← The Tucker Carlson Show
The Tucker Carlson Show
Christopher Caldwell: Is It Too Late to Save the English-Speaking World?
01:38:51
Loading summary
Transcript167 lines
- [00:00]
Tucker Carlson
So you travel more than anybody I know. You spend more days out of the country and have for more years than literally anyone I know. So answer this question. The countries that seem to be moving backward the most quickly, this is my perception are the white, Christian, English speaking countries. New Zealand, Australia, Canada, uk, United States. Am I matching that? What is that?
- [00:22]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, I know I don't, I can't really speak about the countries of what they used to call the, the old Commonwealth, the, you know, Australia Zealand. I've never, I've never been to those places but I, I, I certainly think that England, the UK more generally, but, but England in particular is really in a difficult position now. And, and I, I, I think that the diagnosis that, that English people generally are coming to is that they've had, that they've had too.
- [01:20]
Tucker Carlson
It seems like they've been overwhelmed by immigration, but you may have a better handle on the numbers. How much immigration has the UK had? Ish.
- [01:28]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, I think that they're up around, you know, the, the, the country is the country. Well, most recent countries had a lot of immigration since, you know, since the Second World War. It, it had some moments of acceleration. It, they had a huge wave of migrants from both the, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent in the years right after the war. And by a huge wave, you know, one, you know, it's, it's a couple hundred thousand. But more recently we've had even larger numbers. And in fact one of the, one of the things that has made Brexit so contentious in England is that the big promise of Brexit, the primary promise of Brexit was to limit immigration. That's what most English people thought it was for. Now Brexit was delayed between the referendum and 2020 and when Britain finally got Brexit, it had Covid and so it had a period of zero immigration for a while. But then something really interesting happened which is the, the people who had managed to get Brexit, that is the, the government of, of, of Boris Johnson sort of looked at the numbers and they were very frightened that, that the economy was going to continue slow after, after Covid and due to the way the British government scores economic predictions, immigration comes out as by definition a benefit to the economy. So seriously. So they like in California. Yes. So they decided, they decided to just loosen immigration for a little bit and the result was really extraordinary. They got I think 4.5 million immigrants between 2021 and 2024. 4.5 million, yes. And so we're talking about in three years we're talking about an immigration that is 7% of the, of the country's population. And that immigration, because the European, because Britain had left the European Union was not European immigration. It was 80% of it came from outside of Europe. So it was a profoundly foreign immigration and the largest Britain had ever had. And it was brought about by the very people whose entire reason for being in government was to stop immigration. And it's had an, an extremely destabilizing effect on the politics of the country.
- [04:30]
Tucker Carlson
So they, according to the way British economists score the economy, more people, almost always from poor countries make you richer or something?
- [04:42]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes, I mean it's sort of like it adds a certain amount of units of labor and the country is that many units of labor richer. And there's not really a sufficient, without going into the economic details, there's not sufficient reckoning done of the fact that these people will age, they'll form families and they will collect the generous and perhaps overly generous state benefits that they've been brought in to, you know, to help defray.
- [05:15]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, I mean, is there in the history of the world a country that's had like that level of immigration from poor countries that got richer because of it.
- [05:27]
Christopher Caldwell
The United States? And, and it, but it's a very special case because we were, you know, we were, we had laid claim to a, you know, a continent wide land mass, although we didn't always do that explicitly and we had only a very few millions of people with which to claim it. And so we really needed people and they generally came from societies that were, or let's say they came from, they might have come from societies that were richer than ours, but they came from the less fortunate parts of those societies. So I think it did enhance the United States. While we had, you know, a more or less virgin territory. I understand that the Indians were there, but a lot of the territory was virgin and ripe for development. As long as we were in that position, it was a benefit to us. The mistake that other countries in the world have made and Europe more than anyone has been to assume that if they get mass immigration it's going to work the way it did under the very special circumstances of 19th century North America. But instead what's happening is it's, it's working more like the circumstances of 17th century North America. That is the, the people who are arriving from abroad are becoming the, the core group.
- [07:00]
Tucker Carlson
They're replacing the indigenous population.
- [07:02]
Christopher Caldwell
That seems to be what's happening not everywhere, but in, in a lot of places. If you go to London, if You go to London, it's, it's incontestable.
- [07:12]
Tucker Carlson
Well, it's overwhelmingly, it's like 70% non British. Right?
- [07:16]
Christopher Caldwell
That's right. That's right.
- [07:18]
Tucker Carlson
So what, I mean, can that be changed, fixed, reversed?
- [07:24]
Christopher Caldwell
That's what the discussion in England is about now. And that's why the politics on the English right is so, you know, it's, it's so fractured. It's, it's fractured, but it's actually very interesting. A lot of, you know, there's a lot of sort of like new ideas sort of popping up out of desperation. You know, like what they're mostly of. They're mostly ones that you would recognize from, you know, the Trump campaign. They have, a lot of them have to do with deportation. You know, there are, there's a lot of discussion of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights and, and from the U.N. you know, refugee treaty from the 1950s. The U.N. has a refugee convention from the 1950s that governs a lot of rights of asylum. And the Tony Blair government in the late 90s and the early part of this century passed something called the Human Rights act, which made, which made European human rights law and the authority of the European Convention of Human Rights binding on the uk so there is talk about exiting those agreements. And to not just talk. I mean, this is the sort of thing that whenever it's brought up in a Western country, it's described as extreme right wing and fascist and that kind of thing. It's not just being talked about in England. It's being talked about by, I would say, the three main forces on the English right, which are Nigel Farage, who's in the Reform Party, Kemi Badenok, who is the leader of the, of the Conservative Party, and Robert Jenrick, who's the main sort of like radical, let's just say the Conservative alternative within the Conservative Party. All of them are talking about getting Britain out of the European Convention of Human Rights. To the extent where you think if there is ever a Conservative government again, it will happen. I mean, it's no less believable than Brexit was before Brexit happened.
- [09:49]
Tucker Carlson
You probably heard about eight sleep. Lots of people are talking about it. It is a company with one mission, improving your sleep. And it's changing the way people do that, the way they get a good night's rest. We just got word that their team is launching a new product. It's called the Pod 5. It's an original and innovative mattress cover, plus a blanket that uses precision temperature control to regulate Your body's sleep cycles and give you the perfect sleep, which really, really matters. It can range all the way from 55 degrees to 110 degrees, meaning that you're covered no matter what. It's like electric blanket to the next level, but also a cooling blanket, so it makes you sleep better. Temperature has a massive effect on the way you sleep, by the way. It also detects snoring and then it adjusts your bed position to reduce or completely stop it. So there are a lot of ladies in America who are going to be grateful for this product. Everybody who works here will tell you, because they all use it, that there's no better way to be alert, productive and happy than by sleeping well. And 8 Sleep well really does help. Visit 8sleep.com Tucker use the code Tucker to get 350 bucks off your pod 5 Ultra. If you don't like it, you return it within a month. That won't happen. We think you'll love it, but you can if you want. 8 sleep.comtucker Everyone wants to feel safe in an increasingly dangerous world. And for most of history, people assume that good locks and a loud alarm system are enough to do the trick. But they are not. The more time that passes, the more stories we hear about actual home break ins, home invasions that happen despite these tools being in place. True security requires more than that. And that's why we trust SimpliSafe. SimpliSafe is a preemptive security system. It prevents home invasions before they happen rather than just scaring people away. Once they show up at your house or they're in your house. Its cameras and live monitoring agents detect suspicious activities around your house home. If someone's lurking there, they engage in real time. They activate spotlights. They can even alert the police who will show up. It's been called the best security system of 2025. Over 4 million Americans trust SimpliSafe to keep them safe. Monitoring plans start at about a dollar a day. There's a 60 day money back guarantee. Visit SimpliSafe safe S I M P L I safe.comtucker to get 50% off a new system with professional monitoring plan, your first month is free. That's SimpliSafe.comtucker There is no safe like Simplisafe. Preemptive safety. You don't want to be passive and tired and dependent, do you? Of course you don't. You want to be strong and self sufficient. That's the goal. And our friends at BEAM can help you. They understand that real strength does not come from drugs. It comes from inside you. Internal motivation, internal strength.
- [12:40]
Christopher Caldwell
Health.
- [12:41]
Tucker Carlson
That's the key. Bigger. So we partner with BEAM because they have the same values that we have that Americans have. Hard work, accountability, free will, independence. Be strong. Don't be dependent. Not until you're really old anyway. BEAM can help you achieve that. This great US company is offering our listeners a new bundle, the American Strength Bundle. And it comes with top selling creatine and protein powder that delivers what your body needs to perform form, to recover and to stay strong. No junk at all. All natural ingredients that actually taste good. You will love it. You can get 30% off this bundle@shopbeam.com Tucker this is not in stores, just on that page. For people who listen to this podcast only. They're encouraging you to be weak. Don't let them go to shop. Beam.comtucker for 30% off. But that's still, I mean, that's pretty tepid really, like pulling. I mean, the country's been pretty much the same for a thousand years. I mean, you can go to Stonehenge, pull up bone fragments and trace the DNA to people living in Britain. So I mean, for all history that we know of, it's been pretty much the same people with something. The French came a thousand years ago or whatever, but there have been some changes. But in general they're the indigenous population and now in 80 years they've been like overthrown, replaced.
- [13:58]
Christopher Caldwell
It's extraordinary. This is an extraordinary anthropological moment.
- [14:03]
Tucker Carlson
It's like I've never heard of anything like that happening.
- [14:05]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, there were these, there were, have been a couple of examples of, you know, what the German Paleo historians call, you know, Folkervanderon, you know, movements of peoples, you know, where, you know, people move off the steps in Asia and into Western Europe and then they, you know, that's how we got our independent, sorry, our Indo European languages.
- [14:33]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [14:34]
Christopher Caldwell
And you know, there's movements down through Greece and onto, you know, you know, the Minoan area. I don't, I don't know exactly what it was about. A thousand Russians and the Finns have.
- [14:46]
Tucker Carlson
Kind of Asiatic eyes.
- [14:48]
Christopher Caldwell
You know, I don't, you know, I don't know what happened when. But occasionally there are these huge movements of population. This one's a little bit different because it's enabled by technology. So it's not contiguous peoples sort of like pushing against one another. I mean, it's sort of people who are brought by boat and by, and by airplane. But in terms of its, its importance. Yeah, it's a, it's a major.
- [15:17]
Tucker Carlson
I guess what I'm saying. The reason it's unprecedented. I mean, Genghis Khan, you know, rolled over and impregnated thousands of people. But I don't think those people's leaders asked him to come and impregnate their wives. This is like the only invasion I've ever seen that was been bidden by the leaders of the countries that have been invaded, like come and invade us.
- [15:40]
Christopher Caldwell
It's not like they were begging for it, but they, they say they sort of created a climate of permissiveness, you know, that which people took advantage of. And, and it's the. I think, I think what you're getting at is what was the psychological state of Europeans between 1945 when they started doing this?
- [16:05]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [16:06]
Christopher Caldwell
And. And today that made this possibly the question.
- [16:08]
Tucker Carlson
And I don't understand it.
- [16:10]
Christopher Caldwell
And it's a funny thing because you and I have lived through the deepest part of that trans. Transformation, and it's still kind of a mystery to us. So if anyone's watching this 100 years from now, they, you know, you know, I hope they. They can see how confused we, in fact, were. But I mean, I think that in the wake of World War II, something happened in the middle of the 20th century, and it's really tough to say what it was. It might be a coming to, you know, to consciousness of, you know, after the horrors of the two world wars, it's like you don't want to, you know, this is maybe too moralistic an explanation, but, you know, people began to understand that there were bad things could happen if you were too judgmental about other peoples or inimical. But there are other factors, such as just the technological factors, the sort of the visibility of alternative places to live through television. And that, I think is. I think it's. I think the technological are, as, you know, and, oh, and the fact of easy travel through airplanes and the fact that the telephone, the television, and finally the Internet enable you to go someplace without being cut off from your ancestral homeland. So it makes the decision to travel abroad much lower stakes. You know, I mean, the people who came to the United states in the 19th century from Sicily, they were gone. They got, you know, for the most.
- [17:51]
Tucker Carlson
Saw their people again.
- [17:52]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, well, you know, in fact, in the Italian migration, a lot of them did go back, but it was a, in generally, in general, it was a big decision in, in, in. In. In the case of the Irish, I think they were usually here for, for good. Anyhow. I, I think it's a combination of, you know, at the statesman, at the level of statesman. I think it's a discomfort with any kind of expression of hostility or lack of hospitality towards other peoples. But at the just the operational level of the individual migrants. I think technology, technology had a lot of, had a lot to do with it.
- [18:32]
Tucker Carlson
It's impossible but I mean, yeah, technology for sure. But you know, Victorian England had, you know, the ability to move people around the world to control, you know, the world's biggest navy and all that and it would have been unimaginable. They didn't want millions of non English living in England because they were proud of England and they thought it was distinctly English and they thought. I guess I'm getting at is it's so strange to me that the self confidence of Western Europe collapsed after winning the war. I think that's. So Germany's a different case but I mean Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, I mean these are all countries that Blake had nothing to be ashamed of. From my perspective, certainly England and France. Why did they lose confidence in themselves after winning?
- [19:27]
Christopher Caldwell
That's a sort of complex question. I'm not sure I agree that these countries had, I mean they were all in, they were all in very different positions. I mean Germany, Austria and Italy were the defeated powers and the malefactors in the war.
- [19:45]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [19:49]
Christopher Caldwell
France had collaborated, part of France had collaborated and there was a tremendous amount of soul searching and there was a tremendous amount of guilt. Spain and Portugal had kind of resolved their own civil war in the 1930s and they were kind of out of the picture. It would seem that Britain had a record that it could really be proud of, but it was dismantling an empire. And so the two main victorious, non, the main victorious powers were the United States, Britain and Russia. Russia was communist and had its own project to propagandize. But the United States and Britain, they also had reasons for self examination. There was, you know, I think there was plenty of triumphalism after the, the Second World War. It's a very, it's a very tough thing to read. I think that the America I grew up in was really quite proud of its, its role in the Second World War. I remember even as it was reexamining its own history, you know, of racism and slavery and even the, you know, the settlement and the, and the wipeout of, of the Indians, you know, so it was a mix of, it was a mix of impulses. So I'm not sure that they were, I'm not sure these countries were, were as self doubting as we, as we Think.
- [21:18]
Tucker Carlson
Well, the effect was to just collapse. I mean, especially in the case of the uk so is there any getting back to what it was even 35, 40 years ago?
- [21:29]
Christopher Caldwell
You know, it's funny, I heard a member of the Reform Party saying that what people, what people really long for in England is a return to the status quo anti Tony Blair. That is, you know, Britain had a lot of, of migration. There was one wave in the 40s and 50s. There is another one that kind of coincided with our, the beginnings of our latest wave which has never, which has gone on unabated. But they had a wave in the 70s and 80s the British did, but the biggest one was intentionally started by Tony Blair. And so the Reform. This one member of the Reform Party says if we could just go back to the status quo anti Blair, that would be fine. That was only 30 years ago. But in fact, the amount of change has been so tremendous. And it's not just the, that the numerator of, of migration is changed. It's also that the denominator of the, of the, of the total population of Britain has changed. That is Britain is a very, very slow growing demographic. So they're not really producing a lot of new children. And so the, a disproportionately large amount of the, of the British people in years to come are going to be the product of, of immigration. So no, I don't see any, any in general. There's no way short of like cataclysmic developments to, to, to reverse any of that.
- [23:12]
Tucker Carlson
We're sorry to say it, but this is not a very safe country. Walk through Oakland or Philadelphia. Yeah, good luck. So most people, when they think about this, want to carry a firearm. And a lot of us do. The problem is there can be massive consequences for that. Ask Kyle Rittenhouse. Kyle Rittenhouse got off in the end, but he was innocent from the first moment. It was obvious on video. And he was facing life in prison. Anyway, that's what the anti gun movement will do. They'll throw you in prison for defending yourself with a firearm. And that's why a lot of Americans are turning to Burna. It's a proudly American company. Burna makes self defense launchers that hundreds of law enforcement departments trust. They've sold over 600,000 pistols, mostly to private citizens who refuse to be empty handed. These pistols, and I have one, fire rock hard kinetic rounds or tear gas rounds and pepper projectiles and they stop a threat from up to 60ft away. There are no background checks, there are no waiting periods. Burner can ship it directly to your door. You can't be arrested for defending yourself with a Burner pistol. Visit Burnaby rna.com or your local sportsman's warehouse to get yours today. Burna.com so it just kind of goes extinct. I mean the, because there's no way that those two cultures can live and share power. I mean, one that doesn't, that's never happened in history. A cult, one culture dominates. In the end you have a culture.
- [24:36]
Christopher Caldwell
It depends on how separate they remain. I mean, let's look at the, at the, at the history of the settlement of North America. I mean the, the British, particularly, if you talk to Spanish historians and, and Spanish observers of this, were notoriously insistent on remaining separate in the, in the lands they, they conquered. And, and they did, and they did dominate in some, in some places they were able to settle these, these areas. In other places like India, they were sent home, you know, after a long period of exploiting the place. But there were other, there were other nationalities that tended to colonize by, by mixing more. And so there is a, there is a sort of a, there, a mix of cultures becomes possible. The cultures that mixed into what we now think of as, you know, different Latin American cultures were earlier on quite separate. There still is a degree of separation in South America between these different strains of like the European culture and the native culture. But I mean, in most of Latin America you can say that there's such a thing as Brazilian culture, there's such a thing as Mexican culture, and there will be, you know, I trust such a thing as English culture in, you know, in 50 or 100 years. But it will be a very different thing than the English culture that we recognized over the last 500 years. It would, so it is a rupture, you're right.
- [26:20]
Tucker Carlson
What happens to the, I mean, at some point do the politics get radical?
- [26:26]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, that I think is.
- [26:27]
Tucker Carlson
Because it makes me feel radical hearing about this.
- [26:29]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, that I think is what's happening in England now. And it's one of the reasons I went to England and it's why I, I think it's really, it bears watching in, in the next few years they had a, they had a huge, they had a lot of riots last summer. I mean, there was an episode in which, you know, the British born child of Rwandan immigrants who sounds like he was kind of a crazy man, went to a Taylor Swift dance party that was being held for a bunch of little girls and he stabbed a dozen of them and killed three of them. And the town in which he did it just blew up and the, and the protests spread across the country and you had like a wave of really quite spontaneous public uprising. And that was last, that was just about a year ago in August. The government which had just entered office, the Starmer, the government of Keir Starmer, the Labor government, chose not to view it as a spontaneous uprising. They described it as the, you know, a reaction to misinformation and that sort of thing. That did not convince the, the public very much though. And I think it contributed to the in general low popularity the government has enjoyed since then. It's a strange, just as an aside, it's a very strange situation in Britain where they, they have a lands that this labor government has a landslide majority although they've won only a third of the votes. So that in itself is very stabilizing. But I think the events that we've just been. Let's see, the developments we've just been discussing have contributed to make Britain susceptible to radicalization.
- [28:32]
Tucker Carlson
What about Germany? I mean, Germany's also been completely transformed by immigration, but that's a society with less free even than Britain. And people can't even say it out loud. They've been taught to hate themselves and to keep that stuff inside. But you wonder at some point did Germans say, you know, just had enough.
- [28:52]
Christopher Caldwell
And well, you know, it's, I think it's, it's worth, it's worth remembering that, you know, that we had a lot to do with that, you know, German culture of, of denazification and, and sort of, let's say German, the critical German approach that they take to their past. And so Germany was not. Germany has never been a real free speech society. It's not a value that is held to quite the high degree that we hold it in our First Amendment. In fact, no other culture on earth really has that absolutist idea of free speech that we treasure, I think rightly. But so working with that German culture, which is not a pure free speech culture, I think that we reasoned, you know, the United States, partly because of the circumstances of the Cold War, wanted to reintroduce Germany into the family of citizen of civilized nations very fast. I mean, we were talking about rearming them in the 1950s. You know, we were talking about creating building a European army around Germany in, in like 1955. It was as an alternative to that that the European Union was created because that prospect really freaked the French out. Okay. But at any rate, the United States really wanted Germany to be re introduced to the west and and to do that, a certain number of ground rules had to be laid down. You know what I mean? Like, you couldn't buy a. You couldn't buy a copy of Mein Kampf. You couldn't. You eventually, you couldn't join a Communist party. You know what I mean? There's. So, yeah, Germany had. Germany's. Germany's free speech was, Was a little constrained. You know, it might have been constrained anyway, but it also had this highly critical idea of, Of, Of. Of German history. And again, it's understandable, but there's a lot of great stuff in German history too. I mean, the Reformation comes out of Germany. Germany was the most cultured country in the world with the, you know, with the arguable exception of. Of Britain at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. And it's, It's. I mean, I don't have to go through the, through the list. It was only a matter of time before Germans said, well, like, can't we talk about the good things in our, in our culture too? I thought that that moment actually was coming around the time of the Iraq war. And I think that that was a. To a, To a, you know, Gerhard Schroeder. I mean, at the time, it was fashionable to blame France for the European opposition of, to the American adventure in Iraq, in which, in which, you know, Europe has been spectacularly vindicated, I think. Yes, but in fact, I think it was Germany as much as France that was. That was driving that, you know, rebellion. And it was Gerhard Schroeder who said, who is then the Chancellor of Germany. He said, the, you know, the foreign policy of Germany is going to be made in Berlin and only in Berlin. I thought that that was happening then. At any rate, for a long time, people really lacked the institutions through which to express that German. You know, I wouldn't even call it pride. It's just, it's the desire that. It's partly pride, but it's just the desire that German Germany be treated like a normal country again. You know, and I think now, 80 years after the war, that 80 years after the war and confronted by certain problems that actually require a certain amount of national pride to address. I mean, Germans are beginning to talk that way again. They're beginning to say, you know, we need to be Germans again.
- [33:28]
Tucker Carlson
So the people trying to wreck our civilization want you to be passive. They want you weak so they can control you. Weakness is their goal. No, thanks. Our friends at Beam, a proud American company, understand that our country can only be great if Its people are strong. And that's why they've created a new creatine product to help listeners like you stay mentally sharp and physically fit. People like to mock creatine. CNN doesn't like creatine at all, but people buy it because it works. Beam's creatine can help you improve your strength, your brain health, your longevity. It's completely free of sugar and synthetic garbage that's in almost everything else that you eat. Of course you don't hear about it too much because again, a population that is strong, clear minded and physically capable is a threat to tyrants. That's why they want you playing video games. To celebrate American strength, actual American strength, Beam is offering up to 30% off their best selling creatine for the next 48 hours. Go to shopbeam.com Tucker use the code Tucker at checkout. That's shop Beam b e a m.com Tucker use the code Tucker for up to 30% off. It's built on core values, integrity, results. No BS beam. We strongly recommend it. It's interesting that AFD the alternative for Germany is treated like an outlaw party by the courts in Germany and yet it's growing in popularity. I was just reading in the largest German state, members of the party were banned from owning guns because North Rhine Westphalia.
- [35:13]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah.
- [35:15]
Tucker Carlson
Can that continue?
- [35:16]
Christopher Caldwell
And well, this is a big, this is a big drama. Yes, it can continue. It's a, you know, it's, it's an interesting situation. I mean the German, I'm not sure where in the Grund Gazettes it is in the German basic law. But, but the German, the German constitution permits something called the office for the Protection of the Constitution to monitor parties to make sure that they're not dangerous right wing extremist parties. And the goal of having that in the constitution was to prevent any recrudescence of Nazism. Now there are parties all across Europe that had certain antecedents, whether in the institution itself or in certain just personnel. You know, the way for the, the way, for example, Mussolini's fascist party was ended at the end of, of World War II. But a lot of its members went and they joined the msi, the Italian social movement. And that sort of continued after the Second World War. And then there was, there, there were offshoots of it. Many of the people in it became left wing. Georgia Maloney started a new party, but it had some people who were in the msi. So if you want to trace a genealogy from, to, you know, from mid 20th century fascism to certain European leaders, you can and, and, and people do that as a way of sort of gaining talking points against baloney.
- [37:06]
Tucker Carlson
They do it, yeah.
- [37:07]
Christopher Caldwell
However, the interesting thing about, about the AfD though is that the AfD is not one of those parties. The founded in 2013 by a bunch of academic macro economists who were worried that the European Union, by guaranteeing the, the debts of Greece and other failing countries was in an invisible way taxing Germany. So it was, it was, it was built around a very recondite complaint, you know, and not a hate filled complaint. And I remember interviewing the head of the party at the time who was an economist named Bernd Luka. And he was just a very nerdy guy. He's left, I think he's left the party since. But the party underwent two transformations. The first came in 2015 when Angela Merkel invited immigrants, you know, from fleeing this, the Syrian civil war to come to Germany. And it began streaming over land into Europe and were then joined opportunistically, as you may remember, by a lot of Pakistanis and Iraqis and Iranians and Afghans and just a whole huge human wave. And a woman in the party, a very charismatic sort of like mother of many children named Frauke Petri, said, you know what? We are the alternative for Germany. No, no party is ARGU arguing for an alternative immigration policy. And that has to be us. And so it became the, the anti immigration party. But at the same time it had, it had for similar but less noticeable reasons, it had attracted people who wanted a change in Germany for all sorts of things, including, you know, what we would call culture warriors, people who wanted to change the school curriculum to, so that it denigrated Germany less. And then it became a whole big grab bag of parties of tendencies which it is today, although they are a much more united party than I think a lot of people think. And they're now, you know, they're, they're, they, they get 20% in the last election and between elections they tend to pull much higher. So they're a serious party. They have at, at times in the last, in the last few months since the elections in January, I believe they have been the largest party in, in Germany in terms of opinion polling.
- [40:00]
Tucker Carlson
So if the, if you have a country that calls itself, advertises itself a democracy, a country, you know, run by the people who live there, and over time the establishment excludes parties that represent the majority of the people, then don't you get a revolution at a certain.
- [40:17]
Christopher Caldwell
Point maybe I, you know, I think I got a little off track. There's one piece I forgot to, to explain. So, so there is the, there exists in the German Constitution this idea of, of banning parties.
- [40:31]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [40:34]
Christopher Caldwell
And it's, I think that then when people understood it, it was something that was supposed to be done in like 1948, whenever like a gang of people, you know, got together in one city. And that's why like there have been parties banned since the Second World War, not in a very long time. And they tend to be tended to be, you know, tiny little groups of what we would call jack booted thugs. The idea that this mechanism could be used to ban the largest party in the country and furthermore, one that was founded two generations after the Second World War in 2013, is not what the constitution envisioned. Nonetheless, you can see the appeal of it for two formerly big national parties that are now shriveling up and want to get those votes back or want to keep from being swept away, you know.
- [41:36]
Tucker Carlson
Well, of course I can. It's just such a violation of the core principle of a democracy that I just don't think you, you know, either you have to change the name of the system, it's just, you know, it's an autocracy run by people with power and everyone else shuts up or you have to stop doing that.
- [41:53]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, you, well, you have, you know, you have, you've interviewed Callan Giorgescu on this, on this show. If you look at what happened in Romania and the elections last, you know, last November, where he was simply disqualified because someone in the government asserted, without presenting proof, that there had been a Russian campaign to elect him and managed to head off the next, his replacement in the second round of that election, which was delayed for many months and got a member of the establishment into the Romanian government. It didn't really work like a democracy. And yet when it happened, people said, well, we've defended democracy, we've defended democracy against the voters. So it's the sort of, kind of, it's the kind of thing that Bertolt Brecht would make a joke about.
- [42:56]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [42:57]
Christopher Caldwell
And yes, it's not small d democratic, but people have chosen to call this form of government, which is, you might call it like state of emergency liberalism, which is basically, I think, the most accurate description of what it is. It's a great description. They claim, they claim the term democracy, but I don't think they're doing so very successfully. And the parties that represent this state of emergency liberalism do not do terribly well.
- [43:33]
Tucker Carlson
It just seems like the spread between what people want and what they're getting grows wider every year. People seem to hate mass migration everywhere in the world. I don't think there's a single person who likes mass migration, really. And you can tell by their behavior. Certainly true. In this country, I think people have an expectation of sovereignty, which almost no country has. Like, a country gets to make its own decisions, but that's not, in practice, happening anywhere with only, again, a few exceptions. And so there's so much frustration about that that I just. I'm wondering what's the point where it bubbles up into something unmanageable?
- [44:10]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, a couple of things. I don't. I'm not sure that the. I think that the gap between what people want and what they're getting is. Is wide, Is wide, but I'm not sure that it's widening. I mean, the election of Trump was certainly a. Yes, was certainly a call for more action against mass migration.
- [44:34]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [44:34]
Christopher Caldwell
And since he's been elected, the border has been pretty much closed. There have been deportations, There have been. You know, certainly the rhetorical stance of the, of the administration is against migration. I mean, Trump may disappoint his voters on other things, but on that one thing which I think we agree is like a really central issue, actually the will of the people and the actions of the government have kind of converged.
- [45:04]
Tucker Carlson
I agree with that.
- [45:05]
Christopher Caldwell
If the, if there were to be, as I've just described, a conservative government in England, and it abolished the Human Rights act, which would allow Britain to act in a fully sovereign way, then the way would be wide open to deporting people who did not have the right to be there, and certainly to stopping the ongoing traffic of, of small, small boat migration in England. So I think that that's. I think it is. I think it's possible things are getting better from a democratic point of view. You also said, okay, so at what point does this explode? I'm not sure it does, because one of the things that makes things explode is the, is the. Is discontent in, in numerous and dynamic classes. And that's why, you know, the, The Arab world was so unruly throughout the, the 1980s and the 1990s, because you had. This was a part of the world in which people were having, like, six or eight or 10 kids, and there was no place to put these young men. And there was a lot of. There was a lot of martial dynamism in the, in these societies. And in fact, wherever you have a lot of young people, if you look at the United States in the, in the 60s and 70s, you have a lot of disorder and rebellion. But we're not societies like that anymore. We are top heavy societies full of old wobbly people and not. These are not the kind of societies that say, darn it, I've had enough. These are people who need, I mean the, the, the, the, the, the demographic heart of, of our societies is in the, in, in people who are of an age where they need care, not where they're going to run out into the street shaking their fists.
- [47:12]
Tucker Carlson
So most of what the big health companies sell is loaded with sugar and fillers and synthetic junk. It's probably not too good for you. And that's why we're interested in a couple company called Peak. It's a modern wellness brand that is actually healthy. It's got clean science backed methods, all kinds of blends trusted by doctors, loved by experts. It supports gut health, glowing skin, steady energy, not peaks and valleys. And it makes it really easy for you to feel good all day long at your best. One of our favorites is RE Fountain. It's a calming electrolyte designed to help your body recharge and recover overnight. It's got magnesium, no sugar at all, no artificial sweeteners, no fake flavors. And it gives your body what you need to hydrate and restore overnight, which is good. Everyone here has felt the difference. Better sleep, more energy, smoother mornings. It has helped a lot of people here and it can help you too. You get 20% off for life. For life. When you start your first month. Go to peaklife.comtucker peak p I q u e life.comtucker Highly recommend it. When the children of the latest wave of migrants to the United States are 18. So that'll be in 15 years, then you're going to have a really dynamic society. You're going to have a lot of people born in this country to immigrant parents who feel like they want a piece of it. And you're going to have massive change, wouldn't you think?
- [48:42]
Christopher Caldwell
Absolutely. And that I think is that's why I've tended to look at this, what's happening now with arguments over the border and with Trump as part of a process that will come to resemble about a century later the process that led to the New Deal. Because I think the New Deal was the consolidation of a new governing system in a way that took account of the waves of migration that had changed the country between 1880 and 1920. You know, and you know, we are, we look at our present demographic change and we say, oh my goodness, things are really, you Know, what country has ever faced anything like this? And it's really. There really is. There are really a lot of points of contact between what, what has happened with us and what happened to the country between 1880 and, and 1920. You have, you know, people from, you know, the initial argument is, look, you know, it's all well and good to receive people, but this country is about a certain set of values. It's about, you know, it's historically determined. These people who are coming know nothing of our, of our country. How are they going to ever, you know, assimilate into it? It's exactly the same arguments that you got in the 1880s, 1890s. Then you get demands for, you know, like, closing the border. And it just doesn't happen and doesn't happen and doesn't happen until 1924 when it suddenly happens. And then suddenly the only people who can come here are the people who are already here. You know, I mean, let's see. The only Americans are the ones who've already arrived. Those are the only foreigners. And that's why, you know, if you look at it, it's why there are so many Italians in Argentina. They came after 1924, when the Italians could no longer go to, To. To New York. And so from there, these people had no choice but to mix together into a new kind of American. And the people who said these people will never be able to adapt to the old American ways, they were wrong. But they weren't totally wrong. I mean, they sort of like the. The country did change to reflect the identity of the new. Of the new immigrants. And then in 1932, when Roosevelt came to power on the heels of an event that discredited the old elites, which is the crash, then he claimed the authority to basically reorganize the country in the name of this new mix of the settled Americans, the new immigrant Americans. And it knit the country into one people so effectively that by the 1950s and 60s, young Americans were sort of complaining about how boring and homogenized the United States was. You know what I mean?
- [51:58]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [51:58]
Christopher Caldwell
And so. So it can be done.
- [52:02]
Tucker Carlson
Will there. After Trump leaves in three years, will there be, like, a series of Trumps, or will the party revert to what it was?
- [52:15]
Christopher Caldwell
Oh, you. Will the Republican Party revert to what it was before Trump? Oh, first of all, I think Trump is such a. An unusual person that I don't think he can really be replicated, even if no matter how hard anyone tries. He was a. I mean, he came to prominence because he had an incredible amount of, you know, what used to be called brass at a time when brass was, was what, what was required. There are other people who have sort of, sort of who seem to have more of the, you know, more of the qualifications that, that a politician would require, that is like patience and, and like an understanding of policy and things like that. You had people like Ron DeSantis seemed to be offering that to the Republican Party for a while. But it's not what the country felt it needed. The country felt it needed brass. The country felt it needed someone to come in and insult, topple and then break the old establishment.
- [53:35]
Tucker Carlson
Was that establishment broken like after Trump?
- [53:39]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, it's still in progress. I mean, it's, I mean, I think, I mean this is something, you know, a lot more about than I do. But I, I, I, I mean if I look at Trump, one, I would say that, that it was an almost utter failure on Trump's own terms. That is, I mean he, he used that list that Leonard Leo and and others had given him to, to, to, to fortify the Supreme Court as a, you know, a more or less conservative force and he nominate a lot of judges. He, but I don't think that he ever understood the, where the actual levers of power in the government were. And so the, the same deep state that he had complained about went on was as strong on the day he left office as it was on the day that he arrived. And so one had the impression that he'd learned absolutely nothing. And so what has happened under Trump too is one of the most astonishing surprises in the history of American politics. Now in Brexit, you had a guy who was kind of a genius in the workings of British government, named Dominic Cummings, who was able to say, well no, you don't need to win a majority in Parliament on this one, you just need to control the Cabinet Office, etc. Trump never had such a person, but apparently, and the details are still not clear how apparently he acquired one or several in the course of his four years out of power. I think Steve Bannon is correct to say that the four years out of power in Trumpian terms were a great blessing for him. So there's someone, I mean, maybe Steve Miller is a candidate for this who has the most tremendous Machiavellian understanding of what can be done inside government. I mean, the speed with which, you know, USAID was, was dismantled, which in, in what seems to me it was not really a cost saving operation, it was like a purge of a certain tendency in, in, in government was really, you know, whatever you think of it as an ideological operation, it was a tremendously expert operation in terms of, you know, government rejiggering, the, the executive orders that he has, you know, canceled and the new ones that he has passed in order to give a new reading to affirmative action. And I would say that the, that affirmative action was in many ways the key institution of American government of the last half century. To render it inoperative, even if he hasn't fully killed it, is a. Is a constitutional revolution. So, yeah, this is, I mean, things are still in progress. It's, It's. It's very difficult to see whether, for. Whether an operation like, say, deportations, whether that is going to accelerate or whether Trump is really running out of gas and this is going to. But it's hard to see how will proceed from here. But it's been a huge change. He's turned out to be a very significant president.
- [57:31]
Tucker Carlson
Can you go back a second? How was affirmative action the key institution in American government?
- [57:37]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, I, you know, I've always thought, and we've, we've talked about this, that, that the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964 was the, you know, it created a, a new Constitution that was, was really at odds, a de facto new Constitution that was at odds with what we thought of as our real Constitution. And as, you know, you know, what it basically tried to do was sort of like create a more, you know, create a society in the south where, you know, blacks could live as equal citizens to whites, you know, in, in public and in, in large companies and, and, and, and that sort of thing. But it wound up to be a. Wound up being an incredibly versatile tool. You could use it for anything once you had declared a sort of national emergency. So, like, getting women onto, you know, like, corporate boards, bilingual education into schools, getting, you know, protecting, you know, transgender story hour. I mean, it just, it just ramified into every corner of American life. And anybody could be made. Any. Anybody was under suspicion. You know, let's, let's just say incorporation. It worked publicly and privately in corporations. Anyone who ran a, a company that was, you know, larger than a few dozen people was understood to be under, you know, the government's watchful eye. You could, you could, you could avoid being sued, really, only by establishing a, an affirmative action program. And so it became, it became the, the means through which the government could approach any institution, public or private, and say, you know, we'd like to have a look at your hiring practices. We'd like to have a look at, like, how you, you know, how you've been behaving for the last, you know, for the last year in your board meetings. We'd like to know if there's anyone you're hiring who has kind of an animus against black people or women or gays or. Or immigrants. And so it had a very chilling effect at every level of government and at every level of. Of society.
- [60:17]
Tucker Carlson
Is that over?
- [60:20]
Christopher Caldwell
It is for now, except we now have a culture in which for 50 years, people, even in the most private, you know, conversations, sort of have been trained to ask themselves, you know, can I say this? Or. Or is this okay? Or. Or, you know, like, you know, I'm not homophobic, but, you know, and so you have a. You have a. You have a society that has really been trained to be scared. So a lot of this, you know. Yes, I think so. So I think that institutionally it's over. But, but culturally we are really not a. A people that has sort of, like, learned to use freedom. And that will take a long time. It'll take a long time to get an easy freedom of conversation back.
- [61:19]
Tucker Carlson
About. About things. Obvious things that you notice differences between people and differences between groups.
- [61:25]
Christopher Caldwell
About anything.
- [61:26]
Tucker Carlson
About anything.
- [61:27]
Christopher Caldwell
Almost anything. Yeah.
- [61:28]
Tucker Carlson
Do you see that changing? I see it changing.
- [61:32]
Christopher Caldwell
Do you see it?
- [61:33]
Tucker Carlson
Yes, I do.
- [61:33]
Christopher Caldwell
That's interesting. Yeah.
- [61:35]
Tucker Carlson
It feels like the term racist has lost its sting, like, almost completely.
- [61:42]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, I, Well, I would expect that to happen. I don't. I haven't really gathered any evidence about it. You know, I mean, for one thing, it's harder to, you know, sue a person when you're. You know, the government has announced that it's not enforcing affirmative action, that kind of thing. So, I mean, if you can. It used to be that if someone could just. If you could just successfully attach the word racist to a person, you know, whether through a lawsuit or, Or. Or. Or a public relations campaign, no one could hire him. Do you know what I mean? It was a real.
- [62:25]
Tucker Carlson
Oh, I do know what you mean.
- [62:28]
Christopher Caldwell
And it. And it. And it was sort of like. It was not as different from the, The Chinese social credit system, which we liked to deplore, as we like to think.
- [62:41]
Tucker Carlson
And that is no longer true.
- [62:46]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes, I think. I think that is no longer true. I think it's no longer true that institutionally you can destroy a person with that kind of imputation. However, it may become true again depending on what happens in the. In the next election. So people are wary. And I also think that people. We're not the sort of People that is comfortable going out on a limb anymore. We've become a very conversationally cautious people, or at least anyone who's like lived the last several decades in this country. You acquire habits. I mean, I think that, that you can't expect a person who's had these very self protective habits beaten into him over, over decades to give them up in the same way that, you know, like, you know, people who lived through the Depression maintained their habits of frugality for 60 years after that. Yeah.
- [63:55]
Tucker Carlson
I remember when banks introduced ATM cards, they couldn't get people who grew up during the Depression to use them.
- [64:00]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, that's a very good analogy because.
- [64:02]
Tucker Carlson
It was just too spooky, you know.
- [64:03]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah.
- [64:04]
Tucker Carlson
Do you remember a country where people spoke freely in conversation? Do you have memories of that?
- [64:09]
Christopher Caldwell
I remember one where people spoke more freak. More freely. I remember and in fact I went to College in the 1980s. I think it was pretty free. And I, and actually when people describe the, the first really mention in the wider public of so called political correctness was I think in the winter of 1990 to 1991.
- [64:35]
Tucker Carlson
Yes.
- [64:36]
Christopher Caldwell
And shortly thereafter, you know, you had the Clarence Thomas hearings for the Supreme Court which introduced the idea of, of sexual harassment. And I got the feeling that things were changing very quickly right then. There are a couple of incidents then in one that I remember very clearly was there was an executive for the Los Angeles Dodgers named Al Campanis who got invited on, on Ted Koppel's show Nightline to talk about Jackie Robinson 40 years after, you know, he'd entered the, you know, big leagues. And, and Al Campanis had been, you know, he was, he was not only was he not a racist, he was, he had been Jackie Robinson's roommate and he was one of his defenders. He was great. But he said a few things kind of the wrong way. You know, like he gave a wrong answer to the question of why aren't more blacks managers? And he was ruined. He was ruined. This is a guy who had like fought to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues. But I mean, you know, you had, he, he lost his job. And I remember Maxine Waters, who was the, was already in, I don't think she was yet in Congress actually, but she was a very active in, in California politics. Already said you wanted to be sure that he wasn't, you know, secretly being given any benefits by the Dodgers of any kind. And I mean he was just like, he was just destroyed. This, this, this kindly old man who had been a friend of Jackie Robinson's and it was clearly something was, something was, was happening there. And I think that what was happening is that these enforcement possibilities which are in the Civil Rights act that, that lawyers were getting, were getting more adept at using them for a growing number of things like saying, well, of course you have freedom of speech, but if you say that in the company you own, you will create a hostile environment for your, your employees and therefore they'll be able to speak sue you for this much money. So basically without, without banning speech, you were able to make speech very uncomfortable for people.
- [67:14]
Tucker Carlson
Did that just play out? Was, I mean, is it just impossible for people to live this way forever and people just decide no, it didn't.
- [67:22]
Christopher Caldwell
Play out, it had to be rebelled against. And the, and the, the, the removal, the lifting of the executive orders that, that, that, that order. Affirmative action by Trump was an absolutely necessary step. The decision not to enforce affirmative action was a necessary step. By the way, it was preceded, it was preceded by a Supreme Court case that appeared in its mealy mouthed way to say negative things about affirmative action programs in universities. But it's clear that universities were proceeding, were proceeding as, as best they they could to, to maintain it. So no, it does not play out. It's a, it's a, this affirmative action political correctness woke this whole constellation of authoritarian and even totalitarian seeming rules. They are rules. They are not part of the culture. They are not the result of, you know, a lot of people deciding we really ought to be nicer to trans people. They are enforced by the fact that if you fall afoul of these, of, of, you know, of, of civil rights rights laws, it can cost you your business and your reputation and everything else.
- [68:59]
Tucker Carlson
What, what's the real purpose of them? I, I sense that social justice is not actually the, the, the goal.
- [69:05]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, I, no, I, you know, you know, I, and, and I should add that, that, that, you know, the. Well, let's, let's deal with this. I think that that solving the age old race problem in the United States was the original goal of civil rights. Yes. But the tools that, that were given to solve that problem included ways to overturn democratic democratically made decisions in, in, in the South. That tool, that ability to, to circumvent a democratic mandate from the American people, from any people is such a valuable thing for politicians to have and so they started using it for everything. As I say, you know, you know, underrepresentation of women, underrepresentation of immigrants, under representation of Hispanics. All these things become, become crises and social justice actually was the name that was given to this. But it was always, and you can call it anything you want, but it always was a way of, of using the government to sort of order society. And that's. And the danger of it was that you could do that at a really, really micro level. You know, I mean, you can do it at the level of like what signs people hang in the doors of their shops, you know. And so it became kind of like the world that, you know, Vaclav Havel describes in his. And that's why everyone started reading Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn again, because our society felt like those Eastern European societies at the time of. No, it was.
- [71:04]
Tucker Carlson
It was Soviet. It was totalitarian. I mean, in this, in the strict sense.
- [71:07]
Christopher Caldwell
That's right.
- [71:08]
Tucker Carlson
Total control over people's lives.
- [71:10]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, I like that. To, to draw the distinction that, that Hannah Arendt does. At one point, a lot of people use totalitarianism to mean, like a really, you know, I mean, Mussolini originally used it to mean, you know, like the state can, you know, like, can be all competent. And a lot of people in our time use it to mean, like a really, really, really bad dictatorship. But the way Hannah Arendt uses it means like the state gets into the totalitary, the totality of your.
- [71:43]
Tucker Carlson
Exactly.
- [71:44]
Christopher Caldwell
Of your life. Right. There's no nook of your life that the state, where the state does not belong. The state wants to be at your dinner table, you know what I mean, and listening in on you. The state wants to be on your route to work and make sure the state wants to be everywhere with you in everything you do.
- [72:07]
Tucker Carlson
Can we go back to that? So you said that this was not organic. The population never cried out for total control of its personal conversations or anything else. It was imposed on the population by the state. Now it's been rolled back by the state.
- [72:25]
Christopher Caldwell
Right.
- [72:25]
Tucker Carlson
Run by Donald Trump. But can it be reimposed? Would people put like, could President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez be like, you know, my goal as president is going to be to eliminate racism. Wouldn't people just laugh at her?
- [72:39]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes, but there might be a confrontation. I mean, as long as Trump hasn't, you know, removed these laws from the books, which he hasn't. He's merely sort of like suspended the enforcement of them. And he's unwritten some executive orders which can be re, you know, reissued. I mean, it's, it's a reprieve. So the interesting thing would be what would happen if, you know, how would the, the public respond with, you know, four years of living more freely if those freedoms were suddenly withdrawn. And this includes, you mentioned young people. This includes people who've never had any experience of having politically correct censorship at work or that sort of thing. And I don't know, you were saying.
- [73:32]
Tucker Carlson
Last night at dinner that people often say the Democratic Party, when it takes power again, as it will at some point, will be a lot more radical. But you were saying maybe that's not correct.
- [73:45]
Christopher Caldwell
I don't know what they will have the capacity to do. You know, I don't, you know, you say, well, you know, how will people respond if President Ocasio Cortez says, you know, we're going to have, you know, affirmative action and, and drag queen story hour again, I just don't know. But I do, Yes, I do think the Democratic Party is, is probably, is probably going to, you know, it's going to find something to, you know, some way to radicalize.
- [74:21]
Tucker Carlson
At what point do economic debates like, reemerge? And notice we've, you know, as we've been talking about drag queen story hour and race and sexuality and all this stuff, there's been in a, that would have been weird 40 years ago, but almost no conversation of like macroeconomics in public. Like all the oxygen's taken up by that, this, the political correctness stuff.
- [74:46]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, I, and I think it's, it's a very welcome thing that economics is coming back. You hear a bit of it when we talk about the tariffs. You know, a very interesting, I mean, but Trump is, Trump has really confounded a lot of the categories. I think that everyone has the habit of saying, talking about tax cuts for the rich and all that kind of thing to tie this to what we've been saying with immigration. Immigration is a very important part of this economic question. Trump. An interesting thing about Trump's first term is that as best we can measure, was a highly egalitarian period and we really only have accurate undistorted numbers for the first three years of it because the final year of it was Covid. But it really appeared that the bottom quintile of, of, of earners advanced against other quintiles for the first time since the 20th century. And I, you know, really. Yes. Yes. And this is in the, the, the feds numbers that came out at, towards the end of the, the Trump administration. If you look at total economic performance, like the way we tend to measure it, okay. We tend to measure it by the mean, that is the GDP per capita economic performance was much better or it was better under the Obama administration than it was under Trump. The economy grew more. However, if you look at the distribution of it, there were far lower gains for the very rich under Trump, but there were relative gains for the people. There were absolute gains, let us say, for the people in the lower quintiles. I think the four bottom quintiles did quite well under Trump. And that.
- [76:56]
Tucker Carlson
So his, his voters benefited is what you're saying.
- [76:59]
Christopher Caldwell
Exactly. Okay. So there's, I mean, it's hard to say why that happened. I think immigration did go down, but mostly immigration was talked down. Okay. When you have high immigration, high immigration is like a direct transfer payment from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants, you know, but that's, you know, that's interesting.
- [77:27]
Tucker Carlson
Immigration really is a transfer of wealth to the rich.
- [77:31]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah. So when we talk about Trump and immigration, that's. That, that's, I think, an important thing to keep in mind. And that is why a lot of people were really surprised by the shift in votes among, particularly among black and Hispanic males to Trump in 2024. And people have sought to explain it through these cultural, you know, factors that we've been discussing earlier today. Oh, it was a Trump's, you know, endorsement by this rap hip hop star or whatever. But I think it might just be that people, you know, people at that part of the economy, you know, who tend to be, you know, that benefited from Trump. One tend to be disproportionately black and Hispanic. And it might just be a direct, a case of people just devoting their direct economic interests.
- [78:29]
Tucker Carlson
It's a little weird if you go through the Congressional Black Caucus, certainly among the people whose names you've heard, like the famous black political leaders in this country, they're all for open borders, huh?
- [78:42]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, I think that that is largely intersectionality. And, you know, people talk about, people in, in, in universities talk about intersectionality like it's a, a theory about, you know, the how, you know, different types of lack of privilege intersect. Like, you know, am I, am I more discriminated against because I'm a black woman or because I'm a lesbian and, and that kind of thing or because I'm foreign or whatever. But actually, what intersectionality is. You, you, you've used the term on your, on your show. But I, what I think it really is is just coalition building. The civil rights regime created a, a system. You could do almost anything you wanted. A minority could do almost anything that he wanted with government. You could do almost anything you wanted with government in the name of Minorities, but minorities remained minorities. You couldn't get the, the majority to do that. So what happens is minorities wind up make the beneficiaries of minority government wind up making an alliance. You know, you can't vote against immigration because you're a woman. And you know, women's rights are immigrant rights and immigrant rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights and they're all wrapped up together. So. And that's where the, you know, like the much mocked non sequiturs of intersectionality come from. Like Gays for Gaza and that kind of thing. My favorite.
- [80:26]
Tucker Carlson
Yeah, so, but really you're just describing the Democratic Party, that, that this is just like theoretical overlay to justify retroactively a coalition.
- [80:35]
Christopher Caldwell
The Democratic Party is the party of the beneficiary beneficiaries of the Civil Rights act of 1964.
- [80:44]
Tucker Carlson
Democratic Party is the party of beneficiaries of the Civil Rights act of 1964. And the Republican Party is the party of the victims of the Civil Rights.
- [80:53]
Christopher Caldwell
Act of 1964 or those who have objections to it. You know, I mean, if you count among the victims those who feel their liberty is constrained by it. Yeah.
- [81:06]
Tucker Carlson
I would say curtailing someone's liberty is to hurt somebody.
- [81:08]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah.
- [81:12]
Tucker Carlson
Interesting. Does that change?
- [81:16]
Christopher Caldwell
Well, as I say, I think it's, it's in abeyance now. But, but you know, to, if, if, if I could say another thing about, about immigration and the economy. There is a kind of a longer term, there's a kind of a longer term process sort of working itself out as we create this, as we create through border enforcement, a tightening of the labor market on the bottom of the income distribution. It should do some very good things for the, for the country. If you believe, as I think you probably should believe that that inequality is one of the biggest problems confronting the country. It's going to alleviate that somewhat, but it's going to do it in a kind of a, it's going to do it in a way that is going to hurt in places. I think people are right. I mean, I think those economists who say that immigration, that curtailing immigration is inflationary are right and it's inflationary in a lot of ways that affect the, not just the upper middle class, but also the middle class lifestyle, like the great proliferation of, of really nice restaurants. The idea that, you know, when this experiment in mass immigration in a nearly open border, you know, with Mexico began In, in the 1970s, there weren't a dozen sushi restaurants in Pittsburgh. You know, I mean, people didn't There.
- [83:00]
Tucker Carlson
Were no sushi Pittsburgh restaurants in Pittsburgh, this stuff.
- [83:04]
Christopher Caldwell
We tend to think that, that this is, that these amenities have developed because of our, you know, improving taste, that we're just so much more discerning than our parents were. But the difference I think is this source of, of, of just plentiful, bountiful, really cheap labor for people who can, can, you know, work in back kitchens and things like that.
- [83:29]
Tucker Carlson
So there's no. When I worked in a restaurant as a dishwasher 40 years ago this summer, it was a diner in New England. Everyone was white in the kitchen. Everybody, everyone had a criminal record. Everyone was white.
- [83:40]
Christopher Caldwell
That's, that's interesting. But so when you, when you, when you tighten up that labor market and suddenly you have to pay your dishwasher a dollar more, $2 more, $3 more, the, the, the, the meals in your restaurant are going to get more expensive. So there aren't going to be, you know, like sandwiches, gourmet sandwiches for 11.99 anymore. They're going to be like 28.99, you know, and people are going to say, I'm going to bring my sandwich to work. You know, I'm going to. And then the restaurant is going to close and the country is going to become much more like it was like what you saw the tail end of in your diner in New England. It's going to have crummier food. It's going to have, you know, things are going to, there's going to be a lot more sameness. That's the, that's what the world of a, of a, of a, of a low immigration, less free market. Let's. Where there's less of a free market in labor. That's what a society like that looks like. The, the working class gets richer, they, they move towards the middle. Everyone gravitates towards the middle class. Right? And institutions, economic institutions begin to serve the middle class. That is, you have a, a shrinking of, of gourmet restaurants and, and a concentration of restaurants in the middle of, you know, the middle of the road category.
- [85:12]
Tucker Carlson
So the middle class was the dominant, you know, was the dominant portion of the country was a majority middle class country up until I think 2015. And did that change and then the middle class is no longer the majority. Is that because of immigration?
- [85:33]
Christopher Caldwell
Has a lot to do with immigration? Yes. Globalization and immigration. And I mean I think people, people tend, not to mention immigration, I mean people tend to say it's a mix of globalization, that is free trade and technology. But I think that the Most important part of globalization is immigration.
- [85:55]
Tucker Carlson
Why is it the most important? You mean it has affected the most changes?
- [85:58]
Christopher Caldwell
George Borjas, the Harvard economist, has said that immigration people always talk about, is immigration good for the economy or bad for the economy? And basically, whenever you measure it, it's tough to get an effect on the economy that's more than 1%. It's so trivial. I mean, but what the huge effect is, which is like dozens of times larger than the effect on the economy as a whole, is the transfer effect. The sort of loss of jobs by people who need $15 an hour to wash dishes to those who will do it for $8 an hour. Okay. And the benefit to people who used to be paying their gardener, you know, $30 an hour, but now find it can be done for $6 an hour or more likely, they pay a guy who's got a team on his truck and they pay him, you know, $30 an hour and let him sort out how this is done. And he does it much quicker. And they save money. You see what I mean?
- [87:03]
Tucker Carlson
I do.
- [87:04]
Christopher Caldwell
So it becomes a, it becomes a transfer from the, from the working class.
- [87:07]
Tucker Carlson
So it doesn't necessarily, I think what you're saying is it doesn't necessarily expand your economy, but it just makes the rich richer?
- [87:15]
Christopher Caldwell
I think so.
- [87:17]
Tucker Carlson
So that would explain why rich people, and these are broad strokes, but in general hate any conversation about immigration immediately go to motive, you're a racist, and just aren't at all interested in talking about it at all. And why working class people really resent it. There may be other reasons too, but that seems like a big reason.
- [87:40]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes, those are broad strokes, but I think they're roughly accurate. There's a, you know, I. There's a French sociologist named Christophe Gilwee who's written books about how this has worked in France, and his thinking has really clarified mine on this. But, you know, you basically, in France, you have 20 cities that are like nodes of the global economy. And they like, you know, like in Toulouse, you have Airbus and where the, you know, where there are engineers and executives at Airbus, they have, you know, you know, African gardeners and there are nannies, and there are all sorts of people there. It's a global economy niche. When you get out into the countryside, none of that stuff touches anything. It's basically people. The economy consists of, like, returning, you know, cans to the, you know, to the grocery store. This explains why, you know, if you live in a place like Washington, D.C. or Berkeley, California, and, and, or Boston, people are like, sincerely puzzled they say, like, how did Trump win? I don't know anyone who voted for him, you know, and they say, they'll say something like, no, really, I've talked to people of all classes. I didn't vote for him. You know, my mother didn't vote for him. My nanny, you know, you know, in, you know, from Jamaica didn't, you know, who's not naturalized and vote, she didn't vote for him. And the answer is the, the dividing line is, is not between rich and poor. It's between the beneficiaries of and the excluded from the global economy. Right. That's the dividing line in the politics.
- [89:28]
Tucker Carlson
So when you give up open borders, you're really giving up like a whole way of life.
- [89:35]
Christopher Caldwell
You give up the solidarity between classes in your country.
- [89:40]
Tucker Carlson
Oh, what does that mean?
- [89:42]
Christopher Caldwell
I don't know. As soon as I said it, I realized that you could look at it in a separate, in a different way. I mean, you give up a dynamic that brings the classes close together, you know, which is that the, the ability of, of working class people to withhold their labor for more money.
- [90:05]
Tucker Carlson
Right.
- [90:05]
Christopher Caldwell
You know what I mean? You undercut that. They become, it's why trade unions, when they were actual industrial unions and not arms of the Democratic Party, you know, were, you know, they, they equated immigrant labor with scab labor that was, they.
- [90:24]
Tucker Carlson
Were behind the immigration restrictions.
- [90:26]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes. Of the 1920s. So you give up that dynamic. You know, it's, but it's very tempting. You know, it's. There, there are other ways to look at it. But yeah, I think that's basically, that's basically the, the best way to will.
- [90:41]
Tucker Carlson
China ever decide is it as it's, you know, economy matures and it, and cools inevitably that it needs mass immigration to China.
- [90:53]
Christopher Caldwell
You know, I don't know much about China. I know, I know a little more about, about Japanese. You know, China has had a, China's had a tremendous amount of, of internal labor migration which it is just, which is just about to come to the end of the, and so its labor costs are going to rise. I don't know how it's going to react. It's very interesting that Japan has chosen a tightening economy over a diversifying society. That is they've kept out immigrant labor for the most part. And where they've admitted it, they've tended to do it on a temporary basis. You know, you get a few Filipino nannies and you, they send them home at the end of their, of their, of their term.
- [91:47]
Tucker Carlson
The only mass migration they've had in the last 100 years has been from Korea, which they controlled until 1945. And then the Koreans who stayed kind of pretend they're Japanese.
- [91:59]
Christopher Caldwell
Yes. So, you know, I think that, you.
- [92:02]
Tucker Carlson
Know, and how's that trade worked for them?
- [92:05]
Christopher Caldwell
I think it's worked well for them. I mean, I think it's worked for them. I mean, the United States is constantly, the United States has brought tremendous pressure on Japan to, to admit immigrants. And this is one of the things that I find exactly. This is one of the things I find quite mysterious. But if you look at the pressure that the United States. This is one of the things that I think that USAID did. It's, I mean, it's sort of an ideological arm of the country. But if you look at not just programs, but people in the United States diplomatic or in the State Department were always sort of like brow beating Viktor Orban in Europe, for instance, for not being more welcoming of immigrants. So I think we're at the point now where we're in a moment of transition. But Japan is, is deeply in debt. I believe they have the largest per capita debt in the world, although it is all to themselves. You know, so it's the, it's debt to the, so it, it should be, it should be workable. But there's still a Japan. And you know, as we've discussed, Japan decided that it valued its cultural continuity more than European countries did. And so Japan, if you go there, you'll discover it's still, I think, the Japan that people who went there 20 or 30 years ago remember it as.
- [93:41]
Tucker Carlson
So that, I mean, they seem like the only smart country like in the world because that does seem. No one's starving in Japan. Actually, Japan is infinitely nicer than New York, for example. Sorry, Tokyo is. And even though it's bigger and more crowded. Yeah, I, and I just wonder like, is that, like that just, that just seems like the greatest win to me.
- [94:06]
Christopher Caldwell
I, well, I, well, they, they think so because they continue to, they continue to keep this policy and, and there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of agitation for, for changing it, you know, but I don't know. It's been a few years since I've been there.
- [94:27]
Tucker Carlson
Last question. Are you hopeful about the United States?
- [94:33]
Christopher Caldwell
Yeah, but I'm not sure that's saying much. I tend to want to be hopeful and the United States has some tremendous strengths. The United States. Something has happened since the, I'm using Europe, which I think is the best frame of comparison here. The United States has got a lot richer than Europe in the last 15 years. I don't know why that's happened. The two societies seem to be converging up until, you know, roughly the time of the, the, you know, the, the financial crisis of 2008 and then the euro crisis that followed it. And since then, the United States has peeled away by like, I don't know, 20, 20 or 25% from, from European standards of living. So it's, it's richer. It seems to have a, it seems to be in a period of democratic abolition. I mean, that is the, the, the, the populace is engaged. This doesn't mean that, you know, they've made a right choice with Donald Trump or that he's always going to do the right thing. But, but the, the, the, the, the public is kind of vigilant and, and it's, it is reforming the country and we've reformed before. So I'm, I'm relatively, I'm relatively optimistic.
- [96:09]
Tucker Carlson
I am, too, and you make me feel optimistic. Christopher Caldwell, thank you very much.
- [96:14]
Christopher Caldwell
Thank you, Tucker.
- [96:19]
Tucker Carlson
We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor. Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news things that actually matter. Telling the truth, always. You will not miss it if you follow us on Spotify and hit the bell. We appreciate it. Thanks for watching.