By Scott Ventureyra
Crisis Magazine
November 11, 2025
In his book The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning & Public Debate, the late American legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019), often referred to as the godfather of the Intelligent Design movement, reminded readers that truth-seeking begins not with having the right answers but with the courage to ask honest questions. As he wrote: "The questions I am asking are the ones they should be asking...their education to this point has prepared them to ask the wrong questions [instead of] the right ones." Johnson applied this warning to scientific materialism and Darwinism, but his insight extends far beyond them: any field that forbids uncomfortable questions-whether in science, politics, or theology-substitutes dogma for reason.
Although written more than twenty years ago, his words capture our present cultural predicament, in which both mainstream and alternative media, such as The Daily Wire, together with education systems, mold minds not to seek truth but to parrot ideological positions that serve political agendas. Johnson's warning feels especially timely after Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Nick Fuentes , an exchange that has stirred both curiosity and vitriolic denunciation. In my mind, if anything, the exchange exposed how difficult it has become to ask the right questions about faith, power, and war.
Johnson emphasized that by asking the right questions, a society can potentially avoid echoing the wrong answers and, by extension, the mistakes of the past. One can't help but wonder: When did the political Right, once a defender of open debate, begin to mirror the Left's allergy to disagreement? Why has inquiry, especially about Israel, become a moral minefield where one misplaced question can end reputations? The Right's internal policing of thought now rivals the ideological rigidity it claims to resist. If even questions of conscience are off limits, what truth are we defending?
I believe this is due to the fact that the war in Gaza points beyond geopolitics into theology and a deep tribalism. For many, support for Israel has become almost sacramental within American conservatism, a mark of orthodoxy rather than a matter of prudential judgment. To question Israeli policy, or even to ask how it aligns with Christian conscience, is to risk being branded an "anti-Semite," a charge that in many circles ends discussion before it begins.
The charge of "anti-Semitism" is now wielded so broadly that it often conflates hatred of Jews-a grave moral evil-with legitimate criticism of Israeli policy. This confusion corrodes public debate: real bigotry becomes harder to identify, while honest moral inquiry is treated as heresy. What definition condemns real hatred while allowing moral scrutiny of power?
This does not mean hostility toward Israel, which remains a nation with legitimate security concerns and a remarkable history of survival. But it does mean that Christians are not bound by faith to endorse every action of their government or to sanctify its wars.
On November 3, 2025, Ben Shapiro released a video repudiating the Tucker-Fuentes interview . The piece functions largely as a character assault, relying on selective clips and moral outrage rather than engaging the underlying America First argument-that U.S. foreign policy should serve the concrete interests and moral priorities of its own citizens rather than those of another nation. As inflammatory and obnoxious as Nick Fuentes can be, there was no effort to address the actual substance of his exchange with Carlson, only denunciations, emotive invective, and moral grandstanding. By doing so, the critics have succumbed to the very trap that the interview exposed, demonstrating how reflexive condemnation has supplanted rational engagement and how fear of association now dominates discourse.
Shapiro's video never defines limiting principles or an end-state for American support to Israel, nor does it address Gaza's humanitarian crisis or the demands of just-war proportionality. If the substance of his position is sound, why not answer the right questions: Which specific U.S. interests justify ongoing aid? What conditions would warrant its reduction or suspension? And what outcome in Gaza would satisfy both justice and prudence? One must wonder whether a movement that cannot recognize its own limits can ever produce genuine moral clarity.
Carlson's follow-up conversation with comedian and political commentator Dave Smith on November 3, 2025, underscored this same tension. He observed that figures such as Ben Shapiro and other "Israel-first" commentators have come to celebrate violence, openly defending or even rejoicing in the killing of innocents as though such brutality were a sign of virtue. Carlson noted that this impulse, echoed by politicians like Lindsey Graham who boast about "killing the right people," reveals a deep spiritual sickness. Such sentiments are, of course, antithetical to the Christian Gospel, which commands us to love not only our neighbors but also to uphold the sanctity of life and to show mercy and love even toward our enemies. One must ask: if Western civilization is now defined by its appetite for retribution, does it still deserve to be called civilization at all?
The reaction from certain conservative commentators has been not only disproportionate but also profoundly unserious. Mark Levin's recent tirade against Nick Fuentes exemplifies this decline. Referring to Fuentes as "prepubescent Little Adolf," a "cockroach," and a "psycho bastard," Levin indulged in the same dehumanizing rhetoric he routinely condemns in the political Left and in Fuentes himself. Is this the conduct of a man of integrity, particularly one who is forty-one years Fuentes' senior? Such vitriol reveals not moral strength but fragility, a surrender to anger masquerading as virtue. When moral outrage replaces reasoned engagement, age and experience cease to confer wisdom. The following question stands to reason: How can those who claim to defend civilization's moral fabric speak with such contempt for the very decency they invoke?
This posture is not confined to media voices. The climate of moral outrage surrounding these debates reached an alarming intensity when Congressman Randy Fine called Tucker Carlson "the most dangerous anti-Semite in America," even comparing him to Hitler. Such inflammatory rhetoric does more than defame; it risks legitimizing hatred and violence against those who dissent. One wonders why such vitriol is tolerated within factions that claim to defend reason, liberty, and moral order.
Moreover, take, for example, how other political leaders such as Senator Ted Cruz and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have treated unwavering support for Israel as a core test of conservative identity. Both have condemned Tucker Carlson's willingness to question U.S. policy toward Israel, describing any deviation from the party line as reckless or even dangerous. Their reactions reveal how reflexive and brittle the conversation has become at the highest levels of power, where defending inquiry itself is now considered a kind of betrayal.
Such an example reveals a more profound problem within the Right: the substitution of loyalty for thought and the elevation of ideology over one's conscience. What we need now more than ever is to ask the right questions that follow our moral conscience.
Unfortunately, many dread asking the right questions for fear of reprisal. Nevertheless, Christianity demands such courage: to speak truth without hatred and to love every person, regardless of nation or creed, without partiality. If inquiry itself becomes taboo, we lose not only the freedom to think but also the capacity to discern good from evil.
The recent backlash against figures like Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, who merely defended Carlson's right to ask challenging questions, shows how allergic the conservative movement has become to dissent.
The same caution applies to America and to my own home country of Canada. "America First," or its equivalent elsewhere, need not mean isolation or indifference to suffering abroad. Properly understood, it calls for moral coherence before ideological crusades and prompts to recognize that no nation can defend liberty abroad while abandoning truth, freedom, and prosperity at home. Here, in Canada, even as record numbers rely on food banks and many families struggle to afford basic necessities, the federal government has pledged nearly $22 billion in aid to Ukraine, including $12.4 billion in direct financial support, which is the largest per-capita contribution among the G7 nations.
Many of our leaders have allowed global bodies such as the WEF, WHO, IMF, and U.N. to shape policy at the expense of the common good. When prudence is recast as selfishness and questions about foreign entanglements are branded disloyal, reasoned debate gives way to deference. But who truly benefits when global agendas overshadow local needs? The real question is this: How do we serve our country's common good while remaining faithful to the universal demands of charity and justice?
We can love our nation without worshipping it. The prophets held justice and mercy together as the twin pillars of a rightly ordered people. The same holds true today. To pray for Israel and Palestine alike, to seek peace without propaganda, is not cowardice. It is the difficult work of conscience. Are we still capable of disagreement without denunciation?
What the Carlson-Fuentes exchange ultimately exposes is the poverty of our moral imagination. We have lost the habit of seeing political questions through the lens of theological truth. Instead, our discourse moves between sentimentalism and tribal anger. The Christian must resist both. To ask how faith informs politics is not extremism. It is the task of every believer who refuses to let ideology define what it means to love God and neighbor.