VDH.

A long read, a speech by Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq, the election etc., need I say you should read it?

I sometimes poke fun at my optimistic view of the future, in spite of the Islamic threat, the widespread loony leftish traitorousness ensconced in the schools, universities, media, Hollywood and of course the Democratic party and the probable fifty per cent of the population who follow them and who can’t discriminate between what is common sense and what is plain idiocy. [Obama's speech for instance.] But I’m serious about said optimistic outlook, here is VDH answering a question on the subject.

You know, I just wrote a column today; it should come out this morning in the Chicago Tribune. It was called, “Hope and Change Amid Despair.” Because I looked at the paper the other day, and this is what the headlines were. Over here on the left — $1.56 of euros, gold $1,000, oil $108, gasoline $4, $12 trillion in foreign debt held by Bear Stearns collapse. And then Eliot Spitzer (laughter), crusading moralist, paying for call girls – Eliot Spitzer’s successor, each hour it seems, confessing to yet another new girlfriend. Barack Obama’s, I thought, disingenuous and racialist speech being praised as the next Gettysburg address by everybody from Andrew Sullivan to David Brooke. I thought, Jeez – mortgage crisis – then I thought, Take a deep breath, and don’t look at the symptoms, the cold or flu of the patient; look at the Constitution. Are we a 90-year-old person that has heart congestive – no. Why? Because we’re still – even with the dollar, we’re still the largest economy, we have [as I said] $12 trillion to $13 trillion in goods and services. We could make up that debt within a year. We’re the third-largest oil producer in the world. We have the largest coal reserves. We’re the people who created the nuclear power industry. If we needed to, we could build coal and nuclear power within 10 years, and people could have a second plug-in flex-fuel thing that would save us the $600 billion that we send overseas to these rogues.

We have the largest, best, most experienced, creative military in the entire world; larger than the next 26 militaries combined. The top 17 universities in the world are in the United States, and they’re not just Harvard, Yale, Princeton – places like University of Texas, U.C.L.A., U.S.C., Michigan.

And the demography – 2.1 – 2.3 with immigration – but among the native-born, thanks for Utah — (laughter) 2.1 on the reproductive rate. Church attendance 65%, that’s a positive. So almost everything that we look at – the types of innovation, the new industries, the new discoveries, the new theories – all of these things are happening in United States, because we are still a meritocracy.

What would make me be less optimistic? If we would get a socialistic candidate who would increase taxes, increase spending, increase what I would call equality of result, not of opportunity legislation; and adopt a pacifistic foreign policy and confiscatory government policy on land income. I think that would destroy what we’ve seen. I don’t see that happening. I don’t think that Barack Obama, A, will be elected; and B, if he were to be elected and try to implement such an agenda, that he’d be successful.

The other thing that gets me really encouraged is that I think – despite the optimism of the Democratic Party — we’re coming to the end of what I would call the throat-clearing, pompous, over-judicious, left-wing monopoly on the news. The real grassroots is talk radio, the Internet, cable TV. It reminds me of the Athenian Agora or Aristophanes. It’s loud, it’s boisterous, it’s creative, and it represents people. And that expression is not only a counterweight to that left-wing, old-style monopoly, but it’s more democratic. It’s more energized.

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