The Classicist Podcast with Victor Davis Hanson: “The New Dark-Age Mind”

 

As promised yesterday, here’s the second installment of the Hoover Institution’s new The Classicist podcast with Victor Davis Hanson (don’t get used to this pace — from here on out we’ll be releasing one new episode per week). Fair warning: this episode should probably be accompanied by a tumbler of scotch. Our topic: Victor’s thesis that the West is beginning the descent into a new intellectual dark age — something that he sees signs of everywhere from Ferguson to college campuses to the halls of power in California. Listen in below:

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  1. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @PleatedPantsForever

    TS – this new podcast is great but can you give us more that 15 minutes? You get us all hooked and, before you know it, the thing is over. If you and VDH are short on time maybe you could record the thing while he is shaving or grocery shopping or something. Multi-task! Thanks!

    • #1
  2. Troy Senik, Ed. Member
    Troy Senik, Ed.
    @TroySenik

    Pleated Pants Forever:TS – this new podcast is great but can you give us more that 15 minutes? You get us all hooked and, before you know it, the thing is over. If you and VDH are short on time maybe you could record the thing while he is shaving or grocery shopping or something. Multi-task! Thanks!

    It’s a difference in the model of the parent institution. With the exception of The Bookmonger, Ricochet generally produces long-form (30-60 minute) podcasts. For the shows that Hoover produces, however (just to be clear, Ricochet has nothing to do with producing The Classicist, The Libertarian, etc. — we just post them here), they’re looking for shorter hits, which seems to be standard practice for think tanks. I’m sure we’ll occasionally do longer specials, however, like the Libertarian episode we did with Epstein and Yuval Levin earlier this year.

    • #2
  3. user_1184 Inactive
    user_1184
    @MarkWilson

    Troy, keep ’em coming.  We can’t get enough VDH.

    • #3
  4. Pseudodionysius Inactive
    Pseudodionysius
    @Pseudodionysius

    The first sign or mark of this coming persecution is an indifference to truth. Just as there is dead calm before a whirlwind, and as the waters over a great fall run like glass, so before an outbreak there is a time of tranquility. The first sign is indifference. The sign that portends more surely than any other the outbreak of a future persecution is a sort of scornful indifference to truth or falsehood.

    ….

    The next step is, then, the persecution of the truth. [In ancient Rome] there were all manner of sacred confraternities, and orders, and societies, and I know not what; but there was one society which was not permitted to exist, and that was the Church of the living God. In the midst of this universal toleration, there was one exception made with the most peremptory exactness, to exclude the truth and the Church of God from the world.

    Source: Cardinal Manning The Pope & The Antichrist, 1861

    • #4
  5. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    The introductory music was taken from a film about a young African being oppressed by a myna bird. It’s racist.

    • #5
  6. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    VDH could well have included Matthew Shepard in his list of faux martyrs.

    • #6
  7. user_82762 Inactive
    user_82762
    @JamesGawron

    Troy,

    Again the VDH take on things is at a different higher level. His argument brings to mind for me an old Ayn Rand anthology of essays “The Return of the Primitive”.

    In it Rand goes through the greatest absurdities of the New Left of the 60s and 70s. The new modern left have regularized these ridiculous beliefs down to a science and instituted them formally with university positions, curriculum, administrators, and of course federal law to back it all up.

    Only reality can effectively argue with them. The dark comedy of the California water supply and the gross mismanagement thereof caused by environmental obsessives is just the perfect foil. The reality of natures water supply just doesn’t want to conform to the idiocy of left wing ideology.

    Maybe standing back and laughing at them is not just enjoyable but the best thing we can do.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #7
  8. Robert Lux Inactive
    Robert Lux
    @RobertLux

    The reason why inhabitants of the First World should keep the Third World in mind is that habits prevalent in the countries that became known as the Third World are a set of human possibilities that any people anywhere may adopt at any time. As Argentina showed in the twentieth century, falling from the First World to the Third can be easy and quick. The Third World mentality, namely, to undercut the logic of economics by force, existed long before our time and constantly tempts us to partake of it. As Lincoln said, the notion that some men are born with saddles on their backs and others booted and spurred to ride them, the temptation to think, “you work, I’ll eat,” is “the old serpent” itself. That mentality attracts us as much as it has ever attracted anyone. Business, labor unions, social groups of all kinds know that by associating themselves with the state, or bringing the state to side with them, they can get more for less: set prices, captivate markets, entitle themselves, and privatize profit while socializing risk. The feeling that those who know only how to work, only to serve customers, are unfortunates or fools, that wealth comes from forcing your neighbor rather than serving him, is all too normal. What we call the Third World is more or less how most of mankind has always lived, in part because, normally, the prince is very much in business.  [cont’d]

    • #8
  9. Robert Lux Inactive
    Robert Lux
    @RobertLux

    It is we Americans, along with some Europeans, who have strayed from normalcy into prosperity and who may be returning to normalcy.    

    -Codevilla, The Character of Nations, p. 114-115.

    • #9
  10. captainpower Inactive
    captainpower
    @captainpower

    link to rss feed please

    • #10
  11. Ricochet Inactive
    Ricochet
    @MKing

    captainpower:link to rss feed please

    seconded

    • #11
  12. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Troy Senik, Ed.:

    Pleated Pants Forever:TS – this new podcast is great but can you give us more that 15 minutes? You get us all hooked and, before you know it, the thing is over. If you and VDH are short on time maybe you could record the thing while he is shaving or grocery shopping or something. Multi-task! Thanks!

    It’s a difference in the model of the parent institution. With the exception of The Bookmonger, Ricochet generally produces long-form (30-60 minute) podcasts. For the shows that Hoover produces, however (just to be clear, Ricochet has nothing to do with producing The Classicist, The Libertarian, etc. — we just post them here), they’re looking for shorter hits, which seems to be standard practice for think tanks. I’m sure we’ll occasionally do longer specials, however, like the Libertarian episode we did with Epstein and Yuval Levin earlier this year.

    Excellent post, Troy–you’re on fire!

    • #12
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