Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on the Notre Dame Cathedral fire…brilliantly – IOTW Report

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on the Notre Dame Cathedral fire…brilliantly

AT: Victor Davis Hanson is a well known conservative historian, academic, and author.  He contributes commentaries prolifically on the current political scene to a variety of publications.  He is a frequent guest commentator on the Fox News Channel.  When Dr. Hanson speaks, I listen.

On Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday, April 16, Hanson appeared live from his home in California for a three-minute Q and A on the burning of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.  When a transcript of the program appeared online on Wednesday, I read his comments, which were as impressive as when I first heard them.

His comments totaled 362 words.  I can’t think of anyone who can fit more substance and meaning into so few words.

Victor Davis Hanson in conversation with Laura Ingraham, The Ingraham Angle, Fox News Channel, Tuesday April 16, 2019:

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Hundreds marched through the streets of Paris today to ask for the intercession of Notre Dame, Our Lady. The cathedral named in her honor was heavily damaged by fire yesterday, but it is structurally sound.  French President Macron vows it will be rebuilt as donations pour in from around the world. And amid the tragedy at Notre Dame, there is a lesson to be learned.

Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Victor, you say there’s an irony in the history here in the aftermath of this architectural tragedy, tragedy in terms of what we’ve lost in church history. What is the irony?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, HOOVER INSTITUTION: After 800 years, we were the steward of this iconic representation of western civilization, Catholicism, Christendom. And of all the years, 2019, at the height of our sophistication and technology, I’m not blaming the French or anybody, but we were found wanting and we didn’t protect this icon. And we don’t build them anymore.

There’s great churches and cathedrals that go up all over the world, but, Laura, they are in Poland. They are in Cairo. They are in the Ivory Coast, they’re in Brazil, they’re in India. It’s almost as if the places that are less affluent without the technology of western Europe and the United States are like we used to be. They still believe in transcendence.  They still believe in something other than this world.

And so it’s going to be very hard in our society to ever build a cathedral again, much less to repair them, because we don’t believe in what they represented. And it’s ironic, because we don’t like the past. We are at war with the past. We tear down monuments. We don’t build cathedrals. We erase names. We say to Father Serra or Christopher Columbus, you don’t live up to our standards of race, class, and gender, moral superiority. Shame on you.

INGRAHAM: We’ll wipe you out.

HANSON: And when you have that attitude, you don’t have a reference. Yes, we are not good stewards of the inheritance that were bequeathed to us.  MORE

 

17 Comments on Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on the Notre Dame Cathedral fire…brilliantly

  1. He knows not what he should know. France is not the epitome of civilization, nor is Notre-Dame the only cathedral with historical Christian value. Germany lost much during the war, but the German people did NOT lose their cultural, historical Christian values, or the incentive to restore what was lost. What was striped of them of religious and art value, they had the will and heart to replace.

    The Remarkable Dresden Church Rises From Ashes of WWII Bombing
    By Good News Network – Nov 1, 2015
    [Great photos]
    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/dresden-church-rebuilt-from-wwii-ashes/

    And why should the Dresden cathedral matter in German history and reconstruction? Because Satan was at his height of power in doing this.

    The Firebombing of Dresden
    February 5, 2019
    Starting on February 13th, 1945 the beautiful and peaceful city of Dresden was firebombed into oblivion, even though the war was essentially already won for the Allies.
    http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-firebombing-of-dresden/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=225&v=TdTXL3UC3ww

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  2. The French are digging their own graves with the election of Milquetoast “leaders” like Macron and even worse like the POS Merkel!! The muslims are systematically vandalizing and burning churches all over Europe. A reckoning will come……..our ignorance led us to have a muslim POS prez…….

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  3. tRuth, were Hitler and the Nazis victims? Wasn’t Hitlers’ goal world domination? I believe that when we are faced with an enemy that would like nothing better than to destroy us, that we have an obligation to destroy everything that is possible that could possibly help support that threat. Would you go so far as to justify Hitlers’ V-2 attacks on London? If Hitler had successfully developed an Atomic Bomb he would have certainly used it on a civilian population.

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  4. Joe6pak, you have previously used your own thinking skills on a subject. You still can.
    History can be whatever one wants it to be. I was taught lies in school and never new it until I was initiated into internet browsing. I was confronted with a lot of factual information that I found disturbing, but I chose to pursue getting more information. There is also a lot of disinformation, but I am not incapable of analysis and comparison. Research and discovery has to be done by anyone who really is looking for truthful answers. If you want actual facts, you have to be willing to find them.
    If you question me, then you have to be willing to find answers that you may not even want to know about. And that is why you are throwing a topic at me that you are not really wanting answers to. The tomatobubble may sound silly, but shows evidence of a capable mind.

    FRANCE INVADES GERMANY — 1914, 1923, 1939
    You know those “scary” images we all grew up seeing on TV documentaries and in history books —
    the ones in which the Germans and Hitler strut through Paris?

    … Well, the missing context is the fact that the Germans went into France about 8 & 1/2 months AFTER France had declared war upon and invaded peaceful Germany —
    AFTER Hitler had been deliberately baited into a conflict by Anglo-Franco-backed military dictator of Poland

    http://www.tomatobubble.com/id986.html

  5. tRuth, thanks for the pointers in critical thinking, no doubt it will come in handy as I continue researching the good deeds of Hitler and the Third Reich. No doubt we have all been taught untruths in school. I would like to know if on our entrance through the Pearly Gates the truth will be known to us.

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  6. In a thread about a Cathedral fire, sympathy for hitler is sought.
    And on his birthday.
    FUCK HITLER
    Take your hitler shit and cram it up your ass. (not you, joe6pak- yours I read as sarcasm)

    —–
    The Cathedral, as originally built, is a manifestation of reverence for God. I do not know if the talent, ability or will exists in our world of today that would allow, or accept, that expression. I pray that it will be found.

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  7. Hitler came to power because of the foolishness of the Treaty of Versaille. Once he came to power, he was able to created the military machine he did because of the foolishness of the western allies to do NOTHING when Hitler began to order German troops into forbidden areas, including the Rhineland inside Germany itself.

    Two wrongs created WW2.

    Now that the west has gotten stupid again, there will be WW3. But for Trump, we’d be goners.

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  8. Hanson is so sadly correct because he understands human history. Notre Dame cannot be rebuilt because western society has sacrificed itself to the hedonism of nihilism. today’s man is happily transgressing to the Eloi

    Crowley is correct about the future, & we are trapped in the past of Orwell, fighting the last war instead of the new one.

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  9. The Spirit of God that lives in Christians does not disappear or die, as the human body does. Christians were horribly slaughtered in Dresden by other alleged Christians bombing, burning, and shooting them. Only God can ever forgive the pilots of those planes, if they ever expressed repentance. But the beautiful cathedral was rebuilt, because God’s Spirit is still present in His people in Germany. And that is to be celebrated, now!

    The worst wartime atrocity committed by the allies in Europe. Truth!!

    The WWII Dresden Holocaust –
    ‘A Single Column Of Flame’
    2-6-2
    “On the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe.
    Within less than 14 hours not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants, possibly as many as a half a million,
    had perished in what was the worst single event massacre of all time.”
    https://rense.com/general19/flame.htm

  10. “…and Eva Braun and the other Eva went down to the Bunker where furious shelling by the Russians had blown the doors open. There they met an SS guard who told them,”Hitler is not here. Go and see the empty bunker and then hurry and tell the other staff officers that Hitler has gone ahead to Argentina…”

    Goebbels 28:4 of the Gospel of Hitler Christ

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  11. tRuth I do not say this very often on this site but you are full of shit.
    Oh, and that last comment of yours sounds like you are a Nazi lover.
    Go petal your crap some were else.

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  12. There are a few architcts, tradesmen, and artisans in the US who are capable of designing, building, and decorating such structures. Unfortunately, there are very few donors and church administrations willing to invest both the funds and the time in such projects. Even when beauty is a priority, proper materials are available, and money is not an issue, nobody wants to wait years or generations for such a building to be complete.

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