Victor Davis Hanson: America Being Overtaken? We’ve Heard That Before
• May 19, 2026
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
The recent Chinese-American summit, as I’ve spoken elsewhere, has raised anxieties that there is a tension between an establishment United States and a rising power, China. And a lot of people who I would call declinists say, “Well, China’s gonna replace us.”
A lot of people on Wall Street are afraid of that, a lot of people in the military, a lot of people on the left, a few people on the right, but we’re not looking at it empirically.
So there are two things to be cognizant of. Number one, there’s about eight or nine ingredients that allow a society to flourish, to advance, to expand, that are critical to this argument.
And they cross time and space. They’re ancient. One is fuel. The United States is the largest producer of gas and oil in the world right now. Another one is food. The value of our agricultural products is at an all-time high. We’re completely self-sufficient in food, and we’re, in terms of the value of the exports, the biggest exporter of food.
So, food and fuel. How about education? The Times Educational Supplement that studied the top 50 universities in the world—if you look at the United States, 90% of them are here in the United States, especially in the so-called STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are at the top in the world.
So, in higher education, we’re there.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/05/19/america-overtaken-heard-that-before/
