California 'now resembles a medieval society'

Historian Victor Davis Hanson sees vast feudal poverty and 'an aristocracy of a few million elites'

By Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

California isn’t what it used to be. Just ask historian Victor Davis Hanson. He has spent a lifetime in the Golden State and has watched with dismay as the culture has changed for the worse over the past few decades.

Hanson dubbed it “the weirdest place in the world” in his new e-book, a collection of PJ Media essays titled “The Decline and Fall of California.” And who could argue the point when he calls out absurdities like Tiburcio Vasquez Elementary School – an institution of learning named after a 19th century robber and murderer? That just scratches the surface of his thesis, though. Hanson demonstrates the sweeping impact of liberal elitism on the state’s culture. “California is both more poorly managed than any time in its past, more divided between rich and poor, more fragmented by opportunistic ethnic identity politics, more impoverished by massive illegal immigration – and never more naturally wealthy.” .......

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