In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler continue their Sour 16 competition with growing irreligiosity squaring off against artificial intelligence. Which does Hanson feel is more worrisome?  This content was recorded prior to Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30.  Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.  JACK FOWLER: Victor, we’re going to talk one more dust-off here before we take a break and that would be the worrisome competition between rampant, growing, irreligiosity versus artificial intelligence.   Are you worried about either one of these or which one worries you more? And I just heard you talk about your religiosity on a piece of wood in Libya. But go ahead, Victor.   VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: You mean the decline of religiosity.   FOWLER: Yes, the decline of religiosity.  HANSON: I’m more worried about it. In “The End of Everything,” I looked at a popular account, as I said, of an AI simulation the Pentagon ran where they programmed self-survival into an intercontinental ballistic missile and put it on a computer simulation.  And it was headed toward our enemy, and then they pushed the kill button, and on its own the thing circled back and was going to hit the Pentagon, and they couldn’t stop it.   In other words, in that process of giving self-preservation prompts, electronic prompts to this AI, it went on beyond that and said anybody who tries to blow me up, I’m going to go back and get. So they cancelled that.  So, I am worried about that. But I’ll give you another example. I got a pathology report. I couldn’t understand anything. Anything. It was the TBGA 168, my gene is heterogeneous for this particular adenoma, all this stuff.   I just typed “Grok,” and I cut and pasted it. You know what I mean? And I could not believe it. This has scanned 421 scientific articles. Two minutes later, it gave me the most clear, succinct explanation of exactly what percentage this is, what would happen here.   I had never used it really before. But I’ve been using it the last month. It’s amazing.   The only thing I’m worried about is … Stupid Victor is so stupid. He doesn’t even know what’s going on. I’ve been teaching at a certain place, and I had noticed that some students were writing beautiful stuff.  So just as an example I thought, “Well, I’d like to write a book about Epaminondas the Great,” and I just said, “Could you please write an essay on what were the chief achievements of Epaminondas?”   And it started coming out. And I remember it had the style and prose and syntax of some of the people that I had in class. And my wife taught class, she’s a PhD at a community college, and she is far more schooled than I am. And she said, “Well, Victor, you know, there are programs that can spot that.”   So that is a danger. But I think, all in all, AI will be valuable if carefully controlled. Not regulated to the point of death but monitored.  But I am very worried about secularism, atheism. If you don’t believe in any transcendence then it affects your … humanism that says that you’re only here and now, there’s no mystery anymore. I mean, you don’t know why you’re here.  And the neoplatonism of the early church. When the words of Jesus Christ were recorded both orally and later in the ensuing century by the four gospels, they needed an architecture for a church. They were very learned people for the next 400 years, Jerome, Augustine, et cetera. So, they did look at neoplatonism.   And you know, in Plato, it’s very clear that your soul is immortal and your body is not, and the metaphors that Socrates uses are the lyre, what we would call the harp.  Say you’re playing “Old Lang Syne” on the harp, and then you destroy the harp, does the song disappear? No. It only becomes reified when it has a body, an instrument. And in their way, theirs is not a Christian, but it’s a transmigration of soul.  So, you die, and then your soul was either dented or ruined by your appetites, and you’re given a reincarnated body until you get it right.   Finally, you don’t have to go through this process of memory, losing memory, who you were, new identity.   But the point I’m making is even the pagans believed that there had to be some transcendence. It’s imprinted on our brain. And for people to say there’s not, it’s just a nihilistic creed in my view.   And yeah. It’s very valuable. I don’t want to get into what particular creed you are. I’m just saying that the Judeo-Christian tradition …  And by the way, Jack, you pointed out that we’re very confused in America why we have suddenly substituted the Judeo part, the Old Testament. I was listening to Steve.  FOWLER: We talked about that on a recent podcast. Yes, go ahead.  HANSON: I knew Steve Bannon. I like Steve Bannon. But he was giving a talk. And he just said, we’re going to Christianize the country. And I thought, you mean you’re going to re-emphasize the Judeo-Christian creed. And he didn’t say Judeo-Christian tradition, which would include the Old Testament and the contributions of Jewish culture to Christianity, or the fact that Jesus was Jewish himself.  I think it’s very important that you have a Judeo-Christian dominant tradition with exceptions that you are tolerant of Buddhists and Muslims and other people without diluting the main tradition that affected the Founders. It’s essential.  FOWLER: Right. To act like the Founders were blasé, not ignorant, but uncaring about the Old Testament and Moses and the gang is just a lie.  HANSON: My grandmother was a devout Methodist and took me to church. My parents were not devout. They were Christians. They had grown up in kind of a very rigid religious environment, so they kind of rebelled, I think. But they made it clear they believed in Christianity to me, and they felt that. But my grandmother would take me, and she would give me 20 cents for each poem I [recited]:  “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my Lord the soul to keep me. If I should die before I wake, I pray my Lord the soul to keep If I should live for other ways, I pray the Lord to guide my ways.”  25 cents, 1959.  FOWLER: That’s a lot of money!  HANSON: So, I remembered them all. Yeah. I think Christianity’s done a wonderful thing. The country will not survive without it.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: The Decline of Religiosity is More Worrisome Than the Rise of Artificial Intelligence  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Two dozen noncitizens cast illegal votes in Alabama, while almost 200 were registered to vote, the state found with the assistance of a federal database. The Trump administration has made the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services SAVE program–short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements–available to state and local governments for citizenship verification. “Our elections must be decided by American citizens and only American citizens,” Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen said in a public statement. “While liberal organizations and media outlets claim noncitizen voting is not a problem, my office has proven otherwise.” Using the SAVE data, the state found 186 noncitizens in the state were registered to vote, while 25 actually cast illegal ballots.  Alabama is one of 26 states that agreed to use the SAVE program. The system allows states to make bulk inquiries about citizenship, whereas previously a jurisdiction would have to analyze voter records individually. After his office discovered the names, Allen ordered their immediate removal from state voter registration lists.  He said he will also refer these matters to local, state, and federal law enforcement authorities. Allen directed local election boards of voter registrars to remove those individuals. “Under my watch, illegal registration and illegal voting by noncitizens will not be tolerated in Alabama,” Allen continued. “My office will continue to identify these violations, refer them to law enforcement, and ensure the full force of the law is applied.” Alabama began investigating its voter rolls after it entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the USCIS and the Department of Homeland Security.  The MOU authorizes the Alabama Secretary of State’s office to utilize the SAVE program for voter-file maintenance.  The Trump administration made the SAVE system available to state election officials as part of a larger executive order on election integrity.  Under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002, states are required to regularly update and maintain voter registration rolls to ensure ineligible voters, or voters who have left a jurisdiction, are no longer improperly registered.  On another front, the Justice Department has sued 23 states to obtain voter registration data to ensure compliance with the two federal laws. The agency announced the two most recent lawsuits against Arizona and Connecticut on Tuesday. Every Alabama resident identified through the SAVE database was notified and allowed to respond by submitting documentation proving U.S. citizenship, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office.  The post What One State Found When Probing Voter Rolls for Noncitizens appeared first on The Daily Signal.

At the bottom end of the spectrum were Serbia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) recently sent me a seven-page memo outlining the House Freedom Caucus’ priorities for 2026. It is outstanding.Nothing in it calls for knock-down, drag-out ideological fights. These are 60%-70% issues with the American public, not just conservatives: secure the border, secure elections, expand health care freedom, cut government waste, and eliminate fraudulent programs.We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word. But so is fear.Depending on what happens with the economy over the next six or seven months, this agenda may represent the GOP’s last realistic chance to hold the House and avoid what betting markets currently put at a 53% likelihood: President Trump facing yet another impeachment next year.And it will not stop with him.Democrats will come after War Secretary Pete Hegseth for killing “innocent” drug traffickers. They will target Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for disrupting the childhood vaccine schedule. They will pursue Secretary of State Marco Rubio for alleged “war crimes” in Venezuela.They will do all of this for one reason: In the end, they are coming after you.The House alone cannot stop that onslaught. As sensible and popular as the Freedom Caucus’ agenda is — and as eager as Trump would be to sign it — the Senate must also act. And I see no path to real victory unless the Republican Senate finds the clarity and courage to nuke the filibuster.The alternative is grim. If Republicans refuse to act, Democrats will almost certainly scrap the filibuster themselves within a year to impose their agenda. If that happens, I am not sure the Republican Party — or the country — recovers.Our side already suffers from a deep demoralization problem. What do you think happens to morale when voters watch their leaders voluntarily surrender leverage to the enemy during what increasingly resembles a cold civil war? The black pill will become a black hole of civic abandonment.Or we could try something radical: empower a Republican Congress to deliver tangible results — $1.90 gas as we are currently enjoying, lower inflation, and health care costs driven back toward pre-COVID levels. Then watch as figures like Candace Owens and the Groyper gang lose their ability to manipulate a depressed and disoriented base with conspiratorial nonsense about the Jooooooooos.Money in people’s pockets or more gaslighting?That should be one of the easiest political choices the GOP has ever faced — especially in an environment where turnout collapses when Trump is not on the ballot. Republicans either go big by eliminating the filibuster, or they go home. And if they fail, some of us may end up facing prosecution while the likes of Tim Walz skate free.RELATED: Fraud thrived under Democrats’ no-questions-asked rule Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesThe year 2025 was about pushing back the darkness inflicted by the Biden administration. The year 2026 must be about what we unapologetically replace that worldview with. Standing in the way is the filibuster.So what are we prepared to do?No matter how dire things feel, I have seen proof that action still matters. Children’s Health Defense recently exposed a quiet attempt to shield pesticide companies from liability. Within days, that language was pulled from the bill in question.I also watched Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) abruptly abandon his re-election bid after a single determined individual exposed the massive Somali fraud scandal bleeding taxpayers dry to benefit people who openly despise this country.That tells me something important.We still have agency as free Americans — if we choose to exercise it in service of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Hope is an action word.But so is fear.And 2026 will force us to choose between them.

The U.S. military deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, bringing him to New York City to face drug, narco-terrorism, and weapons charges.Days later, President Donald Trump — who last month ordered a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela and has been in talks with the vestigial Maduro regime about opening up to American oil companies — announced that "Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America" to be sold at market price for the supposed benefit of the American and Venezuelan people.'After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.'The geopolitical implications of America's removal of Maduro and Washington's increasing oversight of Venezuela's oil sector are far-reaching.In addition to demonstrating the reluctance of certain American adversaries to support one another with anything beyond strongly worded statements, Trump's reassertion of U.S. influence over Venezuelan energy and his removal of the leftist dictator serve to undermine the communist regimes in China and Cuba as well as to threaten Russia's ability to finance military aggression in the medium to long term."The recent actions taken by the U.S. in Caracas were motivated by a desire to show greater assertiveness by the U.S. against China and Russia's efforts in Latin America," David Detomasi, a professor of international business at Queen's University who has written extensively on the geopolitics of oil, suggested to Blaze News."Because much of Venezuela's oil exports ended up in Chinese and/or Russian hands, gaining control over those exports was an important goal," Detomasi added.The Trump administration indicated in its National Security Strategy that "after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region."RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC ImagesTo this end, the administration indicated it would "deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere."Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels as of 2024.Despite this natural abundance, output has been nowhere close to what it could be, owing to the nationalization of oil assets under Hugo Chávez in the mid 2000s and other ruinous leftist policies that have since starved the industry of investment, expertise, and infrastructural support. Since the 1970s, when the country was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, daily output has dropped to 1.1 million barrels.While output has dropped from 7% to 1% of global oil production since the 1970s, Venezuelan oil exports have nevertheless proven valuable for nations antipathetic to the United States, China and Cuba in particular.ChinaThe Chinese foreign ministry condemned the recent American actions in Venezuela, stating that "such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela's sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region."China, here throwing rocks from a glass house, announced in 2023 the elevation of the China-Venezuela relationship to an "all-weather strategic partnership" and indicated Beijing would back Venezuela's "just cause against external interference."In addition to having its "all-weather" partnership exposed as an undefended fair-weather compact and losing a key ally in Caracas, China now faces the possibility of losing a significant source of energy.Chinese imports of Venezuelan oil reportedly hit 470,000 barrels per day last year, accounting for around 4.5% of China's maritime crude imports. In November, Venezuela reportedly sent as many as 746,000 barrels per day to China.Reuters indicated that a portion of these imports goes to paying down Venezuela's debt to China, believed to be in excess of $10 billion.J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, recently noted that "depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China's present oil imports."RELATED: The Venezuela crisis was never just about drugs Photo by Manaure Quintero / AFP via Getty ImagesDiana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist and the director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told Blaze News that China wants to buy all the oil it can since it already has coal and doesn't produce much oil or natural gas.'China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia.'In addition to depriving China of a critical source of energy or at the very least regulating its flow, the economist suggested that the restoration of American influence over Venezuelan energy and the potential of Caracas ramping up oil production may also diminish a key source of China's geopolitical power."If there's more oil around, it might lose geopolitical power in terms of the demand for its wind turbines, its solar panels, and its electric batteries that go in the electric vehicles," Furchtgott-Roth said.As of 2024, China reportedly manufactured 92% of the world's solar panels and 82% of wind turbines.Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News that many of Maduro's fellow travelers remain in power, so it is presently unclear whether Caracas will keep China cut off or resist its influence.Martínez-Fernández suggested, however, that ultimately "extricating that Chinese influence and presence in our hemisphere" would amount to a massive victory, serving also to weaken BRICS and reveal how such anti-American alliances "collapse once they're tested by the strength of the United States.""When it comes to it, China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia, even when they have substantial interests there," Martínez-Fernández said.CubaWhereas Maduro's ouster and the premier exercise of the "Donroe Doctrine" spell trouble for Beijing, they could prove catastrophic for the regime in Cuba.Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel suggested this week that "it is urgent that the international community mobilize, organize, and coordinate in denouncing this flagrant act of state terrorism and the illegal, immoral, and criminal kidnapping of a legitimate president."Díaz-Canel's sense of urgency is understandable granted that Cuba — which has suffered rolling blackouts in recent months and years — relies on Venezuela for subsidized oil."If oil supply were to cease entirely, the Cuban economy would grind to a halt," Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University, told NBC News. "This would represent a devastating blow to a Cuban economy already in recession for six years and lacking the productive capacity, competitiveness and foreign currency to replace these flows."Bert Hoffmann, a political scientist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told Euronews, "Over the last months, Venezuelan oil still made up 70% of Cuba's total oil imports, with Mexico and Russia sharing the rest."'Cuba looks like it's ready to fall.'In addition to Cuba's energy dependence on Venezuela, Díaz-Canel's regime was closely linked with Maduro's, with Cuban intelligence and security services lending a hand in Caracas.When asked about whether the U.S. should give other countries in the region the Venezuela treatment, Martínez-Fernández said, "By doing what we did in Venezuela, we are helping to cut off lifelines to the more dramatic and dangerous threats beyond Venezuela in our hemisphere."Weeks ahead of Maduro's capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that bringing down Cuba's communist government is the policy of the United States."I think every administration would love to see a different type of situation in Cuba. Cuba is a disaster. It's a disaster. It's not just because they're Marxists and because they're terrorists," Rubio said. "They're incompetent. These are incompetent people, and they've destroyed that country."Trump told reporters on Sunday, "Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now they won't have that money coming in.""Cuba looks like it's ready to fall," Trump said. "I don't know if they're going to hold out."RussiaRussia's foreign ministry characterized the recent American actions in Caracas as "destructive foreign interference" and urged the Trump administration to "reconsider their position."While Russia, like China and Cuba, had a close strategic partnership with Maduro's regime, it does not similarly rely on Venezuelan oil. Nevertheless, the crackdown in Caracas could nevertheless have profound consequences for Moscow.RELATED: Tulsi Gabbard warns: Powerful foreign allies eager to pull US into war with Russia Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP via Getty ImagesFurchtgott-Roth recently wrote that "Russia, reliant on oil revenues to fund military operations, will suffer if expanded Venezuelan output pushes prices lower."Income from Russia's oil and gas exports amounts to nearly one-third of the country's federal revenues.When asked about the timeline for such consequence, Furchtgott-Roth told Blaze News that the consequences could be felt in Moscow in the near future, even though it might take years for Venezuela to significantly increase oil production."Prices are set on the basis of expectations of future supply. So as soon as people see that the conditions are in place for Venezuelan oil to be produced in greater quantities, prices will adjust, presumably down lower than they would have been otherwise," the economist said.'They might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.'While Maduro's ouster and the potential U.S.-led energy renaissance in Venezuela could profoundly impact Russia, Moscow's response has been rather muted, amounting to little more than heated blather before the United Nations.Neil Melvin, a political scientist at the Royal United Services Institute, told Deutsche Welle that "Russia's support for Venezuela has been more symbolic than practical."Although Russia's influence and relations in the Western Hemisphere have been impacted, Melvin suspects that Moscow does not want to offend Washington with heavy criticism at a time when the U.S. is working to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.The relative Russian silence on America's shake-up in Latin America might also have something to do with its own geopolitical ambitions.Professor Detomasi told Blaze News that while the U.S. action in Caracas might give China and Russia "pause in the operations in Latin America," they "will use the U.S. action as a justification if and when they might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries."Like Blaze News? 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The slashing of the recommended childhood vaccination schedule shows a complete lack of understanding of evidence and data.

Pluribus is a direct refutation of the hot new ‘collectivism’ trend.

Until the U.S. is no longer dependent on critical minerals from China, the country will use its advantage as a cudgel against us.

The Pentagon’s structural overhaul ought to be matched with the coordination needed to successfully wage large-scale war anywhere.