Did JD Vance just attack meritocracy and Milton Friedman? - Blogs 58%
By Andrea Widburg74%
7/11/2026, 4:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 39 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Unattributed Quote, and Confirmation Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 59.2% saturation with 535 hits. Analysis detected 3,237 faulty-reasoning hits from 904 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.3% and a BS Rank of 58% (6,145 of 14,328 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 57.10% of the article peer group.
I've been worried about JD Vance because of the Tucker Carlson connection (and I'll explain why this isn't just guilt by association).
I worried that the Iran Deal, which I know was meant to be a placeholder, was still an exceptionally lousy deal.
And now I'm even more worried, having just learned that Vance seems to be abandoning the concepts of the free market and meritocracy.
I used to be a big Tucker Carlson fan.
When he appeared on the Fox News show, he was Mr.
Normal American, offering takes that aligned with what most Trump voters felt.
And I, like so many people , was horrified when Tucker, unleased from Fox News, went to the dark side, a place of love for foreign tyrants like Putin and Qatar over America, and one oozing fetid antisemitism.
What I've noticed since Tucker went to the dark side is that a lot of his favorite guests went to the dark side, too, joining him in his love for tyranny, his disdain for America, his Islamo philia , and his antisemitism: Candace Owens (of course), Joe Kent, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Megyn Kelly (a fellow Fox News host more than a guest), etc.
You can just imagine them laughing in the green room before the show, telling each other nasty anti-American and antisemitic jokes.
Of course, not all of Tucker's regular guests have followed him to perdition.
Victor Davis Hanson has frequently expressed his gratitude for his chance to be on Tucker's show, while voicing bewilderment about Tucker's current turn and clearly disassociating himself from the man Tucker has become.
Others, such as Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, and Mark Levin, have broken with Tucker, too, often expressing far stronger disdain than the gentle Hanson for Tucker's fall from grace.
Oh, there was one other regular guest, a man whose public profile was boosted by his repeated appearances on the most popular cable news show in America.
That man, of course, is JD Vance.
He was always an impressive guest, so when Trump chose Vance as his Veep, I felt as if I were getting a known quantity.
Now I wonder.
One of the things Vance hasn't done is reject Tucker.
I don't expect him to make an ugly, public break with Tucker, given how Tucker boosted his career.
What I do expect from Vance is a Hanson-style statement that gives thanks to "past Tucker," while politely disassociating from "current Tucker."
But again, he hasn't.
Then there's the Iran Deal that Vance negotiated.
I always understood that the deal was a placeholder, meant to buy time so that oil prices dropped, the military could replenish its supplies, Israel and America could again geolocate top leaders in Iran for targeted strikes, and the 60-day clock on the (probably unconstitutional) War Powers Act would reset.
It was Kabuki, and in that way, it worked.
But the problem was that, in PR terms, it was lousy Kabuki because it made Trump and America look weak.
Maybe Vance was given marching orders to do a bad job, in which case he fell on his sword, and I guess he gets kudos.
But I can't help but think that Vance might not have been up to the task-and I won't forget how nasty he was to Israel during the process, an unnecessary act that seemed like a sop to the Tucker crowd...or maybe a window into Vance's actual views.
And now, there's one more bad coin in the "I'm worried about Vance" coin jar I'm beginning to fill: his apparent hostility to the free market.
He seems to be inching toward George W.
Bush's disastrous compassionate conservatism, which is a form of soft socialism:
In Vance's interview last week with The Daily Wire, he sounded much more like a Mitt Romney, big-government RINO than a Trump or Ronald Reagan.
[snip]
"Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity."
"If you look at modern Britain and the result of Margaret Thatcher's policies, you would say that her policies actually got Britain further away from that ideal and not closer to that ideal."
"I think that meritocracy can steal from us a sense of what really, really matters."
"When Donald Trump ran for president the first time, the idea of tariffs on imported goods was a heresy in the GOP.
It is now the baseline position that virtually every Republican politician adopts."
"If you turn economic development (i.e., prosperity) into a sort of idol, then you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter most."
"American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman.
I think that's obviously a good thing."
No.
No!
NO!!
That's how the RINOs and Dems got us into this mess, after the robust economic growth of the Reagan years.
Compassion comes from individuals.
Whenever the government gets into the job of "compassion" over meritocracy and the free market, we end up with bloated government programs, massive fraud, and less wealth and individual liberty.
I respect Vance's impressive life story, his service to this country, and his intelligence.
But for me, he's on probation.
I just don't trust him anymore.
YouTube (cropped) " src="https://images.americanthinker.com/2w/2w9f23wz19tub1cwezic_640.jpg" />
YouTube screen grab (cropped).
Speakers
2speakers4.6%attributed speech862writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageVictor Davis Hanson
33 attributed words79% of attributed speech99% writer coverage
Unattributed Quote+76.8 pts
Writer 23%Victor Davis Hanson 100%
Biased Writer Voice-62.1 pts
Writer 62%Victor Davis Hanson 0%
Politically Right Leaning Bias-10.0 pts
Writer 10.0%Victor Davis Hanson 0%
Quote-first Misdirection-6.0 pts
Writer 6.0%Victor Davis Hanson 0%
Indoctrination-6.0 pts
Writer 6.0%Victor Davis Hanson 0%
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Analysis
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