Great interview.
There is a Carnegie Library in my hometown in Barbour County, AL. I’ve made great use of that library to study state and local history and review books about Alabama.
Tucker Carlson comes across as one of Patrick Deneen’s emerging Aristo-Populists in this interview. I enjoyed the shout out to John Calvin, but it was Martin Luther who beat him to the punch in the free will debate in On The Bondage of the Will in his famous reply to the humanist Desiderius Erasmus. John Calvin was still a Catholic at the time and wouldn’t convert until the 1530s.
Tucker is right that our current secular elite has bought into the meritocratic lie that it deserves everything it has earned and is in total and complete control of its own destiny. It operates on the assumption that it chooses and owes absolutely nothing to anyone but itself. It doesn’t owe reverence to God, anyone else in society, the cumulative accomplishments of the dead which made the country over the course of several centuries and especially future generations because the self-absorbed individual who stands outside of time and place and whose ego is sovereign accomplishes everything.
I like Tucker for challenging the Lolbertarian madness that is infecting the GOP. He also calls out the neo-cons a lot – such as in his epic takedown of Max Boot. He is probably my favorite mainstream news anchor, just as Omar is my favorite Congressperson.
I loved the way Tucker mocked GDP as some indicator of how well the country is doing. That has been the parody of Trump and how he puts all the emphasis on these fake economic numbers. Trump himself called the unemployment numbers fake when he was running and now considers them gospel.
As Tucker pointed out, it is especially egregious to focus on unemployment numbers by race as Trump does especially as most of these jobs have gone to immigrants and not Americans.
Not The GDP!
Don’t criticize The GDP or The DOW!
A more stable index is the QOLI-Quality of Life Index that rates nations on a multiplicity of factors beside just economics. Switzerland always score high as does Norway, the United States does not.
“Why would a society lionize and promote a class of people who lend money for a living over people who actually make things? Why is it more impressive to be an investment banker than to be a finish carpenter or cabinetmaker?”
Careful, Tucker. That way lies condemnation, ostracism, career death. And truth.
Because we ALL know what RACE are ‘investment bankers, RIghhhht?’ – Did you notice how even his voice assumed that ‘latkes in the mouth’ sound of every obnoxious Jew I’ve ever met, when (((they talk)))? It’s as if they are gagging on their own concupiscience, or something…..
I’m absolutely astounded at this interview. A man who believes in God, guilt, absolution, honest labor, and caring for one’s OWN, before sending their million-dollar check to Somalia? I had no idea he was this NORMAL!!!!!
WHY IS HE NOT PRESIDENT?
Now, as to the second point – Who taught predestinarian thought, first.
It doesn’t really matter, HW. You are so blinded as to your ‘leader’ Martin Luther, as to forget one important thing. Yes, Luther wrote ‘The Bondage of the Will.’ Fine and good. But it’s not LUTHERANS who are all “hep” on studying this tome, it is Calvinists! Even my HB edition of BoW has a forward by JI Packer- a Calvinistic Anglican- (some would say even, a ‘Puritan’ -gasp!), and NOT a ‘Lutheran.’ For the record, for the vast majority of Lutherans through the centuries, all over the world, this book is ‘terra incognita’ even MORE than the Formula of Concord!
The point I am trying to make is that the vast majority of Lutherans are not followers of Luther, but rather are MELANCTHONIANS, and NOT Lutherans. Modern Lutheranism is (at best) a form of Amyraldianism, and not Five-point Augustinianism, as was Dr. Luther (if you’ll allow me a bit of soteriological ‘humor.’)
And, as the article on Amyraldianism notes:
“His (Amyraut’s) system is an approach, not so much to Arminianism, which he decidedly rejected, as to Lutheranism, which likewise teaches a universal atonement and a limited election.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyraldism
But how utterly insane is that? This form of ‘Lutheranism’ noted above, is due to Melancthon, and his utterly COWARDLY leadership after Luther died, and NOT because “Luther’s Predestinarian thought preceded Calvin’s.”
Truly, the errors of one’s theology mess up his (or her’s – right, Denise?) whole life….. As the old hymn says,
“Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide;
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light. ” – https://hymnary.org/text/once_to_every_man_and_nation
If God has only a ‘limited’ election (“Many are called, but few are chosen”- Jesus) yet YHWH offers AT THE SAME TIME, a universal atonement…
(FWIW- the modern Evan-jelly-goo heresy that the ‘nigger is my brother’ because ‘Black, brown, red, white, all are precious in His sight’ comes from this blasphemy.. a sort of demonic theological ‘trickle down’ economics of damnation, as it were)….c.f. – http://faithandheritage.com/2018/07/the-blackwashing-of-christian-history-and-beyond-part-1/
…we aren’t on the fringes of ‘cloud-CUCKoo land’- we’re ALREADY IN CLOWN WORLD! Because that would make God truly a despot- to hold out the reward of Universal atonement, yet deny it, because YOU aren’t elect?!? Talk about ‘works righteousness!
Better to note that those whom God saves, He had already chosen to ‘know’ as His own, so that He DOES predestine those souls to be made into the Ikons of His Son, so that Christ may be the ‘first born among his Ethnic Kin.’ Or, in common Parlance, Romans 8:29. Because then, if someone does NOT choose God, it merely proves that he/she was not elect, all along. Because God respects your ‘free will’ and will not coerce you against that will…. as I have heard said, time and again, by Arminian impastors…
You see folks, “lex orandi” is “lex credendi.” If you hold that ‘all men are created equal,’ you then are already halfway toward Hell…. because Jefferson is not found in the Bible. But St. Paul is. And the concept of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, is all of a piece. And for that, we have Calvin, and the Synod of Dordt to thank… thinking St. Paul’s thoughts, after him.
And modern Americans, following on the Wesleyan Arminian crap – FROM THE BEGINNING, [ I John 1:1] began to follow ‘another Gospel,’ one of ‘cheap grace,’ and ‘easy believerism.’ If you are opposed to see the concept of Aristocracy (which Tucker proves he believes in) in humanity, how are you going to see the concept of ‘King’s Kids’ in the spiritual realm?
In other words, some are ‘called’ and others…. are not. In life, as in the realm of things sacred. By the way, did you know that Carlson is Episcopalian? A decidedly “Aristocratic” form of Christendom, when compared to either apostate (because schismated from) Methodism, ‘uppity’ Presbyterians, or the bottom of the barrel Baptist…
https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2017/06/26/tucker-carlson-episcopalian/
This country (which is why I do not include apostate Rome in this discussion- for America is and was, until recently, a ‘Protestant’ nation) is falling apart, not because of our economics, but because of our Soteriology! If we Do NOT- or WILL not believe that: 1) we are ‘miserable sinners’ (as the Prayer Book notes) 2) unable to ‘save ourselves’ who 3) confess Christ crucified, while at the same time 4) seek forgiveness (and ABSOLUTION- by a priest!) of our sins, in order to 5) “hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of thy holy name…..”
Well, then, it WILL be ‘ragnarok’ as they say. And the first step in this national repentance is to recognize that ‘if we say we have no sin, then the truth is not in us.” [ I John 1: 8] Then we need to acknowledge our entire race as ‘miserable sinners’… which is an appropriately ‘calvinist’ spot to begin ‘true repentance and amendment of life.’
My (stridently non-mainline) Lutheran congregation coincidentally just had a reasonably well-attended day-long study of a series of R. C. Sproul lectures on Semi-Pelagianism vs. Augustinianism, with full-on TULIP election, and we briefly discussed how Melanchthon was more conciliatory and compromising than Luther and was in fact criticized as a cuck. Some differences between TULIP and Lutheran doctrine were discussed, but it was with the understanding that the most doctrinally explicit portions of our confession (the Book of Concord) don’t always reflect Luther’s own views. (I personally find modern Lutheran “single predestination” to be a muddled and weird doctrine, but I’m a pernicious Crypto-Calvinist and Lutherans are tolerant of mystery and paradox anyway.)
Why would a Lutheran study class be watching Sproul, who was literally more Calvinist than Calvin? The unfortunate fact is that the current Reformed camp has a FAR greater body of robust, high-profile, readily available, and theologically literate content than does the current Lutheran church, so as a traditional Lutheran, that’s where I often have to turn for anything readable and orthodox.
I read where one major news magazine called Mayor Pete a “devout Episcopalian.” That pretty much describes the state of Christianity in the land of the United Soviets! (I am sorry, I meant to say the United States. I keep getting the terms confused for some reason)
It’s hilarious and sad that within mainline Protestant denominations, the African churches are the sole defenders of the true faith.