Mike Rowe examined two recent stories, the change in policy at Starbucks coffee shops, and a 30-year-old man who refused to leave his parents' house, and found something illuminating in common with them.
"Starbucks announcing you no longer have to buy anything to lounge around its stores or use the bathroom, meanwhile, 30-year-olds are suing to stay in their parents' basements," Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked. "Are these stories connected? Do they tell us something bigger about where the country is going?"
Rowe began by explaining why its harder every year to give out work ethic scholarships from his foundation, and said that it was harder to find the willingness to do hard work among American students.
"Why is it harder to find it?," he asked rhetorically. "I think that probably does have something to do with the expectations that have evolved out of the safe space movement which you've done a lot to talk about on your program, and I'm starting to think that maybe there is a link between expectations a patron might have at a Starbucks vis-a-vis the expectations a squatter, who just happens to be genetically tied to you might have vis-a-vis the basement in which he currently dwells. Et cetera et cetera."
"You know, of all the divides in the country," he continued, "I think you can probably make a pretty interesting case that there's a fissure running through the expectation of what happens when we elevate safety and feelings to a level of primacy."
"I think it connects a real disconnect that people are struggling to parse," Rowe said.
Carlson asked him, "Are you saying that safety isn't the most important thing ever?"
"I'm saying that everyone always wants to go home safe at the end of the day," Rowe responded. "'Safety always' would be a delightful bromide, a wise platitude. 'Safety first' is the stuff of idiocy. It allows us to begin to believe that somebody other than us might care more about our well being than we do. And the minute we buy into that nonsense, then we embrace the warm grip of complacency."
"So no, safety is not the enemy," he continued, "but if you make it the priority, then let's just wrap ourselves in bubble pack and drive at speeds approaching five miles an hour and never assume anything that could ever be confused with risk."
"That is really deep," Carlson responded. "This is one of the many unarticulated assumptions that govern our society and no one ever examines them and you just did."
