Washington, D.C. — Fox News host Tucker Carlson delivered today’s keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference, outlining what he sees as the central problems with the progressive movement and the insufficient response from the right, particularly on social policy.
“It never occurs to the geniuses on the Hill, if you’re making a play for non-traditional Republican votes, maybe you should take a non-traditionally Republican position on something,” he said. “And why wouldn’t it be a pro-family position in favor of raising your own children?” Carlson received extensive audience applause.
“How hard is that?” he continued. “If I were running for president — which obviously I would never do, I would be insane to run for president, I would never do that — but if I were advising someone who was running for president, I would say make that the centerpiece of your campaign. Vote for me and you can raise your own kids.”
Carlson made these comments in response to an audience question about whether he has hope that the “national conservative” effort will prevail even though people with progressive views control so much of Silicon Valley, academia, Hollywood, and Fortune 500 companies. He praised Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 book The Two-Income Trap and said social conservatives on the right haven’t written anything as useful about how difficult it is for parents to raise children in the modern economic climate.
“We have allowed the single unhappiest people in America to control our social policy,” Carlson said.
In the course of his remarks, Carlson made three primary arguments about the current political situation. First, he said that the main threat to individuals living the way they want to live “comes not from the government but from the private sector.” Second, Carlson asserted that the behavior of progressives “is all a kind of Freudian projection.” “Whatever they say you’re doing is precisely what they’re doing,” he added. He said that observing Antifa radicals is what led him to come to this conclusion: “It’s the guys who are literally armed with steel bars and have black masks on calling other people fascist.”
Finally, Carlson said that the Left is “not interested in peaceful coexistence” and that he rejects that. “I want to be really clear,” he added shortly thereafter, “I’m still for living with people I disagree with. I will always be for that. I will always be for pluralism. I will always be for intellectual diversity. . . . That will never change. I will not allow that to change. You become something less than you should be when you allow those impulses to take over.”