Ben Shapiro gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation based on a simple idea: Countries require borders to maintain their identity and movements do to. Just as you can’t have a country if anyone can cross the border and declare themselves and American, you can’t have a conservative movement if anyone can put themselves forward as a movement leader regardless of what they actually believe. Here’s how he put it:
If, as Heritage Foundation proclaims, our goal ought to be to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense, then we must stand up against those who would pervert and twist the conservative movement into a movement without principles, or worse, a movement that promotes the very opposite of the principles that conservatives hold dear.
So let me begin with a non-controversial statement. A country without borders is not a country. America for example is a country. It is a country with certain ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence with certain governmental structures embodied in the Constitution of the United States with a certain culture rooted in Judeo-Christian thinking and springing from Anglo-American traditions. If America does not protect its borders, America ends. A country without a border is no country at all…
The conservative movement also requires a border. A conservative movement without a border is no conservative movement. We are a wel welcoming movement, but those who seek to undermine the character of conservatism must never be granted legitimacy as voices of our movement. Conservatism requires ideological border control.
All of that seems pretty basic, but Shapiro’s speech is bound to be controversial because his target for roughly the remaining 20-minutes of his speech is Tucker Carlson. Carlson, he argues, has abandoned most of the fundamental principles that guide conservatism. Specifically, those principles are the ones found in the Heritage Foundation’s own guiding principles: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. He then walks through each of those making the case that Tucker Carlson has become an opponent of them, not a supporter.
Which brings us to Tucker Carlson who has become by any honest assessment an opponent of conservatism, an outsider masquerading as an insider and destroying the character of the conservative movement.
Let me begin with free enterprise. Free enterprise is rooted in the idea of private property and private property is rooted in the idea of man as a creative agent made in the image of God. John Locke, one of the great influences on the American founding, explained, quote, every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever he then removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. From private property springs the system of the free market. Free markets are rooted in the simple recognition that if I own my property, I ought to be able to trade it, dispense with it, or invest it as I see fit, so long as those decisions do not infringe upon the equal rights of others to do the same. Free markets are just because justice requires that we each ought to have the same right to the advantage of our natural abilities. The alternative is tyranny.
Tucker Carlson has unending critiques of the free market. Mirroring Marxist thinkers of the past two centuries. Carlson argues that the free market is inherently dehumanizing. Appearing on my show in 2019, Carlson said, quote, “I’m not a socialist, but I’m totally fine with the comparison to Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders on this one specific point. Is the goal of our economy to serve the people who live here? Or are the people who live here merely units of production in a global economy? If you believe the former, then you’re on my side.”
This, of course, is a false choice and a classic straw man. People are both economic actors and also citizens of countries. But to posit the two in opposition is inherently to stack the deck against capitalism. There is no limiting principle at all to the idea that the economy is directed to quote serve the people who live here. Centralized control is rooted in precisely this idea. The economy is designed to protect the rights of individuals. And speaking collectively about the economy in this fashion is a quick road to collectivism, which presumably is why Tucker has called for banning self-driving trucks and high credit card interest rates and mergers that include layoffs. Why he has called venture capitalists vulture capitalists and maligned Bill Ackman as a useless person motivated by amoral greed. Why he has suggested that any venture capital firm that buys a failing firm and sells off his assets and shuts it down should actually be made illegal. It is why presumably he has praised left-wing figures ranging from Elizabeth Warren to Alexandra Okaziocortez to Zoran Mamdani. It is why Tucker Carlson says “the main threat to your ability to live your life as you choose does not come from the government anymore but it comes from the private sector.” This is patent nonsense. Perhaps Carlson frequently finds himself having to say that he isn’t a socialist because often he sounds so much like one.
He then moves on to the idea of limited government. And while Shapiro acknowledges that the “regulatory state” has overgrown its boundaries, he argues Carlson has gone way too far by embracing the nihilistic idea that the American people have no control at all over their country, that it is being run by corrupt elites and foreign powers. He specifically picks on Carlson’s recent praise for feudalism as a better alternative.
As Tucker Carlson recently put it in his podcast, and this is a direct quote, “feudalism is so much better than what we have now. Because at least in feudalism, the leader is vested in the prosperity of the people he rules.” Which is a strange contention to make about feudalism if you know literally anything about the history of feudalism. He said, quote, “If all your surfs die, you starve. There’s a true incentive to care for those people.”
Nothing says caring like feudalism. The founders would have hated nothing more than such sentiments. Thomas Jefferson called feudalism an engine of immense oppression. Alexander Hamilton argued that the Constitution was designed to replace feudalism with allegiance to law. John Adams called feudalism a brutal quote system of inequity. and they were right, which is why the constitution is designed the way it is and why conservatives should seek to uphold and strengthen it.
Calrson really did say that just a few months ago.
“Feudalism is so much better than what we have now” says Tucker Carlson with Auron MacIntyre in agreement.
Auron follows up by saying we are “well beyond” what the founders set up, so “what options are left?” pic.twitter.com/t1FFY6wWCn
— not (parody) 🇺🇸 (@mentalyentil) August 21, 2025
I’m not going to walk through Shapiro’s entire argument. You can watch the whole thing in the video below. But here’s his conclusion:
Tucker Carlson has rejected the central premises upon which conservatism and therefore America stand. But the real question isn’t about Tucker Carlson. It’s about a conservative movement that purports to treat him as a thought leader. A movement without a border is no movement. A conservatism that treats Tucker Carlson as a thought leader is no conservatism.
It would be great to see Carlson attempt to defend some of his own choices and comments (about feudalism and other topics) but there’s a lazy shorthand on the woke right these days, a way to quickly dismiss someone’s argument without really addressing it. It’s literally the same move made by the woke left, i.e. you’re only saying that because of your white privilege. The woke right version sounds something like, Ben Shapiro is a Jew and Israel is all he cares about.
That’s certainly how some of Carlson’s recent guests would dismiss this challenge. Hopefully, Carlson can do better. Here’s the full speech.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Hot Air’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Hot Air VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
