LIBERALISM AND OBAMAUNDER HISTORY’S EYE

Victor Davis HansonTalks with Krista Kafer

Krista Kafer: Winston Churchill, another historian, said that “the longer we look back, the farther we can look ahead.” You’ve spent a lot of time in Rome and studying ancient Rome. What comparison can we draw between the fall of Rome and the moral or fiscal bankruptcy now facing America?Victor Davis Hanson: The problems that imploded in the West and Rome in the fifth century A.D. were known as early as the first century, and they’re unfortunately all too familiar to us today. The poet Juvenal called them bread and circuses.

More and more people became dependent on a redistributive government. When there were no more provinces to acquire, no more newfound riches, it became a predatory economy, a parasitical economy. The focus then became fairness—not growth in the economy, not creation of new wealth, but static wealth.

When you go through history—whether it’s Athens or imperial Rome or Britain after the war, and you hear the elites talk about things not being fair; or today you hear President Obama say the problem is not the deficit or debt but it’s CEO compensation—it bespeaks an assumption that the pie is static, it’s not going to grow, so we have to slice it up more equally.

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Victor Davis Hanson (Ph.D., Stanford) is a classicist, historian, and Hoover Institute fellow, as well as a raisin grower on his family farm in California. Among his 20 books are Mexifornia and Why the West has Won. He was interviewed at the Western Conservative Summit on July 27, 2013.

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Mercedes Envy If somebody has a 2014 Kia, it’s a much better car than a 1994 Mercedes was in terms of comfort, safety, reliability. But in this way of thinking, it’s not “fair” that the person doesn’t have a Mercedes. If you tell him his Kia or his iPhone is much better than what anybody had 20 years ago, it doesn’t matter. Wealth and poverty are relative, not absolute.

To an historian, this is disturbing, because thinkers from Plato to Tocqueville have warned that the logical consequence of democracy would be radical equality of result, not just equality of opportunity, and that this would destroy liberty. Our founding fathers, seeking to make America the exception, came up with all these things that the Left hates—the electoral college, vetoes, balance of power, indirect election of senators.

From the therapeutic viewpoint of liberals, they see liberty and individualism as an impediment to radical egalitarianism, and government is their mechanism to ensure we’re all equal. That’s where we are.

Self-appointed Elite KK: One problem with redistribution is the unfairness

of taking from one person and giving to another. But isn’t there also a deeper problem that inculcating envy and fostering an entitlement mentality actually damages the moral fabric of the country, damages the soul?VDH: That’s the driving ideology. Nobody even finds it shocking any more that the President of the United States doesn’t just say, “Spread the wealth.” Now he also says things like, “You didn’t build that,” and “It’s not the time for profit.” He bashes CEO’s and corporate jet owners. Collate everything Obama has said, and it adds up to the

assertion that success and capital formation are not what enriches everybody, but rather there’s something suspect about a person who is well off. It’s what Balzac alleged: “Behind every fortune there’s a crime.”

Part of this is traditional class envy, but with this president there’s also something new — a self-appointed elite technocracy, similar to Plato’s guardians but much worse.

People like Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder and Barack Obama himself, certified by our best schools, consider themselves set apart in two ways that are very dangerous.

One, their way of life is not subject to the ramifications and consequences of their own ideology. They can go off to Costa Del Sol or Martha’s Vineyard. The rest of us can’t. And two, for them the law is flexible and fluid. It’s not fixed. They see law as simply a means to a noble end.

So if Obama is better than the rest of us and has a better vision, then he doesn’t have to follow the Obamacare mandate, or he can go after Boeing, or he can decree amnesty for 1.7 million illegal aliens—all because his intentions and goals are supposedly much better than ours.

No Better than the Alternative? KK: The Byzantine Empire preserved Western civilization for a thousand years, defended at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) by walls 20 feet thick. I’ve seen them. So was that empire finally overrun from the outside, or did it crumble from the inside? What do you see at work within the walls of our civilization?VDH: Every great society has enemies, foreign and domestic. But why, at a particular time in history, do those enemies become superior to them when they weren’t in the past?

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Our sense of purpose has tobe replenished.

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Why does Rome, when it’s only one-quarter of Italy in the second Punic War, destroy Hannibal, an authentic military genius—and yet when it has 70 million people and a million square miles, it can’t stop a thug like the Visigoths or the Goths? Something changes within.

I think what kept Byzantium alive for so long was not their material riches, but their belief in the transcendence of Christianity, the Hellenic language, and Western civilization. Against the Seljuk Turks, later the Ottomans, then the Huns, they were willing to make enormous sacrifices and articulate the reason why, again and again.

But when a society gets into a Howard Zinn mode as ours is today—to cite one influential historian who not only believes the United States isn’t exceptional, but contends we’re no better than the alternative—then the forces of history are unforgiving.

Wanted: Tragic HeroesThis verdict sort of comes out of nowhere and says all right, America, if you don’t believe you’re better than the

alternative, then nobody else will either, and there’s no reason for you to continue as a nation.

That self-understanding, that sense of purpose, has to be replenished psychologically. All of us in this room have

a duty, each according to our station. Each day we have to say to ourselves: The United States is better than the alternative—and what can I do in my own way to remind people of that? I’m not going to be silent about it.

We need to have an element of the tragic hero in us. Those classic Westerns that Americans love, Shane or High Noon, all have one theme. The tragic hero says I’m going to do the right thing, even if by doing that, people are not going to want me around.

Criticizing what’s going on in this country may earn you bitter wages. But if you don’t, we’re going to lose the country.

A Door Left Open KK: Byzantium’s last losing battle with the Turks was partly decided by someone leaving a door open in the inner gate. Has America done the same with our porous southern border, letting in millions of people who won’t assimilate into our culture?

Hanson: “We need to have an element of the tragic hero in us.”

VDH: For immigration to work in the United States, it has traditionally had to be legal, and we had to have a melting pot of assimilation, and we’ve never had a neighboring country with a long border which is the sole source. A lot of reasons may explain why Mexico after 1970 started to export its people, but it did, and as you say, our door was left open.

Any issue that unites the Wall Street Journal and La Raza is a strange one. But they have one thing in common: it’s not left or right, Democratic or Republican, but it’s elite versus the mass. The average people of all persuasions are skeptical.

I talk to a Hispanic worker and he says, “Why does my leadership want this amnesty when I’m for the first time in my life making $11 an hour? I don’t want my wages undercut by people from Mexico.”

Amoral and Uncaring Yet employers want cheap labor, and the elites want an unassimilated constituency that’s replenished every year by hundreds of thousands with ever-changing demographics so that they can be spokesmen for group grievances.

They keep bringing in people who can’t achieve parity in one or two generations, and they dress it all up with this utopian “caring,” when in fact it’s one of the most amoral, uncaring

phenomena in the world.

It’s bad for America’s poor, and it destroys the concept of the rule of law. When you disregard the sanctity of one law, how you can then pick and choose which other laws people still have to follow? Not one senator has the

integrity to say, “I will give amnesty or path of citizenship to person A, but person B is not going to get it, and here is why.” That’s too politically incorrect.

Constitutional Government at Risk KK: Thinking about the rule of law, to put part of Obamacare on hold for one year will be a relief in some ways. But when officials are sworn to execute the laws, they can’t just say, “I don’t feel like it.”VDH: You’re right, the law has become fluid, and this is exactly what the founders were worried about in 1787 when they looked at Athens versus Rome. Rome was a constitutional republic; Athens was ruled by what 51% of the people thought on a given day.

Then in 1789 came the French Revolution with this very idea of fraternity and egalitarianism enforced by whatever 51% wanted. That’s not constitutional government.

Now what do we see with this president? If Boeing wants to put a plant in South Carolina, the National Labor Relations Board can try to shut it down. They can shut down a small guitar company. They don’t enforce the employer mandate. They give 1.7 million people amnesty right before the election.

Centennial Review, February 2014 ▪ 3

LEARN, THEN ACTBy Krista Kafer

Recently while pursuing a graduate degree, and now as I have begun teaching undergraduates, I’ve kept in mind the insight, often attributed to Mark Twain, that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” It is through the wisdom of historians like Victor

Davis Hanson that we learn to recognize the refrains.

For example, when the citizenry is dependent on government largesse, be it free bread from Caesar or freebies from Washington, the nation is in peril. Rather than encouraging the creation of new wealth in the marketplace, the government focuses on redistributing its fruits. The economy grinds to a slow limp. Thus great nations have crumbled to ruin or atrophied into a shadow of their former selves. If we take the same path, why would it lead to any other destination?

Likewise, when the will of the majority or the minority or even one man supersedes the law, we cease to be a nation of laws not men. We are no longer the republic the Founders envisioned. Plato and Tocqueville warned us of the consequences of being ruled by the will of men without constraints on power. The French Revolution illustrated it.

In the name of equality and fraternity, revolutionaries took the lives, liberty, and property of their fellow countrymen. Heads rolled, literally. When President Obama changes the law on a whim or declines to execute the law as written, it establishes a dangerous precedent in this country. We should worry.

Worry need not immobilize us, however. History shows that when courageous men and women pledge their lives, fortunes, and honor to a great cause, they can succeed. History contains not merely lessons of caution but instruction on overcoming desperate odds and winning. We must learn these lessons and then, in the words of the Roman poet Horace, we must seize the day! ■

Krista Kafer teaches persuasion at Colorado Christian University and is a Centennial Institute Fellow. She is an education policy consultant, a Denver Post columnist, cohost of Backbone Radio, and a commentator on public television.

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Centennial ReviewFebruary 2014

Liberalism and ObamaUnder History’s EyeBy Victor Davis HansonIs America really exceptional in world history? Lessons from Athens, Rome, and Byzantium, along with insights from Plato, Tocqueville, and High Noon, provide a sharper lens than current headlines to illuminate the answer. Liberalism’s

disregard for human nature makes it unsustainable. The Obama era is already waning.

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Our country will emerge

stronger.

To them, the law is not a final statute or a legislative product. It’s predicated on critical legal theory and notions of social justice. So if the Black Panthers disrupt a polling booth, it won’t matter because Eric Holder thinks their aims are egalitarianism and fairness. They have a history of oppression, he thinks, therefore the law is secondary.

Liberal HypocrisyKK: “Fortune favors the brave,” says Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a time to be brave. Is there a critical flaw in liberalism that we can exploit, to help us be brave and triumph?VDH: To begin with, liberalism doesn’t reflect human nature, human acquisitiveness, and self-interest. Liberals are constantly revealed as hypocritical, since they don’t even accept the ramifications of their own ideology.

Around Stanford, where I work, you hear everybody saying they want open borders and they don’t want school choice. Yet the Silicon Valley elite won’t put their kids in the public schools—schools that used to be very good—rather they’re swarming to what I call southern private academies that are sprouting up.

There are all these contradictions. Obama says that we have to watch out for CEO’s, but he doesn’t think that applies to him. Or look at Al Gore, the avatar of global warming. He sells a failed cable channel to an anti-Semitic Mideastern authoritarian government, enriching himself by the profits from fossil fuels, and he does so in haste to beat capital-gains tax increases. Hypocrisy everywhere.

Populist Perspective KK: Some closing thoughts to help give our Summit delegates a sense of hope, a reason to be brave, a starting point for us to begin to mend the social fabric?VDH: Remember that the blueblood Eastern aristocrats aren’t Republicans any more, they’re Democrats. Our side is the populists now. We can ride that. Gas prices have gone up an aggregate of one trillion dollars in the last

five years. We should be talking about how that hurts the average commuter.

Point out that illegal immigration is a Wall Street Journal and La Raza and Democratic elite issue—it’s not for American workers. On the farm bill, we should say yes to curbing food-stamp abuse and no to subsidies for corporate agribusiness. Frame those populist issues that unite people across the political spectrum. Call out our elitist opponents.

When Posterity Looks Back KK: To close us out, here’s a question texted in by a delegate. He asks you to speculate on how historians 300 years from now may summarize what happened to the United States in our time.

VDH: People will look back and say this was a perfect storm for the Left; they got everything they wanted, yet it didn’t hold. They had a Democratic House and Senate from 2006.

They got the first African American post-racial transcendental candidate that pushed every liberal button, very popular, very eloquent speaker, very skilled in teleprompted rhetoric.

They came in after a terrible economic meltdown, they came in on an unpopular war,

everything lined up. All of it favored the Left—yet here we are, fast forward five years later, with sinking polls and a nation in turmoil.

I think that says America is exceptional. People here of all different classes and races do not hold the same collectivist beliefs that are operative in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa.

People come here because this is a different place—and they’re not willing, in the third century of our independence, to give it all up. If we can withstand this dark period, it will be a cathartic experience, and our country will be stronger for it. ■