Tucker Carlson has been targeted by an editorial in the Washington Examiner for his remarks about, among others, Carly Fiorina, once a Republican presidential candidate, and Kay James, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Carlson needs no help in defending himself — he is an articulate journalist who has been practicing the trade for decades. But he makes interesting points that are worth contemplating.
We should look at what some of the individuals he mentioned said, starting with Carly Fiorina (alphabetical order), who tweeted that “it’s white America that now must see the truth, speak the truth and act on the truth.”
What does that mean? It’s possible, of course, that Fiorina meant that we can’t rely on blacks to see, speak and act on the truth — and that therefore whites must. If you knew Carly like I know Carly, you would never think that was what she meant.
She meant, obviously, to blame whites. But for what? Being white? They can’t help that. For killing blacks? Does she think whites kill a lot of blacks? Or perhaps that white policemen kill a lot of blacks? Has she looked at the numbers? Of course not. She’s just joining in the looting, even if hers is only intellectual.
James’ statement wasn’t long, 166 words, and was mostly what you’d expect from a Republican (though, of course, the Heritage Foundation is nonpartisan).
“The senseless and completely unjustified killing of George Floyd … ” Check.
“While I understand the frustration and anger, I do not condone the violence … ” Check. “Rioting … will never lead to anything but more suffering.” Check.
But then this: “But we cannot shrug off Floyd’s killing—along with the killings of so many other black Americans throughout our nation’s history and up through today. How many more black people must die … ”
Who’s that addressed to? Who’s shrugging off Floyd’s killing? Democrat Lyndon LaRouche died last year at the age of 96.
And what about “killings of so many other black Americans throughout our nation’s history”? Are we supposed to wallow in sorrow now at the killings that took place a hundred years ago?
But this is the real problem: James talks of killings “… throughout our nation’s history and up through today.” How many killings have there been recently (i.e., up through today)? She doesn’t say. If she means killings by police, that is, killings of blacks by whites, the answer is very few.
According to Heather Mac Donald writing in The Wall Street Journal, “African-Americans made up 53 percent of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60 percent of robberies, though they are 13 percent of the population.”
Mac Donald also writes that according to The Washington Post database, the police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and nineteen unarmed whites, a total of 28, in 2019.
Does that really justify speaking of the “killings of so many black Americans throughout our nation’s history and up through today”? What is James talking about?
In a country of 350 million people, what is the “correct” number of people we should expect to be killed annually by the police if 1,000 (972 of whom were armed) is too many? 876? In which case all the rioting and their attendant killings and destruction of properties and livelihoods and all the posturing by politicians were over only 124 people—in a population of 350 million.
Of course, if James was talking about drive-by killings of blacks by blacks in, say, Chicago (or any of the other major cities run by Democrats), that is a real problem. But it’s not a race problem. It’s a crime problem.
And if you were black and lived there, your heart would leap for joy every time the cops came round. We know that because that’s what the people who do live there say.
Carlson also went after Vice President Pence and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Their statements seem more anodyne.
But why be anodyne? Now? This is precisely the moment to rattle off the statistics of black-on-black crime in the (Democrat-controlled) inner cities. This is the moment to talk about failed families (the black illegitimacy rate is 77 percent) and failed schools, lorded over by teachers’ unions and their Democrat allies — like Barack Obama (and his race-hustling friend Al Sharpton who visited the White House more than 80 times while it was occupied by Obama)—whose children went to a posh, private Washington DC school while he opposed the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program that allowed inner-city students to escape the Democrat-run educational plantations.
The left is pushing its agenda, which includes, incredibly, defunding the police. If sensible people don’t speak out, an anti-American, antifa message will become dominant leading into the presidential election, for the purpose of destroying Donald Trump and responsible government. Then we’ll see a whirlwind.
What a teaching moment: the intellectuals are looting America! Where were Kay James and Carly Fiorina and Nikki Haley and Vice President Pence when we needed them?
Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.