A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship
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VOLUME XIX, NUMBER 2, SPRING 2019 A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship 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 A Publication of the Claremont Institute PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $8.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 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? Claremont Review of Books w Spring 2019 Page 12 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 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.