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Kevin Roberts’s future as president of the Heritage Foundation, and perhaps the foundation’s future, hangs by a thread. His trouble stems from two errors: misunderstanding what cancel culture is and misunderstanding how deeply Tucker Carlson’s behavior offends America’s founding principles. Their joint futures depend on rectifying those errors by denouncing Carlson.
Carlson’s odious turn toward the fever swamps of the Right is manifest. Turning his platform over to racists, antisemites, and those who think Winston Churchill was the bad guy in World War II is not journalism. Nor is his fawning praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and life in modern Russia’s gilded gulag. It’s clear where Carlson stands in the battle between America and its enemies, and it’s not with us.
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One can legitimately ask if he is an enemy or simply what we would have called in the Cold War a “useful idiot” or a “fellow traveler.” Perhaps it is best to see him as American conservatism’s Lord Haw-Haw, the British citizen who made propaganda programs in WWII for the Nazis.
However you define him, it is clear that whatever Carlson’s past, his present is antithetical to anything remotely resembling American conservatism.
It should also be obvious where the leader of an institution whose claim has always been to defend America’s heritage and lead its conservative movement should now stand. Yet Roberts continues to refuse to do the right thing.
Carlson’s friend, Roberts, contends that saying he is not a friend of the conservative movement amounts to canceling him.
That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what cancel culture is. What’s more, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what a political institution like the Heritage Foundation ought to do with respect to a legitimate political controversy.
Cancel culture basically comes down to one of two things. It is either the effort to deny a person their non-political livelihood because of that person’s political views, or it is an effort to destroy a political entity’s ability to finance their political speech by deplatforming them entirely.
The case of actress Gina Carano is an example of the first type of cancellation. She was fired by the Disney Corporation from her role on the television show The Mandalorian because of right-leaning comments she made on social media. Her political views had no connection with her professional life; firing her was a blatant attempt to show her and others that deviation from the Hollywood progressive line would not be tolerated.
The Left’s campaign to deplatform the conservative news outlet the Federalist is an example of the second type. In that case, NBC News and a London-based group tried to get Google to remove its ability to earn money on the site. Demonetizing an online entity in today’s media environment is a death sentence, something leftists know all too well. The Federalist won its fight to continue to earn money online, but the threat that this could happen again to someone who crosses a censor’s line remains.
Roberts has said he made his ill-fated initial video because of pressure to denounce Carlson, something he has repeatedly called “canceling” the podcast host. But no one ever suggested that Heritage or Roberts try to demonetize Carlson by pushing X or another large tech firm to stop hosting his show. Nor has anyone asked Heritage to lead a conservative campaign to boycott Carlson.
All Roberts was ever asked to do was to make clear where Heritage stood with respect to Carlson. That is not cancellation; that is public leadership.
Indeed, Heritage’s whole purpose is to engage in that type of leadership. Its “one voice” policy means that it makes pronouncements about what the institution does and does not believe as a matter of policy. The company’s executives defended that approach as essential to the institution’s distinctive impact on the Right in an all-staff meeting on Wednesday, calling it “the playbook”.
By Roberts’s definition, Heritage thus “cancels” people every day. This is intellectually incoherent at best, and dishonest at worst.
That intellectual incoherence underlies why Roberts and Heritage remain locked in an ever-worsening crisis. By defending the indefensible, both his and his institution’s reputations are swirling down the sink toward the drainpipe of irrelevance.
This apparent incoherence extends even to the foundation’s own core beliefs. Heritage’s logo has always included the Liberty Bell, which tolled to announce the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence famously pronounces America’s articles of faith.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” it says.
These stirring words freed our nation and inspired the world. Not all who agree with them are Americans, but all Americans do.
Carlson’s words and deeds over the past few years show that he cannot believe them, as he platforms people who cannot, with any reasonable justification, say they believe them. He is thus no friend to American conservatism and can be no friend to any institution dedicated to preserving America’s heritage.
As a classical scholar, Roberts surely knows Aristotle’s famous statement in the Nicomachean Ethics that “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth”. Yet Roberts still denies the truth about Carlson and ties Heritage to the mast of his personal friendship.
Roberts should know that his first responsibility is to the institution he leads, not to himself. Institutions have no permanent friends, only permanent principles. When friendship and principle clash, as they do here, leadership for America demands that the principle triumph.
And yet, Roberts still shirks his duty, and Heritage reaps what he sows as its allies desert its side.
Some do so publicly, like the members of Heritage’s Esther Project, combating antisemitism who have resigned in protest. Most do so privately, hoping perhaps against hope that Roberts and Heritage can recover their bearings.
After all, the Declaration of Independence teaches us that “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes”. So, too, with long-standing alliances and collaborations.
But it also tells us that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Heritage’s friends are telling it that if its design is to protect Tucker, they will look elsewhere.
If Tucker is in, they are out.
This sentiment is especially strong among those who have dedicated their entire adult lives to American conservatism. Robert Rector, Heritage’s esteemed welfare scholar, told Roberts in Wednesday’s meeting that he had labored in the movement vineyards for 50 years. He recounted conservatism’s long history of denouncing and exiling the kooks and extremists who sought to join its ranks. Rector implored Roberts to explain the role in the movement for “someone who is mainstreaming” the racist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi ideas Carlson’s guests espouse.
If Carlson is in, Rector is out.
Roberts responded by expressing disapproval with Nick Fuentes’s “noxious ideas,” but uttered not a word about the man who promotes him.
It seems Hitler is out, but Lord Haw-Haw is in.
Roberts has since said Heritage will speak out against antisemitism, even when “my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging.” But he still has not actually spoken out against Carlson or even recognized that his deviations from conservative principles go well beyond platforming antisemites.
The online New Right is fond of asking whether old guard conservatives “know what time it is.” The question here is whether Roberts knows what time it is, and how best to act within it.
It is, as former President Ronald Reagan famously said, a time for choosing.
Do Roberts and Heritage still believe in the Declaration’s principles? Or do they tacitly deny them by giving even the faintest succor to those bent on those hallowed, self-evident truths’ destruction?
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It should be easy for Heritage to say “Nazis are bad” and name names.
If it’s not, if friendship trumps truth, if criticism is confused with cancellation, then Roberts has made his choice. So Heritage and American conservatives must make theirs.
