Tucker Carlson owes the dead—the war dead of St. George’s School in Rhode Island—an apology. A graduate of the class of 1987, Carlson owes the men of the class of 1940, and of every class whose names line the wall in the Memorial Schoolhouse, an act of penance. He owes a similar duty to the men of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, whence he graduated in 1991. He should visit both campuses, walking the path to the Church of St. George and taking the Long Walk—past the stretch of Victorian Gothic buildings, where the inscription on the pavement honors Theodore Roosevelt—to the Trinity College Chapel, where a plaque commemorates the legacy of President Eisenhower.
Perhaps he will see the light inside the church, and receive God’s light, as the Word comes to life in scenes depicting the prophets and patriarchs, the birth of Jesus, and the spirit of the Jewish people. Or maybe he will find wisdom in a history class at St. George’s, or learn humility at Trinity, instead of promoting a crank like Darryl Cooper or a fool like Candace Owens or a brute like Andrew Tate. May these things happen soon, because the longer Carlson listens to fools and laughs at those who condemn them, the more he becomes a fool himself. May these things happen now, before Carlson becomes like the critics’ description of Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, Franklin: a traitor to his class.
Carlson is already a traitor to truth, because so much of what he says is not so. He says, for example, Alex Jones predicted 9/11, calling him a prophet, when the facts prove otherwise. He says Jones can channel the supernatural, much like Cooper can divine Hitler’s intentions or Owens can discern Brigitte Macron's gender. The fact is, facts are irrelevant to Carlson’s worldview; they cannot compel him to change his mind or abandon his passions. But we have no obligation to be as stubborn as Carlson or as stiff-necked as the people Cooper and Owens seem to despise.
Our duty is to know the truth, and to live it as the men of St. George’s and Trinity died defending it. Honor compels us to remember the promise of Trinity Sunday, and of the words first said in a solemn hour for the cause of freedom, so right and justice may still live. If this is villainy, if, as Darryl Cooper says, Winston Churchill is the “chief villain” of the Second World War, and 1000 years of tyranny is preferable to a single day of anarchy, truth is dead. If, as Cooper also says, we can forsake Israel and forget Jerusalem, and transfer seven million Jews to “apartments” in New York City, London, and Los Angeles, humanity is dead.
Cooper is what he seems, with the accessories—the neo-Nazi merch—to prove it. His avatar is the work of a fellow sympathizer, who plunders the past and abuses the symbols of the ancient world. The artist’s sympathies are obvious, and as odious as the politics of history’s most infamous failed artist.
In the same way, the truth is obvious, and Tucker Carlson doesn’t have to struggle to know it. He can see it on Gasparilla Island, in Boca Grande, Florida, where he has two homes. He can find it at the Port Boca Grande Lighthouse, where volunteers watched for German U-boats, or at the Veterans Memorial, where posterity honors them still.
On the island, where visitors “winter” and fish, regulars include the Du Ponts, the Fords, the Bushes, and the Busches. They’re gentlemen, not loudmouths or friends of Andrew Tate. None of them is an apologist for tyranny or an enemy of America or her allies.
No gentleman will follow Tucker Carlson, or listen to his guests and wander off into lies. But others look for someone who’ll indulge their passions and feed their hates. All we can do is warn them, as we’ve warned them before, that ignorant people get what their foolishness deserves.