the 1930s, and more born in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, we all know how good and nice most of those old people were, for many of us the most interesting people we have ever met were from the old times.
That is just plain false.
btt
Are white thugs walking up to black folks on the sidewalk and cold cocking them? Are black girls being surrounded by a gang of white classmates and beaten?
All this is a product of the incessant use of envy and the sins of long dead people (mostly Democrats) as a tool to keep Democrat politicians in power. That, and the purposeful destruction of black Americans' family structure and communities. How much illegal drug trade money finds its way into Democrat political coffers? That party has been a cesspit of corruption since its inception.
LOL! And since that “lapdog” statement, he’s been exiled to wandering the desert for going on forty years.
This generation and those after seek to leave us nothing but Soviet Russia and West Germany.
I couldn't agree more. On the other hand, the entire human race is pretty foul.
They were all white he argued, TV said so.
The fact that they were every shade under the sun because there was a labor shortage and as long as you could rope, ride and stay away on watch no one really cared what shade you were could not sink in. When I told him there were a number of Indian cowboys, feather not dot, I could see the little "tilt" light start flashing in his eyes.
:)
He was speaking of his farming community I believe, and he describes his community.
“”“But what I’m getting is, everybody got together, they were ethnically and racially diverse, there was no prejudice.
Or if there was, it was incidental, not essential to farming.””
People forget the importance of labor until recently, when literally almost everything, even breakfast, or a run to the store for a shovel required lots of physical and time consuming labor, bodies were constantly sought, which explains a lot of the past.
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