00:00:48.540It was like the Mexican version of TED, but with some obvious narco traffickers sitting0.51
00:00:53.700in the front row, uh, you know, octogenarians with, uh, 20 year old girlfriends or something
00:00:59.200like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, funded by one of the richest men in Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
00:01:05.640it's good to see you. Uh, we've got a lot to talk about, so I'm just going to take it from the top
00:01:09.900here. Uh, you've never been on the podcast, which seems like a, um, glaring omission on my part.
00:01:14.260So apologies to both to you and the audience that it took so long to get you here, but, um, I just
00:01:19.020want to tap your political wisdom and get your view of the present. But let's start with the
00:01:26.620beginning that most people will know you first from your article and then book, The End of
00:01:33.100History. As a writer of books, I'm exquisitely sensitive to a title serving to mislead most of
00:01:40.020one's audience and most of the world who will never read the book. And I think you're the
00:01:44.280ultimate example of this and the end of history as a phrase seems to have convinced many people
00:01:49.100that you were claiming something that you were not in fact claiming so what what was your thesis
00:01:52.840there and what what is the common misunderstanding of it well i think uh it revolves around two words
00:01:58.400and does not mean the cessation of history it meant what is the objective or goal towards which
00:02:05.380history seems to be moving and history you know in my sense was that of the philosopher
00:02:11.060for Hegel, which was a progressive evolution of human society. So the end of history meant
00:02:17.980where is the whole modernization development process tending? And my argument was that it
00:02:24.180looked like it was tending towards a market economy linked to a liberal democratic political
00:02:29.800system. So that was the origin of the, I think, the misunderstanding, because a lot of people
00:02:35.100just read the title and said he thinks that stuff is going to stop happening, and that was never the
00:02:39.560idea. The other thing is that I turned the original article into a book with the title
00:02:45.840The End of History and the Last Man. The end of history part comes from the philosopher Hegel,
00:02:51.740the last man part comes from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that the last man
00:02:57.260is the ambitionless, passionless creature that emerges at the end of history, when all of his
00:03:03.940material comforts and security had been taken care of, and he no longer has any great aspirations or
00:03:11.160ambitions, and that this was one of the problems of the end of history, that people aren't going
00:03:16.820to want to be in that position, and they're going to try to rebel against it. And I actually spent
00:03:21.960the last five chapters of the book version explaining how democracy could break down in
00:03:27.100ways that I think are actually being acted out as we speak.
00:03:30.800So do you still feel that liberal democracy running on the rails of capitalism has more or less won the argument and there's no real durable contender to it, even if in fact there are enemies of it and processes by which it can erode?
00:03:47.480Or do you think, I mean, so one data point recently, as recently as I think yesterday, in favor of that is, you know, we saw Viktor Orban lose the election.
00:03:57.600But I think many people view the kind of capitalist, quasi-capitalist authoritarianism that we're seeing in China now as a more durable contender.
00:04:07.340How do you view that, the sense that we know the punchline of history and it is liberal democracy if we can only hold on to it?
00:04:14.600Well, honestly, I don't know the answer to that. I think that the Chinese have created a pretty impressive system. It is authoritarian. It's quasi-market-based, and they are very successful at marshalling new technology. They're capable of innovating a lot of things we thought they weren't able to do.
00:04:33.560And conversely, democracy, especially American democracy, looks like it's falling apart. If I were somebody trying to move from a poor, misgoverned country somewhere else, I would have chosen the United States without question for most of the last several decades.
00:04:52.100But, you know, these days, I'm not sure that it's such an attractive model for many people. And I would say if the Chinese keep their development machine going, you know, it may turn out that they have a real alternative.0.99
00:05:05.960I think, however, that it's a little premature to come to that conclusion because there are a lot of problems in China, which are related to the fact that there's no feedback, there's no responsiveness to public opinion, and that is going to get them into trouble, I think, in the long run.0.99
00:05:22.480Well, we'll talk about the problems of American democracy, I think, at some length here. But before we do, I think we'll invoke the concept of liberalism a fair amount in your most recent book. I think it's your most recent book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, goes deep into the concept of liberalism and the way in which it can be self-defeating under certain conditions.
00:05:46.260I want to talk about that. But before we jump in, what is liberalism? And this word seems to
00:05:51.440shapeshift for people and it can mean many different things in different contexts. What
00:05:55.720should we mean by liberalism and what are its core commitments? Well, I can tell you what I mean. I
00:06:01.620think that a liberal political system is one in which government authority is limited by a rule
00:06:08.480of law and by constitutional checks and balances. It's a way of preventing the government, the
00:06:14.720executive from violating the rights of ordinary citizens, from interfering too much in, you know,
00:06:20.680markets and ordinary activity of citizens. And it's really that obedience to law that is at the
00:06:27.300core of what I regard as a liberal political system. Now, it has other connotations in other
00:06:32.740parts of the world. So if you say liberal in Europe, it means that you're kind of very pro-free
00:06:37.660market, you're anti-regulation, and that sort of thing. But I don't think that the economic
00:06:42.560interpretation of liberalism is, for me, the key thing. The key thing is that the state should be
00:06:49.400limited by law and there should be checks and balances to prevent violations of individual
00:06:55.980rights by the government. So how do you relate the concept of liberalism to conservatism and
00:07:01.940how do they relate to the traditional notion of left and right in our politics?
00:07:08.340Well, it's complicated because, first of all, there are now several different definitions of conservatism.
00:07:16.180You know, conservatism could mean that you simply want to preserve as much of the past tradition as possible.
00:07:23.660And if you live in a liberal society, that's going to involve retaining liberal traditions.
00:07:29.500I think one of the problems we're facing now is conservatism is mutated into something scarcely recognizable.
00:07:36.280You know, it's returned to an old—well, let me put it this way. I think in the days of Ronald Reagan, conservatism really was a form of liberalism. He believed in markets, he believed in limited government, in all of these constraints.
00:07:51.140And, you know, I basically agree with that. I think the government could be more active in terms of dealing with social justice, inequality kinds of questions than he did. But he was actually still in that liberal tradition that I think is foundational, that's really been at the core of American politics, really, since the founding of the United States.
00:08:12.960what's changed is conservatism because it's gone off in this ethno-nationalist direction that has
00:08:20.580become quite authoritarian in the way that it's implemented. And I think that that's very
00:08:27.880illiberal. You know, Viktor Orban, that you referred to as just having been defeated in
00:08:33.140Hungary, said that he was trying to run an illiberal democracy. That means, you know,
00:08:38.520you have elections, you have popular will, but the government isn't restricted. The government
00:08:44.000doesn't have to follow checks and balances. You know, the government can do whatever it wants.
00:08:49.700And if that's the new form of conservatism, I mean, J.D. Vance seems to think so, then that's
00:08:55.020not, that doesn't have much to do with the kind of conservatism that existed, you know, in Ronald
00:08:59.540Reagan's day. So it seems that the kind of conservatism you're nostalgic for is often
00:09:05.060going by the name of classical liberalism now. Yeah, that's one way of putting it. In the United
00:09:10.200States, it gets complicated because you have these libertarians who also think of themselves
00:09:15.780as classical liberals. I think that they're a more extreme version because I think that, you know,
00:09:21.040the true classical liberals, people like John Stuart Mill or Adam Smith, understood you had
00:09:26.500to have government. Government provided certain public goods. It provided the enforcement of
00:09:31.560rules and law, and you simply couldn't do away with government. Whereas in the U.S., you have
00:09:37.780this libertarian fringe that thinks that somehow all aspects of government activity are somehow
00:09:45.020illegitimate, that taxes are illegitimate. And I think that that's a big problem, and that really
00:09:50.560is not what classical liberalism was all about. Well, I think most sane people, at least given
00:09:58.100enough time to consider the matter. And if we could push the argument far enough outside of
00:10:02.500any perverse incentives, most people I think will converge on something like classical liberalism
00:10:09.500at this moment, which is that there should be a respect for individual rights, whatever should
00:10:14.740be, whatever is best accomplished in the private sector should be accomplished there. But there's
00:10:19.300some things the market can't see and the government can only accomplish well for us. And so we need
00:10:23.440some governance, we can't be anarchists or extreme libertarians. And individual rights are sacred
00:10:32.220because the primacy of the individual really is a bulwark against authoritarianism and extreme
00:10:38.460forms of tribalism. And yet there's this observation that liberalism in this form can
00:10:44.080kind of tip over into an individualism that's so radical that you sort of lose purchase on
00:10:51.800social cohesion, right? That we all just become consumers. We become atomized. There's no way for
00:10:58.180the political system to really ensure that people get what they want communally. And then that0.98
00:11:04.600invites potentially very illiberal forces to rise up and claim some of that vacated space. So we have
00:11:11.900populism in its various forms. We have identity politics. We have just nationalism. I mean,
00:11:17.640You mentioned J.D. Vance, so you can have, you can seem to be sane until you talk long enough and then you get a kind of blood and soil, you know, ethno-nationalist commitment coming in as a way of ensuring that people feel bonded together and things get weirder and weirder.
00:11:33.340And we're living through that. Can you talk for a minute about just how liberalism itself is vulnerable, how a system built on openness and tolerance is vulnerable to being subverted?
00:11:43.540I mean, Karl Popper called this the paradox of tolerance in at least one facet.
00:11:47.440Yeah, well, I think it's basically good ideas being carried to extremes.
00:11:51.840And you had two cases of that, both on the right and the left.
00:11:55.220On the right, you had what's sometimes called neoliberalism.
00:12:00.060I think that this was an extreme sort of worship of market economics where, you know, markets could do no wrong or you wanted to, you know, deregulate as much as possible.
00:12:11.480and you didn't worry about things like growing economic inequality as a result of, you know,
00:12:17.360this free market system. So that was one of the things that drove liberalism in, I think,
00:12:23.220a bad direction that then spawned a left-wing reaction. The left-wing problem, I think,
00:12:30.020is basically identity politics, that, you know, classical liberalism is based on a notion that
00:12:36.660all human beings have an equal dignity and that no particular group of people is superior or has
00:12:44.000a right to dominate others. And I think identity politics kind of reversed that and took, you know,
00:12:51.600formerly oppressed minorities or groups that had been marginalized and said, no, you know,
00:12:56.540they're special or they deserve special recognition and notices. And that's where I think
00:13:03.580They started to deviate from classical liberalism because they were willing to use state power to enforce some of these group identities and strengthen them rather than treating people as equal citizens.
00:13:17.760And I think, you know, the extreme right and the extreme left then fed on each other, that the identity politics created this reaction on the part of former majority communities that said that they were the ones that were being oppressed using the same language, this identitarian language.
00:13:33.900So now you hear, you know, that white people are the persecuted minority in the United States.
00:13:40.240And so they're in a way borrowing that same language of victimization from the, you know, from the left.
00:13:45.920Yeah. I must confess, I haven't read your book on identity politics, but I've gleaned some of what you think about it from interviews I've seen. I feel like you're less allergic to identity politics than I am.
00:14:00.580My feeling is that just across the board, it's now dysfunctional. And the one way I would summarize this is that especially for, you know, left of center for Democrats at this moment in our politics, I would say that virtually any mention of race in any context for any reason is almost always counterproductive at this point. It's almost always toxic politically.
00:14:21.960This is not to say we didn't need a civil rights movement, but where we are now, I really feel like we need just a full commitment to a race-blind, you know, content of their character, political and ethical norm. Does that go too far in your view?
00:14:38.020No, no, no. I completely agree with that. I think that this old ideal from the civil rights era of a colorblind society should still be the objective that we want to move to. We can recognize de facto that our society isn't colorblind and that there are all these ways of hidden privilege and so forth.
00:14:56.700But I don't think that you can have a functioning liberal society based on, you know, making these identity categories essential to who you are.
00:15:09.160In a liberal society, you judge individuals based on their individual merits, achievements, character, morality, and you don't judge them based on the fact that they are female or black or Hispanic or a member of any particular group.
00:15:27.360you want to tolerate and live in a pluralistic society where you're not oppressing any of those
00:15:33.180groups, but you're also not seeing the society just as a collection of groups. You're seeing a
00:15:38.740society as a collection of individuals that may choose to associate with certain groups for
00:15:44.260common purposes, but their primary identity is something that they themselves create and they
00:15:49.780themselves have control over. Yeah, many of us are concerned about the rise of
00:15:57.200anti-Semitism we see on both the left and the right now. And I want to talk about the status
00:16:03.180of Israel and our various adventures in the Middle East in a minute. But just taking the
00:16:08.740anti-Semitism piece in an American context, I'm worried that Jews will see, most Jews will see0.59
00:16:16.460identity politics as their only bulwark against anti-Semitism. And my feeling here is that this
00:16:23.800is really no exception, that we have to fight for liberal values without indulging in identity
00:16:29.600politics. Does that seem too quixotic to you, or does that seem like the right algorithm?
00:16:35.300No, no, I think you're absolutely right about that. I think that if American Jews see themselves1.00
00:16:42.180first as Jews and secondly as Americans, there's going to be a, you know, negative reaction to that.
00:16:47.740The other thing is within Israel itself, you know, it seemed to me that one of the impressive
00:16:51.940things about the state of Israel, for me as a classical liberal, was the fact that Arabs could
00:16:58.140be citizens of Israel. You know, that although Jewish identity was important to Israel's
00:17:04.540self-conception, it wasn't the exclusive way that you could be an Israeli citizen. And so you had
00:17:10.020Israeli Arabs, they were not always treated, you know, fairly or equally, but, you know, they could,
00:17:16.000you know, they could vote and they could, you know, take part in the political system. And I
00:17:21.420thought that that was always a very impressive thing about the state of Israel, something that
00:17:25.820wasn't replicated in many of the surrounding, you know, authoritarian Arab countries. And,
00:17:31.880you know, that's what I really fear is being lost under this particular right-wing coalition,
00:17:36.200That, you know, they're more intent on making the Jewish identity and a specific kind of Jewish identity core to what it means to be Israeli, which I think is almost automatically exclusionary for people that, you know, aren't Jews in that fashion.
00:17:53.340Yeah, well, let's get back to that because I'm, that part of the world worries me as it worries almost everybody at this moment.
00:17:59.180But to stick with America for a second.
00:18:01.800Members can hear the full conversation by subscribing at SamHarris.org.
00:18:06.000Subscribers get a private RSS feed you can use with your favorite podcast player.
00:18:11.520I don't think we've ever had an administration that has been this corrupt.
00:18:15.920Biden was supposed to fix all of this.
00:18:18.340You had a president that tried to overturn an election that was openly anti-democratic,
00:18:24.160was friendly to Putin and Xi and all the dictators in the world, and we managed to re-elect this guy.
00:18:30.000I think that it's going to be really a tragedy if the Democrats don't manage to come up with something a little bit more attractive.