Someone might suggest that a more
appropriate title for this discussion would be: Who's afraid of Ilhan Omar, or
Who's afraid of Tucker Carlson.
That's because David Harsanyi wrote an
article in which he endorsed what he called, “The Tucker Carlson monologue;” a
performance that had to do with Ilhan Omar.
I did not listen to the Carlson monologue,
and I'm not going to comment on what Harsanyi has said about it. Also, I
normally do not express an opinion when two or more people are having a public
debate that does not impact directly on the subjects which are of interest me,
and I'm not going to break this rule now. But in his article, Harsanyi has
displayed the kind of reasoning that affects America's behavior as a superpower.
This is of interest to me, and it's what I'll be discussing.
Harsanyi's article came under the title:
“Tucker Carlson Is Absolutely Right About Ilhan Omar,” and the subtitle: “Even
if he's wrong about immigration.” It was published on July 11, 2019 in The
Federalist.
You read the article and you're told right
at the start that, “Americans are constantly being lectured that good
citizenship isn't contingent on skin color, faith, or ethnicity, but a set of
beliefs.” So, you go through the article to find out what these beliefs are,
and you encounter the following:
“Prospering under a system that values the
individual liberty of all citizens is a manifestation of American idealism.
Having the right to protect yourself, your family, and your property without
asking permission from the state is an American ideal. Religious freedom is an
American ideal. Being able to live life without being coerced to participate in
groupthink is an American ideal. Uninhibited free expression is an American
ideal. The right of communities to live without being impelled by a
majoritarian democracy to adopt centralized policies is central tenet of
American governance”.
Because nowhere in the article do you find
language to the effect that Tucker Carlson or David Harsanyi accuses Ilhan Omar
of repudiating any of those principles, you feel puzzled as to the source of
their annoyance with Omar. You deploy your intellectual magnifying glass and
look deeper into the matter. You discover that they are not annoyed by what Ilhan
Omar has said, as much as they are by how she was treated––or perhaps a better
word would be greeted––by the existing progressive movement that embraced her.
Here is what you find:
“The progressive argument is girded by
identity grievances. So, Tucker Carlson concludes that the way we practice
immigration has become dangerous. Omar isn't the immigrant we should want
because she doesn't believe in the traditional ideas that define American life.
She shouldn't be immune from criticism merely because of her background. When
my parents came to the United States as refugees, they were asked to renounce
communism. We still give newcomers citizenship tests. We want them to adopt our
foundational ideas. There's no country in history born without sin. Yet only
Americans are asked to engage in daily acts of contrition for their past”.
Because Ilhan Omar was too young to have
formulated political beliefs before going to America, it stands to reason that
what she believes in and what she practices today are the result of what she learned
in America. Thus, what Tucker Carlson has repudiated, is the existing
progressive movement that made Omar what she is. So, you go back to the list
that was said to represent America's ideals and try to discern from it who
might be the “progressives” that oppose America's ideals.
What you find in the list that would
offend a right-wing Conservative such as Tucker Carlson, is an attack by
Progressives on the First and Second Amendments of the American Bill of Rights.
Carlson has shown he does not like the Progressives because they speak of gun
control and because they form mobs of pundits that practice groupthink –– the
most prominent being the mob of Jewish pundits.
But what about the exercise of uninhibited
free expression? Does Carlson feel he was “born free”; as free as Ilhan Omar
who braved the odds and spoke her mind in a way that Carlson knows he cannot?
Is he so admiring of her, he found a ruse by which to create a mode of
expression that accords with television in the way that the “rebels” of the
Victorian Era created classic metaphors to address the censorship of their time
without running afoul of the authorities?
Consider this: Before Ilhan Omar and the
squad to which she belongs, nobody but the Jews spoke freely in America. Tucker
Carlson wanted to be like them but could not because he would have been
clobbered by their self-appointed leaders. He would be kicked out of Fox News
and blacklisted by everyone else for life. So then, what to do?
Well, Tucker Carlson hit on the ingenious
idea of using the power of the Jews against them by having one of them unmask
their destructive activities –– they who managed to accumulate enormous powers
by depriving people like himself of same.
Thus, by giving the kind of monologue that
he did, Tucker Carlson prompted David Harsanyi –– one of the self-appointed
Jewish leaders –– to write the article that he did; an article in which every
evil that the Jews brought to America is criticized by none other than a Jew.
What a brilliant idea that was, Tucker.
May you come up with more ideas of such magnificence. Consider yourself a
candidate to go down in history as a television classic.