Video from John Anderson
"Victor Davis Hanson on the need to exercise caution when we speak, especially in a society where the media is given to take things out of context and twist the narrative. He recommends civility in public discourse for this reason." from video introduction.
Victor Davis Hanson always has wisdom to give. Listen to the short video, the transcript is below. It seems to me that what he was trying to say was someone should shut Trump up! Apparently neither family or staff have neve been able to do this, if they had he still might be president. The man is not an eloquent or lucid speaker he just needs to say nothing! - Andy
"..on the issue of blowing it it does uh there's an aspect of this which really concerns me you mentioned Neil Ferguson his wife Ayanne Hersey Ali says that we're in danger of no longer living in a Democracy but in an Emocracy where everybody emotes and confuses as Thomas Soul puts it, thinking and feeling, they think feeling is thinking.
We must I think avoid the trap as we push against the left that is strangely unacquainted with facts, data, reason and reasonableness. Not to fall into that same trap we want to argue the facts and not deny our own commitment to recognizing the worth and dignity of even people we vehemently disagree with. I think that's been so alienating in our culture and it's one of the great achilles heels of the progressives their nastiness. We've got to avoid falling into that trap, it seems to me do you have a view. VDH - " I do I think that we have to do two things as I look at the I try to look back at ancient revolutions in Greece and Rome or what brought the Jacobins to power or what brought the Bolsheviks to power and I think there's there's two lessons. People have to be courageous and forthright and honest to oppose that and they can't sit by the sidelines or the minority will seize power and destroy their culture and their nation. But by the same token I agree with you that in their zealousness to defeat that danger they can't alienate people. I'll give you an example of what I mean and I voted for Donald Trump I'm a big supporter and we've talked about that but the other day he gave a speech to CPAC it was a good speech but at one point he said Putin is a genius but he gave a whole preface about all the bad things Putin did and he meant to say that Putin had figured out us and therefore he was a genius and we were appeasing and weak and therefore we were dumb. But as it came out he didn't use a qualifying adjective and so the the headlines the next nanosecond was Trump calls Putin a genius his own president dumb whereas if he had just said Putin is one of those evil geniuses one of those dangerous geniuses and if he had just said Biden is acting tragically dumb or unfortunately dumb.
So we we on the the right and conservatives have to be very very careful given the media is against us in the popular culture to be very careful in the the words we say the expressions we use and it's much better to be quiet and smiling and carry a club than it is to be angry and loud with a twig so my advice to conservatives is the more that you can be civil the more forceful you can be and the more that you want to go down a cul-de-sac and argue and scream and yell and and smear somebody the less clout you're gonna have and I would rather have a lot of clout and not pick fights that are good too it is..." from transcript
Comments