A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

VOLUME XIX, NUMBER 2, SPRING 2019

Michael Anton: William Voegeli: Christopher Caldwell: In Praise of Tucker Carlson Socialism for Dummies Hungary vs. Liberalism Larry P.Arnn: Joseph Epstein: Martha Bayles: Andrew Roberts’s Churchill The P.C. Menace Cold War Movies John Fonte: Mark Helprin: David Gelernter: Reihan Salam’s Melting Pot Memo from Harvard Admissions Up from Darwinism

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Claremont review of books Volume XIX, Number 2, Spring 2019

Essay by Michael Anton Tucker’s R ight

ucker carlson’s cable-tv show their power: “We are ruled by mercenaries a long time, I overlooked all the implau- begins identically each night. After who feel no long-term obligation to the people sible aspects of libertarian theory. I just Tthe words “Good evening and welcome they rule.” believed. I didn’t realize I was a living to Tucker Carlson Tonight”—always intoned Within a day or two, the speech had gone parody. I thought I was an iconoclast and inflected exactly the same way—the host viral. Friend and enemy alike referred to it but in truth I was just another member launches into an opening monologue on the simply as “Tucker’s Monologue.” Everyone of the herd. news of the day, or what he thinks ought to be knew instantly which was meant. To those the news of the day. sympathetic, here was a quasi-Trumpist rally- He’s certainly iconoclastic now. The ways On January 2, 2019, though, there was no ing cry not merely for a new Right, but also in which he breaks—on his nightly show and news. So Carlson used the holiday lull to de- for millions of apolitical Americans who in bestselling book, Ship of Fools—with the liver a non-stop, 15-minute, 2,571-word evis- feel—rightly—abandoned, even preyed upon, rightist iron triangle of Republican politicians, ceration of America’s ruling class—political, by the status quo. By contrast, those opposed conservative donors, and the magazine-think industrial, financial, intellectual, and cultural. sensed a clear danger: a message that—unlike tank industrial complex are legion. Our rulers, he insisted, had failed at their os- the stale tenets of Republican-study-group, Why is capital taxed at half the rate of la- tensible tasks: to improve the health of the think-tank conservatism—might actually bor, Carlson asks, and is manifestly unsatis- country and the lives of its citizens. have a chance of inspiring and creating a new fied by the conventional Right’s answer that The show is usually leavened throughout majority. “investment” is necessary for “growth and in- with puckish humor. Not that night; Carlson Carlson is the first to admit that he used novation.” What good are the latter, he fur- was deadly serious. He laid at the feet of our to be one of the very people he now skillfully ther asks, if all their gains accrue to a narrow- ruling class a devastating litany of failure: the criticizes. His first job out of college was at ing upper slice while those taxed double for destruction of the family, skyrocketing out- the now-defunct conservative magazine Policy working (assuming they can find jobs) can’t of-wedlock births, the opioid crisis, rampant Review. He was one of three staff writers pres- afford to share in the supposed glories of late- male unemployment, the sleazy effort to anes- ent on day one of the Weekly Standard ’s 24- stage capitalism? thetize the dispossessed with payday loans year run. Why are we still making trade deals, three and pot, increasing financialization and tech- Still, he was always a bit out-of-step with decades (at least) into a manufacturing decline ification of the economy and resultant wealth his colleagues. “I started out as a libertarian,” that has devastated entire American industries concentration, and foreign war without pur- he recently told me. and hollowed out many of our communities, pose, strategy, victory, or end. all the while enriching some of our most deter- But have our rulers really failed? Not if one I’m still an instinctive libertarian. I have mined foes? Why do our politicians insist on understands, Carlson explained, that their no interest in controlling other people getting us into wars we not only can’t win but real aim is to enrich themselves and maintain and I don’t care to be controlled. But for for which they can’t even define victory?

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Above all, why—at a population of 330 Attacked from the “Right” happiness.” Not so, replied Shapiro. Carlson million and climbing, with as many as 22 mil- has this “wildly wrong. The goal for America lion here illegally—do our elites refuse to do he establishment right’s reaction wasn’t happiness. It was the pursuit of happi- anything whatsoever to control our borders? to any retrospective doubts about the ness—the framework of freedom that allows Indeed, why do they thwart, at every turn, TIraq war tends to fall into one of three us to pursue happiness.” President Trump on this very issue and attack categories: furious denunciation for impiety, Odd choice of past tense aside (perhaps an anyone who speaks up for any limit on immi- chin-rubbing about “flawed execution” of esoteric assertion of American decline?), it’s gration whatsoever? a “worthy mission,” or embarrassed silence. hard to know whether to call this a tautol- What, specifically, changed the mind of the They know they’re not on strong ground here. ogy or a hair split so fine it would make Bill formerly bow-tied boy-Buckley (or as a friend Which is why they much prefer to de- Clinton blush. On the one hand, of course it’s put it to me, “typical conservative dorkwad”) nounce Carlson over his indictment of the true that the Declaration of Independence and launched Carlson toward becoming the elites for their domestic failures. Within a promises not happiness but only the right to leading light of a new conservative movement? day of Tucker’s Monologue, the “Right” ral- pursue it. The American founders were wise “Two things,” Carlson said. lied—not of course to denounce the decidedly enough to know that no government can guar- unconservative trends Carlson complained antee happiness, and that any attempt to do First, the Iraq war. Like most people about, but to attack Carlson himself. “Any- so leads inherently to overreach, opportunity I knew and worked with, I supported one who thinks the health of a nation can cost, and tyranny. Yet the founders emphati- that war. But I wanted to see it first- be summed up in GDP is an idiot,” Carlson cally believed—as they said in that selfsame hand. So in December 2003, I went to had said. Right on cue, as if to trumpet their document—that the purpose of government Iraq on assignment for Esquire. What I idiocy, in rushed a platoon of policy wonks to is precisely “to effect [the people’s] Safety saw was horrifying. defend the sanctity of markets and explain and Happiness.” Moreover, they knew—as why creative destruction should and must ap- George Washington put it in his First Inau- He describes a scene of total chaos and omni- ply every bit as much to people, families, and gural Address—that “there is no truth more present mortal danger: societies as it did to the buggy whip industry. thoroughly established, than that there exists Bret Stephens devoted an entire column in the economy and course of nature, an indis- Before Iraq, I assumed that when smart to riffing on a Monty Python movie, as if soluble union between virtue and happiness,” people of goodwill got together, they that happiness can be achieved only atop a make good decisions. Seeing Iraq up bedrock of virtue—precisely those virtues close was a formative change in my Discussed in this essay: whose decline Carlson’s monologue mourns— thinking. It demonstrated the abil- and that therefore not only can government ity of smart people to make obviously Ship of Fools: How a Selfish not afford to be indifferent to virtue, it must unwise, faith-based decisions. What Ruling Class Is Bringing America actively promote it. actually happened was not what they to the Brink of Revolution, The question—are Americans happier promised—not even close. That set off by Tucker Carlson. when welfare, child support, cheap consum- a chain reaction in my mind. I was sin- Free Press, 256 pages, $28 er goods, and fentanyl replace jobs, families, cerely shocked that the people in charge and meaning?—is precisely the right one, for were actually really unwise. Worse, they statesmen and thinkers alike. Our politicians didn’t care. They didn’t even try to cor- Carlson’s meaning were such a joke no seri- (we have no statesmen) have long ignored it. rect course. The whole thing made me ous refutation was warranted. (Then why Their objective is to get reelected, exercise very distrustful of theories. devote an entire column to it?) It’s worth power, and enrich themselves. Our intellec- noting that the proffered catalogue of elite tuals insist it’s the wrong question. Any state And the second? beneficence—“capital financing, deregulation, that concerns itself with the happiness of its access to global markets, a stable and predict- citizens, they say, is ipso facto a nanny state, I’ve been going to the same town in able regulatory and legal environment, IRAs and they know that’s wrong because Hayek, Maine for basically my whole life. Not and 401(k)s, talented immigrants, global cit- Friedman, Buckley, Goldwater, Reagan, etc. for a week or two now and then, but ies, good food, universities that are the envy of Not to begrudge any of these figures their three or four months a year for 40 years. the world, record-making growth and a world genuine accomplishments. But to answer a I watched it change from clean, reli- in which there’s almost no chance of my chil- question with a question: do any of their an- able, orderly, decent, and bourgeois into dren being conscripted to fight a war”—while swers meet the questions of 2019? The answer something different and diminished. no doubt offered with utmost sincerely, reads to that may not quite be an unqualified “no,” Not just poor but degraded. I asked like self-parody. but add the qualifier “urgent” to “questions of myself “Why is this happening? What “The Right should reject Tucker Carlson’s 2019” and it becomes hard to answer “yes.” led to this? How did this go from be- victimhood populism” whinged David French, Many conservatives instead try to turn ing such a great place to such a troubled who, when not exploring a presidential cam- Carlson’s question back on him. When Amer- place? And why is nobody noticing, or paign, never misses an opportunity to moral- icans sink into welfare, booze, drugs, video pretending it’s not happening?” istically lambaste those to his right. games, and lethargy, who’s to blame? Why, Ben Shapiro took it upon himself to school they are! And, to an extent, they’re right. Ev- Specifically, what does he mean? Alcohol? Carlson in the finer points of political philoso- eryone is responsible for his own choices, his Drugs? Opioids? Divorce? Illegitimacy? Un- phy. Carlson, echoing Aristotle, had declared own behavior. employment? Welfare? “All of that,” he an- that “[t]he goal for America is both simpler But why don’t these conservatives apply swers. “All of it. And more.” and more elusive than mere prosperity. It’s this logic to the ruling class? If men’s free will

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is to be interpreted to mean that each man to those few programs that seem narrowly be made, it is that both rethought earlier posi- is entirely responsible for every outcome of tailored to speak to you directly and person- tions over the course of their careers. his life, why do we have political leaders at ally—Carlson’s audience is impressive. He But these similarities obscure very great all? If our political officials’ role is not to pro- hosts on any given day the best-rated news- differences. Not to take anything away from mote—to create conditions for—the virtue commentary show on cable, averaging around Limbaugh, whose talents as a broadcaster are that is indispensable to happiness, what is it? 3 million viewers and on big nights exceeding immense, but he essentially inherited con- The “conservative” doctrine of “moral agency” 5. On one recent night, his single show beat servatism from Reagan and Buckley owing taken to its extreme ends up being indistin- CNN’s entire primetime lineup combined. to their advancing age and his relative youth. guishable from total free agency, i.e., liber- Ship of Fools reached number one on both He didn’t change or challenge the tenets of tarianism. Which is to say, doctrinaire, ex- Amazon and the New York Times bestseller their conservatism; he made himself their new treme, purity-obsessed, big-picture-denying, list, and bumped Bob Woodward’s Fear from champion. And his ascendency was warmly and silly. the latter. welcomed by the old guard. Also, Buckley’s Second, Carlson’s message is in tune with journey—for instance, on racial issues—was De Facto Leader the times. Limbaugh became famous in part mostly in keeping with that of other con- by grasping, early, where conservatism was servative luminaries, elite opinion, and the hich is why tucker carlson headed in the immediate post-Reagan era. culture at large, and thus (mostly) praised has become the de facto leader Carlson is similarly more in tune than any- by them all. Carlson by contrast has—apart Wof the conservative movement— one else with the mix of populism, economic from his considerable fan base—been vili- assuming any such thing can still be said to centrism, immigration restrictionism, and fied for his changes of heart. Interestingly, the exist. He didn’t seek the position. I doubt he war fatigue that motivates today’s disaffected Reagan-bots who took it upon themselves to wants it. He’d probably disclaim it, in fact. Right. take on Tucker’s Monologue were all a good But the mantle settled on him nonetheless, Third, like Limbaugh, Carlson did not deal younger—some by decades. Millennial partly by default, though it’s more than that. come to his position of leadership by helming and Gen Z conservatives are sticking up for First, there’s the show. Carlson is some- a magazine or a think tank (though, being a a status quo that was fading before they were thing of a Rush Limbaugh for the Trump era. former magazine writer, Carlson’s career is even born, whereas the TV host (age 49) who Granted, his audience is not as large as Lim- slightly closer to that model than was Lim- actually saw the Reagan era firsthand is the baugh’s at his peak (north of 20 million) or baugh’s). Mostly owing to his prep school champion of a youthful intellectual and po- even Limbaugh today (around 15 million), but background and wardrobe, Carlson is occa- litical realignment. in an age of media proliferation, fragmenta- sionally compared to William F. Buckley. Yet In perhaps his most famously enigmatic tion, and “cocooning”—paying attention only if another, more illuminating comparison may remark, Aristotle asserts that “natural right

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 16 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm is changeable.” This is hardly the place to at- written. Flipping to the acknowledgements “Conservatives,” of course—recent rightward tempt to plumb the depths of that idea. Yet it in back, one notices the pointed absence of feints aside—are mostly all for mass immigra- is useful in helping us understand why Carl- any reference to a ghostwriter, however eu- tion. “I was too, once,” Carlson says. “But I care son is both correct and conservative, while phemistically described. Decades on televi- more about tactile reality than about theories. his detractors fall short on both counts. The sion have not atrophied Carlson’s ability with The think-tanks are all about theories. Those conservative ideas that they venerate origi- the word processor. To the contrary, his style organizations have become poison.” nated at specific times to address specific cir- is lean and clean, stripped of all extraneous The third chapter, “Foolish Wars,” is im- cumstances and challenges. Tax cuts made ornament, a skill perhaps honed writing mensely entertaining, especially to those ex- sense in 1980, when the top marginal rate those monologues. On TV, every second— asperated by the antics of sanctimonious ex- was 70% and the American economy needed and therefore every word—counts. Veer conservative Max Boot and self-appointed to achieve the escape velocity to leave behind astray and viewers click away—and most savior-of-conservatism Bill Kristol. Carlson stagflation. Low tax rates are not the most don’t come back. It’s a testament to his skill has both dead-to-rights on their innumer- urgent priority when the richest Americans that Tucker’s Monologue held so many view- able errors and unshakeable self-confidence. are taxed only on the carried interest of their ers rapt for so long. It’s not uncommon, in Yet this is the one chapter that left me slight- two-and-twenty, when the share of wealth fact, for his monologues to stretch past the ly unsatisfied, the same feeling I occasionally income controlled by the One Percent has ten-minute mark. get when the show turns to foreign policy. more than doubled since 1980. Carlson gets Ship of Fools is, in a sense, a guide to the Carlson is undoubtedly right to call out the this. His ankle-biter critics don’t. Like Rea- show. The themes it details, Carlson ex- failures of the last two decades and to hold gan, Carlson prioritizes the conservation of plores every night. But unlike nearly all other to account those failures’ biggest cheerlead- the actual American nation: its people, com- cable news bestsellers, low-I.Q. or otherwise, ers. He is especially devastating when he munities, traditions, and liberties. That’s it stands independently of the show, and in- shows how—and how many of—those fail- what conservatism should be about. All poli- deed of the host. One could read this book ures were the direct result of hubristic, im- cies—even the best—are just tools to con- never having seen the show, even not know- perial overreach so vast it would be comic serve things higher than themselves. ing who Carlson is, and still profit and learn had its results not been so tragic. Still, I can’t from it. shake the impression that he sometimes goes At Home and Abroad too far in the other direction. The vanishing America he so ably defends—the country n ship of fools’s first chapter, carl- Carlson is the of manufacturing jobs and a thriving mid- son explains, indirectly, the reason why most effective voice dle class—is a commercial republic whose Ihis heresy is hated. Entitled “The Conver- health and prosperity require a muscular for- gence,” it describes what has been variously of the America eign policy and strong defense. We still have termed (though not by him) the uniparty, the interests and we still have enemies. Carlson junta, the oligarchs, or the ruling class. That our elites have sees this clearly in the case of China, less so is to say, the people who take pains to ap- manifestly failed. when it comes to Islamic radicalism. He is pear “diverse” on the outside but who in fact surely right that retrenchment from idiocy all think alike and work together toward the is necessary and long overdue. But it would same end: total domination of our country. Six of the seven chapters cover a single be foolish—perhaps not as foolish as Boot- Conservative intellectuals remain junior— topic each: immigration, foreign adventurism, Kristolism, but foolish nonetheless—to risk very junior—partners in this coalition; their political correctness and thought control, the our interests and embolden our enemies by assigned role is to punish dissidence and en- elite strategy of “diverse and conquer,” femi- overcorrecting. force conformity by knifing their ostensible nism and sex, and finally the difference -be co-ideologists in the back tween sincere conservationism and the mod- Fight the Power “It looks like a low-I.Q. cable news best- ern environmentalist cult. seller” another friend said to me of Carlson’s Ship of Fools’s treatment of immigration in mmigration and foreign policy are book. He has a point. The format is small- its second chapter, “Importing a Serf Class,” is relatively well-trodden ground, though. ish, nine by five-and-a-half inches, typical of highly informative and entirely correct. “My IIt is in the book’s final four chapters that books deemed unserious by their own pub- views on immigration come from growing up Ship of Fools really shines and, if it does not lisher. It’s got one of those endless subtitles, so in California,” Carlson told me. quite break new ground, at least exposes to a common nowadays, insisted on by marketing much wider audience ideas hitherto known departments to remove any possible ambigu- People want to make it about race, but only in dissident quarters of the right. ity from the title; and its actual words, in the it’s not. When I was a kid, my best Carlson is merciless on our tech overlords great tradition of cable news subtlety and un- friend was Mexican. Granted, he was and their transparent—but still widely over- derstatement, warn ominously that America rich, his parents were from the Mexi- looked or denied—effort to work hand-in- is on “the brink of revolution.” The cover fea- can upper class. But still. The point is, glove with the rest of the ruling class to con- tures garish caricatures of eight political and when you allow more poor people into trol all speech and thought in what used to high-tech bosses (plus one leading intellectual, your state than you can assimilate, you be called “the West.” A recurring segment on Bill Kristol, Carlson’s former employer). Even create poverty. Unchecked immigration his show is called “Tech Tyranny” and that’s the paper is cheap and smells like decaying wrecked the state—100%, immigration not hyperbole. The “deplatforming”—from newsprint. did that. Whatever the ruling class did Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon— “But,” my friend quickly added, “it’s not. to California, I don’t want it to do to of dissidents and even skeptics of the ruling It’s actually very smart.” That it is, and crisply America. orthodoxy continues and accelerates. Disfa-

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vored individuals and groups increasingly find up, but never or rarely down, on the socio- themselves locked out of the banking system, economic ladder. Carlson broached this taboo unable to book hotel conference rooms, or in his monologue, remarking that travel abroad. This alarms the residual libertarian in when men make less than women, wom- VOL 8 NO 1, WINTER 2019 Carlson. (It should also be noted that Carl- en generally don’t want to marry them. son’s concern for liberty doesn’t end with Maybe they should want to marry them, speech; he’s also a stalwart and consistent but they don’t. Over big populations, defender of gun rights.) The authoritarians this causes a drop in marriage, a spike The Alt Right and the in the ruling class aren’t merely all for it; in out-of-wedlock births, and all the fa- Religious Impulse: A they’re behind it. As for the “conservatives,” miliar disasters that inevitably follow— Tocquevillian Analysis all they can muster is the tepid talking point more drug and alcohol abuse, higher in- Matthew Berry that, so long as the private sector is the actor, carceration rates, fewer families formed then the holy market has spoken and who in the next generation. Progressivism and are the rest of us to judge? That America has States’ Rights: de facto ceded many of society’s most fear- This naturally set the feminist furies after Constitutional Dialogue some powers—some of which the state is him, not for the first time. The sisterhood between the States and explicitly enjoined from exercising—to cor- also gets angry whenever he talks about the porations, which are using them the way the plight of men (again, drugs, booze, unem- Federal Courts on Chinese Communist Party uses the Chinese ployment, welfare, loneliness, early death), Minimum Wages and state, seems to trouble our conservatives not which he does a lot, and thank goodness be- Liberty of Contract at all. (Though Bill Kristol did recently call cause hardly anyone else will dare. None of Sean Beienburg for “regime change” in Beijing. One wonders the critics can deny or refute the statistics if he could ever be roused to call for it in Palo Carlson cites. They just riposte with “Poor Invisible Man and Alto.) men!” and similar sarcastic jibes. Which Democratic Leadership Carlson is also more than skeptical of the is clarifying. If you’re still confused as to Brian Danoff promises of automation-driven techtopia. No whether old-fashioned America’s leftist en- one will have to work! our overlords enthuse. To emies wish us harm and think we have it which Carlson objects: we’ve actually already coming, just ask them. Increasingly, they’ll James Baldwin and seen what happens when people don’t work. tell you to your face. Recognition They become unhappy and self-destructive. David Jenkins How is that a good thing? Without Apology The book’s fifth, and best, chapter -ex “Ghostly Voices Rose plains in nauseating detail one of the rea- ndeed, carlson gets “in trouble” a from the Fields”: sons for our elites’ obsession with “diver- lot, if we understand the term to mean Nebraska and Political sity.” Some of them no doubt believe every Iginned-up, phony controversies designed Hopelessness word of the dogma they force on the rest of to drive him off the air. One of the most ef-

AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT POLITICAL AMERICAN A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture Char Roone Miller us. But the cleverest of them also know that fective, sadly, was the response to Carlson’s as- promoting diversity is a key to maintaining sertion that mass illegal immigration makes their power. The less the disaffected have in America “dirtier,” by which he meant strewn Book Reviews common, and the more they squabble among with litter. Now, this can easily be confirmed themselves, the less of a threat they pose to by simply visiting and observing places where READ AT bit.ly/2tYs5LI the ruling class. Our country has been, and illegals transit and settle. Anyone from Cali- continues to be, disunited on purpose. That’s fornia has known this since at least the 1970s. the hidden fourth motive—after importing But the illegal alien is a sacred object in the Democratic voters, welfare state clients, and current year, a saint whose purity cannot be cheap labor—for our elites’ stalwart sup- questioned, much less criticized. Carlson’s en- port of mass legal and illegal immigration. emies saw an opportunity, pounced, and cost The prospect that liberal luminary Arthur him a few advertisers. Schlesinger, Jr., warned about in 1991 (“dis- Their more recent attempt had a happier uniting America”) is now official policy of his ending. Democratic Party adjunct Media movement and his party. Matters for America (MMA) assigned one As is, via feminism, keeping men and wom- of its 20-something grunts to go back and en apart as much as possible and, failing that, listen to hundreds of hours of Carlson’s old for as long as possible. Among the many ser- shock radio appearances. They thought they vices Carlson has rendered to his country is hit paydirt with a collection of about a dozen getting the concept of “hypergamy” into the outré quotes. A rollout was carefully planned, bloodstream. Readers of this august journal in conjunction with corporate-Left media will have seen the term before (“A Woman in (CLM) allies, above all, the Washington Post. LEARN MORE AT bit.ly/2n5Aaz8. Full,” Spring 2015). To refresh memories, it The quotes were aired over a succession of means that women prefer to date and mate days, with the Post alone covering the “story”

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 18 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm with an average of three articles per day for smarter and wittier than they are, but more If Trumpism is to survive Trump, it will a week, including an embarrassingly fawning fundamentally because he’s right and they’re need an intellectual movement, a political “profile” of the researcher that read like it was wrong. And they know it. As Carlson put it party, and above all a new champion. Which drafted by MMA itself. to me: raises the questions: Will anyone emerge as Carlson, to his great credit, declined to play Carlson’s Reagan? If not, will he do it himself? his assigned role of groveling penitent. Rather On some level, they know they’re rot- I asked him that, and while he didn’t ex- than explaining, or much worse, apologizing, ten. They know their gains are ill-gotten actly slam the door airtight, nobody who’d he counterattacked against phony outrage and not deserved, the result of bleeding like to see him go into politics should feel en- culture and the rotten collusion between the middle America dry. But rather than couraged. Others are going to have to carry Democratic Party, left-wing agitprop groups, accept responsibility, what do they do? the political struggle forward. But those oth- and the CLM. Within a week, the story had They blame middle America. They hate ers are nearly certain to emerge. My unscien- blown over and Carlson was still on the air, middle America because they shafted tific impression is that the disaffected youth having lost no further advertisers. middle America. Think about it, who are much more interested in Carlson and his Still, as he said to me, “It’s hard to do a TV do you hate the most? You hate the peo- ideas than in warmed-over Reaganism. That show these days.” It’s mostly not hard, actu- ple you wrong. You get mad at family Conservatism, Inc., can’t stop dishing out the ally, so long as you either repeat ruling class members more when you wrong them latter, like a days-old special that always fails talking points or else offer diversionary non- than when they wrong you. It’s the to sell out, ensures its looming irrelevance. sense. It’s only hard when you take on the rul- same dynamic. Grown-ups can admit it The kids couldn’t care less about tax cuts, de- ing class every single night and—more to the and apologize. The ruling class can’t. regulation, and Russophobia. point—attack them repeatedly at their weak- Carlson’s book, show, and worldview point est points: their dishonesty, venality, greed, The ruling class and its social-media-mob the way forward. Put people and families first. stupidity, and myriad failures. bodyguard hates Tucker Carlson not simply Remember that the economy exists to serve us It’s a measure of the effectiveness of Carl- because they know he’s right, but because and not the other way around. Stop importing son’s criticisms that the opposition fears and they know he’s effective. The greatest danger scab labor and scab voters to enrich and em- hates him so much. He is, more or less, alone to the ruling class is that his message spreads: power the ruling class. Honor and enforce the out there. And while 3 million viewers sounds to other hosts, other shows, other networks, fundamental charters of our liberty, especially like a lot, in a country of 330 million, how im- other media and—most dangerous of all— the first two amendments to the Constitution. pactful is that really? more people. Treat people fairly and—truly—equally: no Judging by the consistent anger Carlson Especially people in power. Buckley and special treatment, no protected classes. Unite arouses, one must at least entertain the pos- Limbaugh had their Reagan. Carlson keeps Americans around a common destiny. sibility that the ruling class is right to fear him. a respectful distance from Trump, praising If we want to avoid the revolution that the Carlson and his show are the tip of the spear the president when and where he thinks war- subtitle of Carlson’s high-I.Q. cable news best- in a spiritual war, the most effective voice of ranted while remaining unafraid to criticize. seller promises, that’s the only way. the disaffected, despised, left-behind, forgot- Not for any typically conservative reasons but ten America that our elites have manifestly mostly because of what he sees as Trump’s in- Michael Anton is a lecturer in politics and re- failed. The ruling class knows this. Its leftist complete success—and even, sometimes, ap- search fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow handmaidens know it. They can’t beat him parent lack of interest—in implementing his at the Claremont Institute, and a former nation- on the field of ideas. Not simply because he’s own 2016 agenda. al security official in the Trump Administration.

Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 19 “ e Claremont Review of Books is “Issue after issue, the an outstanding literaryClaremont publication Review brings intellectual clarity, philosophical written by leading scholars and wisdom, and a deep commitment to critics. It covers a wide range of the ideals of the American Founding topics in trenchant and decisive to bear on our most important public language, combining learning with challenges. It is indispensable.” wit, elegance,—Yuval and Levin judgment.” Paul Johnson

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