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21 comments

1 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 8:11:04am

While I agree with much of this article, Floral, I have to warn you that many on LGF do not regard Victor Davis Hanson very highly. So expect some FLaK, but I’ve got your back.

2 Charles Johnson  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 8:54:45am

I’ve now asked several times for you to NOT post such long quotes from articles, especially without making it clear that it’s a quote. I’m going to start deleting Pages that do this, because it’s a clear copyright violation.

Seriously. Please pay attention to this comment, because I’m not going to say this again.

3 Charles Johnson  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 9:35:19am

As for the article, it’s just rote, by-the-numbers right wing anti-liberal agitprop.

4 Charles Johnson  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 10:17:27am

OK, I’ve edited the post to comply with these rules, but it’s the last time I’m going to do it. Next time I’ll just delete with no further explanation.

5 Skip Intro  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 11:56:37am

Why does Victor Hansen Davis hate America so much? Does he seriously think that moving D.C. from from the humid swamp it currently resides in to the Great Plains would make even an infinitesimal difference in how business is conducted there?

So all the lobbyists would just move from K street to Wheat Lane. Of course a new major international airport would have to be built to bring all of the important people to town to “do business”. And nothing would change, except the addresses and the spending of hundreds of billions of federal dollars to build the new capitol.

Then there’s the part where RW, free enterprise, Capitalism is God’s Plan Davis presumes to tell America’s billionaires how they should be spending their money.

Comedy gold, as a guy on the radio used to say.

6 klys  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 12:02:08pm

The coasts aren’t REAL AMERICA, DURRRR. That’s why they should get no say in anything.

7 jaunte  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 12:05:30pm
“…In the United States, counties directly on the shoreline constitute less than 10 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 39 percent of the total population. From 1970 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by almost 40% and are projected to increase by an additional 10 million people or 8% by 2020.”
oceanservice.noaa.gov
8 klys  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 12:06:16pm

re: #7 jaunte

I think what we’re both forgetting is that land is supposed to vote, not people.

//////

9 BusyMonster  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 4:41:46pm

Interestingly enough, our political system is largely captive to a tiny group of 100 doddering old men (mostly) who largely represent vast, empty swathes of land. I know because I have lived my whole life traveling across that near-desert between where I was born and where I live now.

I bring this up especially in the context of the LOUD, shouty billboards one sees driving along I-70, especially through Kansas, lecturing anyone who will listen about abortion. While our economic life may be dictated by the coasts, our social order appears (in my opinion) to be wholly captive to a tiny band of rednecks who can’t figure out how to fit into the modern world.

It is a street with lanes that go both ways.

10 Dark_Falcon  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 4:48:45pm

re: #6 dr. klys

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

11 gwangung  Sat, Nov 30, 2013 9:04:01pm

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

Above and beyond the disproportionately large segments of the population that live in the two regions?

12 Decatur Deb  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 1:07:21am

Most of the world’s population lives within artillery range of navigable water. That’s why there is a Marine Corps.

13 Varek Raith  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 4:31:36am

What a load of crap.

14 Varek Raith  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 4:33:01am

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

His disdain of the East and West coast is painfully evident.

15 Varek Raith  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 4:35:36am

stateofthecoast.noaa.gov

The coast is substantially more crowded than the U.S. as a whole. In 2010, over 123 million people, or 39 percent of the nation’s population, lived in Coastal Shoreline Counties, representing less than 10 percent of the U.S. land area (excluding Alaska). This situation presents coastal managers with the challenge of both protecting coastal ecosystems from a growing population, and protecting a growing population from coastal hazards.

16 Lord of the Pies  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 9:16:15am

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

Because that’s where TEH MOAST PEOPLE LIVE?

17 calochortus  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 9:20:09am

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

I might also ask how southern CA is able to force the country to buy what it produces? They are making what sells to the mass market, and that includes the hinterlands.
Hanson is just engaging in his usual blather. If we want to talk about the ‘elite’, from Wikipedia we have:

Hanson, who is of Swedish descent, grew up on a family farm at Selma, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Hanson’s father and uncle played college football at the College of the Pacific under Amos Alonzo Stagg.[3] Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975[4] and his Ph.D. in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian.[5]

Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Fellow in California Studies at the Claremont Institute. Until recently,[when?] he was professor at California State University, Fresno, where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution.

He didn’t pull himself up from a poor farming family-he was born into a educated and apparently well to do family. He reminisces about the values of an agrarian society from the standpoint of a landowner, not a farm worker.

18 klys  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 12:16:02pm

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

a) Where’s the definition of disporportionately large? Compared to what? Their populations? Their landmass? You keep ignoring the question here.

b) There was a very clear tone of “move these things to the center of the country to see how REAL AMERICANS live.” I know it was implied and not literally written out and that can make things difficult for you, but it is there. For example, where he advocated moving Facebook to North Dakota, etc., and implied that then all those software engineers would settle down and get married and pop out 2.5 children (like Americans should, apparently). (BTW, if the free market drives folks to start companies in CA, why are the Republicans so pissed off about this? I thought they worshipped the free market? What inducements are they going to use to get Facebook to move? I’m sure there would need to be a lot of government spending and subsidies to encourage Facebook to try to move out of Silicon Valley, and I know you’re against those.)

19 DesertDenizen  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 12:49:15pm

We’re ruled by the liberal elites from the coasts? Then why don’t we have single payer health care, a complete ban on handguns, no unreasonable restrictions on abortion, a ban on discrimination based on sexual identity, an unquestioned right for gays to marry, a windfall tax on petroleum profits, caps on executive pay, and a coherent immigration policy? Perhaps its because the argument is specious and wrongheaded. I could make an argument that instead, the country is ruled by twenty or so mainly rural states that can reliably produce 40 Republican Senators, and have closed, winner-take-all primaries that encourage candidates to race to the fringes of their parties.

20 goddamnedfrank  Sun, Dec 1, 2013 11:24:30pm

re: #10 Dark_Falcon

Hanson didn’t say that. what he said was that two regions of the country wield disproportionately large influence in determining the intellectual and cultural discourse in the USA. You can disagree with Hanson on the point, but it wasn’t a WND-style DERP fest.

It’s fucking idiotic. People vote, acreage doesn’t. The coasts have influence exactly proportional to the number of citizens who live there. It’s the desolate states like Wyoming, Utah and Idaho which, by virtue of having the same two Senators as highly populous states, have influence far beyond what their constituency warrants.

21 aagcobb  Mon, Dec 2, 2013 11:34:10am

re: #20 goddamnedfrank

It’s fucking idiotic. People vote, acreage doesn’t. The coasts have influence exactly proportional to the number of citizens who live there. It’s the desolate states like Wyoming, Utah and Idaho which, by virtue of having the same two Senators as highly populous states, have influence far beyond what their constituency warrants.

The 21 lowest population states have a combined total of about 35 million residents and 42 Senators. California, with 38 million residents, has two senators.


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