267 Comments

1. Ted Pethick:

Well done sir – I would add 1 thing: 8 years of exhaustion of fighting against the jihad of the left and the media (same thing really…)

These years, and this exhaustion, have had to take their toll – but then we will fight back – which is happening already, sooner than I would have believed

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:01 am 2. MJCIV:

Professor Hanson, you are a light shining in the darkness. I won’t give up if you won’t.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:20 am 3. Darrin:

Wonderfully said. You have expressed my heart with words I could not.

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:49 am 4. James R.:

Professor Hanson, yours is a mesmerizing depiction of the social, political and cultural nightmare we are experiencing, and reminds me of words from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah: “We grope for the wall like the blind; we stumble at noonday as in the night.”

Another shoe could topple from the rack, involving collaboration among Russia, Venezuela and China. Russia is rebuilding its military and has raised billions in cash for the purpose, agreeing to sell oil at $20 per barrel to China for several years hence. Chavez now sells us sour crude amounting to 11% of our imports (2006). China can easily pick up the market tab, and divert this segment of US oil supply to Asia. Chavez has been bullying the Venezuela port cities, threatening to arrest mayors and other officials for resistance to his ever-encroaching political/economic/domestic control.

Should we suddenly lose over a million barrels of daily crude supply, this would likely send even more shock waves of chaos through our groping, stumbling. blind society. It won’t be pretty: Atlas Shrugged, 1984 and Cuckoo’s Nest all at once.

Mar 21, 2009 - 5:11 am 5. Claude Hopper:

Sixty years ago my grand pa would say, “These young whippersnappers, they don’t know nuthin.” Now I see he was right.

Mar 21, 2009 - 5:25 am 6. smitty1e:

Another edifying outing.
About the only thing to add is that the renewal sought is readily available in the better churches.

Mar 21, 2009 - 5:36 am 7. vb:

This rant is one that many of us wish we could articulate half so well. Thank you.

Mar 21, 2009 - 5:46 am 8. Pops in Vienna:

Wow Doc, I’m saving this article forever. Thanks for articulating a lot of the feelings I’ve been experiencing lately. I think you and many of the people who leave comments on your blog are a remnant of an America that was once great. But, unfortunately, we are greatly out numbered.

The old testament is full of examples of the Almighty using foreign powers to punish Israel when it failed to obey the commandments. Have we come to that point in our history? Perhaps it is even for the best because we’ll never be able to reform or change what is taking place from within, just for all the reasons you have cited. Our national character has become too corrupted and our people too selfish.

I’m interested in your theories on how the actual fall will finally take place. Will it come from the Chinese, because they will actually own the country or will it be from Islam; which isn’t soft, confused or afraid to act?

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:25 am 9. Allison Aller:

I just got back from a visit to my rancher cousin and her husband in Northern New Mexico.
They embody all the qualities you articulate as lost these days: dignity, humor, intense responsibility, politeness, competence, courage….
It makes me think that our culture, as cut off as it has been for fifty years from hard work out in all weathers, has lost the source of its goodness, too.
I wonder if there is a direct correlation?

Mar 21, 2009 - 7:36 am 10. cfbleachers:

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”

Ayn Rand

VDH, there are indeed days of discontent, despondency, even some… approaching despair…. for this land of ours. We are at war with our own information stream (as suggested by your first commenter Ted) and we are losing ourselves, our sense of truth and honor, our national identity in that war.

In a land where truth no longer matters, all that remains is a lie. Truth in “the approximate” is no truth at all.

If man’s proper estate is an upright posture, we have been bent into a question mark by the acceptance of distortion as fact, filtered facts as “news”, and forgery as documentary which now act as our guideposts in self-governing this land of ours.

Do not lose that inner hero, my esteemed friend, VDH…the road and the battle set upon taking back the truth we deserve…. is blazed by your words.

And there are more of us who are inspired by you to soldier on it behind you, than you can ever know. Thank you for all you do, you indeed are a hero in my eyes and in your soul.

Mar 21, 2009 - 8:21 am 11. cfbleachers:

are blazed by your words….(wish I had an edit button)

Mar 21, 2009 - 8:30 am 12. RJ:

You’ve articulated my thoughts better than I could myself.
Thank you.

Mar 21, 2009 - 9:09 am 13. BellaMia:

Check out this link that show who benefited from the AIG bailout funds – which banks and institutions the money was shuffled to – and notice who is on TOP. Connecting the dots.

http://thebigtalker1210.com/pages/15118.php

Mar 21, 2009 - 9:21 am 14. JohnR223:

Victor is getting more and more riled up! I love it. All he was missing in this rant was hubris and nemesis.

One thing for sure, no one is going to accuse the cohort of being the Second Greatest Generation.

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:00 am 15. Chavo:

Who is John Galt?

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:01 am 16. PM:

Thanks VDH. Take heart – our spirit is not dead, and we are not at the end. As the pendulum swings left, so it must swing right, and the lessons learned in this era will be indelible.

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:20 am 17. Thrasymachus:

There is one last bubble to burst, after all the others- real estate, oil and other commodities, stocks- and that is the Obama bubble. Plenty of people, high and low, thought that this man really would turn things around. It is beginning to dawn on people he and his crew don’t have any idea what they are doing. Getting a grip on things can only start when people realize there is no more magic fairy dust left.

At the same time, conservatives are going to need to face up to how much Bush contributed to all this. I campaigned for him in 2004, and I think it was very important he won so the war on terror would be continued. He held on in Iraq, just barely, but gave up on Iran, Syria, North Korea, and just about everything else. And this is why we can see Obama’s foreign policy changes little from his.

Domestically we got out of control spending and crass, logrolling politicians like Tom DeLay running things. Bush has plenty of responsibility for the mortgage mess. And the Republicans had full contro through 2006, so why did they not rein in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac? I think because they were following a gentlemen’s agreement to leave alone the Democrats’ honey pot so their own would be left alone.

The US as a whole is following the path of California, which is total fiscal insanity.

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:24 am 18. David Johnson:

Although I have never contributed to this blog, I have been a fan of yours for several years. Thank you for expressing what so many of us feel. Also kudos for the brilliant political parody “Bush did it.” That essay graphically exposes the rampant hypocrisy of the Democrats and the media.

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:46 am 19. Instapundit » Blog Archive » VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days? It is perhaps…:

[...] VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Why are so many Americans so depressed about things these days? It is perhaps not just the economy.” Some are depressed. Others are angry. But they tell us that depression is just anger turned inward. . . . [...]

Mar 21, 2009 - 11:47 am 20. Cienfuegos:

I hate to see you depressed. I am certain it has much to do with the change in administration and therefore in the good ship America’s course. It could be said that at the very least Bush, his people, their character (cf. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Petraeus, Colson), his worldview — all were arrayed against the forces and trends that you lament in this essay. They say it’s darkest before the dawn … I believe America will shudder and rise, shake off these embarrassing girlish daisy chains, and summon forth its pride and self respect once again. If all that remains for us is to lead by example, then I shall embrace your essay as a call to arms to improve as much as possible my daily comportment, the words that I speak, and the visions that I share. We are Americans!

Mar 21, 2009 - 11:49 am 21. Andrew X:

I am prone to get wordy in these forums, but I stumbled across the pithy-est one line explanation for it all. I wish I knew where so I could hat-tip.

“The classroom spitball throwers are the ones in charge.”

It is as simple as that. And is there any part of this, ANY part whatsoever, that the rabid left has not been actively trying to bring about for decades? Any one single part? Any of it at all?

They have triumphed.

But of course, they are not to blame.

The conservatives who have warned about all this also for decades? THEY’RE the ones to blame for it all. And people believe it.

No bangs, just whimpers.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:01 pm 22. Insufficiently Sensitive:

There is one last bubble to burst, after all the others- real estate, oil and other commodities, stocks- and that is the Obama bubble.

The problem might well be, when that bubble bursts it may do so violently. If the last 50 million Messiah-acolytes see their hope fading and a change leading the rest of us in a counter-movement, they have enough street soldiers to make life miserable for an awful lot of people.

There’s plenty of rising disgust against the current ‘government’ antics in Washington, but where’s the leadership to propose a better path? Certainly not with Michael Steele, who yesterday simply threw in his lot (and the Republican Party with it) with the Obama-led and MSM/Congress-supported lynch mob against some AIG bonuses.

Bills of Attainder be damned, contract law be shredded, let’s continue with the great American TV festival of Days of Rage, and to hell with deliberative government.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:02 pm 23. John Work:

Dr. Hanson, thank you for telling it like it is in a very eloquent way.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:05 pm 24. Niel:

Once again you put my vague unease into elequent words.

You have described why I have recently found myself turning on the reading light, retiring to my wing-backed reading chair, taking out Gibbons and reading about the future.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:17 pm 25. GayPatriot » Obama’s “Perpetual PR Mode”:

[...] Davis Hanson weighs in on the President: Sorry, I don’t want my President joshing about the Special Olympics on Leno. I don’t want him [...]

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:18 pm 26. Insufficiently Sensitive:

Bush has plenty of responsibility for the mortgage mess. And the Republicans had full contro through 2006, so why did they not rein in Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac?

Sir, that is a blatant assertion of flatulent resonance with no supporting facts. The Community Reinvestment Act, foundation of the mortgage mess, was deliberately contrived by the Carter and Clinton administrations as a perpetual motion machine to re-elect Democrats. Under it, saver A saw his savings lent by bank B to high-risk house buyer C by government coercion, with no due diligence allowed. Party D then took credit for this coerced largesse, which bought them votes. And while at it, Party D emplaced their functionaries Jamie Gorelick, Joe Johnson, Franklin Raines etc at Fannie and Freddie where they awarded themselves obscene salaries and benefits, and sloshed out huge campaign funding to Barney Frank, Chris Dodds and one Barak Obama.

The Bush administration made about 20 proposals to rein in Fannie and Freddie with additional regulations beginning in 2001, all of which were killed by Congressional Democrats, cheerfully overdosing on the F&F gravy train. It only ran off the rails when real estate prices failed to continue rising perpetually.

And now that the F&F gravy train is dead, we see Obama’s grotesque ’stimulus’ bill is named yet another ‘Reinvestment’ bill. Only this time, the intent is to apply it to the whole country, not just the zip codes inside those old invisible red lines. And yes! The CRA is still on the books, and loans must still be made to folks who can’t show resources to repay them.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:19 pm 27. Jack Marcotte:

Essential vdh

We need to get to the core of the problem. Enumerating the chafe will never let us find the wheat.

We are being blinded and choked on chaff. The core kernel is the nature of who BHO is and what he is not.

Who we are as Americans and what we needed to be to build America.

It is who BHO and his syncopates are and what made them. All growing in number like a mold out of the Sun light of truth.

They are all products of a river of subversion that has been going on in the USA starting with the cold war anti American communist spies and American communist sympathisers.

A common cause to bring down America. A shoe pounding.

Collectivists. Equal outcome idiots. Romantic Fools and economic predatory parasites like Soros. Ivy League educated middlemen who are taught to game the system.

Affirmative action “victims” who are getting theirs. A match made in hell. A mindless fifth column.

Made anti American to rationalize the racism and unfair nature of affirmative action giving them unearned benefits.

Lost individuals who are seeking external power–but not sweat to get it.

Typically educated beyond their intelligence–politicians, intellectuals, affirmative action groups.

Group thinking, victim acting, non productive, taking from others by Government means and power consolidation.

Hiding in the shadows feeding off assets made by others who were not paying attention.

They,the others were and are working to meet their responsibilities and carrying this putrid mess at the same time. Wake up.

BHOs seeking the fertile affirmative action ground in America’s Universities to sharpen their proboscises.

To be injected with the Arguments needed to sustain the rationalizations needed to accept unearned “gifts”.

“Sensitive” to human “rights” with no sense of individual human responsibility, integrity or moral value.

Feeding the grade schools of America with “Teachers” who do not notice that their ideas are not American. But they are so “sensitive”.

Like feeding little lions with tofu. Killing the lions, not allowing them to reproduce but so correct.

This river of puke covered in perfume has found outlets in public schools dominated by Unions and writers simply rewriting history.

All done under the growing fragmentation of the American family caused by the very process.

No local, regional, moral or family oversight on what is happening.

A welfare system that promotes this American fragmentation into victim groups to insure votes needed to maintain ignorant power.

All designed by “do good” socialist ideas stabbed into America’s heart by a Utopian language that cannot be refuted due to abject ignorance about the real results of these ideas.

The real results have been going on and are self evident. Look in the Jails, Hospitals, Schools, inner cities and crime rates.

MSM is blindfold and dumbed down to not “see” it and conclude it is not there. They are dumb rats mesmerized by the snake’s eyes. They will be the first to go.

All Designed to create A capital and individual responsibility destroying collectivism and ugliness delivered and covered up in a Utopian romantic verbage.

This! This very system has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people over the last 100 years. Russia, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, Cambodia and it is not over. Putin thinks not.

All in the name of what BHO is now saying on American soil.

A stupid semi literate nice guy. A POTUS. A talk show comic. An individual created by an affirmative action system that has to create and falsify Anti American ideas simply to justify its rationality. Now his ideas.

Anti American to the core. A knife being slipped into the heart of America with a pain killer of government handouts–working Americans money. A revolution to over throw America financed with American dollars by our own government “of the people”.

A putrid stream of death allowed to be carried in on the cloaked backs of ignorant, totally stupid politicians who want to maintain power.

Aided and promoted by psychotic intellectuals who need to rationalize and create their self worth by creating a myth that they alone can be the arbiter’s of what is right and wrong.

There is no GOD. Only their old but new to them ideas spouting forth from their rumpled skin, shaking hands and pot seeded heads.

Bill Ayers is a poster boy. Still alive because he is also a coward along with his wife. Hiding in America’s freedoms. A yellow snake.

America will not renew itself with the less than human products of this stream of humanity created as parasites and victims.

We are now at a high water mark. From here on out productive assets will be dismantled and will be replaced by printed money and protection of status quo with a still growing “victim’s rights” agenda.

To be replaced by chaos and revolution and that will be replaced by starting over. Get used to it. Get some backbone.

It is sickening to listen to the CEO’s kneeling before Barney Frank.

Don’t buy their products. They will do nothing but extend the pain by being weak.

Make them fail.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:24 pm 28. Anthony:

We have truly entered the Age of Hooper.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:26 pm 29. Japanorama:

Does the Left believe that anger will never be turned outward?

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:27 pm 30. exceller:

More than any other person, your writing seems to capture and express the very thoughts and feelings that have been rattling around in my mind. Bravo to you sir on your eloquence, and thank you for speaking about things that used to be taken for granted, fundamental things like good/bad, and the damage that has been done by lowering the bar and allowing so much coarseness in our society. You see the same things that many of us do, but it’s so rare to find somebody that can articulate it so well. I really look forward to all your columns.
Many thanks.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:37 pm 31. Mike_K:

The Congress makes me think of the Athenian Assembly that voted to recall Alcibiades after having voted to send the expedition to Syracuse, assuming that he would command. The result was the fall of Athens after a few more years. The result of Obama’s reign ? Time will tell.

Mar 21, 2009 - 12:44 pm 32. Bob:

I don’t want to be a Joad and find nothing enobling in the concept. I work hard and am debt free and if you believed like I do that this whole financial mess was a prethought evil plan you’d be more furious than depressed.
If I have to starve I’d rather do it to see Frankilin Reins(?) go to jail.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:03 pm 33. BillJ:

DR. My sincere thanks for expressing my pent up feelings. I can think of only one way out of this sewer- Petraeus, Petraeus,Petraeus!

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:08 pm 34. Nancy:

Do please read the final paragraph of Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence. Boredom, he says, will help solve these problems, at least culturally (although he wrote his book before Lord Obama got moving really destroying the economy). Boredom will cause people to reopen old texts as the record of a fuller life, and that will, among other things, “resurrect enthusiasm in the young and talented, who keep exclaiming what a joy it is to be alive.”

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:09 pm 35. JMH:

The Bush administration made about 20 proposals to rein in Fannie and Freddie with additional regulations beginning in 2001, all of which were killed by Congressional Democrats…

This, I think, is the source (or at least a manifestation) of the source of so much despair. The “good” people won’t fight. For whatever reason, the Republican party leadership, even when in power in D.C., simply didn’t do what was needed. Of course the Democrats fought against any reforms, the corrupt always will. What we needed was a Sherrif who fought back and won. What we got was one that struck a deal.

Congressional Republicans had 12 years from 1994 to 2006 to get D.C. under control and they didn’t. Instead, they adopted a marketing campaign of “not as bad as the other guys.” But still not good enough. Taking 5% less slop from the trough isn’t good enough.

That’s the source of our despair. We’re looking for leaders who will work for us, not sell us out and join the Klepocracy. We don’t see them anywhere. Not in government, not in business, not in entertainment. Where are they?

I remain optimistic. I think those leaders are out there, but it will have to get darker before we find them. The Boomers need to be shoved off the stage, for one thing. That ruined generation will not produce the leaders we need.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:14 pm 36. Tara:

Hanson betrays his retro-literary taste in holding Hemingway (alcoholic and suicidal), Fitzgerald (alcoholic poseur) and others as the only worthwhile literary figures in his past 20 years of reading. I suggest Hanson get out more, read current reviews of current fiction writers (start with T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, for e.g.) He is trapped in the syllabus of the past.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:16 pm 37. ajacksonian:

“At last, the heralds come and say: The barbarians are coming!

The city prepares to greet them:
Excited youths already chant their names
And rush to worship the new gods.
For did the poets not say they were a solution?
Now they write poems to their glory
Awaiting the day when they will be read aloud
While the impressed barbarians (fully armed)
Applaud, and learn them by heart.
Already they see their verses in bold letters
Hanging above entrances to the temples
From which they will banish the feeble gods;
They see libraries full of their books
From which they will banish stories that no more
have meaning to anyone.
But poets do not know they will be the first
To be hanged on the town square
Together with the youths who rushed to open
The gates
And let into the city those they have so eagerly awaited.
Because barbarians are barbarians
Not a solution.”

Jovan Hristic (1933-2002)

(tr. Nebojsa Malic)

Yes, indeed, have those saying that there is no right nor wrong and excuse any wrong and complain of any right now fully cheer and write poems to barbaric ends. We want the Punisher of government to be our benefactor and yet, we have seen that each time that is done the poets and those cheering on the end of what was are the first to be put up by that beast as it always eats its young. They always have such good intentions, those poets and young folks hailing the great and barbaric change from a Punisher with few duties to one with far too many to figure out. Great hossanahs are written about how good the Punisher of government will be once we give it ever so much good to do.

Unfortunately government can only Punish as that is how we need it to be to ensure that the ills of society are curbed. It is a necessary evil amongst men, best kept out of our daily lives and given very little to do and watched acutely should it seek to do one bit more.

Woe are those that cannot bear the burden of their meager lives nor the hardship of making any decision for what is the best use of their liberty. Shall we spend it on frivolities and then moan about not having health care? Well, done! Let government decide for us so we may all suffer from the lacks of poor decision making on our behalf. See a lack of public spirit? Change that with forced volunteerism, which is so good, is it not?

As the comedic saying goes: “The punishment will stop once morale improves.”

That is the credo of good things given to government to do.

Restraint of self is the heart of being civilized. Abandon to self-indulgence is decadence and only leads to one end no matter how sweetly it is presented. Strange that so many wish for more punishment, fewer decisions and to be enslaved to government and say ‘what a good thing this is’… rather than make a choice for themselves and let their fellow citizens do the same. That is enslavement to fear of yourself and never wanting to make a hard decision so as to live with its outcomes, but to want as a child does to have it all. And when that overwhelms you, then it is your taskmaster because we cannot all have everything all the time at low cost, or price, to ourselves without end. That is being driven by fear and will bring you to barbaric ends very, very quickly because you think you can have it all. If only everyone would just give up to get ‘good things’… become a barbarian, it is so easy, just lose all restraint of self and fear of ever having to make a hard decision and let someone else make it for you. Surely no ill could come of that?

After that comes Iron Times.

“Never take counsel of your fears.”

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:22 pm 38. heathermc:

The best stories are family stories. I told this story to my nephew who is a photographer, a successful hardworking one, in terrible times right now.

A.W. Graham was as a young man a prisoner of Louis Riel during the Riel Rebellion. He and his brother, when they were freed, WALKED in mid-winter through the snow from the Red River to St Paul’s. He became a surveyor, and a successful business person. He married, had no children. He was an intellectual, he liked poetry, he wrote some of it for the local newspaper (in Ontario). He invested most of his money in something called the Erie Railway (?). At the time, there was no ‘limited liability”. He was 65 when that company went bankrupt, and of course, he went bankrupt too. He had a heart attack. And then. He started a NEW business, a nursery business, selling seeds through the mail. And he made a good living with that little nursery.

You see, there were lots of people like AW, and there still are. But our thought world is blanketed by Britney and Paris.

I don’t know what the answer to this is. I think the Tea Party is one hopeful sign. I am a member of Team Sarah. I know that it is a dreadful harbinger for our future, that the US Government is being run by such decadents.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:24 pm 39. Tara:

I’m sitting on my porch in Washington D.C. watching one obese person after another waddle by. I moved here from Northern California six months ago and am appalled by the east coast diet (high in fat, salt, carbohydrates and sugar) as compared to the healthy fare prevalent in California. East coasters are not a hardy group; I look to the West for the most progressive, innovative and relevant ideas and projects.

We are what we eat. A change in diet can be revolutionary.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:24 pm 40. JorgXMcKie:

Japanorama: “Does the Left believe that anger will never be turned outward?”

Yes. Believe, deeply, in the Marxist formulation –that the producers are the enemy– and simultaneously that the vast majority of the public are “sheeple” to be driven where the Left wants.

I think you could sum up VDH’s argument as, “not enough individuals truly believe in the established truths of the world.”

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:33 pm 41. Cassandra:

A masterful list of reasons to be depressed, but you’ve left out the one fundamental thing that (a) led to the others and (b) makes me most depressed of all. That is, that a majority of our fellow citizens seem no longer to have the personal qualities necessary for citizens of a constitutional republic of limited government. Not only have they lost — or never developed — those abilities, they seem to have lost even the _desire_ for self-governance and ordered liberty. Rather, there are now just too many latter-day plebs, content to believe, follow, and be governed by the one (or, the One) who flatters them the most unctuously and convincingly, and satisfies the eternal pleb desire for panem et circenses. I fear we’re well on our way to becoming a banana republic, and there aren’t enough responsible citizens left to turn things around.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:35 pm 42. Jane:

Oh – Dr. Hanson. I have been thinking all the same thoughts. On Facebook I see my niece acting like a warm up for a porn movie. She attends parties at her college and and I can’t believe what they choose to take pictures of, funny scenes mimicking sex acts – ha, ha, ha! You know you are a fading generation when people can tell how old you are by your ability to write in a pretty cursive script. Everything is dying: decent writing, decent reading, decency in general. I now know why my grandmother was in a state of constant despair in the early 1970’s and yelled at me to cover up my bikini when I was in the house and not down on the dock! I have become my grandmother!

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:45 pm 43. heathermc:

another straw in this depressing hurricane: on my refrigerator, I have a list of the 7 Deadly Sins (good ol’ Pope Gregory the Great!) Some young people were at my house (there is an annual race from Skagway to Whitehorse), and one young lady looked at it… and laughed.

The interesting thing about that list is that EVERYONE knows what each of those terms refer to. Even now.

Mar 21, 2009 - 1:57 pm 44. MG:

Dr. Hanson,

The great achievements of my generation (those “slacker” Gen-Xer’s) include achieving mastery over energy and matter quanta, to birth the technology needed to decentralize energy production and mobility fuels.

This will lead to a decentralization of the economy, and then to our political structure. It won’t be easy, but the Baby Boomers gotta die off sometime, and will do so before my generation does.

Mar 21, 2009 - 2:07 pm 45. RDN:

Great thoughts.

Politics is no longer an ideology, or the difference of ideas/solutions but rather marketing. We do not understand the subtleness of marketing. How it wears us down, feeds on our lusts and desires. Stirs up in us greed, fear, worry, anxiety. The goals are, we should be afraid instead of confident, that we should be envious instead of content, jealous rather than charitable, that we should be angry with rather than love each other. Happiness is not found by getting even, or taking what is not yours.

The political class cannot abide with the good that is in our great country as it robs them of power over us. The media has no economic incentive to call them on their hypocracy as the turmoil sells their product.

If I observe my community closely, I see many happy people living rich lives within the chaos, the problems and circumstances of life seem to evade them as others wither and crumble. They live by a personal set of rules that prevents self induced misery, that steers them clear of disaster.

Turn off the noise, don’t fall prey to the marketing. Live free, they have no power except what we personally cede to them.

Mar 21, 2009 - 2:22 pm 46. The Fop:

The main irony is that “the greatest generation” consisted of scrappy, hard working people who did well for themselves. And what was their greatest desire? To give their children the college education that they never had. Mr. Hanson, I can sum up your rant in one sentence……we have become a society that looks down on people who work with their hands.

People like my 85 year old father knew that once he graduated from high school he was on his own and had to make the most of what he had learned in public school. Over the past 40 years children have been programmed by their own parents to believe that you can d*ck around for four years in a university, and not only will that diploma somehow enable you to earn more money than a plumber or an electrician, but more importantly, that diploma will make you a better, more enlightened, more well rounded person than a plumber or an electrician.

It’s high time that we realized that “education” and “academia” are not mutually exclusive. What we need is more “street smarts” and less “resumes”.

Mar 21, 2009 - 2:28 pm 47. Robert Winkler Burke:

Assuaging guilt with indulgences,
Is a time-tested trick,
Catholics did it long ago,
But Luther made them quit.

Now broadcast preachers sell the same,
Saying, God will bless you by sending funds!
But those same rich preachers in jets,
Must buy carbon offsets to not feel moribund!

If you are reading this poem,
For free from the internet,
Assuage your guilt! Send the author,
Your money, your house, your pet!

Don’t feel like doing that?
I have made the mistake,
I showed you how the con works,
You won’t let me from you take.

And what about socialism,
What’s the crafty con job there?
Allow taxation unto death,
For absolution somewhere.

The trick you will notice,
In this kind of scam,
Some group’s in the cash flow,
Grabbing all they can.

You were born free,
But quickly come vicious, traumatic cons,
Stay free in God,
Your money must be with whom it belongs!

Mar 21, 2009 - 2:41 pm 48. kenny komodo:

Thanks Doc, great article. I think many people are upset, angry, depressed, distressed, worn out and confused because they realize now they’ve been had by the Obambi. He doesn’t really inspire, does he. There is no real hope or change, is there. Just the same old same old, all wrapped up in a pretty brown package who has the ability to read his teleprompter with style and elegance. Hopefully we’ll recover but it’s hard to say if America will ever again be the “shining city on the hill” or merely the convenient city dump where the leftovers and retreads are tossed.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:01 pm 49. proreason:

Well, much as I love vdh, I beg to differ.

I’m not depressed. I’m mad as hell, and am more than willing to act when I see the person and movement to rally around. And I don’t think I’m alone.

And I’m not confused about what has happened either. It’s now absolutely clear that there has been a long term strategy to capture the education system and the media and to develop a demagogue and to act with lightening speed when that demagogue got elected.

Perhaps we should have seen it. Perhaps some did and cried out. But it didn’t reach my ears. I was worried in 2008. In fact, I was screaming as loudly as I could about it. But I still didn’t believe that in only 60 days we would see this massive an attack on the pillars of our country.

But we know now.

What we need Mr. Hanson, and I apologize for disagreeing so sharply with someone for whom I have enormous respect, is a stong person to galvanize the MILLIONS of us who are crying out for a leader with integrity and the courage to not only articulate the attact we are under, but the ability to organize an opposition. What I hear from you in this article is whining, I’m sorry to say.

I had hoped you would be one of those strong people with a national voice, and perhaps you can still be, but please, stop with the explanations and the empathy with depression and start with helping us defeat the criminal who are stealing our country.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:05 pm 50. jimbrown:

This depressing state so eloquently described by you makes me wonder how long our great country can remain in one piece.

Call it the “Vermont Scenario.” Vermont secedes and no one cares.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:08 pm 51. D Foster:

A large number of Americans feel the same and Dr Hansen. I also think, the majority of these same Americans, have taken their lives inward and are not participating in the Political Debate. They have given up and may never return, which may be the death to the Republic. If you lived your life by paying your bills and taxes when due, lived withing your means, run a honest business and by in large, followed the rules of society, you rare. At 72, I find myself and other life long members, no longer attending the Presbyterian Church,we have heard the last sermon on Gay Rights and or it is America’s fault that the Muslim Society America, and or George W. Bush as the most evil President in the history of the Country. This plus, we have a culture in Washington DC that is too difficult for a “Conservative” to understand. It does not appear to see any difference between a Republican or Democrat, I have for some time thought we have a “LET THEM EAT CAKE” attitude in Government. We may just see the return of “THE SUN GOD” in Barak Obama. This could be the final hit to the silent majority.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:42 pm 52. Tara:

RDN: You mean take responsibility for my own attitude, no matter what’s going on in the world? I love it. Sounds a lot like Obama who repeatedly stresses individual responsibility. Resist the insidious forces of marketing and that creepy word, “branding”, no matter how popular it is in San Francisco! Reverse the slogan: “Drop Before you Shop” from “shop until you drop”.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:51 pm 53. geoffgo:

JohnR223@14

How true. Our legacy will be cursed by every sentient being, from now on. We will be remembered as the “_____ If Only Generation“. Insert epithet of choice.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:52 pm 54. Sharon:

I always laughed off the left’s crazy ideas about global warming promoting unrealistic solutions to our energy needs completely ignoring the fact that wind and solar can never replace the energy grid and still maintain a robust economy.
I laughed when they promoted the cause of the Palestinians who murdered innocents, discriminated against homosexuals and Christians and refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
I laughed when they talked about opening dialogue with countries that oppress women, treat them like chattel,execute or maim anyone who disagrees with the barbarism of Sharia law.
I laughed when they praised Chavez and Castro while criticizing Colombia.
I never believed that these crazy ideas would ever be the guiding principles of The United States of America. Everything this administration has done since the day Obama took office is the exact opposite of what is right and moral. We should be rewarding free, democratic societies which allow their peoples to be whatever they want to be whether male,female,black,white,hetero or homosexual as long as they obey the rule of law. Instead we constantly criticize Colombia and Israel, two staunch allies who are doing everything they can to preserve the rights of their citizens to live in peace, while trying to court the completely irrational regimes of Chavez and Ajmadinejad.
Congress gives itself a raise, increases their office budgets, allows itself free car leases,airplane trips,foreign travel, jobs for cronies, earmarks for contributers at taxpayers expense while excoriating us to cut back on everything that makes life pleasureable. They want to limit corporate pay, but what about the obscene pay of Hollywood stars and athletes that they like to hobnob with at their ritzy Washington parties. It is only the engine of their fat cat lifestyle that they want to kill. Why is it okay for them to go on some executive retreat while it is wrong for a company to do the same.
How come I have to give up everything while they do not have to even pretend to care? There is a revolution coming.

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:55 pm 55. olivia:

Sadly, this Nation cast off it moorings and now…..

For those who believe as George Washington, that:

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained”

and as Thomas Jefferson, that:

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Then the discussion found in the link below will be a wake up call.

BAMA-NATION or

ABOMI-NATION?

AMERICA at the CROSSROADS!

Prophecy Update Radio hosted by Bill Salus interviews eschatology expert Dr. David Reagan this week. Dr. Reagan, host of the television program “Christ in Prophecy”, expresses his serious concerns about the present White House Administrations Pro-Abortion and Anti-Israel positions. According to Biblical precedence Americans appear to be leaving God no other option but to judge this once great country. A severe warning resounds to Christians throughout these United States to repent, humble themselves, and pray for the well being of their country and its extremely liberal President.

What is President Obama’s present spiritual condition and is he being true to his campaign promises? Is he an evangelical Christian, a Muslim, or a Humanist? Is America’s President threatening to turn his back on the nation of Israel?

LISTEN NOW to this fascinating interview to find the answers to these questions and many more.

http://isralestine-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/obama-nation-or-abomi-nation-america-at.html

Mar 21, 2009 - 3:59 pm 56. liberty4usa:

“The Age of Pretending” is what I call it.

It is as if delinquent children now portray life as a party, without worry or consequence.
These immature icons of the left impress with their silliness and defiance of reason, while we wonder how this all came to be.

We need adults in charge again, not these spoiled children that have painted us as all with the self loathing they cling to.

A president with no ideas on how to better our country, but well suited to disassemble it, wanders around with his teleprompter of deceit- like a traveling carnival showman to thrill crowds but is rather crude and unimpressive when caught without it.

At least a generation of kids have not grown up to learn what individual freedom and responsibility means. Our education system was infiltrated and manipulated decades ago to reward collective thought and discourage individual growth.

It seems to be working as we have so many that “feel” that government has a duty to take care of everyone’s worries. Just ask them they will tell you they “all” feel the same about that!

“That’s not fair!”; has always been heard on our playgrounds and now it is heard in our so called leaders rhetoric in every subject. They are going to make it all fair again for all the children, and the children, being children, believe them.

Think about the leaders in the left Pelosi, Franks,Schumer, Dodd, Reid, Obama and you can see they are all like ignorant children playing grown up with our lives, and yes it is depressing!

It’s time to flunk these delinquents and get some real grown up adults back to running this great, great country!

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:04 pm 57. mac:

Try this, Dr. Hanson:

“For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted.

Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction.”
–Helaman 5:2-3

Our nation has been warned by people shouting from the rooftops. Most of us aren’t listening.

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:07 pm 58. BloodhoundBlog.com | Victor Davis Hanson: “I’d prefer one gall bladder surgeon to fifty Botox experts, a good Perkins engine mechanic to 1,000 deconstructionists at the MLA, one competent chemist to fifty government attorneys.” | Nationa:

[...] Davis Hanson, a brilliant old Hellenist, here seeming more old than brilliant, wonders, “Who is John Galt?” We sense we are trimmers and redistributors, and [...]

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:18 pm 59. LS:

VDH, I love you like a father (except when you criticize my atheism), but, although there’s truth in what you say, there’s another side as well. The ‘Great Generation’, who certainly did many wonderful things, also elected FDR and acquiesced to many of the further erosion of our rights through the later decades and through their election of the presidents who increasingly strayed from the Enlightenment philosphy that started us off so well. The Sixties weren’t all bad, with their fight against the Drug War-which the Founding Fathers would have condemned as pointless and unjust-and their fight for ‘civil rights’.

As cfbleachers commented: this crisis is just beginning-the drama as yet unfolding. You are talking to friends, and we understand that everyone has their moments of despair (which may in part be based on truth). But, since freedom requires eternal vigilance, the exercise of that additional vigilance now may result in greater knowledge about the causes of our decline, and that greater knowledge may lead to a fundamental change in our values and attitudes as a nation. The Internet, by itself, for example, has given those with the courage to speak the truth much greater power, has exposed the ‘fourth estate’ as derelict in its fundamental function, and has already nurtured the growth of an an alternative source of news and analysis, a sort of cyber-equivalent of the power of talk radio. Think of the power of the printing press, and its role in the spread of Englightenment ideals, multiplied a hundred-fold. One man, such as yourself, VDH, has made all the difference to me, and with such others, we can make all the difference to our country.

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:20 pm 60. geoffgo:

Thrasymachus@17

And you and me T, and Dr. Hanson now have a responsibility, a duty to convince all those folks on whom it is beginning to dawn that Obama and his crew don’t have any idea what they are doing, that instead O & Co. know exactly what they’re doing, and it’s outright malevolence. The Executive and Congress are colluding to intentionally destroy US. The overlords call the pogrom something else.

It’s not like those hundreds of new Bills introduced so far this year, sprang forth fully crafted in the last 2 months. The Left was prepared to launch. Congress passed 60,000 new laws in 2008. How many have you broken, unknowingly? Just last year’s.

Now that Congress can ignore the Attainder provisions in the Constitution, what stops them from directly debiting your checking, savings and investment accounts to confiscate what they will? By new law.

“Says here Thrasymachus, that you owe $289,567 in back taxes, due to your not filing Form ABC as required by HR 23246. Since your name isn’t on this list of exemptees, be informed we have debited all your accounts. Your court date is February 29, 2013; if it’s not delayed by the shortage of bailiffs and/or kapos.

Please note: HR23246-paragraph 67A…(cf. Rule 238 – section 51) says that no “public funds” can be made available for your defense regarding this matter.

It’s only insanity to the sane. To the insane, it’s party time.

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:32 pm 61. Rich H.:

Dr Hansen: I am a 66 year old California native whose ancestors came across the continent in the mid 19th century in a Conestoga and from Oklahoma when the dust blew. I am a veteran who reads you regularly and know about the Okinawa place where your namesake died. I can milk Holsteins and worked in a lumber mill to get to college. Your writing tells me you are a neighbor and a friend.

I despair as you despair. Although Americans have been instinctively loath to take direct action against the level of danger that has come forth to steal our country,a reaction is building. Maybe we will each remember all the others who faced the hardships brought by the fools and tyrants of of their time and step up as they did against our petty oppressors.

Keep up the sort of work shown in this essay. I don’t know how exactly we will translate it into action, but your words are truely inspirational. I will not let the likes of Nancy Pelosi and her ilk erase what is left of the US Constitution. Rich H.

Mar 21, 2009 - 4:35 pm 62. Zane:

I would like to know how many actors are the sons or daughters of actors/producers/hollywood types. Acting is not that hard. My kids get academy awards at bed time or when they want to get away with something all the time. Hell, any of us could act given the opportunity. If it wern’t for Penn’s dad he’d be tending bar somewhere. Nepotism in Hollywood. What’s the percentage and why do these people matter?

Liberal Hollywood = rich kids with no clue.

Mar 21, 2009 - 5:27 pm 63. RDN:

Tara/all
I don’t hear anything about personal responsibility from Obama, except when it makes for good sound bites (marketing). IMO He is the grand wizard of marketing!

It’s not what politicians say to us, it’s what they do to us. Obama is saying things while doing the exact opposite.

You never solve a problem by creating another problem.

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:27 pm 64. buddy larsen:

zane, they matter because Hollywood is a global industry with well-established distribution channels. They could film a gopher taking a dump and get millions of young urban influentials in a hundred countries to watch it with keen interest.

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:31 pm 65. buddy larsen:

Rich h. –i’m with you and am standing by.

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:34 pm 66. geoffgo:

D Foster@51

This plus, we have a culture in Washington DC too difficult for a “Conservative” to understand.

It is not too difficult to understand. It repulses moral people.

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:36 pm 67. Michael Lonie:

It’s really a bit unfair to compare Barney Frank to Cleon, whether the Theban or the Athenian. The Cleons were doing their best for their countries. What has FRank done except harm the USA by his legislative actions?

As for the rest, if we could get some intelligent people to run in 2010 and elect them on the basis of reversing most of the obamateurs’ actions we might get somewhere. Pitch out all the liberals from Congress (of either party, for a lot of Packs are RINOs) and put in sensible people and we’d see a sea change soon. But that is assuming the voters will recognize the dangers and do what they can to counter them. If not we will get the government we deserve. Then: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:49 pm 68. Ron Kean:

Peggy Lee

“Is That All There Is?”

I remember when i was a girl
Our house caught on fire
And i’ll never forget the look on my father’s face
As he gathered me in his arms
And raced to the burning building out on the pavement
And I stood there shivering
And watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over
I said to myself
” Is that all there is to a fire ? ”
Is that all there is?

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And when I was twelve years old
My daddy took me to the circus
The greatest show on earth
And there were clowns
And elephants
Dancing bears,
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads

And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what
But when it was all over
I said to myself
” Is that all there is to the circus ? ”

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And then I fell in love
With the most wonderful boy in the world
We’d take long walks down by the river
Or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love

And then one day
He went away
And i thought i’d die
But I didn’t
And when I didn’t
I said to myself
” Is that all there is to love ? ”

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
If that’s the way she feels about it
Then why doesn’t she just end it all
Oh no. not me. i’m not ready for the final disappointment
‘Cause I know just as well as i’m standing here talking to you
That when that final moment comes
And i’m breathing my last breath
I know what I’ll be saying to myself
” Is that all there is ? ”

Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

Mar 21, 2009 - 6:59 pm 69. Paul M Hupf:

My parents, though born in this country, were of German ancestry. They spoke German to each other only when they did not wish the children to know what thhey were talking about. Neither had any high school diplomas. I started college in 1939. I was able to go to college because I worked weekends at 33 cents an hour and full time throughout the summers. Languages (Greek, Latin and German) were my major study. Once I asked my father (who had served in the American Army in Europe in WWI) if he would speak to me in German so that I could acquire some speaking facility in German. His answer: “No way! that’s the old country; you’re an American!”

Mar 21, 2009 - 7:13 pm 70. JAWolf:

One of the problems is that we send good men to solve the problems and they either get worn down, driven out or corrupted utterly. Once upon a time Barney Frank was, yes liberal, but against corrpution and reasonable. He courageously crossed the powerful Billy Bulger as a state legislator and found himself under Gerrymander assault afterwards. But then he became part of the problem and not the solution.

I mention Billy Bulger. One of his favorite lines is ‘Show me a reformer, and I’ll show you someone who won’t be around next year.” We need to be patient with the reforms. Patient and relentless. For the moochers know their sustenance is gotten by government control. To starve them we must wrest is away bit by bit. It will be no short task.

Mar 21, 2009 - 7:23 pm 71. Deana:

Dr. Hanson –

I don’t know how you do it but you manage to write what I feel and know in my heart.

Thank you.

Mar 21, 2009 - 7:24 pm 72. TLM:

VDH:

Great post followed by great comments.

Your impression of modern American society jibes with my own. Our political leaders (especially those in Congress) being a reflection of us, it should come as no surprise they are flailing around during this crisis, squandering their dignity and our money. They are just acting true to form. We’ve been no different ourselves these past few decades. It’s depressing, but then you notice more people are starting to see where we went wrong.

Bright spot last two weeks: Realizing that Obama does not possess the leadership characteristics of an FDR/Reagan/Lincoln. A real statesman, who had his political leanings and this crisis, could permanently change the trajectory of this country. I don’t think Obama has it. In fact, more and more, I think he’s an airhead — vain, fatuous and self-absorbed. The highlight of this “historic” presidency was on Jan 20th. It’s all downhill from there.

Tara @ 36:

VDH extols here the literary accomplishments of Hemingway, Fitzgerald et al. Their personal shortcomings are ancillary to his point. BTW, you sort of expect a classicist to have “retro-literary” tastes.

Mar 21, 2009 - 8:03 pm 73. Prof. Victor Davis Hanson: “Thoughts About Depressed Americans” « Prydain:

[...] March 22 by Will In a post from his Works and Days blog, Prof. Victor Davis Hanson writes on Thoughts About Depressed Americans.

Mar 21, 2009 - 8:08 pm 74. Pete:

Tara wrote: “Hanson betrays his retro-literary taste in holding Hemingway (alcoholic and suicidal), Fitzgerald (alcoholic poseur) and others as the only worthwhile literary figures in his past 20 years of reading. I suggest Hanson get out more, read current reviews of current fiction writers (start with T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain, for e.g.) He is trapped in the syllabus of the past.”

Tara, perhaps the only guide we humans have to our present and future is history, the multitude of lives lived before our time – what they learned, what they built, what they destroyed, what they preserved. The “wisdom of the ages” is not simply an aphorism, but an expression of a deep truth. Much of that truth lies in the great writing and thought of the past. That Dr. Hanson uses what you call a syllabus of the past is a tribute to his wisdom. That you reject it, is a symptom of your lack of the same.

One other point: Great art is not a function of the personal habits and moral rectitude of the artist; they aren’t connected. Attacking Hemingway for being an alcoholic or suicidal is an ad hominem attack, an ‘attack on the man’ and not a mature judgment of his work.

Mar 21, 2009 - 8:42 pm 75. bruce:

Professor Hanson,

My mind meandered back to my father after reading your article. In a private moment with my father, two days before he passed from cancer, just shy of his 80th. birthday, tears were running down my face when my Dad mustered all of his strength and sternly told me to stop the tears. He had had a good life with a wonderful wife, two good boys and adoring grandchildren. He was not afraid to die. He told me to save my tears for all the boys he served with as a corpsman on Peleliu and Okinawa, who were not as fortunate as himself. At that moment, tears started to flow from my Dad’s eyes. Those tears were not tears of sorrow for himself, but tears of thanks to God for an extra sixty years of life.

Forgive me for shedding a few tears for my father and to what has happened to our once great Republic.

Mar 21, 2009 - 10:00 pm 76. Master Cranky Hucklebubble:

Dr. Hanson,

A very timely post. I have been an installer in the cable business for the last decade and my job has taken me into thousands of homes where I have met people of every possible political,religious,racial,social and economic stripe. I have wired upper-end houses and have slithered through the spider-webbed,rat-infested crawlspaces of complete dumps. These past two years I have definitely noticed, in my humble profession, the same symptoms you describe from yours. There is some bad Mojo going on. People are uneasy and it is rare that I enter into a situation where there is genuine peace and contentment. That being said, I usually get on well with customers and it is very rare (maybe once every two years) that I have had to mix it up with those of exceptional rudeness.
Cable installers, in general, have something of a bad reputation and -this might seem off topic- I would like to express my opinion as to why; because I believe that what is happening in the company where I work is a microcosm of what is going on in our national politics. (Assuming that things, in reality, work as described in William Blake’s “Augeries of Innocence”).
First, a disclaimer: There are a few bad apples, but the majority of the techs in my crew are hard-working,intelligent, results-oriented folk who have a genuine desire to serve our customers. Go up through the ranks to management, however, and the level of competancy seems to decrease in inverse proportion to one’s position on the food chain. Many of those in leadership positions have tended to arrive there either through strategic social networking skills or as a reward for getting injured on the job. I believe that our CEO’s are decent men who genuinely care about their employees but they are living and moving and having their being in an echo chamber of synchophants and yes men. They want to keep things positive at the expense of the real. And in order to keep costs down they are moving 180% in the wrong direction. Rather than provide the techs with decent tools and signal meters and lap tops, we are left to scrounge around on our own to do the best with what we have. Like many in the crew, I use my own tools and lap top. We all check out extra equipment in the morning because, increasingly the internet modems, phone modems, and digital boxes that we are issued are recycled and bad and we often have to waste time at a customer’s home trying out a couple of pieces of bad equipment before we arrive at something that actually works. Many of the remotes that we issue customers are recycled with buttons that stick or the batteries are drained or they are stained with cigarette smoke from from years of use in another couch potato’s house. Even the brand new routers that we use for networking come out of the box with scuff marks and are obviously retreads (often still with the previous owner’s SSID and encryption codes). At present, we are out of channel line-ups as well as the literature that explains how to use our equipment. We installers often work through our lunches in order to make our scheduled appointments on time. We work in the rain and snow, (the more so because that is when people are in their homes with little to entertain themselves besides the services we provide.) Despite suiting up and showing up (It has been almost a year and a half since I called in sick); despite my productivity and quality work, despite the many promises by managers that a merit increase in pay is forthcoming, I have only received the usual 3% cost of living increase each year. (Our newest installers start at 12 dollars an hour in one city and 10$/hr in another.) Our managers regretted to inform us that, due to the bad economy, our cost of living increase this year will be reduced to 1.5%. They told us that the good news is that they will be hiring teams of direct sales reps and purchasing new vans for them to aggressively enlarge our subscriber base. They will also be investing in a GPS tracking system to keep tabs on the location of each technician, a fancy paperless billing system (like UPS uses),and third party contractor to call customers after each install to check on their level of satisfaction. They will not, however, be purchasing new tools and the right equipment for those of us who actually have to go to the customer’s home and do our jobs.
Last week, I visited our company headquarters and saw the party atmosphere that purvades our call center of 50 or 60 phone reps. They understand the customer more as an abstraction than as a living, breathing being like themselves. They have a very nice break room and a fancy espresso machine with a choice of 3 of the city’s best brands of coffee. They have regular hours, regular breaks, and regular lunches. When I introduced myself as an installer I sensed from some of them that I should be grateful that they condescended to shake my hand. In the Hindu caste system of the cable world, installers are the Chandela class. I left that place with the impression that these people are at once clueless as they are solipsistic. I also left resigned to the possibility that if it is like this everywhere, things will get worse before they get better. The morale in my crew is the lowest it has ever been.
That being said, I am grateful to have employment. Despite the hassles and the set backs, I bust my butt, the time goes by fast and I go home knowing that I at least accomplished, or tried to accomplish, something real.

Lacking both, I do pray for wisdom and courage.

Mar 21, 2009 - 11:01 pm 77. Mancinus:

From now on Doctor, I shall call you Gideon. You must come in from the field and lead us.

Mar 21, 2009 - 11:11 pm 78. Gaffe Prices:

I’m not depressed, I say weakness is a liablity for the weak. not for the rest of us.

Smugness, and snobbery will only get you so far.

I love batting the boule right back at them, with logic and argument, with the best of them.

But when I start gittin nervous, and worryin, and wreeenging my hands, I say lets bat that right back at them too.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:44 am 79. Pajamas Media » America in Depression:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Mar 22, 2009 - 2:16 am 80. JVSKM:

Thank you Sir for your always insightful comments.
Eventually America will run out of Kool-Aid
and the stupor will pass.
I wasn’t there to see it, but my books tell me that the financial turmoil of the Great Depression was resolved in war, at least for the U.S. That which was not properly dealt with in that great conflict spilled over to what we affectionatly call the Cold War. The Soviets were eventually defeated, but not Communism. And so Western Civilisation is presently infected with that
disease. We call it “Liberalism” or “Socialism” and while our version is certainly less murderous than the totalitarian, it is still toxic.
Meanwhile, Hegemonic Islam threatens once again to turn Planet Earth into Planet Muslim.
Fortunately,Socialism is not up to the task of resisting Jihad. If there are any lingering questions on this one need only refer to the sad example of contemporary
Europe for clarity on the matter. Perhaps I am a Naif, but I believe the American People
possess enough residual wisdom to recognize that continued reliance on the Welfare State
renders us helpless before our enemies. I also believe we possess the inherant strength
to rise to the challenge of fiscal and social sanity.
Dark as this cloud may be, there is a silver lining to it. Never in my memory has it been so apparent that the Emperor is wearing only his expensive perfume. The perennial sham the great and powerful put on is generally entertaining, but it has waxed positively ridiculous of late.
I would prefer the laughs sans the tears
but I’ll take what I can get.
Be of good cheer!!!

Mar 22, 2009 - 2:16 am 81. Gaffe Prices:

#41 Cassandra:

Even worse, is that whole generations, have not lost something, that they never had

the landscape of civic life, flows with minds of countless, various forms of repetatrons, as thick, vast and impenatrable as jungle.

Wild, stocked with creatures abominable
defensive, sarcastic
they bow down
and plant,
their knees on the floor
and start worsipping them,
“the demons you ask
are all things of the past
(I’ve got plenty of them living right here! Ha! Ha!)”

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:09 am 82. Jon Threlkeld:

Dr. Hanson summarizes our dilema better than anyone else. It’s hard not to be pessimistic but sometimes we need a good hard slap up-side the head to wake us up to what is happening. But, as the Great Sage of KSFO Lee Rodgers has said repeatedly: “We are just too damn stupid as a nation to survive!” I fear he is right.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:46 am 83. William Blake:

Another great telling of what is going on!

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:08 am 84. kent Ramsay:

Very good, VDH. I would only mention that your Hollywood critique should have excluded Clint Eastwood, who not only does not speak like a woman, but who has given the most consistent vision of American individualism over the span of his career, which has not even included bouts with drugs or alcohol.

I think we need an “action” to cleanse and purge. The action must be a “repudiation” and should include a tip of the hat to our heritage. I suggest a TAR AND FEATHER BRIGADE, aimed not at a local lake or river, but a huge mass of people, feeling as you depict VDH, traveling the full distance from wherever they are, to Washington DC. The BRIGADE, will be led by TRUCKERS, common people with uncommon sense, with loads of TAR AND FEATHERS. They will lead a national parade which is targeted squarely with a BULLSEYE at Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Ted Kennedy, et. al. THE TAR AND FEATHER BRIGADE will not tolerate it anymore, and is not satisfied with whining. It knows history, and is using a tool of SHAME and FEAR. Shame is hard to pin on a politician today since honor is gone. But FEAR is strong. And scores of trucks with TAR AND FEATHERS and more people than the eye can see puts fear in the politicians, who are not normally confronted. This would be a direct broadside, well behaved but still a clear and direct threat.

They run for the hills and we can start all over again.

I can dream.

Kent Ramsay
Aurora, OH

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:10 am 85. TennesseeVolunteer:

Victor, the feelings and concerns you evoke in your article describe me perfectly. For years, I have always wondered what great challenge was in store for me. Now, I know it is this coming battle…for ideas…for principles…for goodness.
We, as a people, have lost our way. Whether you or I survive the storm will not matter as long as we stand up for what we believe. I have two strong sons who need to see me fight for what is right. To take a stand when no one else will.
I don’t own a gun and don’t plan to buy one. My battle will be in the realm of ideas, as yours is. It is OUR DUTY to fight this good fight.
My wife and I have been blessed with many great achievements and things, we may lose all of the possessions before this is over. We’ll never lose the achievements. This time is why God put you on Earth. When VDH writes, we can see, as a people, that the PEN IS TRULY MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD.
You have stated the problems and our feelings well. I know it has not been your role to tell us what to do or to think but to point things out so we can come to our own conclusions. God has blessed you with a gift, it is now your time to use it. Write about the Ten Commandments, about what is good, about thrift, Ben Franklin, George Washington, about God.
Each of us needs to realize that it starts with us. On Tuesday morning, I will start my own personal Tea Party. There is a corner in Memphis, TN where I will stand with my sign each Tuesday morning:

Tea Party
Less Taxes

I will be making, and have made, many other changes for my family and business but this is where I will start. How about everyone who posts on this story, list the one small thing they will do to stem the tide. It won’t take much.
The other thing I will do , is pray!

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:07 am 86. Bruce:

Zane: make the same equations for academics (VDH excepted of course), Wall Street “masters of the universe” and most corporate “captains of industry”. Hayden, Marcuse, Alinsky and =:obama’s tutor Frank Marshall Davis ALL shouted in the 60’s that this would happen — and it did.

Marcotte: correct spelling, strive for concision and remove what gets taken for hate, then PUBLISH IT!

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:10 am 87. Mina Bender:

What took you so long to see ! And here I thought it was just me.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:49 am 88. William Mueller:

The irony of this rant is that the people reading it and commenting on it are literate, well-informed and yet overwhelmed by the sea of mediocrity that dutifully checks off the same names on ballots election after election, with the grand exception of the last federal election. Mr. Obama did not win the election by an overwhelming majority (except in the Electoral College) because almost half of the voters did not want to tread the path he was articulating. However, the bed has been made and we appear to be trapped between a restful sleep and the recurring nightmare of America sliding into obscurity.

The malaise that we appear to be experiencing is definitely reinforced by all the cultural negativity VDH rants about. One danger in venting in this manner (and in the replies) is that the will to work toward change is vitiated, chained to symbols on a page rather than action in the theater of reality. That action should be patterned on the methods that Mr. Obama used to convince the slim majority of participants that he should be elected. So how should we proceed? Blogging is good but only insofar that it leads to action.

I received this link from my brother and I will send it on to as many of my addressees as possible. Some will carefully analyze the content and others will probably go on about their business after a cursory reading (such is life). I will also use the phone for those who are not Internet savvy or who want a “logline” of the rant so they (like Hollywood producers) can say yea or nay to further investigation.

In short the reading of the rant should not lead to a “high five” and more lassitude once the glow of agreement vanishes; rather, it should lead to some sort of action that in concert with others of like mind will (or at least may) instigate the remedies that VDH suggests: “…roll up our sleeves, take a cut in our standard of living, pay off what we owe, admit that we lived too high on the hog…”

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:08 am 89. bvw:

Comments — “We” know why, but the knowing are not heard in the old elite media and the new cool media. We speak on new uncool media, like here, and we are sometimes in the elite but we are never old, and we have media, but it is not labeled elite — although it is already the most potent of all. Denial is on all sides — in the socially deconstructed modern lost souls, and even in us when we deny our our vast powers. Day after day we speak with reason, and wisdom. Our voices are loud and compelling, yet we gossip among ourselves, and rarely take on the feral, or chase the lost sheep back into the herd. We are strong, and smart, yet we waste our energies turned inward.

Time to attack on all fronts — into the world — and not against our innards. No more tolerance for those who’d turn our energies inward, organ set gain organ. No tolerance for the play-alongers, the so-ready to-agree and excuse, the moderates, those who tell us to look at ourselves first. No more time for it. We’ll have to take us as we are, and give all that and more to all that and those in the world set against good ideals and ideas. No more time for an all-consuming talking among ourselves.

Whether this becomes a centuries-long fragmenting diaspora for those committed to the Ideals of Liberty is strictly up to us. There is no Babylon we can be carried to in whole. We stand up, turn to the enemy and engage now, with all we can muster, or we or we are dust.

Hang tough.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:11 am 90. sule:

Good, so what’s the solution? Everywhere one goes, there are all the maladies mentioned in your article to be seen and heard.

Does anyone really think that a return to decency would be welcomed in this culture?

Walk into any mall and hear the cage fight music…sit and watch the teenage moms, holding shopping bags and pushing the next little gangbanger in a stroller, while a sullen, gangsta boyfriend slouches behind…you think that’s gonna CHANGE?

Start out from a green light and HOPE the drivers BELIEVE that red lights are meant to be obeyed…stand in line at the grocery and see all the food stamps being used by defiant, obese, healthy looking women…

And don’t even get started on government and corporate welfare…

All this is possible because of those stupid enough to follow traditions long dead…such as hard work, self control, civility, and respect.

Good luck on that CHANGE thing…I’ll watch for the HOPE from THE ONE WE WERE WAITING FOR from a distance, thanks…

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:13 am 91. bvw:

Also, two terms of interest to measure ourselves: NEET, Freeter.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:17 am 92. Finbar:

Thank you Dr. Hansen. This transformation of America has been taking place in earnest for the last 45 years. It has been met with tolerance and a willingness to hear the grievances and demands of political minorities. It has also been met with apathy by the sons and daughters of those who help build what we have today. We are now on the precipice, facing the demise and destruction (from within) of the American experiment. Some of us will not go down without a fight. What depresses me is whether we have enough numbers to even wage a respectable battle.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:24 am 93. DaveinPhoenix:

” …If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed.”

-Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (3/21/09)

Even our enemies are aware of the obvious. We have a federal government with a $59 trillion negative net worth. Nearly half of our debt is owned by foreign nations. We are approaching a point where 50% of the economy is consumed by all levels of government spending. The private sector is shrinking – lowering our standard of living.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:57 am 94. Terry Gain:

@17 Thrasymachus

Getting a grip on things can only start when people realize there is no more magic fairy dust left.

At the same time, conservatives are going to need to face up to how much Bush contributed to all this. I campaigned for him in 2004, and I think it was very important he won so the war on terror would be continued. He held on in Iraq, just barely, but gave up on Iran, Syria, North Korea, and just about everything else. And this is why we can see Obama’s foreign policy changes little from his.

After the vicious attacks and lack of support he received from his countrymen in the liberation of Iraq you expected Bush to solve Iran? I suggest you heed your own words.

Getting a grip on things can only start when people realize there is no more magic fairy dust left.

By the time Obama is finished, Bush will seem like a miracle worker.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:00 am 95. Sissy Willis:

Excellent rant, but I’m still reeling from “they talk in the same tones as women did sixty years ago.” Which women do you mean, exactly? Certainly not my Finnish-American grandmother, who was an outspoken oner in her prime back then.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:30 am 96. David:

Our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor.

It’s that time.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:32 am 97. DFR:

If we judge US environmental quality by the abundance of species that have been extinct, yet are now common, North America is a environmental Eden. Bald Eagles, Osprey, Perrigrine Falcons, Canada Geese, Turkeys, wolves, etc, are now common accross North America. The air is cleaner, the water is cleaner, the politicians are ignorant. Urban people want more. Experts are on
TV ranting about polution, while eagles nest in places that they have been absent from for a century. Who are we going to trust, an expert on NPR, or our own lying eyes?? We can drill our own oil. We can build new Nukes. We can do it and keep America beautifull. Urban and political elites don’t have a clue. There can never be an eagle in every tree. Judgements must be made. President Obama you can stick your “cap and trade” where the sun don’t shine. Smile America, in many ways it doesn’t get much better than this.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:42 am 98. sigintel:

Our national depression must be replaced by a call to action. Both parties have sold out American values and trampled on the constitution and Bill of Rights. We need to organize our efforts as free men and women to heed the clarion call to remove the oppressors from government. It will now take a real movement to rid ourselves of the fakers and posers whom we have elected and let destroy the country. The Tea Parties are the first indication that a movement is building. Marching on Washington with pitch forks wont be enough however. We need to re-declare our independence…a revitalized declaration and a call to arms (our right under the Constitution)if need be…we must march and clamor for a return to small government, un-intrusive government and equality for all (no more special privileges). Unfortunately, time is short as the juggernaut in Washington is moving at a record pace to destroy all that we have fought and died for. Citizens raise up!!

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:47 am 99. Saltherring:

Thank you Dr. Hanson. You have put into words what intelligent and enlightened Americans know to be true…that our once great nation has been stolen from us while we were distracted by things that mattered little…self-importance, material wealth and physical well-being. Our preoccupation and indifference opened a door, allowing a foul, immoral and wicked presence to steal our nation’s soul, a soul that once consisted of faith in God, humility, the family unit, personal responsibility/accountability, hard work and acceptance of the rule of law. In its place the thief has left us moral relativism, arrogance, divisiveness, victimhood, indolence and mob rule. We have become a nation of fools ruled by the same. God is the only one who can save us from ultimate destruction by the hand of the thief.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:51 am 100. The Historian:

THE PRESIDENT HAS A LOT TO LEARN
He should pay attention to this.

http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/leadership-coach-k-got-it-right.html

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:52 am 101. Phd:

Great observations, as usual. A small smudge, however, as “Rorke” is correctly spelled “Rourke”

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:57 am 102. Another Chuck:

One institution that will have to go is the culture of the office, which has promoted cowardice, hypocrisy, improvidence, dependency, and stupidity. These qualities are suitable for palace eunuchs, not for freeborn citizens of a Constitutional Republic. Maybe this depression is exactly the purging we all need.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:02 am 103. trac2:

I was in Iraq (07-08) when I was 51 years old army recall. I personally witnessed the magnificent conduct of our young citizens in combat at the company level. The faith I had in our country was revitalized not only by our troops but by the support of our citizens at home.
We are Americans and we will survive.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:06 am 104. George Best:

Its ok to elect a defective self centered human being as our President when times are good economically ie Clinton. If our pockets are fat, we ignore the downward spiral of the morality and class of our fellow citizens. However, when times are shiite, and we elect someone who is of the same character is Clinton, we get depressed because are more likely to face the reality of what we have done.

We need a conservative leader but one cannot emerge when the base of support cannot win a majority or an electoral college. The end result is we have all these pseudo conservatives who are trying to take control of party leadership while trying to placate a percentage of society who would never vote for them no matter how concilliatory they act. Its a crying shame.

The world changes and we are in the proces of an evoultion in our country that will force real conservatives to make life chaning decisions. If I plan on staying in the USA, I would be investing heavily in real estate in Idaho.

Obama is everything that is wrong with our country all mixed into one person. The multicultural aspect of his personal history only makes thete traits more accurate.

I am still amazed at the stupid white people with regular jobs and lives who voted for him.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:06 am 105. Patrick Nowak:

Right on, good doctor.

We must be courageous and wise as individuals, not expecting or depending on the emergence of a great leader to save us. Still, it would be God’s own hand delivering us from the fate we deserve if such a courageous and wise leader or group of individuals would appear who could lead us out of the present moral wilderness back to our basic values and aspirations.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:08 am 106. lester tobias:

As always, Doc, you make me proud to be a Californian. But you need to embrace technology just a wee bit more, use your spellcheck, and proof-read with a little more care. I say this with all due respect, as I take you t be a man of precision and accuracy. It does me no good to comment on what you say, as I rarely have a critique of your thesis. Go slugs!

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:15 am 107. fear Obama:

Today while President Obama railed against AIG bonuses (imagine damning the bonuses you signed into law to the execs from whom you took over $100,000 in campaign donations!)

I will not give this POS the benefit of a doubt.

This is the first president that has ever reached the depths of Joe McCarthyism.

This Racist bastard put the lives of thousands of employees at AIG subsidiaries in jepordy.

Just one case for an instance.

A Young black secretary works at AGLA an AIG subsidiary.

She voted for Obama and considered him the one president she could finally trust.

Now she hates his guts.

She calls him names I cant repeat on this blog.

People come into her office at AGLA and call her names and have offered death threats.

Obama pointing fingers at ordinary American citizens is the height of criminal stupid behavior.

These citizens whose lives he threatened are protected by the Constitution and it is against the laws of this land.

Obama should be impeached and removed from office for High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Or we should physically remove him.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:19 am 108. Mike M.:

As Dr. Pournelle is so fond of pointing out, despair is a sin. And futile.

But I do not despair. Obama represents the last vestige of the Brat Boom of the postwar era. He may be in his 40’s chronologically, but mentally he is a good fifteen years older. The last, and the worst. His misrule will smash the old leftist superstitions once and for all.

And afterward? Opportunity. A once-in-a-generation chance to change things. The opportunity to turn this nation around. To steer the ship of state out of these shoals into deep water. It will be hard, yes. But the reward will be a strength and prosperity undreamed of.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:20 am 109. Canuckistani:

So … are we totally ****ed or not, Doc? I’ll stay tuned.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:20 am 110. fred:

This is absolutely one of the best written commentaries about our contemporary miasma of degradation I’ve laid eyes on. VDH has penned – brilliantly – so many of the emotions and thoughts I have been wrestling with during the past year or so, as I take stock of what has become of us and even how, in minor ways, I have participated in the diminution of standards of conduct and thought.

What I most feel sad about is the closure, down through the past three decades, of so many Catholic schools – within which much good was accomplished despite some of the more odd and occasionally abusive behavior of the religious sisters who taught there. I feel blessed that my working class parents could afford, back in the Sixties, to send us, their brood, to these schools, and that those schools were affordable to parents such as mine who were not upper middle class. I believe so much of the decline of Western Civilization underway is tied to what the Gramscian Marxists have done during their Long March Through The Institutions.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:23 am 111. Войска ПВО:

Another fine article by Dr Hanson.

Years ago, I worked at Universal Studios on a contract and — like today — we were in the middle of an “economic crisis”, this time in the early years of Clinton. (”Never let a crisis go to waste.”)

I hated that assignment because it paid very little, was a crushing commute through fouled Los Angeles traffic, and managed by a coterie of dolts. Nonetheless, I was grateful for a job and, in my daily trudge through the parking lot, I made it a point to pass by one car (assigned parking) that carried a bumper sticker whose motto sustained me then and is appicable today:

“Tough times never last. Tough people do.”

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:27 am 112. Войска ПВО:

er..appicable = applicable.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:35 am 113. My Private Socialist Hell:

I was hired nine years ago to teach history and geography at a new charter school. It looked like a chance to actually improve education over what the local public schools were offering. I am today faced with the following:

* Over the next 30 days my calendar is scheduled for a week of standard based assessment tests, a week of spring break, a day off for Good Friday, two days of parent-teacher conferences, and a day of professional development. Total time for actual classroom instruction will be six days.

* Our staff of 30 teachers includes five for special education, a social worker, and a counselor. Those seven are charged with keeping the school in compliance with administrative mandates. When not involved with administration, they are engaged in therapy, but very little actual teaching.

Our public schools (including charters) represent the face of socialism in America like no other sector of our society. Our education system no longer serves students; it exists only to justify the hiring of more bureaucrats. No learning is going on because little in the way of actual teaching is occurring.

I feel like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a pit bull. I’m beyond despair.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:35 am 114. AnonAmom:

Your comments are apt. Collectively we as a people have slowly slipped into this mess. A frog dropped in boiling water will jump out. But put him in a pot of cold water and gradually apply the heat and he will cook.

Even as we note the lack of civility in today’s world, we sometimes cannot see how the pervasiveness of that decline affects each of us. For example, a few times in this piece the name of deity is used in vain. Why? Because it is a cultural norm – but like the ads that are decried, not a norm that we would have found in a more genteel, civilized time. Like other forms of coarseness, this hurts my sensibilities. Some would suggest I am too sensitive. I suspect, however, that we have, as a culture, grown too insensitive to those of faith.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:41 am 115. Marc Malone:

Very nice article. It accurately protrays the anguish of my heart.

My anguish is not for me, but for my children when I’m gone. I know their futures are diminished.

My anguish is for my once-great country, this shining ideal whose time in the sun is passing. The sun sets on my nation. I see it so clearly, and my eyes fill with tears, but my vision is, sadly, unblurred. To slightly ease the ache in my soul, I must shut my eyes to my nation’s demise.

My anguish is that, while my mind is still keen, my body fails me. I am one who once had that fine cursive, but now my arthritis robs me of it. My eyesight and health fade, so I am forced to play captive spectator. I enjoy no bliss, for my keen mind offers no ignorance. I am forced to watch the slow-motion train-wreck in all its terrible glory, and I cannot look away.

I do not always feel this way. There are times when I have hope and can laugh. When the train’s engineer is clearly on his way to destruction, I can feel a measure of satisfaction, even exultation. There is hope that the wreck will not be total, that some of it will survive. Perhaps, we will see a new engine with a new engineer. Whence he will come, I know not. I can only look to Providence.

Thanks to the author’s eloquence, and to the many others here who responded in kind. It is good to not feel so alone.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:45 am 116. John Repsher:

Read “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”. Kipling was a prophet:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:47 am 117. Anthro Non-Apologist:

Welcome to the display case of Generation X. The good news is that they are inherently self destructive. The boomers created them from the successes and wealth of their parents. They rebelled with credit cards into the hippies, me-generation, and trust-fund babies that were driven off work ethic by the seemingly unending opulance that was advertised on the multimedias. They live in a geometrically accelerating evolution of technology from which mass popularity is their thin thread of stability. Their secular miracle is ’something for nothing.’They too will pass on as consequence goes uncalculated for sensations while the bills come due. Hope is eternal, and not legislated.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:58 am 118. John B:

I’m sorry….

What we need now, more than ever, are some
“Clear Thinkers”, in government. VDH has so far resisted my encouragement to enter public life.

VDH could even run as a Democrat,,, wouldn’t that be a kick in the backside to have a Dem who actually believes in America?

Where do I make a contribution to the campaign for intelligence over greed?

jb

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:59 am 119. Moogie:

Excellent essay VDH.

I offer here two links to two lectures – both a bit long – but both highly informative, about the liberal mindset of today. In these lectures, I am sure you will find the answers to ALL of your musings above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev030309a.cfm

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:27 am 120. K8:

Jeffersons tree of liberty requires, from time to time, the blood of patriots and tyrants. Professor: your voice, as well as that of the majority of posts here, IS brilliant. I do fear the tyrants are outnumbering the patriots. In the face of empending disaster, I will continue to live my values and morals,and take comfort knowing others are appreciative of grace and manners. I will however not shy from the fight to defend my liberty.
Please enjoy your lovely cruise…wish I could join you.

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:28 am 121. Thomass:

It was just a sci-fi book, but a quote by author comes to mind. He was describing an insular and tribal people who questioned little and explained why they were such. To paraphrase, ‘when patriotism, religion, and culture are in alignment, you do not produce individuals’.

The upside to all this mess is it may create more people like you Dr. Hanson (provided we play our cards right). One of the big Oopses and/or unintended consequences of lefty social engineering is that in the process of decoupling patriotism, religion, and culture (re: from government) in the 30s and then 60s (to deconstruct, rebuild, and then reattach their new government)… the left helped create more individuals and hence… more conservatives and libertarians…

As to this specific time, it is also our opportunity to take back things. With the left defending the undefendable we can do all the things they say we don’t. Quote history, use logic, use research and social science, et cetera… to show how ridiculous their plans are (and don’t forget to go back to the stimulus plan for more inspiration). All they can come back with are insults and rhetoric. This will show their true face to the public.

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:50 am 122. Walt Wilkening:

When our new Messiah giveth towhom he wants and taketh away from whom he will, who, pray tell, is going to maketh what he redistributes?

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:52 am 123. Delia:

Dear Sir Hanson,

You have written yet another heart-felt, empathic article. I’m beyond bummed out. I weep for our present as well as our future. I waver between wanting to be strong and crying my guts out. I’m truly scared.

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:55 am 124. Jim:

“4) What is good/bad?”
That’s just the problem. We’re living in a generation that has been socially engineered to deny the existence of objective, absolute truth. Hence, no one can make a pronouncement that something is either good or bad since that is logically inconsistent with the idea that everything is subjective. Only the left retains the right to pronounce conservative ideas as evil or conservatives as intolerant for believing some things shouldn’t be tolerated. What’s really sad is that conservatives can no longer appeal to morality. Instead, they’re required to use the subject term “family values”.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:13 am 125. John Boyle:

A wise old friend once told me “The day is coming when there will not be enough well people to take care of the sick ones.” He was not talking about the ageing demographic, either.

That day came some time ago. What we have now is the institutionalization of the sickness.

The only solution is an unprecedented political earthquake. We, The People, should vote out every single member of both Houses of Congress in 2010 – including your own favorite members. The only way the Royal Princes in Washington will wake up and realize that The People rule in this country, not whoever last gave them the biggest bag of money, is to give them an unprecedented historical kick in the ass out the door.

I propose we call the movement – and chant it at every political event – “GET OUT!”

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:25 am 126. Ian Thorpe:

Obama is getting almost everything completely wrong but he is no more to blame than George Bush or any other single president for this problem (which exists here in Britain too.

Social change, chganges in the fundamental way we live and organise societies has been forced ahead too fast.

Our communities have been torn apart, traditional industries have been exported along with the jobs and stablity they provide. In the west we have been persuaded material things buy happiness. It is not true.

I remember a student from Tanzania talking on British Televison last year. He said what had struck him about his time in britain was children seemed to have so much but were not happy. In Tanzania he said, so long as the boys had a soccer ball to kick aound and the girls had a rope for their skipping games they were happy because they were loved and valued. Their parents, grandparents siblings and extended families all had time for them.

The man made a lot of good points. I can remember boyhood games of soccer in the 1950s and 60s. They went on all day, teams varied from three to thirty a side, goalposts were piles of sweaters or coats and when we were eventually called home the rule was “next goal wins.”

I’m 60, I guess people aound my age or even as young as mid forties would have similar memories. Those games were important, they taught us to be members of communities.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:25 am 127. Claire Solt:

My radio tracks the price of gas daily, but I was a little surprised to see %/lb tomatoes at the market this week. That must be due to the judicial imposed drought in central CA he mentioned.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:31 am 128. J.E. Dyer:

A noble rant, professor. I had to laugh my head off over the “food stuck to your colon like spackle or paste” reference.

It doesn’t seem like toddlers have much of a job left. It used to be their function to run into polite adult company and say “wee-wee!” and “pee-pee!” and “poo-poo!” — for the attention-grabbing effect.

Now that we have TV, movies, advertising, and academia filling this role — and the president and Congress performing the tantrum-throwing function — I don’t think there’s a whole lot left for the toddlers to do.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:39 am 129. Terry Gain:

He may be in his 40’s chronologically, but mentally he is a good fifteen years older. The last, and the worst.

Entirely too optimistic. Obamateur is 47 but he has the mentality of a college freshman. He believes every piece of leftist nonsense he comes across and peddles. His is the kind of naivete that believed you could just leave Iraq in the hands of Al Qaeda, Iran and insurgents without devastating consequences for Iraq and American foreign policy.

His misrule will smash the old leftist superstitions once and for all.

I wish it were so. I hoped socialism would go the way of the dodo bird when the USSR fell apart. Unfortunately the old (and discredited )leftist superstitions are held dear to heart of 80 % of the media , 90% of academia and 95% of Hollywood.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:54 am 130. Joel Ariel:

Dear Sir,
Thank you.
ja

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:01 pm 131. ProfessorJim:

I, too, feel depressed these days. You’ve articulated my feelings quite well.I knew before the election that we’d be in the hands of amateurs, but this has gone beyond my worst fears. I’d rather have Bill Clinton back than this gaggle of adolescents.
I cannot imagine what our Founding Fathers would think!

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:04 pm 132. bob59049:

VDH – You, along with Charles Krauthammer and Rush Limbaugh could, I think straighten things out. I would also add Judd Gregg and Dick Cheney. It is a time when it would be easy to dispair. Please keep the faith, my son needs you – I need you.

I say to people to look at the glass as half full. The beautiful thing about our democracy is that every 4 years we get to find out how many dump people there are – and those dump people learn that their unthinking vote has consequences. This time we found out there are a lot of dumb people. Back in ‘92, we could blame Perot for screwing things up and could be more hopeful that things would correct, as they began doing in ‘94. In 2010, hopefully, we will have large republican gains in the congress and in the mean time, there will be enough conservative democrats that Obama’s plans will be slowed or stopped. So, be hopeful. He seems to me to be flailing around like a fish out of water…and isn’t http://www.barackstelepromter.blogspot.com a pick-me-up?

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:07 pm 133. Bent Notes » Blog Archive » The thunderous, horrifying truth:

[...] Victor Davis Hanson on the five main reasons America as of March 2009 is a very spiritually sick pla… [...]

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:08 pm 134. Mike Blackadder:

Thanks Dr. Hanson. You are indeed a ‘clear thinker’. I’d say it’s a rare quality regardless of the times. I only wish more people were listening.

trac2 #103: Thanks, also an excellent point. There are still plenty of Americans who know courage and sacrifice. Don’t forget or apologize.

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:09 pm 135. bob59049:

Correction: I mispelled teleprompter. It should be: baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:15 pm 136. bliberis:

I’m already depressed. Reading this made me feel worse. Of course, there was light at the end of the Jimmy Carter tunnel, there should be here, too.

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:48 pm 137. ChipD:

D. Hanson makes some cogent points, some more that are arguable, but the main thrust of the post seems to be that somehow this is all the fault of some amorphous cartel of socialists.

The left has a tremendous stockpille of idiocy to account for, and the Carter/ Clinton administrations are chock-full of errors and foolishness….but…
It should be pointed out that the GOP had control of the Congress since 1994, and full and unfettered control of all branches of the government since 2000.
Are we supposed to believe that if only McCain had somehow won control of the Presidency, if only the GOP had retained control, that Dr. Hanson would not be writing this post?

Where is the supposed superiority of Dr. Hanson’s worldview on display? Are the cities and states run by conservatives somehow demonstrably in better shape than the ones run by liberals?

I applaud his points about cultural coarseness, but would point out that culturally conservative parts of the country have just as many strip clubs, indulge in just as much pornography, and consume just as much drugs as do the more culturally liberal areas.

I agree with his point about timidity and indifference in pursuing a large bold vision for progress- but then again, I would also point out that bold public projects were the hallmark of the New Deal- for example, would Dr. Hanson applaud the building of Hoover Dam, or sit on the sidelines grumbling about large government expenditures?

Lastly, I would remind everyone that Wall Street did not implode from an excess of governmental regulation, but at their own hand, from their own excesses.

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:49 pm 138. Ron Kean:

123. Delia

Hang in there, sweetheart. We care about you.

Mar 22, 2009 - 12:58 pm 139. BamaMom:

AMEN!!! To everything you said. (I wondered if I was the only one who thought society has became extremely course. I cringe at the commercials on TV.) As I was reading your column the lyrics from the song by Buffalo Springfield popped in my head:
‘There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear’
I think I have an idea of what is going on and it scares me to death. I can only hope the American people wake up before it is too late.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:13 pm 140. John:

To Professor Hanson and the readers.

I am 27 years old and am becoming increasingly frightened about where our country is going. What is more frightening is that my generation is either oblivious, unconcerned, or too comfortable about how our decisions now are going to alter our lives forever. I have not spoken with too many people who are concerned about Obama’s behavior. It is as if we are too accustomed to what is hip and cool reigning supreme, that we can’t spot a genuine leader when we see him. Reality no longer matters to my generation. And why would it? If you were born in the 80’s there is a good chance you believe your standard of living is inevitable, the world is intrinsically safe, and you are the greatest thing since sliced ham. So sit back and relax, Obama will take care of everything. All you have to do is show up and the bike will ride itself.

What is most frightening about all this is not solely my generations beliefs, but the unthinking that went into producing those beliefs. OUR UNIVERSITIES DO NOT TEACH US HOW TO THINK. IN FACT, MOST PEOPLE MY AGE DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE PHRASE “LEARN TO THINK” MEANS, OR MUCH CARE.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:19 pm 141. David:

Reading your blog this morning I choked up. Yesterday, we had a memorial service here in our Central Valley town for a 24 year old who was killed in an RPG ambush in Irag a few weeks ago. (Things there are quiet, but not “peaceful” yet.) He was really something. Top student, star athlete, community volunteer, West Point graduate….and above all, someone who embodied those seemingly lost but longed for virtues Victor writes about. My kids grew up playing with him. This earnest, sincere, and good-hearted young man is so much a foil to the self-promoting, shallow caricatures who lead us that one can be both repulsed by them and reassured by him.

Somewhere beneath the social and cultural rot there is still a root from which to grow. I can only pray that we find our soul…certainly those in power, in true postmodern fashion, seem to have none.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:38 pm 142. tanstaafl:

Excellent essay and wonderful, heartfelt comments.

In short, I don’t want to hear any more Viagra or Cialis ads, no more douche commercials—please no more talking heads about penises that are enlarging, hardening, stimulated on the public air waves.

I remember seeing one of the first ED (geez, who invented that term ?)ads with Bob Dole and thinking, ohmygod, this is incredible, being on tee vee, and, Bob, how could you sink this far?

Now I’ve become numb, the little that I still watch television and catch one of these embarrassments (and so many others).

It Tabloid culture. That which used to be in the shadows (like National Enquirer) has become mainstream. Any subject under the sun that can be addressed & exploited for profit, is.

We simply are thirsty for the unapologetic doer, who never says he’s sorry for himself or his country or his ancestors, but instead thinks and plans…

The instincts of the doer have been shut down in an effort to educate for mediocrity and sameness. Everyone gets a blue ribbon, or some color ribbon, anyway.

Damn the rugged individualist…From a recent Limbaugh rant, the current ethos in a nutshell…

Rugged individuals don’t care about anybody else, they leave everybody else behind, and it takes people like Mrs. Clinton to care about the people who get left behind when rugged individuals take over.

Yeah, like I’d trust any modern “progressive” to have my back or show me the way. right, sure.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:46 pm 143. Old Soldier:

Great article. VHD articulates exactly why I feel this depression. I’m depressed for my children.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:53 pm 144. fred:

John @140,

I do not feel hostile towards your generation (I’m 54). I know, from firsthand experience, how teachers and professors have largely botched the education of your generation. It makes me very angry to ponder this. You kids were not served well by these crypto-Marxists who infiltrated the “transmission belts” of society, all according to Antonio Gramsci’s plan. Instead of a solid education, they coddled you guys and indoctrinated you. This is a crime.

The most important thing right now is for you and your friends to pay attention and learn. Start examining the ideas that your educators and the media have put in your heads. Walk those ideas back to their source. Every idea and ideal has a provenance and ties into a system or vision of what society should be. Look at this. Critique it and even critique yourselves.

But know that while you guys are trying to get your act together we old farts are not going to be standing idly by. A few of us Boomers, like me, had our own period of dalliance with Marxist thought and we came out the other end. Most were cured of it during the Seventies, which was a period of stagnant economic growth and foreign policy humiliation and crisis. I didn’t leave the Left until 1987. When I was in college (1978-82) most of my classmates voted for Reagan in November of 1980. I was an older student (did Army time before I went to university)and voted for Carter in ‘76. And I voted for him again in ‘80. Looking back, it’s embarrassing to think I voted for that man twice.

Mar 22, 2009 - 1:56 pm 145. Mike Blackadder:

ChipD and others,

I think some people might be missing part of Dr. Hanson’s point. It’s not just about picking the right government. More importantly, do we take responsibility for our own lives?

Governments will change, particularly if people want it to. The more depressing thing is what some of us perceive as the degradation of our society’s character (particularly among young people). Laziness, cynicism, ambivalence, victimization, entitlement, despair. These attributes are depressing, and also evidence of a society that is depressed. As fat bastard said, “it’s a vicious cycle”.

Mar 22, 2009 - 2:28 pm 146. CAUTION:

Nice try professor, but really a bunch of BS. Why? Because we live like crack whores because we want to. Do I need an SUV? No and neither do you but we like them because they are comfortable for our fat asses. The unease you feel is not that we lived beyond our means for many years, but that it is over. THE GRAVY TRAIN HAS PULLED INTO THE STATION. Our current standard of living is going to take a hit like nothing you have ever seen. Obambi, the product of poor circumstance, is simply speeding up the process by attempting to give back to those he new as a youth……

What to do? Don’t save, your money will soon be worthless. Buy high value products now. A VW turbodiesel jetta car comes to mind with close to 50 mpg economy and a very long life span if cared for. Other things would include taking care of your self, get that medical procedure done now while you can.

Mar 22, 2009 - 2:40 pm 147. TLM:

ChipD:

Reread the article. This is not a partisan rant. We know the shifts in political power the past twenty years. More than enough blame to go around for both Parties. And both were in cahoots with Wall Street re this financial fiasco.

Obama obviously didn’t cause problems 1 – 5. He’s merely the ultimate expression of what they lead to: a smiley faced airhead president yucking it up on Leno — dissin’ the “tards” to hysterical applause (how ironic) — while the country burns.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:09 pm 148. Sam H:

Dear Dr. Hanson,

Thank you, as always, for another brilliant essay. Like you, I too feel a similar unease.

Yet I have always harkened back to the words of Churchill for succor during trying times as the thoughts and words of The Great Man have a calming effect upon me. I leave you with one of his most illuminating (to me) and relevant…

“Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:09 pm 149. Kathleen:

I miss Tony Snow.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:28 pm 150. Delia:

138. Ron Kean,

Aww. Right back atchya, hon (((HUG))). Thank you for that. I’ve been trying to laugh through my tears when I’m not actively lamenting the current ’sitch’.
~

140. John,

Hang in there, John and you seem to have a good head on your shoulders so don’t give up the good fight. I was 20 years old when I met my 27 year old husband and we were young but not stupid and we’ve survived some pretty horrific hardships between the two of us. We have always been conservatives since we were around your age. The ‘brain-washing’ that is going on in the school system is getting frightening as well as the Islam @ss kissing with 0bama.

There is light in TRUTH and it always shines as long as we provide the spark.

What is done can also be UNdone even if it means a revolt.

The scary part is… Our votes and voices will become impotent if ‘ACORN’ and Zero’s minions of willing and ready cronies have their way by ‘gaming’ the system. Then what do we do? This slippery slope straight to hell, do not pass go or collect your pittance of a tax refund or right to live is a nightmare indeed.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:28 pm 151. ChipD:

To the depressed ones out there, bemoaning the sad state of our culture; I guess there are always things to despair about.
So what else is new? I can remember this same argument being made in the 1960’s about the state of the world then, and about every 10 years, someone writes another screed claiming the moral sky is falling. Shame on them for indulging in the self righteous nostalgi for their own virtuous youth!
People have always been lazy, greedy, selfish and mean spirited; and others have always been energetic, altruistic, and kind.

I see plenty of reason for optimism:
1. There is a deep and sincere groundswell of civic virtue among the people I work with. In my field of architecture, the green and sustainable movement has energized the entire professional class of engineers, architects, and manufacturers. There is a real and deep desire to use our skills to designing a better world. This is not a movement to attack anyone or anything, not to demand the taking of anything from anyone, but to change our buildings and cities for the better.

2. Reports of the corruption of our young people are wildly exaggerated; while the media depicts youth as a non-stop orgy of drugs and sex, the truth is the vast majority of young people are sober and responsible with their personal lives.

Virtue doesn’t belong to one political ideology or another.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:35 pm 152. lester tobias:

I’d like to add to points of depression out here in California.

1. I don’t feel like “we’re all in this together”. I hear a lot of that from Obama, but in reality, the policies that he is espousing are very “us v. them”. If we were all in this together, any additional taxation would be spread out among the entire taxed populace, with specific programs on which it would be spent (deficit reduction, health care, whatever…just tell us EXACTLY where the money is going). In California, one of our famous hollywood scions, Rob Reiner (”meathead” from “All in the Family”), is very good at putting initiatives on the ballot where he gets poor people to vote for a tax on a small, affluent sector of the populace. He usually aims at universal childcare, or something like that, and sometimes these initiatives don’t pass, but he’s perfecting the formula and the donor lists for essentially devising a “plug and play” political scheme for the type of income redistribution that Obama seems to love.

2. The second is that while I watch every human segment of the California Environment take a haircut in this economy, I can’t help but marvel that no one is even thinking about relaxing some environmental regulations for the sake of the economy. If we did this, only temporarily, I am certain that we could work our way out this financial hole we are in. VDH touched on this in his article, but as an architect in the Golden State, I find this hyper-environmentalism to be what is killing the construction industry. Not only is construction severely delayed or flat out denied for very specious claims of environmental protection, but even when it is allowed the costs of implementing the various protective systems, from $20,000.00 rainwater pollution control devices (for a single house!), to rendering up to 90% of a homeowner’s residential property “off limits” to any kind of improvement (including brush clearance for fire protection) can kill a project.

There have been years when my income would put me in that 5% bracket that has apparently benefited from the past 20 years who is now being asked to “give back” to the other 95%. Well, I feel like California’s environmental quality has also benefited from being overly protected lo these past 2 decades, and maybe she should “give back” a little bit, for the team, as well.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:47 pm 153. golf Wacko:

thank you Dr. Hanson for the analysing the real zietgisht. I truly think that we will eventually move toward a civil war between the Statists and the Individualists.

I will be ready and I will fight to the death the right of the individual to be free from the state.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:52 pm 154. Войска ПВО:

Oh, by the way, we have every right to be depressed, what with our being led by this buffoon, our Narcissist-in-Chief who concerns himself more with getting his limousine onto the stage at Tonight show appearances and planning press conferences to stem the tide of ill feelings about his administration.

This clod is supposed to make us feel good about ourselves?

Hat tip to the Illustrated Conservative Blog who does a fine job of chronicling this unbridled conceit.

Mar 22, 2009 - 3:58 pm 155. Ann:

Mr. Hanson, I applaud your words as I weep.
Bless you for your clarity and insight, and for the posts here those who sense a simmering of rebellion amid this blackness.
Hasn’t God promised not to abandon if there is a remnant? I cling to that hope, and trust that He will raise up a leader and shine the light on the best path for us to walk, swords held high. Surely He has “begun a great work” in this miraculous country, and will “bring it to completion.” These are terrifying times, but kindred souls are finding each other, and finding strength, in slowly-gathering numbers, to march. We can’t give up.

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:02 pm 156. Another Chuck:

Let’s try to enjoy what we will have to do. It will make it easier.

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:33 pm 157. JM Hanes:

Where I come from we would call this one big pity party.

Being idealistic is a tough business, and battling cynicism, especially within yourself, is the most grueling struggle of all. Don’t wait till you’re so far down that everything looks like up before you bestir yourselves. If you want to restore what you feel you’ve lost, you’re going to have to fight for it. Do you think the Founders didn’t get depressed? Were they paralyzed by vague malaise? Nobody handed them a constitution.

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:34 pm 158. Wolla Dalbo:

Not that a diagnosis matters much at this stage of the disease, but pre-WWII Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci must be smiling in his grave, because his call for a “long march” through the key institutions of bourgeois societies, and his propaganda based tool kit for attacking, subverting and remaking the building blocks of those societies—the family, the school, the church, civic institutions, government and academia, has been followed and been wildly successful; road signs have been turned and we have been lead–by design–in exactly the wrong direction, and we find ourselves disoriented, lost and disheartened, in unknown territory, with no way to get back home again.

But, a solution is at hand, to quote H. L. Mencken,

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:47 pm 159. J.E. Dyer:

John at #140 — I really want to thank you for chiming in, because your comments remind us that it is not for ourselves alone that we older folks (49) can encourage ourselves to buck up, and present a more optimistic, positive attitude.

As you imply, it’s of supreme importance to know how to THINK about all this. And it is absolutely vital for us to understand that rationality does not condemn us to discouragement and pessimism. What it must lead us to, though, is rejection of the demogogic power of image and impression embodied by Obama. That is a chimera — superficially attractive, absorbing — whose inherent deception will do us in if we do not see it for what it is, and reject it.

Some reasons for optimism:

1. America has largely been here before, and it is, in a way, a tribute to our recuperative powers that we don’t even remember it. FDR was a HUGE demagogue, whose political methods relied on demonizing selected demographic groups — including businessmen and their legally-acquired wealth — and on a policy style that could best be described at peripatetic. Do a search on the “sick chicken” case from the 1930s, and check out the collectivist statism of the FDR-era rural electrification program, and you’ll see how breathtakingly socialist — Stalinist — were many of the programmatic elements of FDR’s vision. And in the end, they were largely rolled back, rejected, forgotten. (A good read: The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes.)

2. Consider that the trends of history would argue only AGAINST the formation of the United States of America, as a constitutional republic founded on the ideas of LIMITED government as the best guarantee of individual rights. And yet we WERE formed, and against all the odds of human folly, here we are — still not living out a pasteurized, homogenized version of the French Revolution, like everyone else, but stubbornly clinging to the principles of our own: primacy of the individual over the state, limited government, constitutional boundaries on majoritarianism, separation of government powers, checka and balances, the rule of law.

3. People really are suited for better things than infantilization and slavery to a parental state. Read David at #141, about the wonderful young man whose memorial the people of his community attended. People yearn to aspire and achieve, and admire those who do. People ARE inspired by ideals, and by beloved family and friends, and legacies of inheritance and land, toil and sweat, that constitute enough to sacrifice for.

We are not fated to only live down to the prison of our temptations. That’s the insidious thing about temptations: they appeal to the cheap desire for freedom from accountability, but in the end they do us in, because we humans are NOT constituted to be slaves to our baser natures. We don’t need to fear that life will “work” that way. It will not: people are so made that we can and do thrive on challenge, responsibility, hard work, and discipline over ourselves. No arrangement of law or force of the state can make us function properly in any other condition.

People can do far more than they think they can. For many in the younger generation today, whom our society has equipped so poorly, there will be a lot of catch-up. But we need never lose sight of the fact that what they need to do, they CAN do. Homo Americanus has become out of practice in a number of things — but the muscles and neurons are all still there. They reside in all of us. If we let freedom ring, instead of wrapping ourselves in a cloak of invidious fear, the carillon will resound for decades to come.

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:51 pm 160. David McKinnis:

>One, just one, novel of a Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas >Wolfe even, is worth more than what has been written collectively in >the last ten years

Not true.
Gene Wolfe is still with us.

Mar 22, 2009 - 4:58 pm 161. misanthropicus:

Re #69/Paul M Hupf: [...] My parents, though born in this country, were of German ancestry. [...] Once I asked my father (who had served in the American Army in Europe in WWI) if he would speak to me in German so that I could acquire some speaking facility in German. His answer: “No way! that’s the old country; you’re an American!”

Paul, check the “Cross Over” review -

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:04 pm 162. Mark:

In the early 1960’s, one of the lead researchers into depression observed it was a state of feeling helpless. We are helpless in so far as we are ignorant to what has been planned for decades. We should be MAD enough to DEMAND the resignation of ALL but a few politicians who have betrayed us with false campaign promises just to get elected.
We should also find legal recourse to take back the bonuses thses bastards stole from the American tax payer. What the media is NOT reporting are the billions funneled through AIG to third parties. NOW that’s where we should be looking.
Please read “The Rise of the Fourth Reich” by Jim Marrs. It documents what has been planned and implemented by the trecherous politicans. Prescott Bush, George W’s grandfather was in league with the Nazis (National socialists) so why would he be any different. Obama is simply a black face on the same agenda.

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:06 pm 163. misanthropicus:

Re #85/TennesseeVolunteer:[...] Write about the Ten Commandments, about what is good, about thrift, Ben Franklin, George Washington, about God. Each of us needs to realize that it starts with us. On Tuesday morning, I will start my own personal Tea Party. [...]

TennesseeVolunteer, as much as I agree with you, how many people in California, Arizona and Texas KNOW what the Tea Party was, and what would be the meaning of a Tea Party now?

What they learn in school today is that Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington and Madison were a bunch of perverts (leaving aside their sinister, English sounding names), America has always been a vicious, despotic nation, that … oops, I stop here because I might sound like our current president vis-a-vis America’s merits.

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:14 pm 164. misanthropicus:

RE #106/lester tobias: [...] As always, Doc, you make me proud to be a Californian. But you need to embrace technology just a wee bit more, use your spellcheck, and proof-read with a little more care. I say this with all due respect, as I take you t be a man of precision and accuracy. It does me no good to comment on what you say, as I rarely have a critique of your thesis. Go slugs! [...]

Cher Lester – frankly, you don’t make me proud to be a Californian. Dear, I think you could get away from technology “a wee bit more” , use your spellcheck “as I take you t be” [...].
As far as precision and accuracy (redundant redundancy ), these are qualities we appreciate in clockmeisters – my impression is that VDH goes a bit wee bit beyond that.
Best regards from Los Angeles -

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:27 pm 165. Dave the Kapampangan:

Depression isn’t the answer and never is/was. As for me, I intend to plod on ahead in my simpleton way, raising my 2nd grade son the honest, old fashioned way; continuing to keep the radio off while driving the kids’ carpool and enjoying the back-and-forth with the elementary school kids on such subjects as boomerangs and shark teeth and igloos and the speed of sound and the ten commandments. Yep, I’ll keep right on trying to add value and rationality and efficiency at the workplace and creativity at grad school; and so on. In short, whether the world falls to pieces or not, I intend to PERSEVERE in my politically incorrect and “old fashioned” ways, the way the biblical Job did during his tribulations– because “good old fashioned” ways ensured the survival of society humanity for tens of thousands of years, and deserves respect for that. I mean, who but the arrogant can argue with commandments like “don’t lie, cuss, kill, steal, screw over your family, or get greedy for your neighbor’s stuff?”

There truly is nothing new under the sun. In most environments, after so much time has passed, the wiser-than-thou liberal kids get tired of being bogged down in self-created bureaucracy and baloney and two-faced butt-kissing and office politics and credit card debt– and return home to roost to ask the sane old geezer for a handout– and get wisdom instead of the expected handout.

Without the additional discipline of apprehending God and weather directly in real time, young drivers have come to rely on delayed radio and cell-phone groupthink for mass-produced reality reports. Bad idea.

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:30 pm 166. Steve J.:

You kids were not served well by these crypto-Marxists who infiltrated the “transmission belts” of society, all according to Antonio Gramsci’s plan. Instead of a solid education, they coddled you guys and indoctrinated you. This is a crime.

This did not happen. What did happen is the colossal failure of conservative “principles.”

Mar 22, 2009 - 5:49 pm 167. trangbang68:

Tara, while no doubt the denizens of DC are a sorry lot , you can keep your NoCal fitness buffs. It reminds me of reading of the Weimer German back to nature movement in the 1920’s that metamorphisized into the Hitler Youth League.
I’d rather have a nation of fat patriots who love our nation’s lore than a bunch of fit narcissists who hate the land that spawned them and spend their leisure time in serial anonymous sodomy.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:07 pm 168. SukieTawdry:

“Instead, this generation has gone quite stark raving mad the last seven months…”

“This generation” presumably is we Boomers. What exactly were you expecting from us, Prof. Hanson? What in our past behaviour suggests that we would face a crisis of this magnitude with sanity, dispassion, grace, civility and wisdom?? My father and aunt went through WWI, the Spanish Influenza pandemic (they lost a brother), the Great Depression and WWII (of which my father was a veteran). Can you even imagine this lot enduring that succession of horrors, much less coming through the other end in shape and determined to rebuild the world? Not hardly.

I feel that a periodically necessary culling of the herd is in our foreseeable future.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:12 pm 169. Delia:

154. Войска ПВО & 155. Ann & ‘everyone’…

A small guffaw for those of us with heavy hearts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgXgnq7PD8

Short-n-sweet.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:15 pm 170. Wolla Dalbo:

I realize that my flippant use of Mencken’s quotation above could be misinterpreted.

I do not advocate Menckens’ solution to this problem or violence, but I do advocate the serious attitude which I believe he is advocating when tackling problems.

VDH has written an elegy, a dreamy meditation on things irredeemably lost; almost like a Roman living in sacked 6th century Rome, dreaming of the glory that was and will never return.

I suggest that there is still time to fight and recapture what once was—maybe not all, but the essence; that when we see deterioration, when things have been directed down the wrong path, or mutated into something ugly and unhealthy, we should actively oppose these changes.

The “Tea Parties”—which seem to be growing in number and sometimes in size, are a good start; join them, help organize more and swell their numbers; the nationwide April 15th Tea Party—if big enough and widespread enough, could give our “Dear Leader” pause and could impose, at least temporarily, a much needed check on the headlong rush to disaster in Washington. Check the curriculums of the schools, and universities, too, that teach your children, and if you see something that you believe is not right, protest, go to school board meetings, speak to the principal, home school your children if you can or send them to a different school that will teach them the values, information and lessons you think they need to learn. Write and, more importantly, personally visit your Congressman and Senator, and tell them about the legislation you are unhappy about and why. If an Obamabot shows up on your doorstep to round up your support for Obama’s budget, give him or her, an earful. Write letters to the editor and blog comments—hopefully more clear and precise than mine above—to defend what you believe is good and right. When you blog, include links to sources for information you have found that the MSM wants to bury. Check on the background of those running for Congress in 2010, accept nothing at face value, and start now to organize to increase voter participation and get out the vote for Republican candidates in 2010.

Complacent and nice doesn’t get it, and supine is not the position from which you command respect.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:20 pm 171. Dr Zen:

You didn’t care about any of this when Republicans did it, and our moral decline bothered you not a jot when your mates were binning the regulations that kept our financial system from being raped. You weren’t all that fussed when Bush binned your credibility as a moral power either. In fact, you cheerleaded for it. So it all comes down to, you’re depressed because the Democrats are in power now. Yeah, okay, message received, you whiny baby.

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:51 pm 172. Terry:

You read my mind. Excellent article..!!

Mar 22, 2009 - 6:54 pm 173. Alex:

Debt in real numbers ;

The Latest M2 report from the Federal Reserve Bank for February 2009 and lists totals at:

8275.4 Billion dollars which, is a little over $8 trillion dollars.

Now, according to Bloomberg.com the Stimulus and Bailout pledges as of February 2009 totals:

$11.6 Trillion Dollars

This means we have Debt bill that is $3.6 Trillion Dollars MORE than our entire money supply for the entire country, or roughly 50% more than available total funds.

Inflation is devaluation based on increasing number relative to worth ( Asset backing the Currency). In the US, there is only Industry, real estate and trust of the people in the system. Due the to completely absurd mismanagement of the Banking system since President Clinton and congress deregulated banking in 1999, we are looking at devaluation of the dollar by roughly 50% in the next few years.

This means the price of goods will double in that time. We are watching an inflationay depression in the making, because we are too lazy to demand accountability from the Federal Reserve.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:07 pm 174. Roughcoat:

Hanson is full of apple sauce. Well, half full.

I’m a Boomer, born in 1950: when I went to college in the late sixties to study English Lit, I found that most of the professors in the humanities departments were Marxists who either “notch babies” born in the thirties or members of the World War II “Greatest” generation. All that leftist baloney in our universities came from pre-Boomers. And most those that weren’t Marxists were blithering anti-social idiots, functionally insane, or monumentally lazy, of some combination of the three. They weren’t Boomers, though.

My generation, the Boomers, fought the Vietnam War under the misdirection of World War II “Greatest” generation generals, admirals, and civilian leaders who botched the effort, lost the war, and got some 55,000 of my generational brethren killed and tens of thousands wounded for little gain.

As for whether we were capable of serving as fathers did in B-17s over Europe, I should like to point out that it was Boomers who crewed the B-52s that ran the gauntlet of SAMs and MiGs over Hanoi and which were getting shot down in droves to further a military strategy formulated by “Greatest” generation military and civilian leaders that could at best be described as confused, contradictory, and incoherent.

What’s more, it wasn’t Boomers who elected Kennedy, LBJ, or even Carter. Boomers did not even start to become a significance force in the electorate until the eldest Boomers reached their thirties, in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Assigning character traits to generations and then separating out generations based on those traits constitutes grossly shoddy, and lazy, thinking. Generations overlap as does the history they make and the consequences of the actions that produces that history. If you’re looking to blame someone or generational group for the mess we’re in, you’re going to have look beyond the Boomers, both before and after them.

Now, Victor, please eat your apple sauce.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:12 pm 175. TLM:

“You’re sitting here. And you’re— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money—’”

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft says.

(Steve Kroft interviewing Obama for 60 Minutes — via Politico).

Punch-drunk? No. Just an airhead. Playing president makes him giggle.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:17 pm 176. Charles C.:

Having lived almost 83 years in this country, remembering getting running water, electric lites, a telephone which my parents had to pay for the construction of along with others before they would do it. I can tell you that when the wants out number the willing to pay for it we are on the way down. As far as borrowing from China to pay for the present administration plans and expecting to keep doing this with out a way out is scary. !’m sure thw younga nd the uneducated in the political area will be wondering what to do in the 20012 election once this administration learns it cannot borrow and tax it’s way to properity.When free enterprize is no longer freewe’ll be done as a nation. As Korea is firing off the equivalent of an intercontinental rocket and will then give the plans to Iran the dust storm that I thot would start in thw middle east and circumfert the earth will probably starting in New York, Washington DS, Seattle, Los Angeles and other such locations and most of populace will think for moment until reality sets in that there just watching anothe episode of “24″. i grieve for the good people who will be affected by the ones who thing that socialism will make things better for all. Unless we get busy and use the natural resources here that means drilling and nuclear and coal we’ll never be able to sustain ourselves while tring to buy fossil fuels from the middle east and Chavez and the rest that see us going down and nowing time is with them unless there is some sense shown in Washington Dc. From the time democrats gained control of congress they have only paid there polical debts to those who gave them the cash to buy the lready liberal news facilities who have done their best to help elect the present administration. I’ll not live long enough to see the demise of the United States although at the present rate of the Administrations actions I may. The only ope is for the younger generation to realize this country needs an industrial base again and an economy that thrives. the tax structure suggested by th present administration give no hope that will be their goal. During world war 2 when i was in the service everyone was willig to work and fight but the few demented souls who thought tat the pacifists should rule. but enough. i have grandchildren who have adopted the present d ministrations morals and are going tohelp bring the country down. We shall see but at present it loos grim. Charley

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:33 pm 177. HealthCareCynic:

Prof. Hanson:

I am sorry you wrote this piece.

Oh, I agree with everything you said and, moreover, you said it very well.

My problem is that I turn to your column for fresh insights, information, and understanding. But this piece contains material that has been said many times in many places.

I shall look forward to your next column.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:34 pm 178. Roughcoat:

Re “One, just one, novel of a Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe even, is worth more than what has been written collectively in the last ten years.”

Nah. Cormac McCarthy is a better writer than those three. Better by far.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:52 pm 179. Roughcoat:

Those four (not three). Apologies.

Mar 22, 2009 - 7:54 pm 180. fred:

“This did not happen.” by “SteveJ” at 166

I would expect nothing less than a denial from you. We know that socialists often pose as “liberals” and “progressives” and they are practiced deceivers about who they really are and what they hope to accomplish.

You can’t put this one over on me, because I used to be in academia. I know you people THOROUGHLY.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:14 pm 181. Delia:

177. HealthCareCynic,

Some things written from the heart and written well are worthy of being repeated.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:31 pm 182. TLM:

Very good posts here. VDH brings out the best in his readers.

JE Dyer: If you decide to run for Congress, let me know.

Can’t verify this, but apparently Obama sent a letter to Chirac expressing a desire to work with him the next four years, and thereby causing a rift with Sarkozy. Le Figaro has the story if you read French.

All joking aside, this Administration needs to get its act together. We don’t just have a financial crisis anymore. We have a crisis in government. The clowns in Congress are playing CYA, Obama is preening for the cameras like he’s in a non-stop Pepsodent commercial, and the derelict MSM is (finally) starting to turn up the heat on both. The whole world’s stuck watching this Amateur Hour in American, and they’re not laughing.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:36 pm 183. USMC Ken:

Obama and his cohort have accomplished an impressive two-fer, squandering the inheritance they received from their parents and grandparents and then stealing the wealth of their children and grandchildren.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:37 pm 184. Peter Warner:

Thank you, Dr. Hanson.

These social problems are all symptoms. Is not the cause the absence of Biblical devotion? Our goodness, virtues and principles come from the Torah, Talmud, and New Testament. Isn’t it obvious that if we neglect them, our society becomes misguided and lost?

Now, what is the solution? We need prophets, for one thing. Not to replace this false messiah with another, but to refocus our objectives and regain our footing.

Let us each stand and speak up against the lies, ignorance, and falsehood we find ourselves drowning in. Let us each be a prophet.

Best regards and best wishes, Peter Warner.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:39 pm 185. Walter:

Well said! The heartland of America is concerned about the “hope and change” that is being trumpeted. Thomas Paine said, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” It is time for those who have undergone that fatigue to stand up and say, ENOUGH! Our country needs real leadership not a celebrity.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:39 pm 186. WRG:

I see the miracle teachers you speak of every day. I also witness the disdain in our public schools for learning a trade. Nowhere in our cirriculum is there any room for learning a trade. Every child is going to college regardless of his talent or lack of it. It’s interesting to hear how we talk down to the people who are craftsmen and tradesmen until we need them. It is here that we have lost our grit, creativity and determination. Television has taught us that everyone of us should be rich and enjoy the finer things in life. All of out problems can be solved in half an hour. In striving to become these characters we see potrayed we go into professions such as law and politics because they are sexy, because they can afford us the lives we see on TV. Now that we’re in those professions we must DO something. This is where saving the snail darter at the expense of someone’s farm comes in. Never mind him, he’s just a stupid farmer. I’m doing something important. Look at me. This glut of lawyers is killing us. John Edwards is a good example. Here’s another guy who played well on TV. Never mind that his biggest accomplishments in life are affecting obstetrical medicine in the state of North Carolina so negatively a woman can hardly find a doctor in some areas and the naming of two post offices while he was in the senate, he looked good and he spoke well. Unfortunately, his resume is better than Obama’s. The Messiah never got around to naming those post offices. We have elected our first (created) celebrity president. We didn’t have an election, we had political American idol. This guy is polished, well spoken and vigorous but he is as qualified to be president as Madonna. Until we rise up and tell him and the congress no-and I mean leave- we will be stuck with this progressive hack and the minefield of mistakes, miscalculations and political mischief for generations to come. If we survive.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:39 pm 187. Meryl:

171 zen … The equating of the Republicans foolishly looking the other way while money was being spent…with what the punchdrunk wonderbaby is doing is ridiculous, and those of you still enjoying using that line are beginning to look a little ignorant.

Mar 22, 2009 - 8:43 pm 188. Night Owl:

Sissy Willis said:
-Excellent rant, but I’m still reeling from “they talk in the same tones as women did sixty years ago.” Which women do you mean, exactly?-

I thought I was the only one who was left wondering about that statement. I too, wish he had been more specific. Which women, and what exactly did they say?

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:04 pm 189. Войска ПВО:

169. Delia..

..check out the link where BINC (Boob-In-Chief) gags on his press conference lines. I think it’s looped, but he often stumbles like that.

I laugh every time I see posts or references on what a bumbler President Training Pants is; it reminds me how the MSM used to say GW was clumsy with his words, not realizing that their golden boy would turn out to be such a stiff.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:05 pm 190. J. Davis:

Fabulous… but instead of us all being depressed, I say we should get mean! Let’s have more tea parties and then, when we are good and strong, commit a takeover of the present administration. If we the people don’t take them out of office… and I mean ALL of the leftist socialist bastards, we may as well kiss our country goodbye.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:25 pm 191. Kondratieff:

What is good/bad? Add to your list of good authors Ethan Canin, and, if you have time, look at his latest ‘America, America’.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:42 pm 192. fred:

The government either is no longer competent or this crazy Marxist has an agenda hidden from view:

- He disses the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom when he visited here.

- He blows kisses at the Mullahs in Tehran. The Mullahs tell him to F- off.

- Now he disses French President Nicholas Sarkozy and hails former President Jacques Chirac and praises him for his obstruction of the U.S. in the lead up to the war in Iraq.

- And now his people blithely and with good humor fling the b.s. that the budget being submitted will work and that the economy is going to grow fast enough to support it. In reality, it will bankrupt the nation.

Keep the ammo stocked up and your weapons safely cached, boys, because Eric Holder wants them. And they know it’s got NOTHING to do with crime and the police being “outgunned.” 99.9% of us have nothing at all to do with what happened out there in Oakland today. And we would not be behaving like the animals around the dead police officers taunting them. King George III sent Gen. Thomas Gage to Boston to disarm the people of the province. He never succeeded and it only lit the match.

Crazies, animals, riffraff, the mob, and parasites now have put these people in power and they think they are invincible. We’ll see…

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:47 pm 193. Judy, NYC:

“He’s merely the ultimate expression of what they lead to: a smiley faced airhead president yucking it up on Leno — dissin’ the “tards” to hysterical applause (how ironic) — while the country burns.”

yes.yes.yes. a truly brilliant synopsis of the decline and fall of the american empire. nerobama.

Mar 22, 2009 - 9:54 pm 194. Belmont Club » The pits:

[...] in some of the most recent Belmont Club posts have been haunted by what Scott Johnson and Victor Davis Hanson have called depression.

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:02 pm 195. trangbang68:

Roughcoat; Cormac McCarthy better than Fitzgerald and Heminway? Puhleeze! His writing is almost unreadable gibberish. And no Alice Walker isn’t comparable to Shakespeare and keep Maya Angelou, give me Eliot or WH Auden.

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:17 pm 196. trangbang68:

oops, Hemingway

Mar 22, 2009 - 10:17 pm 197. BMoon:

I agree we should get shit-happy mean. But even in some of the Tea Parties, I see a lack of necessary FIRE in the oratory and in the tepid response. The cannibalized middle class, like the dissipate Eloi of HG Wells’ book, is too fat, somnambulent, half-educated, overweeningly self-occupied to be fit for a true revolution. We need joyous, fire-breathing warriors. Where are they?

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:09 pm 198. The Wide Awake Cafe » “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”:

[...] You’d think we were living in pre-Revolutionary France these days, what with the utterings and declamations coming out of Congress to deflect the flack of their own making with the stimulus, tarp and AIG mess. It’s enough to depress any normally optimistic American. [...]

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:09 pm 199. Pete:

When reading of Dr. Hanson’s blues, and what has gone wrong with our society these past decades, I can’t help but think of the great Dennis Prager’s comments about the ‘Baby Boom’ generation, which he calls the most narcissistic, and most destructive in American history. Hard to argue with him when so many of the problems we face date in their origin to that era. Of course, there are many good, productive people from that era, but in general they have been as a plague of locusts, destroying everything in their path… wealth, civil society, trust, fiscal responsibility, and more.

Perhaps another way of saying it is that the problems we face are ones of values. We have forgotten the Judeo-Christian values that undergird our nation, the Ten Commmandments, the Golden Rule, and so many others. The good news is that there are many, many Americans who still believe in the traditions that once made us great, and the values that our forefathers fought and died to defend. We just have to find a way to make ourselves heard, and our influence felt, not merely acknowledged as it is now in Sodom-on-the-Potomac.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:19 pm 200. hawkeye:

yes it is true. where is the decency. lets bring back the decency.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:39 pm 201. hawkeye:

and thank you sharon. under the rule of law. the only purpose of a constitutional republic is to protect rights.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:50 pm 202. gregor:

Speak for yourself Mr. Hanson.

It is time for sane people to rejoice that we have a literate and educated person in the White House who can speak coherently on the issues of the day.

Mr. Hanson spent the last eight years cheer-leading a war that was based on false premises at best, and outright lies to the Americans at worst, and now he is worried that a black man is in the White House who by his very nature has brought ‘coarseness’ in the land.

Perhaps Mr. Hanson should indeed be depressed that while millions of people were being displaced and hundreds of thousands were dying, he was just clapping.

He should indeed be depressed that he cannot get his little wars so he can feel good about his machismo.

He should indeed be depressed that his pseudo-intellectual rants on the desirability of mass-violence do not have a listener on the 16th Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:59 pm 203. Works and Days » Thoughts About Depressed Americans « Snow Report Blog:

[...] via Works and Days » Thoughts About Depressed Americans. [...]

Mar 22, 2009 - 11:59 pm 204. J:

Thanks for writing this article. Your article mirrored what is in my heart and mind. I hope this economic crisis will generate a tectonic shift not just on the financial system but also on the core of the beliefs and values of modern day Americans.

Mar 23, 2009 - 12:02 am 205. Joe:

We’re overworked, lonely, and disconnected from nature. Our lifestyles have made us weak. “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” – Patton.

Mar 23, 2009 - 12:50 am 206. kathy:

188. Night Owl & Sissy Willis

Were you readers of Dr Hanson in November ‘08? See #6 in Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts

Mar 23, 2009 - 1:46 am 207. One Eyed Jack:

So this is where all the smart people have been hiding. I’ve looked over all the internet and found no sign of intelligence until now.

I believe that there is one more symptom of this lingering malady sickening America that VDH did not mention.

There is a soul sickness in this nation, a sense of entitlement that makes us petty as we spend our days searching for the next gratification in hope that this one will make our lives seem less empty, less wasted. We medicate ourselves with the slow poison of television morality, laughing at the crude humor, watching bodies murdered and dissected, unmoved by portrayals of infidelity, addiction and revenge.

I don’t know when, years ago, in the sixties or the seventies we stopped being the people of the old, well-worn book. We stopped reading the wisdom of the ages in parable and psalm. We stopped striving to comprehend the mind of God and be transformed into his likeness. We had become too sophisticated for simple truths and wanted to try our hand at the new, the outrageous and the avant garde. And so we abandoned those hindering moral principles that, though they had served us well, now seemed like weights keeping us back from the new morality and its payload of carnal delight.

But that abdication of the absolute and the good has brought us to this moment of crises. We find ourselves adrift in a sea of moral relativism. We can no longer discern right from wrong because we gave up such terminology in order to pursue convenient and inconvenient instead. But, in this hour of testing, convenient and inconvenient shed no light on the way we should take. We have become so accustomed to the easy that we are incapable of the hard.

And there is only one remedy for this affliction. We must turn back from this cult of self and return to the principles we have long disparaged and abandoned. It will be a hard and grueling way because we are no longer fit for the journey. There must be a wilderness experience so that the enslaved and the soft can be burned away and we made ready for the task ahead. Ah, we dread the wilderness but it is the only way to go from here to there. And so, dreading the task and hating the journey we will slowly become that which we once were. Hardship, terror and loss will be our teachers and when we emerge, at last, from the other side we will have mastered them all.

And this journey and this restoration will remedy all else that is wrong.

Mar 23, 2009 - 3:07 am 208. Rebeccq:

Thank you for putting into print what I have been thinking for a long time. You put it clearer than I ever could. I think part of the problem that you didn’t mention is the role that media has played in the reversal of tone for this age. If you watch TV and go to movies you wouldn’t be able to miss the insulting humor, the denigration of others, the evil played out by people against each other. Every thing I see now in real life I have seen on some screen before. I now realize that life imitates “art”, not the other way around.

Mar 23, 2009 - 5:21 am 209. Corbin Hollis Choate:

Mr. Hanson,

Reach out with vision and strength, and strive toward the noble cause. Duty, family, honor and loyalty… these can still be found.

Mar 23, 2009 - 5:22 am 210. Robert F:

Dear Professor Hanson,
Your words scare me. Why? Because I see that you are a good and intelligent man. Someone who grew up with an appreciation of the legacy of your ancestors who started and ran your farm over the years. Someone who then developed an appreciation of history in general and the debts we all owe to our ancestors. Then you went on to make a career of teaching this history, to instill in others that same knowledge and appreciation. In doing so, you were preforming a vital function in preserving our culture for future generations.
So, why do your words scare me now? Because I don’t believe it was ever your intent to spread doom and gloom, or that you started out believing that the horrid mistakes you have seen in our past would be repeated in our lifetimes. But now you are seeing it. Reluctantly, for no one wants to witness the demise of that or those whom they love.

God Bless you, Professor.

Mar 23, 2009 - 5:34 am 211. liberty lover:

Food for thought from an e-mail sent to me Friday:

Divorce Agreement
THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT’S BY A YOUNG
PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I’LL VOTE FOR HIM.
Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:
We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce.
I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course. Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.
Here is a model separation agreement:
Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion.
That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy!
Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes. We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.
Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell (You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them).
We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.
You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens.
We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks.
We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .
You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.
We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the UN…but we will no longer be paying the bill.
We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.
You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.
We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot.
Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag
Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete.
In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you ANWAR which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.
Sincerely,
John J. Wall, Law Student and an American
P. S. Also, please take Barbara Streisand & Jane Fonda with you.

Mar 23, 2009 - 6:10 am 212. Cranford Pundit:

Prof Hanson-

I hear you. I feel your pain. We’ve given the keys to the country to morons, who have painstakingly helped create vast swaths of morons to the point that they’re the majority.

But to paraphrase John Riggins: “Lighten up, Vic, baby!” It will swing back the other way; maybe we’ll have another Victorian age. (Yes there’s a chance we’ll be similar to a lot of other nations in history, about 2 dozen literate aristocrats overseeing millions of peasants).

I have hope. There are a lot of people who could rise to the top when things get really tough. I have a lot of friends who are vastly smarter than I am, more resourceful and full of class. And they’re making new people that will carry on the torch.

You won’t hear about them. They’re busy and are never polled or interviewed on the news. And they are very good at getting around the barriers set before us.

Maybe I’m delusional, but to me it’s not over yet. And I’m from New Jersey (although, in NJ, it’s pretty much over.)

Mar 23, 2009 - 7:48 am 213. Angus:

Shorter Hanson: “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!”
Please, VDH, stick to military history, an area where you excel.

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:04 am 214. P Gable:

When I see 200+ comments of so many thoughtful people so quickly, I wonder if there’s more cause for optimism than we think. The mindless media will be the last to find out, but there are more people awake in this country every day. The specific leaders who will be made famous by this era, and the actions that will be taken to take back this country have not yet taken shape, but once thought is moving, experience will follow.

Samuel Adams said it didn’t take a majority to prevail, but an irate tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men. Dr. Hanson and many others are setting those brushfires. They are going to spread.
More at http://www.brushfires-of-freedom.com

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:29 am 215. bruce:

# 202 Mr. Gregeor

You need to look inward and what you will see is exactly what is wrong with America today. You are a willing participant in perpetuating a lie that institutionalized racism runs rampant in America. How dare you infer that Professor Hanson is racist for exercising his constitutional right to question Obama’s policies, decisions, or even competence. You posit no facts, only hyperbole and hysteria.

In regards to Obama, please tell us, as he was the editor of the Law Review at Harvard, what he wrote to set himself apart from others. Professor Hanson has a long distinguished record, and his writings and thoughts are readily available for anyone to read. The fact is Obama has conveniently sealed all his prior records from public scrutiny and examination. What is he trying to hide?

The American people, quite frankly, are sick and tired of your type. The game is up. Get a life.

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:54 am 216. Getting Cranky « The Cranford Pundit.:

[...] March 23, 2009 Getting Cranky Posted by Cranford Pundit under The age of rainbows and rosy cheeks   Victor Davis Hanson is thinking that Barack Obama is Nero and we’re Rome. [...]

Mar 23, 2009 - 9:19 am 217. Why are we depressed? Victor Davis Hanson sums it up. « Jb’s Sanctuary:

[...] Why are we depressed? Victor Davis Hanson sums it up. By JB Thoughts About Depressed Americans [...]

Mar 23, 2009 - 9:25 am 218. Jordan M. Poss:

I come from a long line of strong men and unapologetic doers. Needless to say, I often remember my grandfathers–one of whom fought in Korea and made it on his own as a plumber/electrician, while the other survived polio, started his own businesses, served in the state legislature and is still going strong in his 80s–and feel infinitely inferior to them. I admire them as a Roman would a Cincinnatus or Horatius Cocles, but I feel like I’m living in a generation of Caligulas.

Thanks for your thoughts. Keep up the good work.

Mar 23, 2009 - 9:44 am 219. deguello:

Good diagnosis of the TERMINAL situation of contemporary American society.The toilet is clogged with 40 years of leftist insanity, corporate greed, and vulgarity. It’s time to flush this toilet;and it won’t be pretty.

Mar 23, 2009 - 9:59 am 220. Bill:

Great description of the state of the union. One senses a happy ending is not to be had. What does history tell us about what the future might bring? We aren’t even addressing energy in a serious fashion let alone water. What is next? “Road Warrior” reality comes to a neighborhood near you? Seems like we are edging in that direction….

Mar 23, 2009 - 10:18 am 221. Roughcoat:

trangbang68, 195, re Cormac McCarthy: “His writing is almost unreadable gibberish.”

Gosh, I find his writing easy to read. Maybe I’m fluent in gibberish.

Mar 23, 2009 - 10:39 am 222. Roughcoat:

And what’s with all this “Professor Hanson” and “Dr. Hanson” and “Mr. Hanson”? Is this a blog or a grad school seminar?

Mar 23, 2009 - 10:48 am 223. Hans Rupprecht:

VDH this isn’t Cialis or Viagra related, but close.

Stimulus? U.S. to buy Chinese condoms

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/64577.html#Comments_Container

” At a time when the federal government is spending billions of stimulus dollars to stem the tide of U.S. layoffs, should that same government put even more Americans out of work by buying cheaper foreign products?

In this case, Chinese condoms.”

It’s an Obama-Nation(tm) I tell ya! Well at least the ’stimulus’ funds are aptly named, albeit now the American people know they are being screwed by the Chinese, but they don’t know “Hu” or “Wen”!

VDH great column as usual.

Hope and ’spare change’. Hey mister got a spare condom?

The thing that makes America great is the ability to transmit transcendent ideals. Transcendent is precisely what is missing in American political life. The proposition that Americans are actually building and part of something bigger than themselves.

These people can’t even procreate properly, how the hell are they going to stimulate the nation?

At least with real sex, you’re making a “deposit” on the future generation.

Cheers

Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”

Mar 23, 2009 - 11:12 am 224. straycat:

Not having time to read the comments, it may have already been said. But, what we are living and witnessing is a more Godless society than ever. We find ourselves, the ones with faith, weighted down with our armored suits, defending morality and our worldview against the onslaught of egalitarian haters and multicultural traitors. Mr. Hanson, the addition of this point would have rounded out your rant.

Mar 23, 2009 - 11:37 am 225. Steve Walton:

#222 Roughcoat: it’s a sign of respect, troll. Something else that is falling by the wayside.

Retired professor Hanson’s doctorate was acquired with much more hard work and erudition than dozens of other PhD’s I’ve known. Why don’t you sit down and read all of his published works? I’ll wait…

Mar 23, 2009 - 12:20 pm 226. kathy:

202. gregor
It is time for sane people to rejoice that we have a literate and educated person in the White House who can speak coherently on the issues of the day.

snork

giggle

What, no storybook articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy?

Mar 23, 2009 - 12:22 pm 227. Kathie Crawford:

I teach history in a community college in Fresno, California, a generally conservative area. But this morning, three classrooms full of students, one after the other, lamented the fact that GWB had not been assassinated in office. Taken aback, in the first class, I said that was a terrible thing for them to say–and in a college classroom! A student shouted back at me, “Free speech!”
It was depressing as hell. Twenty years of teaching feels like so much wasted effort.

Mar 23, 2009 - 12:31 pm 228. Sarabella:

Thank you, Mr. Hanson. (I say “Mr.” because I regard a comment as being akin to an actual letter. Since I’ve never met VDH, I opt for being polite.) You’re right about all of it. We can only stand firm and be ready to rebuild what we know is good and decent and sane.

Mar 23, 2009 - 1:35 pm 229. Marc Malone:

#202 Gregor – You had a good moonbat rant going there… until your last three words destroyed any credibility you might have had. It’s not “16th Pennsylvania Avenue”. It’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The former is worse than a wrong address. It demonstrates a gross ignorance of how our address system works. 16th Pennsylvania is not functional as an address. If some girl invited you by for sex at such an address, you’d wander throughout the night looking for it, not realizing that she’d blown you off, What a maroon!

#227 Kathie Crawford – That was a rare opportunity to TEACH! You could have explained to them the instability that comes from a culture that promotes assasination as a means of regime change.

You could have pointed to Pakistan. Assasination of top political figures, and the ensuing instability, chaos, and irresponsible civil war, in a nuclear-armed country is an horrific scenario. It’s not enough to say, “That’s terrible!” It’s clear they don’t know WHY that’s terrible!

As a teacher, you have to find those moments. That was a gift from heaven directly to you. You’ve been called.

Mar 23, 2009 - 2:01 pm 230. J.E. Dyer:

TLM at #182 — no plans to run for Congress, but I may run for governor of California one of these days. Or, who knows, President of California.

Thanks for the tip on the Obama letter to Chirac. I did some digging on that, and you may enjoy my blog piece on it today. Click on my name.

Obama’s swath through this vale of tears keeps reminding me of a James Joyce novel — you know you’re wading through a whole lotta BS, but you keep being bombarded with “explanations” from a lot of people who couldn’t get a job behind the counter at 7-11, if they had to live in real world.

Mar 23, 2009 - 2:36 pm 231. Fresh Bilge » Depression:

[...] Davis Hanson has published an essay on five reasons why Americans are depressed. At Powerline, Scott Johnson adds a sixth reason — the president is a fool. Posted at 5:45 [...]

Mar 23, 2009 - 2:45 pm 232. deguello:

Sorry to disagree, but judicious assasination, is an effective way to defend the republic.if your remember your history, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t exactly shy about recommending violence.without violence, including attempted and successful assasinations,there would have been no labor unions, or even the establishment of republic;or even a purpose for the second amendment.Can you imagine a lib.tumor screeching to shut down the first amendment knowing that the consequences of his rant might be fatal? I can’t either. Unless conservatives make it clear to the Stalinist left, that we will defend ourselves by ANY MEANS NECESSARY, they will continue to destroy our nation.Your student was right about free speech.

Mar 23, 2009 - 3:02 pm 233. Katie:

Cheer up, people. Traditional American values are a secularized version of Christian ethics. Christianity has survived 2,000 years worth of war, famine, social upheaval, the rise and fall of multiple empires and civilizations and it’s still going strong.

Remember, you can be Christian WITHOUT rejecting evolution or adopting fundamentalist doctrine.

And if your inheritance is Jewish, take what I just said about Christianity and say the same about Judaism, except add four thousand years.

There are reasons why religions outlast civilizations and we’re seeing the reasons, up close and personal, right now.

Mar 23, 2009 - 4:16 pm 234. Kathie Crawford:

#229, Mark Malone: Indeed, you are right, and I did try to explain why political violence is a terrible thing to contemplate. But to them I am an old lady, quaintly familiar with things like the election of 1840. I fear they will not be taught by the likes of me. (Although during the day, two students did contact me with encouraging messages. Perhaps all is not quite lost.)

Mar 23, 2009 - 4:35 pm 235. Z:

Man, did Mr. Hanson NAIL it. Anybody got any Kleenex?
Can we get America BACK?

Mar 23, 2009 - 5:23 pm 236. bruce:

#176 Charles C.

Sir, God bless you for your service to our country. Your sacrifices helped make a better country for my generation of Boomers. I can only hope that future generations of Americans, will look up to your generation as role models, rather than mine.

Mar 23, 2009 - 6:14 pm 237. Rob Pollard:

Ah, always good to confer unto ALL the masses (e.g., “Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?”) something that you and your friends are feeling.

Mr. Davis Hanson, YOU may be feeling more depressed, but poll after poll have shown more Americans feel the country is starting to get on the right track.

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/mar/poll/
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/right_direction_wrong_track/right_direction_or_wrong_track
…and there are plenty more.

We still have a ways to go, even if you agree with Obama & the Dems. And you certainly don’t have to agree, even if polls eventually grow to 90% plus — but don’t be a reverse Pauline Kael (i.e., “How could have Nixon been voted President (in a landslide)? Nobody I know voted for him!”)

Mar 23, 2009 - 6:23 pm 238. D. B. Robinson:

Mr. Hanson hits it out of the park. There is just no more commentary necessary.

Mar 23, 2009 - 6:49 pm 239. Dick:

When I was a kid (in the 30’s), the American dream was to own a home. In the 90’s and beyond. that idea went the way of the buggy whip. As soon as you accumulate a little equity, just suck the equity out and keep trading up to a bigger house, car, boat, second home, etc. The goal of burning the mortgage was long forgotten. Who pays off mortgages anyway? Same thing with educational loans–get the education, and forget the obligation. Who pays off loans anyway?

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:01 pm 240. Victor Davis Hanson - An Incarnation of Our Ideals :Obama Tea Parties:

[...] is brilliant. Really, you owe it to yourself to read this. An [...]

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:07 pm 241. Tollen:

Dr Hanson

Please continue your rants, I love them and you are doing your share of heavy lifting to get us back on track.
And to all the rest of us, join the tea parties!

Mar 23, 2009 - 8:22 pm 242. Yehudi_T:

Sadly, this administration has lived down to everything and more I expected of them. Thank you for collating and expressing so eloquently the thoughts that have been raging within me since the “immaculation.”

Mar 23, 2009 - 9:43 pm 243. mark:

Whoa, angry Duude–tell us what you really think!

Mar 23, 2009 - 10:08 pm 244. westerncanadian:

An excellent article. Not only Americans are depressed. Anyone who admires the US and counts themselves as its friend is also depressed by the current almighty mess. One thought – if the US Govt continues the insanity, will it reach the stage where foreign creditors will go on strike and the government itself will be unable to print more money because it has lost all credibility? Then, will the whole unsustainable castle in the air collapse in on itself leaving as a remnant a small federal government? Is this how crazy people might inadvertently cause a massive shrinkage of government?

Mar 23, 2009 - 11:17 pm 245. Sayoko:

Dr. Hanson, you are my hero. I’ve been reading your ariticles for years, and this is one of the best. Thank you for writing this piece. You are one of the few true voice of reason in this mad world.

I am, too, so sick of stupid commercials, celebrity culture, people with no manners, disrespect for good old American tradition and culture, and the generation of spoiled, weak-mineded, hypocritical, and self-congratulatory.

I am looking forward to your lecture at Hillsdale again this fall. Please take care of yourself.

Mar 24, 2009 - 6:20 am 246. geoffgo:

Many thoughtful and encouraging posts, as usual here. Lots of denial. Some simmerings of dissent. A few kooks (and while they’re harmless here in the ether, they tend to enlist in the jackboot brigades, so these kapo-kadets need to be studied and penciled in for re-education. Or obeyed, depending on how it turns out. Lots of depression, which fosters paralysis. The first glimpses at anger.

I’m not a shrink and I haven’t played one on TV; but have spent 10s of thousands so they could practice on me. I’ve heard that anger is the rational emotion one experiences when confronting evil. And when warranted, it’s always a good and rational and natural reaction, no matter your skin color, gender, country of origin, or any other discriminatory characterization. I heard if you are an American, evil is bad. End of story, and no compromises. That’s got to be in our pledge, integral to the conservative promise going forward; to become the most inclusive party.

The fight we’re facing is not POLITICAL RIVALRY; anymore than your “one vote” you get with your rapist, just prior to the act.

A fight to the death between good and evil deserves coverage, worldwide. In case you’re thinking I’m gonna get all religious with ya, I’m an aetheist. Let’s escalate.

The Left has/is/will always seek to destroy morality; because unless they are successful in doing so, people will judge. People constantly judging makes achieving their goals harder…and when they accrue sufficient force, it no longer matters.

It’s about slavery vs. freedom, which cuts across humanity, morally speaking. It’s as inclusive an issue as can be found. Most moral-coward moderates and some Dems can be persuaded that their rape will be a bad.

It’s not about whimsy, mistakes, goofball antics, clowning around, incompetence, inexperience, misplaced enthusiasm, lack-of-time, hackery, rookie behavior, or politics when your being raped – literally or figuratively.

There are NO EXCUSES for what is transpiring in the US. This is intentionally evil, which should evoke intense anger among the rational.

Now, perhaps half the population may not qualify. But pressing on. The end game = a whole lot of hangin goin on amongst the losers; unless we find a way to get er done without force – mutiny – all out revolt.

For planning purposes anticipate this: neither winner can tolerate recidivism, ever again. This is not best 2 out of 3. We have just one last shot remaining.

At some point soon, we must get really vocal. About as outraged as you’d be, if someone was discussing your march to the raperoom or gallows. It’s time to embarrass, ridicule, harrass and INSULT elected officials locally and in DC.

Confront your elected officials. Ask pointed questions. Like: About half the population thinks what this Congress is doing is pure evil and unAmerican, and that your support is criminal. How do you respond to those charges? Record the confrontations. Video at 11 on Youtube and elsewhere.

Evoke rational anger and channel it. Rally, march, demonstrate, picket, stage sit-ins, be clever and SHOUT OUT. Otherwise…it gets gruesome.

Mar 24, 2009 - 8:01 am 247. Harry Flynn:

“We yearn for an ex-President Truman or Eisenhower—and instead get Jimmy Carter.”

Hey, we had John McCain right there; all we had to do was elect him. And we chose Twerpy McBullsh*t instead. We get what we deserve.

Mar 24, 2009 - 8:26 am 248. ACraig:

Certainly this is one of the most profound ‘rants’ that I have read. It speaks to the sadness many Americans feel at watching our beloved country slide into the abyss. I would like to mention my primary reason for sadness, or ‘depression’: this country’s rejection of faith in God and of the Judeo-Christian values and morals that once provided the mortar that held the nation together. Indeed, I would add that the five causes of Dr. Hanson’s depression are all symptoms of the American people turning their backs on God. We are dealing with the consequences of sin. God does not have to punish us. Rather, we simply reap what we sow.

Mar 24, 2009 - 8:39 am 249. deguello:

#234 KATIE CRAWFORD: Violence,can be terrible, but is sometimes necessary and unavoidable;indeed an issue of survival. The left needs to know that conservatives are fully capable of it;see my post #232.

Mar 24, 2009 - 9:30 am 250. Tom Casey:

Sir: Everything you said is correct. We ALL have “dark nights of the soul”.

Many years ago I read and was impressed with Sinclair Lewis’ 1930s book, “It Can’t Happen Here”. He remarked on how lonely and isolated a principled stand can feel. I don’t have the book handy (loaned it to my son) but it went something like this: “In hard, hard times 90% of people shun you and avoid you; 5% collaborate with the enemy and would turn you in instantly; and 5% are your friends. It is that blessed 5% that keeps you alive.”

I had my own close-up and personal encounter with a Death Star (bush league variety) about 25 years ago. A life-changing experience, and one with lessons for today or any day.

In that case, the Good Guys won. There is a plaque in a small town today with Edmund Burke’s immortal quote on it: “All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Sir, NO ONE will ever be able to say that of you!

Thank you, and keep up the good work.

Mar 24, 2009 - 9:35 am 251. 98ZJUSMC:

Prof. Hanson, long have I read your incredible opion pieces but, never have I been so struck through to the core of my own feelings. I read this piece open mouthed and, quite frankly, awe. With a suppressive fire essay, you have expressed the entire range of emotion a great many of us feel every day. Awesome. Indeed, we face a set of challenges that may be impossible to surmount and perhaps more difficult to figure out where to begin. What I think I gained from this is a logical layout of the progression that led us to our current state and I thank you for that. Here’s to the hope we can find the courage to stand up to what is going on and persevere. Thank you, sir. Semper Fidelis, Prof. Hanson.

Mar 24, 2009 - 11:47 am 252. 98ZJUSMC:

Roughcoat: I completely understand your POV. Painting a entire generation with a broad-brush can be slightly disingenuous. I am a Joneser. When I enlisted in the Marine Corps, they were still a great many of the Vietnam guys around to show us “boots” the ropes. They were among the most dedicated and field talented Marines that I ever came across. I had a discussion with an old-breed salty Master Gunny, with WWII and Korea time, about the state of the Corps at that time (77-78). Over numerous beers, we came to the conclusion that the Vietnam guys were the best we had ever fielded. That is true. It is indeed sad that the notoriety gained by the slackers, buried the accomplishments of the shining examples of fortitude that exist in every generation. The 60’s were a perfect storm that exploded with a change that was too fast and you are absolutely correct, middle American voted in Carter. People were tired and I think politically exhausted. Thinking back about that time, I think there are a number of analogies that apply to this election also. That’s enough….my brain hurts. Take care.

Mar 24, 2009 - 12:12 pm 253. TEN JACK TEN » Blog Archive » Of Interest - 3/24/09:

[...] An Excellent rumination on the current mood of the country by one of my five favorite columnists, Victor Davis Hanson. [...]

Mar 24, 2009 - 1:06 pm 254. Alan Kellogg:

Sir, you have not read some of the books I have.

We’ll start with Inferno and Escape From Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The first a re-telling of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the second a sequel to the re-telling. They are both a comment on society -the first a comment on the society of the 80s, a study of Hell and it’s purpose (It’s a wake up call), and satire. It’s also a shaggy dog story featuring Robert Oppenheimer, a suicide bomber, and lawyers. I shan’t go into more than that.

Another work, a trilogy, is Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law. Think Lord of the Rings as told by a muckraking reporter. It’s gloomy, it’s depressing; by the end of the tale you find yourself sympathizing with the Dark Lord.

The First Law is not an elegantly written work. Then again, was Northhanger Abbey before the editors got their hands on it? It is a multifaceted, multilayered work, concerned with heroism, legend, and the lies we tell ourselves about our ancestors.

Not telling the like we used to? Time you tried some of the less thought of genera.

Mar 24, 2009 - 10:43 pm 255. coach:

Evil people listen to evil ideas and liars listen to liars…VDH continue providing wisdom…we need it now more than ever.

Mar 25, 2009 - 1:54 am 256. giovanna:

We have become a nation of complainers and blamers. Washington just reflects our own irresponsible behavior. These are sad times.

Mar 25, 2009 - 3:53 am 257. SteveL:

Prof Hanson, one of our wisest observers, missed one additional reason to be depressed: Though Obama confirms every day that he is a shallow and destructive fraud, millions of American voters are still mesmerized by their blessed Messiah. There is no hope of convincing the hard Left, but if we are to have any hope of surviving, the nation’s “moderates” are going to have to come to their senses, no later than November, 2010. How can we force them all to read VDH’s writings?

Mar 25, 2009 - 8:57 am 258. BadLiberal:

My one quibble on this is the reference to California farmers. Government, at vast expense, built a system to deliver waters to farmers for minimal costs.

Somewhere along the line, farmers began to believe that this was their God-given right, much like today’s seniors believe that they are somehow entitled to ever-expanding Medicare treatments and the way today’s poor complain about the earned income credit.

VDH’s continual complaining about how the state treats farming water rights — as though every farmer got a piece of paper guaranteeing him free water for life because he’s a farmer — is a terrific example of how corrosive government programs that “give away” things are.

Mar 25, 2009 - 9:13 am 259. Prevost1580:

It’s not only the economy,stupid! has anyone looked at the dolts who keep reproducing?! The baby boomers were/are the self entitled ones ( most of them but not all ) you know from the 60’s, if it feels good! then,do it! Well… they reproduced & passed on the self enitlement issues and on & on.

So each generation gets more & more entitled & rude. I’m sure many have noticed how annoying & bratty,kids have become. Even Michael Savage was saying recently, quote! Your kids are not ADD,ADHD,Autistic or bipolar, they are just useless,spoiled brats! who need their asses whooped!

Mar 25, 2009 - 10:45 am 260. MrT:

Oh Thank goodness, someone has got the brains and chops to say it out loud. People are allowing this to happen by NOT turning off the reality shows which are like traffic accidens, allowing chidren to have cell phones with photo capabilities and PC’s with the ability to pass along inappropriate sexual content, not saying NO to the children, going to gory movies that glorify insane people who want to stab torture (why do you think kids think it’s okay to kill their classmates with terrorist type actions?), and without a doubt being part of the “ME” generation who double park, push you out of the way, don’t say excuse me/thank you, fall into the victim trap by taking whatever they can grab, legally or not. Octomom comes home with paparazzi all over the lawn and it sells magazines. Someone has the chops finally! THANK YOU! Maybe the next generation will have had enough and stop this mess from continuing.

Mar 25, 2009 - 2:15 pm 261. Cadydid:

This is an amazing article. You’ve successfully articulated every single thing that I have been feeling lately. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Mar 25, 2009 - 2:41 pm 262. Prevost1580:

@ Mr.T , yes. What happened to manners? consideration? and respect?! Kids run into you these days without saying ” excuse me ” or respecting an elderly person like my dad or grandma. The kids are raised by rude,obnxious,self entitled parents.

I was listening to a Christian radio station the other day and the Pastor was explaining what has happened to America, society & we the people,as a whole. From the 60’s on,everything became about YOU! How are YOU feeling? Look in the mirror at YOU! Are YOU happy??? This pastor went onto say that God’s mirror is transparent, you look through YOU & see everything & everyone else and that is what life is truly about.

Mar 25, 2009 - 6:04 pm 263. Pete:

174. Roughcoat: You are partly correct, that it is folly to over-generalize concerning the make-up of members of a given generation, whether the baby boomers, the so-called ‘greatest generation,’ or any other. If you fought in Viet Nam, and survived the experience, then you are indeed a special man, not to mention lucky and blessed. However, Professor Hanson is dealing in generalities, and in general, the baby boomers have been an immensely destructive force in our society… narcissistic, materialistic, selfish, short-sighted, you name it. It is simply a fact that most of the great institutions in America predate the arrival of the baby boomers on the scene, and their degredation is directly traceable to them.

However, I would with you that perhaps the ‘greatest generation’ – the Depression/WW2 generation – has been over-rated in many respects. If any generation deserves that title, it is the generation of patriots comprising the Founding Fathers, the men who gave birth to this nation, in the process writing our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Federalist papers, and many other landmark works.

As Dinesh D’Souza writes, the acheivements of the WWII generation, though impressive in many ways, were lacking in one significant way: they failed to reproduce themselves; that is, they failed to transmit their values to the following generation.

You are also partly correct that the WWII generation ‘lost’ the Vietnam War, as the war effort was largely led by politicians and officers of that time. Bear in mind that the war, we now know, was won for all intents and purposes on the battlefield after the Tet Offensive. Although we didn’t know it at the time, the Vietcong were effectively destroyed as a fighting force, and the regular NVA sustained terrific damage. However, Walter Cronkite effectively slammed the door on our efforts by unilaterally declaring the war effectively unwinable. We also had the N. Vietnamese on the ropes during the “Rolling Thunder” strategic bombing offensive of the early 1970s, but again let the intiative slip away. These were, it can argued, political and not military failures. The Communists won the war only after we’d left the scene, so it is accurate to state that we did not lose the war, the S. Vietnamese government did. If one argues that we ‘lost’ the war by failing to achieve our strategic aims, then one shouldn’t blame every senior U.S. officer, many of whom were gravely troubled by how the war was being prosecuted. Moreover, our best military people in Vietnam were the equal of anyone, anywhere – bar none. For every William Westmoreland, there were men like Creighton Abrams, or David Hackworth, or Hal Moore. Vietnam was a new kind of war, one any nation would have had trouble winning. And make no mistake, we could have ended that war with the push of a button. What I find remarkable about that conflict is that after all the suffering sustained by our uniformed services, we still in the end exercised some degree of restraint and did not use tactical nukes.
The fact that we didn’t not use nuclear weapons says something about the basic good sense and decency of the American people and – yes – even our leaders, who had the sense not to risk a wider war by using these ultimate weapons.

Thanks for your service…

Mar 26, 2009 - 8:49 pm 264. Pete:

Fop (#46)wrote:

“Over the past 40 years children have been programmed by their own parents to believe that you can d*ck around for four years in a university, and not only will that diploma somehow enable you to earn more money than a plumber or an electrician, but more importantly, that diploma will make you a better, more enlightened, more well rounded person than a plumber or an electrician.”

My goodness, how right you are! My parents-in-law, neither of whom went past high school in the late 1940s/early 1950s, are among the wisest and most capable people I know. My father in law can fix anything mechanical, a natural engineer. Their small town is full of people like that.

As a society, we’ve lost sight of the fact that there are many wellsprings of knowledge, not simply books. Scholarly learning has its place, but certain kinds of knowing aren’t accessible that way, and can only be learned by doing, by getting dirty, by rolling up your sleeves and getting to it – whatever it is! Our current President typifies this problem; he is a scholar – a very bright one, but knows only that, and nothing else. Therefore he lacks concrete knowledge of reality – the kind that cannot be learned in the library or behind the lectern, and is therefore deficient in wisdom.

Farmers, anyone who works with their hands, seem to acquire a certain type of view of reality – maybe that’s one reason VDH’s writing is so insightful, that he was (is?) a farmer.

Mar 26, 2009 - 9:12 pm 265. jillosophy:

The reason everyone feels this way is because dep down inside we all know that there are not enough Americans to pull our country and culture back from the brink.
We have been weakened by the foreign influences in our societies, the very unique strengths we inherently hold have been diluted because they were rooted in American culture.
Men have lost their moral compass because the male role of protecting and leading has been cheapened in order to take power away from the men. They have no honor as their inherent sense of honor has no footing any longer. Hence, the corruption of our leaders everywhere.
They first created a war between the sexes to cut our society right down the middle – and which should have been called the war against human nature. I can’t begin to describe how twisted and warped this issue has become our modern world. I won’t even try.
America has been weakened and dilluted. We aren’t what we were last century. If we want to turn things around we need to stop spreading our best and brightest areound those God-foresaken countries who will kill us.
We need to bring everyone home.
And send ever foreigner home.
And if they have exteneded families – THEY ALL GO.
Muslim? Dennounce Allah and Islam or leave. Period.
Either become an American – not just a Paper Citizen of the US – or leave. And then we have to enforce our standards on them.
Don’t like it? LEAVE.
This will solve our problems.
We have everything we need in this country.
It’s time to isolate and contain and heal.
Not forever, just for a few generations. We can heal ourselves, if left alone.

Apr 2, 2009 - 6:54 am 266. Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » Am I depressed yet?:

[...] Davis Hanson Thoughts About Depressed Americans points at how “all the accustomed referents, the sources of security, of knowledge and [...]

May 15, 2009 - 2:21 pm 267. jward52:

We agree! – This unConstitutional privately owned FEDERAL RESERVE needs abolished and sent back to Europe where they came from! FRACTIONAL Banking & Fiat fake Money have destroyed AMERICA. And only these Criminal Globalist Banking Families Benefit of the PEOPLE!! Abolish the Federal Reserve Act IMMEDIATELY!!! Congress should be ashamed for selling Our Nation to these Criminals!!

Aug 3, 2009 - 4:37 am

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