“A man’s got to know his limitations”

It was Clint Eastwood playing Inspector Harry Callahan who laid down the humbling maxim in Magnum Force (1973): “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Pseudo historian Darryl Cooper abides by Callahan’s maxim in declining to debate real historian Andrew Roberts on the subject of Churchill and World War II. Cooper is sufficiently self-aware to know “how that would go for [him].” That is, it would not go well.

A British outlet asked me to debate literally Andrew Roberts, Baron of Belgravia, member of the House of Lords, and author of a whole shelf of books in my library (incl the best one on Napoleon), about last week’s controversy. 😂 pic.twitter.com/DiDInl6Hp8

— Martyr Made (@martyrmade) September 9, 2024

In his podcast interview with Tucker Carlson last week, Cooper expounded for two hours on sundry topics including World War II. According to Cooper, Churchill was a warmongering psychopath. He was the “chief villain” of World War II. And he was a Zionist to boot! — bought and paid for by, well, you know who.

Adolf Hitler — well, he was misunderstood. Everything we think we know about him is wrong. He killed millions accidentally. He didn’t mean it.

If you have a high tolerance for balderdash, you can check out all two hours of it yourself here on Tucker Carlson’s X podcast. Andrew Roberts disposed of Cooper’s teaching regarding Churchill and World War II here in accessible form at the Free Beacon. Roberts patiently explains: “No, Churchill was not the villain.”

Cooper’s self-assessment is that he lacks “the necessities” (as Al Campanis put it) to stand up to Roberts at this time. Maybe later.

Niall Ferguson — another real historian, the author of sixteen books including The War of the World — bluntly judged: “[W]hat we have here, reheated and served up to an American audience: Nazi excuses. The well-documented reality is that the mass murder, including systematic starvation, of soldiers and civilians in the German-occupied Soviet territory was ideologically motivated and deliberately planned.” Ferguson’s Free Press column is posted here behind a paywall and here in accessible form.

Cooper presents as a groaningly unfunny variant of Franz Liebkind, the unreconstructed Nazi of The Producers: “Hitler was better looking than Churchill, he was a better dresser than Churchill, he had more hair and he told funnier jokes and he could dance the pants off of Churhill!” That’s the gist of it.

In that sense, Cooper can be seen as a comic figure. But what about Carlson? According to Carlson: “Darryl Cooper may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.”

While Cooper may be sufficiently aware of his limitations to decline an invitation to meet up with Andrew Roberts, Carlson himself appears be unaware of Cooper’s limitations. He promoted Cooper and seconded his views over the course of the two-hour podcast. Carlson advertised precisely Cooper’s teaching on World War II in his précis of the podcast. Now the truth can be told!

Carlson is a conservative superstar. Writing in the Claremont Review of Books in 2019, Michael Anton reasonably assessed Carlson to be “the de facto leader of the conservative movement—assuming any such thing can still be said to exist.” Since then Carlson was terminated from Fox News, which Anton cited in his assessment of Carlson’s influence.

Since leaving Fox News, however, Carlson has found a large audience on X and become an influential figure within the Republican Party. He sat with Trump and Vance at the Republican National Convention the month before last. He spoke at the convention on Thursday evening

Now Carlson is taking his show on the road. He’s going on tour. On September 21, Carlson is scheduled to host Senator Vance at Giant Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania. I think Vance should make like Cooper and decline the invitation or rescind his acceptance. Carlson should go his own way.

Carlson has become a figure like Charles Lindbergh circa 1941. Lindbergh was America First’s most prominent speaker. As he spoke up in September 1941 to keep America out of World War II, Lindbergh fingered “the leaders of both the British and Jewish races.”

Carlson may not be aware of his own or Cooper’s limitations, but he is aware of the limitations of discretion. He lets Cooper do the talking while Carlson simply promotes him and cheers him on. Vance should at least acknowledge that that is a problem.