Victor Davis Hanson: President Trump Is Undoing a Destructive Revolution 50 Years in the Making

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to The Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
Back to school is busy enough. The last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder. Whether you're moving into a dorm, your first apartment, or just getting organized for the semester, Wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place. Furniture, bedding, storage, decor, study essentials, all at prices you'll love. With fast shipping before move-in day.
Get everything you need for back to school season. Shop wayfair.com today.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:36)
Wayfair, every style, every home.

**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:38)
Whether we realize it or not, we've been in a progressive revolutionary cycle for about 50 years. It was anti-American, it was anti-Western, and it glorified other modes of civilization, socialism, communism, anarchism. The Republican and conservative movement had just tried to slow it down, and then came Donald Trump. He was a true counter-revolutionary. He's trying to undo the entire half century progressive project within four years.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I'd like to speak today about revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries. Whether we realize it or not, we've been in a progressive revolutionary cycle for about 50 years. And by that, I mean, there has been the effort of most of the Democratic Party, and now the radical elements to accelerate that efforts as emblemized by the Democratic socialists to take control of government, expand it, redistribute income so that many people in blue states, especially, are paying over 10 percent of their income, in addition to 38 percent of their federal tax, or two or three percent in Obamacare tax and other add-ons.
And it's not very difficult to pay 50 percent of your income or more for the taxpayer who's salaried without much write-offs. And the welfare state, which has distributed over 20 trillion dollars since this started under the Great Society, is getting bigger and bigger, at least until Donald Trump.
And this progressive revolution doesn't believe in borders. It has let in, we have now 53 million people that were not born in the United States. And in California, it's over a quarter of the population.
It's all time high and percentage wise, 16% of foreign born. They don't have confidence that you, the people, will buy into the progressive project. And so they want to import a demographic that is poor and needy on the idea that they will be constituents that will trade their votes for subsidies. And we saw that with the Somali community in Minnesota, and we've seen it with other communities here in California.
And so the progressive project has given us a real revolution. We never imagined that there were going to be more than two genders or sexes. We never imagined that they would try to normalize biological men taking over women's sports or dressing among young teenage girls. We never imagined that. We never imagined that prosecutors would let out career felons who had committed violent acts the same day they were arrested. We didn't know we were going to empty the prisons because we felt that penal punishment was too mean. We never really felt that our only real democratic country and ally in the Middle East, Israel, we would try to disassociate ourselves, and we would try to romanticize terrorists like Hamas. But what I'm getting at, this was the progressive project. It was anti-American, it was anti-Western, and it glorified other modes of civilization, so to speak. Socialism, communism, anarchism, and it was very critical of the very society who had enriched most Americans. And I say most, the middle class of America is the largest middle class in the world and the most affluent, and are poor or better off than most middle class and upper middle class and other places.
It's important to remember that there has not been a counterrevolution. So what was the...
Ronald Reagan was the first and really last Republican president that had an economic counterrevolution. It was quite successful. He lowered the tax rate, he deregulated the economy, and by 1983-4, he was growing the economy at 7% GDP growth. And then, of course, that was watered down in subsequent years. But the two Bushes, candidates like John McCain, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, their agenda was to slow down, slow down the revolution, but not to try to overturn it. What do I mean by slow down? Kind of advise Hollywood that they didn't have to be so anti-American and have movies that talked about race, class, and gender ad nauseum. Try to tell professional sports not to be weaponized. Try to tell K through 12 Calm it down a little bit. We don't need sex education in the first grade. And there's nothing wrong with a teacher occasionally giving a prayer that she inadvertently forgot that was illegal.