VDH at His Finest: ‘We’re in the midst of a counter-revolution’
VDH compares the eight years under Obama and “the four-year, more radical third term of Obama using or employing the waxen effigy of Joe Biden” to the French Revolution under the Robespierre brothers. It was “a cultural, economic, political, social revolution.”
In less than five minutes, conservative commentator and historian Victor Davis Hanson masterfully summarized the Left’s revolution to transform America and President Donald Trump’s counter-revolution, which he refers to as the “Trump Restoration,” aimed at returning the U.S. to normalcy. Elon Musk posted the brief—but potent—clip on X on Friday morning and it’s already received nearly 11 million views.
VDH opened his analysis by comparing the eight years under former President Barack Obama and “the four-year, more radical third term of Obama using or employing the waxen effigy of Joe Biden” to the French Revolution under the Robespierre brothers. He describes it as “a cultural, economic, political, social revolution.”
He recalled that Robespierre changed the days of the week, renamed landmarks, tore down statues, and went after the churches—then asked if that sounded familiar.
Speaking on the Left’s revolution, he said, “We invented a third gender and rammed it down people’s throats. We tore down statues. We said 1776 was no longer the foundational date. It was 1619. We changed the very mechanism of how we vote.” He cited the explosion in early and mail-in voting that began in 2020—a “radical change” that happened with “no discussion.”
He continued, “We destroyed girls sports” by allowing biological men to participate, noting that transgendered females have won over 600 medals. “We had drag shows among young children.”
“It was an effort to change the entire Constitution.” He recalled that Democrats tried to grant statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. to gain four new Democratic senators. They “proudly” spoke of packing the Supreme Court.
He added that Democrats sought to revive neo-Confederate nullification, a reference to the more than 600 Southern jurisdictions that declared federal law did not apply to them in the lead-up to the Civil War. Instead, they pledged to adhere solely to state laws.
VDH explained that the Democrats’ sharp left turn “was a revolutionary movement. Movies were different. Sports were different. Take a knee.”
“So, Donald Trump came in and it was not sufficient to say we’re going to stop the madness.” He needed to take drastic actions to rein in our nearly $37 trillion national debt, remove DEI from the military entirely, restore America’s loss of stature on the world stage after Biden’s abrupt withdrawal from Kabul, and stop appeasing China.
VDH made it clear that Trump has started a counter-revolution. He is reversing the enormous damage inflicted on the U.S. by the far-Left fringe of the Democratic Party, much of it over the past four years. To that end, DOGE is combing through the finances of our federal agencies to identify and eliminate waste, criminals are being held accountable for their actions, and people who entered the country illegally are being deported.
He concluded, “So, we’re in the midst of a counter-revolution. It’s not [a] revolution. You know what it is? It’s a return to normalcy. It’s a return to common sense. It’s only looks revolutionary to revolutionaries. But to the rest of the people, it is a counter-revolution to restore normalcy, and bring the country from the far-Left fringes back home again.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2025
As always, VDH nailed it.
Perhaps out of fear of sounding hyperbolic, many Americans downplay what we’ve lived through as a country over the past decade. Although the revolution began under Obama, the initial changes —such as filling the Department of Justice and other federal agencies with as many Leftists as possible— were nearly imperceptible to the average American. But, after Trump’s surprising victory in 2016, the gloves came off. Democrats no longer even tried to conceal their agenda. Obama’s stated objective on the 2008 campaign trail – the fundamental transformation of the U.S. – became increasingly clear.
By the time “the waxen effigy of Joe Biden” took office, Democrats began to move even faster toward their goal. By the end of his presidency, the majority of Americans understood that our nation had radically changed.
Now Trump faces the Herculean task of righting the ship. While some of his methods may appear draconian, desperate times call for desperate measures. And we need to trust him to “bring the country from the far-Left fringes back home again,” as VDH so brilliantly put it.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
“Democrats’ sharp left turn was a revolutionary movement. Movies were different. Sports were different.”
Not to mention tv commercials where the only time you see a white person is someone who’s a dufus, low life, criminal, or the butt of a joke. And where all the doctors, lawyers and professionals who are giving advice on medicine, finance and insurance are persons of color.
Bring back our highly qualified emus, geckos, and cavemen.
The article mentioned Robespierre and that brought to mind Ragspierre. But I don’t want to bring him back.
I liked him in his early years, but towards the end of his tenure here, he was abrasive.
I other words we now have a fighting chance of saving America. It looked bleak, now we have a huge problem deprogramming loony Dems.
Academics are calmly plotting a counter-counter-revolution using Marx and Du Bois. Columbia University Marx seminar 3 weeks ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXQi4J5PvWg&t=4566s
Napoleon, like Trump, is characterized as the most simple-minded man in a country where circumstances enabled a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.
Classical writers equal Trump in zingership.
We need a few Joseph McCarthy ‘s. I was taught that Joseph McCarthy was a bad dude, much later in life I became aware that he was right about the threat.
Today we are facing the same threat, maybe worse than what it was in McCarthy’s time.
I am old enough to remember Joe McCarthy. Not very well–I was about ten, but I do remember the time.
McCarthy was a hero, until he wasn’t. He was very close to the Kennedy family. Someplace, I have a copy of his book–with a laudatory comment by JFK.
He was a complex guy, with a lot of personal faults. But, he wasn’t all wrong.
Perhaps the clearest example of “cancellation” that ever happened.
Yes, I agree that VDH did indeed nail it. Rand Paul was also correct recently that Congress must act to make the changes permanently and broadly reflect the will of the people. If it’s just Trump’s EOs, then the counter revolution will be thin and short-lived. DJT has both Houses of Congress for a short time. Congress needs to begin an extended attack.
Yep. Obama is the demon in this play. Dumping his non-black girlfriend that he actually wanted to marry. Co-opting the black experience in Chicago as if he lived it, Creating a false persona in this pretend autobiography. Grifting on the guilt of whites. All the while, anti-American to the core. He did more to hate and divide the country, and the results are the lunatics that can’t sing on tune. Thankfully his aura is increasingly tarnished, not a minute too late, because he was just a fraud that used everyone to become wealthy.
Nobody who claims to want “fundamental change” in something actually loves the thing he wants to fundamentally change.
“I love you baby, but I want you to change fundamentally” is something no successful suitor has ever said.
“The average shopper that goes to Walmart, just the average ordinary shopper, saves about $1,000 every year by being able to buy items that are less expensive, that were imported from overseas. That means the average ordinary shopper at Walmart is $1,000 richer. If we put tariffs on them, they’ll be $1,000 poorer.”
Republican Senator Rand Paul.
Not quite. There’s substitution. In the early 80s there was a frost in Brazil that wiped out all the coffee. In the US, the bottomless cup disappeared at restaurants; the coffee aisle in groceries became small – yet always full. You could get all the coffee you wanted, but at $20 a pound.
Now a poor person comes into the store, and we hand him $20 to buy coffee. Does he buy coffee with it? No. He has a better use for $20 than a pound of coffee. That’s what’s meant by “can’t afford.’ You actually do have the money but have better things to buy with it instead.
Of course that leaves out the part where the ‘average shopper’ also needs a job to earn a salary to get the funds to go shopping with in the first place. Unless we want the gov’t to simply cut a Universal Basic Income check to everyone that average shopper needs a job. We used to have lots of good paying manufacturing jobs that allowed middle-class workers to raise a family on a single income, this hasn’t been the case in three decades at least.
If we were in a world of no tariffs, no direct Gov’t subsidies for businesses and no indirect Gov’t subsidies of businesses the I’d be 100% in opposition to the USA unilaterally introducing distortions to the pure free market utopia. Unfortunately that’s not what we have.
Instead we have a great many distorting things introduced and imposed on the ‘free market’ by our economic competitors in other Nations. Those Nations have acted to subsidize and protect their own domestic production and the jobs of their Citizens. The Tariffs the Trump admin is introducing are largely reciprocal which if the Nations impacted feel are too burdensome can be avoided by lowering or eliminating their own tariffs on US manufactured products…. which means more jobs and higher pay for all those ‘average shoppers’ in the USA.
JR doesn’t get the big picture.
I’ve thought for years that the “women’s lib” movement was a psyop. It was meant to inject women into the workforce precisely at the time it was becoming impossible to support a family on a single income (almost always dad’s). The purpose of injecting women into the workforce to was conceal the fact that the value of the dollar had been ruined to the extent that two incomes were required to support a family. Everyone was too busy clapping like trained seals to notice that the additional income didn’t seem to actually increase families’ standard of living. Nobody seemed to have asked at the time, “Our family now has two incomes. Why aren’t we better off than before?”
Tariffs are terrible economics.
My question to all those that complain about Trump’s tariffs–what is your alternative? Should we continue it a world where we depend on China for everything?
Something like ninety percent of our pharmaceuticals, for instance, depend on raw materials from China. Is that OK? Tariffs create an economic umbrella for domestic production.
I am not a great fan of Marco Rubio. However, he recently said something that I am trying to find the exact wording, so I can quote him accurately. Along the lines of “everything we buy, depend on is, or will be shortly, sourced from China. Are we willing to live in a world where our entire life style is dependent on the good will of China?”
I am VERY willing to consider alternatives to tariffs. So far, I have heard no alternatives.
Sen. Paul may have a point, but he doesn’t take into account the U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed because many of the jobs previously aavailable to them have moved to outside the U.S. Those citizens have less money to spend at Walmart and the U.S. economy also is accordingly diminished.
Trump promised American voters that he would end the Ukraine/Russia war within 24 hour of being elected. So where are we now?
Quit upvoting yourself.
Puffery not a promise. Much like ‘this is the absolute best (insert product category) you’ve ever seen’. I suspect the conflict will end before the end of this year, maybe much sooner.
I upvoted you so you won’t feel so lonely, but I disagree with you.
Closer to the end than under Biden, by a long shot. Enough with the TDS. Please do not break into song.
GB News’ Steve Edginton interviews VDH once a month. He’s a pretty sharp guy. And the featured tic tok video was lifted from the Daily Signal. Musk really should promote primary sources.
Hey Victor, remember how Obama appointed 47* tzars? (Trump appointed 1.) Of course our mass media propagandists forget about that.
*Politifact claim Obama only appointed 27 tzars. Phew, only 27! 27 is almost less than 1.
Bleh and phooey.
Wow, do I ever have news for VDH: the Revolution has been permanent for along time, not just during the Obama years.
Snarky horse crap.
It suits your Mr. Akshully.
Truth hurts. Here’s a Kleenex.
How long will the Trump reforms last? As pointed out by John Derbyshire on his podcast, Thatcher instituted many reforms in Britain, but they didn’t last. Tony Blair and the Labour Party reversed her good works. Britain today is a mess and freedom of speech has disappeared. Pakistani rape gangs torture innocent young British girls. Do the Brits have more freedoms than the Russians? Not if you count the number of people imprisoned for thought crimes and illegal speech.
The rot in America is so deep and pervasive I doubt four or even eight years of GOP rule can make fundamental and lasting changes.
“Fundamental and lasting changes” await the return of the Messiah. We do what we can in the meantime.
“noting that transgendered females have won over 600 medals.”
I really do wish normal people would stop using the Lefties’ preferred term for mentally ill men and men manipulating the system.
The correct word for ‘transgender females’ is ‘men’. Men have won over 600 medals. That means that 600 women have not. More than 600, because if the man won 1st Place in a women’s meet, a woman who would have gotten third didn’t get any medal at all, while the winning woman or girl got 2nd and the second place winner got third.
Call these people what they are: men. Men have no place in girls and women’s locker rooms and showers,
See how simple it is when you stop submitting to their bullying on terms?
Men.