Tucker Carlson is a determined and courageous advocate for free speech in an age where that right is increasingly challenged and becoming evanescent.
He is the John Milton of our era.
He might also be the most powerful independent force in a media world that is constantly changing shape, finding new ways to tell the news and subject to new forms of government censorship—like the notorious Bill C-11 that was just passed by Trudeau government.
The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was fired this week.
Or was he?
“Tucker Carlson Tonight” was the most popular show on cable news television. He has sown and cultivated a massive audience—in the United States and Canada—of faithful viewers who refuse to listen to the libellous liberals who have called him a racist and fascist without any justification.
He has retained that following, as evidenced by an April 26 video on Twitter that had garnered well over 73 million views at the time of this writing and continues to climb. He could easily fashion those faithful into an independent media outlet that could outstrip the current networks that many in the public view as tired, mendacious, and superficial.
“One of the first things you notice when you step out of the noise for a few days is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country, kind and decent people,” Carlson said, noting “how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are: they’re irrelevant. In five years we won’t even remember we had them.”
Hopefully, we can forget some of this nonsense in five months, especially if he’s talking about whether drag queens should be telling stories to pre-teen children.
Tucker continued, “At the same time, and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics—the ones that will define our future—get virtually no discussion at all: war, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?”
“Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly the United States looks very much like a one-party state.”
Carlson declared that “this moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue” but suggested that “honest people become powerful.”
“The liars who have been trying to silence them, shrink, they become weaker,“ he said. ”True things prevail.”
As Milton wrote, “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”
In his address to the Heritage Foundation on April 21, where Carlson almost anticipated his unemployment, he said, “The more you tell the truth the stronger you become … and of course, the opposite is also true the more you lie the weaker and more terrified you become. We all know that feeling, you lie about something and all of a sudden you’re a prisoner of that lie you are diminished by it you are weak and afraid.”
Carlson is anything but weak and afraid. In his Heritage Foundation speech, he shrank away from any accolades that he was courageously defending free speech, saying he was just “a talk show host.” But that mantle has been thrust upon him.
He has become a crusader for free speech but will not limp away into the night. Not as long as a Twitter post can attract that many million views and not as long some social media remain equally committed to letting the people have their say.
Or as Carlson said in his viral video, “True things prevail. … As long as you can hear the words, there is hope.”
