Tucker Carlson says protests against police violence are an “ancient battle” between “thugs” and “normal people”
Carlson: “Ponder that the next time they demand you get a permit to put a deck on your own house”
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From the May 29, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight:
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Now we know that other people have somehow negotiated a far better deal than the one we have. They get to ignore the rules. They don't believe in order or fairness, they reject society itself. Reason and process and precedent mean nothing to them. They use violence to get what they want immediately.
People like this don't bother to work, they don't volunteer or pay taxes to help other people. They live for themselves. They do exactly what they feel like doing. They say exactly what they feel like saying. They spray-paint their opinions on buildings. On television, hour by hour, we watch these people, criminal mobs, destroy what the rest of us have built. They have no right to do that. They don't contribute to the common good. They never have, yet suddenly they seem to have all the power.
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What you’re watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in society and would like to preserve it and those who don’t and seek to destroy it.
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The rioters in Minneapolis and in other places act as if they're allowed to loot and burn, and in fact they are allowed. No one stops them. The authorities don't arrest them -- instead, they pander to them, flatter them, desperately trying to win their love. Why are masked lunatics setting fire to Wendy's? Because the rest of us are sinful.
That's what our leaders tell us. The crimes of the mob are the punishment we deserve. That's their argument, and many seem to buy it.
On a White House executive staff call just this morning, key domestic policy advisers Brooke Rollins and Jeron Smith argued that it might seem racist to say anything about the rioting in Minneapolis. Better just to let it happen, so that's what they're doing. We should have seen this coming.
When you express an opinion our leaders don't like, they call it "violence." When criminals commit actual acts of violence, they call it "speech." So, the game is rigged. Why are the rest of us still playing it? We have more power than we think we do. Our system only functions because dutiful normal people, people with self-control and decency and above all, a sense of responsibility toward others created our system. They sustain the system. They pay the bills. None of the thugs looting Target or the well-paid nihilists on television who are egging them on have added a thing -- nothing. Yet all of the destroyers expect that this arrangement will last forever, and you can see why, because for them, it's been a very good deal.
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When the mob comes, they're gone. You are on your own. That is true. Those are the facts. We can't change them, all we can control is our own behavior. Should you keep playing along with all of that? Ponder that the next time they demand you get a permit to put a deck on your own house, and think about it even harder the next time you write a tax check.