By Free Republic | Created at 2025-01-20 14:47:30 | Updated at 2025-01-23 04:18:08
2 days ago
Victor Davis Hanson: Biden’s So-Called ‘Oligarchs’
American Greatness ^ | 20 Jan, 2025 | Victor Davis Hanson
Posted on 01/20/2025 5:38:00 AM PST by MtnClimber
Biden’s farewell swipe at “oligarchs” was a hollow echo of Eisenhower, deflecting from a presidency defined by chaos, corruption, and hypocrisy.
In his last address, Joe Biden offered a Parthian shot at “oligarchs” and the dangers these “billionaires” pose to the republic. At the same time, left-wing senators hammered Trump cabinet nominees on the grounds that they would be too complacent in the face of a supposed takeover of the country by Trump’s “billionaires” and their “oligarchy.”
Many things could be said about Biden’s farewell address, but I will limit them to three.
First, Biden was attempting to copycat the warnings of outgoing president and iconic war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Some 64 years earlier—on January 17, 1961, the near day of Biden’s “farewell address,” a departing Eisenhower warned of a new “military-industrial complex” threat to the republic that had grown out of World War II and was cresting during the ongoing Cold War of the 1950s.
The fear, as Ike outlined it, was that a new small tech-corporate elite would sell the country on all sorts of expensive weapons and programs to ensure a near-permanent condition of hyper-military readiness and national insolvency.
This resulting “garrison state” would make the arms merchants and technocrats rich but also exhaust the U.S. treasury in the process. What would follow for the American people was a government octopus that demanded ever higher taxes while spending money in ways increasingly unknown or irrelevant to the public interest.
Eisenhower worried the grandees of the military-industrial complex—ex-generals revolving into defense contractor lobbyists and board members—would redefine the ancient laws of war and peace in terms of mumbo-jumbo techno-jargon. The resulting esoterica was designed to justify budget-busting defense expenditures, without enough care that the federal government would expand while the now overtaxed and overregulated citizen...
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: vdh; victordavishanson
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1 posted on 01/20/2025 5:38:00 AM PST by MtnClimber
To: MtnClimber
Marxism is the greatest threat our country faces, both externally and internally.
2 posted on 01/20/2025 5:38:17 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
To: texas booster
3 posted on 01/20/2025 5:39:11 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
To: MtnClimber
The oligarchs just gave each other Presidential medals in front of everybody ffs.
To: MtnClimber
I respect VDH but he rarely tells me anything I don’t know anymore. He never goes for the jugular. He writes beautifully but leaves me wanting.
5 posted on 01/20/2025 5:49:30 AM PST by subterfuge (I'm a pure-blood!)
To: MtnClimber
OK article for historical perspective. Says not much (except for $oro$) about the evil behind and around the Biden Crime Family and the ‘rat party. Enemies domestic.
6 posted on 01/20/2025 5:52:47 AM PST by PGalt (e Past Peak Civilization?)
To: MtnClimber
7 posted on 01/20/2025 5:59:27 AM PST by nopardons
To: PGalt
I agree, much missing from this article. democraps hold on Wall Street and other financial institutions missing.
To: subterfuge
I like VDH and Alex Jones as a pair. VDH is a sober assembler of history-in-the-making and Jones is a wild eyed conspiracy enthusiast who has been right way too many times to be ignored. His crazy prognostications too often have become reality in a year or two.
9 posted on 01/20/2025 6:02:25 AM PST by arthurus (covfefe b)
To: arthurus
I really like Hanson too. Just wish he would punch harder, so to speak.
10 posted on 01/20/2025 6:09:56 AM PST by subterfuge (I'm a pure-blood!)
To: 5th MEB; 6ppc; agondonter; Alberta's Child; AndyJackson; Aria; artichokegrower; ...
Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list
So, he further insists that in the future, the U.S. must master emerging technologies and services—such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, cyberwarfare, cryptocurrency, drones, emerging fuels like small nuclear plants, hydrogen, and mega-batteries, and deadly new weaponry from lasers to hypersonic missiles.
In that regard, he knows that the talent that created and mastered these technologies and new services are not greedy billionaires and “oligarchs,” but, if enlisted in a common cause for their fellow citizens, could become the modern successors to Kaiser, Knudson, Ford, and Wilson.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.
11 posted on 01/20/2025 6:17:43 AM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
To: MtnClimber
Didn’t these “oligarchs” all bend to Biden’s will? Biden gets money from oligarchs. The Democrats are oligarch wannabes.
12 posted on 01/20/2025 6:35:57 AM PST by popdonnelly (All the enormous crimes in history have been committed by governments.)
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