THE GOOD LIFE According To Tucker Carlson

Conservatism, Culture, Education, Family, Technology

Most YouTube offerings are not worth watching. The speakers drone on forever, when the substantive essence of their words could be distilled in a single unoriginal paragraph. Moreover, YouTube consumes time. Reading text is so much quicker and thus more efficient.

Trust me, then, when I say that not one words is superfluous in Tucker Carlson’s address, now on YouTube, delivered to the youth of Turning Point USA.

I found myself uncharacteristically listening to it all, disagreeing only with his blind worship of the family, per se. The emphasis, rather, ought to be on happy, adaptive, loving and reciprocal relationships. Sometimes the loved ones you choose are more of a family than the loved ones you were born to.

Carlson’s message to his youthful audience was an extension of the wisdom shared on the Tucker Carlson Show (I paraphrase):

“There is more to life than just preserving it—life must be lived to the fullest.”

Life is short. Don’t waste time, reiterated Tucker, participate in it to the fullest. Do it now. Jump face first into the pool of life. Meaning comes from other people.

Carlson warned of digitally induced dullness, in the context of things that blunt the imperative to experience life to the fullest; in the context of the need to eschew anything that causes one to miss out on life, or prevents one from engaging with [worthy] people to the fullest.

Digital distractions steal your life, he stressed. [I would add that, to the extent you have precious and worthy people in your life, you need to get as close as you can to them in a world defined by distance. Don’t type to them; talk to them and travel to see them.]

You don’t want to wake up to life in the third act, cautioned Tucker. You don’t want to be dulled to the people who love you. Rather, take stock of those who love you and focus on them.

In a chat I recently had with Buck Johnson, I advised especially talented techies (who have options by virtue of their brilliance) to stay out of the corporate world. It will dull and deform your spirit, and devour the rest of you. If you can, pursue work as an independent contractor.

Likewise, Tucker encouraged conservative kids to opt out of popular society. In particular, if you believe that the system is a joke—don’t partake. Above all, do the thing to which you are naturally suited.

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Conjugate the Verb To Lie (As In ‘Lie Down’ And Not ‘Lay an Egg’)!

Affirmative Action, America, Conservatism, Culture, Education, English, Gender, Paleoconservatism

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Forgive this English patriotism. In dumbed-down America, it would, no doubt, be derided as elitist. By extension, meritocracy and an emphasis on canon and curriculum are considered elitist — and even petty.

After all, the aim is for societal institutions to look properly diverse. And, if this sort of diversity is to be achieved—our institutions must reflect diverse standards as well. There is no getting away from it.

The now-acceptable lack of proficiency with English grammar means that there is more crap (a good, honest adjective in this context) grammar to report, this time from an “editor” at Chronicles magazine, a conservative magazine of culture.

SHE “writes” (as she sins indulgently and promiscuously in using the Imperial “I” 1000 times, in what is a cardinal sin in writing):

“You probably expect me to now explain how awful COVID was, how I LAID around in bed.”

Past tense of “lie” down is LAY. It’s, “…how I lay around…”

Our laid-up “editor,” who happens to write at the 8th-grade level at Chronicles Magazine, would have been correct to write that “the chicken laid an egg.” In so writing, she would be conjugating the verb to “lay,” as in “lay tile” or “lay the table” for dinner, too.

How deep runs the institutional rot—and how disgraceful it is—that people who call themselves “editors”; market themselves as such–are bestowed with the honorific; get paid to titivate the works of their betters–are, themselves, incapable of conjugating English verbs.

NEW COLUMN: A Christmas Story Before Nerf Guns Became a No-No

Christianity, Comedy & Humor, Family, Feminism, Film, Founding Fathers, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

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NEW COLUMN, “A Christmas Story Before Nerf Guns Became a No-No,” is on American Greatness.

An excerpt:

Described by a critic as “one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way,” “A Christmas Story,” directed by Bob Clark, debuted in 1983. Set in the 1940s, the film depicts a series of family vignettes through the eyes of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who yearns for that gift of all gifts: The Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

This was boyhood before the Nerf gun and “bang-bang you’re dead” were banned; family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads,” and Christmas before Saint Nicholas was denounced for his whiteness, and “Merry Christmas” condemned for its exclusiveness.

If children could choose the family into which they were born, most would opt for the kind depicted in “A Christmas Story,” where mom is a happy homemaker, dad a devoted working stiff, and between them, they have zero repertoire of progressive psychobabble to rub together.

Although clearly adored, Ralphie is not encouraged to share his feelings at every turn. Nor is he, in the spirit of gender-neutral parenting, circa 2020, urged to act out like a girl if he’s feeling … girlie.

Instead, Ralphie is taught restraint and self-control. And horrors: The little boy even has his mouth washed out with soap and water for uttering the “F” expletive. “My personal preference was for Lux,” reveals Ralphie, “but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant, after-dinner flavor—heady but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.” Ralphie is, of course, guilt-tripped with stories about starving Biafrans when he refuses to finish his food.

The parenting practiced so successfully by Mr. and Mrs. Parker fails every progressive commandment. By today’s standards, the delightful, un-precocious protagonist of “A Christmas Story” would be doomed to a lifetime on the therapist’s chaise lounge—and certainly to daily doses of Ritalin …

…

NEW COLUMN, “A Christmas Story Before Nerf Guns Became a No-No,” is on American Greatness.

Merry Christmas.

If The Libertarian Left Condemns Trump’s Immigration Record, It Must Be Quite Good

Democrats, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy

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Who do you turn to for accurate, objective data on just how relatively effective President Trump’s immigration initiatives have been?

You turn to a source that is both quite credible and, at once, opposes Trump’s immigration policies with all its open-borders, ideological zeal.

That’s not the Left, for its data are seldom credible; it’s the libertarian-left, and in particular, a policy report from the CATO Institute, whose scholars are eagerly awaiting the “Pro-Immigration Agenda [of] the Biden Administration”:

If the libertarian-left condemns Trump’s immigration record—it must have been quite good.

CATO predicts Biden will please them, because:

… At no time in American history has immigration been as legally restricted as it is currently. Trump has overseen a reduction in legal immigration greater than the declines during the two world wars, the Great Depression, or even after Congress ended America’s open immigration policy with Europe in the 1920s. President-elect Biden could do more to expand, improve, and deregulate the immigration system than any other president if for no other reason than that the system is largely shut down right now. …

… Before Trump closed the borders, the United States legally accepted more immigrants than any other country in absolute terms, but accounting for its size and economy, it ranked in the bottom third of wealthy countries for both its foreign-born share of the population and its annual per capita growth in the foreign-born population in 2019. Immigrants in Canada are about 21 percent of its population….

Less credible are the polls the CATOites cite to the effect that, “for the first time in [a certain] poll’s 55-year history, more Americans support increasing immigration than decreasing it.”

Really? At a time when Americans can be found congregating by necessity outside food banks, in lines stretching as far as the eye can see? Now, Americans badly want more competition over scarce resources?

Yes, say our CATO “scholars.”

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