People often wonder about the direction of the country.
You hear it all the time, and recently polls have shown that people are not happy with this direction in the slightest. According to a recent NBC poll, which made headlines with its startling results, only 23 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the right direction, while 71 percent believe the country has gone off-track.
Interestingly, there does seem to exist a correlation between certain negative trends, such as the declining birth rate, the decline in religion, and deaths of despair (depression-caused suicide and drug overdose). There is another negative trend that is under-reported: the century-long trend of urbanism — the increase in Americans living in cities.
In a recent speech given in Hungary, a nation moving in a strongly conservative and Christian direction, Tucker Carlson made the case against living in a bustling American city.
In a portion of his speech, the conservative superstar discussed the enslaving character of urban living in contrast with that of living in a rural area.
“Who votes for the people who run the United States right now? People who are working for big non-profits or big banks, living in crowded conditions, very often alone, in big soulless cities, having their food delivered by immigrants, and spending their time glued to a screen. What does that sound like to you? It sounds like prison, actually.”
This image of a prison cell being invoked to describe lonely apartment life is both jarring and relatable and gives an uncomfortable cause for contemplation on the sort of lives that we, as Americans, are living in our own version of 1984.
The Blaze posted the relevant portion of the speech on its X, formerly called Twitter, account. (The whole video is very much worth watching.):
Let the impact of Carlson’s words from the video on X sink in: “You are enslaved, and you can’t think clearly. And your reference points are gone. And you can’t see the stars, and you can’t see the trees. You cannot see God’s creation.”
What a powerful contrast between city and country life!
Now, some might find the characterization of the urban versus rural strange or out-of-place, but this contrast is a historic one, with deep roots in both the American and Christian traditions, and is politically relevant.
Thomas Jefferson, in contrast to Alexander Hamilton and the Federalists, argued that America should have very independent, self-governing states with very little federal power at all and that America’s policies should promote self-sufficiency, rural living, and agriculture.
Now let us compare this vision to that of the World Economic Forum as argued by the forum’s frequent contributor and member of the Danish parliament Ida Auken who wrote the following in her article, titled “Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, and Life Has Never Been Better.”
“Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city — or should I say, ‘our city.’ I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”
“Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think, and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.”
“All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest, and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realized that we could do things differently.”
You cannot get much more dystopian than this, and it matches perfectly with the aspirations of the Democrats and establishment voter base as described by Carlson in his speech.
“The ruling party is the party of the childless, the unmarried, and the people who are working for low wages for large corporations and living in tiny apartments in overcrowded cities that are rife with crime.”
By contrast, Thomas Jefferson envisioned America as a country landscape with free and virtuous landowners attending to their own affairs.
“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands,” Jefferson once wrote.
Tucker Carlson stands on the shoulders of giants in the American tradition when he makes the case against urbanism in favor for a more rural America. He is right to point out that the reality of urban living, as well as the future vision of the global elite, is nothing short of prison-like in not only its appearance but in its level of control. We were once a nation of farmers founded by farmers, and we must make the choice between a return to the land as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson or into the rented pods of urban enslavement as envisioned by Ida Auken and the World Economic Forum.
For those of you who are hesitant at the idea of being “reactionary” and think that we “can’t go back in time” and must continue the march of “progress,” I leave you with the wise advice of the great Christian apologist and author C.S. Lewis:
“There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistakes. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
