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Tucker Carlson being sacked by News Corp is a blow. I’d trimmed my regular intake of conservative television news and commentary to Tucker and to Andrew Bolt. Tucker was brave, effective, charismatic and popular. That’s presumably why he had to go. There’s speculation about the trigger for his demise. Exposing the January 6 ‘insurrection’ hoax? That or anything else would be a pretext. The dark side hit back. Cancelling is its forte. Getting rid of the presenter who attracted the largest audience is a message to lesser lights.
Bolt is often very trying. On promoting the COVID jabs, for example. On his one-eyed support for Zelensky, on cancelling Mark Latham, on a predilection for being wishy-washy on other things I can’t remember, but remember switching him off. Still, he is absolutely excellent on the racist Voice, on the climate scam, and on the Stolen Generations myth. All striking at the very heart of national life. On the latter, he seems to me to be alone in having the enormous courage to state the truth, so far as it can be discovered, and quite often too. I might have missed it, but I haven’t heard any of his conservative colleagues on Sky take the same stand. Evil triumphs when conservatives stay silent. Mind you, speaking up can get you thrown to the wolves — a cause for anxiety if you have a large mortgages.
Tucker was anything but silent. The demonic Dems hated him. He threw light on their nefarious doings. And, like cockroaches, they don’t like the light. Am I being too harsh? I don’t believe so. How else do you describe those who support flooding and crippling the country with uncontrolled masses of economic asylum seekers, untrammelled abortion to the point of delivery, gender reassignment surgery for teenagers, the sexualisation of children in classrooms, transgender activism, critical race theory, debilitating and discriminatory affirmative action, nobbling free speech, setting the law on political opponents, turning a blind eye to rioting and looting, turning violent criminals back onto the streets, and whatever other evil takes their fancy?
Robert Kennedy standing as a Dem in the presidential primaries? That’s as ill-fitting as you can get. A decent man in a den of iniquity. I dare say that most people who vote Democratic in the US are decent people. Many are low-information voters easily corralled by the Democrats better ground game in the inner-city. Some of course simply vote for what they believe to be their own base financial interest. That includes the very rich at one end and the disadvantaged at the other. Most, I suspect, are just tribally affiliated. It’s hard to know what’s to be done about that. It’s a testimony to the flaw in democracy. A party changes its spots entirely, becomes totally removed from the party of Jack Kennedy, yet few voters leave the familiar fold.
To be fair, I fancy that few voters on either side of mainstream parties actually examine the policies they are voting for. Even committed Greens voters would know little of the party’s socialistic policies. These days, they would simply believe gullibly that the planet is destined for a fiery end and that the Greens have the policies to save it and us.
Those who despise Trump – whether leftists or curate’s-egg conservatives – are never able to identify one of his policies that they disagree with. Greg Sheridan, for example, says that Trump is a dreadful man, though he did some good things. I could be wrong but I can’t remember Sheridan, or any other Trump-despiser on the centre right, offering up one specific bad thing of materiality that Trump did. The lowest black unemployment rate on record? The lowest female unemployment rate since the 1950s? Energy independence? Getting NATO countries to spend more on their own defence? Moving the US embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem? The Abraham Accords? Better control of the southern border? Standing up to China on trade? Reversing the downward trend in manufacturing jobs? Not starting any wars? I could go on.
Personally, I think Trump did at least one bad thing. That was motivating Big Pharma to produce a COVID vaccine at “warp speed.” A bad idea. Money talked. Thorough testing walked. But I doubt, as a COVID bed-wetter, that Sheridan would nominate that particular policy.
The referendum on the Voice later this year is shaping up as a poster child for the flaws in democracy. You might have been following the debate in Quadrant; might have read the excellent articles in The Australian by Janet Albrechtsen; might have read arguments from the pro side too. Overwhelmingly, voters will have not. They will vote either on party lines or on the vibe of the thing. The issue is too complicated for democracy. Young know-nothings will vote on something of which they will have no understanding.
John Howard had a touching faith in the good sense of the Australian people. Let’s hope he’s right and that out of a sea of ignorance; nevertheless, good sense will find its way through. We live in dangerous times. The issues – climate policies, the Voice – are simply too complex for ordinary people, occupied with their daily affairs, to comprehend. Yet they have the potential to permanently change the fabric of the nation. They are not like economic policies which can be changed as political power changes hands.
Conservative media personalities are invaluable to go some way to balancing debates. That’s why the Tuckers and Bolts (the rare few) are so important. Much more important now than they were when the other side was not so intent on irreversibly undermining the nation state and Western values.
Two of the greatest Australian artists, in their fields, have been Conservative: Les Murray and Barry Humphries. Why the Left think they have a monopoly on artistic genius has always been beyond my comprehension.
Saying issues are too complex for ordinary people to comprehend is fundamentally undemocratic and should be rejected. Understanding why to vote No to the Voice, and to reject climate alarmism, is not complicated. Do you want to become a second Australian? Do you want to become energy poor, and actually that means poorer? The matters at stake are very simple. What we need is politicians and other ‘thought leaders’ willing and able to prosecute the case with conviction, evidence, and an appropriate dose of cut through rhetoric.
As you point out Peter conservative news/current affairs commentators has been shrinking and we are left with slim pickings. Sky had a good lineup but with Alan Jones’ departure and Chris Kenny going off the reservation we’re left with Bolt, Bernardi and the Outsiders particularly Rowan. Message to presenters is definitely don’t alienate advertisers with critical analysis of the prevailing government narrative. The newspapers are useless too, full of frivolous issues, apart from a few writers such as Albrechtsen .
I’ve turned to online media like quadrant and certain social media to find like minded viewpoints where logic and facts are presented. Not like Greg Sheridan or Noel Pearson who often dismiss contrary views by name calling.
As far as the Voice is concerned the argument against needs to be couched in the simplest terms for voters who only vote because it’s compulsory. e.g. Should Australians have different rights in our democracy based on their race or colour of their skin?
The ‘no’ message is muddled and unclear despite great efforts by Warren and Jacinta. Warren’s “there’s a better way” is not hard hitting enough and won’t resonate with apathetic voters. What exactly is a better way?
“Evil Triumphs When Conservatives Are Silenced”. That’s because there are too few conservatives with the moral fortitude to speak out against the tide of evil rising against us. Those that do speak out are shouldering the burden all by themselves when there is a potentially overwhelming force of good people who sit by silently whilst their stable society is burned to the ground by a relative few evil machinators.
Proverbs 24:11-12 says: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death;
hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it,
and will he not repay man according to his work?
Edmund Burke paraphrases the above with this highly applicable aphorism: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
To all those good men ( for the gender pedants, men means people) out there reading this we’ve got the numbers. Speak out wherever and with whatever you can. Word gets around, but if you stay mute then you are a traitor to the cause of good against evil.
The one person we should not forget who has been responsible for providing conservative balance to the mainstream left media has been Rupert Murdoch.
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The situation is pretty bad but just imagine the lack of choice and balance we’d have without him. It would be a hell of a lot worse.
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I’m always grateful to him for that. The fact that I don’t always agree with him on issues is irrelevant to that.
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And Rupert Murdoch is no narrow minded ideologue or media devil as he’s often portrayed. He’s far too smart and pragmatic for that.
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And I say good luck to him that he’s made a nice fat buck out of it all too. That’s an example of the free market working well.
It’s almost become a badge of honour among people who’ve never spent time looking at the issues to decry Donald Trump. They seem to think that it somehow makes them superior and are quite shocked when you disagree with them; and possibly even a little angry when you prove them wrong.
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Yet Donald Trump delivered more of what he promised than nearly all politicians have. As Peter Smith says here he was good for black Americans and women. Far better than Democrats have been for their normal constituency in recent years. Workers in rust belt areas also benefited from Trump’s presidency.
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It’s no surprise that more blacks voted for Trump than any other Republican candidate for President.
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And what really annoys me – as Peter Smith alludes to – is conservatives who know the issues who still often feel the need to preface any praise for Trump with a criticism of him.
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I don’t think the war in Ukraine would ever have started if Trump had been President – invasions have occurred under Barrack Obama and Joe Biden but not under Trump. China would not be nearly the threat that it currently is if Trump were in office.
PS: “Tucker was brave, effective, charismatic and popular. That’s presumably why he had to go. There’s speculation about the trigger for his demise.”
The reason he had to go had, I think, more to do with certain emails he wrote and unearthed during the discovery process by Dominion Voting Systems lawyers.
Rupert Murdoch apparently had a similar experience in the UK a decade or so ago. “Never,” he said at the time, “put anything in an email”.
In other words, leave no trace that might be used as evidence against you.
There’s something else too. Fox’s policy: “No one person is bigger than the network”.
Before Tucker Carlson’s dismissal, there was Glen Beck (2011) and Sarah Palin (2013).
What an irony. The looming trial would have been more about reputational damage and defamation issues than the alleged voting “abnormalities” of one kind and another in the last US election.
Western values matter, of course. But the real underlying problem is the rise of government and corporate power relative to that of the citizen. The latter is now caught up, like a fly in a spider web, in the complex strands of a myriad of regulations. Like the fly, the citizen is now subject to constant surveillance. Meanwhile, power resides in what is known as ‘the administrative state’.
We are no longer free citizens operating independently under the rule of law. We are now trapped, enmeshed, by a remorseless management system from which there is no escape. In this system, conservative Western values no longer operate. The system generates its own values, familiarly known as ‘woke ideology’, in which objective truth no longer exists, and values are whatever the system dictates – and are therefore entirely arbitrary and meaningless. The fundamental problem is not ideology, but the distribution of power. How will the fly escape from the clutches of a rapacious enemy who is rapidly taking complete control of its very existence?
(2/5) It used to be (up until the 60s) reasonably difficult to argue against the left, as they did a reasonable job of pretending to champion the workers, the poor, women and minorities, as they wormed their way into positions of power. To call them out seemed mean and heartless. Nowadays, it’s a lay down misere in terms of easy moral targets for the Right to mock and condemn.
Now that the left hold all the positions of influence, and their true nature can be safely revealed, all their preferred policies are inherently and undisguisedly racist (current referendum, all Aboriginal policies over the last 40 years), sexist (ideological destruction of the unique role of women in conception, growth of a new life, birth and nurturing), misogynistic (any current gender-based policy you care to name), fascistic (this was always their weak point, but now it’s absolutely blatant and out and proud), anti-scientific (climate science, RE, gender, biology, economics, sociobiology, etc etc) and anti-Semitic (Israel is only part of it).
There is no part of modern left politics that you wouldn’t immediately say, in isolation: “Oh, that’s so far right!”. But then, the “far right” (sic) always was an essential part of the far left.
Tucker Carson offered $20m pa for 5 years by Patrick Bet-David.
Well, Tucker Carlson was.
“Those who despise Trump – whether leftists or curate’s-egg conservatives – are never able to identify one of his policies that they disagree with.”
Spot on Peter. Did they want a nice President or an effective one?