Victor Davis Hanson has written several essays for pjmedia. Two of them are excerpted below:
A Beat-up, Exhausted,
and Terrified Republican Establishment
By Victor Davis
Hanson On February 2, 2014 pjmedia (except)
On almost every
contemporary issue there is a populist, middle-class argument to be made
against elite liberalism. Yet the Republican class in charge seems ossified in
its inability to make a counter-argument for the middle class. Never has the
liberal agenda been so vulnerable, a logical development when bad ideas have
had five years to prove themselves as very bad ideas. When Obama is all done he
will have taken high presidential popularity ratings, a supermajority in the
Senate, and a large margin in the House and lost them all — if only the
Republicans can make an adequate case that they represent the middle class, the
Democrats only the very wealthy and the very dependent.
Illegal Immigration
We know the entry of 11
million illegal aliens depresses the wages of the poor and entry-level working
class. Illegal immigration overwhelms state services, and that too hurts
citizens most in need of help. The lower-middle classes do not have low-paid
nannies, gardeners, and house-keepers. We know the illegal influx pleases La
Raza activists, most of them second- and third-generation elites in government,
politics, journalism and education, who without illegal immigration would not
have much of a moral or legal justification for the continuance of affirmative
action and identity politics, given that statistically Latinos would soon
follow the pattern of other assimilated groups. (For example, is there
affirmative action for Armenian immigrants? An Italian Razza movement? Punjabi
Studies?)
We also know that cheap
labor in the shadows benefits corporate business [1],
eager for low-wage laborers. So how hard is it [2]
for a Republican simply to say, “I oppose illegal immigration because (1) it is
illegal. It undermines the sanctity of the law and discriminates against the
law-abiding waiting in line to enter the U.S. legally. (2) It
benefits corporate grandees at the expense of working people. (3) It is driven
by self-serving elites of the ethnic-grievance industry to enhance their own
advantage, rather than to help poor folks struggling to find decent wages and
schools. Illegal immigration, in short, is the most illiberal issue of our
time.
Energy
Fracking and horizontal
drilling help the middle class [3].
Stopping them on federal lands or banning Keystone makes the lower classes pay
for the pipe dreams of the upper class. The Berkeley Sierra Club professor
doesn’t worry whether he can find a job welding on a pipeline. He does not
drive along the Westside 50 miles to work and so cares little about the price
of gas for his third-hand pick-up. It is about 70 degrees year round in Menlo
Park, so it is easy to jack power bills up to subsidize wind and solar, when
you don’t need to survive 105 degree temperatures in Bakersfield. Discouraging
energy development is a pastime of the rich, who have the money to shield
themselves from the consequences of their advocacy, and do not associate with
the less well-off, who always seem to suffer from elite pipe dreams. Why not
headquarter the Sierra Club in Bakersfield, where the cost of
electricity is real for real people? Cannot a Republican rebuttal to the State
of the Union simply say, “Mr. President, you are shamelessly taking credit for gas
and oil production that you did all in your power to thwart. The middle class
is enjoying a temporary cut in gas prices, despite, not because of, you.”
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