Hillsdale College Hosts an Evening with Victor Davis Hanson
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College’s Distinguished Lecture Series hosted an evening with Victor Davis Hanson on Sept. 6 at the Searle Center. Hanson, a distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College, gave a lecture titled “California’s Dysfunction and the Future of Our Country.”
Hanson described how the state of California gradually became a one-party state due to a mass exodus, globalization, and immigration.
“In the last 30 years, we think somewhere between six and eight million Californians left,” said Hanson. “They looked at the sales tax, the property tax, the gas tax and the income tax on one side of the ledger. They looked at San Francisco having the highest crime rate in terms of property of any city in the United States. They looked at the public schools, the medical budget, and infrastructure and they said, the more you tax, the worse things get. So, they left.”
He concluded by saying the only hope for California was that a “solution will come before the wreckage is complete.” Hanson stated that “what [they] did to California has to be stopped, and I think we have [it] within our power to stop it.”
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished classicist, military historian, and Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. In addition to his role at Hillsdale, Hanson teaches at California State University, Fresno, and Stanford University, and is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford.
For photos from the event, click here.
For a high-resolution copy of the Hillsdale College clocktower logo, click here.