by Victor Davis Hanson
Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events break the slender façade of respect and convention. This is followed by the disclosure and rejection of long-existing but previously hidden pathologies.
Events such as the destruction of the southern border over the past three years, the October 7 massacre and the resulting war in the Gaza Strip, campus protests, the Covid-19 epidemic and lockdown, and systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracy and courts have led to radical reassessing American culture and civilization.
Since the 1960s, universities have always been hotbeds of leftist protests, sometimes violent.
But the eruptions on campus after October 7 marked a watershed difference.
The masked leftist protesters were shameless and vicious anti-Semites. Students on elite campuses especially showed contempt for both the middle-class police officers tasked with preventing violence and vandalism and the maintenance workers who had to tidy up trash.
Crowds occupied buildings, attacked Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and destroyed American monuments and comments.
Pressed by journalists to explain their protests, most students knew nothing about the politics or geography of Palestine against which they were protesting.
The public concluded that the more elite the campus, the more naive, arrogant, and hateful the students seemed.
The Biden administration has destroyed the southern border. Ten million illegal immigrants have flowed into the United States unchecked. Almost daily, news reports detail acts of violence committed by illegal aliens or their surreal demands for more free housing and support.
At the same time, thousands of Middle Eastern students, invited by universities on student visas, are blocking traffic, occupying bridges, disrupting graduation ceremonies and generally showing contempt for the laws of their American hosts.
As a result, Americans are re-evaluating their entire approach to immigration. Expect borders to close soon and immigration to become mostly meritocratic, smaller and legal, with zero tolerance for immigrants and resident guests who violate the rights of their hosts.
Americans are reassessing their approach to time-honored bureaucracies, courts and government agencies.
The public is still reeling from the truth that the once-respected FBI collaborated with social media to suppress news reports, surveil parents at school board meetings, and raid the homes of perceived political opponents as part of the performing arts.
Following the Department of Justice’s attempts to go cushioned on villain Hunter Biden, but at the same time prosecute former President Donald Trump for allegedly illegally deleting files in the same manner as current President Biden, the public has lost confidence not only in Attorney General Merrick Garland, but in US jurisprudence itself .
The antics of prosecutors such as Fani Willis, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, as well as openly biased judges such as Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American legal system had descended into third-world tit-for-tat vendettas.
This same politicization almost discredited the Pentagon. Her investigation into “white” rage and white supremacy found no such organized clique within the ranks. However, these unicorn hunts likely contributed to a shortfall of 45,000 recruits precisely among this demographic, which died at twice the rate of the general population of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Add to that the humiliating escape from Kabul, the abandonment of $50 billion in weapons to Taliban terrorists, the recent embarrassment over the damaged Gaza pier, and a litany of political insults from retired generals and admirals. As a result, the armed forces face the enormous task of restoring public faith. They will have to return to meritocracy and emphasize combat effectiveness, enforce a uniform code of military justice, and start either winning wars or avoiding unwinnable ones.
We are finally witnessing a radical inversion in our two political parties. The elderly populist Democratic Party that defended lunch workers has morphed into a vociferous union of the very wealthy and the subsidized penniless. Support for open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and racial theories, and the woke agenda causes the party to lose support.
The Republican Party is also rebranding itself from the once stereotypical brand of aristocratic and corporate tycoons to one anchored in the middle class.
Even more radically, modern populist Republicans are beginning to appeal to voters based on shared class and cultural concerns rather than racial and tribal interests.
The results of all these revolutions will rock the United States for decades to come.
Soon, a degree from Georgia Tech or Purdue may prove to be a much better sign of an educated and civic-minded citizen than the brand name of Harvard or Stanford.
We will likely reject the failed salad bowl approach to immigration and return to the melting pot once immigration becomes exclusively legal, meritocratic and manageable.
To avoid further loss of public trust, institutions such as the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and Department of Justice will need to regain, rather than merely assume, the public’s trust.
Perhaps we will soon accept a reality in which Democrats reflect the values of Silicon Valley plutocrats, university presidents, and blue city mayors, while Republicans become the home of an ecumenical black, Latino, Asian, and white middle class.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness and a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is an American military historian, columnist, former professor of classical philology and researcher of antique warfare. Since 2004, he has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College.
“Ohio State University Campus Protest” photo by columbuscpus.
