Podcasts about madisonian

Few analysts are more familiar with the politics of both contemporary Turkey and the United States than my old friend , the distinguished Turkish political scientist Soli Ozel. Drawing on his decades of experience in both countries, Ozel, currently a senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne, explains how democratic institutions are similarly being challenged in Trump's America and Erdogan's Turkey. He discusses the imprisonment of Istanbul's popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, restrictive speech in American universities, and how economic decline eventually undermines authoritarian regimes. Ozel emphasizes that effective opposition requires both public discontent and compelling leadership alternatives, which Turkey has developed but America currently sorely lacks. Most intriguingly, he suggests that Harvard's legal battle against Trump could be as significant as the 1925 Scopes trial which marked the end of another bout of anti-scientific hysteria in America. 5 Key Takeaways* Populist authoritarianism follows a similar pattern regardless of left/right ideology - controlling judiciary, media, and institutions while claiming to represent "the people" against elites.* Academic freedom in America has declined significantly, with Ozel noting he experienced more classroom freedom in Turkey than at Yale in 2019.* Economic pain combined with a crisis of legitimacy is crucial for challenging authoritarian regimes, but requires credible opposition leadership to succeed.* Istanbul mayor Imamoglu has emerged as a powerful opposition figure in Turkey by appealing across political divides and demonstrating practical governance skills.* Turkey's strategic importance has increased due to its position between war zones (Syria and Ukraine) and Europe's growing need for security partners as American support becomes less certain. Full TranscriptAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's not great news these days that the U.S. Brand has been, so to speak, tarnished as a headline today on CNN. I'm quoting them. CNN, of course, is not Donald Trump's biggest fan. Trump tarnishes the U S brand as a rock of stability in the global economy. I'm not sure if the US was ever really a rock of stability for anything except itself. But we on the show as. As loyal viewers and listeners know, we've been going around the world, taking stock of the US brand, how it's viewed around the word. We did a show last week with Simon Cooper, the Dutch-based Paris writer of the Financial Times, who believes it's time for all Americans to come and live in Europe. And then with Jemima Kelly, another London-based correspondent. And I thought we would broaden. I asked european perspective by visiting my old friend very old friend Soli Ozel. iVve known him for almost forty years he's a. Senior fellow of international relations and turkey at the montane institute he's talking to us from vienna but he is a man who is born and spends a lot of his time thinking about. Turkey, he has an interesting new piece out in the Institute Montaigne. Turkey, a crisis of legitimacy and massive social mobilization in a regional power. I want to talk to Soli later in this conversation about his take on what's happening in Turkey. But first of all, Soli, before we went live, you noted that you first came to America in September 1977. You were educated here, undergraduate, graduate, both at uh, sized in Washington DC and then at UC Berkeley, where you and I studied together at the graduate program. Um, how do you feel almost 50 years, sorry, we're dating ourselves, but how did you feel taking off your political science cap, your analyst cap, how did you feel about what's happening in America as, as a man who invested your life in some ways in the promise of America, and particularly American education universities.Soli Ozel: Yeah, I mean, I, yes, I came to the States or I went to the States in September of 1977. It was a very different America, post Vietnam. And I went through an avant garde college liberal arts college.Andrew Keen: Bennington wasn'tSoli Ozel: Bennington College, and I've spent about 11 years there. And you and I met in 1983 in Berkeley. And then I also taught at American universities. I taught at UC Santa Cruz, Northwestern, SAIS itself, University of Washington, Yale, and had fellowships in different parts. Now, of course, in those years, a lot has changed in the US. The US has changed. In fact, I'm writing a piece now on Christopher Lash. And reading Christopher Lasch work from the 60s and the 1970s, in a way, you wonder why Trumpism has not really emerged a bit earlier than when it did. So, a lot of the... Dynamics that have brought Donald Trump to power, not once, but twice, and in spite of the fact that, you know, he was tried and found guilty and all that. Many of those elements have been there definitely since the 1980s, but Lascch identified especially this divergence between educated people and less educated people between brainies and or the managerial class and the working class in the United States. So, in a way, it looks like the Trumpism's triumph came even a bit late, although there were a couple of attempts perhaps in the early 1990s. One was Pat Buchanan and the other one, Ross Perot, which we forget that Ross Perot got 19% of the vote against in the contest when Bill Clinton. Won the election against George H.W. Bush. So underground, if you will, a lot was happening in the United States.Andrew Keen: All right. And it's interesting you bring up Lash, there's that sort of whole school Lasch Daniel Bell, of course, we had Daniel Bell's son, David Bell, on the show recently. And there's a lot of discussion, as I'm sure you know, about the nativism of Trump, whether it's uniquely American, whether it was somehow inevitable. We've done last week, we did a show about comparing what's happening now in America to what happened after the First World War. Being less analytical, Solé, my question was more an emotional one to you as someone who has built their life around freedom of expression in American universities. You were at Bennington, you were at SICE, you're at UC Berkeley, as you know, you taught at UC Santa Cruz and Yale and many other places. You come in and out of this country giving lectures. How do you personally feel about what's happening?Soli Ozel: Yeah, okay. I mean, in that sense, again, the United States, by the way, I mean the United States has been changing independently of Mr. Trump's presidency. It was much more difficult to be, I mean when I went to college in Bennington College, you really did not bite your tongue when you were going to speak either as a student or a professor. And increasingly, and especially in my last bout at Yale in 2019, I felt that, you know, there were a lot of constraints on what you could say or how you could say it, whether you would call it walkism, political correctness, whatever it was. It was a much, the atmosphere at the university was much more constrained in terms of what transpired in the classroom and that I mean, in Turkey, I had more freedom in terms of how we debated things in class that I felt that...Andrew Keen: That is astonishing. So you had more freedom in...Soli Ozel: As well, you did in Yale in 1990. I'm talking about not the political aspect of things, but how you debate something, okay, whether or not, I mean, there would be lots of views and you could you could present them without insulting anyone, however you presented them was fine, and this is how what the dynamics of the classroom had been when I was a student. So, in that sense, I guess it wasn't just the right that constrained speech, but also the left that constrained the speech, because new values were added or new norms were invented to define what can and cannot be said. And of course, that goes against the grain of what a university education ought to be. I mean, I had colleagues. In major universities who told me that they really were biting their tongue when they were giving their lectures. And that is not my understanding of education or college education and that certainly has not been my experience when I came to the States and for my long education here for 11 years.Andrew Keen: Solit, you and I have a long history of thinking about the Middle East, where back in the early 80s, we TA'd a class on the Arab-Israeli conflict with Yaya Sadowski, who at that time was a very independent thinker. I know he was a close friend of yours. I was always very influenced by his thinking. You're from Izmir, from a Jewish family in Turkey. So you're all too familiar with the complexity of anti-Semitism, Israel, the Middle East, Turkey. What do you personally make of this hysteria now on campus about anti-semitism and throwing out anyone, it seems, at least from the Trump point of view, who are pro-Palestinian? Is this again, I mean, you went back to Christopher Lasch and his thinking on populism and the dangers of populism in America. Or is this something that... Comes out of the peculiarities of American history. We have predicted this 40 years ago when you and I were TAing Sadowski's class on Arab-Israeli conflict at Berkeley.Soli Ozel: The Arab-Israeli conflict always raises passions, if you will. And it's no different. To put it mildly, Salvador, I think. Yeah, it is a bit different now. I mean, of course, my hunch is that anti-Semitism is always present. There is no doubt. And although I followed the developments very closely after October 7. I was not in there physically present. I had some friends, daughters and sons who were students who have reported to me because I'm supposed to know something about those matters. So yeah, antisemitism is there. On the other hand, there is also some exaggeration. We know that a lot of the protesters, for instance, were Jews themselves. But my hunch is that the Trump administration, especially in their attack against elite universities, are using this for political purposes. I'm sure there were other ways of handling this. I don't find it very sincere. And a real problem is being dealt with in a very manipulative political way, I think. Other and moreover So long as there was no violence and I know there were instances of violence that should be punished that I don't have any complaints about, but partially if this is only related to what you say, I'm not sure that this is how a university or relations between students at the university ought to be conducted. If you're not going to be able to say what you think at the university, then what else are you going to say? Are you going be able say it? So this is a much more complicated matter than it is being presented. And as I said, my view or based on what I follow that is happening at colleges, this is being used as an excuse. As somebody I think Peter Beinhart wrote today in the New York Times. He says, No, no, no. It is not really about protecting Jewish students, but it is protecting a certain... Type of Jewish students, and that means it's a political decision, the complaints, legitimate complaints, perhaps, of some students to use those against university administrations or universities themselves that the Trump administration seems to be targeting.Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's interesting you bring up Beinart. He was on the show a year or two ago. I think he notes that, I mean, I don't want to put words into his mouth, but he seems to be suggesting that Jews now have a responsibility almost to speak out, not just obviously about what's happening in the U.S., but certainly about what is happening in Gaza. I'm not sure what you think on.Soli Ozel: He just published a book, he just published the book being Jewish in the US after Gaza or something along those lines. He represents a certain way of thinking about what had happened in Gaza, I mean what had happened to Israel with the attack of Hamas and what had happened afterwards, whether or not he represents the majority. Do you agree with him? I happen to be. I happen to be sympathetic to his views. And especially when you read the book at the beginning, it says, look, he's a believer. Believer meaning he is a practicing Jew. So this is not really a question about his own Jewishness, but how he understands what being a Jew actually means. And from that perspective, putting a lot of accent to the moral aspects of Jewish history and Jewish theological and secular thinking, He is rebelling, if you will, against this way of manipulative use. On the part of some Jewish organizations as well of what had gone on and this is this he sees as a along with others actually he also sees this as a threat to Jewish presence in the United States. You know there is a simultaneous increase in in anti-semitism. And some people argue that this has begun even before October 7. Let us not forget Charlottesville when the crowds that were deemed to be nice people were chanting, Jews will not replace us, and those people are still around. Yeah, a lot of them went to jail.Andrew Keen: Yeah, I mean Trump seemed to have pardoned some of them. And Solly, what do you make of quote-unquote the resistance to Trump in the U.S.? You're a longtime observer of authoritarianism, both personally and in political science terms. One of the headlines the last few days is about the elite universities forming a private collective to resist the Trump administration. Is this for real and is it new? Should we admire the universities or have they been forced into this position?Soli Ozel: Well, I mean, look, you started your talk with the CNN title. Yeah, about the brand, the tarnishing of the U.S. Whatever the CNN stands for. The thing is, there is no question that what is happening today and what has been happening in my judgment over the last two years, particularly on the issue of Gaza, I would not... Exonerate the Biden administration and the way it actually managed its policy vis-a-vis that conflict. There is, of course, a reflection on American policy vis a vis that particular problem and with the Trump administration and 100 days of storm, if you will, around the world, there is a shift in the way people look at the United States. I think it is not a very favorable shift in terms of how people view and understand the United States. Now, that particular thing, the colleges coming together, institutions in the United States where the Americans are very proud of their Madisonian institutions, they believe that that was there. Uh, if you will, insurance policy against an authoritarian drift in their system. Those institutions, both public institutions and private institutions actually proved to be paper tigers. I mean, look at corporations that caved in, look at law firms that arcade that have caved in, Look at Columbia university being, if you will the most egregious example of caving in and plus still not getting the money or not actually stopping the demands that are made on it. So Harvard after equivocating on this finally came up with a response and decided to take the risk of losing massive sums of grants from the federal government. And in fact, it's even suing. The Trump administration for withholding the money that was supposed to go to them. And I guess there is an awakening and the other colleges in order to protect freedom of expression, in order, to protect the independence of higher education in this country, which has been sacrosanct, which is why a lot of people from all around the world, students... Including you and I, right? I mean, that's why we... Yeah, exactly. By the way, it's anywhere between $44 and $50 billion worth of business as well. Then it is there finally coming together, because if you don't hang together, you'll hang separately, is a good American expression that I like. And then trying to defend themselves. And I think this Harvard slope suit, the case of Harvard, is going to be like the Stokes trial of the 1920s on evolution. It's going to be a very similar case, I believe, and it may determine how American democracy goes from now.Andrew Keen: Interesting. You introduced me to Ece Temelkuren, another of your friends from someone who no longer lives in Turkey. She's a very influential Turkish columnist, polemicist. She wrote a famous book, How to Lose a Country. She and you have often compared Turkey. With the rest of the world suggesting that what you're going through in Turkey is the kind of canary in the coal mine for the rest the world. You just came out with a piece, Turkey, a crisis of legitimacy, a massive social mobilization and regional power. I want to get to the details of what's happening in Turkey first. But like Ece, do you see Turkey as the kind of canary and the coalmine that you got into this first? You're kind of leading the narrative of how to address authoritarianism in the 25th century.Soli Ozel: I don't think Turkey was the first one. I think the first one was Hugo Chavez. And then others followed. Turkey certainly is a prominent one. But you know, you and I did other programs and in an earlier era, about 15 years ago. Turkey was actually doing fine. I mean, it was a candidate for membership, still presumably, formally, a candidate for membership in the European Union, but at the time when that thing was alive. Turkey did, I mean, the AKP government or Erdogan as prime minister did a lot of things that were going in the right direction. They certainly demilitarized Turkish politics, but increasingly as they consolidated themselves in power, they moved in a more authoritarian path. And of course, after the coup attempt in 2016 on the 15th of July, that trend towards authoritarianism had been exacerbated and but with the help of a very sui generis if you will unaccountable presidential system we are we find ourselves where we are but The thing is what has been missed out by many abroad was that there was also a very strong resistance that had remained actually unbowing for a long time. And Istanbul, which is, of course, almost a fifth of Turkey's population, 32 percent of its economy, and that's where the pulse of the country actually beats, since 2017 did not vote for Mr Erdogan. I mean, referendum, general election, municipal election. It hasn't, it hasn't. And that is that really, it really represents the future. And today, the disenchantment or discontent has now become much broader, much more broadly based because conservative Anatolia is also now feeling the biting of the economy. And this sense of justice in the country has been severely damaged. And That's what I think explains. The kinds of reaction we had throughout the country to the first arrest and then incarceration of the very popular mayor of Istanbul who is a national figure and who was seen as the main contender for the presidency in the elections that are scheduled to take place in.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and I want to talk more about Turkey's opposition and an interesting New York Times editorial. But before we get there, Soli, you mentioned that the original model was Chavez in Venezuela, of course, who's always considered a leftist populist, whereas Erdogan, Trump, etc., and maybe Netanyahu are considered populists of the right. Is that a useful? Bifurcation in ideological terms or a populist populism that the idea of Chavez being different from Trump because one's on the left and right is really a 20th century mistake or a way of thinking about the 21st century using 20th-century terms.Soli Ozel: Okay, I mean the ideological proclivities do make a difference perhaps, but at the end of the day, what all these populist movements represent is the coming of age or is the coming to power of country elites. Suggests claiming to represent the popular classes whom they say and who are deprived of. Uh, benefits of holding power economically or politically, but once they get established in power and with the authoritarian tilt doesn't really make a distinction in terms of right or wrong. I mean, is Maduro the successor to Chavez a rightist or a leftist? I mean does it really make a difference whether he calls himself a leftists or a rightists? I is unaccountable, is authoritarian. He loses elections and then he claims that he wins these elections and so the ideology that purportedly brought them to power becomes a fig leaf, if you will, justification and maybe the language that they use in order to justify the existing authoritarianism. In that sense, I don't think it makes a difference. Maybe initially it could have made a difference, We have seen populist leaders. Different type of populism perhaps in Latin America. For instance, the Peruvian military was supposed to be very leftist, whereas the Chilean or the Brazilian or the Argentinian or the Uruguayan militaries were very right-wing supported by the church itself. Nicaragua was supposed to be very Leftist, right? They had a revolution, the Sandinista revolution. And look at Daniel Ortega today, does it really matter that he claims himself to be a man of the left? I mean, He runs a family business in Nicaragua. And so all those people who were so very excited about the Nicaraguan Revolution some 45 years ago must be extraordinarily disappointed. I mean, of course, I was also there as a student and wondering what was going to happen in Nicaragua, feeling good about it and all that. And that turned out to be an awful dictatorship itself.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and on this sense, I think you're on the same page as our mutual friend, Moises Naim, who wrote a very influential book a couple of years ago. He's been on the show many times about learning all this from the Latin American playbook because of his experience in Venezuela. He has a front row on this. Solly, is there one? On this, I mean, as I said, you just come out with a piece on the current situation in Turkey and talk a little bit more detail, but is America a few stops behind Turkey? I mean you mentioned that in Turkey now everyone, not just the urban elites in Istanbul, but everyone in the country is beginning to experience the economic decline and consequences of failed policies. A lot of people are predicting the same of Trump's America in the next year or two. Is there just one route in this journey? Is there's just one rail line?Soli Ozel: Like by what the root of established wow a root in the sense of youAndrew Keen: Erdogan or Trump, they come in, they tell lots of lies, they promise a lot of stuff, and then ultimately they can't deliver. Whatever they're promising, the reverse often happens. The people they're supposed to be representing are actually victims of their policies. We're seeing it in America with the consequences of the tariff stuff, of inflation and rise of unemployment and the consequences higher prices. It has something similar. I think of it as the Liz Truss effect, in the sense that the markets ultimately are the truth. And Erdogan, I know, fought the markets and lost a few years ago in Turkey too.Soli Ozel: There was an article last week in Financial Times Weekend Edition, Mr. Trump versus Mr. Market. Trump versus, Mr. Market. Look, first of all, I mean, in establishing a system, the Orban's or Modi's, they all follow, and it's all in Ece's book, of course. You have to control the judiciary, you have to control the media, and then all the institutions. Gradually become under your thumb. And then the way out of it is for first of all, of course, economic problems, economic pain, obviously makes people uncomfortable, but it will have to be combined with the lack of legitimacy, if you will. And that is, I don't think it's right, it's there for in the United States as of yet, but the shock has been so. Robust, if you will, that the reaction to Trump is also rising in a very short period, in a lot shorter period of time than it did in other parts of the world. But economic conditions, the fact that they worsen, is an important matter. But there are other conditions that need to be fulfilled. One of those I would think is absolutely the presence of a political leader that defies the ones in power. And I think when I look at the American scene today, one of the problems that may, one of problems that the political system seems to have, which of course, no matter how economically damaging the Trump administration may be, may not lead to an objection to it. To a loss of power in the midterms to begin with, is lack of leadership in the Democratic Party and lack of a clear perspective that they can share or program that they present to the public at large. Without that, the ones that are in power hold a lot of cards. I mean, it took Turkey about... 18 years after the AKP came to power to finally have potential leaders, and only in 2024 did it become very apparent that now Turkey had more than one leader that could actually challenge Erdogan, and that they also had, if not to support the belief in the public, that they could also run the country. Because if the public does not believe that you are competent enough to manage the affairs of the state or to run the country, they will not vote for you. And leadership truly is an extraordinarily important factor in having democratic change in such systems, what we call electoral authoritarian.Andrew Keen: So what's happened in Turkey in terms of the opposition? The mayor of Istanbul has emerged as a leader. There's an attempt to put him in jail. You talk about the need for an opposition. Is he an ideological figure or just simply younger, more charismatic? More attractive on the media. What do you need and what is missing in the US and what do you have in Turkey? Why are you a couple of chapters ahead on this?Soli Ozel: Well, it was a couple of chapters ahead because we have had the same government or the same ruler for 22 years now.Andrew Keen: And Imamo, I wanted you to pronounce it, Sali, because my Turkish is dreadful. It's worse than most of the other.Soli Ozel: He is the mayor of Istanbul who is now in jail and whose diploma was annulled by the university which actually gave him the diploma and the reason why that is important is if you want to run for president in Turkey, you've got to have a college degree. So that's how it all started. And then he was charged with corruption and terrorism. And he's put in zero. Oh, it's terrorism. There was.Andrew Keen: It's terrorism, they always throw the terrorist bit in, don't they, Simon?Soli Ozel: Yeah, but that dossier is, for the moment, pending. It has not been closed, but it is pending. Anyway, he is young, but his major power is that he can touch all segments of society, conservative, nationalist, leftist. And that's what makes people compare him also with Erdogan who also had a touch of appealing to different segments of the population. But of course, he's secular. He's not ideological, he's a practical man. And Istanbul's population is about anywhere between 16 and 18 million people. It's larger than many countries in Europe. And to manage a city like Istanbul requires really good managerial skills. And Imamoglu managed this in spite of the fact that central government cut its resources, made sure that there was obstruction in every step that he wanted to take, and did not help him a bit. And that still was continuing. Still, he won once. Then there was a repeat election. He won again. And this time around, he one with a landslide, 54% against 44% of his opponent, which had all theAndrew Keen: So the way you're presenting him, is he running as a technocrat or is he running as a celebrity?Soli Ozel: No, he's running as a politician. He's running a politician, he is a popular politician. Maybe you can see tinges of populism in him as well, but... He is what, again, what I think his incarceration having prompted such a wide ranging segments of population really kind of rebelling against this incarceration has to do with the fact that he has resonance in Anatolia. Because he does not scare conservative people. He aspires the youth because he speaks to them directly and he actually made promises to them in Istanbul that he kept, he made their lives easier. And he's been very creative in helping the poorer segments of Istanbul with a variety of programs. And he has done this without really being terribly pushing. So, I mean, I think I sense that the country sees him as its next ruler. And so to attack him was basically tampering with the verdict of the ballot box. That's, I, think how the Turkish public interpreted it. And for good historical reasons, the ballot box is really pretty sacred in Turkey. We usually have upwards of 80% of participation in the election.Andrew Keen: And they're relatively, I mean, not just free, but the results are relatively honest. Yeah, there was an interesting New York Times editorial a couple of days ago. I sent it over. I'm sure you'd read it anyway. Turkey's people are resisting autocracy. They deserve more than silence. I mean from Trump, who has very peculiar relations, he has peculiar relations with everyone, but particularly it seems with Turkey does, in your view, does Turkey needs or the resistance or the mayor of Istanbul this issue, need more support from the US? Would it make any difference?Soli Ozel: Well, first of all, the current American administration didn't seem to particularly care that the arrest and incarceration of the mayor of Istanbul was a bit, to say the least, was awkward and certainly not very legal. I mean, Mario Rubio said, Marco Rubio said that he had concerns. But Mr. Witkoff, in the middle of demonstrations that were shaking the country, Mr. Witkof said it to Tucker Carlson's show that there were very wonderful news coming out of Turkey. And of course, President Trump praised Erdogan several times. They've been on the phone, I think, five times. And he praised Erdogan in front of Bibi Netanyahu, which obviously Bibi Netanyah did not particularly appreciate either. So obviously the American administration likes Mr. Erdogans and will support him. And whatever the Turkish public may or may not want, I don't think is of great interest toAndrew Keen: What about the international dimension, sorry, Putin, the Ukrainian war? How does that play out in terms of the narrative unfolding in Turkey?Soli Ozel: Well, first of all, of course, when the Assad regime fell,Andrew Keen: Right, and as that of course. And Syria of course as well posts that.Soli Ozel: Yeah, I mean, look, Turkey is in the middle of two. War zones, no? Syria was one and the Ukraine is the other. And so when the regime fell and it was brought down by groups that were protected by Turkey in Idlib province of Syria. Everybody argued, and I think not wrongly, that Turkey would have a lot of say over the future of Syria. And I think it will. First of all, Turkey has about 600 miles or 911 kilometer border with Syria and the historical relations.Andrew Keen: And lots of Syrian refugees, of course.Soli Ozel: At the peak, there were about 4 million, I think it's now going down. President Erdogan said that about 200,000 already went back since the overthrow of the regime. And then of course, to the north, there is Ukraine, Russia. And of course this elevates Turkey's strategic importance or geopolitical importance. Another issue that raises Turkish geopolitical importance is, of course, the gradual withdrawal of the United States from providing security to Europe under the umbrella of NATO, North Atlantic Alliance. And as the Europeans are being forced to fetch for themselves for their security, non-EU members of NATO such as Britain, Norway, Turkey, their importance becomes more accentuated as well. And so Turkey and the European Union were in the process of at least somewhat normalizing their relations and their dialog. So what happened domestically, therefore, did not get much of a reaction from the EU, which is supposed to be this paragon of rights and liberties and all that. But But it also left Turkey in a game in an awkward situation, I would think, because things could have gone much, much better. The rapprochement with the European Union could have moved a lot more rapidly, I will think. But geopolitical advantages are there. Obviously, the Americans care a lot for it. And whatever it is that they're negotiating with the Turkish government, we will soon find out. It is a... It is a country that would help stabilize Syria. And that's what President Trump also said, that he would adjudicate between Israel and Turkey over Syria, because these two countries which have been politically at odds, but strategically usually in very good terms. Whether or not the, so to avoid a clash between the two in Syria was important for him. So Turkey's international situation will continue to be important, but I think without the developments domestically, Turkey's position and profile would have been much more solid.Andrew Keen: Comparing US and Turkey, the US military has never participated, at least overtly, in politics, whereas the Turkish military, of course, has historically. Where's the Turkish Military on this? What are they thinking about these imprisonments and the increasing unpopularity of the current regime?Soli Ozel: I think the demilitarization of the Turkish political system was accomplished by the end of the 2000s, so I don't think anybody knows what the military thinks and I'm not sure that anybody really wonders what the army thinks. I think Erdogan has certainly on the top echelons of the military, it has full control. Whether or not the cadets in the Turkish military are lower echelons. Do have political views at odds with that of the government that is not visible. And I don't think the Turkish military should be designing or defining our political system. We have an electorate. We do have a fairly, how shall I say, a public that is fairly attuned to its own rights. And believes certainly in the sanctity of the ballot box, it's been resisting for quite some time and it is defying the authorities and we should let that take its course. I don't think we need the military to do it.Andrew Keen: Finally, Soli, you've been very generous with your time from Vienna. It's late afternoon there. Let's end where we began with this supposed tarnishing of the U.S. Brand. As we noted earlier, you and I have invested our lives, if for better or worse, in the U S brand. We've always been critical, but we've also been believers in this. It's also important in this brand.Soli Ozel: It is an important grant.Andrew Keen: So how do we, and I don't like this term, maybe there is a better term, brands suggest marketing, something not real, but there is something real about the US. How do we re-establish, or I don't know what the word is, a polish rather than tarnish the US brand? What needs to happen in the U.S.Soli Ozel: Well, I think we will first have to see the reinvigoration of institutions in the United States that have been assaulted. That's why I think the Harvard case... Yeah, and I love you.Andrew Keen: Yeah, and I love your idea of comparing it to the Scopes trial of 1926. We probably should do a whole show on that, it's fascinating idea.Soli Ozel: Okay, and then the Democratic Party will have to get its act together. I don't know how long it will take for them to get their act together, they have not been very...Andrew Keen: Clever. But some Democrats will say, well, there's more than one party. The Sanders AOC wing has done its job. People like Gavin Newsom are trying to do their job. I mean, you can't have an official party. There's gonna be a debate. There already is a debate within the party between the left and the right.Soli Ozel: The thing is, debates can be endless, and I don't think there is time for that. First of all, I think the decentralized nature of American governance is also an advantage. And I think that the assault has been so forceful that everybody has woken up to it. It could have been the frog method, you know, that is... Yeah, the boiling in the hot water. So, already people have begun to jump and that is good, that's a sign of vitality. And therefore, I think in due time, things will be evolving in a different direction. But, for populist or authoritarian inclined populist regimes, control of the institutions is very important, so you've got to be alert. And what I discovered, studying these things and looking at the practice. Executive power is a lot of power. So separation of powers is fine and good, but the thing is executive power is really very... Prominent and the legislature, especially in this particular case with the Republican party that has become the instrument of President Trump, and the judiciary which resists but its power is limited. I mean, what do you do when a court decision is not abided by the administration? You cannot send the police to the White House.Andrew Keen: Well, you might have to, that's why I asked the military question.Soli Ozel: Well, it's not up to the military to do this, somehow it will have to be resolved within the civilian democratic system, no matter where. Yes, the decks are stacked against the opposition in most of these cases, but then you'll have to fight. And I think a lot hinges on how corporations are going to react from now on. They have bet on Trump, and I suppose that many of them are regretting because of the tariffs. I just was at a conference, and there was a German business person who said that he has a factory in Germany and a factory in Ohio. And he told me that within three months there would not be any of the goods that he produces on the shelves because of tariffs. Once this begins to hit, then you may see a different dynamic in the country as well, unless the administration takes a U-turn. But if it does take a U turn, it will also have weakened itself, both domestically and internationally.Andrew Keen: Yeah, certainly, to put it mildly. Well, as we noted, Soli, what's real is economics. The rest is perhaps froth or lies or propaganda. Soli Ozel: It's a necessary condition. Without that deteriorating, you really cannot get things on values done.Andrew Keen: In other words, Marx was right, but perhaps in a slightly different context. We're not going to get into Marx today, Soli, we're going to get you back on the show. Cause I love that comparison with the current, the Harvard Trump legal thing, comparing it to Scopes. I think I hadn't thought of that. It's a very interesting idea. Keep well, keep safe, keep telling the truth from Central Europe and Turkey. As always, Solia, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much.Soli Ozel: Thank you, Andrew, for having me.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Many Americans had never heard of the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, until the Trump administration gutted its funding. While some of those cuts are being battled out in court, the real-life implications of the administration's actions are already being felt around the world and right here in Madison. To get a better understanding of the impact of these cuts,, we sat down with Dr. Jatinder Cheema, a Madisonian who worked at USAID for nearly three decades. Wanna talk to us about an episode? Leave us a voicemail at 608-318-3367 or email madison@citycast.fm. We're also on Instagram!  You can get more Madison news delivered right to your inbox by subscribing to the Madison Minutes morning newsletter.  Looking to advertise on City Cast Madison? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads.  Learn more about the sponsors of this March 26th episode: Special Olympics Wisconsin UW-Madison Science Expeditions Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

”I grew up thinking that Christianity was basically cruel and hypocritical.” “The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.” “That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.” —Jonathan Rauch, from the episode We're at a crossroads, where Christianity and secularism in America are both operating at cross-purposes, and both need a critical reassessment of their role in democratic public life. In his new book, Jonathan Rauch “reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the corrosion of Christianity.” He “addresses secular Americans who think Christianity can be abandoned, and Christian Americans who blame secular culture for their grievances.” Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch. He is also a celebrated essayist, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. In this episode Mark Labberton and Jonathan Rauch discuss: Republican virtue What Jesus and James Madison have in common The political idolatry of secularism The differences between the thin church, sharp church, and thick church The political orientation of the church in exile Tyrannical fear The Morman church's example of civic theology “of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation” The promise of power in exchange for loyalty About Jonathan Rauch Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch. Show Notes Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth Reasonable, civic mindedness “Graciousness toward a faith you don't share.” “Of course I knew I was Jewish. I also knew that the idea of God seemed silly to me. I just never, never could believe it.” The Rev. Dr. Mark McIntosh 2003 Atlantic article: “The dumbest thing I ever wrote” celebrating secularism in America (”Let It Be,” The Atlantic, May 2003) “ It turned out that when Christianity started to fail, people started looking for substitutes, because they were looking for a source of identity and values and transcendent meaning.” Political idolatry of secularism “A major reason the country is becoming ungovernable is because of Christianity's crisis. We can no longer separate the two, and that's why I, a very secular person, am writing a book about Christianity.” “Moving away from the teachings of Jesus…” “The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.” Mark's description of his father: “ My dad used to save certain neck veins for the discussion of religion because he felt like it was something that should be avoided, at that time, at all costs, particularly its most zealous kind. And his primary critique was that what religious people do is that they take great things and make them small. …   What shocked me when I became a Christian was this discovery that Jesus and my dad had this same theme in common, that Jesus often objected to the small making of various religious authorities of his day.” “God's capacious grace, creativity, purpose, and love” Will the church live in its identity as followers of Jesus? “Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our liberal democracy.” “Republican virtues” (not the party): lawful, truthful, civic education, tolerant, pluralistic Christianity's role in upholding the unprecedented religious freedom “When Christians begin demanding things that are inconsistent with those core values, that makes everything else in the country harder.” “The thin church is a church that blends into the surrounding culture and it becomes diluted.” “The sharp church is …  where the church takes on the political colorations of the surrounding environment, aligns itself with a political party.” Divisive and polarizing “The third is the thick church. And there, the challenge is that you want a church to be counter cultural. You want it to have a strong sense of its own values. Otherwise, it's just not doing the work. So it needs to ask a lot of its followers. It needs to give a lot back in exchange. That's what sociologists mean by, by thick communities and groups. At the same time, it needs to be reasonably well aligned with our constitution and our liberal democratic values.” Church of fear Fear of demographic decline Cultural fear and losing the country to the woke Left Fear of emasculation Plain old political fear: “Our side needs to win.” Fear as a major theme of the Bible Fear of God as “the beginning of wisdom” “A communion of unlike people. … A workshop in which the character of God … is meant to be learned.” Immaturity and lack of wisdom in the church “The chief defense of the faith in the world that Jesus died and rose is that unlike people find communion with one another in a union that only Jesus Christ's death and resurrection could actually accomplish.” “Tyrannical fear”—a drive for dominance “Fear is part of the human condition. Yet what's so countercultural about Christianity, is its teaching that you can't be governed by that fear. You can't let it run your life and go around in a state of panic. And that Jesus Christ himself had lots to be fearful of, as we know from the end that he came to, and yet comported himself in this calm and dignified way, did not let fear triumph over him. That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.” “Fear casts out love.” Trump administration['s] … demonstration of a capacity to have literally no compassion, no empathy.” The paradigm of Exodus versus the paradigm of exile Isaiah 58: “ Now as strangers in a strange land in Babylon, I'm going to ask you: Who are you now? Who do you trust now? Who are you going to put the full weight of your life on now?” “Exilic Church” “ Christianity is not about owning the country or winning in politics.” “It can't be a coincidence that at a moment when (at least) white Protestantism in the United States is obsessed with political influence and has mortgaged itself to the least Christlike figure possibly in American political history (in any case, right up there) that its numbers are shrinking catastrophically.” “The irony of the cross always is this self emptying power.” [Trump] is saying, “I will give you power, and in exchange, you will give me unquestioning loyalty.” Comparing Trump's transaction (at Dordt University in Iowa) “If you vote for me, you will have power” with the temptation of Christ in the desert: “All of this will be yours if you bow down to me.” Transactional relationship with power The Mormon church's “ civic theology … of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation” Jesus: “Don't be afraid, imitate Jesus, and forgive each other.” Madisonian liberalism: “Don't panic if you lose an election, protect minorities and the dignity of every individual, and don't seek retribution if you win, share the country.” “When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said, ‘It would be a good idea.'” Black church and MLK Jr.—”emphasis on Reverend” “You accept the stripes and the crown of thorns. You turn the other cheek.” Profoundly counterintuitive countercultural example Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Jonathan Rauch is one of the clearest thinkers writing today about the philosophical and sociological interconnections between democracy and science, as detailed in his last book, The Constitution of Knowledge, about which we had a fascinating podcast discussion a year or two ago. When I heard his newest book was due to appear this month, I was eager to have him back on. This new book, Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy was released yesterday. It was a surprising take on the subject. Rauch is an atheist, a Jew, and homosexual, so one might have expected an attack on the failings of Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rauch argues that Christianity offers moral bases that mesh well with Madisonian democracy, and that it is necessary for the Christian community to tap into these if democracy in the US is to be resuscitated. There is a lot to unpack there, and that is precisely what we did. He and I share atheist and Jewish roots, and we agree on many features of both philosophy and religion. But our perspectives on both the actual moral fabric of Christianity, and the extent to which society should give special treatment to religious teaching, and to what extent the positive aspects of Christian religious theology, including the theology of groups like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, means that we should respect that theology, differ. Because I respect Rauch as a writer and a thinker so much, I thought it would be useful to take time to explore these differences, in order to ascertain to what extent his thesis was viable, and also to allow listeners access to a thoughtful and respectful discussion of to what extent Christian religious teachings have a key role to play in the moral framework of a healthy democratic society in the United States.As always, the discussion was educational, and illuminating. It is an important issue at the current time, and I am very happy we could have a deeper dive into it with someone so thoughtful and knowledgeable. I hope you enjoy the discussion, including the animated give and take at times, as much as both Jonathan and I did.As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

There is a Madisonian whose name you might not know, but you've certainly seen his work. He is the photojournalist behind the photo of President Obama in the White House situation room during the Bin Laden raid. He captured the iconic moment when a five-year-old child reached up and touched Obama's hair, after asking if it was like his own. White House photographer Pete Souza captured history as it was happening, and then when he was done with his work at the White House, he moved here to Madison, Wisconsin. He currently freelances and occasionally pops off about current events online, when he's not taking beautiful images of our fair city.  We caught up with him last year to learn what it was like to be a witness to history during those years.  And of course, how we can become better photographers.  Pete Souza's most recent book is called The West Wing and Beyond: What I Saw Inside the Presidency.  Also on the show:  Beginner's Photography Class from the Madison Photography Group Mansion Hill West Historic Architecture Walking Tour from the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation This episode originally aired June 28, 2023. Wanna talk to us about an episode? Leave us a voicemail at 608-318-3367 or email madison@citycast.fm. We're also on Instagram!  You can get more Madison news delivered right to your inbox by subscribing to the Madison Minutes morning newsletter.  Looking to advertise on City Cast Madison? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An attorney is suing Chippewa County. The attorney claims the county is responsible for nearly $28 thousand dollars in unpaid legal fees. Two Wisconsin-based retail companies had sales slumps heading into the holiday shopping season. And, Madison's Greenbush Neighborhood has a rich history that many people have forgotten. We'll hear from a long-time Madisonian working to preserve its legacy.

Madison's Greenbush Neighborhood has a rich history that many people have forgotten. But as Maria Brunetta tells us, business owner and long-time Madisonian, Sam Brown is working to preserve the legacy of the historic neighborhood.

Long-time Madisonian and master of improvisation Roscoe Mitchell joined Thursday 8 O'Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda to talk about his upcoming shows at Café Coda this weekend. The post Jazz Legend Roscoe Mitchell Plays Benefit Show at Café Coda appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.

The election is over and, is spite of Trump's clear victory, America remains as divided as ever. So how to put the country together again? Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley, has been giving this existential question much thought. What all Americans need, Tafur tells me, is the compassion, empathy and humility to understand the other side. But, as I asked her, isn't that just shorthand for a progressive bridge building project in which the left defines the language of a reunited America?Juliana Tafur, the director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley Her work focuses on strengthening social connections across lines of race, religion, culture, politics, and more, to foster a culture of understanding and belonging in the United States and beyond. Through partnerships, multimedia content, speaking engagements, and workshops, Juliana is committed to ensuring that bridge-building skills and resources reach people and inspire meaningful change. With experience as a social entrepreneur, workshop creator, Emmy-nominated senior producer, and award-winning documentary filmmaker, she has been working to foster human connection across complex societal divides for more than a decade. A TEDx speaker, she has led and facilitated speaking engagements and training sessions on bridging differences at more than 30 higher education institutions and organizations. Juliana is also a 2021–2022 Obama Foundation Scholar at Columbia University—a mid-career fellowship that recognized and deepened her work in the bridge-building field, expanding her research on intergroup relations, political polarization, and conflict transformation. She is an honors graduate of Northwestern University, where she earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Journalism and History.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.TRANSCRIPTKEEN: Hello, everybody. The easy bit's over! The election's finished, now the real challenge is bringing America back together. We always hear these terms from politicians and activists, but in practice, of course, it's a very challenging thing to do. My guest today on the show, Juliana Tafur, though, is somebody who's given a great deal of thought to bringing America back together, bridging differences. She is the inaugural director of the Bridging Differences Program at UC Berkeley. She's also very much involved in the Denver Foundation. She's based in Boulder, Colorado, and she's joining us today. Juliana, is that fair? Was the election the easy bit? Now, the challenge is putting Humpty Dumpty back together again?TAFUR: 100%. I love the Humpty Dumpty. Yes, we are broken. How do we come back together and mend those pieces while still acknowledging the brokenness, right? Yeah. With that analogy, there's a beautiful Japanese technique that aims to cover the fractures, but to cover the fractures with a strand of gold so that we're not pretending like the fractures aren't there, but we are making something better as a result of the recognition of those fractures.KEEN: Juliana, we've done a lot of shows about this sort of thing. In fact, I've worked with the Braver Angels group. I'm sure you're familiar with them. I have been to a couple of their conferences. There are more and more of these groups trying to bring Americans back together. Might one suggest that there is now a broader movement in America to bring Americans of different--particularly different political persuasions back together? You're doing it, braver angels are doing it. Many of the thousands of activists and hundreds of groups.TAFUR: Yeah. There is so many of us across the country that work tirelessly day in and day out, around elections and before and after elections to make sure we come together. And yes, Braver Angels is just one of them. I could certainly give you a list that you could attach to the show notes, because a lot of us are doing this work and it's good for people to know that we're out there and that this is possible. But sometimes it takes seeing it in action and understanding how to do it to really trust that you can do it, too.KEEN: Yeah, we've had lots of people on the show. I know you're familiar with the work of Eboo Patel. You've worked with him his book couple of years ago. We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy is another example of this kind of work. Tell me what you do at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. What are you doing that's different or unusual or unique in terms of bringing Americans back together?TAFUR: Yeah, well, at the Greater Good Science Center, we study the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being, or what we'd like to call the science of a meaningful life. And we break the science to the practice. So we take the science of how to have a meaningful life or how to bridge differences, and we translate it in a way that is accessible to people to apply in their own lives or to practitioners to help others apply the science. And in the bridging differences programs specifically, we do this through a series of videos, multimedia pieces that we publish in our magazine, Greater Good. We have a famous podcast called The Science of Happiness. We began in earnest in 2018, I would say, gathering what the science said about how to bring people together across differences. And when we talk about the science, we talk about skills, science-based skills, from compassionate listening to finding shared identities, etc., that have been tested in labs, and we translate them in a way that people understand how some of these skills applied, how they worked in labs, and how they can then work also in kind of real-life scenarios and situations. So we have a bridging differences playbook that has 14 science-based skills for bridging differences. We have an edX course that's free and available for everyone to take that also disseminates some of the science-based skills.KEEN: Tell me a little bit more about yourself. You've been involved in this space for a while. You're also a filmmaker, so you're very much committed on lots of fronts to this. How did you find yourself? Is this a reflection of your own upbringing, your own experience in the United States?TAFUR: Absolutely, yes. What you had up first was the page from the Obama Scholars Program. So a few years ago, 21, 22, I was an Obama scholar at Columbia University--KEEN: And you were the founder, at least at that point, of something called Story Powerhouse. I'm guessing you're still the founder, although you've moved on in a sense.TAFUR: Correct. Yeah. And Story Powerhouse was at the company Listen Courageously, which was a workshop series that I took around to universities and organizations and corporations talking about the power of empathic listening. And I got to that through film that I produced and directed that brought Americans together on opposite ends of the spectrum across the easy topics of abortion, guns and immigration. And the inspiration for this film came after the 2016 election. I felt a big need back then to try to bridge the divide that I was seeing and feeling, very explicitly, for the very first time in our country. And as a Colombian-American, I was beginning to talk to folks in my circles, and I was feeling this this real sense of othering that I had never, ever experienced and wondering and questioning what was my place and that of so many others like me in our country. And that led to to Listen, to this film that brought three sets of participants across these really tough topics together to explore if they could see each other as people and connect on a human level despite their differences. And I had no idea what the outcome would be. I had documented their conversations across a period of time. And I was truly moved by what I saw. I saw that those who were able to connect at a deep, human level were those who were able to listen. So then, that led me to study and explore and understand the power of listening and understood that it was a field. It's an arts, but it's also a science and connected with practitioners, but also researchers in the field of listening. And one thing led to the other, right? As a practitioner and filmmaker in the field of bridging differences, I found myself going back to intergroup relations and conflict transformation and other subjects too, to really understand why. Why was it that my film participants had come together, and how could I then equip others to continue doing the same? Less from a "we know this is possible" and more from a kind of research-grounded way.KEEN: Juliana, some people might be listening to this and...whilst on the one hand being, in a way, impressed they might be scratching their head, maybe listening to you, you use the E-word all the time empathetic, which is quite a kind of ideological character these days. You talk about othering, you're funded by, or you were funded by, the Obama Foundation. Now you head up a greater good institute at UC Berkeley, People's Republic of Berkeley, which is a place I know all too well, I used to live there for many years. Some people might be listening to this and thinking if you scratch the surface of what Juliana's saying, is she suggesting that this is the progressive version of the greater good? And as long as you're in our camp and you use her words like "empathy" and "othering" and love the Obamas and spend time at UC Berkeley, it's fine. But when you start perhaps putting red caps on and talking about America becoming great again or not being particularly sympathetic to immigrants, then you're outside your world. How would you respond to that? Is that a fair criticism or am I wrong, or would one be wrong?TAFUR: Well, obviously, people's criticisms are their criticisms, and that's absolutely okay. And there is no right or wrong. I just want to say--KEEN: Well, there is right and wrong, Juliana, isn't there? There's some things are certainly more right than wrong and some things are more wrong and right.TAFUR: Yes, but we don't judge that. I think, you know, people are right to believe what they believe, vote for who they vote, and be who they are. And we start bridging from the place of: I see you, and I hear you, and I might not understand you, but that's okay. I still don't dehumanize you. And that's the spirit of bridging differences. And yes, I don't hide where I stand. Politically, I am more progressive. And I have been an Obama scholar. And I work at Berkeley. So all of that is who I am. And from that place, I bridge. I bridge from the place of this is who I am, where I stand. I still love you and I still want to get to know you. And I still want to see you. And I just want to say, given that I'm Colombian American and I lived in Miami for the last ten years, I just recently moved to Boulder, Colorado, to lead a statewide initiative here in the state of Colorado called Belonging Colorado to make Colorado a place where everyone feels like they belong. Thank you for popping it up.KEEN: Called Belonging Colorado.TAFUR: Yeah, in Florida, I mean, I've had friends and neighbors who don't think like I do, who don't see the world like I do. And I've appreciated that. And I have not excluded them from our circles, from trying deeply to learn and understand what is it that they believe, what they believe. So I intentionally have made way to understand our country and and to try to tap into, honestly, what at the end of the day, are people's fears of what we need. And I approach them from that place. When you approach others from a place of "we are all walking with our fears in our foreheads," we begin to connect with your fear, my fear. But it's all fear and it's okay.KEEN: You used the term "humanizing differences," Juliana. Some people, again, might be listening and thinking to themselves, well, the guy who just won the election, more Americans voted for him than the other candidate. It's quite a decisive election. He doesn't seem to be in the business of "humanizing differences." In fact, many of the people he doesn't like, he seems, some people believe, I tend to be sympathetic there, he's dehumanizing them. So. So what do we do in an America, where the next president is, or appears to be, very often in the business of dehumanization?TAFUR: Hopefully we take back the narrative.KEEN: What does that mean, "take back the narrative"? He's been elected. It's his narrative.TAFUR: It is his narrative. But as people I don't believe that everyone who voted for him is voting for the dehumanization. I am holding firm to the belief that people are good, and that people have voted for other things and not for that. And I want people who voted for him to still see that we need to humanize each other despite our differences. And I believe that they do. I do not believe people are buying into that narrative and rhetoric. At least not everyone. Some may. But I think when we take back the narrative, we take back the narrative of: yes, right now there's a winning camp and a losing camp, and that's okay. And I would hope that those in the winning camp also want to see across differences and are reaching out to humanize those who are not in the winning camp. And, you know, that is now that is four years. But our country perseveres and continues and we are interdependent and need each other. Absolutely need each other. More than this rhetoric, more than the divisive politics. Politics is just one aspect of who we are.KEEN: There are others. I mean, you acknowledge that you're a progressive. There are other progressives who are preparing to resist the new--what they see as a regime, some people even think that the new president is a fascist. What would you say to resistors, people who don't believe that it's possible to, as you would put it, reshape the narrative or seize the narrative, that that the next president is in the business of dehumanizing many people, particularly people out of America and many people in America. And it's just pointless and that they're going to fight him, they're going to fight him in the courts, and maybe even on the streets.TAFUR: I don't think that's the way. I don't stand for that. And I'm also trying to bring those people along. I think the only way out of hate, sincerely, and I know it sounds cliche, but it's through love. I don't believe in resistance in that way. I am for peace and I will continue to promote peace. And I know that that is hard for people in the far left to also swallow. And I know it takes time and I know not everyone is there right now, especially right now. And not everyone will be there ever. And that's okay, too. We understand that bridging is not the right thing for every person in every situation. We know that a lot of people who feel that their identity is in danger or that they're being disrespected might not be called to bridge differences. And that is also okay. I don't think this is work that you do by demand. And and we know that it's not without risks. We know that it involves exposing vulnerability. And we also know that sometimes bridging work takes small shifts over time. What we like to call small to large, or big, bridges. Sometimes you don't start with the biggest bridge possible bridging across the biggest divide. So we know that it's work that requires the right mindsets and skills and attitudes, and that takes time.KEEN: You've used the word bridge a lot, bridging as a noun, as an adjective. I seem to remember Bill Clinton was very much in the, at least the etymological bridge building business. He would always talk about it. Are examples of American politicians in the past who have successfully built bridges? I mean, Clinton wanted to, of course, he had his own controversial personal narrative that didn't help. But when you look back into the American past, who are the bridging presidents? FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Lincoln?TAFUR: Yeah, those, and I would say, you know, yes, I may I'm totally biased because I am funded, have been funded, by the Obama Foundation. But sincerely, President Obama has taken bridging and pluralism, as he called it, as the work that he is doing, that he is centering on after his presidency, and he runs these democracy summits that happen once a year. And and it is a message that he deeply believes in and is trying to share with others.KEEN: Yeah, I mean, doesn't everyone bridge on their own terms? Obama campaigned aggressively for Harris. And in fact, a lot of people believe that Trump never would have got involved in politics had Obama not given him such a violent roasting at one of the White House correspondence evenings a few years ago. So isn't Obama an example of someone who bridges when they feel like it and when they don't, they accuse other people of not bridging?TAFUR: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I prefer not to get into politics. I do bridging differences work because I am equipping folks with the skills to be able to do this work. And I believe in humans. So so this is really not about politics for me. It never was. It never will be. I happen to be an Obama scholar, but I'd really rather not comment on what politicians are or not doing.KEEN: And I take your point, Juliana. But politics and the founders knew this, the politics in and out of America, is a dirty business. We pursue our own interests. Madison called them the pursuit of faction. That's why we have divisions, that's why we have branches of government which are designed to negate each other. Just as Madison so famously said, so profoundly said, "If men were angels (and he did say, man, he didn't say women as well, of course), if men were angels, there'd be no need for government." And I wonder whether...and again, I don't want a group for your movements or your thinking into one, but I wonder whether this kind of ambivalence, hostility, maybe even contempt for politics is problematic. When I think of someone like Michelle Obama, I have to admit I'm very, very disappointed that she didn't choose to enter into politics. She seems to be political when she feels like it. But not to participate in politics, she was probably the only person in America could have beaten Trump. Again, I don't want to turn this into a conversation about either Obama's. But my question to you is about acknowledging the dirtiness of politics, which reflects the dirtiness of the human condition, the fact that we all are, for better or worse, self-interested. Do you accept that Madisonian version of human nature?TAFUR: I honestly think there is a better future for us when we tap into what we can be and not what we are. And I know it's hard for many to do right now. And it's hard when what we see as reality is what politicians do. And I do see some examples of politics where people are coming together that I'd like to highlight, including Governor Spencer Cox. And he's led a national campaign called Disagree Better. And he's come on ads with Governor Jared Polis from--KEEN: Colorado, yeah?TAFUR: Colorado. And Governor Cox is out of Utah, Republican. Jared Polis is a Democrat from Colorado. And I think we need more of that. We need more examples of that, politicians coming together and showing how they are coming together so that we believe that it's also possible. So I'd like to  hang on to those examples in the political realm. But again, I'm in the business of what we individuals can do at the interpersonal level to begin to cultivate the right skills and mindsets, to be able to come together and at the inter group level with others.KEEN: There's been a lot of conversation, debate after this election, Juliana, like many elections, about why and how people should vote. Should they vote out of self-interest or for the the greater good? Lots of comments about many of the people vote voting for Trump seem to be voting against their own interests, particularly the new American working class. Whereas the coastal elites in voting for Harris seem also in an odd way to be voting against their own--certainly economic--interests by voting for her, in your view, to get to this bridge and this ability to be empathetic and converse with others, do we need to overcome our own self-interest, particularly our own economic self-interest?TAFUR: I don't think you need to overcome your own economic self-interests to bridge. Not at all. Because when we bridge differences, we are not asking honestly people to leave aside any of what they value. It centers on this recognition of, yes, common humanity, which I know is very abstract to a lot of people. But it is not about persuasion and it does not require you compromising your beliefs or values. It just requires the ability for you to recognize that anyone, anyone can teach you something, which is a term called intellectual humility. So, no, not to bridge. I mean, you may be putting your self-interest aside, or some of your self-interests, aside when you're voting for certain candidates. But to bridge, we are just coming together to see each other and to be with each other.KEEN: You talk about intellectual humility. That word again, humility is another fashionable word that goes with empathy. Is there, do you think, a religious context to this? Do you think some of these movements, maybe yours, maybe even yourself, it grew out of a religious tradition. A Christian tradition? Humility, empathy, love, understanding. These are words that are traditionally used in religion.TAFUR: Yes, they are. I will say that we have not necessarily emphasized or called attention to these character virtues and moral virtues in our work. We do talk about them a lot and we will probably emphasize them a bit more moving forward, given interest that we have in doing so, because we do think that when you talk about civil, moral character virtues like respect and curiosity and courage, you are meeting different types of people at different places. And at the end of the day, this is about becoming better people.KEEN: Say that again: this is about becoming better people. So, it's a moral movement. You're suggesting people need to pull their their moral socks up if we're going to put Humpty Dumpty, to extend this rather childish metaphor, if we're if we're to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, we need to pull our moral socks up. Is that fair?TAFUR: Yeah. I mean, we believe that cultivating these virtues is not just about overcoming current societal divides, but about nurturing a deep commitment to, for a lack of a better word, the greater good. This is what this is about.KEEN: I don't know how many jobs you have, Juliana. I'm lucky enough that I don't have multiple jobs, but some people, again, might be watching this and saying this is all very well. Maybe in some biblical fantasy land, we can all put ourselves out and be better people. But most people are really busy. Many, particularly, working class people who perhaps voted for Trumo, they're working 2 or 3 jobs. They're busy. They struggle to pay their rent, feed their families. Does this require to be part of your bridging movement? Does it require, shall we say, moral...concentration? Or could you do it...occasionally?TAFUR: Absolutely. You can do it occasionally. You can do it in the weekend. You can do it with neighbors. You could do it at a school board meeting. You could do it in neighborhood meetings. You could do it wherever you are. You could do it at work. You could do it with colleagues. You could do it with your kids. It does not require more than anything that you are already doing. It's just about how you approach those who are in your circles and in your life.KEEN: What's the most difficult thing? You do this a lot. You run bridging programs. You run a school, essentially, designed to help people bridge. What does the movement most struggle with? When you see people who are open to the idea and say, you're right, I need to be able to talk responsibly with humility and empathy to people who I don't agree with on the other political side, culturally, racially, and all the rest of it. What do people most struggle with, what don't they expect? What would you warn people about who are trying to get into a movement like this?TAFUR: We are very clear that if the other person is dehumanizing you, and if you feel at risk or threatened by this dehumanization, that you should probably be careful in engaging. So that's where we draw the line.KEEN: Yeah, but then you're shifting the responsibility to somebody else. I mean, obviously, if they're dehumanizing you, you wouldn't want to talk to them. But what's hard about changing oneself, that's possible, that doesn't involve the other?TAFUR: I think this just requires the commitment to want to do it and then the right skills. To engage with it in a way that you see works, that feels good, and that invites you to continue trying it out. And all it takes is the willingness to say, "I'm exhausted by this. This is affecting me personally." Because we do know that our divides are consuming us. They're affecting our health, our well-being. We also know our divides are affecting our families and our closest circles. We know that our divides affect our children in schools. So there are many, many reasons for wanting to bridge, for saying, "this is enough. I am exhausted." And if you are, you are not alone. Three. Out of four Americans are. 75% of Americans in the most conservative estimates say they are exhausted by the division.KEEN: Exhausted by just this endless controversy of people not being able to talk to one another?TAFUR: Yeah. Research tells us that three out of four Americans see political hostility and divisiveness as a serious problem and want to live in a less polarized country. So we are just trying to meet that exhausted majority where they are. Because we do know that people value diverse perspectives. Again, research points to this, and a desire to shift the political discourse. So we're telling them: we hear you. We see you. Yes, this division hurts us. Let's do something about it. Do you need some skills? We got you.KEEN: Juliana, I asked you about other examples from American history. What about models from the rest of the world in these kinds of conversations? You often hear about the the reconciliation, the truth and reconciliation movement and Mandela, South Africa. Are there models overseas, which Americans can learn from? Americans often aren't very good at learning from other countries, particularly in Africa. But is the South African model a good one, do you think?TAFUR: Yes. I mean, clearly, they were able to come together across incredible fracture and division, and they were able to persevere and collaborate across differences. There is also the model in Ireland that we can point to. There is division that is hurting countries across the world right now. And I know ,I come from a country that is deeply divided, Colombia. And Colombians have also succeeded in bridging the great divide. But there's been strides, through peace treaties and others, to come together despite differences. So we can certainly learn from other countries that have been deeply divided and in deep conflict and have come together. We are not in a place in the US where our conflict has turned violent, thankfully, at least not openly. We are seeing signs of violence, but we are not in the midst of a war (although it seems like a moral war in many regards.) And and I do want to point to the hope that countries who have been in deeper fractures about how this is possible and and hopefully also show us that we must do something before the fracture goes wider and deeper. And where reconciliation seems harder to do.KEEN: Juliana, you mentioned Ireland. One of the things that comes to mind in the Irish model is the role of citizen assemblies in bringing people together to talk about very difficult issues. You brought up abortion, guns and immigration, in the U.S., the three most divisive issues, probably abortion, was and maybe still remains the most divisive in Roman Catholic Ireland. But the Citizens' Assembly movement in Ireland addressed the issue of abortion, and that was the way for the Irish parliament to actually develop some some quite interesting new legislation on abortion. Are you sympathetic to rethinking institutions, political institutions, political organizations like the Citizens' Assembly? Is this something that you've thought about, researched, is it part of a greater good future?TAFUR: Yeah, I mean, I do think we need to re-imagine. I do think we need to take good examples, including citizens' assemblies and in understand what's going to work for all of us. We know what we're doing now is not working for all of us. What does it take? How can we bring folks together to the conversation in a way that is bringing us all together? So, I do think bringing a diverse group of citizens to engage in structured dialogue, learn from experts, and also deliberate over complex topics could be the way. Maybe that's what we need. Maybe we do need more public participation in the democratic process in a way that ultimately ends up shaping legislation. And it does align with our bridging differences program, right? And and what we promote in in bringing people in and fostering inclusivity. So how can we bring different backgrounds together in structured discussions so that we can move beyond these partisan divides? Because we do understand that some of these issues do provoke, I would say, a really strong emotional response and and also carry significant social implications for folks.KEEN: Juliana Tafur, you've you've done very well with, my rather obnoxious question. So let's end with an opportunity for you to talk about, quite literally, where we go from here. You have some articles on your website, on the Bridging Differences website about where do we go from here, after the election. Perhaps you might touch on 3 or 4 bullets--concrete things of where we go from here in in early November 2024 that can bridge America, that can bring us back together. What would you suggest that's doable, viable, can be achieved in the next few months?TAFUR: It's great that you point to that article. I was obviously part of a group of us at the Greater Good Science Center that was very keen on publishing this the day after the election to--KEEN: And now you're on--I couldn't resist this one, Juliana, now you're on KEEN ON. I'm sorry for that rather silly joke, but anyway. Go on.TAFUR: Yep, yep, yep. Well, let me just, like, run through a bit of what some of the experts and researchers who we invited to be a part of this article with what they said.KEEN: And that included Eboo Patel, who, as I said, has been on the show. So you put together a very interesting group of people to write this thing.TAFUR: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so Eboo is saying keep doing what matters to you and the world, and he's trying to get us away from this catastrophe mindset, and he wants to remind us that what you are doing is sacred and it makes a difference. And even if the world is going to end, he says, the wisdom of the sages says to keep doing your meaningful work, because that work is part of the saving grace of humanity. So that was beautiful. Scott Shigeoka, who's a bridging differences fellow at the Greater Good Science Center, is inviting us to practice curiosity as an act of love. And for Scott, he says that we must practice curiosity if we want to transform our fear and hate. And he's reminding us that curiosity is a trait that we are all born with, and it's the desire to understand others more deeply. Again, this does not mean agreeing with views that clash with your own, but challenging the assumptions that you have about people who hold those views. So a lot about interrupting prejudice. Jeremy Smith, who's our editor at The Greater Good, he's inviting us to work to promote your values in community. I'll go high level on some of these. Get to know other humans, right? Get out of our silos as much as we can and connecting across our differences. Dr. Linda Traub, who is a close collaborator of ours, is inviting us to be good neighbors, even, and especially, to those who are different. So those are just a few. Choose nuance, not outrage. So I do invite folks to go through this article and and hopefully a few of the golden nuggets of inspiration do stay with you, do motivate you, to do something. It's been hard for many of us to understand what is it that we can do right now if bridging even is the calling of the moment when so many are struggling to understand what this means about our country, what this means about the next four years. But I understand others are not and are celebrating. Regardless of where you are, I think in a few weeks when you feel up for it, I think the calling of our times is to come together and to understand, again, our interdependence. We must break this cycle of othering us versus them. That does that does not exist. Those are constructs that that we have created. But we are better and we are more. And we are one. And sorry if this sounds cliche to some, but that's what I got for you.KEEN: That's interesting. And finally, Juliana, you mentioned one of your colleagues talked about what they would do if the world was to end tomorrow, what they would do this evening. It certainly reflects on you. I know if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would go to Kentucky Fried Chicken. But that probably speaks of my own unsuitability for your movement. What would you do if you knew the world was ending tomorrow?TAFUR: I would speak to you, Andrew.KEEN: Oh my god, we can go together to the Kentucky Fried Chicken. Well, Juliana, it's been a real honor to have you on the show. Very interesting conversation, we're going to get you back on because this--one thing we can say for sure is this issue is not going away in 2024, 2025, 2026. Keep up the good work, Juliana, and we'll talk again in the not too distant future. Thank you so much.TAFUR: Thank you, Andrew. Thank you.For those impressed with what Julianna Tafur is doing and would like to participate, here are a couple of ideas:* Ready to turn division into connection? The Greater Good Science Center's 7-Day Campaign for Connection Challenge offers practical, research-based skills to ease stress and create understanding. Reserve your spot: http://tinyurl.com/7DayChallenge24* Feeling the weight of division this election season? You're not alone! Join the @Greater Good Science Center's 7-Day Campaign for Connection Challenge, to help you navigate these polarized times with science-backed skills. Reserve your place: http://tinyurl.com/7DayChallenge24Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Sure, we all pay lip service to the Madisonian system of checks and balances. But presidents have been steadily expanding the reach of the job. With an election around the corner, we updated our 2016 conversation with the legal scholar Eric Posner — who has some good news and some not-so-good news about the power of the presidency. (Part one of a two-part series.) SOURCE:Eric Posner, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.   RESOURCES:"Presidential Leadership and the Separation of Powers," by Eric Posner (Daedalus, 2016).The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic, by Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule (2010). EXTRA:"Does the President Matter as Much as You Think?" by Freakonomics Radio (2020).

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if you can keep it.” In The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (Stanford UP, 2021), David M. Driesen argues that Donald Trump's presidency challenged Americans to consider whether the Madisonian system of checks and balances could robustly respond to a president claiming extensive executive power and disregarding traditional processes such as the peaceful transition of power. Driesen notes that Benjamin Franklin and many men in the “founding” generation observed tyrannical government in Europe – and they explicitly included safeguards in the U.S. Constitution to prevent extensive executive power in the United States. In this tradition, Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. He argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to constitutional democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Specifically, he sees the United States Supreme Court as enabling the expansion of executive power. Specter of Dictatorship highlights how the Supreme Court's reliance on and expansion of the legal approach called unitary executive theory threatens the separation of powers in the U.S. Driesen recommends a less deferential approach in which the judiciary checks the executive. The Supreme Court has been acting a if policing presidential power is the threat to democracy – but the real danger for constitutional democracy lies in expansion of executive power. For Driesen, judges and justices should give substantial weight to concerns about democratic erosion. Because autocracy is spreading abroad and presidential power is expanding in the US, Benjamin Franklin's concern about maintaining democracy is relevant in 2024. Professor Driesen is the thirteenth University Professor at Syracuse University where he teaches constitutional and environmental law. He is a graduate of the Yale Law School and has published several books and numerous articles with leading academic publishers and law reviews. From the podcast: David's piece on major questions doctrine David's editorial on the POTUS debate, Victor Orban, and Haitian Immigrants Correction from Susan – the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade were appointed by John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The justices voting in favor of reproductive rights were 5 men appointed by Republican presidents (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon) and 2 men appointed by Democratic presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yuval Levin, the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Boyd to discuss what we think we know regarding the Constitution, our founders, and our relationship to our government and each other. They discuss Yuval's latest work, "American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation- and Could Again," and how the Constitution can create unity across our country. Yuval shares why he uses the word, "covenant" as part of the title and walks through a Madisonian approach in unity-making. They finish with diving into the idea that anyone can incite a populist uprising and examine the problems with political populism.

“The Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together.” American political life today is fractured and splintered, but many still yearn for unity. How can we find social cohesion amid sharply felt differences? Political scientist Yuval Levin wants to bring us back to our founding document: the American Constitution. After all, the Preamble identifies as its primary purposes to “form a more perfect union” and “establish justice.” Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Currie Chair in Public Policy. His latest book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He's founder of National Affairs, senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor of National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. Levin joins Mark Labberton to discuss the US Constitution's purpose in fostering social cohesion and unity; the malfunction of Congress to build coalitions across disagreement; the values of social order and social justice; the fragility of democracy; the difference between a contract and a covenant; and the American aspiration to live up to the covenantal relationship and mutual belonging implied in “We the people.” About Yuval Levin Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. At AEI, Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish. Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President's Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels. In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024). He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Show Notes Get your copy of Yuval Levin's American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again Yuval Levin's background as a Jewish American and his childhood immigration to the United States from Israel. Yuval has “the kind of vision that sometimes immigrants have, which combines a really deep gratitude for this country with a sense of what's unique about it, and what's wonderfully strange about it.” Yuval's religious practice at a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Washington, DC. How Torah has shaped Yuval Levin's life and thought. Torah is Hebrew for “law.” Annual cycle of reading and immersing oneself in a text. “The American Constitution is not divine. It's the work of a patchwork of compromises, it has a lot of problems, by no means do I think that it's analogous to the Hebrew Bible.” Why write a book about the American Constitution? How to understand the constitution as a framework for social cohesion and unity. “Even in the private lives of a lot of Americans, I think the sense of isolation, of alienation, breakdown of social cohesion is very powerful in the lives of a lot of people.” Constitution is intended to unify, but it's been used to divide. James Madison as a primary figure in Yuval's new book. “Americans tend to approach politics by thinking of other Americans as the problem to be solved.” “In any free society, there are always going to be divisions.” James Madison in Federalist 10: “He just says, simply: As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he's at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. The fact that we disagree is not a failure. It is a reality. And yet, that doesn't mean that we can't be unified.” Unity doesn't mean thinking alike, it means acting together. “The Constitution compels us into building coalitions with precisely the people we disagree with.” Yuval Levin explains the premises behind his book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left Social order versus social justice “There are, as a general matter, more or less two ways of thinking about the purpose of a free society like ours. There is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of chaos and disorder, and there is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of inequality and injustice.” “… the premise of human fallenness, which says that we begin unready for freedom. And we need to be formed and shaped to be capable of freedom.” “I think it's worth our seeing the Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together, which has these two sides to it. And so it has a lot to offer us.” Social order as “patient to a fault” and “prejudicial toward white or elite culture.” Ideological extremism. “The most dangerous kinds of abuses of the weak happen at the hands of majorities. And therefore, democracy itself has to be constrained by principles of justice that are kept beyond the reach of majorities.” The question of “simple majority rule.” Populism. Two minority parties, rather than a majority party. Coalition building is just not being allowed to play out. Shared action versus shared ideas. Congress is about acting together when you don't think alike. “Clearly there is something broken about Congress… Everybody agrees the institution is dysfunctional. I don't think everybody agrees about what function it isn't performing.” “Their job is actually to negotiate with the other party.” “I think that's fed a kind of attitude among a lot of prominent politicians in America that says, fighting for my constituents means yelling at the other party, and refusing to give ground, refusing to give an inch. That's actually not what fighting looks like in our kind of democracy. That's what losing looks like. Fighting looks like effectively bargaining and negotiating so as to achieve something of what your voters want or need. Partisanship, reactionary politics, and cynicism “I've come to think that cynicism about politics is actually very naive.” “The people you're dealing with are not cynical Machiavellians. They really believe they're doing good here, and there actually is room to have an argument.” How does justice operate in the political approach Yuval Levin advocates? The first two purposes of the Constitution: form a more perfect union, and establish justice. Who gets to decide what is just? Human equality and dignity as the premises for justice Why wasn't slavery abolished in the Constitution itself? Native Americans and the abuse of human dignity Analogy: relating to our political or religious tradition as analogous to the child–parent relationship Seeking a mature relationship with our traditions Yuval Levin on the fragility of democracy: “Our democracy is often at risk.” Contract (an agreement that can be broken) vs. Covenant (a relationship of belonging) “'We the people of the United States.' That “we” is an aspiration.” Yuval Levin's perspective on the American Church, and how it contributes to the current social crisis American evangelicals coming to identify as an “embattled minority” or a “moral minority” Judging the success of a religious community by their influence as a political block “The particularly Madisonian logic of the Constitution is that everyone is a minority. … And that is not a position of weakness, necessarily, in this society. This is a society that is unusually solicitous of minorities. And when it's at its best, it is especially solicitous of minorities.” Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Madisonian's love to bike. We even have a whole week dedicated to it! So when a Madison Minutes reader introduced us to MadTown BMX, we knew we had to go full throttle into learning more about this Madison gem. Host Bianca Martin spoke with the track's operator Brian Stouffer about hosting the state championship races, how to join a beginner league, and what makes this sport fun for everyone from 2 year olds to 67 year olds.  Follow their facebook for more updates. Wanna talk to us about an episode? Leave us a voicemail at 608-318-3367 or email madison@citycast.fm. We're also on Instagram!  Want more Madison news delivered right to your inbox? Subscribe to the Madison Minutes morning newsletter.  Looking to advertise on City Cast Madison? Check out our options for podcast ads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's edition, we round up a few stories from the week: the state files a lawsuit against an employer accused of firing employees when they organized; a Madisonian is a finalist for a Hugo Award; and a County Board supervisor says “sin is the root cause” of homelessness. Then, we visit the headquarters of Urban Triage, where founder and CEO Brandi Grayson gives us an update on the organization's activities and programs, and previews next month's Black Brilliance Gala fundraiser.   Links:   State sues owner of Crushin It Promotions, alleging unlawful labor practices   Sci-Fi zine GigaNotoSaurus, edited by Madison writer LaShawn Wanak, nominated for a Hugo Award   “Sin is the root cause” of homelessness, Dane County Supervisor says   Black Brilliance Gala Tickets   Black Brilliance Gala Volunteer Opportunities   Nominate an Unsung Hero

Origianal air date: 8/25/23 Jeff Weigand and Mary Danielsen discuss the progressive politics at the State level as seen in liberal bastion Madison, Wisconsin. Jeff is Dane County Board Supervisor and a lone conservative voice. While he does enjoy a spot on the catbird seat with which to view the hammer of progressive politics, he also has to deal with radical agendas while standing firm on his own Christian worldview. We will be talking about what it takes to glorify God in such a position and learn just how Madisonian politics affects the state and the nation. While not in the top 20 of liberal cities, Madison and surrounding towns are a microcosm of the liberal pockets around the nation. Jeff and his wife and 5 children live in the Madison area and attend Calvary Chapel Madison. Watch Stand Up For The Truth on YouTube ! ICYMI: David Fiorazo resigns from WORQ on July 5, 2023

Michael Glennon is the author of “National Security and Double Government.” He joins to discuss the growth of America's national security apparatus, and how it functionally upends Madisonian democracy while leaving constitutional rhetoric in tact. Support the Show! Patreon.com/andrewheaton Glennon's book at: www.mightyheaton.com/featured LINKS: Charles Cooke on Abolishing the FBI Ron Paul on Foreign Policy and the Deep State

Madison was the first city in the nation to offer curbside recycling service. But 55 years of celebrating recycling's virtues has driven us to optimism. We wishfully toss things in the cart and hope for the best. Friends, we are here to tell you that is NOT how this works. In fact, your good deeds are messing things up — gumming up machines and putting workers in harm's way. Can you recycle plastic bags? Nope. Those little tabs from your bread bags? Nope. Bottle caps? Nope. And please, for the love of Gaylord Nelson, no shower curtains. So what's a Madisonian to do? The city's Recycling Coordinator Bryan Johnson is here to help sort it all out. ♻ Ready to become a recycling evangelist? Check out Sustain Dane's Recycle Better program. 

Jeff Weigand and Mary Danielsen discuss the progressive politics at the State level as seen in liberal bastion Madison, Wisconsin. Jeff is Dane County Board Supervisor and a lone conservative voice. While he does enjoy a spot on the catbird seat with which to view the hammer of progressive politics, he also has to deal with radical agendas while standing firm on his own Christian worldview. We will be talking about what it takes to glorify God in such a position and learn just how Madisonian politics affects the state and the nation. While not in the top 20 of liberal cities, Madison and surrounding towns are a microcosm of the liberal pockets around the nation. Jeff and his wife and 5 children live in the Madison area and attend Calvary Chapel Madison. Watch Stand Up For The Truth on YouTube ! ICYMI: David Fiorazo resigns from WORQ on July 5, 2023

Madison was the first city in the nation to offer curbside recycling service. But fifty-five years of celebrating recycling's virtues has driven us to optimism. We wishfully toss things in the cart and hope for the best. Friends, we are here to tell you that is NOT how this works. In fact, your good deeds are messing things up - gumming up machines and putting workers in harm's way. Can you recycle plastic bags? Nope. Those little tabs from your bread bags? Nope. Bottle caps? Nope. And please, for the love of Gaylord Nelson, no shower curtains. So what's a Madisonian to do? Bryan Johnson, Madison's Recycling Coordinator, is here to help sort it all out.

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Dane County; https://bit.ly/3wCtPKkThe Cabin is also presented by WCA's Group Health Trust; serving local governments and school districts, the WCA Group Health Trust partners closely with members to fulfill their employee health benefit obligations in a fiscally responsible manner. Learn more here; https://bit.ly/3JMizCXCampfire Conversation: As the holiday weekend approaches, our conversations tend to focus on food and family, but what about…fitness? And more importantly, your mental health as it relates to your physical health? Today in The Cabin, we are joined by Madisonian, fitness enthusiast, and entrepreneur Peter Kraus to talk about all the things in our capital city! Eric and Susan were very well educated in some of Peter's research and fitness findings and end the episode with some rapid-fire questions about what he loves the most in Wisconsin! Don't worry, we keep The Bachelorette chat to a minimum 

In 2019, music writer Randy Fox discovered a long-forgotten nugget of info - sixteen years before Lucy's opened its doors at 1707 Church Street in Nashville it was home to another record store called Buckley's. Randy has an insatiable curiosity and an unbridled enthusiasm for music and history, so this story has lots of twists and turns. It starts in Kentucky and his discovery of the Sex Pistols and the Ramones in college, zigs into the history of mid-20th century radio and record shops, and zags to the use of urban planning as a tool for white supremacy. Chock full. Enjoy! Randy Fox grew up in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Currently managing editor of The Madisonian and an Editor-at-Large for The East Nashvillian, his writing has also appeared in Vintage Rock, Country Music, Record Collector, Journal of Country Music, Nashville Scene and many other publications. He is the author of Shake Your Hips: The Excello Records Story, a history of the renowned Nashville-based blues, soul and gospel record label. He is also a co-founder, President, and Program Director of independent, freeform radio station WXNA 101.5 FM in Nashville, where he hosts the weekly programs, Randy's Record Shop and the Hipbilly Jamboree. Episode Music: Lambchop - So I Hear You're Moving (Intro) Deford Bailey - Davidson County Blues Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips Etta James - Seven Day Fool (Live at the New Era Club I'm Going to Sit at the Welcome Table / "We Shall Not Be Moved" - The Nashville Sit-in Story: Songs and Scenes of Nashville Lunch Counter Desegregation (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings) Additional Mentions/Links: Shake  Your Hips: The Excello Records Story by Randy Fox “The Emperor of Grooves,” by Randy Fox, The East Nashvillian “Love at 33 1/3: Reflections on a Year of Writing About Record Stores,” by Randy Fox, The Nashville Scene Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) movie review - Sneak Previews with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel WXNAfm.org One Mile North by Campbell Haynes (Belmont Law Review, Volume 8, Issue 1: 2020) The Highway to Segregation by Sabre J. Rucker (Masters Thesis, Vanderbilt University, 2016) “Racist planning shaped our city; conscientious planning can help undo its mistakes,” By Adrien Weibgen, New York Daily News Harvey's Nashville Sells 39¢ Singles, Billboard, May, 5, 1962 Randy's Record Shop. Ernie's Record Mart. Dot Records DJ Gene Nobels  The Children by David Halberstam JeffersonStreetSound.com Fisk University, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University (now Tennessee State University) Diane Nash, Rev.James Lawson, Congressman John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, C.T. Vivian, Rip Patton Night train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm and Blues 1945–1970, Country Music Hall of Fame, Michael Gray & Daniel Cooper, curators. Cover Photo of Randy Fox, Scott Greenwalt Photography PLAYLISTS & RADIO SHOWS The Best of Excello Records The Excello Story, Vol. II (1955 - 1957) The Excello Records Story, Vol. I (1952 - 1955) Randy's Record Shop (Randy's Radio Show) - Mondays, 7:00am–9:00am CT, Archive and Live on WXNAFM.org Hipbilly Jamboree! (Randy's Radio Show) - Sunday 3 - 5 PM Archive and live on WXNAfm.org Follow us / Say helloInstagram: @lucysrecordshopTwitter: @lucysrecordshop Facebook: /lucysrecordshop This show is part of We Own This Town, a podcast network of original entertainment and documentary content. You can find more info at the official site at WeOwnThisTown.Net and on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter.

Stu Levitan welcomes Madison native Doug Moe for a conversation about his new biography of the UW's first director of women's athletics, Kit Saunders-Nordeen. On June 23rd 1972, President Richard Nixon did two things with historical significance. In a meeting with chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, he told Haldeman to call FBI director Pat Gray and tell him to stay the hell away from Watergate because it was a CIA matter, which of course it was not. This was the so-called ‘smoking gun' tape which quickly led to Nixon's resignation when it was released a little over two years later.And, with a more appropriate nod to his re-election campaign, Nixon also signed the Education Amendment Act of 1972 with its 37 words and four commas now known as Title IX – “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”The impact of Title IX on women's athletics at the University of Wisconsin – and the critical role that Katherine Kit Saunders played in defining that impact -- is the business that occupies Doug Moe in his latest biography, “The Right Thing To Do – Kit Saunders-Nordeen and the rise of Women's Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Wisconsin and Beyond.”It is a book the native Madisonian and 1979 graduate of the UW is well-equipped to write. Doug Moe is, after all, one of Madison's most prolific and honored journalists and authors. He's written 12 books, including Tommy Thompson's autobiography, biographies of legendary Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko, Madison builder Marshall Erdmann and Madison jewelers and philanthropists Irwin and Robert Goodman, a history of the fabled but now defunct UW boxing program and more. In his 18 years as a daily columnist with the Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal, he wrote more than 4,000 columns, which is about 3 million words, and continues to write a monthly column for Madison Magazine and a weekly blog for its website. He is so active, in fact, that his website isn't doug moe dot com, it's doug moe dot org. Speaking personally, in my work as a historian of Madison, I know I have benefitted greatly from several of his books, and am very much looking forward to one he's working on now – the autobiography of State Senator Fred Risser. It is a great pleasure to welcome to MBB the great biographer of modern Madison, my friend Doug Moe.

Bailey joins the podcast to co-host and pontificates on the recent Bitcoin conference he attended. Noah and Bailey introduce Victor to the podcast and have a great time talking about music, faith, and fun! Victor talks about the challenges, blessings, and point of view of an international student coming to America and how God has been constant through all of the ups and downs. Join the guys as they share how the Culture of Christ can bring a Nigerian, Georgian, and Madisonian together and how all Christians are truly foreigners on this earth!Remember to like, subscribe, and share and don't forget to check out our website! http://pontificationpals.xyz

General Welfare Clause to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; Of all the limitations upon the power to tax and spend, the General Welfare Clause appears to have achieved notoriety as one of the most contentious. The dispute over the clause arises from two distinct disagreements. The first concerns whether the General Welfare Clause grants an independent spending power or is a restriction upon the taxing power. The second disagreement pertains to what exactly is meant by the phrase "general welfare." The two primary authors of The Federalist Papers set forth two separate, conflicting interpretations: James Madison advocated the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist and at the Virginia ratifying convention upon a narrow construction of the clause, asserting that spending must be at least tangentially tied to one of the other specifically enumerated powers, such as regulating interstate or foreign commerce, or providing for the military, as the General Welfare Clause is not a specific grant of power, but a statement of purpose qualifying the power to tax. Alexander Hamilton, only after the Constitution had been ratified, argued for a broad interpretation which viewed spending as an enumerated power Congress could exercise independently to benefit the general welfare, such as to assist national needs in agriculture or education, provided that the spending is general in nature and does not favor any specific section of the country over any other. Although The Federalist was not reliably distributed outside of New York, the essays eventually became the dominant reference for interpreting the meaning of the Constitution as they provided the reasoning and justification behind the Framers' intent in setting up the federal government. While Hamilton's view prevailed during the administrations of Presidents Washington and Adams, historians argue that his view of the General Welfare Clause was repudiated in the election of 1800, and helped establish the primacy of the Democratic-Republican Party for the subsequent 24 years. This assertion is based on the motivating factor which the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions played upon the electorate; the Kentucky Resolutions, authored by Thomas Jefferson, specifically criticized Hamilton's view. Further, Jefferson himself later described the distinction between the parties over this view as "almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans...." Associate Justice Joseph Story Associate Justice Joseph Story relied heavily upon The Federalist as a source for his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. In that work, Story excoriated both the Madisonian view and a previous, strongly nationalistic view of Hamilton's which was rejected at the Philadelphia Convention. Ultimately, Story concluded that Thomas Jefferson's view of the clause as a limitation on the power to tax, given in Jefferson's opinion to Washington on the constitutionality of the national bank, was the correct reading. However, Story also concluded that Hamilton's view on spending, articulated in his 1791 Report on Manufactures, is the correct reading of the spending power. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/law-school/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/law-school/support

The pie has been around for centuries, in both savory and sweet forms. But pies have been perceived and presented in a lot of different ways, and have even been an issue of deep contention.  Research: Tanglen, Randi. “A cultural history of pie.” The Madisonian. Nov. 24, 2020. https://www.madisoniannews.com/community/cultural-history-pie Anastolpoulo, Rossi. “Why Apple Pie Isn't So American After All.” Food 52. October 8, 2021. https://food52.com/blog/24688-apple-pie-origin-story Siegel, Matt. “'Substantial, Satisfying, Hard to Digest.' How Apple Pie is Like America.” Literary Hub. Sept. 1, 2021. https://lithub.com/substantial-satisfying-hard-to-digest-how-apple-pie-is-like-america/ Snell, Rachel A. “ As North American as Pumpkin Pie: Cookbooks and the Development of National Cuisine in North America, 1796-1854.” Erudit. Oct. 7, 2014. https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/cuizine/2014-v5-n2-cuizine01533/1026771ar/ “Pie.” New York Times. May 2, 1902. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/05/03/118469204.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 “A Shortcrust History of Pies.” BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zmtn2sg Simmons, Amelia. “American Cookery, or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preservesd, and All Kinds of Cakes, From the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake. Adapted to This Country, and All Grades of Life.” Hudson & Goodwin. 1796. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12815/pg12815.html Soyer, Alexis. “The Modern Housewife or, Menagere Comprising Nearly One Thousand Receipts, for the Economic and Judicious Preparation of Every Meal of the Day, with those of The Nursery and Sick Room, and Minute Directions for Family Management in All its Branches.” New York. D. Appleton & Co. 1850. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41899/41899-h/41899-h.htm Howland, E.A. “The American economical housekeeper, and family receipt book.” H.W. Derby. 1845. Accessed online: https://d.lib.msu.edu/fa/23#page/10/mode/2up “History of Pies.” What's Cooking America. https://whatscookingamerica.net/history/piehistory.htm Hale, Sarah. “The ladies' new book of cookery : a practical system for private families in town and country; with directions for carving, and arranging the table for parties, etc. Also, preparations of food for invalids and for children.” 1852. Accessed online: https://d.lib.msu.edu/fa/48#page/2/mode/2up Masterson, Kate. “The Great American Pie.” New York Times. August 10, 1902. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1902/08/10/118475659.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0 Simmons, Amelia. “American cookery, or, The art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables : and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves : and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plumb to plain cake, adapted to this country, and all grades of life.” Hudson & Goodwin. 1796. Accessed online: https://www.loc.gov/item/96126967/ Traill, Catherine Parr Strickland. “The female emigrant's guide, and hints on Canadian housekeeping.” Maclear. 1854. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/cihm_41417/page/n11/mode/2up Kelly, Alison. “A Brief History of Pumpkin Pie in America.” Library of Congress Blof. Nov. 20, 2017. https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2017/11/a-brief-history-of-pumpkin-pie-in-america/ Clarkson, Janet. “Pie: A Global History.” Reaktion Books. 2009.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The image of public harmony between elected officials and an entrenched national security bureaucracy collapsed in the Trump years, according to Tufts University professor Michael Glennon. Glennon discusses the massive transfer of power from the Madisonian institutions of government to a behemoth national security bureaucracy, the problems this poses for policymaking, and how our politics have become a fight over prevailing "myth systems." Show NotesMichael Glennon bioMichael J. Glennon, “Populism, Elites, and National Security,” Humanitas 31, nos. 1 and 2 (2018): pp. 35-45. Michael J. Glennon, National Security and Double Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).Michael J. Glennon, Gene Healy, Jeremy Shapiro, and Justin Logan, “National Security and Double Government,” Cato Event, November 21, 2014. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The idea of a “deep state” in American government has become a hot topic in recent years, but does it actually exist? And is it good, or bad?Today's expert guest, Prof. Michael J Glennon, is possibly the best person on the planet to help us figure out the truth.In this interview, Prof. Glennon explains his book, "National Security and Double Government."Amongst other topics, he discusses how the reality of a "double government" of the national security complex intersects with the more controversial term "deep state."(Interview Starts at 5:45)In its most basic definition, the concept of a “deep state” is that the politicians you elect actually have far less decision-making power than is publicly presented. Deep state theories suggest that behind the scenes there is a second group of individuals you know little about, and who have little public accountability, actually calling the shots on most important decisions.On the far-right, the concept of a “deep state” quickly goes further into Qanon narratives of good vs evil. In those stories the shadowy individuals truly in charge are inevitably up to elaborately orchestrated plots to destroy all personal freedom, enslave decent Americans, and snatch up children for unimaginably horrific ends.While to the lazy-left, the other extreme of the political spectrum, the idea of a “deep state" is only something to pompously sneer and snicker at. Or even worse, embrace they sometimes now embrace the very undemocratic concept of a "deep state" as some sort of big-government savior-overlord which will protect them from anything they fear (mainly those people on the far-right).So what is the truth of the “deep state," Professor Glennon will help us understand.Michael J. Glennon is Professor of Constitutional and International Law at Tufts University. He was Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Professor Glennon has served as a consultant to various congressional committees, the U.S. State Department, and the International Atomic Energy Agency. He has appeared on Nightline, the Today Show, NPR's All Things Considered and other national news programs. His op-ed pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, International Herald-Tribune, Financial Times, and Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung.In this episode, Prof. Glennon and Jim cover the following topics:—How US government is designed to work… “not to promote efficiency, but to protect people from autocracy”—Checks and balances, separation of powers, decentralization of power—Historical rise of bureaucracy, and political parties—Madisonians v Trumanites—1940s creation of national security state—United States moving from republic to more unaccountable system—Importance of civic virtue—Trumanites vs Trump—CIA and NSA abuses of 1960s and 1970s, spying on Americans, MLK, anti-war protests—Trumanite influence on presidency, congress, courts—No conspiracy, instead a “system” that has developed and grown that encroaches on Madisonian structure, even with good intent—Dangers going forward unless people begin to wake up to the way US government is designed to workPlease remember to tell people about the show, and purchase Prof. Glennon's book "National Security and Double Government" at Amazon or your favorite bookseller.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/independme)

What does it mean to be a good citizen? How is American government meant to function? What does the present ideological state of our parties indicate? The American Enterprise Institute's Dr. Jay Cost is joined by students from the University of Georgia to discuss insights that James Madison, Founding Father and America's fourth president, can offer us about brokering compromise in a divided society. For more on the topic, check out Cost's incisive new biography, https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jay-cost/james-madison/9781541699540/ (James Madison: America's First Politician).

Genia Stevens is running for a full term on the Rock County Board as well as a seat on the Beloit City Council, and Madisonian (ok not really) Stacey Abrams is running for governor of Georgia. Plus, COVID stats just keep getting worse.

Supporters of the monster state want you to believe that the general Welfare clause in the Constitution gives the federal government the power to do pretty much anything and everything. And since the federal courts have adopted the Hamiltonian view over the Madisonian one, that's pretty much how it has played out in practice. The post The general Welfare Clause: An Introduction first appeared on Tenth Amendment Center.

Historian and AEI fellow Jay Cost is back on The Remnant to discuss his new biography of James Madison, which focuses on the political theory of Jonah's favorite Founding Father. Jay and Jonah fuse rank punditry with historical nerdery to explore how a little Madisonian wisdom could go a long way toward solving our most pressing institutional challenges. What are the greatest misconceptions about Madison and the founding? How should the Declaration of Independence be understood? And could American politics use more smoke-filled rooms?   Show Notes: -Jay's page at AEI -Jay's previous Remnant appearance -Jonah and Jay on AEI's Viewpoint -James Madison: America's First Politician -Jay previews the book in the Wall Street Journal -Jay's previous book, The Price of Greatness -Federalist 10 -Polybius (the historian, not the mythical video game) -Jefferson and Madison on Malthus -Why Nations Fail -Inventing Freedom, by Daniel Hannan -The Remnant with Steve Teles -Jonah: “That Shor Sounds Good” -The Remnant with Mike Duncan -The Webster-Hayne debate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TranscriptWelcome to the Self-Evident podcast. It's been quite a while since my last episode. Life has been crazy, school has been crazy, and, honestly, I just do what I have time to do. Since it's been so long, I decided to make an episode in connection to the debate triggered recently by an article written by Jonah Golberg about the idea of creating new conservative third parties. I won't go into too much detail. I and many, many others have delved into this debate and I'd suggest doing some reading of the various articles yourself to get a measure of what it is we're talking about. As for my two cents on the issue, I wrote a newsletter last week where I submitted a subtle shift from Jonah's aims, maintaining the same goals but seeking to accomplish what he suggests, not through third parties, but through committees or caucuses that can organize people towards championing values within the existing party structures.  Today, in this podcast, I'm going to take this argument a little further and add some philosophical flavoring to what I'm positing. I'm not going to rehash my arguments too much from last week's newsletter, so before you continue listening, I would suggest taking a moment and giving that newsletter a read.   As a Madisonian, one of my key interests throughout my studies of political theory and constitutionalism are the mechanisms or “auxiliary precautions” that can be introduced to a political system and political culture in order to maintain the counterpoise necessary to ensure that no single majority faction gains control of the government and proceeds to assault the rights and liberties of those outside of the majority's interests. James Madison, for his part, was zealous in assuring that such auxiliary precautions existed within the framework of the US Constitution. While others would have preferred a strong bill of rights within the main body of the proposed constitution, Madison initially scoffed at the effectiveness that “parchment barriers” could have in actually controlling the actions of the government. Pointing to the serious violations of English Constitutionalism at the hands of Parliament that necessitated the struggle against Britain, James Madison was more interested in establishing checks and balances on power than in an enumeration of rights.  Madison argued that only through a proper diffusion of interests that forced governance by coalition and consensus could rights and liberties ever truly be secured. In this view, no enumeration or declaration of rights can ever fully secure a nation from arbitrary oppression and tyranny if there was not a proper diffusion of interests to make it impossible for any one faction to be large enough to compose a true majority. It should be pointed out that faction and party are not necessarily synonymous in political theory. More often than not, especially in American political history, a political party is more likely to constitute a coalition of factions rather constitute a single faction in and of itself, seeking absolute dominance of the wheels of government.  In our own day, most of Madison's auxiliary precautions remain intact, though the counterpoise he helped establish has been disrupted by several key developments. The four main disruptions of constitutional counterpoise I'll discuss today are negative partisanship, national communities, the imperial presidency, and national parties. National Communities By national communities, I refer to associations that allow individuals to assume identities disconnected from their local communities and their states. Social media, for example, has created platforms for political activism that tend to establish core constituencies of citizens united by ideological beliefs that can wield political power despite being spread out across the country. This has tended both to increased instances of groupthink through self-sorting as well as a tendency to view politics as purely national because local and state issues fall to the wayside among groups that have no common interests at that level of government.  Developments such as this have frustrated several aspects of counterpoise that had existed within the American system. Firstly, the notion of dual sovereignty shared between state and federal governments has fallen to the wayside as the interests of the people have become far more interested in accomplishing their political goals through the federal government rather than local or state government. As well, officers in local and state government are often more interested in national politics and less interested in wielding political power in their limited spheres. Additionally, Madison had believed that each state would have its own interests and that it would be too difficult to unite various state-based factions into a majority faction. The technology that has brought us closer together has largely washed away the state-to-state differences that used to exist in even similarly philosophically disposed factions. Imperial Presidency The imperial presidency as well has created its own set of difficulties. More than a mere executive authority, the president has come to represent the will of the people as a whole by way of being the only political officer elected by the entire nation. The people and their political representation have developed the tendency to adopt interests based upon whether they support the “nation's father” or oppose him. This has made it difficult for a proper diffusion of interests to occur as, increasingly, the nation becomes split in two in support or opposition for a president. Both individuals and institutions lay down many of their interests in order to adopt and champion the common interests of a larger faction united by their disposition towards a single man.  Not only has this led to the development of larger, overarching factions, but it has disrupted the balance of power in the federal government as well. In the designs of the American system, the various branches of government were meant to check and balance each other through institutional jealousy. The idea was that, even if a member of Congress was politically allied with the President, his institutional loyalty would check the tendency to simply do what the President wants, and vice versa. But, as part of a broader political faction that transcends these countervailing forces, members of Congress now offer undying loyalty or unfailing opposition to the president based upon the pressures of national faction to the detriment of any institutional considerations. National Parties  Another concerning development is the popular view of political parties as national parties. I say popular view because, while the supposed leaders of the parties act like they're leading a national institution, the realities of how American parties organize themselves do not reflect the notion of truly national organization. Each major political party is actually a confederation of mostly independent local organizations with surprisingly high levels of autonomy. What national bodies exist within these parties have very little capability to impose their will upon local organizations. (This is why someone like Joe Manchin is a Democrat in West Virginia but would likely be a Republican in New York. Actual party politics can vary to great extant across different states and counties because there is no institutional gravity that dictates party politics). But, as I said, this is not how the political parties are viewed in the popular imagination. They are made out to be monolithic entities either to be wholly supported or completely opposed. A center-right independent in New York will refuse participation in their local Republican Party because of the actions and words of a far-Right Republican in Georgia. A center-left independent in Utah will refuse participation in their local Democratic Party because of the actions and words of a hard-Left Democrat in Oregon.  The natural counterpoise that exists in the organization of political parties, which are modeled after the organization of the federal system, fail to operate as checks and balances upon the creation of majority factions because the tools for such a purpose largely lay unused. Because the parties have come to be viewed as national, monolithic institutions, people only join them if their interests align with their perception of the national interests of a large, national faction and they abandon them if they come to believe that their interests are opposed to their perception of the same. Negative Partisanship The combined impact of everything that I have discussed leads the propensity of negative partisanship. Because we've effectively allowed for the creation of two large factions that control our two major parties and because both factions claim to represent a majority of the country, many Americans have reasonably become concerned that the outcome of any given election will have major consequences upon the nation. Because the parties claim a mandate of majority approval for their ideas when they gain control of the government as a national “majority” faction, they feel entitled and empowered to engage in arbitrary governance. Building coalition and consensus in legislation in this environment comes to feel like a compromise of basic principles rather than the exercise of good governance. The political parties end up seeing no reason why they can't attempt to enact their entire vision without the constraints of opposing viewpoints or the concerns for those outside of their “majority” faction.  This leads to mainstream voters who, while at the same time feel pressure to disassociate from the parties and fail to engage in the party processes, nevertheless feel they have no choice in the general election but to vote against the side they view as a wholly unacceptable option due to the realities and perceptions of what they will do when in power. This negative partisanship has double impact upon the problems we've been discussing because it both leads to a lack of participation in party processes that allows marginal interests to wield unchecked power while also enabling mandates for these marginal interests who can claim to be a majority faction when they do not actually reflect the interests of most mainstream voters. When Factions Are the Cure The solution, believe it or not, is to create factions. Not separate political parties, mind you, but to engage in the ideas I laid out last week in my response to Jonah Goldberg's conservative third-party idea. We need more factions within factions, factions within our political parties, so as to diffuse interests and disallow any single faction from claiming a majority mandate in the government.  We need to slowly but surely attack the idea that either political party is a truly national faction that wields majority approval for any single interest group. Presidents, Senators, Representatives, and all local and state officeholders must be made to understand that they are in power because coalitional efforts put them there, not a monolithic and united faction that they must kow tow to. Specific to my brand of conservatism, there needs to be organized local and regional organizations of Platform Republicans, Values Voters, or, as an excellent article for National Affairs suggests, liberal-conservatives. Indeed, the article from National Affairs, written by Steven M. Teles & Robert P. Saldin, lays out a path for (a) small but effective organization(s) of classical liberal conservatives who can leverage what power they have for change within the Republican Party (the working model for this kind of action, believe it or not, is the Democratic Socialists of America). The article lays out the unfortunate reality that, for the time being at least, “the dominant faction of the GOP will almost certainly be populist and nationalist” but it goes on to point out that this faction can be kept from being considered a majority faction and can be “forced to share the party with what we will call the 'liberal-conservative' faction in recognition of its grounding in classical-liberal principles of free trade, pluralism, and constitutionalism." As the constituency for this ‘liberal-conservative' faction, the article lists the “middle class, the college educated, business managers and owners, and more upwardly mobile members of ethnic minority groups, especially in cities and states where Democratic governance begins pinching their core interests.” The article suggests that broad financial support for such a faction could come from “the financial sector, which is generally less socially liberal and more suspicious of increased taxation than the technology entrepreneurs of the West Coast while sharing with them a generally internationalist orientation that makes the nationalism of the populists and socialists anathema." The article even points out the appeal of this ‘liberal-conservative' faction to areas that are out of play for a nationalist and populist dominated GOP, such as “the bluer parts of the country” where Republican governors gained “re-election...in Maryland and Massachusetts, who, in a somewhat inchoate form, already embrace such an approach.” Pointing to “GOP success in Annapolis and on Beacon Hill” as indicative but “lone-wolf” successes, the article suggested the possibility for “fueling a durable faction” out of this approach by building “a broader organization and forg[ing] connections with like-minded partisans elsewhere.” The article asserts quite unequivocally that “building a liberal-conservative faction within the Republican Party is not a fantasy." The article cautions that this ‘liberal-conservative' faction would indeed be a minority faction for the time being, but that it could still create a “genuinely distinctive, independent, factional brand such that voters don't think of themselves as supporting the dominant populist faction of the GOP with their vote in congressional elections” and that “it could become powerful enough to force the majority faction to negotiate and share power with it." I actually hold a bit more optimism than the article is willing to concede because I think that once a choice could be provided to the Republican electorate that doesn't amount to supporting the Left in order to oppose Trump there would be significant portions of voters who would get shaved off from what ultimately remains a small but dominant faction of true nationalists and populists who are punching far above their weight in their control of the party.  But, regardless of how quickly such a ‘liberal-conservative' faction may gain inroads within the Republican Party, the path is nevertheless there (and similar paths exist for center-left efforts in the Democratic Party as well). This, of all the suggestions I have pondered over the last half-decade, seems the most sound and rational way to both arrest the control of the major parties by marginal factions and to address the increased anxieties and disruptions of domestic tranquility by the general belief that the two major parties represent coherent and monolithic factions that can claim true and unflinching majority support when they take control of the wheels of government.  Conclusion I started this podcast by referencing the Madisonian notions of counterpoise and auxiliary precautions whose purpose was to diffuse interests in order to keep any faction from growing large enough to dominate the country as a governing majority. I laid out four key ways in which this goal has been frustrated in modern politics: negative partisanship, national communities, the imperial presidency, and national parties.  My closing argument relates to my prescription of re-establishing factional divergences within the major political parties and how this path not only addresses the immediate concerns of our political moment, but can address the four problems I've laid out. The factional approach I propose would effectively address the problems associated with negative partisanship. By carving out philosophical space where people can engage based on their actual interests, it will help arrest the tendency of individuals to surrender their interests to their view of a national party in order to defeat the party they oppose more. Membership in such smaller factions would also embolden people to punish their own parties if their factions are ignored in the selection of candidates. Finally, it would be much more difficult for elected officeholders to claim overarching mandates as they are forced to recognize they owe their positions to coalitions of factions and not to overwhelming support from a supposed single majority faction. All of these developments would help lower the temperature and make negative partisanship far less likely among the electorate. Smaller and active factions would also limit the impact of national communities, especially of the online variety. Locally based factions within the parties would encourage people to step away from their computers and engage in political activism in their own neighborhoods and states, helping to re-establish interests that are more regionally and state-based. This would not only limit the effectiveness of factions that skip over local and state interests and make the conversation solely about the federal government, but it would also engender more conscientious political engagement since rhetoric tends to be more measured face to face than with the buffer of a computer screen. Most strikingly, re-establishing smaller factions within the political parties would absolutely shatter the illusion of national parties that reflect coherent and monolithic factions who can argue for representing a total majority of the country. With enough effort, Americans would begin to see through the partisan fog and recognize the major political parties for what they are: political institutions where coalitions work together to elect generally acceptable members of government. Parties are not themselves factions but loose confederations of local organizations who themselves are pressured by various factions pushing and pulling against each other to find compromise and consensus.  All of these things would have their impact upon the imperial presidency as well, though this is perhaps the factor of dysfunction that is the least likely to be impacted through the efforts I suggest on their own. The reality of the presidency is that serious adjustments to federal procedure are needed to re-establish the proper balance in the three branches of the federal government. This is a topic for another time. But there are still ways that small, active factions could help at least prod things in a better direction. First and foremost, members of Congress would see themselves less as extensions of a presidential agenda attached to a national party and more as representatives of the coalitional interests that put them in office. As well, the Presidents themselves would be less able to claim clear mandates for governance since their time would be spent negotiating with the various factions of their winning electoral coalition as much as it would be asserting their agenda. Finally, Americans could begin to see their president less as a figurehead representing the nation as a whole and more as chief broker and arbiter who helps sort out the various interests of the smaller factions and must see to the faithful execution of what legislation gains consensus and becomes law. In politics, there is never a silver bullet. But I do believe that if we can establish smaller factions that can operate within existing party structures and shatter the illusion of the parties as factions themselves, it will go a long way to lowering the temperature in the country and to finding paths towards better and more effective governance.  If I had the means and connections to act upon my suggestions, I would do so in a heartbeat. But all I can do is make an argument for my ideas and hope that enough hearts and minds are touched that maybe such efforts may take root, even if they only begin in a few key places ripe for such efforts. And that will do it for this episode. We'll see how long it takes before I'm able to pump another episode out. Until then, stay free my friends. Get full access to Self-Evident at selfevident.substack.com/subscribe

If there's one group Jonah has less patience for than post-liberal Catholic integralists, it's progressives who want to replace Madisonian democracy with a parliamentary system. On today's ranty Ruminant, he explores why America's system of government is exceptional, why the Electoral College should stand, and why the Germans don't always do it better. There's also a disquisition on historicism and relativism, obligatory kvetching about Democrats spending money they don't have, and an aside about conservative intellectuals turning their backs on light. Tune in for nerdy references to Leo Strauss, but stick around to see if Jonah can actually make it to the end without mentioning Woodrow Wilson. Show Notes: - Wednesday's “news”letter - Ben Sasse's rant at the Kavanaugh hearing - George W. Plunkitt, no relation to Harry S. Plinkett - Jonah defends the Electoral College - The Morning Dispatch breaks down Germany's election - Biden can't read the room - The Remnant with Mike Duncan - The Remnant with Scott Lincicome - Leo Strauss' critique of historicism - “Hello lamppost, whatcha knowin'?” - Hillbilly lunacy - Robert Kagan: “Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here” - The latest Dispatch Podcast  - Actually, it's the common good See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Public disenchantment with and distrust of American government is at an all-time high and who can blame them? In the face of widespread challenges--everything from record levels of personal and national debt and the sky high cost of education, to gun violence, racial discrimination, an immigration crisis, overpriced pharmaceuticals, and much more--the government seems paralyzed and unable to act, the most recent example being Covid-19. It's the deadliest pandemic in over a century. In addition to an unimaginable sick and death toll, it has left more than thirty million Americans unemployed. Despite this, Washington let the first round of supplemental unemployment benefits run out and for more than a month were unable to agree on a bill to help those suffering. Jeanne Sheehan's book American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government (Palgrave Macmillian, 2021) explains why we are in this situation, why the government is unable to respond to key challenges, and what we can do to right the ship. It requires that readers "upstream," stop blaming the individuals in office and instead look at the root cause of the problem. The real culprit is the system; it was designed to protect liberty and structured accordingly. As a result, however, it has left us with a government that is not responsive, largely unaccountable, and often ineffective. This is not an accident; it is by design. Changing the way our government operates requires rethinking its primary goal(s) and then restructuring to meet them. To this end, this book offers specific reform proposals to restructure the government and in the process make it more accountable, effective, and responsive. Jeanne Sheehan is a Carol S. Russett Award winning Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona College School of Arts & Science. She is also Bloomberg News Political Contributor and the author of several books and articles Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Jonathan Rauch. They speak about Jonathan's books Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought and The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, the Popperian influence within them both, where (and how) the message of Karl Popper remains resonant and important today for the societies we live in, how Popperian epistemology can and should be stretched into the social sciences and humanities, the problem of institutional arrangements and how Popper overlooked this aspect of knowledge creation, and importantly how we can build on this (through Madisonian epistemology) to create a more robust system of turning disagreement into truth – The Constitution of Knowledge.  Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, cancelling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order. *** The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth The Constitution of Knowledge : Jonathan Rauch : 9780815738862 (bookdepository.com) *** Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, Expanded Edition Kindly Inquisitors : Jonathan Rauch : 9780226145938 (bookdepository.com) Support via Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/jedleahenry Support via PayPal – https://www.paypal.me/jrleahenry Shop – https://shop.spreadshirt.com.au/JLH-shop/ Support via Bitcoin - 31wQMYixAJ7Tisp773cSvpUuzr2rmRhjaW Website – The Popperian Podcast — Jed Lea-Henry Libsyn – The Popperian Podcast (libsyn.com) Youtube – The Popperian Podcast - YouTube Twitter – https://twitter.com/jedleahenry RSS - https://popperian-podcast.libsyn.com/rss *** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa

Poll: https://www.strawpoll.me/45461578 Email me: ben@themadisonianpodcast.com Stay subscribed, turn podcast notifications on, stay updated.

Discussing self-evident truths and the tension of views that often leads to them with Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis.Welcome to the sixth episode of Self-Evident, a podcast about first principles, hosted on Substack along with the Self-Evident Newsletter. In this episode, I was pleased to host my first guest on the podcast, Josh Lewis of Saving Elephants fame. You can listen to the episode by clicking the play button above or listen on Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I have also included a transcript of the discussion below. You can also subscribe and get future episodes as well as the newsletter in your inbox:And, please, share this podcast episode, add any thoughts you might have in the comments section, and be sure to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter. Episode TranscriptMe: Hello folks, welcome to the Self-Evident podcast. Today's episode is going to be something a little different. For the first time ever, I'm going to have a guest on the podcast. My good friend Josh Lewis is here with us. He is the host of the Saving Elephants Podcast; he also writes on the Saving Elephants Blog, and he's also contributed to the Liberty Hawk from time to time. So, good to have you here, Josh. Josh Lewis: It's great to be here. Hey, I feel very honored. I'm the first-time guest on the podcast. Me: Well, you know I've been on your podcast what, three times? So, I felt like whenever I got around to deciding to have guests, you had to be the first guest. So, I'm pretty excited. Josh Lewis: We might call it two and a quarter since the third time you were on, you were on there with three others. Me: I guess that's true, that's true. I mean, if you want to bring it down to two and a quarter, then so be it. (laughter) Me: So, we're going to try something with my guests, and I'm going to use Josh as my Guinea pig here a little bit. My podcast's name is Self-Evident. Most people would recognize that as coming from the Declaration of Independence when it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” So, even though I talk a lot about the news of the day, I talk a lot about, you know, the political issues in the headlines, this podcast is ultimately about trying to get back to first principles and discovering what is self-evidently true about limited government and about the entire experiment of American governance. So, to start out this conversation, Josh. When you think about what self-evident means or what could be considered self-evident truths or even just what first principles might be, what's the first thing that comes to mind? Josh Lewis: First thing that comes to mind is exactly what you read, 'cause it's the most famous phrase perhaps in all of American literature, if you will, as we hold these truths to be self-evident. Now, that being said, it being the first thing that comes to mind, I am a chronic overthinker, and sometimes you know I think through this is like well is that self-evident 'cause there's a whole heck of a lot of people it doesn't seem to be self-evident, you know, in their world. Let me start off by saying this: I believe the statement is true, right? I absolutely believe we are created equal that we are endowed with certain rights. I think that the big three, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, is a good way to summarize it. Is it self-evident? When I think of self-evident, I think of something like 2 + 2 = 4 or the famous “I think therefore I am.” You know, it's hard for me to doubt my own existence because there has to be a non-doubting that they exist. And again, maybe I'm overthinking this, and if I am, please let me know, but I guess that's where I'm trying to bridge the gap of how much of these truths that we hold as Americans are truly self-evident or what allows us to base our purpose as a nation on these truths. Me: You know, and it's something that I've always wrestled with as well, 'cause I mean, my first love is history and then I kind of branched out from there and even though, you know, I agree with you, I totally agree with Jefferson's statement, but for these things being self-evident, it's kind of interesting that in a lot of ways, that moment in time was a radical departure from the norm in history. The idea that people have rights and that, you know, the government isn't just there to allow those who are in power to rule, you know? So, how do we reconcile that reality? Can these truths be self-evident if they haven't been the norm in human society? Or, was Jefferson and the founding generation rediscovering something that had been lost along the way? Josh Lewis: I think the question you just asked is what I would call conservatism. And I have no succinct answer to it. I really don't. And Justin, I think I'm not telling you anything you don't know here. I think between the two of us, you would be more Jeffersonian than I am. I think he was an incredible thinker, eloquent writer. I think he hit on some very valuable truths that's worth debating [and] discussing today. How do you reconcile that is hard. And, it's hard because I think sometimes the temptation from a classical liberal, say, framework, and I support classical liberalism, but I think sometimes the temptation is to try to say, well, this is something that's formulaic, right? This is something that is not only discernible and understandable to all people at all times, and it's completely reasonable, but it's something that we can document in a manner that's just from A-Z. We understand this thing completely. And I tend to be way more skeptical of that. Somehow, in the United States, I wouldn't necessarily say just through accident, but probably through a combination of accident and providential grace, we stumbled upon what Jefferson refers to as self-evident truths. This idea of equality. I don't mean that as the Left means it, of equal outcomes. But the idea that there's something about human nature that we are no greater or less than one another just by the raw material of what we are as humans, that from that we can derive all sorts of notions of duties and rights. And what is the purpose and the justice of a just society, of civil society? This is in my mind quite a group effort that really stretches over thousands of years in Western civilization, and I'm uncomfortable saying there's any one thinker or any one document that had it all right, but it was a very laborious, difficult trial by error that, to be honest with you, we still don't have completely right. We're still trying to figure out how to do this, and I think part of the problem is here, and this is a matter I suppose we would agree, we are a fallen creature. We're imperfectible, and we're trying to figure out how to fit the square peg in a round hole of how do we establish, you know, perfect justice, perfect truth on this Earth, and I don't know that we'll ever get there, but I think the struggle in that direction is what allows for these truths to be born out. Me: Not to segue too quickly away from the topic that we started with, but you mentioned, you know, I'm definitely more Jeffersonian. You, not quite as much. Which of the founders would you say you associate with the most? My guess would be Adams or Hamilton? Josh Lewis: (laughter) Yeah, yeah, you picked the big two I think I would throw in, I'm probably a trifecta: Adams, Hamilton, and Madison. I love Hamilton. Of the three, to be completely honest with you, If I put it on my purist conservative lens, Hamilton is probably the odd fit there. But he's just sort of dark enough and realistic enough that it kind of fits my kind of pessimistic nature at times, like sometimes you kind of need, you know, the wise guys in charge, sort of running the show. But you're right. It's more Adams and the Madisonian model I would look to. Me: Yeah, the HBO miniseries John Adams is one of my favorites, not only because it really does a good job of showing who Adams really was, but they did such a good job of finding actors to represent all of the different Founding Fathers in ways that I really, really enjoy. Josh Lewis: Yeah, and Adams, I think, was a terrible president. Me: Yeah. Josh Lewis: He did some good things and was an amazing thinker, and I think I've read somewhere he wrote more than all of the other founders maybe combined, or at least pretty close to it. Me: Well, I think Adams' problem as a president was he thought his job was to govern in deference to so many other forces, especially Congress. Josh Lewis: Uh-huh. Me: I think, I mean, especially the Alien and Sedition Acts comes to mind because he wrote many, many times that he felt like they were wrong. But he felt like it wasn't his place as President to veto a bill that was so supported by a majority of Congress. So, I think, if anything, Adams was part of the Presidency finding its place. Josh Lewis: Yeah, and I would go one step further and, again, I'm a huge fan of Adams, [but] I don't think he had the temperament to be president. I, you know, if you look at Washington or Jefferson, they had a sort of stately mannerism about them, whereas Adams kept, I'm blanking on the name, the Hamilton book. It will come to me in a second. Ron Chernow. There we go. The historian Ron Chernow that wrote the definitive biography of Hamilton in a lot of ways, refers to Adams as a man who has an encyclopedic memory for slights. I thought that was just hilarious that he could not hardly forget when someone had wronged him or harmed him in some way. Me: Well, I think you could almost say that most everything that Adams accomplished that was very good, he had Franklin whispering in his ear at some point, tempering down his short man syndrome. Josh Lewis: Well, Franklin was known for his eccentricities also. Me: (laughter) Oh yeah, yeah, just different kinds of eccentricity. Well, I guess back to the original question. I think there today are a lot of conservatives that view the founding as a genesis, that the Constitution, the Declaration, that's where all of the things that we believe in begin. And then they kind of look at politics as a scramble to try to get back to that near-perfect moment. But then you have on the other side of the equation, people on the Left who look at it as, you know, this murky beginning, the first amphibian crawling from the muck, and we have to build on it but looking back to it doesn't really, it's not really beneficial a whole lot. I think you probably agree with me that neither of those ways of looking at the founding is probably correct or healthy. So, what's your view? Where is the cross-section between those views? Josh Lewis: Yeah, I often say that conservatism is, well, conservatism is a lot of things, but one of the things that it is is the ability to hold ideas In tension. Not contradiction but in tension. And, I think both of those two views certainly have truth to it. And, I think if you hold either of those two views, you can look at the historical record and find, you know, let's take the first one, for instance. Conservatives, I think, will rightly say we need more limited government if we could just get back on the path of how the Founders had originally set this up. In terms of statecraft, say, in terms of this sort of notion of a citizen legislature that we're getting back to first principles, that we really took a wrong turn, you know, we could pick any moment history, but oftentimes conservatives will pick FDR, or maybe the neocons will say LBJ, where the feds were getting a little too involved in our lives. And that has brought some good things with it, federal intervention, but it also brought a lot of problems and complexities to our society. And so too, I would also agree with the progressive view that you can trace a sort of a barbarism, if you will, from most of human history, on up through the enlightenment period, on up through the United States. And there's a sense of progress. There's a sense of industrialization. There's a sense of the civilization, in effect Western, what we think of today. And I really think the truth is somewhere in between those two. I don't think humans truly progress in the same [way], that we're not actually made out of better stuff than, say, our ancestors, but that civilization itself does have a progressing influence, say, maybe working within generations. I don't know if I'm answering your question or not. Am I getting a little far afield of it? Me: Oh no, I guess the best way to ask the question is, right now, we kind of have a 1776 versus 1619 moment where the founding is almost held up by some conservatives as this penultimate moment in human history. I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with that because I do believe that the founders were wise men. I believe they were raised up by God for the purpose that they accomplished. But a lot of people who call themselves conservative don't have an understanding of their philosophical heritage beyond the founding. Josh Lewis: Right. Me: You and I have talked before about how, you know, you kind of trace your roots to Burke. I kind of trace my roots to Locke, but we find agreement in the founding moment and what came out of it. And then we can even go further back. I mean, a lot [of what we're] even talking [about], we're approaching upon themes that go all the way back to Plato. You know, what is a just society? And a lot of people on the right, right now, don't have that sense. They don't. And they've gotten so lost in the weeds. They don't even really understand what the underlying principles of the founding were in some cases. And so, we have this 1776 project which I believe could have had a lot of beneficial things, but because it was built by all these different voices and forces that don't really have that intellectual grounding, Biden and others were able to dismiss it, fairly easily. But then on the other hand of the coin you have this 1619 project that is essentially arguing that the original founding was when slaves were first brought to the country and that the 1776 founding was not as pure as some people would consider it to be, because they neither lived up to those principles before, during, or afterwards. And so, I guess people like me and you that don't agree with either of these dueling arguments necessarily, where do we find ourselves within that dynamic? How do we project what we believe and how do we, you know, assert that there are self-evident truths, what those self-evident truths are, and how do we champion them? Josh Lewis: There's a lot there.  Me: I know, there is.  Josh Lewis: I think the 1776 project, and I agree with the premise, but I think it suffers from the same problem that almost everything on the Right today suffers from, which is much of it is just reactionary. Which, weirdly, is the problem, I think, much of the Left suffers from, other than I disagree with much of the Left, is that it's also reactionary against whatever the Right's doing. You know, occasionally you read a book like Frank Meyer, for instance, who you, Justin, pointed me to and thank you for that. Me: No worries. Josh Lewis: Or Russell Kirk where they'll try to distill down, well, what are these core principles that you will recognize? There's a lot within the conservative world, that there's a lot of disagreement or tension held in there, but what exactly is the common themes that keep us together? And it occurs to me, one of the things that show up often is sort of a revere of the Founding Era and the Founding Fathers in those ideas. Now that can take on a lot of different flavors, and you're absolutely right. I think there's something very problematic, not only wrong but something very dangerous or problematic where if what we're doing is sort of, what is the phrase of Parks and Rec Ron, oh, good grief, my mind is blanking on who is the main character from Parks and Rec Ron... Me: Oh, Ron Swanson. Josh Lewis: Thank you. Me: OK. Josh Lewis: I don't know why I'm blanking on that. Me: No worries. Josh Lewis: Where that phrase he says, and you'll see this sometimes on memes on Twitter, “History began in 1776, everything before that was a mistake.” I think that's sort of how oftentimes bumper sticker conservatism presents itself these days, [is] this is the golden era we start with, where in reality I think if we just reflect about it for a moment, something had to happen before 1776 to even get us to that point. I mean, if you know just anything about the Founders, they were drawing on a wealth of Western civilization literature to get there, and quite frankly, drawing from people like Rousseau and some other Enlightenment thinkers, I was like, well, they mostly got stuff wrong, but they were able to benefit from even some of those wrong teaching sometimes. So, I think, and maybe this is kind of repeating what I was saying earlier, I think it's necessary to hold thing's in tension. 1619 is truth. Or, at least there's elements of truth to it, and I think we're very wrong, or it's very problematic if we start our view that 1776 is all there is to say about America and that we deny the fact there was anything wrong. Or maybe better put, oftentimes what they'll do is, we'll say, 1776 was kind of, in some metaphysical sense, perfect. And then we acknowledge the problem of slavery, but with something that happens afterwards rather than these things existed simultaneously. Now what I would say as a conservative, I think we need to be careful of is, while there is room to critique the Founding and while there is room in a certain sense to say improve upon that model, in reality, what conservatives are trying to do is saying these are timeless principles the Founders were elevating to the conversation. This is not sort of the starting point, and that from here, we develop new principles, or we come up with new values or new virtues that were previously undiscovered. Now that's not the same as saying things like abolishing slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation was a huge step forward for the country, but that wasn't a new principle. That was the application of an old principle that the Founders just failed to realize. And I think for me, oftentimes, that's what as a conservative it means to say the 1776 project is the more correct view, is that this is where we took a leap forward. This is where we happened upon, again, accidentally or providentially, possibly a combination of the two, what I would say are still today not only true principles, but are no less true today than they were in 1776, and they will be no less true hundreds of years from now. And that what we as Americans can do is to continue to try to build upon those principles. Me: OK, now, I'm going to ask a loaded question because I know you're more on one side of the coin, and I'm more than on the other. Are self-evident truths more to be found in prescription or reason? Josh Lewis: (laughs) Prescription, but again it's a tension, right? It has to be a little of each. You know, it's interesting these days because I think sometimes there's a certain quarter of the Right, the name that's coming to mind is Ben Shapiro. You know, he's famous for his catchphrase, “Facts don't care about your feelings.” And the Left does this too. I mean, they practically worship science sometimes, in the way they speak, but there's almost this competition between the Left and the Right that, “We have the facts, you guys are the ones who are mistaken, we're the reasonable people, right? We're the ones who lead by reason, by facts, by science. Not just a squishy sort of internal stick your finger in the wind. Here is where we want things to go.” Me: Uh-huh. Josh Lewis: What's weird is if you go back to the enlightenment period, it was really, you know, the old, the Burkean model, say, was not anti-reason. Now from a certain lens, I think you can read Burke as if he's almost anti-reason. He was certainly very skeptical of our ability to apply reason. What he was was very, I say, he was very cautious about how far does reason get us. And prescription, which is really a really hard concept for me to define. I've never found, like, a succinct way of saying this, but it's almost a more, say, evolutionary process. I don't mean that in the secular Darwinian sense necessarily, but sort of Burke wanted to craft a scenario where, via the stream of virtue, say, that we hold to these principles and that we allow for the trust that providentially we can stumble upon the truth. But that if we try to do it from a purely rational framework that it is, in a sense, denying our fallibility as humans. Now, neither of these are completely true, right? In a completely exhaustive sense, I would not say that reason has no place. It absolutely has a place. I mean, why would the good Lord endow us with reason if he doesn't intend for us to use it to, you know, to butcher a familiar quote. But I guess if I'm having to hold these things in tension, I would come out more on the side of prescription.  Me: Oh, and I, and even though we're on different sides of the coin, we're not very far from each other because we both agree on that principle of tension. Josh Lewis: We share the same coin. Some people want to throw the whole coin away. Me: Right, exactly. In fact, I've long talked about how one of the big differences between the American Revolution and the French Revolution was, even though the American founding created something new, they did so based on solid foundations found throughout history, from the Greeks from the Romans from all the different Enlightenment thinkers, and they actually built a lot on English common law, even though they were leaving England. Whereas the French Revolution, they kind of tried to do something entirely new without taking into consideration the realities of human nature, and it didn't turn out...as good as it could have, we'll say that much. Josh Lewis: I was gonna add to it, my hesitancy with, say, reason, with the other side of the coin, while I am very much pro-reason and I think that it's right, is sometimes the Left can take reason and run with it. Because the danger you can have with reason is you can assume that reason gets you as far as you need to, and therefore you can chuck everything behind that's come before you. In other words, you step outside this notion that we're fallible humans. Sometimes what the Left will do is they actually elevate those who are younger and less experienced because they're not tainted by the traditions of our broken, terrible, awful culture that we're just all trying to get out of. Now, I know you well enough just to know you don't subscribe to that idea at all. I'm not in any way accusing you of that. What I'm suggesting is that this is where I hold that kind of tension, as I recognize that while it is truthful that going too far down that road can play into sort of a Leftist framework. Me: Yeah, and we actually have talked about this before about how certain segments of libertarianism have so thoroughly abandoned the mooring notions of tradition that they've actually morphed to the Left, even though they might not realize it. Josh Lewis: Yeah. Me: And, I think that, you know, we've talked a lot about how one of the difficulties of the Republican Party, of the conservative movement, is that after the Soviet Union fell, anti-communism was no longer holding together these two notions in tension and that a lot of libertarians and a lot of more traditionalist type conservatives have gone their own separate ways. And now, they're no longer holding each other together in healthy ways. Josh Lewis: Yeah. Me: So, I think it's important for people like me, people like you to demonstrate, you know, hey, we might have different flavors to how we think, you might lean different ways, but we're in this project together, and it needs to be more that way. You know that I'm a huge advocate of fusionism, so... Josh Lewis: Yeah. Me: So, I guess going back to our discussion of, you know, self-evident truths [and] what they are, do you see Burke as kind of your genesis of political philosophy? Do you go beyond Burke, further back? Do you recognize that there's more there, but you just haven't delved into it? What's, kind of, your thoughts there? Josh Lewis: That one. (laughing) Yeah, I haven't exactly read everything Plato's written, hardly anything. I would, you know, I have strayed away from using the phrase, I used to say this all the time, that Burke was the “father of modern conservatism.”  Usually, when we say modern, we think of 1950s onward, I actually mean the last several centuries. Yuval Levin, he has more conservative intellectual know-how in his little finger than I do in my entire body. He straight up says that Burke is not the father of conservatism, that Burke would actually object to this phrase, and I think that it's probably a more healthy way to look at it, that this is something that these are truths that Burke did not develop. All he was doing was articulating something that was already there. Now, I personally often will call myself, say, a Burkean-Kirkian conservative. Russell Kirk, being because that's sort of the American variety, say of this. While I'll still acknowledge, I think that conservatism is incomplete with just those two individuals. What I often mean by that is that Edmund Burke, for me, articulated and wrote down these principles and pulled together these truths of the past in a way that, prior to [him], say, you couldn't get just in one individual. And I don't mean that the truth is contained within Burke, say, but he did so better than anyone else I know of who came before him. And so that's kind of what I mean by Burke would be my founder, in a sense. I certainly hope that the more I delve into this, the broader I can...I'm actually currently reading through a lot of Leo Strauss's works, though sometimes he was critical of Burke. It's difficult, Strauss was German, and Burke was English, so I kind of made a joke: It's like the difference between reading Dietrich Bonhoffer [and] CS Lewis. You know, Lewis, with Lewis and Burke, you feel like you're in a [room] smoking a cigar and in front of a warm fire in [the] English countryside. With Bon Hoffer and Strauss, it's very German. It's exhausting. It's very matter of fact. But in reading him and reading Strauss, it's like this is a, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to capture this or not, but this is a completely different stream of thought that in some way feeds into the same river that we're all kind of swimming in, and that's, and I'm not, I am a Burkean, you know, I'm not Straussian. But I hold my Straussian brothers, say, in very high regard. I, you know, when it's in a certain sense, I would say Lockean classical liberalism could be viewed as part of the same stream, and so, just, it's hard to describe these things 'cause they're in tension. And it is kind of our starting point where we put a stake in the ground, say, you know, I don't have the ability to comprehend all of reality, but here is something, some text, some individual, some founder that I can recognize that helps me navigate this thing so that I can swim in this greater ocean. Me: You know, I agree, actually. Right now, I am taking a political philosophy class, and I'm having to read through Plato's Republic. Very difficult considering it was translated from Greek and it's thousands of years old. And there's a lot of things within Plato's Republic that initially, I recoil at. I'm like, whoa, you know, some people even argue that Plato gave philosophical permission thousands of years later for totalitarianism, for even communism, and things like that, but my professor kind of said something that put things a little more in context for me. He, and it kind of is related to your idea of a river and things flowing into that river. He said, you know, if you look at history as a string movement, or, you know, as a symphony, and at different periods of history, there are going to be crescendos that help guide the movement. Because people are connected to their times, not everything that they say is going to be 100% of value, but they help nudge us in a better direction. And he said Plato was a good place to start because he was essentially the earliest political philosopher and his whole goal was to...how do we create a just society? What is justice? How do we find that? And then the people that followed him took up that question. And I guess as I look at all of this and as I've learned more about this, I'm growing concerned that there are certain efforts, temporary efforts that look back at these things that we might call crescendos, and instead of taking what is of value from those moments, they want to discredit those moments entirely because of the negative things that accompanied it. And I guess that's my big problem with the tension between the 1776 project and the 1619 project is, it takes this great injustice, slavery, something that has existed from the foundations of humanity, something that was written about in our earliest documents in history as, “well this is normal, this has been around for a while.” And then they try to discredit something that was new and tried to make things better and ultimately allowed for us to move beyond slavery, you know. And so, they're essentially saying, oh, slavery discredits the American Founding, 1619 is the real founding in these things. And to me, it's like, well, how do we proceed forward in trying to find justice, trying to find freedom, trying to find the best way to govern a society, if we can no longer look backwards and find what's good because it's all discredited by what we consider as discrediting and terrible and bad? Josh Lewis: Yeah, and so much of what you're saying, it touches on, say, I'll invoke his name again, a Burkean model, say, of change, right? It's, what is the value of the past? Is it something we build upon? Is it all wrong? Like, how do we progress as a species? And I think there's a certain faith, say, and I mean that in a very literal sense, a certain faith, on a progressive path or a Leftist notion of reality that humanity is always advancing, and that therefore we're actually furthering that process the more we can, even if it's in a civil sense, deconstruct what came before us. Whereas a conservative has a very, very different view of that. It's not whitewashing the past, it's not even, you know, I'll even go further than that [with the] 1619 project. Because, what you said is absolutely true, and it is a common critique, say of the Right toward the Left, in the United States anyways, to point out rightly that slavery existed, and every civilization that we know of and every period of time that we know of, really the only question was whether or not one civilization or nation or people were stronger than the other. And that, it's incomplete to just tell the story that this happens in the United States because the real story is it was Western civilization, largely the Anglophile, the English-speaking people that eliminated this horrible blight on humanity. And that is true. But there are also other things that are true about it, which is there are different versions and flavors and severity of slavery. I'm not saying that some slavery is OK and others [aren't], but I do think it's also incumbent upon us to recognize that sometimes things are more evil or barbaric, that in the United States, in particular, we have, more so than other parts of the world and other times, slavery can be a problem between races, right? White versus black to the point that in the South there was that slavery was equipped and fueled by this idea of racism, but there's actually something superior about those of us who are white versus those who are black. There's a difference in the sort of barbarism and tasks that come with slavery pre or post cotton gin. You know, or when slaves were allowed to be brought to the continent versus when the, fortunately, the founders at least had the foresight, say, well, let's at least stop any more from coming here and have the very wrong idea that eventually this will just go away, right? Eventually, we're going to kind of evolve our way out of this, and unfortunately [they] couldn't foresee inventions like Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, which just kept it going. Anyway, the point being, I think there's a temptation on both sides. One is to paint the picture as all dark, all black in the past, and that we're constantly progressing forward, but the other is too literally white-wash, and I realize I'm using terms like black and white-wash, I don't mean that in a racial sense, to make the past look better than it actually was, and to kind of swallow it up in this “all people have done wrong things at all times and hey, look at us. We actually got this one right.” And that is true and worth celebrating. But I think it's also true that there's a particular uniquely American ugliness to slavery that it's hard to see how we progress beyond this if we're unwilling to acknowledge that, and I think sometimes it's honestly a conversation the Right is very uncomfortable having. Me: Yeah. I mean, in fact, I've actually had interesting conversations in the past about whether eliminating the slave trade without eliminating slavery possibly compounded the problem because, now it made slaves a greater commodity, and the South had to create a rationalization for allowing generational slavery. And it allowed it to be more connected into race and a lower sense of humanity. You know, 'cause if you go before the Revolutionary War, you know, you go into the traditions of slavery in Roman and Greek society, and a slave was just a certain level of class that you could rise from. You know, and that is one of the problems in America is that we made it generational. We made it so that you cannot rise from this. And the effects of that have lingered to the present day. And, of course, you know, then there's the whole discussion of, OK, how do we bring things back into balance without pushing it out of balance further the other way? Josh Lewis: Well, and it's interesting you say that because I think, you and I, if we were setting in a, say, coffee shop in 1776, we're having this conversation, right, and we've just declared independence with Great Britain. Or, maybe afterwards, we've won the war. We're trying to figure [this] out. We don't hold any political power, but we're having this conversation [about] where should we go from here? And we both acknowledge that slavery is wrong. It would also seem like a radical opinion to suggest a course that we now know killed 600,000 Americans to eventually put this back together, and that is not in any way to say slavery was OK or that we ought not to with an equal breath of revering the Founders, hold some of those responsible who were unwilling to take a stronger stance in trying to abolish slavery. But I think that's part of the problem, is when you have a distorted view of history, either from making things look too good or too bad, it makes it difficult to truly appreciate what were the actual facts on the ground. What were they trying to do? Because I think you can see a lot of instances in which even the Founders that held slaves were trying to find ways to set it up so that eventually this could eventually just fade. They didn't want hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, which, sadly, is what it ultimately took. They just wanted this to sort of peaceably, eventually, kind of make its way out. And I'm sure there were some Founders that would have been fine it for the rest of their lives, you know, slavery existed just as it did. But I think that's kind of where it's a complicated story, and I think we try to simplify it to our peril. Me: Yeah, wrestling with difficult facts is difficult. Josh Lewis: Yeah. Me: I've often posed the question, and there's not an easy answer: Could the North have beat the South pre-Industrial Revolution? Josh Lewis: Well, that is interesting, 'cause in the election of 1800, there was actually some talk in the North of seceding from the Union, which is weirdly hilarious when you think about our history. It might have been an interesting question, could the South have kept the North in? ' Me: ‘Cause, I mean, you know, if more Founders had put their foot down on the slave issue and forced the conflict to a head. How could that have turned out? I mean, there's no easy [answer] to that, but it's an interesting thing to think about. In a lot of ways, by the time we got around to Abraham Lincoln, by the time we got to that point in American history, the North had progressed so much more than the South, and it allowed us to have that outcome, and who knows if that outcome would have been as beneficial moving forward if that conflict had begun at any point in history before that. I don't know.  Josh Lewis: It is an interesting question. I mean, the traditional response that's given as to why, say, the Constitution is written the way it is, why it contains some overt, very offensive racist ideas within it is because that is what was necessary, or at least believed to be necessary, in order to form the Union. Is that true? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's enough constitutional historians out there who could probably definitively answer that question. But it's an interesting thought experiment. What would have transpired had the Union never formed? Would we have had two separate countries? And if so, does that mean slavery ultimately was never going to be abolished in the South? None of this, of course, answers the question [of] whether or not what those individuals did was right. It's just, it's interesting to think. It's amazing how difficult it actually was to rid the world of something that, in reality slavery still exists, just not like it once did, but to rid the world of something that today, it's just...you would be hard-pressed to find someone who thought that was OK, that there was a time we actually enslaved people in this country. That's just such a revolting, abhorrent thought to us. And yet, how much it cost in blood and treasure to get to the point we are today. Me: Yeah. So, I guess my final question that we can discuss a little bit before wrapping things up, going back to the tension between the 1776 and the 1619 ideas: [are] the truths, is the path forward to be found in finding the tension between 1776 and 1619 or is it to be found just in understanding 1776 as it actually happened? You know, for better or worse, the Founders had to choose their priorities, you know, and they don't come out and address it within the musical, Hamilton, but it's there because Hamilton is close friends with an avowed abolitionist, and he seems to be an ally of abolition for a good portion of the play, but then, the musical, sorry, gotta be correct, it's a musical, not a play, but then near the end, you know, I can't remember at what point off the top of my head, but someone tries to remind Hamilton of that, of his support of that abolitionist who died and wasn't able to see his vision [come true] and Hamilton kind of just brushes it aside and says, we have other things to focus on right now, you know? So, I guess that's my question is, is the path forward finding a place where both the 1619 project and the idea of the 1776 project should be allowed to, you know, go and then find the tension between those two different things, or is it just more about properly understanding what happened in 1776, what happened in 1787, you know, what happened in the founding period? Josh Lewis: Well, and again, I'd say it's maybe a little of both. You know what I was saying earlier is, as a conservative, I would say that 1776, the value of that is that is we stumbled upon or providentially were provided some principles that we can still uphold to this day. Principles that ultimately allowed us to, you know, got us to the point of the Emancipation Proclamation. I think the value of 1619 is more an awareness of the darkness of our past. I don't think that these things are held in tension in the sense that there, somehow in between them, is the correct course of action. And part of which, I'm being a little hesitant, because part of what you're getting at is, or at least what I'm hearing, is kind of this notion of prudence and trade-off. And, this is again, a conservative, not necessarily a progressive vision, and that, I think it was Thomas Sowell that said, “The Left looks for solutions, the Right looks for trade-offs.” Now from a certain perspective, neither of those are right or wrong positions. They're just different. But I think there is missing in this era this kind of, the wisdom and the courage that is necessary to understand the moment we're in and where to go from there. And in giving you such a highbrow answer, such a pie in the sky answer, I know that I'm not being very specific. Although granted, this question wasn't extremely specific either, but I think this is something that you know harkening back to Burke, and this isn't a direct quote, but just sort of a combination of some things that are written was kind of this notion that what was needed in their moment. You think about that Burke was around this era, right? Around the American Revolution, the French Revolution. In a certain degree, these were new revolutionary moments, and I think most statesmen recognized, here is something that has never happened before. And I think, and I'm not trying to elevate the moment we live in, but I think you'll know what I mean when I say there's a certain sense in the air that we're in this ground shifting moment. Not the same as the American Revolution, say, but the sort of post-World War Two, post-Cold War, maybe post-fusionism moment of where do we go from here. And history is extremely valuable, but unfortunately, it's also extremely limited because we're not going to be able to find in the pages of history the solution for our exact moment. We might get partway there. What's really needed is prudence and wisdom. And the unfortunate understanding that we're going to get this wrong. Not all the time, not exhaustively, but we're not going to have the correct answer all the time, just as those Founders didn't know how do we actually abolish slavery, those who wanted to. And I'm not saying Hamilton was justifiable, say, in sort of saying it's not that big a deal, but you have to pick your priorities, and you have to recognize that in so doing, there are tradeoffs, and they can be very painful sometimes. Me: Yeah. I would add that a big part of moving forward is having the difficult conversations, breaching the difficult topics the way that we have done today. And you're right. Sometimes these discussions can be painful. Both me and you look at the founding generation, you know, as great wise men, we have put them on the pedestal and arguably, you know, for good reason. But it's important to recognize their humanity, to grapple with their difficult decisions, and possibly to discuss when we might need to make small corrections. You know, you look at the founding generation. They were making corrections to the Constitution within 10 or 20 years because they were trying to improve upon what they had created. But I think it's important to do that within the vision of what the overall goal is. Did you have any final points or anything you'd like to talk about here at the end of this wonderful, wonderful episode? Josh Lewis: I have never known how to answer that question, to be honest. So not necessarily, not necessarily. I'll just say again, I am thrilled and very honored I would be your first guest on the show, and I hope it was a good experience for you such that you will have other guests on. Me: Perfect, well, hopefully, we'll have you again. You know, before too much longer because I've always really liked our conversations. I think that the tension of our viewpoints really leads to excellent places. Get full access to Self-Evident at selfevident.substack.com/subscribe

Stu Levitan welcomes former Madison journalist Bill Christofferson, author of The Man From Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson, himself a former Madisonian, from our friends at the University of Wisconsin Press, still located right here in Madison. As to Gaylord Nelson – Tom Brokaw calls him “one of the great public servants” of the post-war era. His Senate colleague George McGovern calls him “a magnificent man.” Former VP Al Gore says his story is “an inspiration.” Even Ralph Nader calls him “one of the great can-do senators of his time.” And those are just the folks who wrote endorsement blurbs for this book. Pretty much everybody who worked with him or for him, or covered him, agrees. Conservation, the environment, peace, social justice, consumer protection – pick just about any important issue, and Gaylord Nelson made things better. And he did so with honor and humility and humor And as to Bill Christofferson – well, he's a pretty fine fellow, too. He's a Marine Corps veteran, served 17 months in Vietnam as a combat correspondent … which is why he's a long-time active member of the Milwaukee chapter of Veterans for Peace. After Vietnam, he was a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois before coming to Madison in 1973 to cover the legislature and politics for the Wisconsin State Journal. He also became president of the State Journal Union so when the strike came in 1977, he became a reporter and editor of the strike newspaper, the Madison Press Connection. Which is when we went from being competitors to being colleagues, which I much preferred. After the strike, he spent four years as the director of Nukewatch, educating the public on nuclear weapons and nuclear power and helping to pass a statewide nuclear freeze referendum. He is also a past chair of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, a statewide coalition of 165 organizations working for social justice. As a political consultant and aide, his clients have included Ed Garvey, Tom Loftus, Senator Herb Kohl, Governor Jim Doyle, Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, and Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist. It is a pleasure to welcome to Madison BookBeat, my friend and former colleague, Bill Christofferson.

In this episode, we discuss a Noam Chomsky lecture about Madisonian Democracy. We discuss positive rights, property rights, and democracy. It's a fun one with a lot of the discussion you'd expect from us!

On January 6, 2021, rioters supporting United States President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election stormed the United States Capitol. After breaching multiple police perimeters, they damaged, ransacked, and occupied parts of the building for several hours. The storming led to the evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol building, and it disrupted a joint session of Congress assembled to count the electoral votes and formalize Joe Biden's election victory for President. The rioters gathered in support of Trump's false claims that the 2020 election had been "stolen" from him. Summoned by Trump, thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 5 and 6 to demand that Vice President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden's victory. On the morning of January 6, protesters assembled near the White House for a "Save America" rally. At the rally, Trump himself, Donald Trump Jr. and Rudy Giuliani among others, addressed the crowd. Trump encouraged his supporters to "fight like hell" to "take back our country" and to proceed to the US Capitol. The speaker will provide history and context to the hostilities and siege at the US Capitol, while speculating on the broader near and long term effects on US politics, political institutions and indeed, democracy. Speakers: Dr. John von Heyking Dr. von Heyking has been at the University of Lethbridge since 2000. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, an MA and a BA in Political Science from the University of Calgary. John specializes in political theory. He is author of Comprehensive Judgment and Absolute Selflessness: Winston Churchill on Politics as Friendship (2018), The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship (2016), and Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World (2001). He has coedited numerous volumes including two volumes of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin and, most recently, Wherefrom Does History Emerge?: Inquiries in Political Cosmogony (2020). Date and time: Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 10am MST YouTube Live link: https://youtu.be/Y_Ld_QLUAIo In order to ask questions of our speaker in the chat feature of YouTube, you must have a YouTube account and be signed in. Please do so well ahead of the scheduled start time, so you'll be ready. Go the YouTube Live link provided in this session flyer and on the top right of your browser click the “sign in” button. If you have Google or Gmail accounts, they can be used to sign in. If you don't, click “Create Account” and follow along. Once you are signed in, you can return to the live stream and use the chat feature to ask your questions of the speaker. Remember you can only participate in the chat feature while we are livestreaming. Link to SACPA's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFUQ5mUHv1gfmMFVr8d9dNA

As The Remnant kicks back into gear, we figured it would be best to let Jonah make his trek back to D.C. and instead treat you to a secret artifact from a few days after the election. This is a conversation between Jonah and AEI emeritus scholar Charles Murray on the state of libertarianism and liberalism (both of the “small-l” variants) in the aftermath of November 2020. Murray explains why he’s pessimistic, while he and Jonah also extol the virtues of a Madisonian system, and upon reflection, they both relish in being on the right side of the debate that character is indeed destiny in the political realm: “The idea that the United States can continue to be … exceptional without character being a leading principle is ridiculous—it can’t happen.”   Show Notes: -Fusionism -John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” -Eric Voegelin on how lapses into fanaticism occur -Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 -Misreading Adam Smith -Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Madison’s Federalist 10 makes an unusual case. He argued the size and diversity of the United States is a critical safeguard against the dominance of any single faction. Of course, it is well-known that the Founding Fathers were wary of all factions, political parties and, most of all, the tyranny of the majority. The American constitution is even described as counter majoritarian, because multiple avenues exist for entrenched minorities to prevail in the legislative process. But Madison was different. While he is credited as the father of the constitution, he was among the most majoritarian of all the founding fathers.Still Madison was wary of strong, overwhelming majorities. He saw regional diversity as a check against majoritarianism. The size and diversity of the new nation meant any meaningful majority would be the result of significant compromise and deliberation.Unfortunately, the two-party system, as it exists today, has undermined the Madisonian vision in Federalist 10. The two political parties fight for overwhelming majorities, but the inability of either party to prevail causes gridlock rather than compromise. Necessary reforms are stalled or delayed as they become rallying cries in a never-ending campaign cycle. This was never Madison’s intention.Lee Drutman offers a solution to transform American democracy. His book Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America argues for proportional representation of the legislature and ranked-choice voting for the Presidency. But his intention is not about any one reform. Instead, his goal is to produce a multiparty democracy where no single party commands an absolute majority.You may recognize Lee Drutman from articles he has written in The New York Times, Vox, and Five Thirty-Eight. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Political Reform Program at New America and a cohost of the podcast Politics in Question alongside Julia Azari and James Wallner.The idea of multiparty democracy in the United States can seem radical, but like most reformers Drutman is a traditionalist at heart. He finds his inspiration in Madison’s vision of the American political system. Rather than designing something novel, Lee believes his reforms bring America closer to the original aims of the Founding Fathers. The United States has grown in its size and diversity. Nonetheless, the two political parties have reduced politics to a single dimension. Ultimately, Lee believes a more diverse party system is necessary to represent a diverse population. It’s a Madisonian case for the challenges of polarization and partisanship.Related ContentWilliam G. Howell and Terry M. Moe on the PresidencyDonald F. Kettl on FederalismThoughts on Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman's Four Threats

During the ratifying debates, Alexander Hamilton was every bit as Madisonian as James Madison. He sold the Constitution as a document that gave the federal government only a few limited powers. But once it was ratified, he did a complete 180, and his views - more than any other founder - are the foundation for the largest government in the history of the world today. The post Should Alexander Hamilton be Canceled? first appeared on Tenth Amendment Center Blog.

Barry Levenson is an amazing Madisonian who started as a massive Red Sox fan growing up in Boston. After a career in law he took a leap of faith to make his mustard collection into the world wide known National Mustard Museum. Listen to hear his journey through a career in law to mustard. Mustard Museum website: mustardmuseum.com Our Website: themadisonianpodcast.com Merchandise: teespring.com/stores/themadisonianpodcast Patreon: patreon.com/themadisonianpodcast Music Credits: Voices by ASHUTOSH | https://soundcloud.com/grandakt Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture—during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement—but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.  Arguing that the contemporary Republican Party is waging a counterrevolution against the core beliefs of the nation, journalist and scholar Kevin C. O'Leary cracks open American history to reveal the essence of America's liberal heritage by critiquing the reactionary illiberal currents that periodically threaten American democracy. American politics is no longer an ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives because the new Republican Party embraces the feudal values of the Old World. While there are millions of conservatives in the population, the elected leadership of the GOP is deeply reactionary.  Today's marriage of white-identity Southerners and their northern allies to moneyed libertarians is no run-of-the-mill political partnership. Instead, it is extraordinarily dangerous. Clearly, conservatives have lost their party. And without conservatives debating liberals in an intellectual, respectful manner to address the nation's problems, Madisonian democracy breaks down.  A stimulating reinterpretation of the American experience, Madison's Sorrow: Today's War on the Founders and America's Liberal Ideal (Pegasus Books) exposes the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the illiberal right while offering a robust defense of the liberal tradition. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture—during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement—but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.  Arguing that the contemporary Republican Party is waging a counterrevolution against the core beliefs of the nation, journalist and scholar Kevin C. O’Leary cracks open American history to reveal the essence of America’s liberal heritage by critiquing the reactionary illiberal currents that periodically threaten American democracy. American politics is no longer an ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives because the new Republican Party embraces the feudal values of the Old World. While there are millions of conservatives in the population, the elected leadership of the GOP is deeply reactionary.  Today’s marriage of white-identity Southerners and their northern allies to moneyed libertarians is no run-of-the-mill political partnership. Instead, it is extraordinarily dangerous. Clearly, conservatives have lost their party. And without conservatives debating liberals in an intellectual, respectful manner to address the nation’s problems, Madisonian democracy breaks down.  A stimulating reinterpretation of the American experience, Madison’s Sorrow: Today's War on the Founders and America's Liberal Ideal (Pegasus Books) exposes the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the illiberal right while offering a robust defense of the liberal tradition. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture—during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement—but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.  Arguing that the contemporary Republican Party is waging a counterrevolution against the core beliefs of the nation, journalist and scholar Kevin C. O’Leary cracks open American history to reveal the essence of America’s liberal heritage by critiquing the reactionary illiberal currents that periodically threaten American democracy. American politics is no longer an ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives because the new Republican Party embraces the feudal values of the Old World. While there are millions of conservatives in the population, the elected leadership of the GOP is deeply reactionary.  Today’s marriage of white-identity Southerners and their northern allies to moneyed libertarians is no run-of-the-mill political partnership. Instead, it is extraordinarily dangerous. Clearly, conservatives have lost their party. And without conservatives debating liberals in an intellectual, respectful manner to address the nation’s problems, Madisonian democracy breaks down.  A stimulating reinterpretation of the American experience, Madison’s Sorrow: Today's War on the Founders and America's Liberal Ideal (Pegasus Books) exposes the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the illiberal right while offering a robust defense of the liberal tradition. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of America is the struggle between our liberal ideal and illiberal resistance. Donald Trump catalyzed a reactionary revolution by tapping into the dark, shadowy side of American democracy that embraces exclusion and inequality. Throughout American history these alarming impulses have come to the forefront of our culture—during the Civil War, the era of the Robber Barons, and the Civil Rights Movement—but have now come to fruition in the presidency of Donald Trump.  Arguing that the contemporary Republican Party is waging a counterrevolution against the core beliefs of the nation, journalist and scholar Kevin C. O’Leary cracks open American history to reveal the essence of America’s liberal heritage by critiquing the reactionary illiberal currents that periodically threaten American democracy. American politics is no longer an ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives because the new Republican Party embraces the feudal values of the Old World. While there are millions of conservatives in the population, the elected leadership of the GOP is deeply reactionary.  Today’s marriage of white-identity Southerners and their northern allies to moneyed libertarians is no run-of-the-mill political partnership. Instead, it is extraordinarily dangerous. Clearly, conservatives have lost their party. And without conservatives debating liberals in an intellectual, respectful manner to address the nation’s problems, Madisonian democracy breaks down.  A stimulating reinterpretation of the American experience, Madison’s Sorrow: Today's War on the Founders and America's Liberal Ideal (Pegasus Books) exposes the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the illiberal right while offering a robust defense of the liberal tradition. Kirk Meighoo is a TV and podcast host, former university lecturer, author and former Senator in Trinidad and Tobago. He hosts his own podcast, Independent Thought & Freedom, where he interviews some of the most interesting people from around the world who are shaking up politics, economics, society and ideas. You can find it in the iTunes Store or any of your favorite podcast providers. You can also subscribe to his YouTube channel. If you are an academic who wants to get heard nationally, please check out his free training at becomeapublicintellectual.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dean Dayalu has lead a life filled with learned experience of religion, philosophy and phycology. He traveled to india and discovered his fate as a Vedic Astrologer and yoga practitioner. Early studies in yoga and depression as well as many other experiences has lead him to be the wise, intelligent, and incredible Madisonian he is. Merchandise: teespring.com/stores/themadisonianpodcast Patreon: patreon.com/themadisonianpodcast Music Credits: Voices by ASHUTOSH | https://soundcloud.com/grandakt Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Hardly anyone disagrees Americans are divided, or that our divisions are problematic.  But could continual political partisanship and polarization actually fracture the United States into multiple nations?  What is the likely outcome or potential risks if we do not find a way to reverse the negative polarization?  What are the preconditions for state secessions, and how close are we to meeting those preconditions?  Is the United States facing another civil war, acrimonious divorce, or eventual reconciliation?   Those are precisely the questions David French sets out to answer in his new book Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.  David joins Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis to discuss the threats political polarization represent for the United States, what our history can tell us about the likelihood of these dangers, and how returning to the Madisonian blueprint of the extended republic may offer the solutions to many of the controversial political battles today.   David French is an Iraqi war veteran, attorney, free speech and religious liberties advocate, political commentator, and author who has been at the center of some of the hottest political battles over the past four years.  His name was used to coin the term Frenchism to describe a deference to classical liberalism and opposition to the new nationalism and authoritarianism on the Right (see the Saving Elephants article on Frenchism for more information).   French has served as a senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defending Freedom, has lectured at Cornell Law School, and spent much of his career working on religious-rights issues.  He served as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).  He retired from FIRE in 2005, citing plans to serve in the United States Army Reserve as a judge advocate general officer.  He was a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019, and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.  In 2019 French left National Review to join the conservative news site The Dispatch as a senior editor.  

Odessa Piper is an incredible nationwide known Madisonian who is best known for founding L'etoile here in Madison. She owned and ran the establishment for almost 30 years! Listen to her story on how she hitchhiked to Madison with a goal set in her mind! Support L'etoile: letoile-restaurant.com Support us: teespring.com/stores/themadisonianpodcast Music Credits: Voices by ASHUTOSH | https://soundcloud.com/grandakt Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich's success with such tactics paved the way for Trump's rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich's ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party's approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich's famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright's ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer's deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly everyone in the United States is aware of the fiery rhetoric and divisive political stratagems of Donald Trump and the contemporary Republican party. What many people forget, however, is that Trump is not the first Republican to rise to power by pushing incendiary policies and destroying opponents. Julian E. Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University, traces many of these tactics back to Newt Gingrich, the former representative from Georgia and Speaker of the House of Representatives. Zelizer argues that Gingrich’s success with such tactics paved the way for Trump’s rise and his path to power. Burning Down the House examines Gingrich’s ascent within the Republican Party and to the Speakership, and the long-lasting effects of this approach to partisan politics. Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party(Penguin, 2020) follows Gingrich through his controversial political career in the House of Representatives. Originally, he was dismissed by many within the Republican establishment as an angry newcomer who would, with time, mellow. Many of the party elites never suspected that he would transform their party’s approach to politics. His first conquest as a junior member of the House was a takedown of long-standing congressman, Charles Diggs, whose expulsion he called for over alleged ethics violations in the House of Representatives. Gingrich pushed hard for Diggs to be punished, and Diggs was officially censured in 1979. This bold success brought Gingrich attention within the Republican Party, and he continued to hammer away at the Democratic majority with personal accusations and media manipulation that catapulted into the national spotlight. These methods would lead to Gingrich’s famous showdown with the Democratic Speaker of the House, Jim Wright, and Wright’s ultimate resignation from his seat, representing the 12th congressional district in Texas, and the speakership. Zelizer’s deep dive into this historical event highlights how Newt Gingrich fundamentally changed partisan politics, directly attacking political opponents, using the media to his advantage, and doggedly pursuing partisan power instead of legislative outcomes. This template, as he demonstrated the capacity for success, leading the Republicans to their first majority in the House of Representatives since the 1950s, has reshaped the GOP and has pushed a generation of Republican leaders to adopt his approach. Gingrich and his approach to politics has upended the Madisonian ideal of compromise—replacing it with a form of zero-sum partisan battle. And the former Speaker is still involved in politics in many ways, but especially as a media advocate for the GOP and Trump. This podcast was assisted by Benjamin Warren Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When he’s not on tour, the 25-year-old rapper Ted Park keeps busy making music videos on the streets of New York City, writing songs for rising artists in Korea and the U.S., and cooking up sizzling hip-hop tracks of his own with longtime producer and fellow Madisonian, DJ Pain 1. Listen closely, and you’ll hear

Remembering The Point of Self-Government: Louis Brandeis is oft-cited for speaking of the states of laboratory of democracies. It’s a Madisonian notion that seems long-forgotten. Seth reminds us of that Federalist teaching for our politics today. Congresswoman Debbie Lesko, representing Arizona’s 8th District, on President Trump's upcoming visit to Arizona, and why voting for any Republican versus any Democrat in November is a clear choice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are quite a few authors writing about the problems facing American democracy and how best to solve those problems. Many of the problematic issues devolve to the question of representation – and how to shift or change the American political system so that it better represents the voters themselves and the plurality of perspectives and opinions across the country. Lee Drutman's new book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America (Oxford UP, 2020) dives into both the problems with the current political dynamic and the possible solutions. As the title indicates, Drutman's analysis investigates the current binary “doom loop” of two internally consistent parties, and the elected officials who rarely have to compromise within the Madisonian system set up to compel compromise. Drutman's examination takes the reader through the historical shifts in terms of the parties themselves and American political development, and how Americans have come to find themselves in this “doom loop.” Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop also explores contemporary “toxic politics” and the existential threat that every election seems to pose for parties, partisans, those in elected office, and ultimately for the country itself and public policies. Ultimately, Drutman proposes a number of reforms that, without amending the Constitution, could, as he says, break this doom loop and open up opportunities for more actual representation. Following the examples of a number of cities in the U.S. and the state of Maine, Drutman posits that electoral reform, especially options like ranked choice voting, would shift the dynamic during campaigns, and would lead to coalition building and compromise by lawmakers and elected officials in office. The final section of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America makes the case for how a multiparty system in the United States would work without amending the political institutions established by the Constitution. This is, ultimately, an optimistic book with a variety of proposals designed to untangle some of the persistent knots within the American political system. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices