5 Things That Could Destroy America — Victor Davis Hanson | PBD Podcast #857

What happens to the world if America falls? >> It will be utter chaos. For all the criticism of the left, they don't quite understand that >> they would be killed if there wasn't the United States. >> If you were to give a warning to actual Americans, we have to be very wary about taking people who were part of the failed state. Ilian Omar, her father was a colonel in Sed Bry's army responsible for killing 200,000 people. >> We saw what happened in UK. We saw what's happening in EU. I'm not optimistic about the future of Europe. >> This is the future for Europe. >> Illegal immigration at numbers you cannot assimilate or integrate. The only reason that they have survived major existential terrorist threat in the United States military. How do you prevent the Islamification from taking place in America? I mean, if you look at Rasheed Talib or you look at Hassan they have a desire to change the system because they can't win within it. >> The Supreme Court, obviously, >> they hate the very system, >> this entire system that birthed them. >> They just making us more angry. You know what that makes us do? >> When we went into war, did you support the decision? And two, now that we're in, did you expect it to be at this point? I never thought we were going to start negotiating with a lunatic that doesn't care about the welfare of its own people. >> How do you think this is? >> I think that's where we leave them to stew in their own Jews. [cheering] >> So, I'm going to ask you an indirect way of helping our guys, our production team that works so hard get a raise. Do you want to help them get a raise? This is how you can help us out. 49% of you watch our podcast that our editors work so hard. Producers, cutters, all of them, our production team, 32 of them that work here, they work very, very hard to deliver a good quality to you. If you enjoy our show and you want to help this thing get bigger so we can take our talent that we have in house that support this production all the time and maybe even give them a raise, then please subscribe to the channel. that allows us to get more viewership and indirectly it makes bigger opportunities for our current team that we have. Thank you so much Mr. Victor Davis Hansen. How are you? >> Very good. Very good. Thank you for having me. >> Thanks for making the time for being here. I've been following uh your teaching for many many years. You're on the list of mine of uh yourself, Thomas Soul, Milton Freriedman. The amount of wisdom you share is I think everybody should consume more of your content and it looks like millions are. So again, thank you for your time. So thank you. You know for somebody like yourself who you got your PhD from Stanford, you love farming, you've done a lot of different things, senior fellow at Hoover Institute, you you you very well read in the history, you know, different things that happened in America. Open-ended question, what happens to the world if America falls? >> Well, it it it will be utter chaos. And for all the criticism of the left, they don't quite understand that the United States is a disinterested player in international finance. I know it has things that favor it, but it doesn't manipulate currencies like the Chinese. It doesn't cheat on patents or copyrights. It doesn't dump product below the cost of production. And the US military is the only reason why these choke points whether it's the straight of Hormuz, the Bosphorus, uh, Suez, Gibralar, Panama Canal, they're open to international commerce. If it would be a war, a Hobsian war of everybody against everybody if the United States was not there. And the other thing to remember very quickly is the Europeans for all their occasional ankle biting are not a viable entity anymore on their own. They have immigration problems, open borders problems, energy problems, fertility problems, um defense project problems. And since World War II, the only reason that they are that they survive the Russian onslaught into Eastern Europe and the only reason that uh they have survived major existential terrorist threat is the United States military. >> [sighs and gasps] >> So it would be a very and there would be no way for people who objected to their totalitarian governments. I don't know where they would go. We have the largest number of immigrants legal and illegal and there some of that's problematic of course but a lot of them are legal immigrants and they agree with the founding and the values of the United States and they would they would be killed or they'd be imprisoned if there wasn't the United States. what what what is the chance like what needs to happen for America to fall and and I think some of it is a lot of it is in our control but if if if you were to give a warning to actual Americans well these are the five things that if we continue doing America is going to fall and somebody else is going to be the lead dog so what does that look like if America does end up falling well I think we have a good example because we have a fellow western paradigm in Europe and I'm I'm not optimistic about the future of Europe so the five things would be one open borders and unchecked illegal immigration but also legal immigration at numbers you cannot assimilate or culturate or integrate and we're seeing all that already how it affects a government in Britain or France or Germany especially when people are coming from let's be honest Islamic countries and they don't feel they want to acculturate through the melting pot into their host country's u civilization so illegal immigration and open borders and then ideological I would call it nealistic ideologies such as that wind and solar are going to power us um in the 21st and 26 second century that's not demonstrabably true and when people in Germany tried it it almost destroy the German economy that's a self-inflicted wound the third is the idea that you tamper with what has worked over 2500 100 years. By that I mean the slow steady evolution of constitutional consensual government and we know now that a a prime minister-p president an executive balanced [clears throat] by a parliament whether the US model of a two bicameal congress or the European model of a parliament checked again by an independent judiciary is what makes um freedom and liberty possible in the west. And and so when you hear people that want to eliminate the presidency or eliminate the Senate or pack the court, um they don't quite understand that that was the norm. Uh that attack on consensual government or that lack of the type of consensual government that we have was the norm before the United States and Europe adopted this process dating back to classical Greeks, the Roman Republic, the Renaissance. So it was a tried andrue method. That's another that's a third. The fourth is utopian pacifism that you want to and we're hearing that now you want to abolish the Pentagon or that we can um that we don't really have existential differences with different cultures or alternative civilizations and diplomacy can work our way out of it. I don't think whether we like it or not the Roman idea that if you want peace, prepare for war is classical deterrence. deterrence is what keeps the peace and that's important to remember in a in a a western society. Finally, our baines are not foreign. I don't think necessarily they're going to be, you know, barbarians crossing the t um the rine and the danube in the fifth century of the Roman Empire, which happened. But it's this problem in the west. It's not a problem, it's our strength. But free market capitalism when combined with consensual government and freedom of speech creates what the Romans called a luxus luxury and people become soon become not just self-critical which is our our strength self-criticism but they come become nealistically self-critical. They hate the very system that birthed them. And we're starting to see that on the left that the more um people have freedom, the more they have affluence, the more they think they don't need to work, the more they think they can take things that they haven't earned, the more that they can call for people to be killed under. And so that creates an indulgence and that always creates a backlash and we have to be careful about both. But I don't think the democratic socialists to take one example understand that they think what they're saying is new. But for every unhinged um new uh reform so-called reform that they're demanding, it's been tried before somewhere in the world and it's not worked >> you know this. So out of the out of the five you talk about one of them was immigration. So, but we saw what happened in UK. We saw what's happening in EU. And what the best case study is Poland. Lowest rape, lowest unemployment, lowest. And they don't allow anybody in. >> Yes. >> And we saw what's going on with the Rubert Low report on UK, the 250,000, 87% Pakistani rape, gang, all the stuff that was going on. But somebody may say in America, but you know, when our founding fathers started America, they had freedom of speech. They had freedom of religion, of course, free market. And so what do you do if Islam grows here? And we learned in uh Trump's administration when he tried to push voter ID in a 63 Supreme Court, they still voted against it. >> So to get that protection there. So if eventually a Democrat takes over and say a couple of the Supreme Court justices step away and then it flips to the other way around 63, they can really push the envelope the other way even more. And so based on the way our founding fathers created the constitution, how do you prevent the Islamification from taking place in America? Well, you have we have innate checks. So we've had existential dangers in the 1930s. there was an active communist movement and that grew out of the great depression and it intensified in the 19 uh during the war with our alliance with the Soviet Union. And in fact, I'll give you an example. We had a two billion uh funded Manhattan project to create the bombs. And we found out later that scientists that were working in New Mexico were sending the blueprints of both the uranium and plutonium bomb. when the Soviet Union had not invested much but along with German physicists that after the war it created a bomb within four years after we did and that that was a shock. How could that happen? So what I'm getting at is as long as you have a free press and we have podcasts like this where people can be informed and as long as you have an opposition party and that's what the socialists are. They understand that. So when they say they want to destroy the Senate, what they're saying is we want to destroy that traditional check on mass populist uh what the Greeks called ocracy, the rule of the mob. We just want the uh a huge House of Representatives in maybe double the number every 300,000 people get a and then we want whatever they say will be instant law without a Senate to veto it or twothirds majority to override a president and they want to get rid of the presidency and have a committee. So they understand what you're talking about and they look at the present system and they say, "Well, we don't have the Supreme Court. We don't have the White House. We don't have the Senate. We don't have the House and we're pulling 8020 7030 on all these issues >> and this isn't fair. So we want to open the borders again, bring in a new demography, and we have 54 million people who weren't born in the United States, >> 16% of the population. They want to up that. Not to bring in, you know, immigrants that really help us and believe in the American system, but people who don't believe in the American system and want to tear it down. And we've seen a lot of that lately. And and so they are they want to change the system. They want to bring in two new states for four senators. They want to pack the court to 15. We haven't done that since 1869. They want to uh get rid of the electoral college in complete ignorance about what the federalist paper authors had shown us why it was important to have it and um you could go on and on but they have a a desire to change the system because they can't win within it and that that's sort of what the Jacobins did in France during the French Revolution and what the Bolsheviks did in the Soviet Union. And it's it's scary. So we have to have an open a free press and we have to have people to speak up and as long and we have to have an alternate media. When you have a media nexus that's joined at the hip with government and you have a permanent bureaucracy that's judge, jury, and executioner. You got a real problem. The founders never assumed that we would have three million people working in the federal government and another 20 million working for state governments. That was just something they didn't they think and they also thought that even though they were deists many of them that is they were not active Christians they did believe that religion in this case predominantly Christianity would offer a moral break on excess but they never dreamed I don't think that a large number of the population would be atheist agnostic or or hostile to organized religion because They even people like Washington or Madison or Jefferson that didn't you know go to church every Sunday and didn't pray daily they still believed in the principles of Christianity to take that particular religion and they still believed that it was invaluable invaluable that a moral people uh could govern themselves. In other words, there was a religious break or religious restraint on their innate desires which could become excessive and dangerous. What what blind spots do you think our founding fathers had when they create I mean of course you can't create a perfect perfect system. There's going to be some leaks in it. Where were some blind spots that they had? Meaning there were issues that didn't even think about back then that now we're dealing with today. >> Well, they were modest people. So I don't think uh when they set up the constitution and the amendments that followed they didn't have any idea that it would be so popular and I mean it in this context the Spanish empire from this our southern border to Chile and the Caribbean to the degree it was run by the French or the Spanish or the Portuguese they had a they would not let immigrants come into any of those countries unless they were subjects of the crown or they had special dispensations as traders but they all had to be Catholic and so and it how that that didn't work out well I don't think compared to ours so ours was a innate in the constitution was a bargain that said all men in the declaration are created equal there's no mention of race in the there's one mention about three-fifth representation for slaves in the in the census, but it's not what us most people usually think it is. But what I'm getting at, there's no mention of a of an official race or religion. So, they felt [gasps] that there was going to be this free market, this free system, and it was open to the world and they were going to form a city on the hill. And when they founded the country, 94% of the people were European. And that is they had a shared if you were from Scotland or Ireland or Britain or France or Germany or Dutch and then later in the 19th century if you came from Eastern Europe they felt that people were coming already with an experience of the western tradition so they would be easily assimilated into the American people. But I don't think they ever imagined that we would be bringing people from all over the world without audit, without a culturation, without assimilation, without integration. And they would immediately um believe in the constitution, the declaration rather than attack the country almost. I mean if you look at Rasheed Talib or you look at Ilian Omar or you look at Zoron Mandami or you look at El Say or you look at Shioalier or you look at this socialist in New York that people have been talking about you or you look at Hassan there is a there is a similarity they're either first or second generations which is fine but they come from failed states which is understandable to want to come the United States but they're also very wealthy that their parents are very successful and yet as first or second generation immigrants. They don't they don't show a graciousness, a gratitude to the host. They come over here and they do very well. Um but they're completely exempt from criticism. They plug into DEI and then they try as much as they can to dismantle the US system and they're exempt from criticism. So if I say, "Well, Mr. Mandami, don't give us any more lectures about settler colonialists. You came from the 1% the 1% of the Indian community in Uganda and they controlled 65% of the wealth. According to your own standards, you're a settler colonialist. I would never say that, but since he does all the time, he should be aware of his contradictions. I should say to Hassan you want to confiscate wealth and all this. You drive a Porsche, your parents are multi-millionaires, you bought a a very multi-million dollar home in Hollywood. Or I could say to Ro Conor, you're talking now about a wealth on attacks on the wealthy, and you're driving this socialist message, which you find convenient all of a sudden. Your father-in-law came over here, he made 250,000. Your kids have golf courses in their name and your trust. Your wife drives a Range Rover, $180,000 car. You get the picture that given that success and that bounty, you don't think they would be calling for the destruction of the system of their adopted country that gave them so much opportunity. And I don't think the founders ever thought that was going to happen. And it's a result of the therapeutic left saying, you know, we don't want to be too proud about our achievements in the 1960s, 1970s. They abandoned civic education, western culture, western heritage, and they'd adopted this therapeutic, you know, salad bowl rather than the melting pot. So when when you're saying that, that kind of a goes back to what do you now do knowing these guys are growing? In 1970, 5% of the American population was immigrants. >> Then you go 30 years later, it hits 8 n 10% and then today it's at 16%. if on any leaders bulletin they're growing they're winning and they're expanding in different markets. So now uh uh you know one could go back and study in the 20s and 30s when immigration went up to 14 13% and then we brought it down to 5%. But during that period of bringing it down there had to be a unification of people realizing it's the same problem you know on both sides. And for the most part the left and the right agreed on some of the things being the same problem. You don't have that today. So, how what can a president do to slow this down? What can a president do to slow it down? >> Well, I think Donald Trump I never thought he could take 10,000 people coming in illegally a day and get it to zero. And he did. And that was I So I Right now, at least for the near future, we don't have a problem with new illegal immigration. The problem is finding the 12 million people who came in illegally and then what to do with the 30 million who were here illegally. But on immigration, I I don't think it's chauvinistic. It's not racist. It's not imperialistic. It's not nivist to just to say at this stage of American history, we're only going to take x amount of people that we can assimilate and culturate acculturate and integrate. And it's going to be easier for us if we are allowed to select people who believe in the American system. So we should uh I think we should audit them, should have them give a test to see if they have some English fluency, some familiarity with American institutions. And I think we have to be very wary about taking people who um not dissident, not people who you know were a dissident community within a failed state, but people who were part of the failed state. For example, Ilian Omar for all her rhetoric and sharp criticism of the United States and and Israel and other places. Her father was a colonel in Sahed Berry's army that was responsible for killing 200,000 people in the war between Somali and the breakaway republic of Somali land. And the reason they fled and thousands with them to Minnesota wasn't because they just picked America out of the hat. It was because they lost that genocidal campaign and their opponents were after them. So they fled to the sanctuary of the United States. And yet she gets here and then she starts lecturing us on fascism and white supremacy. And so I I think you could say we want a temporary hold on any immigration from Somalia until we can audit these people. We obviously can't given the mount the staggering fraud. We need to be very careful about uh people coming from the West Bank or Gaza until we can audit them. any any country that's uh at a veritable war with the United States or has uh it has people who don't believe in the values of America and they're not willing to uh you know take a a citizenship exam or visa exam or some way we can find out who they are and I don't think I think we always did that but the problem was before you were bringing people who had some experience uh not as rich as our own but some experience with constitutional government and the long tradition of western values and they were for the most part 95% Christian and they came to a a 95% Christian country but we the idea that you would bring people from with another religion who did not want to assimilate and whose goal was to supplant Christianity with Islam or with that the founders would find that, you know, suicidal. >> Yeah. But we're here now, right, to see what's going to happen next? It's it's it's going to be interesting. So, now let's let's look at the war today. Iran, >> US, Israel. >> Uh, one, when we went into war, did you support the decision that we went into it? And two, now that we're in, did you expect it to be here months later where there seems to be a gridlock that the president is now going and threatening China to say you got to stop providing support to Iran so we can suffocate Iran more? Did you expect it to be at this point? No, I and I wrote uh on February 28th, I thought that within about 90 days, the US military with help from Israel, but also with help, we forget that the Gulf States have 600 late model combat aircraft, they have double the number that Israel has, the six Gulf states, they have more than our permanentbased combat uh forces in the region, not counting our two carriers. So I thought there would be this huge armada of 1,500 planes hitting all of these targets and then they would after 6 weeks or 7 weeks they would consult and say have we met our goals of dismantling this nuclear program. Have we attracted the military such that it will not pose an existential threat? Yes. have we kept the sanctions and blockades so they can't subsidize these ring of fire terrorist Hezbollah Hamas the Houthis and then they would leave a carrier group like which is always in the region to patrol the straits of Hermuz and go home >> and say we've pretty much done our job and now this and we have the we have the sanctions and the blockades on and I think there they could have been much stricter as we see now they're very strict but we could have done that much earlier. And then we would have said, "We're going to let this awful theocracy stew in its own juice." And when 93 million people come out of their apartments and homes and this government has a they see a wrecked half ccentury investment, half a trillion dollars in fact, in this militaryindustrial nuclear complex. And then this theocracy still wants to rebuild it and still wants to give their precious money away. uh to Arab terrorist in the Middle East that that subversion we saw earlier would increase and almost like the fall of the Berlin Wall. We think the fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of communism. It wasn't. It took about a year for all the Eastern Europeans to be liberated and two years for the Soviet Union to fall. But that mechanism would would be in place as long as we kept the sanctions and as long as we had enough naval support to keep the straight open and then I think uh we would have done that 4 months before the midterms and gas would be normal. But I I never thought we were going to stop uh right at 38 days and start negotiating with a lunatic unhinged regime that is not attached to reality and doesn't care about the welfare of its own people. And uh I thought we would help the dissident as well. Well, I I I said that we should have a u intermile representing the different ethnic groups and parties in Iran and we should not talk to the theocracy at all. We should talk to a government in waiting and just deal with them and then turn over Iranian frozen assets to them and then they know best how with media and propaganda and arming. They know best how to weaken that regime and we could offer our help but we should not go into the country on the ground and we should not talk fight talk talk fight endlessly just hit them so that they can't hurt anybody for a long time. Keep the sanctions to bankrupt them and create the conditions where they can't get can't close the straight, can't get oil out, can't get imports in and let the people then deal with them. Do do you think it do so two-part question do you think it was the right move to take out their supreme leader because typically Trump's model is he takes out the number two he took out solemani but you don't go to the main guy and take him out one do you think it was the right move to take out the supreme leader and number two do you think that was Trump's plan or do you think Israel got ahead and took him out to keep Iran to keep us longer involved in this war >> handmade [music] in Portugal their craftsmanship Ship is a way of life for those who move through life differently. [music] From sunlit decks to nights that never need an occasion. Every detail is [music] considered. Every step effortless. Crafted from fine suede and built with builder technology. Designed to move with you. [music] Because true luxury isn't about being noticed. It's about how you feel when you arrive. The FLB icon loafer [music] made for the life you've earned. [music] The more that I've talked to people, I think it's a little bit more complex than that. I think the United States was very worried because of the criticism he got taking Solamani and Baghdaddy and Obama got with his 500 assassination uh drone missions on the Pakistani border which he killed remember three civilians who probably deserved it but so there there's always been a reluctance uh we use this euphemism targeted assassination but really talking about hitting hitting killing somebody. So the United States, although they did do a little bit, they divided up, I think, on our initiative, they said, "We're we're going to hit the targets that we can see aerial, but we don't have intelligence on the ground. We don't know the intricacies of the Iranians. We don't have the knowledge that the Mossad does. We don't have um any of that." So Israel said, "Well, we can take out the first, second, and third echelon of their leaders, but we don't have the ability with B2 bombers to hit the nuclear facilities. We don't have um the wherewithal to um sustain the bombing campaign. We don't have the munitions. You do the heavy stuff and we will do the selective targeting." And that's where that happened. And I don't think at this point um it made any difference because I think he's dead but they assume that he's they're acting as if he's the supreme dead but I think his son is too but they assume that he is but anytime you have chaos um that that your enemy is in chaos it's a good thing. The reason why we think it's a bad thing and why you ask that question is Donald Trump has a unique art of the deal style. I mean once he killed Solomaini the next day he said well the Iranians kind of felt bad so I let them shoot some missiles in an or they called me up in advance and said lock down and that's that's what happened that no other president would have done that or when they sent some missiles sent missiles into the Gulf he said well they got to get it out off their chest. So with him, he's a transactional president. He thinks he can always make a deal with rational actors. And I'm not sure these people are rational. So I think that that's the problem that if we in a normal way that we do business, knocking out the entire leadership would create chaos, but we we didn't care because we're not going to negotiate with them. We're going to inflict such military damage unilaterally, they're not going to be able to do anything. And by that I mean we should have hit all the bridges to China and Russia on rail from day one. We should have taken out their airports on day two. And we should have had the economic sanctions of freezing bank accounts, embargos, blockades on day three. When Bill Clinton said he wanted to bomb Serbia again without congressional authorization with NATO, US flew 85% of the missions to extreme criticism. Russia was very angry at us. We had a lot of people on the right who were opposed. Our allies like the Greeks were very upset. He It was a complete failure for 55 days. And then they said to Clinton, "You're going to have to hit dual use targets." So he said, "Oh my god, what do I have to do?" And they said, "You're going to have to take out every bridge on the Danube." And he did. And it weakened Melovich. And then they came back about 2 weeks later and they said, "You got to get more." And he said, "What? You got to take out the power grid. don't destroy the generators, just magnesium bombs, chaff, whatever you have to do. So, they blacked out. And we did that for another what, two weeks, and on days 78 or nine, they capitulated. I don't know why we didn't follow that Clinton model. It would have been much more successful, I think. >> So, so then doesn't that u doesn't show a contradiction? If you go that strong and then you want to negotiate, what makes you think they're going to be negotiating truthfully? What makes you think they're going to be honest players? But >> they're not going to they're not going to be negot they're never going to be negotiating truthfully. They're going to be negotiating either without desperation or with desperation. And what I'm getting at is he did not inflict enough military and economic and physical pain on that regime for them to cease what they were doing. And that was making a bomb, trying to disrupt the straight of your moves, sending missiles into the Gulf and um funding all of these Arab terrorist groups. He did with the Houthis because the Israelis did too. They said if you keep doing it and they took out their port facilities, they hit one of their airways and then they gave him a list of targets. And so far the Houthies haven't been attacking us as they did under Biden. So I I think if he had inflicted that type of pain, then I think we wouldn't have negotiated. we would have just said, "This is what we want from you, and if you don't want to do it, we're going to inflict a a level of pain that's going to cost you trillions of dollars to recover, and your own people are not going to like the way you choose to recover and divert funds. And we're going to help them uh find freedom and we'll just tell and then basically, you can't open the straight. You can't have commerce. We don't want to get near you. We don't want to get on the ground. see you. Wouldn't want to be you. And that's and months before the midterm. Everybody says it's cynical that Trump um is got the midterms and he keeps denying it. But it's not cynical because if he loses the House and Senate, his MAGA counterrevolution is essentially over with. It's going to be like Obama executive orders. And Obama the last year of his his eight years, he just spent it on the golf course. He was a non- entity. And Trump is trying to wage a multiaceted counterrevolution on economic, cultural, civilizational, social, military, political realms. And if he can't get a maintain majority and history says it's going to be very hard, 39 out of the last 41 elections >> and he's he's got the lowest approval rating right now since 2017. 33 whatever the numbers just came back. And so that's going into the midterm. But just to isolate one of the questions >> based on what you said, you said we don't have that kind of intel. MSAD does. So it's fair to say if anybody did approve to take out the Supreme Leader Kame, it wouldn't have been Trump, it would have been Israel. Is that a fair assessment or no? [clears throat] >> It is. If if you allow some latitude, if the scenario went like this, the Israelis went to Trump and said, "We know who their leadership is, military, theocratic, Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and taking them out will help disrupt that regime." And but we don't have the wherewithal to hit their nuclear facilities. we don't have the type of heavy aircraft that you do. So why don't we have a um division of labor? And Trump would say yes with a full knowledge what they were doing. Yes. And he would think that would aid his task of disrupting command and control. And that's not to say the Israelis did not take out conventional targets. They did. And it's not to say that we didn't hit some people. We did. But I think there was a concession to the Israelis who had a lot more intelligence of who was actually running things, where they lived, who they were, where they traveled. >> But do you think there was a conversation to say, "Mr. Trump, President Trump, are we good? Are we on the same page if we take out their supreme leader?" Because there's nothing above it. That's not number two. >> That's their supreme leader. Yes. Do you think there was a concession or an agreement to say, "Are we good taking him out?" And the president said, "Yes. I think yeah I I but I don't I don't know if he said you take them out or we're going to take them out. I think the answer was we're going to hit these military targets which include command and control and he's not exempt. So I don't think they you know what I mean they obviously when they hit that big compound right in the middle of Tran they knew that there were top people there and they kept hitting them. And I think that was the American approach. I think the Israeli approach was this particular person is going to work in this particular building and we know him and he lives at this particular address. I don't think we had that level of of knowledge, but we didn't have the rough idea that where they live. So I don't know who actually killed him or killed which particular command and control, but it was done with the knowledge or the aid of the United States obviously. >> Yeah. The only reason I'm asking that question, the purpose, the motive behind that question is if you killed the supreme leader and you did it intentionally and you approved it, you can a logical player cannot say, "Well, now let's go and negotiate." Those two don't go together. If you kill our hero, our second to God, whatever my religion is, you kill him. Vengeance is permanent. That vengeance is not going to go away. So you better put us out instead of just come back and say let's do a memorandic of understanding. Those contradict each other. That's what I'm asking. So we we did that. I mean we were knowledgeable all during World War II. The OSS and M5, the British intelligence were sending people in to Europe to kill their top leaders. So they killed Reinhardt and east. He was the proconsul of most of Eastern southern eastern Europe and they killed him the checks killed him on the directive of the British intelligence. We killed the the most beloved senior commander in the Japanese military, Admiral Yamamoto. We knew we got intelligence where he was. We sent P38s on long distance and we shot him down and killed him. And >> respectfully, this is a religious leader. This is supreme leader. This is like this is like somebody killing the pope. This is like somebody coming out and taking out the pope and you're going to war against Catholics. I mean >> Yeah. But you have to remember there at the time he was killed there was a Pakistani national who was on trial uh for a plot to kill Donald Trump. And we know now the Iranians for a long time have tried to kill Trump. And this came this came after three three attempts. I mean, we've had, if you count the one in Florida and you count the one in Washington, excuse me, if you count the one that went into Mara Lago and was killed and you count the person at the DC uh White House correspondents and then you count uh you count the Palm Beach and you count the Pennsylvania, there were four, it's the first time in American history when four people had had shots exchanged with the Secret Service. So this was he was a big target and we know in addition to those there were attempts and the Iranian government made no they they were talking before we were bombing that we were they were going to kill Trump for solainy they put a hit out on Mike Pompeo John Bolton and Donald Trump and that was that was free everybody and they would have done that had they got >> but respectfully that's not my question my question is this my question is if you're approvening to take out the supreme leader. There's no way you can think let's come and negotiate now. You're only doing that because you want regime change. You're only doing that because you want to topple the regime. You won't do that because it's now let's come and talk to you about what we can do. Don't you think? Well, if your question is what is the ultimate solution that 93 million people who have a illustrious history in Iran and prior to the theocracy were a stabilizing force in the region and have pro-western sympathies innately and have been hijacked for 50 years by this odious regime and you're trying to deal with it. You're trying to corral it. Seven presidents said that it had to they couldn't have a nuclear weapon. Seven presidents have tried in vain to weaken it except for Obama perhaps. And the ultimate and only solution is regime change. You're right about that. But why didn't he say from the beginning he wanted that? Because we'd had a 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan. We'd had a 10-year misadventure in Iraq. uh the Clinton uh the Obama administration had bombed for seven months and removed Gaddafi and what happened it turned into an utter mess. So there the consensus not just in the Trump administration but by partisan in Washington is we do a lot of things very well but one thing we don't do is go into the Middle East, get on the ground and nation build. It just doesn't work. So we're not going to try that. We're not even going to profess that we want the regime change. But deep down in their hearts they knew that all the other methods were five or 10ear solutions but not ultimate solutions. The ultimate solution is to remove that odious regime. >> Okay. Okay. So then if that's the case, so now the basic innocent question is so how is it possible that Iran is able to stand against Israel that is historically we always hear how amazing their military is, how amazing their intel is, how amazing their air force is, is able to stand against the six Gulf states that are now united let's just say with US and with Israel and the 600 you know and US as known as the greatest military in the world. How is Iran who is ran by these folks, these extremists, how are they able to stand up to all of these countries combined together? How public opinion? I mean, do you really believe that the United States military if they said destroy the Iranian regime and destroy Iran as a they couldn't do it in a week? They could do it in 5 days. They could they could send 2500. They could get we have 11 carriers. They could send six, park them right off the Persian Gulf and they could obliterate Iran as a modern nation and send it back to the stone age and Israel could do it in six weeks. And the Gulf states could probably now after it's been a try to do it in a month. But the reason they don't are political calculations. The Gulf States, they feel, well, we can't account for every missile. One missile can hit a distillery or water. We wouldn't have water. Their own fears repress them. In the case of Israel, uh they're afraid that if they were to do that, they would lose all of the support of the United States. And the Trump administration knows that he's got public opinion and half the country or more than that would not approve of that type of an annihilation. And especially when you put into the I don't think we're talking about the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the United States doesn't believe that the Iranian people are culpable. They believe that they're captive. And you can argue, well, if they're captive, 50 years should have given them. Well, it's not that easy because they murdered 40, 50,000 of them without even blinking an eye. So in the American way of thinking, every target, and I know this for a fact because I've talked to people in the military, every target was evaluated on the following criteria. Will this hurt the America, the Iranian people to the degree we'll have starvation or illness, pandemics, or uh their ability if they throw the regime out not to have a a good recovery. If it does, let's not take out this bridge. Let's not take out this power grid tomorrow. We could ensure that the theocracy was in darkness without and we could ensure there wasn't one drop of gasoline. We could bomb every gasoline distillery. We could blow up Car Island in 24 hours. But we don't do that. And why we don't do it, it's not because we're bought off or there's conspiracy theories. We really do believe that the Iranian people deserve a different government. And that government we hope would solve the problem. It's not that we're going to go in and build it or try to do what we did in Afghanistan or Iraq. We're just saying the Iranian people are different. They have a different tradition than other Middle East countries. They're very sophisticated. Uh we had good relations with them. We have a large expatriate loyal patriotic community in the United States. So let's try to re remove the problem of that theocracy without the without hurting the their their ability to have a consensual government. And that's a very hard thing to do. We didn't do that in World War II. The idea was the German people, even though they're our second largest minority in the United States in 1941, we're going to bomb carpet bomb. Same thing with the Japanese. If they're if they're in Tokyo and they're building propellers and their homes at night, we're going to burn down Tokyo. Same thing in Vietnam. Same thing in North Korea during the Korean War. But we don't do that now. And I'm that that's a decision that was taken. So then doesn't doesn't the leverage there? It's it's almost like, you know, a bunch of uh married husband and wife couples go out with kids, and one of their friends shows up who's single, just got fired, doesn't have a penny to his name, doesn't have kids, doesn't have a girlfriend, mom and dad are not alive, no siblings, nothing. And they go out, he he acts like a fool, and he starts a fight. And the other guys are like, "Well, I I can't afford to fight because if I fight, got I got a wife, I got kids, I have to make the right." No, let's just go and take them out. So, doesn't this almost say that Iran has the leverage because they have nothing to lose and everybody else has so much to lose. So, Iran's going to play the waiting game. They're just going to sit there and say, "Let's wait for Trump to be out." >> That's what they think. Well, I don't think you have to speculate. They said that explicitly. They're waiting till another Obama-like administration that's pro- Iranian and pro- Iranian theocracy. Remember Obama's idea of the Middle East was the Shia Persian minority has been the underdog and it needs some community organizing. So I want to form a allow to be formed a Shia crescent with the Assads in Syria, the Shia in Iran, the Hezbollah people in Lebanon, the Houthis, and that will balance out Israel and the Gulf States and creative tension. And every once in a while, I'll adjudicate that. But I feel that this group has been uh the victims of oppression by the Sunni Arab majority and the Israelis. That's Obama believed that >> and that's part of our problem today. And he empowered that. He he's he delivered 400 million dollars at night on pallets and more than that in some cases cash. He unfroze all of their assets. He he paid interest on the money that we had frozen. They they they had killed over 1,600 people with shape charges in Iraq and Afghanistan and they were behind about 50% of the terrorist acts in Europe. So we had ground they blew up blew our troops up in Lebanon. They blew up the Ber Beirut embassy. They were behind some of the bombings uh USS Cole. They were behind some of the bombings in our African embassies. They had a lot of culpability. And so uh yes, if your question is has western restraint or the use of western restraint on other entities made it very difficult. Yes. Because we haven't we haven't wanted to inflict a level of punishment and pain on that theocracy because it can't be distinguished by design on their part from the Iranian people we want to help. How do you think this ends? >> How do you think this ends? >> I think I think it ends favorably. I think what we're going to see is Basant and Trump and Rubio are going to get together and they're going to say, "How can we function at pre-war in terms of political power, price of gas, the economy, and put and still inflict a level of pain on them that doesn't hurt our normal operations?" And they're going, in other words, how do we make it, how do we make the destruction of the theocracies a status quo everyday event that will culminate successfully without impuging or impinging or doing damaging our political apparat. So now they're saying they're not going to send any rail out. They're not going to send any ship, nor is any rail, nor missiles, nor anything's coming in. Nothing's coming in, nothing's coming out. And no Iranian, no matter how wealthy he is with the theocracy, is going to have a mansion in London. We're freezing all of those accounts. We're freezing them in the United States. And we have a list of people that are completely ostracized from the Western world. And then we're going to the Europeans and saying, you know what, if you want to keep doing this, we're not we're going to free we're not going to uh deal with you either. And that's a pretty powerful message we sent. And I think that level of economic coercion and it can be done now because we did the hard lifting of destroying their military essentially. And I don't know what they're going to do. But the I guess the alternative for them is to live at about a 1920s level add infan item. And I don't think the people again are going to put up with that. At some point they're going to say, "I don't have anything to lose. We're we're back in the medieval period. We're going to and who did this to us? This theocracy and what do I care about the Houthis and what do I care about, you know, Israel and Hamas? It's none of my business. I don't care about any of that. I just want to eat and I want gas and we're a naturally rich and these people did it to us." >> And I think that's where we leave them to stew in their own juice. >> Hopefully you're right. Hopefully you're right. >> I hope so. I'm not I mean nobody's been accurate [laughter] but >> you know my Tucker Carlson said it would be World War III and on one end and then we had other people saying uh it's going to be over in two weeks. So >> yeah. Yeah. So I I think we're in a good position now once we finally saw that we have to go back to standard operating procedure, normal business, and can still level a still inflict a level of pain on that theocracy that's not sustainable. >> But we are sustainable. We're going to be sustainable with our economy and our military and they're not. And it's just a matter of time. >> Let's see what happens. >> They can sort let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. So you you earned your PhD in classics and then you from Stanford and then you decided to go back to farming >> and you you worked as a farmer you know some people know that some people don't you even I think even one time you were trying to get into academia they didn't believe that you had a PhD dressed as a farmer they made you go back and get your degree and come back which is a great story but do you think being a farmer makes you a conservative and I don't mean politically I just mean a conservative because a bad idea can last in academia for 30 years but a bad idea cannot last on a farm for a day or two. >> Yeah, I'm I'm speaking from my farm today. Yeah, I I farm full-time uh myself with my brother for six years and then five years and then I did it while I was a professor for another 10 with my brother and cousin. Yeah. I I I mean, you can talk all we've been talking about all this, but if I said to you, uh, should I pick a Santa Rosa plum crop when it's 90% ripe, 80% ripe, 100% ripe, 110%, any of those decisions, there's a right decision, but you don't have enough information >> to know which one is right at that particular time. But if you make the wrong decision, you lose $70,000 of borrowed money. And then you have to tell your family, I'm sorry, you can't have braces on your teeth. And so there's immediate consequences. And so what what it develops in your mind is you're flexible. You and you understand there's forces in the world you can't control. And it's a tragic world. It's not a therapeutic world. And you can see people who are not talented sometimes thrive and sometimes the race doesn't go to the swift. So you get you get a resignation. It doesn't mean you quit or anything, but when I look at farmers and I see every single day the money goes out for insurance and maintenance and pesticides and energy and nothing comes in until the crop is harvested >> and then there's labor and weather and volatile markets and mechanical breakdown. I don't know how they make it. I I've the funny thing is after I left I I mean I still have 40 acres here but and I rent it out but the more that I look back at my full-time farming and more that I see people farming I have enormous respect for farmers above anybody else. I don't know how they do it. >> Why why is it such an emotional thing? Why is it that every time I listen to Paul Harvey tell the story so God made a farmer? Why why is that so why is farming so >> because they live on the land and not all the cor corporate doesn't but most people traditionally had lived on the land so and it's generation after generation so I'm speaking in the house right now that I remodeled this was a a manger and there were horses that my grandfather had in here and over here on my right right here was where they put the hay. So, this building was built in 1878 by his grandfather. So, I'm the fifth generation to live here. My children, if they want to live here, will be the sixth. And wow. >> Every every time I walk around, I see things, you know, I'll see if I'm digging out by a tree, I see a horseshoe, and I think, was that Cyrus Davis's >> or was that Wendle Davis? Who put And then I'll see something. And it reminds me uh we I the barn was about ready to fall and I replaced some it but it was built with eucalyptus poles in 1880. And then I remember all these people carved their name in it and I remembered them. And then as a boy I was up on a ladder trying to fix the barn. I said gosh I remember when I was 5 years old a barnell got trapped right here and flapped his wings and couldn't get out and died right when I replacing this. So the whole thing is memory and and tradition and shame and honor and all these ancient ideas and uh it's not about money. It's about a way of life and um unfortunately if you don't understand it is about money and maybe it should be but romantic farmers everybody's romantic but the the dividing line between those who go broke and those who endure the ones who check romance and have to make tough market decision. >> Yeah. And you see that they're going through a lot of challenging times right now. Bankruptcyy's being up. Suicide is up three and a half times the average person. >> Yeah. I I I saw when the raisin market collapsed in 1983, the price went from $1,400 to $400. And I saw the ditch tender shoot himself. I I mean, he he killed himself. And but one of my best [clears throat] friends who was a raisin farmer. He put a noose around his neck from his garage. He closed the door. He let the the truck exhaust go on. He he took sleeping pills. And then he shot himself all at once. >> Wow. >> So he and I it was a pretty bad time. And I'm speaking on 40 acres. We used to have 185 acres and my twin brother and cousin lost it. And it wasn't their fault. It was just the market conditions were globalization, you know. It was just it was tragic and their lives were never the same. And it's I it's a lot of tragedy. I mean, I I asked myself, we have pesticides. We were told in the 60s and 70s when I grew up, they're perfectly safe. >> My mom, who lived here, died of brain cancer. My daughter, who lived here, died of uh leukemia at 26. >> My sister-in-law died of leukemia at 48. And I have lung cancer. So, I've never smoked a cigarette or used drugs or drank. So, it's it's it's a very complex, you know, a lot of stuff going on. >> Yeah. Some of these questions you won't get the answer to for >> Yeah. >> Well, anyway, I hope I haven't gone on too long. >> No, you this was I can't I can't finish it off without asking you. Last question. If there's five books you recommend, you you're a very well- read person. Five books that one must read, what would those five books be? I believe that the New Testament is and I've taught it in Greek many [clears throat] times. So the the Gospels especially, I would recommend that. I would recommend of all of ancient literature uh Homer's Iliad and Thusidity's history of the Pelpeneisian War. I think everybody Dante's inferno or the divine comedy would be I think that's a brilliant exposition of human nature religion consequences and then I would read a great novel and one of the greatest novels I think is Conrad's victory that or nostrommo either one of them so those are just arbitrary but those are the ones I would recommend fantastic sir you have to know this from me to you. Men like me look up to you. We respect your wisdom. We respect the content you share with the rest of us. And I know sometimes you do your thing and I'm sure you hear this from a lot of different people. Your work is heard and is making an impact around the world. Thank you so much for your service. And thank you for your time. >> Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. >> Anytime. Have a good one. Take care. Bye-bye. >> Thank you. >> Handmade in Portugal, where craftsmanship is a way of life for those who move through life differently. 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