Tucker Carlson Wonders: Where Did All the Beautiful Things Go? — Part 1

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Tucker Carlson, welcome back. Oh, Charlie. I never roll through this town without seeing you.

That's always the highlight. That's the advantage of being in Phoenix is that you're like one of the only shows in town, so everyone kind of just comes on by. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, Phoenix, definitely. I've been coming to Phoenix my whole life as a native Californian, and your studio increasingly seems like an oasis in Phoenix.

Oh, thank you. Well, it's better architecture than most of the buildings in Phoenix. That is true. This whole town... Higher ceilings, a little bit?

Well, I would say almost every city in the West, every city in the West, except San Francisco, is really kind of an offense against architecture. So what's your take on Frank Lloyd Wright? You know, certainly... I ask because he has a whole outpost here.

Yes, I'm aware. I mean, I'm not impressed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I mean, don't even get me going on the subject of design.

I'm so unbearable. But no, I mean, I think a house, a building of any kind should serve the physical needs of the people inside of it. And one thing that I've always been unimpressed by in Frank Lloyd Wright's designs is they don't work very well. Yes, no, they're not functional.

They leak. And if I'm not mistaken, but some of the homes in the portion of Florida that I know that you're in actually are Frank Lloyd Wright inspired or look like Frank Lloyd Wright, correct? Right.

I mean, there's a whole... There's a school of architectural design out of Sarasota, Florida in the 60s, which is very much related to what was going on in LA at the time and earlier in the 50s, which is modernist in a sense, but is also kind of rooted in the landscape. Makes use of the natural environment around the building, which is the key, I think. But just one thing about Frank Lloyd Wright, I really like Spanish colonial. And one of the things I like about it is that it sort of suits the environment in which it was built. So like an adobe home...

It configures to the... A hundred percent. It responds to the landscape. So if you're building in 19th century Maine, you're building out of wood, of course, you're building out of pine because that's the main source of wood there.

And you're doing it in a way that works. They can handle the massive snow load of the winter, they can handle the rain and the cold, et cetera, et cetera. It's like it actually serves the people who live in the building.

And you see that like in New Mexico, parts of Arizona... Santa Fe especially. Exactly. The old architecture works. And Frank Lloyd Wright is, I guess what I'm saying is a little bit too theoretical for me.

Yes. Sort of in love with his own theories over and against like the practical. And I feel like building materials and styles should be very practical. But it's not insignificant. Frank Lloyd Wright was during that time of the kind of proliferation of modern architecture. Totally. It was theory-based. You said something interesting, but it's not self-evident to most people.

The building should serve the people that will live there. Well, of course. Why and how did that change when all of a sudden philosophical abstraction started to infiltrate our architecture? Well, I think a lot of the people who sort of took control of the design business, but also the movement, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius. I mean, they hated people and they saw people as widgets to be assembled. It was this weird sort of mixture of the assembly line mentality of the industrial age with Marxism, both of which see people as kind of expendable. Yes. And so the whole idea of like worker housing, that we're all in like little...

It's a hive. Yes. And we're all in identical little cubes because we're serving the greater good. We're serving the organization. I just reject that.

Yes. I believe in the individual because God created the individual. Each person has a name and a soul, and every hair on his head is known by God. So if you come at design with that belief, then you're going to make things that are elevating to the human spirit, that are pleasing to the eye, that keep the occupants warm in the winter and cool in the summer that won't leak because you care about the people who are living inside the building. And I think there's an overwhelming amount of evidence that the people who changed design in the West, beginning in the 30s, but were just accelerated and became the consensus after the war, those people just had no interest in the individual at all. They believed in the collective, and it really shows. So in my own tiny little personal life, we just reject that completely.

Yes. And don't have any contact with that at all. I mean, I just have no... I don't like modern...

I mean, I have a lot of eccentric views too that are probably not supportable, but just are more reactions and instincts that are probably pretty eccentric. But yeah, we rely too much on the mechanical and the electric and modern building materials, or leaving aside their effect on physical health, which is probably really bad. Like you shouldn't be living in a room full of plastics and drywall, obviously. Or super low ceiling with fluorescent light all the time. 100%.

And everything is... We live in Phoenix and we have like no natural light in our buildings. You'll get the same nationwide coverage as the big providers because Patriot Mobile operates across all three major networks. Plus, they back their service with a coverage guarantee.

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That is PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie, PatriotMobile.com slash Charlie. I woke up this morning, so we don't use air conditioning at all. Ever. We don't have air conditioning, period. We don't use air conditioning. Don't like it. That wouldn't work here.

Yeah, it wouldn't work here. That's exactly right. So I woke up in a hotel room this morning in Phoenix. I was like, I can't breathe. Probably because I've been on the Western Maine diet of like gas station food for the last three months. So, you know, the fatter you get, the more you snore. But it's more than that.

It's the bad air. Of course. Really noticeable. Yes. Like, we haven't slept with a closed door in, you know, many years. Ever.

Ever, ever, ever, ever. In both Florida and Maine? Oh, yeah. We leave Florida before it becomes too hot. That's amazing. We leave Maine when it's pretty darn cold.

But we have a lot of dogs, and, you know, they're happy to sleep under the covers, so it works. So the ugly seems to triumph over the beautiful in honor. Well, the ugly is intentional. I mean, you know, the elevation of the diseased, the deranged, the deformed, you know, it's not an accident at all. The ugliest things, the ugliest people, the ugliest attitudes in our society are venerated.

But what is that? It's an attack on God, of course. Beauty comes from God, right? The design of nature is God's design, so it's the prettiest thing. So all art that's worth anything mimics the natural design.

Like, there's never been a painting prettier than, like, what you can see at dawn where you live, if you can see outside, of course. And so if you have a movement or then a culture that intentionally elevates the ugliest things, then you know that you have, you know, it's just an attack on God, obviously. And I could go on and on and on on this subject.

No, of course. It's not talked about enough because it actually intersects with our politics and our lives. Well, completely. So if something is, and this is not the only society to reach this point, there have been quite a few in the last hundred years, I don't think you're allowed to mention them anymore, but anyway, that intentionally elevate the disgusting and the diseased and the immoral, the amoral or immoral.

It's very purposefully immoral over the self-evidently, you know, beautiful, which is to say clean, orderly, symmetrical. Uplifting. Uplifting, of course. These are not complicated concepts. You know them instantly when you see them. They're built into our soul. Right.

Symmetry is part of nature. It's immediately, you know, the arch. Yes. The circle is the perfect shape.

Buildings point up to God. I mean, this is not difficult, right? Of course. It's not difficult. It doesn't need to be- Once it's explained, you're like, oh, well, of course. A medieval cathedral to be beautiful. No, of course.

No, that's right. You know, a clabbered house in a pine forest can be every bit, in my opinion, can be every bit as pretty as Notre Dame or maybe even prettier, actually, because it doesn't have the French tendency to overbuilt and make everything, you know, rococo and crazy- With ridiculous opulence. Totally. To mimic the French brain, which is like- A little bit confusing. Too complicated for its own good. But as a Protestant, you know, I just sort of, I like the clean lines, but that's just a preference. Both of them are seeking the same thing, which is beauty. And so it's almost like parenting.

If you start out sort of trying to do your best, you'll get close enough. You know, there's no, I'm sure there are a lot of good parenting books. I've never read one, but the whole point of parenting is if you really love your children and seek the best from them, you'll make tons of mistakes, but you're not going to get too far off course, probably. But if you seek to hurt your kids, it's really easy to do that. And a lot of people do for a bunch of different reasons. But design is exactly the same.

If you seek beauty, you know, you may wind up at a different variety than I prefer, but you're not going to be too far off. You're not going to build a glass box. Are you worried about the future of the U.S. economy? With so much uncertainty in the air, it's natural to fret about the security of your retirement savings. But there's one asset that stands the test of time, and that is gold. For centuries, gold has been a hedge against market volatility and economic instability. With a gold IRA from Noble Gold Investments, you can harness the power of precious metals to help protect your financial future. By rolling over your existing IRA or 401k into a self-directed gold IRA, you can enjoy the potential for long-term growth and stability. Diversify your portfolio with a tangible asset that has real value. Setting up your gold IRA has never been easier with Noble Gold Investments.

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That is noblegoldinvestments.com, noblegoldinvestments.com. For people that aren't quite there yet in the audience, the design and the architecture reflects the morality of the moment or the lack thereof or the cultural landscape. And you have a theory that art, literature, architecture went south to the discussing the ugly after we decided to use the bomb. I think so. I mean, there were certainly strains. I mean, there have always been strains.

Explain why you think that. It's just a theory. I mean, I don't have any evidence.

I don't think it's on Wikipedia. Therefore, it's not true. I think it's incredibly compelling, though, is that we use the ultimate force of the eradication of life. And all of a sudden, we tend to become an uglier.

Yeah. And I don't I don't in any way mean to criticize the indiscriminate murder of civilians at all, because I know that that's not allowed. I don't want to piss off Jonah Goldberg, OK, by questioning the decision to drop a bomb on Nagasaki on a Catholic church on Japan's Christian population. But it and again, I don't have, you know, hard evidence of this, but I just noticed really in design and architectural design that there's a line, pretty bright line between pre and post-war design. You know, in New York City, you know, you're going to pay a lot more for a pre-war apartment than a post-war apartment.

Why is that? Well, because it's prettier. And by prettier, I mean, it's it's serving the needs of the people who live there like normal people like to have a fireplace. You know, there's something wonderful and sort of atavistic, not sort of atavistic, literally atavistic appeals to your to something ancient within you sitting in front of an open fire. And so, you know, if you were designing a living place for people, you would go out of your way to have a wood stove or a hearth, because that's appealing to the deepest desires of the occupants. And if you intentionally eliminate that, and I'm not against central heating, you know, I have it.

I don't use it, but I have it. You know, it's more efficient. But is it more pleasing?

No, of course it's not. Is forced air a more pleasant experience? It drives me crazy. Than living with it all the time. I mean, it's just you get used to it and then you go to a place without it. You're like, oh, wow, this is a better way to live. Yeah, I would never have that. I mean, I don't have to because...

Right. If you lived here, it'd be tough not to. I mean, it's... Of course it would be.

I mean, I don't mean to judge and... No, you could totally judge itself. I'm also 55 and can kind of live wherever I want. Sure. And so, you know, you've got massive advantages in middle age if you are not deeply in debt.

I actually would argue it's not that expensive to live a little better than most people live, but it's a trade-off for sure, and I have more options than most people, so I don't in any way mean to be sitting in judgment of 24-year-olds who live in shared apartments in midtown or whatever. Of course. They're doing the best they can.

I get it. And I think the system is arrayed against them. However, if you cared about the people who lived in a building, you would design the building for their pleasure. What you saw post-war is just the opposite. People herded into spaces like cattle. Actually, I think most cattle live better, at least where I live, than they do in our big cities, and that change really took place at exactly 1945 or thereabouts. So I just noticed that as a former resident of an American city, a couple of American cities, and as a frequent traveler around the United States, where I was born and love and know the country pretty well, and it's like, what is this?

Why World War II? And what seemed evident to me is that the most basic sin that people commit is imagining their God, and of course, I'm God. I'm totally independent. I can make my own decisions about life or death, and I'm in charge of the universe. That's the fundamental conceit that people have through all periods of history and especially now. And there is something about atomic power, the power of atomic weapons, that would naturally... It's metaphysical.

Yeah. Well, it may in fact be metaphysical. It flirts on that line. I mean, I'm not a conspiracy person at all, however, I'm a little confused by where nuclear technology came from. I've never gotten a really clean explanation.

There doesn't seem to be an Isaac Newton apple on the head moment. Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here. What an unbelievable start to 2024. We had last month saving babies with preborn by providing ultrasounds, and we're doing again this year what we did last year. We're gonna stand for life because remaining silent in the face of the most radically pro-death administration is not an option.

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Go to charliekirk.com, click on the preborn banner. They say Oppenheimer, right? I mean, that's the whole, like... Yeah, but where, you know, if... And I know so little about this. Where did LSD come from? Well, Albert Hoffman was in his Swiss lab messing around with the ergot and dosed himself by accident and started, you know, tripping balls in his lab, and that's where, you know, that's how LSD was synthesized. Where did Viagra come from? Well, there was a study of this heart medication in Great Britain, and they noticed a side effect or whatever. You know, most technological advances have a moment... Antibiotics, right? Antibiotics, exactly. Yes, that's right. And there may be one for nuclear weapons, but I'm just not familiar with what it is, and I've asked around.

No, nor am I. But it's sort of interesting because it is the pivotal, it's the most important technological development in, I don't know, I mean, maybe ever, the capacity to destroy human life on Earth, which we now possess. No one had that before, and we've had it for 80 years. So it's interesting that every fifth grader doesn't know the moment that that was invented. But you know, again, I'm much older than a fifth grader, and I'm sort of interested and I don't know. And I'm sure there's a totally logical explanation and story behind it, but it's just weird that we don't know.

Anyway, that's a side question. But I do think the power that we possess, which is the power to destroy, is profound, and I think it couldn't help but change people's attitudes about themselves and about their fellow human beings. How did it change our leaders?

Well, it made them imagine that they were gods. And that's, you know, always the worst thing in a leader is hubris, and they've certainly had it ever since. And you know, its symptoms are very recognizable and consistent through time, but like the belief that you can foresee the future in a way that no person can, the total resistance to acknowledging unintended consequences of any decision at all, you know, we're gonna roll into a rock.

I was gonna say a rock is the perfect example. Right, exactly. I mean, it's so, but there are so many. You know, every- They'll embrace freedom like Indiana. A hundred percent, it'll become Belgium in a year, and then every autocracy in the Middle East- And Baghdad will be Brussels, and- And I sort of wanted to believe that, and I've apologized it for many times, let me do so again.

I bought it, I'm ashamed. I want to ask you about that in a second. But there are all kinds, you know, there's no social program in Washington. If you go and you read, you know, the advertisement for any big change to our society, from the 1965 Immigration Act to Social Security in 1933, or you just name any sort of big decision the federal government has made on behalf of the people, and you read the ad copy that accompanied its rollout, like this is what it's gonna do for you, you know, they're just completely wrong, and wrong in ways that should be expected. People can't see the future, period, because they're not God. They can only sort of muddle along in the half darkness and do their best. And so as soon as you have leaders who imagine that there's a really clear line between today and three years from now, and they can see what it is, like you're gonna wind up in disaster, the Ukraine war. Again, we're surrounded by examples of this, and so really what you need in a leader is good intent- And humility. And humility. Those are the two things.

You want someone who, you know, imperfect as he may be, will make a good faith effort to uplift his people, A, and B, you need someone who understands his limits in doing that. Like I'm gonna try- And his place, too. That there's a God, I'm not him, there's something sovereign above me. And you're not allowed to kill people except in self-defense. Let me repeat, you are not allowed to kill people except in self-defense, and if you do, you are evil.

It's really- It's a bureaucracy. It's really, you know, it comes in all these various justifications throughout time, but just to restate, you are not allowed to kill people except in self-defense. That's the most basic rule of them all, and if you find yourself doing that, you are evil or abetting evil on the side of evil, and if you lose that, and like people make mistakes all the time, and what you think is self-defense is actually an act of aggression or whatever. I mean, these are complicated scenarios as they occur, right?

And you do your best to make the right decision, but if you don't go into it with the knowledge that as a human being, you are not in charge of life, you did not create it, and you are not allowed to take it except to preserve your own life, or those of the people you love or the people you're in charge of, if you don't know that and say it and repeat it to yourself every single day, you will wind up murdering millions and millions of people. And that really is the story of the last 100 years. And one of the things I object to about the constant focus on the Second World War, there are many things I object to about it, but one is it creates the illusion that we've defeated these mindsets, that we've defeated this evil, which was metastasizing around Europe. There was evil metastasizing around Europe.

For sure. Hitler was evil. Yes. To be clear. But the idea that we kind of defeated that and now we're moving on to a sort of whole new level of enlightenment is absurd, and that lie allows us to hide from ourselves the truth, which is just to restate, you are not allowed to kill people except in self-defense. And to the extent you do that, you are evil.

And I think we should say that every single day. And we don't. And so we wind up killing a lot of people. And ruining entire civilizations. Oh, 100 percent. Including our own.

For what? Including our own. Right. So anyway, whatever.

This is all kind of disjointed, these are the things I think about while fishing. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. If you want to become a member today, members.charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.