The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Opinion Editor And Host,
"The Josh Hammer Show"

This week, my column began with Tucker Carlson's recent keynote address at The Heritage Foundation's 50th Anniversary Gala in Washington, D.C.—which I attended, and which ended up being Tucker's last notable public event prior to his untimely dismissal last Monday morning from Fox News—as a hook to make a broader point about the stakes of our current civilizational struggle. As Tucker also underscored in his speech, we are no longer living in an era where amicable partisans agree on ends and merely disagree on the margin about the most suitable means—that is, an era where, to paraphrase Tucker, "the best white paper wins out" and everyone goes home happy at the end of the day. Rather, we now live in an era where Left and Right—or, more accurately, the American Ruling Class and average American citizens—profoundly and perhaps irreconcilably disagree about rudimentary theological and anthropological conceptions of man and his relationship with his fellow man, the state, and God Himself. For those of us on the side of civilizational sanity, we need Tucker Carlson back in the fight posthaste.

This week, my podcast featured the exceptional Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute. Leor is a Ph.D. who has left academia behind in the dust for the think tank world, where he contributes richly and boldly to our roiling debate about transgenderism, the pernicious downsides of gender ideology, and the so-called "gender-affirming care" "surgeries" that Leor unreservedly refers to as comprising the greatest medical scandal in American history. Leor and I go deep in our conversation, exploring how it is we got to this point where one is deemed a "transphobic" bigot for merely suggesting that those with male and female genitalia ought to urinate and defecate in different bathrooms. What a crazy thought!

In terms of media appearances over the past week, I recorded a CenterClip audio op-ed railing against 2024 GOP presidential contender (and former South Carolina Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) Nikki Haley as a "BoomerCon archetype," joined Newsmax's "National Report" to discuss Tucker Carlson's abrupt dismissal from Fox News, was quoted in a thorough write-up in The American Conservative about Tucker's recent keynote address at the Heritage gala in D.C., was quoted in a write-up in The Epoch Times on Tucker's dismissal from Fox, joined Steve Bannon's "War Room" to discuss the same topic, joined The Rita Panahi Show on Sky News Australia for a conversation on numerous U.S.-centric topics, participated in an American Affairs virtual symposium on Australia's News Media Bargaining Code and its U.S. policy implications (I also had an essay for the written version of that same symposium), and (as always) co-hosted the latest production of the Edmund Burke Foundation's "NatCon Squad" podcast.

By the time you read this, I will be in Budapest (where I also visited last year) to speak at this week's CPAC Hungary conference. It should be a great time, and I am excited to report back next week.

Our highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds this week include selections from Jonathan Tobin, Ben Weingarten, Zoltán Koskovics, Max Eden, and Nathan Lewin.

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Tucker Carlson and the Struggle for Civilizational Sanity

Last Friday, I attended The Heritage Foundation's 50th Anniversary Gala, a sprawling and swanky affair featuring many fine presentations, a surprise Dierks Bentley mini-concert for the country music enthusiasts (yours truly among them), and an extravagant post-dinner fireworks show over the Potomac River. But the highlight of the evening, bar none, was former Fox News star Tucker Carlson's electric keynote address and his (all-too-brief) colloquy on stage afterward with Heritage's exceptional new president, Kevin Roberts.

Carlson's speech was both wildly entertaining and poignant, at times slapstick funny and at other times humorously self-deprecating about his Episcopalian faith. But as Carlson began to reach his peroration, the key substantive takeaway he wished to impart unto his audience became clear. The relevant political and cultural battle lines in the year 2023 are not those befitting a civil and polite discussion where both sides are reasonable, both sides pursue their own version of the common good, and the best think tank white paper wins out in the end, Carlson cautioned. No, our current civilizational struggle is not reflective of a refined policy debate between amicable partisans; rather, it is one that implicates fundamentally distinct theological and anthropological visions of mankind—of man's very biology and his relation with his fellow man, the state, and God Himself.

I immediately hearkened back to an interview Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams did with The Atlantic in October 2021, where Williams had this provocative (but accurate) line about America's contemporary fault lines: "Even during the Civil War—I think we're more divided now than we were then. As Lincoln said, we all prayed to the same God. We all believed in the same Constitution. We just differed over the question of slavery." This is the precise sentiment that Carlson was getting at in his keynote speech at the Heritage gala last Friday.

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