Last week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson gave an impassioned monologue on his show about cultural decay, criticizing everything from Wall Street greed to marijuana legalization to women in the workplace. Carlson’s speech undeniably touched a chord with millions of people who feel forgotten, correctly identifying the importance of family, church, and civil society in a prosperous nation.
Yet despite spending 15 minutes espousing the importance of morality and personal responsibility, Carlson’s narrative only reinforces the victim mentality that both extremes of the political spectrum can’t seem to quit these days. Contrary to Carlson’s vague protectionist policy solutions, the values he seeks cannot be manufactured by a government agency. “Dignity, purpose, self-control,” and “independence” can only be achieved by free people working voluntarily with their fellow man.
As many commentators on the center-right have noted, Carlson plays fast and loose with the facts on a number of issues. Ryan Ellis pointed out in a Washington Examiner op-ed that Carlson’s claims of Wall Street greed are overstated, as the U.S. has “a highly progressive tax system where the wealthy pay a lot more than the middle class.” On marijuana legalization, Jim Geraghty notes in National Review that teen pot usage has declined after legalization in Colorado and California, hypothesizing that legalization makes the drug “less taboo and thus less tempting to teenagers.” On the supposed decline of male wages leading women to the workforce, Ben Shapiro notes in the Daily Wire that “while wages have declined on an inflation-adjusted basis, that’s not true in terms of what you can buy for the same wage,” as goods and services have generally become cheaper.
Ironically, though Carlson laments that “anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in GDP is an idiot,” his diagnosis of the country’s problems and suggested solutions are entirely political. To the contrary, I submit that Carlson’s gut reaction is right: Economic growth cannot alone alleviate a nation’s ills. That’s why government policy isn’t entirely the answer.
Rather, to reinforce the role of morality, civil society has a strong role to play — “family and faith” as Carlson calls it. Yet, ironically, many conservatives who espouse the importance of these institutions have opposed their expansion to new groups of Americans over the past several decades. The Republican Party fought tooth and nail against gay marriage for decades — matrimony being the foundation of the family. Today, the Trump administration seems adamant in halting the flow of some of the country’s most religious immigrants crossing the southern border. Meanwhile, the GOP has all but written off outreach to Hispanic Americans under the illogical assumption that this deeply Christian population does not share so-called “Western values.”
If Carlson and his fellow conservatives seek to nurse the country’s moral health, they should seek to expand American institutions of family and faith, not leave them to contract as they currently are. Though Carlson repeatedly trashes libertarians’ supposed amoral obsession with “market fundamentalism,” the philosophy’s live-and-let-live attitude toward the private lives of individuals and families allows civil society to adopt to the realities of the modern world and proliferate the morals of the ages.
To that point, the U.S. by no means is hopeless. We have the largest charitable sector in the world. Charitable giving reached a record high of $410 billion last year. In many ways, the values that Carlson esteems (dignity, purpose, self-control, and independence) are being exercised more than ever before in this country through volunteering and donating to causes that reflect individuals’ deeply held values.
If an individual or group feels out of place in the realities of the modern world, they should see it as a moment for self-reflection instead of a cause to blame others. Sadly, Carlson’s monologue falls into the latter trap, only continuing the toxic politics of victimhood that continues to divide America.
Casey Given (@CaseyJGiven) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the executive director of Young Voices.
