OK Boomers: Victor Davis Hanson, Pagers, Zelenskyy, and the Fellows “Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation” | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution - GoodFellows: Conversations from the Hoover Institution

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>> George Carlin (00:00):
A lot of these cultural crimes I've been complaining about can be

(00:04):
blamed on the baby boomers.
These people were given everything.
Everything was handed to them, and theytook it all, took it all, sex, drugs and
rock and roll, and they stayed loaded for20 years and had a free ride.
But now they're staring down the barrel ofmiddle-age burnout and they don't like it.
They don't like it, sothey've turned self-righteous and

(00:25):
they wanna make thingshard on younger people.
They tell them abstain from sex,say no to drugs, as for the rock and roll,
they sold that fortelevision commercials a long time ago.
[MUSIC]

>> Bill Whalen (00:40):
It's Tuesday, September 24, 2024.
And welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hooverinstitution broadcast examining social,
economic, political, andgeopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen,I'm a Hoover distinguished policy fellow,
and I'll be your moderator today,joined by two of our regular Goodfellows,
that would be the economistJohn Cochrane and the geostrategist,
lieutenant general H.R. McMaster.

(01:00):
We're gonna have to do withoutNiall Ferguson today, but
that's Neil's loss because we havea very special guest today joining us,
a Goodfellows fan favorite,the one and only Victor Davis Hanson.
In case you don't know who Victor DavisHanson is, let me briefly explain.
Victor is the Martin Ely Anderson seniorfellow here at the Hoover Institution,
a frequent guest on TV,prolific columnist, and

(01:21):
he is also now a podcaster in his ownright, the Victor Davis Hanson show.
If that's not enough,he also has a website, victorhanson.com.
it's VDH, his blade of Perseus.
Victor, I'm very curiousif you're Perseus,
what Medusa you're trying to slay,but maybe you get in the show.
But thanks for coming back on Goodfellows,Victor, it's great to see you.

>> Victor Davis Hanson (01:38):
Thank you for having me, everyone, appreciate it.

So we're gonna do two segments today.
Segment B, the B block is goingto be devoted to baby boomers,
the premise being that 2024 might bethe last presidential election in which
a boomer is a nominee ofa major presidential party.
So we're gonna kick aroundwhat the boomers have rot.
All four of us on the showare baby boomers, I believe, so
let's talk about our generation, ormy generation, the who famously saying.

(02:02):
But the A block, let's get into overseasaffairs, let's talk about the Middle East,
and let's talk about Ukraine.
Victor, I turn to you.
A debate going on in this country simplyput, is it kosher for the Jewish nation to
set off pagers, to set off walkie-talkies,to blow up its opponents?
One school of thought being, Victor, thisis what a small democracy surrounded on

(02:22):
all sides and vastly outnumbered,does for survival.
There was school of thought thatmaybe this is not how wars and
international warfare is conducted.
What say you, Victor?

Well, given that Hezbollah has sent 8,000 rockets into
Israel anddisplaced 60 to 70,000 civilians and
no one has really said anything.
And given the pressure on Israelto avoid collateral damage,
I think you could argue thatthere are very few, if any,

(02:51):
people who are walking around Lebanonwith an archaic walkie-talkie or pager.
I mean, most of them have cell phones andwho would have a pager?
And that Hezbollah orderedon spec from a shell company
unless they were a Hezbollah terrorist.
So it was a very effective wayof minimizing collateral damage,

(03:15):
taking out Hezbollah activist orterrorist, exposing them to family and
friends or people in theirapartments who they really were.
How large that group was,taking along with them the architect
of the 243 people who werekilled in Lebanon in 1983,

(03:35):
of which we had a $7 million bounty on.
So I think it was a win-win situation andit's a preliminary, just to finish with
Israel is telling the world that they'vehad enough with Hezbollah's rocketing.
And if they don't stop it, they feel theyhave the wherewithal to do damage that
would make something like the 2006 Shiadestruction of the neighborhoods in

(03:58):
Beirut looked minor in comparison.
So I think they're justsaying we've had enough and
we're gonna deal with these terroristsin the way that we see best.
And we'll try to do it humanely, but
we don't really care what the UNsays anymore, the EU, or even for
that matter, what people inthe US Congress, like the squad, say.

H.R., is this something that is unique to Israel in terms of hot
wiring pagers and walkie-talkies,or do other governments do this?
And you have top secret classification,maybe things you cannot tell us.
But I'm just kinda curious,
as if this is what the face ofmodern warfare looks like now.

>> H.R. McMaster (04:32):
Yeah, I can't comment on it.
>> [LAUGH].
But I can use a historical example, I mean, of course,
most people are aware now of Stuxnet,
a lot of that has been in publicreporting, I can't confirm or deny it.
But in the public reporting about Stuxnet,
which was the spinning out ofcontrol of centrifuges that

(04:53):
created the destruction of a portionof Iran's nuclear program,
that was an intervention intoa hardware supply chain as well.
We also know that therehave been cases where
surveillance capabilities have beenplaced into hardware, for example,
remember the super microincident from years ago?

(05:15):
This is not unprecedented, butthe scale of it is kind of unprecedented.
And as Victor said, I think it'scompletely appropriate to go and
consistent with what St Thomas Aquinastells us about juice and bellow, and is
consistent with the guidelines associatedwith discrimination and proportionality.

(05:35):
I mean, these are people who forfour-plus decades,
have waged a war against Israel andagainst the United States,
as Victor said, have a lot ofAmerican blood on their hands.
And so I think that this attack, thisthree really, it's a three-phase attack,
is what we're talking about,which was the explosion of the pagers.

(05:57):
Then they go to the walkie-talkies, thenthey hit them with the walkie-talkies, and
then they can't talk to each other,says, we need an emergency meeting.
They're probably just tryna figure outwho's still alive and who's dead and
who's wounded, not wounded.
And then Israel determines where they'remeeting and then strikes that building.
So I think completely appropriate,
extremely effective at reallydecapitating Hezbollah leadership.

(06:20):
And you'll hear a lot of people say,it really doesn't matter,
going after leaders, that's nonsense.
All of these people have beenactive in that organization for
decades, they have importantrelationships not only
throughout the organization of Hezbollahbut with their Iranian masters.
So it was extremely effective series ofattacks against Hezbollah leadership.

(06:41):
And I think it's likely it'sa precursor to an invasion of southern
Lebanon by the Israeli defenseforces to create a buffer zone
up to the Litany River, about 40,30 kilometers into Lebanon.
So that, as Victor mentioned,

(07:02):
the 60 to 80,000 Israelis whohad to evacuate a territory,
10% of Israel can go back to their homes.

>> John Cochrane (07:13):
Lemme add, this is half statement half question, so
I invite my better-educated Goodfellasto say, no, John, you're wrong.
This was beautifully targeted in the senseof maximal damage to known terrorists and
minimal to civilians around them.
The only response one could have isIsrael should just give up and go home,

(07:36):
well, go home, give up andcommit suicide rather than fight back.
You knew, it was funny whenI was listening to NPR and
they had some expert on the terriblemental health crisis this is causing
among people associated with Hezbollah cuzthey don't know what's gonna blow up next.
And the memes on the Internet about what'sgonna blow up next are very worth it if

(07:57):
you get anything like my Twitter stream.
The rest of Lebanon is notCompletely unhappy about this.
They are not happy to have a gangsterstate running things in the bottom and
inviting Israeli attacks all the time.
So a lot of stuff I've seen onTwitter is Druze and Christians and
lots of other people in Lebanon saying,yeah, great,
get rid of these gangsterswho are ruining our country.

(08:19):
The next two issue is the rockets.
And Israel is surrounded bysomething like 100,000 rockets,
stuff I've seen beautifulpictures of just what it is.
Hezbollah has built houses around rocketlaunchers throughout southern Lebanon.
And here I think is a dramatic loss forHezbollah.

(08:39):
I mean, so what Israel is able to do isblow up pagers and now they know where all
those rockets are because what Hezbollahdidn't count on was that lidar existed.
And so Israel knows pretty much whereevery rocket is in a way that Israel
was not able to counterthe tunnels in Gaza.
So houses with rockets in themIsrael knows where they all are and
they're all going to get blown up.

(08:59):
The tunnels in Gaza less so.
And that's an importantlesson going forward.
And Israel was able to blow up pagers butis not able to blow up the rockets.
Too bad it wasn't able toget into that supply chain.
But the one view that I heardhere is why are we fighting so
much about southern Lebanon?
Well, if Hezbollah has to pull back,
this isn't an orderly retreat ofan army with all its stuff intact.

(09:20):
It gives up all of those rockets andall of those houses holding the rockets.
You can tell now why the movingback from southern Lebanon is so
important to Israel andso damaging to Hezbollah.
Opinions Guys,did I get any of this right?

Yeah, absolutely,
I would just add that these series ofactions fit into a broader context.

And Viktor, I think that what we're seeing is the activation of
the ring of fire around Israel anda situation in which Israel
is on a greater threat thanit's been maybe since 1948.
And so you have the attacks againstthe leadership, but also what Israel has
been doing is striking againstthe supply chain for the rockets.
Many of the targets that they've struck inSyria, for example, have been associated

(10:04):
with retrofitting some of these rocketswith precision guidance capabilities.
And also the raids that you've seen inthe West Bank where Iran has really
accelerated the delivery andincreased by orders of magnitude
the delivery of weaponsinto the West Bank as well.
So you can see really thisis a multi front war.
You had the Houthis who'vebeen firing at Israel.

(10:25):
And of course,think back to April with the hundreds of
projectiles fired atIsrael from Iranian soil.
So it is kind of likea seven front war for Israel.
And this is why I think it's importantto place these strikes in broader
context of Iran's proxy war todestroy Israel and kill all the Jews.

(10:47):
That's really what they want to do.
That's what they tell us they want to do.
And every conversation shouldbegin with that, I mean.

[CROSSTALK] The status quo, if you guys should send up a couple,
you know, dozen rockets a day and we shootthem down with very expensive Iron dome
missiles, that status quo is over.
And I don't think asking Israel to go backto that, well, that's simply not tenable.

Yeah, I would just comment that I agree with both of you that
their strategy of serially sendingoff ten or 15 rockets a day,
displacing the population,destroying the economy,
stopping international flightsto Israel in a war of attrition,
Israel has decided it's notgonna sustain that anymore.
And there's no,there's no restrictions on it now.

(11:34):
And there's a couple of thingsthat I would just point out.
I think John was right about the pagers.
I talked to an Israeli not too long ago,about two days ago, and
he pointed out that a lot of the pagersthat blew up were Hezbollah people that
were monitoring rockets in individualhouses that they didn't know about.
So they actually got intelligence whenthey saw these explosions go off or

(11:58):
they heard the families go tothe funeral of a particular house,
there was a likelihood that the Hezbollahpeople were actually neighborhood watchers
that were posted where the rockets were tomake sure that nobody tampered with them.
So it was even a better bonanza because itactually did show where the rockets were
in some cases.

(12:18):
And then you get back to the otherpoint that you both made.
Ultimately, it's all about Iran.
If Iran just had a governmentlike the authoritarian Shah,
which is not a great government, but
if it just had something marginallybetter, you wouldn't have this turmoil.
And ultimately, everybody in the westhas a rendezvous with this government.

(12:41):
They can say what they want, butunder your administration, HR,
when you guys declared the Houthisa terrorist organization,
you cut off money that was funneled toHamas, you embargoed Iran, you got out
of the Iran deal, you hemorrhaged it,$100 billion in oil revenue.
It was far less capable ofdoing what it's doing now.

(13:03):
And that offers a blueprint to go back to.
So I think that's helpful as well.
But the weirdest thing is we'rehaving the Iranian president,
I think he's in the United,he's coming to the United States and
he's getting Secret Serviceprotection that might be superior

(13:26):
to what we gave Donald Trump, which is sobizarre that you can't even imagine it.
Then when you putRobert Malley in [CROSSTALK],
I know you put Robert Malleyin the equation.
We don't even know what's happened to him.
He still hasn't faced consequences.
He was a prep school roommateof Anthony Blinken, who,

(13:47):
I don't know what his stance has been,but it hasn't been very forceful.
Then we had Kamala Harris to Opabragging that she's put this
embargo on 2,000 pound bombs to Israel.
I'm not sure I see the differencebetween what she just said,
given the Biden fixation on250,000 Muslim voters in Michigan.

(14:13):
Seems to me very analogous to what thefirst impeachment of Donald Trump was when
he allegedly, for political reasons,fixated on the Biden corruption and
did not cancel, but suspended military andcongressionally approved aid to Ukraine.
It seems to me that the Bidenadministration has suspended
congressionally approvedmunitions to Israel.

(14:34):
The only difference is thatIsrael is in a hot war right now,
when at that time, Ukraine was in a coldwar, suspension of actual firing.
But nobody's going to impeachJoe Biden for looking at political
benefits by suspension in an electionyear of suspension of aid.

We'll see if no one's going to look at that.
Trump might win the election and he mightwant to look at a lot of things, and
that's a separate issue.
But I want to ask you guys the long runhere, because you're talking about Iran.
There's two long runs.
One is the long run of what goes on withthe land, but the other long run for
both Israel and forus West Israel supporters, do we allow,

(15:17):
do we continue with terroristgroups in charge of territory in
southern Lebanon, in the West Bank,in Gaza, in Yemen?
This is something that we decided wedidn't like in Afghanistan in 2001.
The current ceasefire negotiate,blah, blah,
envisions that these groups continueas effectively sovereign states.

(15:42):
They are running territory andsitting there and
it's mow the grass is supposedto be the status quo.
I think Israel has moved on.
It doesn't tell us what the longrun strategic desires, but
it has to be that this doesn't go on,that Gaza is not run by Hamas.
Hezbollah does not run southern Lebanon.

(16:02):
An aircraft carrier shootingmissiles at Israel.
Victory over these groups andsending them out
of governing territory isan intermediate thing.
Iran supports them,Iran does not wanna have a war with Iran,
Iran wants to fight to the last Arab,as the saying goes.

(16:23):
But not having these groups still incharge and in the West, what are we doing?
What is the UN doing?
What is Europe doing?
Saying, you have tonegotiate with these groups,
leaving those groups inpower as the intermediate.
I think Israel has decided thosegroups don't stay in power,
we're gonna wipe them out.
The only question is,do we still believe in victory?

Well, I would just add that,
I think there's also a lot of electoralcalculations in the Middle East.
I think a lot of people feel thatif they were gonna have a hot war,
Hezbollah would respond, andthey would go into war like Iran.
It would reflect badly onthe Harris candidacy or
the Biden that would look like they were.
So I think that at least until theelection, it's in the interest of Iran and

(17:04):
Hezbollah andHamas not to blow up the Middle East.
Because they feel that if theyget crazy Trump in there,
they don't know whatthey're gonna deal with.
And that would reflect badly on Harris'schances if what Jake Sullivan called his
quietest portfolio turns out to be afull-scale war, right before the election.
After the election,depending on who's elected,

(17:27):
I think that it's more likely to beheating up, because if Trump is elected,
they feel they better go ahead anddo something wild until he's president.
And if Harris is elected, it doesn'tmatter anymore because she's probably
considered sympathetic to them andshe's not up for election,

(17:47):
they won't embarrass her.
So I think after the election,it's gonna really heat up.

I wanna talk about that further with regard to Ukraine and
Zelenskyy's visit to Pennsylvania.
But first,an exit question on the Middle East.
Gentlemen, we're not recordinganother Goodfellows until the second
half of October,
which means the October 7th anniversary ofthe Hamas attack would have come and gone.
Let's quickly go around the table here.
What is October 7th gonna look like inmajor cities and college campuses, Victor?

They've been kinda quiet.
And we're speaking onthe Stanford campus and the new
Stanford president from what we understandis not going to be as tolerant or
sympathetic to people whotrash the president's office.
Or defile iconic sandstone colonnadesthat have to be this obscene,
antisemitic graffiti has to beremoved by tweezers, it's so delicate.

(18:39):
So I think that people acrossthe country feel that they
don't like the idea ofguest in our country.
And many of these protesters are onstudent visas insulting the halls,
breaking American laws, sothere's no public support.
And I think given the firingof these presidents,

(18:59):
a lot of the current presidents feelthat it's now not just insurance
of not being fired by appeasing thesepeople, but rather the opposite.
If you do appease them,you're gonna incur some consequences.
I think that's a positive development.
So I just don't think we're gonna getthe level of violence that we had.

(19:24):
And then there's the final thing that,of course,
if you read Molly Ball's 2021-Time essaywhich she called a cabal and a conspiracy.
She said one of the reasons that Biden and
Harris won were they were able tomodulate the tempo of demonstrations.
She said that.

(19:44):
And so I think that a lot of peopleon the left feel that the last
thing that Harris needs justone month before the election,
our campus is blowing up andmonuments to face, bridges occupied, etc.

HR.

Well, to say,
first of all, overseas there was an efforton the part of Hezbollah to prepare for
a massive attack againstIsrael on October 7th.
I believe that the timing of thistriple attack with the pagers,
the walkie-talkies and then the strikes,
plural in Beirut were designed tofoil that plan in the United States.

(20:23):
And on October 7th,I think it's just an extraordinary
display of ignorance when yousee young people on these
college campuses protestingreally in effect for Hamas.
And I think what we should do iscounter that with education and facts.
For those who are still open-mindedenough to consider the facts that

(20:47):
the greatest victims of Hamas havebeen the Palestinian people in Gaza.
The greatest victims of jihadistterrorists across the region, many of
which groups and militias are supportedby the Iranians are the people of Yemen.
The people of Syria, Iraq,and of course, of Lebanon.
Think back to the Cedar Revolutionin 2005 when the Lebanese

(21:11):
people said enough of this androse up against it.
Now, of course, the Lebanese people havebeen through multiple traumas since then,
but I think there has to be a recognitionof what John said up front.
John, your point about, hey,
there are people in Lebanonwho are sick of Hezbollah.
And I think what we have to recognizeis the greatest victims of jihadist

(21:33):
terrorist organizations are Muslims andMuslim-Americans.
And I think is also extraordinarilyignorant by US politicians and
maybe even bigoted to assume thatthe Arab American population in
Michigan is somehow going to besympathetic to any of these groups.
Of course, one of the reasons that they'rehere in the United States is they had

(21:56):
to flee violence associated withjihadist terrorist organizations.
So I think that it's time for education,
maybe as we approachthe anniversary of October 7th.

I would add Iran, too.
One of the favorite things I've seen onTwitter lately is this new sport in Iran
is to run up behind a cleric,topple off his turban and run away.
[LAUGH] That everybody's happy with that.
This has been a clarifyingmoment in the US.
The pro-Hamas extreme left in the USis revealed, and it's very small.

(22:30):
Yeah, there's some nuts on collegecampuses, but the dominant part
of the US stands behind Israel andunderstand terrorism what it is.
And the cognitive dissonance it takes tobe Greta Thunberg and the unicause and
think that Hamas is for climate justiceand so forth, really makes it small.

(22:51):
So in the US it's small andthey may make some noise, but
it is nothing that we'lllook forward to that much.
Europe is a different question.
So Europe has very large, unassimilatedMuslim minorities who are very,
quite loudly pro-Hamas in allof its celebrating terrorism.

(23:13):
Wanting the destruction of Israel, wantingthe destruction of Jews and so forth.
So at least on the very biased sampleof my Twitter stream, I would forecast
a lot more outburst in Europe ofthe pro-Hamas sentiment and a lot.
And even less ability, unwillingnessof the authorities to stand up for

(23:35):
it cuz they still seem to wannaprotect this sort of thing.

Okay, let's shift to Ukraine.
Victor, Ukraine President VolodymyrZelenskyy was in of all places, Scranton,
Pennsylvania yesterday touringa munitions plant with
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
I want your thoughts on this becauseon the one hand, the man wants weapons,
he's trying to make a point.
On the other hand, we are daysaway from a national election and
a foreign leader coming around andhanging out with one party.

(24:00):
It looks kind of political, what say you?

I think it does [LAUGH] I think it's a lot worse than that
for a variety of reasons.
Look, we're 43,we used to have October surprises.
Remember George Bush's drunk drivingseven days before the 2000 election?
And things like that,Russian disinformation,
laptop disinformation,all of that in 2016.

(24:23):
But now with early voting and mail inballoting, we have September surprises
because there's a couple of things thatwere disturbing the early voting or
mail in balloting,although had been delayed his visit.
And by the way,
he was flown on a US taxpayer supportedmilitary C17 into the United States.

(24:44):
And he was flown in bythe Biden Harris administration,
of which Harris is an incumbentrunning for president.
And where does he go in this first stop?
He goes to the one state that's gonnalikely decide the election, and
more importantly, they've timed it,so he goes in during early and
mail and balloting that's beginning.

(25:06):
And where does he go?
He goes in a state where jobshave been jobs, jobs, jobs,
unemployment, static economy,goes to a munition plant,
which is advertised as an exportto Ukrainian for artillery shells.
And it keeps people working.
And then it gets even worsebecause what does he do then?

(25:27):
Does he keep out of politics?
No, he gives a interview to the hardleft pro Harris New Yorker magazine,
and he says that Donald Trump doesn'tknow what he's talking about.
Maybe that's true, but it's not hisbusiness as a guest on taxpayer dime
to go into a swing state 43 days beforean election as people start voting and

(25:49):
trash the main rival to the personwho basically flew him in.
And then he compounds that,he calls JD Vance dangerous,
and he says he's too radical.
So he weighs in to try to tilt the scale,and
then there's a final fillup to the whole thing.
So somebody tried to kill Donald Trumpjust a little bit more than a week ago.

(26:16):
And the person, if you read his crazymanifestos, one of the prime reasons
he tried to kill him was he felt thatDonald Trump was too soft on Ukraine.
And this guy had gone to Ukraine.
He's a nut.
I don't think he was very effective.
So you have a person who is trying to killthe president because of his stance on
Ukraine, and then you have the Ukrainianpresident come over the United States and

(26:40):
trash Donald Trump.
So all of the optics are bad.
And the only thing that I think they don'trealize is that public opinion is split on
Ukraine, and this was so obvious that itmight look crude rather than just sneaky.

Hr, I don't think Churchill came to America in 1940.
I'm not sure Roosevelt would havewanted him in America in 1940 as he was
running on keeping us out of wars.
But are there any kind of rules to howthese are played in terms of foreign
leaders coming in the middle of election?
Because this country has played inthe middle of Israeli elections.
We have had political consultants goover there and run opposition campaigns.
But is there any protocol here in terms ofa foreign leader coming in this close to

(27:19):
an election, as Victor suggests,putting his thumb on the scale?

Well, it is associated with the UN General assembly.
That's when you have a lot ofleaders coming to the United States.
I do agree with Victor, though.
It was an error for him, I think, to go toPennsylvania to go to a munitions factory.
I think what you want is youwant performative effects,
I mean you want formative effects,not performative effects here.

(27:45):
And I think that what would have beensmart is, if you're going to UNGA,
stopped by Bedminster as well asWashington, talk to both candidates,
talk to Vice President Harris andPresident Trump.
And I think that would have beena lot more effective from Zelenskyy's
perspective.
When Benjamin Franklin wentto France from 1776 to 1778,

(28:09):
he canvassed the entire politicallandscape associated with the monarchy and
the court andwas quite effective at doing so.
So I think it's a missed opportunity forZelensky.
I think you're gonna see,you see more and more of this these days,
which are visits andphone calls during elections.

(28:29):
There's been a lot of outreach toPresident Trump during the run up to
the election.
But again, I agree with Victor, it wasa tactical error on Zelenskyy's part.
Zelenskyy, he's in a tough spot right now,though, in terms of the war and
the cacophony of voices that are raisingdoubts about sustained support for

(28:50):
Ukraine.
And this, of course, has a magnifiedpsychological effect in Ukraine.
We pay attention to it, like,in the context of the election.
Ukrainians read andparse every single word that
candidate Vance [LAUGH] orPresident Trump says.
And there's also a movement onthe right in Germany as well,

(29:12):
that is against sustaining support forUkraine.
So I think he comes at a timeof significant concern for him,
but I think he blew it in termsof the visit to Pennsylvania.

I also want to cut Zelensky a little bit of slack.
The guy is in a hard position.
Russians are advancingon his eastern front.
He needs to keep his country together,win a war.
If he got a little bit wrong on thenuances of us politics, I'm not sure any
of us could go to Ukraine, [LAUGH] getthe nuances of Ukrainian politics right.
And I think a lot of his intention couldbe and should be to try to persuade

(29:50):
a Trump administration and the manycacophonous voices in the republican party
that support for Ukraine is very much inour interest and the West's interest.
If he didn't handle it right,I'll grant you that, but
I think that is really,I think is important.
Why does he go to a munitions plant?
Because he knows that Trump andJD Vance want American manufacturing,

(30:13):
and he wants some American manufacturing,too.
You just like to be allowed tobuy what we have to export.

Yeah, but he didn't go to one.
And there's other munitions plants.
He chose Pennsylvania, andhe chose it right when early voting.
And it was part of a plan.
Gotta remember during the midtermelections, this is what Biden and
Harris did.
They had their activists leak the Dobbs,the repeal of Roe versus Wade.
They started draining the petroleumreserve, they started canceling student

(30:43):
debt, and the supposed red waveturned into a little ripple.
And right now, we've already seenhe's draining the reserve again.
And all of a sudden, on the 50th day,and I'm not an economist, John,
so correct me, all of a sudden,the Fed decides they just
have to cut interest rates50 days before the election.
And then we bring in Zelensky.
And it's part of thisdesperation of these October-

Separate issue,
which is the skullduggerygoing on at the election.
The intelligence agenciesare already at it again.
They're crying wolf for the third time,Russia, Trump, blah, blah.
You know, guys, we've heard this.

Yes, I know.
I really resent it.

Gets Zelensky a little bit of slack and that he,
why does he wanna go here?
He wants to point out to Trump,
[CROSSTALK] he nneds [CROSSTALK]>> Victor Davis Hanson: I just think it
was bad optics.
When you, you get a pro Ukrainianzealot tries to shoot a president, and
then you get the Ukrainian presidentcoming over to a swing state right before
an election, when early voting starts.
Then he gives an interviewto the New Yorker, and

(31:45):
he calls one of the candidates dangerousand a radical, and he calls the other one,
he doesn't know what he's talking about.
And then you think, well, wait a minute,there is no elections in your country.
You have suspended habeas corpus,you have suspended elections,
you've suspended opposition parties Andthen you come over here and
weigh in on a democraticprocess in our country.
So I'm not,I understand what you're saying, but

(32:08):
I think it was self destructive.
And it really reminds me of what we do.
We have no business.
And Bill Clinton started itwhen he sent campaign teams,
as I think Bill was alluding to,into Israel and right now.

Obama is there.

Yeah, Obama too.
And I think right now we're trying to->> John Cochrane: Netanyahu needs to go,
what the heck?
We're trying to overthrow the government of Israel,
we really are.
And I think that's horrible.
To interfere in the internalrelations of Israel and
to predicate maybe congressionallyapproved aid as kind of the incentive.

(32:42):
So I don't like it when we do it,and I think he shouldn't do it.
And that's not to say that I don'tunderstand that he's in an existential
fight, buteverything about it is gonna hurt him.

He's in an existential fight.
And all of the, we've been talkingabout this now for a couple of years.
All of the reasons that we needto hold back and not escalate and
so forth have been proved false.
On the first day we were discussing,why doesn't the US send them F-16, well,
Russia will.
Well, finally they get F-16s.

(33:14):
Are we gonna let them bomb the Russianbases from which glide bombs are going,
that would be terrible.
The escalatory,they've even now invaded Russia.
And we've been talkingabout the nuclear threat.
Ukraine's invaded Russia.
No one's talking about nuclear.
Letting Ukraine win remainsthe important thing that we

(33:34):
could do in our sleep if we wanted to.
And persuading the US that thisis important for the US and
the west remains not only important forUkraine, but for everybody else.

Just quickly, a missed opportunity for Zelensky is he should have
thanked President Trump for beingthe first, for the first time allowing
the sale and provision ofdefensive capabilities to Ukraine.
The decision that President Trumpmade in December of 2017 to
provide javelin missiles,as well as the other support that we've

(34:06):
given Ukraine duringthe Trump administration.
And then also the fact that duringthe Trump administration's first year,
he placed more sanctionson Russian entities and
individuals than the previous eightyears of the Obama administration.
He closed to Russian consulates, expelledscores of Russian undeclared agents.

(34:26):
So I'm not saying that President Trumpstill doesn't hold this kinda soft
spot for Putin and believes that maybehe can get a big deal with Putin.
But I think Zelenskyy missed anopportunity to make some of those points.

You don't go to a foreign country and
insult any politicians andwe shouldn't totally agree.
I just wanted to cut him justa little bit of slack because.
>> [CROSSTALK]>> H.R. McMaster: It's a desperate
situation.
But it's a very serious situation now,John.

How hard was it, John, for
him to have come over on his own expense?
Go to the White House, talk to Harris,then have a photo op with Vance and
say that I respect their hesitation orreservation.
And my job here is to presentthe Ukrainian people's argument to both
sides and go to maybe Texas orCalifornia and not Pennsylvania and

(35:15):
not during the early andavoid all of that.

Absolutely.

It would have been very effective had he done that.

It was a mistake. >> Victor Davis Hanson
he didn't do it, I agree.
And not give an interviewto the New Yorker magazine.
No, if he understood us politics and culture better,
he probably would have done that.
It was a misstep.
Absolutely granted.

All right, gentlemen, time is up for the segment.
Let's move on to the B block.
[MUSIC]
In the B block we're gonna talk about baby boomers.
And all four of us belong tothe baby boomer generation.
Born between 1946 and 1964, boomers makeup about 20% of the American population.

(35:55):
If you've had a boomers,Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen C,
that's about five out of six Americans.
It's by the way,I'm giving a talk on this later today.
That's why I selfishlyinserted this into the show.
It's why HR andI are wearing suits, by the way.
It's a, this is an odd configuration.
HR is literally in the roomnext to me right now.
So when he talks, I can hear himcoming in two different directions.
But I'm going to talk about the boomers,and

(36:15):
I want to get your guysthoughts on boomers as well.
Victor, it's an easy generation to mock.
I'm sure you've seen the insurancecommercials where they show the boomers
coming up to the airport gate and theyasked what time does group five board?
And they say 3 hours.
So we can have all kinds offun picking the peccadillos.
But when people ask you about the boomers,what are your thoughts on boomers?

Well, it's a mixed bag.
Our generation, I was,I entered college in 1971 and
the newly opened UC Santa Cruz.
And there were some goodthings that happened
with the emancipation of women andcivil rights advancement.
And more interest that that generationbrought to the environment and

(37:00):
all of that.
But on the whole,it was a destructive generation.
The drug use, the promiscuity,
the narcissism and the polarization.
Cultural revolution of the sixtiesreally started the idea that if you
had a political difference with someone.

(37:22):
Then that political difference wasgoing to be a totalitarian difference
in the sense that it was going toinvolve a social, cultural, economic,
political front.
And everything about you was going to
be in opposition to this country.

(37:45):
And I have to be very careful, becauseyou got to remember that the baby boomer
generation voted overwhelmingly forRichard Nixon in 1968.
They really did when they gotthe 18 year old boat in 72.
And it was just not evenclose with McGovern.
So they were caricatured.
There were a lot more silent majorityboomers than the loud ones that

(38:07):
got the attention.
But for the loud ones that gotthe attention and have now moved in,
as Roger Kimball said years ago,just tenured radicals and are retiring.
But had positions of enormous influencein government, the bureaucracy,
the media, corporations.
A lot of the changes that some of us onthe conservative side saw were not so

(38:29):
good, came from the ideology of thatgeneration, and they're not done yet.
And they finally,I don't think they had a very.
They didn't have a realistic orempathetic view of their parents.
And I'm speaking frompeople in my own family.
But that generation who wentthrough the Great Depression,

(38:52):
the so-called greatest generation.
And then the 12.2 million who went toWorld War II in various capacities and
helped defeat fascism and Nazism.
And then went back and won the Cold.
They were, for all their mistakes inVietnam, they were a great generation.
And they, I think,
decided that they were not gonna havetheir children suffer as they did.

(39:15):
And they tended to indulge us more thanotherwise, would have been true had
they been, had been, had they nothad to go through all of that.
But our generation, I don't think,showed them the deference that
they deserved at least thiselement of our generation.
Again, I wanna reiterate.
I'm not talking abouteverybody in the baby boomer.

HR we're looking at a boomer president for
at least the next four years.
If Trump wins, maybe the next eight yearsof Kamala Harris wins, which means they
will have had a unprecedented almost40 year run on the American presidency.
What is the boomer legacy whenit comes to foreign policy?

Well, you know, it's a complicated one and, you know,
I'm about to go back for my 40th reunionfor my graduation from West Point.
And the term that we useis the long gray line.
And when you think, when I thought backabout who was the class that was coming
back when I was a first-year seniorat West Point, it was a class of 44.
So you get a sense of this long gray line,which is the title of a great book by

(40:12):
Rick Atkinson aboutthe West Point class in 1966.
But you get a sense of continuity acrossgenerations, of course, there are changes,
but certainly in the military profession,I've seen a lot of continuity.
I came into the army,
really under the leadership of officerswho had seen the army prior to Vietnam.

(40:33):
And then, during the trauma of Vietnam and
personnel policies that weredestructive to the army and
then organized a renaissance in the armyin the 1980s, I was a beneficiary of that.
But in terms of your question, Bill,foreign policy wise, I think after
the victory in the Cold War, that weentered into a period of overoptimism and

(40:53):
complacency based on some unrealistic and
flawed assumptions about the natureof the post-Cold War world, right.
That the arc of history had guaranteedthe primacy of our free and
open societies over closedauthoritarian systems,
that great power rivalrywas a relic of the past.
And that our technological prowess,technological military prowess,

(41:14):
would guarantee our primacy andsecurity for the foreseeable future.
And then what we've seen, I think,since the 2000 were a series of strategic
shocks, disappointments, andthat over-optimism, I think,
shifted in the Obama years towardpessimism and even resignation.
And so what I endeavored to do to helpdisrupt President Trump is to help him

(41:36):
disrupt what needed to be disrupted andchart a course in between that, in between
the overoptimism and complacency andthe pessimism and resignation.
And I think that's what we need now,is a rational,
clear-headed view of the world inwhich we prioritize our interests and
we recognize the limitations ofour power and our resources.

(41:58):
We're not gonna conciliatethe furies in the Middle East but
also recognize that if we disengage fromthese complex problems abroad, they can
only be dealt with at an exorbitantcost once they reach our shores.
So I think what we've seen maybe as thelegacy we're coping with is this swing,
from maybe undervaluing the cost andrisk of engagement and

(42:21):
then undervaluing the risk andcost of disengagement.
And I think that's what you'veseen in the Middle East under
the Obama administration is the cost andrisk of disengagement, de-escalation,
and trying to manage conflictsinstead of advance our interests.

John, you and
I could do an entire good fellows onfiscal responsibility and the boomers, or
lack thereof, and I wanna depressthe good people watching and
listening to the show with the statistic.
But simple question, John,
is our generation too comfortablewhen it comes to debt?
And do we lack a confrontationalgene when it comes to things like
entitlement reform?

I don't think that's necessarily a generational thing,
I'll instead riff on what mycolleagues have said here, I mean,
1968 was a really dividingyear in America, and
that's when our cultures are ripped apart,as I think Victor pointed out.
Well, it's not everybody turned left in,but the current right and

(43:23):
left defined themselves in1968 in the Vietnam War,
in McCarthy versus Nixon, andhave been at it ever since.
That cultural shift is really amazing,I mean, I was young in the late 1960s,
early 1970s.
We didn't listen to music from the 1920s,but the music that,
the way we dress, that culture,certainly of the left,

(43:44):
highly educated part of it, Americahas been pretty much added ever since.
I mean, they've changed their passions,first it was anti-nuclear,
and now it's anti-climate, butthey've been, first it was given
to the Russians, and then [LAUGH]given to the Iranian terrorists.

(44:05):
But whatever, it's been remarkablyconstant ever since, and
on that left,it's really conservative means something,
conservative means that youvalue the constitution,
the traditions,the norms that your society brings to you.
And you understand there's a certainwisdom in following those norms.

(44:25):
And the boomers decided, no,we get to make it up on our own,
to the point where today, pretty muchexplicitly, most of the democratic
party wants to throw out half theconstitution because it gets in their way.
So that individualism, that your country,your religion, your traditions,
your culture is meaningless,make it up as you go along is, I think,

(44:48):
a part of that half of Americathat is the elite left.
Another big difference of the boomers isthe boomers were defined as a baby boom,
[LAUGH] our parents had a lot of kids,the boomer generation had a lot less kids,
and the boomers kids generationis basically reproducing.
So when you think of baby boom,it naturally brings up the huge

(45:11):
question underlying of the collapsein birth rates in America,
especially among the highly educatedleft were very different as parents.
And it's kinda funny that the boomersdidn't have kids, poured enormous
effort into those kids compared tothe greatest generation, just kind of,

(45:32):
I was let out alone to play [LAUGH] andlook at the attention that goes.
And producing what, producing kids who arejust skyrocketing amounts of anxiety and
spend all day on Twitter.
So we've been, as a generation,not very good as parents, and
certainly inculcating the tradition thatyou go on to be parents yourself among our

(45:52):
children, the next generationis simply not reproducing.
And you could put it,the greatest generation, what do they do?
The men drove a tank across Germany at 19,came home,
married their high school sweetheart at21, got a job, and produced four kids.
The boomer generation went to college,had a draft affirmative,

(46:14):
hung out on the ashram for a while,eventually went to Wall Street,
made some money, andfinally had some kids.
The kids generation is ten, 15 years ofself-discovery, and around age 35, one in
four of them will get around to maybethinking about marrying and having kids.
It's a very big difference inthe basics of life, so that's for

(46:35):
reflections on boomers.

John, just a quick recommendation,
you mentioned 1968,maybe Victor can comment on this.
There's a great book by Luke Nichtercalled The Year That Broke Politics about
1968, he's a great historian,by the way, too.

Yeah.

Yes.
Is really given so many of us historiansaccess to the White House tapes and
the Nixon tapes in particular,but, Victor,
any comments on that John's observation?

No, I wanted to just emphasize what you said,
the norms before 68 kinda hated eachother, but the norms were in it together,
you respect each other.
And the demonization of the other side,which certainly you saw in 68,
starting with Nixon, and with their own,they ate their own, demonizing Johnson.
And then demonizing Nixon, that was a bigchange in the norms of American politics,
and it's not Trump that startedin 68 sorry Victor, please.

I would just add that subsequent to the baby generations,
the problem, I think a lot of it,is that there's been a greater and
greater distance from the so-calledgreater generation that John mentioned,
got married, they fought a war.
And I'm teaching a class on World War IIat Zoom to Pepperdine graduate students

(47:45):
this semester, and it's just, they'revery smart kids, but they are so distant.
Each generation we get,
they have no personal knowledge ofanybody who fought in that generation,
that's their great-grandfathers ortheir dads, and so the.
The further you get away andeach generation.
I mean, Horace the poet and his ode said,we, a bad generation, are about

(48:08):
to produce a generation worse than ours,that's going to produce one worst of all.
There's a term in Latin for laudatortemporis acti, you're just as praiser
of the past age all the time, and soyou have to be careful about that.
But each generation,we're getting less grounded and
when you have a 1.6 fertility ratecollapsed the last 25 years from 2.1.

(48:35):
I mean, I understand abortion, butit's really not reproductive rights,
it's deproductive rights.
Because they've almost made it intoa national religion where abortions are up
over a million per year now, and yetthe fertility rates' going down to 1.6.

Wait, I gotta stop at this, this is not people getting pregnant
and getting abortions, this is choosingnot to get pregnant until you're 35 or 36,
and then, then you discover it's hard.
So this is->> Bill Whalen: But,
John, it also ties to no different.
John, you talked about people coming backfrom the war, getting married when they're
in their early 20s, but people waita lot longer now to get married, and

(49:13):
wait a lot longer to have children now,which ties down to fertility.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay, a quick exit question, gentlemen,
let's go into lightning round.
And that is,as you look at younger generations,
those who came after the boomers, do yousee any traits in the younger generations
that you wish we boomers possessed?

Well, this new generation is facing hardships that
the boomers and the next generation x orwhatever didn't.
In other words, it's getting very,very hard to justify going in debt for
100 or $200,000 with student loans andthen coming out with a major,
not in four years, but the average issix and a half years to finish college.

(49:51):
And then not being guaranteed a job,not being able to buy a house,
not being able to have their1.6 children in their 20s.
So they're facing burdens that the priorto post baby mentors didn't face.
And the United States, I think if welook at its cities, San Francisco,

(50:12):
Portland, Minneapolis, it's just adifferent world that we have bequeathed to
them these last, subsequent generation.
And oddly enough,when you talk to these kids,
you're starting to see that hardship,or that you're just beginning to
see the beginning of it I think that thatcollapse in American culture at least.

(50:35):
I mean, we still have the Internet,we have all these gizmos and pertinences.
But the actual fundamentals of life,
buying good food at an affordable price,buying a car at affordable price,
buying fuel at an affordable price,buying a house.
Being able to have three childrenat affordable, affordable price,
having one parent, as our parents were,for the most part, home, or

(50:59):
at least home a lot, that's out of reach.
And oddly enough, I think they're startingto get back to basics a little bit.
I've met a lot of kids that are 18,
19, and they're very hard working,and they're starting to reject some of
the values that they have absorbed fromthe last two or three generations.

(51:19):
So these are cyclical, andusually hardship creates good people,
affluence creates bad people.
Okay, HR, John, anything you wanna add?

Yeah. >> H.R. McMaster
I'm inspired by the younger generation,of course, there's a lot of continuity,
maybe between generations in the military.
Because there's certain people who wantto serve, who wanna be part of a mission
bigger than themselves, who are committedto kind of the sense of honor
associated with the military andthe willingness to sacrifice for
one another and the mission andeverything else.

(51:50):
But I'll tell you, I get tointeract with cadets at West Point,
they're fantastic, [LAUGH],
just like the junior officers that I knewin our army of the younger generation.
But now also with the students that Iinteract with, mainly at Stanford and
Arizona State University,I see a real desire to serve,
and then also a real desire to bebetter connected to one another.

(52:10):
Of course, this is a generation that isbetter connected to one another than ever,
electronically, but quite distant fromone another at times psychologically and
socially.
So I think that there's a real desire,whether it's on sports teams or
serving in an organization wherethey can make a difference,
like in the military,that there is this desire to serve.

(52:33):
So, I mean, maybe it's a self selectinggroup that I get to interact with in my
classes and interactions, but I'll tellyou, I really am impressed by them.
I know they're much pilloried,but as Victor said, Victor,
I think that it's going to be the studentswho provide the corrective to
this kind of curriculum of self loathing.
And the orthodoxy that they're beingfed associated with organizing

(52:57):
the world into oppressor andoppressed, and
the valorization of victimhood,all this nonsense.
I don't say to my students directly,hey, this is nonsense, I just say, hey,
it's your job as a studentto question any orthodoxy,
to read a broad range of views andcome to your own decisions.
And so I think that resonates with themand I think I'm inspired by them and

(53:20):
I've got a great hope forthe next generation.
Because [LAUGH] we've screwed a lotof things up in our generation and
they're gonna have to deal with it, Bill.
So we better hope thatthey're on their game.
Mike, I get the last word, Niall isn't anymore.

Exactly.
>> [LAUGH]>> H.R. McMaster: Economist rule.

I agree that this generation faces an extraordinary
challenge, it's not an economic challenge,though.
Right now the US economyis doing fantastic.
And even if you're from reducedcircumstances, if you finish high school,
get married, get a job,keep the job, you're gonna do great.
And it is not economic hardship,

(54:02):
especially compared to lotsof the rest of the world.
Europe is 40% poorer than the US and notgrowing, they've got way worse problems.
But it is a social, political,economic and government challenge.
Every historical analogy to end of empireout of losing faith in who you are and

(54:23):
your basic systems,America is just screening all of them.
So do you wanna keep your constitution?
Do you wanna keep your freedom of speech?
Do you wanna keep a justice system thatisn't in there selecting your political
candidates for you?
Do you not wanna live underregulators who go to sex parties and
tell you that you can't take your kidsout to the park and stay six feet apart?

(54:49):
Are we going to lose, save our republicis the crucial, this is crucial.
And abroad, are we gonna be just, is italways retreat, take whatever you want,
and we're for the ceasefire andthe status quo, just eat it slowly.
So a great challenge of are wegoing to revitalize this country?
Yes, economics could be way better.

(55:10):
Politically, the institutions,instructions of American democracy
are gonna let the whole thing fall apart,that's this generation challenge.
And it will turn into economic very soon,even though it isn't now.
So they got a great challenge.
But I like the young people that I've met,granted a selective sample.

(55:31):
They can tell that what they've beenfed is so extreme, such nonsense.
They know they're being lied to,they understand it's bullshit and they
are looking for better ideas, and it'snot hard to find them if you look hard.
So at least many, many young peopleare turning away from the craziness,
understanding that the structuresthat sustain our life have

(55:56):
been destroyed around them andwant to fix them.
So I also, I gotta echo the HR's optimismto quote it up, although it's going to be
a very hard challenge to put together themess that our generation has left behind.

Okay, we'll leave it there, and it's on to the lightning round.

>> George Carlin (56:16):
Lightning round.

We have two questions for you today, one serious, one not so
serious, and John Cochrane.
The serious question goes directly to you,and it comes from John in Ohio rights.
In a recent show, John Cochrane saidthat there are no economic models
that show a link between the level ofinterest rates and the rate of inflation.
An article in the current issue of theEconomist argues that the Fed's interest
rate hikes over the past two years isthe main reason why inflation in the US

(56:42):
has cooled.
Can you help me understandthe different views?

God, you want a lightning round?

30 seconds or less?

The Guido Sarducci version, if anybody remembers that.

Exactly.

[LAUGH] I'll just say there's an interesting disconnect between
what every modern economic model does and
the sort of standard doctrineexpounded by the Feds.
Kind of interesting, what seems normal buthigher interest rates would reduce
the economy andthat would bring down inflation.
That just doesn't exist incurrent economic models, so
they're doing what any sensible persondoes, they're kind of winging it.

(57:19):
But let's just, I have a lot ofexpertise in monetary policy.
I've been studying for 40 years, andwhat I can tell you with great certainty,
nobody knows how it works.
And if they tell you they know how itworks, I don't know how it works, but
I know they don't knowhow it works either.
So, what this just requires is a littlebit of humility, keep it simple,
stop trying to spin enormousRube Goldberg contraptions
that you think you know how to control.

Okay, and now the not so serious question, a statue of Johnny Cash,
the man in black,has been unveiled in the US Capitol.
Questions for the group,
what other entertainers shouldhave statues in the US Capitol?
Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Ken Rock,Taylor Swift, Barbra Streisand, HR,
who'd you go with?
And I think I know you're gonna guess,it's gonna be some funk guy, right?

[LAUGH] Hey, I'll tell you why not?
Why not George Clinton from parliamentFunkadelic who basically told us,
hey, if you don't like the effect,don't produce the cause.
In many ways, I think he'sa modern day stoic philosopher.

John, I don't know what your musical tastes are as
opposed to the general,you wanna give us some thought, what?

I live in an unfortunate Iowa boomer from 1972, and
my life reflects the line fromthe wonderful Tom Lehrer song, which went,
we may have won all the battles,but they had all the good songs.
That was about the war against Franco.
And that certainly reflects the musicof 1972, which I still listen to, and
I ignore their politics [LAUGH].

Victor?

Well, I think the person who made the greatest effect on
music and popular culture probablyin the last 50 years was Bob Dylan.
And he's a very strange guy,right when there was that scene where
the Harvard professor was lockedout of his Cambridge apartment and

(59:11):
he said he was a victim ofpolice brutality cuz he asked,
the police didn't know who he was.
About the same time Bob Dylanwas giving a concert and
he was walking around without any ID andhe looked like a bum.
And he was gonna be on stage in a fewminutes, and the police picked him up and

(59:32):
they took him to the police station andthey said, who are you?
They didn't know theyweren't baby boomers.
And he said, I'm Bob Dylan,I'm a guy named Bob Dylan, and
I've got to go to a concert.
And then they said, well, you have no ideaand you're a vagrant, same kind of thing.
But rather than saying that hewanted the police ties put in

(59:53):
the Smithsonian Museum, he said,I don't blame these guys.
One person recognized him, drove him veryfast, so he got on stage just in time.
And they wanted him to say that he wasa victim of police [LAUGH] brutality.
And he basically said, if I saw a guy thatlooked like me and I was a police person,
I was walking down the street, I don'tblame them for doing what they did.

(01:00:16):
So he was kind of an off the wall guy, andhe was not easy to pigeonhole politically.
And he went through a lot ofmetamorphoses, both musical, politically,
culturally, so.
And he just won the Nobel Prize, so
I think he deserves a littlebit more recognition.

>> Bill Whalen (01:00:32):
Okay, as further evidence, you cannot trust boomers with anything.
I've been told that actually we have timefor one more lightning round question.
And here it is, it's from Markin Indianapolis, who writes,
I'm about to enter retirement.
I would like the Goodfellas toeach recommend three books that
will provide me with a betterunderstanding of their fields of study,
even better if it's one of their works.
You don't have to do three,you could do just one if you want to HR,
what do you want to point them to,battlegrounds?

>> H.R. McMaster (01:00:54):
Well, y no, I would say if so, military history,
American military historyis kind of my field.
I would say three great books to read,
you've got to understandthe revolution and the colonial wars.
And I would say Don Higginbotham's book,
the War of American Independenceis fantastic.
I would say that then you've gottaobviously understand the civil war.

(01:01:17):
And McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedomis the best one volume work there.
And then the world wars andWorld War II in particular.
So I would say Victor's book onWorld War II, or for a global perspective,
Gerhard Weinberg's world at arms.
So I would say if you'restarting in military history now,

(01:01:37):
you can't go wrong with those threeone volume fantastic histories.

>> Bill Whalen (01:01:42):
John, one, two or three books?

>> John Cochrane (01:01:46):
Well, I'll give you three authors.
Start with Tom Sowell, and certainlyhe has a great economics textbook,
any of his stuff on raceis just spectacular.
And I annually tell the Nobelcommittee that, get to it,
cuz this is just one of the mostspectacular things written.
His knowledge and
decisions is a masterpiece ofeconomics expressed in easy words.

(01:02:10):
Milton Friedman, you wanna read it?
Learn a little bit about economics,start with the easy one, free to choose.
And Friedrich Hayek, it is now theanniversary, I forget what anniversary is.
It must be 80th of the publicationof Road to Serfdom,
which was not just a great book,but also intellectual touchstone.
Let's not forget everyone wasa communist back in the 1930s,

(01:02:31):
including [LAUGH]the Roosevelt administration.
And that really, everyone assumedthat planning was good, and
that really was a watershed inthe late 1940s of waking us up and
a key to why we had such good growth.
So those are my three choices.

>> Bill Whalen (01:02:47):
Too humble to add your own book?

>> John Cochrane (01:02:50):
Not yet.

>> Bill Whalen (01:02:52):
Okay, Victor, you go last, do you wanna do three VDH books,
do you wanna do three outside of VDH?

>> Victor Davis Hanson (01:02:57):
I'll talk about just three, I think,
that are classics of military history.
And one is EB Sledge "With The Old Breed".
It's a personal memoir.
I wrote the introduction to oneof the paperback versions, and
it's about the 1930s generationthat stayed in the Marine Corps,
and then they taught the new draftees andwhat they did on Okinawa.

(01:03:20):
It's the most frighteningmemoir you could possibly read,
but it's ultimately a paeanto American soldiers.

>> Bill Whalen (01:03:29):
It's also the basis for the Tom Hank series of "Pacific".

>> Victor Davis Hanson (01:03:32):
Yeah, it's a very beautifully written book.
He was an etymologist, of all peopleat the University of Alabama.
Another one is,we all read Grant's memoirs, but
the best memoirs on the Civil War,William Tecumseh Sherman's 2 volume.
He was not just a tactician orstrategist, but
he was really a cultural geostrategist.

(01:03:54):
And he talked about how to defeat the selfin a very holistic way that was way ahead
of his time.
He had an enormous influenceon Liddell Hart and others.
And he wrote in a very,he has a very strange prose style,
it's not like Grant's tactician, butit's beautiful in its own, right?
It's a very easy read.
And then more contemporary, I've alwaysbeen a fan, I knew him very well and

(01:04:17):
I liked him.
He was a wonderful man, John Keegan, and
he wrote a book called"The Face of Battle".
And his argument was that injust this 100-mile radius,
history had radically changed.
And he looked at the Battle of Agincourt,the Battle of Waterloo and
the Battle of the Somme.
But he did it unusually,
from the point of view of what it wouldbeen like to fight there and the dirt and

(01:04:39):
the grime and the wounds andhow horrific these experiences were.
And he's also just happenedto be a master pro-stylist,
so it's a classic book andit's often underappreciated as well.
But it's a great read.
Yeah.>> H.R. McMaster: It is.
What battles have in common is human.
He talks about how battles are aimedat the disintegration of human groups.

(01:05:00):
And it's the struggle of men,and of course,
women now struggling to reconcile theirinstinct for self-preservation with
the achievement of some aim overwhich others are trying to kill them.
And it's fantastic in terms ofunderstanding what it takes to steel,
s-t-e-e-l, organizations againstdisintegration and battle,

(01:05:21):
and how important it is to build upconfidence and competence in small units.
Because, of course, the book isorganized into infantry, cavalry,
artillery and technological change.
But what's most striking is what hefinds is the major continuity in battle,
which is human, and I think yousee that playing out today even.

(01:05:43):
I just finished by saying he was a wonderful guy.
I was an obscure farmer who wasteaching at Fresno State and
wrote a book called "TheWestern Way of War: Infantry",
about how battle was like forthe common hoplite in the ancient world.
And he called me in Selma, California,from his house in Kensington,

(01:06:04):
London, and said,I saw an advance copy from Alfred Knopp.
I love your book andwould you let me write the introduction?
So it was an obscure book and hisintroduction made it a near bestseller,
and I've been in his debt ever since.
And he was just a wonderful person anda beautiful writer,
and he was just a nice guy.

(01:06:25):
Struggled with post-polio syndrome,so he was quite courageous as well.

>> Bill Whalen (01:06:30):
Gentlemen, I'm going to leave it there.
Great conversation,thanks for coming on, Victor.
It's been too long,hope to have you back again soon.
Our viewer's note our nextepisode of GoodFellows will
be in the second half of October,
It's going to be a recording of a liveshow we're doing at Hoover's fall retreat.
John, HR and Sir Niall Ferguson will beattending, if that's not enough nobility
for you, our guest is going tobe the Lord Andrew Roberts,

(01:06:53):
we're going to do a counterfactual show,which will be great fun.
By the way,we really enjoy getting your letters, so
if you do wanna send in questionsto John and HR and Niall,
go to hoover.org/askgoodfellows andpose a question to GoodFellows.
And we'll do our best totry to get it on the air.
On behalf of my colleagues, John Cochran,HR McMaster, the absent Truett,

(01:07:14):
Niall Ferguson and our very special guest,Victor Davis Hanson.
We hope you enjoyed the show,we look forward to see you again soon.
Until then, take care,thanks for watching.
[MUSIC]

>> Presenter (01:07:27):
If you enjoyed this show and are interested in listening to more
content featuring H.R.McMaster, subscribe to Battlegrounds.
Also available athoover.org/battlegrounds.
[MUSIC]

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OK Boomers: Victor Davis Hanson, Pagers, Zelenskyy, and the Fellows “Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation” | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}OK Boomers: Victor Davis Hanson, Pagers, Zelenskyy, and the Fellows “Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation” | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution