The State of the Union | Victor Davis Hanson

Who is "the left" btw? Can you define that term?

Anthony Logan - The "Left" comes from the French "Rive Gauche" (Left Bank) of the Seine River in Paris where artists, writers, and intellectuals congregated. As a rule, they were socialists. The definition holds to this day in which it is used to identify those who espouse a strong central form of government owning the means of production and making decisions for all. In America, "Left" is modified as "progressive Left", a movement inspired by the writings and speeches of Woodrow Wilson who espoused the concept that people weren't actually fit to rule themselves. An intellectual, Wilson advocated that Congress should limit itself to voicing the general will of the people, and a strong Executive Branch actually decide if their "will" would be good for them and then decide how to implement any good ideas they came up with. To do this, he began the process of progressively reinterpreting the founding documents including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to mean what the intellectuals needed it to mean to realize their vision of having the nation ruled by the "better people".