# Ship of Fools (Tucker Carlson)



## RamistThomist (Jul 29, 2019)

This is not a Fox news rant. Tucker indicts both Left and Right in the current crisis. While he doesn't use the language of "Deep State," both Left and Right are in the Deep State. The key to his thesis is in answering the following question: Why did America elect Donald Trump? The Left will say because they are racists and all. Well, maybe, but _why Trump_?

Even if they are racists, why couldn't they choose someone more traditionally Republican? The people knew that Trump, despite all of his faults, didn't create the problems in America. The current leadership--collectively defined as the Left/Right status quo, the media, the universities, etc.--did. As Tucker says, "Ignore voters long enough and you get Donald Trump." Our elites haven't listened.

Tucker opposes illegal immigration, of course, but he points out that liberals have traditionally opposed it. That's because liberals used to favor the working man, and when you have a glut of workers on the market who will work for less, wages go down. It's the law of supply and demand. That is why big corporations favor unrestricted immigration. 

*War*

While Tucker drops truth bombs on every page, this is his finest chapter. It's also in this chapter where he takes Republicans to task (I dare not call them conservatives). The Right doesn't have a monopoly on war. Leftists today are as pro-war as Bill Kristol. That wasn't always the case.

Liberals in the past opposed war because they knew the human cost. "Yes, they were hysterical, inconsistent, and simplistic, and often motivated by a dislike of their own country. But on a basic level they were right: war is not the [long-term] answer; it's a means to an end, and a very costly one." War is also complicated. "Violence tends to create chain reactions that move in unpredictable directions."

This also explains why the Deep State turned on Donald Trump. You can even isolate the precise moment. It was February 13, 2016. Trump said, "We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the entire Middle East." (This leads Tucker into a fascinating digression on Bill Kristol and the neoconservative movement. For all of Kristol's faults and utter incompetence in foreign policy, he at least studied under intellectuals like Strauss and originally represented a sane centrist policy. The Middle East wars forever discredited him. If he is bad, Bob Kagan was worse.)

The rest of the book describes the environmental crisis (both real and imagined), transgender politics (which ultimately hurts women), the attack on men's financial well-being (which also hurts women), and the like.

This is actually a compassionate book. Tucker knows that the downtrodden in rural America are hurting (those are the groups that Woke Evangelicals avoid in their summer mission trips). And he wants to make it better.

Reactions: Like 2 | Informative 3


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## Reformed Covenanter (Jul 29, 2019)

I have not read your review, as I plan to read the book after I finish reading one of Pat Buchanan's.

Reactions: Like 1


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## A.Joseph (Jul 29, 2019)

BayouHuguenot said:


> This is not a Fox news rant. Tucker indicts both Left and Right in the current crisis. While he doesn't use the language of "Deep State," both Left and Right are in the Deep State. The key to his thesis is in answering the following question: Why did America elect Donald Trump? The Left will say because they are racists and all. Well, maybe, but _why Trump_?
> 
> Even if they are racists, why couldn't they choose someone more traditionally Republican? The people knew that Trump, despite all of his faults, didn't create the problems in America. The current leadership--collectively defined as the Left/Right status quo, the media, the universities, etc.--did. As Tucker says, "Ignore voters long enough and you get Donald Trump." Our elites haven't listened.
> 
> ...


Tucker is the best. He’s a small government libertarian with traditional values, at least as far as I can tell.


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## RamistThomist (Jul 29, 2019)

A.Joseph said:


> Tucker is the best. He’s a small government libertarian with traditional values, at least as far as I can tell.



He is the best. He is not a libertarian, though. He believes the govt should provide some sort of safety net to prevent stuff like Appalachia going under in the opioid crisis.

Reactions: Like 1


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## A.Joseph (Jul 29, 2019)

BayouHuguenot said:


> He is the best. He is not a libertarian, though. He believes the govt should provide some sort of safety net to prevent stuff like Appalachia going under in the opioid crisis.


Yeah, he’s also knows the middle class is struggling, which you allude to in your review. I sent a few blog submissions his way when he was with DC Caller and he personally rejected them in a very thoughtful sort of way, lol. He’s not afraid to go after the establishment because Republicans are as much of the problem. They are 2 sides of the same establishment coin with not much separating them. 

I thought Ted Cruz could have been as good, if not a bit better, except he’s more hawkish.


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## Edward (Jul 29, 2019)

A.Joseph said:


> I thought Ted Cruz could have been as good, if not a bit better, except he’s more hawkish.



And he was living well off of Goldman Sachs.

Reactions: Like 1


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## PaulCLawton (Jul 30, 2019)

A.Joseph said:


> Tucker is the best. He’s a small government libertarian with traditional values, at least as far as I can tell.



I'm not sure this is the case anymore, in his interview on Ben Shapiro's _Sunday Special_ and increasingly in his nightly commentary, he seems to be moving towards a kind of "economic nationalism" similar to what is increasingly found on the pages of _First Things_ and other publications.

Reactions: Like 2


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## Eoghan (Jul 31, 2019)

I thought you meant http://www.shipoffools.com/


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## alexandermsmith (Jul 31, 2019)

Tucker is pretty based. He's not all the way yet but it seems he knows what's going on.

I haven't read the book. In terms of Tucker generally his best moments have been:

-Just talking about what is happening to whites in South Africa
-Syria
-Banking and its nefarious influence on our politics
-Immigration (obviously). He had a great video on the Japanese underground and how clean it was. I wonder why...

Reactions: Like 1


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## alexandermsmith (Jul 31, 2019)

BayouHuguenot said:


> *War*
> 
> While Tucker drops truth bombs on every page, this is his finest chapter. It's also in this chapter where he takes Republicans to task (I dare not call them conservatives). The Right doesn't have a monopoly on war. Leftists today are as pro-war as Bill Kristol. That wasn't always the case.
> 
> ...



This has been a major shift for me in recent years. What are all our wars for exactly? And now our elites and certain countries want us (especially America) to go to war with Iran. One looks back at the anti-war protests of the 60s and 70s and yeah full of hippies and druggies but there is something quite powerful in that movement as well against the constant onward march of war. The problem is that the anti-war position was totally discredited on the Right because of its association with the "flower power" generation who in every other respect were utterly degenerate and have bequethed to us the ruins of civilisation we live among today. But "anti-war" has a pedigree on the Right as well, the real Right not the fake "Right" we have today which doesn't know anything before Reagan. We should reclaim it. War should be for actual self defence.

Reactions: Like 3 | Amen 1


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## VictorBravo (Jul 31, 2019)

alexandermsmith said:


> But "anti-war" has a pedigree on the Right as well, the real Right not the fake "Right" we have today which doesn't know anything before Reagan. We should reclaim it. War should be for actual self defence.



I remember when Ron Paul was a Republican candidate for president in 2008, he tried to make this point at every turn. Usually he was howled at with revulsion.

Of course, his idea of cutting the military in half and bringing them home to defend our borders, while simultaneously eliminating the income tax, was too much of a disruption for the status quo. 

Sounded pretty good to me, though. We still would have had the largest military budget on the planet. And no income tax? The numbers really seemed to work.

So I dream on....

Reactions: Like 2


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## Reformed Covenanter (Jul 31, 2019)

alexandermsmith said:


> But "anti-war" has a pedigree on the Right as well, the real Right not the fake "Right" we have today which doesn't know anything before Reagan. We should reclaim it. War should be for actual self defence.



Ann Coulter and Pat Buchannan argue that the neo-cons misappropriate Ronald Reagan, as they see his approach as one of peace through strength as opposed to actual war-mongering. I think that is a fair enough reading of it, as there is a significant contrast between President Reagan's record and that of the two Bush Administrations.

Reactions: Like 1


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## alexandermsmith (Aug 1, 2019)

Reformed Covenanter said:


> Ann Coulter and Pat Buchannan argue that the neo-cons misappropriate Ronald Reagan, as they see his approach as one of peace through strength as opposed to actual war-mongering. I think that is a fair enough reading of it, as there is a significant contrast between President Reagan's record and that of the two Bush Administrations.



With Reagan I'm thinking more of economics. Reagan, like Mrs Thatcher, pursued the policies needed at the time to deal with the economy. But those policies became doctrine and today being "conservative" means being a neoliberal and celebrating "drag queen story hour" and being opposed to regulation of Big Tech because they're private companies and that would be government censorship. Nevermind that these private companies are silencing true conservatives, allowing calls for violence against individuals they deem legitimate targets, openly saying they're going to do all they can to stop Trump being re-elected. And on and on.

Reactions: Edifying 1


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