The Auron MacIntyre Show - Ezra Klein Has a Crisis of Faith ｜ 5⧸20⧸26

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00:00:16.980 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:18.540 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:20.060 I am Oren McIntyre.

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00:00:47.200 All right, guys.

00:00:48.500 So I was watching Ezra Klein.

00:00:51.320 Not something I do all that often, but I thought the title of the video was interesting.

00:00:57.160 It was talking about how liberalism was in some form of crisis, and we needed to understand it at a historical level.

00:01:05.440 We need to put liberalism in its historical context so we can better grasp why liberalism is currently in the situation that it's in.

00:01:14.260 Now, in case you don't know, Ezra Klein is a New York Times columnist, is pretty much everything you'd expect.

00:01:22.000 And it was interesting for me, though, when they talked about the the history of liberalism, because normally when you're talking to a liberal, they're not even aware that there is history.

00:01:34.340 You know, they they know that there was World War Two and slavery and Jim Crow and the civil rights movement.

00:01:40.880 And that was about it. Like that's about as much as as any liberal will grasp when it comes to history, because history is very, very dangerous to the left.

00:01:49.320 progressives have to be very wary about actual investigations into history. Because if you read

00:01:56.200 enough history, if you look deep enough into the past, you start to discover that the worldview

00:02:01.660 that has been carefully curated by the liberal left is just radically incorrect. And even the

00:02:08.220 worldview that has been curated by much of mainstream conservatism is very incorrect.

00:02:13.380 And when you look at history, you'll see that there are these very, very different forces

00:02:18.840 acting upon humans, very different belief systems, radically different from what we think of today.

00:02:26.200 And if you look deep enough into the past, you will slowly start to discover that much of what

00:02:32.500 we think of as history, much of what we try to understand as like our political lineage

00:02:37.120 is completely incorrect. And so I was interested to see what would these two liberals think about

00:02:44.020 this like uh what what would two people who are trying to understand history and liberalism and

00:02:50.240 tradition what would that look like would they would they glaze over different parts would they

00:02:55.200 make things up and it turns out that really Ezra Klein is having a crisis of faith in this discussion

00:03:01.980 he understands that at the root uh he believes in something that is very different from previous

00:03:08.540 versions of liberalism and he wants to like tie this together because he thinks ultimately like

00:03:13.740 this is an issue but also he hates most of the history like both of these people really hate

00:03:20.420 uh the the history that they're discussing so he has this woman on i think it's like helena

00:03:25.580 rosenbaum or something like that and they're supposed to go over her book because she's a

00:03:30.340 historian and we we want to understand what's going on in the past with liberalism and uh you

00:03:36.880 know the whole podcast is always like it's like an hour an hour and a half there's no way i could

00:03:42.080 cover it all in one of my episodes so i cut it down but but as always i encourage you to go listen

00:03:47.180 to the whole thing at the very least you can kind of get inside the mind of the new york times

00:03:52.380 liberal which i think is actually rather valuable uh that's one thing the left doesn't have a theory

00:03:57.500 of mind for the right they don't understand how we think they don't understand what we value

00:04:01.600 it doesn't make sense to them on a fundamental level and they're not particularly interested

00:04:05.460 in understanding that they don't have to they live in a world that is ruled by progressivism

00:04:10.600 and leftism and so conservatives are just swept away as some kind of silly uh you know thing out

00:04:15.940 of time but ultimately i think it's important for us to understand what they are thinking how they

00:04:22.080 are processing this because it reveals to us the inner workings of the people who are you know

00:04:27.340 frankly coordinating against us on a regular basis and if we can grasp you know where these

00:04:32.380 tensions are then we might find different weaknesses that can be exploited different

00:04:36.480 strategic moments, maybe even if you find the right liberal arguments that could ultimately

00:04:41.180 compel them to change their mind, though I wouldn't bet on that too often. I'm not a big

00:04:46.040 marketplace of ideas guy, but people do change their mind. I've certainly changed my mind on

00:04:49.380 arguments. So it's always worth having that particular trick in your bag in case the person

00:04:54.360 you're discussing these things with actually does have a hope of kind of learning something and

00:05:00.160 changing that said let's go ahead and dive into uh this video and i'll stop and i'll explain as we

00:05:07.260 go so we live in this moment when illiberalism is winning when illiberalism is in power i don't

00:05:14.800 think anybody really argues that what so we start off with trump is being and mean and bad and he's

00:05:22.160 an authoritarian and he's illiberal now that'll be very interesting because of course in many ways

00:05:27.340 Trump is a very liberal president. He is somebody who is relatively socially liberal when it comes

00:05:33.920 to, you know, conservative standards. Yes, he's talked about abortion some and, you know, he has

00:05:40.260 won some victories there. You know, he will kind of make certain noises about Christianity, but

00:05:46.200 he's not a doctrinaire Christian. He's certainly not a faithful Christian, certainly not someone

00:05:50.260 who seems overly interested in that kind of stuff. So, you know, Trump is the first guy to

00:05:56.160 like wave the lgbtq flag at the republican convention so we're not talking about a guy

00:06:01.420 who's like deeply uh you know convicted when it comes to like conservative uh right-wing or

00:06:07.040 reactionary morality and even when you look at the different measures that trump is taking

00:06:12.800 ezra klein only sees them as illiberal because he disagrees with them when joe biden was doing

00:06:18.940 this stuff when joe biden's locking up j6ers locking up abortion protesters you know uh you 0.54

00:06:24.040 know locking away his possible you know only real political challenger in Donald Trump or 0.51

00:06:29.740 attempting to uh through ridiculous government prosecutions Ezra Klein has nothing to say he

00:06:34.960 has nothing to say about that fact are those authoritarian actions well if Donald Trump does

00:06:40.700 them of course they are but if Joe Biden doesn't he's a liberal he's a liberal in good standing

00:06:45.460 so Ezra Klein doesn't really care about the the terrible authoritarianism of Donald Trump

00:06:51.360 it in fact only impacts him because it's his enemy when his ally is doing it when his friends

00:06:56.740 are doing it it's fine he's not going to bring anything up he's certainly not going to say

00:07:00.500 this is some kind of indication that we're becoming illiberal okay the war in iran you

00:07:04.820 say that's illiberal well obviously hillary clinton was celebrating celebrating the death

00:07:09.680 of momar qaddafi again like i i think that ezra klein is very very careful with when he finds

00:07:15.980 problems with use of government force against people who disagree but yeah obviously that's

00:07:21.980 exactly what we'd expect has surprised me about it is how weak liberalism has felt in response

00:07:27.920 i'm a liberal i'm a like a professional liberal one involved in liberal politics

00:07:32.920 and i don't think at this moment i could tell you what liberalism's vision is so i mean this part

00:07:40.400 is honest so this part is interesting and and this is why i did find the episode interesting

00:07:44.680 if not ridiculous like most of it as you'll see is ridiculous but editor klein recognizes that

00:07:49.740 there is like a floundering of liberalism and we'll get to why here in a second you know this

00:07:55.480 is a guy who came up with the abundance uh discussion we're going to make everything

00:07:59.040 abundant and you know people will then have material stuff and that's going to fix our

00:08:03.220 that's our vision of of liberalism which you know i mean in a lot of ways it's just like

00:08:08.700 half-hearted capitalism you know kind of just conceding that fact uh but really he understands

00:08:14.000 that liberalism has become very hollow. It seems at some level to have burned out a lot of its

00:08:19.780 kind of passion in 2020 and the George Floyd riots. It felt like while liberalism was triumphant

00:08:28.860 in a way, like we can control these streets, we can lock these people down, we can close the

00:08:33.140 churches, we can really censor all of our opponents on the internet. At the same time,

00:08:39.020 It seemed to have reached this culmination and this euphoric moment, and then it didn't go anywhere. It didn't do anything. It didn't unlock what comes next. And so this is very concerning to Ezra Klein because, of course, in his mind, liberalism means progress. It means we should always be moving towards some end, right?

00:08:57.860 And so if there is no continued vision for where we should be going, liberalism is going to flounder, which I think is true.

00:09:06.240 Like, liberalism is an eternal revolution.

00:09:09.060 And so if we're not finding something new to kind of revolt over, if there's no next version of the revolution, liberalism kind of falls on its face.

00:09:19.940 Who its leaders are.

00:09:20.980 In some way, I feel liberalism never really recovered from the Obama era when it had this grand victory in electing America's first black president, when it had this thoughtful, deliberate and frankly, quite popular liberal leader.

00:09:37.200 And then it ended in Donald Trump twice.

00:09:41.560 Yeah, I mean, and this is kind of it, right?

00:09:43.840 Like they think of this idea of progress.

00:09:46.560 Once you achieve the thing, we elected a black man to the White House. There you go. We're just only going to become more leftist, more progressive from here. That's just how history works. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards liberalism, except it doesn't because Donald Trump disproves that.

00:10:07.180 Right. Like after Obama, where did the American people go? Did they find someone even more liberal than Obama? Did they find someone at least tangentially as liberal as Obama? No, they went to someone like Donald Trump, who's a direct repudiation of that.

00:10:21.380 There had been no permanent victory of liberalism achieved there. There was this desire to run away from much of what had been done in the name of liberalism. And there's not some holy moment that once Jesus Obama was elected into the White House and a black man finally sat in the big chair, it didn't bring about any of the things that liberals wanted at the end of the day, or at least not sufficiently because it is the eternal revolution, right?

00:10:50.780 And so if you run into this moment where Trump gets elected and then after Joe Biden, who is a disaster in all kinds of levels, I think at this point, there's probably very few liberals that want to own the Obama or rather the Biden presidency, even though they were all championing it up until the very end. 0.53

00:11:08.460 At this point, then Trump reenters. And so what does that say? What does that mean about the momentum of the left?

00:11:15.880 You know, we now because of the Trump administration's kind of current internal struggles, struggles with its own base, kind of distractions with foreign wars and these things, we forget like how devastating a loss the liberals took when Trump was elected, that how much they were completely demoralized by that, how much they were spiraling.

00:11:37.400 And so Ezra Klein recognizes that, yeah, you might currently have some outbursts from Antifa, some momentum because Trump hasn't been doing so well, inflation, Epstein, all this stuff. But ultimately, there is still a break in the liberal narrative by Trump's election. People did want the mass deportations. They did want the things that Trump was ultimately offering.

00:12:01.760 They wanted to see him back in the White House, despite all of the propaganda that had been spewed about him.

00:12:07.180 So what does that mean? 0.67

00:12:07.940 What does it mean for the left when Hispanic men vote for the guy who's hawking mass deportation?

00:12:14.000 Like, how does that fit into Ezra Klein's worldview?

00:12:16.520 It doesn't.

00:12:17.320 And so there's a real crisis there.

00:12:19.080 But Donald Trump is not working out.

00:12:22.200 He is not making people want more of what he is.

00:12:25.040 but if he's going to be beaten if illiberal political forces are going to turn back

00:12:31.020 i think you're going to need a liberalism that is aspirational again

00:12:36.120 again i think there's a little wish casting there i i know the trump administration again has had

00:12:41.880 some rough patches and uh you know it's got a certain level of internal crisis at the moment

00:12:46.740 but ultimately i don't think there's a full repudiation of what donald trump offered in fact

00:12:52.160 If anything, I would say the main argument that people who are currently angry with Donald Trump make is that he didn't do enough.

00:13:00.740 He didn't follow through, right?

00:13:02.480 He hasn't had enough deportations. 0.61

00:13:04.560 He didn't release the Epstein files when he was supposed to. 0.52

00:13:07.720 He didn't take some of the actions that they were hoping he would.

00:13:11.620 Now, of course, there are leftists that just always hate Trump.

00:13:14.000 But for that kind of centrist coalition, the Maha guys, the libertarians that came over, and then much of the new right, those kind of things, if there's any disagreement with Trump, it's not on Trump going too far, being too Trump.

00:13:29.140 Their argument is Trump is not Trump enough.

00:13:31.380 Trump did not continue through with what we thought he was going to do.

00:13:35.080 So I think Klein is kind of hoping that it's a wholesale, you know, rejection of Trump and his promises, when in fact, I think it is simply, if anything, a current desire to see more of what Trump promised and see it fulfilled.

00:13:50.220 liberalism has moral imagination again a liberalism that stands for more than not this

00:13:56.800 and so i've been on this sort of esoteric personal quest reading all these books in the liberal canon

00:14:04.400 reading all these histories of liberalism trying to think through like what in this very very long

00:14:10.240 tradition is valuable for us right now being liberal really was not just all right so this

00:14:16.480 the author that he brings on uh yeah i cut the whole intro because they go on and on about all

00:14:21.280 the books she's written that kind of thing not super useful but she wrote this book about the

00:14:24.680 history of liberalism uh and that's that's what he's diving into here about um believing in a

00:14:31.220 certain or working towards a certain political design it wasn't just about a constitutional

00:14:35.320 form it wasn't just about individual rights it was actually more about moral development and about

00:14:41.880 certain character development that they felt was so very important and that a good constitution

00:14:51.920 should promote. And many of them thought that, yes, rights are important, but they're important

00:14:57.200 because they allow us to actually accomplish our obligations. They're very much concerned with

00:15:07.680 establishing a good morally good regime so what this historian does is like really gross and ugly 0.98

00:15:18.120 and dumb uh but it's gonna it's gonna work on the new york times people because they don't they 0.97

00:15:22.600 don't know any history liberals don't know history they don't they have no clue there's no context 0.99

00:15:26.320 for anything she's saying so they're just going to nod along as your client is like completely

00:15:30.040 blown away yeah liberalism really was in the ancient world having civic virtue and achieve

00:15:36.420 like that is not what liberalism is it's not what liberalism means what they're doing is they're

00:15:41.720 going to take liberalism and they're going to expand it to mean any positive pro-social virtue

00:15:47.640 so everything that is like be a good person how you know contribute to your community build up

00:15:54.540 you know a well of this like social capital that's all liberalism now none of the people

00:16:01.480 in the ancient world thought anything like that like that's complete bastardization of what they

00:16:06.800 thought in any way shape or form though there is some truth here which is important so she's going

00:16:12.520 back and she's talking about ancient societies you know the greeks the romans the ones that we

00:16:17.600 think of as foundational to many of our western uh understandings of the world she won't say that

00:16:22.900 of course because they're not going to talk about the western tradition they're not going to

00:16:26.200 delineate that as a specific important different tradition because of course they would just want

00:16:31.840 to globalize this they're all they're all just global communists at the end of the day and so

00:16:35.740 like that that's what they're really looking for and so they're not gonna like pull out why this

00:16:41.840 tradition looks different than other traditions they're not going to explore that they're just

00:16:46.380 going to kind of be like well this is a thing that happened in the ancients but the the point

00:16:51.000 here at least stands, it's true that to the degree you cared about liberty in the ancient

00:16:59.720 world, when you're looking at the Greeks or the Romans and their city states, the reason you

00:17:03.840 would talk about liberty, the liberty is to do the right thing. It's to live as God wanted or

00:17:10.640 the gods wanted, depending on the society. It's to be a good citizen. It's to have the freedom

00:17:16.460 to cultivate a high level of moral character so they were oriented towards a collective

00:17:23.480 understanding of the good and this is something that's going to be really really hard for klein

00:17:29.360 and rosenbaum to like ultimately a rosenplatt i keep i keep forgetting what her last name was

00:17:34.020 um but but uh it's gonna be really hard for them to grasp because they don't believe that you

00:17:40.860 should have like a cohesive society they think and they go and they go on to this at length in

00:17:47.520 the full podcast again i don't have the whole thing in here because it's just too long but in

00:17:51.500 the full podcast they go on at length about how important it is to have like this radical diversity

00:17:57.480 where you uh you know put up with everything you put up with different religions and viewpoints and

00:18:02.880 and and people from you know all these other countries and everything and they never get to

00:18:07.460 the fact that like the reason the ancients were able to orient themselves towards this virtue

00:18:12.620 is that they had a relatively uh you know homogeneous society they had a relatively

00:18:19.740 cohesive understanding of who they are what they believe they have the same religion they came from

00:18:25.940 the same lineage they came from the same traditions and this allowed them to then understand what

00:18:31.460 liberty meant inside their tradition and this is going to be again the failing of these guys over

00:18:37.060 and over again they're going to talk about like the roots of western civilization they're going

00:18:42.500 to color them as liberal even though again like nothing in the roman or greek uh you know

00:18:50.040 understanding uh was anything close to like progressive liberalism much less even classical 1.00

00:18:56.000 liberalism like we're talking about societies where you know oftentimes women had little to

00:19:00.880 no rights certainly couldn't vote uh only a certain percentage of the population could vote at all

00:19:05.720 uh you know the slavery patriarchy all kinds of stuff you know all these hierarchies that left

00:19:12.460 hate these are rampant and heavily baked in to the understanding of what the good was like if

00:19:18.120 you're talking about the ancients and their pursuit of virtue inside society they're going to be

00:19:23.820 pursuing like how to own the most slaves and build cool things with them and like you know like like

00:19:30.420 like how to marry your daughter off for political and social advantage like these are all things

00:19:36.420 that they would think of as virtuous things are orienting themselves towards like and and there's

00:19:42.080 just no acknowledge of the there's no acknowledgement of that anywhere except to say that they hate it

00:19:47.900 even though they're like trying to tie things to this history so i decided to trace the word and

00:19:55.180 the meaning of the word all the way back to ancient Rome, which is liberal in ancient Rome.

00:20:01.080 The root of the word is liber, right? And the word liber, yes, it means free, but it also means

00:20:07.140 generous, which I thought was so very, very interesting. So if liberal were really the

00:20:12.080 qualities of freedom, lovingness, and generosity expected of a citizen, liberalitas was the noun

00:20:20.140 that went went with it um so this was an attitude that was expected of citizens in rome when you are

00:20:28.320 devoted to the commonwealth to the common good well so again just this this one two step of like

00:20:35.940 well liberalism was being generous with your money and then liberty is freedom these are not the same

00:20:42.300 thing right so you know there there there's not some like obvious correlation but of course we

00:20:47.220 want to make a just so story where the Rome, the Romans, when they talk about liberty, they had

00:20:52.280 the idea of basically the democratic party in 20, you know, 2005, like that's, these are the same

00:20:59.660 thing, whether or not at all, again, the Roman version of liberty would have meant the ability

00:21:05.960 to live towards virtue. Yes. But what virtues, right? It's not that the liberty itself is the

00:21:12.920 virtue it's that it you know you it's a virtue but it's not the overall identity of the virtues

00:21:19.040 it's one among many and they all orient towards you towards a vision of the good that both of

00:21:24.660 these people would find absolutely abysmal and so trying to root the history of her political

00:21:30.480 ideology in ancient robe is just so radically and comically a historical that it's amazing that like

00:21:37.640 like i again i know these people are biased i know they're ignorant but it's just wild how like no

00:21:43.400 one sat down like you really want to you want to try to make that move like she obviously published

00:21:48.540 a book doing this so i don't know if she she knows what she's doing is a lie she should she's

00:21:53.400 a historian but what does the left-wing historian do with all that inconvenient knowledge i don't

00:21:58.500 know one thing that was a bit of an epiphany reading a book for me i think a lot of things

00:22:04.360 are missing in modern liberalism. My interest in doing this episode and more that I think are going

00:22:08.760 to come is trying to figure out why liberalism feels so exhausted at a moment that it is so

00:22:14.900 needed, and why so many of the books I read about it, some of the defenses I read of it,

00:22:20.520 are so arid. They have no blood in them. But one thing that was interesting here

00:22:29.680 was this idea that liberalism is built on a virtue,

00:22:33.980 not a political philosophy, right, liberality.

00:22:37.200 And as you just mentioned,

00:22:38.420 that the old definitions of it,

00:22:40.480 and you have Cicero and John Locke and John Donne,

00:22:44.300 but they have some kind of intersection

00:22:46.920 between generosity and freedom,

00:22:48.540 but not freedom like we think of it now.

00:22:52.860 So what did freedom mean in this context?

00:22:55.500 so again this has some value like i think this is important even for conservatives to understand

00:23:02.760 that like freedom and liberality meant very different things in the ancient world

00:23:07.500 but that's not what ezra klein's doing here he wants to connect this directly to his political

00:23:12.900 ideology he doesn't want to understand and let history inform his definition of liberalism he

00:23:18.600 wants to find a way to like retroactively impose his understanding of politics into like roman

00:23:27.900 traditions and understandings of liberty and virtue and freedom i think it's wise to ask what

00:23:34.460 were these things for i think it's good to understand liberty as a virtue and not a political

00:23:38.720 ideology but for klein he just wants that because he wants to hope that this will somehow connect

00:23:43.580 things and again he's right to say that liberalism is failing because it's not connected to its

00:23:48.180 history because it's not connected to its roots. It's not connected to its ultimate understanding

00:23:55.300 historically, but he can't do that. He can't connect the tradition because he hates the

00:23:59.860 tradition. He hates the things that the Romans and the founding fathers and many of the other

00:24:04.900 people they're going to cite here ultimately believed. And you're going to see that through

00:24:08.040 line throughout here. He desperately wants to connect liberalism back to a deeper tradition,

00:24:13.520 But he is so hateful. He is so dismissive. He and his guests sneer so often at the people who

00:24:21.200 built the tradition he's trying to revere that it's impossible. And he's going to run into this

00:24:25.280 problem repeatedly. It's really about having the freedom to voluntarily become the person that you

00:24:31.580 should be. And this has dropped out of our conversation. We think of liberalism so much,

00:24:36.400 as you said, being about individual rights and maximizing our choices. A good system of

00:24:42.320 government would help you, give you the capacity to make those good choices.

00:24:49.280 So again, this is correct. This is actually the way that freedom and liberty were understood in

00:24:58.020 the ancient world. But this is radically different than current liberalism, and that matters quite a

00:25:03.240 bit. Now, they're going to say they want to reground it in this idea of being civic-minded,

00:25:07.140 not being so individualistic. But of course, that's what defines everything that they think

00:25:12.040 about as what civic mindedness is. Being civic minded is creating the most tolerance, creating

00:25:19.160 the most opportunity for people to go do things individually by the state, helping them out with

00:25:23.800 things, giving them money, you know, giving them advantages, giving them a hand up. That's what

00:25:28.300 they think of as liberalism. So they can't look at this. It's a lot of stolen valor. They're trying

00:25:35.200 to run back to the Romans and the Greeks and say, oh, no, their definition of liberalism is part of

00:25:41.000 our grand tradition no it's not it's not at all like you do not understand virtue in this way

00:25:46.560 in any like it's not even close and so once again they're going to try to keep trying to connect

00:25:52.040 things to this tradition but they're going to hate everything about it they're going to revile

00:25:57.540 its outcomes on a regular basis while still trying to steal back some of that history

00:26:03.340 thinking that somehow that's going to revivify liberalism in the modern era that evolved over

00:26:09.320 times. So in the medieval period, it became Christianized, and it's behaving freely the

00:26:15.500 way God wants you to behave in a generous, charitable way. There's Cicero and Seneca,

00:26:23.260 and these are well-known names that have had tremendous influence.

00:26:27.240 What do they say? What is their vision of liberality?

00:26:29.280 So that liberality is about reciprocity, exchange, behaving, gift-giving, and reciprocity

00:26:37.940 is is uh fundamental you need to know uh you need to be good to one another um very much about what

00:26:46.400 they would call you know citizenly or i call citizenly virtues things that make a commonwealth

00:26:52.080 work and and and adhere you know stay to get together that is not now again there's some

00:27:00.460 truth to this but she's never going to mention that when cicero or any of these other people

00:27:06.980 are talking about liberalism as a virtue, they always mean to your people. They mean to the

00:27:12.740 people of your city, your culture, your tribe. That's what he's talking about. If you tried to

00:27:19.760 explain to Cicero that you as a Roman should be generous to any given barbarian outside the gates,

00:27:28.140 any given people that you've conquered, that would make no sense to him. It would not make

00:27:33.180 sense it's not a it's not a generalized virtue a universal understanding of interaction it's a very

00:27:40.740 specific again restricted understanding in this tradition and that's what makes it work by the way

00:27:49.500 because cicero would immediately understand that if you were that generous and receive and you

00:27:55.620 reciprocated all the time to anyone you met outside of your people your tribe your civilization

00:28:01.500 it would bring you to ruin. And so, yes, like they saw this as some level of virtue.

00:28:09.000 They'll remember like true charity is a Christian virtue that didn't make a lot of sense to Romans

00:28:14.640 either. Right. But to the extent that you had this level of generosity and reciprocity, 0.77

00:28:20.460 it was within your tribe. It was within your city. This idea of like universal tolerance,

00:28:26.800 universally giving money to people, you know, having the state take it from them and then just 0.93

00:28:31.800 hand it out to a bunch of illegal immigrants. None of this would have been virtuous to the 1.00

00:28:36.240 ancient Romans. In fact, it would have been a absolute scandal. It would have been seen as

00:28:41.100 horribly, horribly corrupt. And yet she's, you know, acting as if this is the same thing.

00:28:47.400 So he said the word liberal at some point. So it's the same thing too. I don't try to

00:28:53.520 idealize you know these these thinkers either because you know you had slavery in rome which

00:28:58.600 is uh so they're talking about a small group a small group an elite so again they're they're

00:29:06.320 they're never going to make it more than 10 seconds into discussing the kind of different

00:29:11.920 virtues and the different traditions that they want to connect liberalism to without immediately

00:29:17.160 attacking the very people that they want to build this on so they they simultaneously want to do

00:29:23.320 like this build on the shoulder of giants thing and then cut them off at the knees right oh well

00:29:30.160 we're we're following the tradition of cicero we're following the tradition of the ancient romans

00:29:35.060 who were awful and had slaves and were terrible people and were elitist and they didn't let women

00:29:40.480 do this and they treated barbarians like this and like they're gonna do this over and over again

00:29:46.140 and so they're so desperate to connect liberalism back to this root they understand the hollowness

00:29:52.460 they understand that it's lost its blood they understand that it's lost its uh its virality

00:29:58.500 but ultimately they can't because they hate everything that came before them and they don't

00:30:04.840 understand how that like constant destruction of the past has completely unmoored their liberalism

00:30:10.720 from anything that could be seen as virtuous why are why is everyone individualistic uh maybe

00:30:16.740 because you told them to hate their ancestors like why wouldn't why would they behave for the

00:30:21.340 common good when the common good was built by people who were racist and sexist and all of

00:30:27.840 these things right it makes no sense but they they want to they want to do both they want to have a

00:30:32.820 society that coheres around a central identity and a shared set of beliefs and values is is civic

00:30:38.460 minded and oriented but they want people to hate every single thing that came before them that

00:30:42.980 would motivate them to engage in this civic minded behavior i i think this is quite important and

00:30:50.700 it's something threaded through your book. You write at some point that this idea of being a

00:30:55.220 liberal, which comes way before liberalism as a political philosophy, is designed by and for the

00:31:00.300 free, wealthy, and well-connected men who are in a position to give and receive benefits in ancient

00:31:04.640 Rome. And some other things that emerge as the book goes on, one thing it makes clear is that

00:31:11.420 if today your problem with liberalism and liberals is you find them to be a bunch of smug,

00:31:17.140 condescending elites that problem goes way back that's always been braided into the the issue here

00:31:24.020 um and that there was like uh like it was a set of virtues that was associated with like the noble

00:31:29.840 born and set them apart in a way that would make them the ideal citizens so again calling this

00:31:37.560 liberalism is ridiculous ahistorical junk history nonsense ezra klein is trying to take the word

00:31:46.480 liberal and turn it into the ideology of liberalism he wants to take the virtue and he wants to say 0.99

00:31:53.540 the virtue is the ideology garbage like none of these people were liberals none of them were even 0.98

00:31:59.220 close to liberals these people would have been the most reactionary retrograde insane people 0.94

00:32:05.180 to guys like Ezra Klein right like Ezra Klein would be absolutely like jaw on the floor destroyed

00:32:13.040 by seeing the way that the people he is now revering as the founders of liberalism behaved,

00:32:19.500 how they would have thought of someone like Ezra Klein, right? So ridiculous. But there is, 0.98

00:32:25.300 again, truth here. And this is the problem. They are going back to ancient virtue and ancient

00:32:30.840 cultivation and certain attitudes. And that is valuable. Like, I want to do this too. I talk

00:32:35.940 about this. I think this is valuable. Something conservatives need to understand as much as

00:32:39.560 liberals but ultimately he points out here that liberalism his idea this ideology of liberalism

00:32:46.780 really the cultivation of virtue this understanding of like you should have this intense uh uh program

00:32:54.260 to encourage a specific way that you should live and and cultivate these different aspects of human

00:33:00.100 behavior that are pro-social which is not liberalism that is not what liberal ideology is but that is a

00:33:06.720 real thing that was a real thing and he says well this was for the aristocracy and so there's a long

00:33:10.840 history of this behavior being for aristocrats there are people who should lead and they should

00:33:16.020 behave in this way why yes there is that's true the nobility were expected to cultivate these

00:33:22.540 things to be worthy of leadership by having these attributes that's correct but there's a hidden

00:33:29.180 nugget in there that's really important ezra that means that this style this aristocratic

00:33:34.560 understanding, which he would hate if it was forced on the United States today. That is for

00:33:41.100 a certain set of elite people that is hierarchical. This way of understanding the world that you want

00:33:48.080 to connect to modern liberalism is an anathema to modern liberalism because it was built around

00:33:55.020 the idea that a hierarchical structure of people ruled because they were worthy, because they were

00:34:00.660 brought up in a certain way and conducted themselves in that virtue in that orientation

00:34:05.620 towards the good that that would be a complete heretical statement for Ezra Klein so he he notes

00:34:13.760 that yes this thing he wants to call liberalism is attached to the elites the entire time but he

00:34:20.940 never thinks about the implications there maybe it's not for the masses maybe you can't do it at

00:34:26.320 scale maybe there's a reason throughout history that this approach always had to focus on a small

00:34:32.240 noble set that being able to cultivate that level of virtue could only be done

00:34:38.520 in a certain particular type of people who are worthy to lead that doesn't mean you didn't have

00:34:44.520 a general expectation of behavior but it was understood that there were only so many and

00:34:49.280 again it certainly would be understood that this had to happen inside your city your tribe your

00:34:53.600 people. It certainly would not be this idea that you can universalize it to any and anyone who

00:34:59.220 wants to walk in to Rome can just become a Roman by following these virtues. That would make no

00:35:05.920 sense to the Romans. This was always an ideology. It's not even an ideology. For him, it's an

00:35:11.860 ideology. This was always a tradition that was cultivated inside a specific, particular people.

00:35:20.120 but Andrew Klein doesn't want to believe that

00:35:22.440 so he's not going to bring that up he's not going to

00:35:24.220 notice that he keeps hitting on

00:35:26.420 that fact he's going to completely

00:35:28.300 ignore that fact

00:35:29.560 and continue to talk as if this is just something

00:35:32.200 that was always available to everyone

00:35:34.300 or should have always been available to everyone

00:35:36.040 and that feels to me actually like a quite

00:35:38.560 profound

00:35:39.340 tension at the heart of

00:35:42.460 the project

00:35:44.120 yeah absolutely

00:35:45.200 you know they don't even always live up

00:35:48.000 to the ideal

00:35:49.120 But they had that ideal and they talked about it. And they designed an educational system, a liberal arts education that was supposed to cultivate these virtues, this liberality in elite boys. But there was a lot expected of the elite as well.

00:36:13.780 so again hatred of these people well they weren't perfect they didn't do all the things that we

00:36:18.800 modern progressives know are the right thing to do so again hatred for the virtue but also a

00:36:24.280 recognition that there had to be this cultivation but again you notice that she says these liberal

00:36:31.840 virtues no liberalism was one of the virtues it was not the entire set of virtues they're trying

00:36:42.240 to take every virtue and put it under generosity. They're trying to turn it into an ideology again

00:36:50.500 and again. They're trying to fuse it to a political identity. But this is a complete rewriting of

00:36:56.780 history. It is a radical modern frame for a historical phenomenon that simply did not exist

00:37:04.420 in that day. There is nothing about the Roman understanding of virtue that was in its totality

00:37:11.600 liberal that is just incorrect at every level but they keep insinuating that it was however

00:37:18.160 they are going to talk about a you know the cultivation of that virtue through a liberal

00:37:24.160 education which was again they wouldn't have called it a liberal education this is an ideological

00:37:30.040 understanding however they did understand the romans that you did have to cultivate

00:37:35.220 a certain set of virtues not liberality not liberalism as a system but you did have to

00:37:41.760 cultivate a set of virtues amongst liberalism being one that you ultimately needed to have the

00:37:48.960 elites follow and much was expected of them they didn't they didn't just cultivate these virtues

00:37:53.780 and have their position and that was it no like there was a lot of expectation if you were going

00:37:58.780 to hold this power hold this wealth hold this position in society you had to meet very high

00:38:04.040 expectations you know so i i don't think it was just mere you know hypocrisy and that um they're

00:38:11.720 an elite but they had obligations is what are the habits what is a kind of education what is a form

00:38:17.260 of personal development needed to instill the virtues that will be necessary to hold together

00:38:25.560 complex societies what so that was good phrasing this is this this is the correct frame right

00:38:34.220 what are the virtues that you need to cultivate to hold together society possibly even complex

00:38:39.880 societies he didn't say the liberal virtues this time though that's what he means but again that

00:38:46.280 would be the correct framing is to say there are a whole set of virtues in which generosity is one

00:38:51.600 that you need to ultimately bind a society together to make it function and you should

00:38:57.620 look to cultivate those as a society there should be a civilization wide effort to find worthy

00:39:03.720 people to elevate this but again while klein at moments hits on truth hits on the correct

00:39:09.700 understanding the correct frame most of the time he's subverting it into an ideological understanding

00:39:14.760 is needed to hold together a country or even a city is not easy. I actually think this helps

00:39:23.300 explain one reason liberals have always been so shocked and repulsed by Donald Trump himself,

00:39:33.840 not just Trumpism or the Republican Party, but him, which is quite deep in the liberal theory

00:39:40.220 and inheritance, I'm not even sure people totally realize

00:39:42.940 that they have absorbed,

00:39:44.700 is the sense that to make a country work,

00:39:46.460 people have to behave in a certain way towards each other.

00:39:48.980 And the ways in which he flouts the rules of behavior,

00:39:53.340 the ways in which he acts towards others.

00:39:55.620 Mm, mm, you hear that? 0.99

00:39:58.260 That incredibly female indignation, mm. 0.83

00:40:01.320 Their people are almost separate from anything he believes, 1.00

00:40:05.860 like a profound challenge to what liberalism,

00:40:08.740 what liberalism believes of how you make a society work i think in many ways he is proving that there

00:40:14.520 was something um important in that but but this question so of course they hate trump right like

00:40:22.140 that's that's the whole mission here is to hate trump and they say okay well trump is crass and

00:40:28.080 the way he treats people talks to people that that offends my liberal sensibilities and that's why

00:40:33.000 he's so terrible like apart from anything he believes or does just his mannerisms are illiberal

00:40:38.560 And that's the problem, because he's so, you know, caustic. He's so not careful with his language. He does not feel aristocratic. All right. So fair, like Trump is brash. He is bold. Many people love that about Trump. But it's it's fair to say that Trump does not act like normal politicians. He does not carry himself with an air of decorum. He says what he means. He gets right to it. He's very uncareful with his language. Right now, again, a lot of people like that.

00:41:06.520 a lot of people hate it but they're pretending like trump is somehow unique in this way which

00:41:11.460 is of course not the case at all look at the left right now was jasmine crockett aristocratic

00:41:18.040 is aoc aristocratic careful with her language cautious about how she treats people or addresses

00:41:26.740 people ilhan omar are these people careful with their language no they're around saying 1.00

00:41:33.240 white people are stupid they're they're you know we should eliminate whiteness uh we know the the 1.00

00:41:38.740 patriarchy is evil uh you know red state americans are stupid and ugly uh they're all racist they 1.00

00:41:44.960 all this stuff right like that's how they live their lives yeah they run around uh you know 1.00

00:41:49.600 using like ridiculous vernacular uh you know assaulting people verbally like all this stuff

00:41:55.620 and and it's like oh but trump came up with this no like again you can feel how you want about 0.88

00:42:00.480 Trump's behavior, his mannerisms, but pretend like it's a one-sided deal, like Trump is some

00:42:06.280 kind of unique force and the right has embraced this crude, completely illiberal, completely

00:42:12.520 unvirtuous guy who up there is in no way aristocratic. Well, you have too. You have

00:42:20.280 embraced and celebrate that behavior. So at the very least, you could say this is a general

00:42:25.740 breakdown for our society but trying to point to trump as if he is somehow uniquely an avatar of

00:42:31.760 this is insane of how do you instill in a society the virtues necessary to make a society work

00:42:39.180 understanding that as an actually hard problem yeah i think there's juice in that today yeah

00:42:44.560 no absolutely and um the the fact that they're elitists i mean i think it was i think you

00:42:50.700 mentioned that liberals throughout their history have tended to be elitist, but they demanded a

00:42:57.500 lot. There were a lot of obligations and they took that extremely seriously. There's a section

00:43:02.880 in my book where I talk about Lincoln and how much he was admired by liberals who are very

00:43:09.800 worried about this problem of elites, you know, perhaps not being able to show people how to

00:43:16.740 behave and to be the kind of leaders that a liberal society needs. And they thought, you know,

00:43:21.380 at that point, they thought maybe a liberal democracy would fail. There was no real example

00:43:26.580 of it lasting. You know, would the American example, this exceptional example, actually

00:43:32.400 work? And Lincoln showed that he could, and he did it in this beautiful way that kind of

00:43:39.720 made people optimistic about liberal democracy. He

00:43:46.740 what i'm sorry i'm sorry what are you talking about abraham lincoln saved liberal democracy

00:43:55.440 by having the bloodiest war in american history on american soil he saved liberal democracy

00:44:04.640 by putting the south under military occupation by suspending the constitution by having the

00:44:13.360 constitution basically rewritten at gunpoint the idea that abraham lincoln was this you know

00:44:21.120 completely liberal leader who inspired people to to really re-embrace liberal democracy no he shot

00:44:28.140 people who disagreed with him like that was the plan again you can feel how you want about that

00:44:33.360 you can say ultimately that kept the union together uh slavery and whatever right but like

00:44:38.340 this is again radically a historical you're just gonna gloss over the entire civil war

00:44:45.200 the suspension of habeas corpus the burning of the south the military occupation of reconstruction

00:44:52.660 and we're gonna say that abraham lincoln saved liberal democracy the 14th amendment

00:44:58.660 basically destroying states rights

00:45:00.960 bringing in birthright citizenship as we now understand but yeah lincoln saved liberal

00:45:08.320 democracy now again you could still think he's a great president you could still think he did

00:45:12.540 the right thing but he was not liberal in any of those senses he did not resolve political

00:45:18.560 differences by having discussions in the marketplace of ideas yeah he had famous debates

00:45:24.200 and when that didn't work he shot people again okay fine like that's that's the way of the world

00:45:30.800 I'm not going to sit here and ultimately be like, I can't believe someone conquered someone else.

00:45:35.000 But that's what happened. 0.72

00:45:36.600 Lincoln conquered the South.

00:45:38.120 The end.

00:45:39.380 It was not liberal.

00:45:40.340 There's nothing liberal about it.

00:45:41.780 What are you on about?

00:45:43.460 Was not a demagogue.

00:45:45.380 He did not talk down to people.

00:45:47.820 He raised them up.

00:45:48.920 He engaged in moral uplift.

00:45:50.940 And they recognized that.

00:45:52.420 And it showed that a liberal democracy could survive if it had a leader like this.

00:45:56.720 They also recognized that those kinds of leaders are very hard to find.

00:46:00.220 What is liberal in the liberal arts?

00:46:02.900 The purpose of the liberal arts education is really to form leaders, to form freedom-loving and moral leaders and giving them the tools, rhetoric and history and some science for sure.

00:46:16.300 But it's supposed to train citizens, really, through engagement with the classics.

00:46:21.940 In the early times, there was a lot of emphasis on being able to speak in public.

00:46:26.560 So, again, all of this is true.

00:46:28.780 they wouldn't have thought of this as a liberal arts education but again like you know we're

00:46:33.380 taking all of the modern ideology and we're forcing it down onto history we can't actually

00:46:38.440 treat history as it was we have to view it through the lens of our modern ideology we're trying to

00:46:44.020 ultimately justify even though we hate all of the historical figures and we gotta stop every few

00:46:49.180 minutes to remind you about that but she says here well they read the classics okay well guess who's

00:46:54.000 really against reading the classics right now liberals we're banning the classics we're 0.61

00:47:00.100 replacing with books by like a black woman from the 1980s the the past is too white remember 0.93

00:47:07.860 the the authors of the past are too european too white too male we have to get rid of all of those

00:47:15.880 books even when we go back to something like the odyssey or the iliad we need new translations by 0.98

00:47:21.460 radical feminists and those are the ones we're going to follow because even the past can't be 0.55

00:47:27.080 authentic it must be re-viewed through this liberal feminist modern lens so even in even if 1.00

00:47:36.580 we're going to grant her that this was a liberal education which it was not but even if we're going

00:47:40.960 to grant that like incredibly modern premise she rejects it the left rejects it they're adamantly

00:47:46.560 against it get rid of shakespeare bring me more poetry from you know sub-saharan africa that's

00:47:54.300 liberalism today has nothing to do with looking at the classics and why do you look at the classics

00:47:59.640 by the way why are the classics important oh because they teach you about your people

00:48:04.060 your history the beliefs of your tribe your descendant that you're descended from

00:48:11.020 it's your tradition and they never bring that in they want to they want to link things to the

00:48:19.000 liberal tradition but they don't want to actually engage in it because the people of the past are

00:48:24.280 dirty and racist and believe in hierarchy and patriarchy and all these things like um to speak

00:48:29.780 in a convincing way in public and this is all really to convince people to become citizens 0.88

00:48:36.120 and to do the right thing it sounds terribly idealistic and i don't always want to again

00:48:40.960 idealize them or say these people were were perfect in every way far from it but the ideas

00:48:46.300 were pretty beautiful and i think we could we could uh learn something from them at what again

00:48:51.340 gotta stop gotta stop every 10 minutes or so and say actually remember yeah these people were we're

00:48:58.160 we're talking about the history we're trying to connect it to the tradition but all the people 0.98

00:49:02.560 in the tradition were terrible people they were all racist they were all evil they were all sexist 1.00

00:49:07.940 They were all transphobic. They didn't peer into the future and see the trans surgery and know that in their heart men could become women. So we have to decry them, even though we're trying to connect this. And again, that's the beauty of this whole exercise. 0.99

00:49:21.880 ezra klein desperately sees a weakness in liberalism he desperately sees a failure of

00:49:28.520 liberalism but he is committed to the modern practice of burning your ancestors at the stake

00:49:34.780 and so he hates these people and so does she even though they're the very people they're trying to 0.93

00:49:40.580 stand on top of again we're trying to build on the shoulders of giants while chopping them off at the

00:49:44.520 knees point in your view did the strand of liberal thinking that was about the cultivation

00:49:52.740 and disciplining of the self oh drop out definitely it happened during uh the the cold war let's say

00:50:01.820 i mean this is uh and it's that's pretty recent in in the history that i describe in my book right

00:50:07.040 but this idea of disciplining the self or the we're talking about the collectivity about your

00:50:12.580 duties about um any government or state making and getting involved in forming citizens a public

00:50:20.540 education system that forms citizens started to have a a scary kind of ring to it when you've

00:50:26.740 seen fascism and communism and i liberals uh wanted to show like oh we're not that we're not

00:50:35.320 going in that direction uh this is so important and so revealing okay so this is the post-war

00:50:41.900 consensus that's what they're talking about this is basically the liberal inverted version of rr

00:50:48.180 reno's return of the strong gods when reno explains that after the cold war everyone was

00:50:53.300 so worried about these ideas of collectivity and fascism and all these and communism and all these

00:50:57.820 things that you had to banish the idea of having a national identity of having a history of having

00:51:03.120 a shared faith of having a shared identity you had to scatter everybody to the wind because you

00:51:08.380 didn't want to look like those other forms of government you didn't want to summon the ideas

00:51:12.740 of a mustache man from the 1930s that was what was so important that you had to stop and so it was

00:51:20.060 important to after the cold war become radical individualists if we can't collectivize behind

00:51:26.000 some kind of shared identity as americans because that'll make us look too much like nazis well then

00:51:31.880 the only other option is to become as radically individual as possible and that's what they're

00:51:36.780 doing here again they want this fruit of having a cohesive social identity but they want to destroy

00:51:44.340 everything that makes it real they want to destroy the roots the foundation that allows for that

00:51:52.160 collective understanding of the good that you can orient people towards that you can train them

00:51:56.500 towards but they they want to destroy everything that makes it real and so they're desperately

00:52:02.300 trying to construct the like edifice of a cohesive society on just this foundation of sand that are

00:52:11.080 really rubble that they destroyed they want to take a sledgehammer to this collective identity

00:52:16.620 tradition understanding but they ultimately want the fruits of it and so they they're desperate to

00:52:23.620 solve this problem but they have cut themselves off from all possible solutions they want virtue

00:52:30.120 they want a society oriented towards the good but they also want to destroy everything that

00:52:36.860 would drive people to understand why they should care about their neighbor why they should care

00:52:41.980 about the collective continuance of their society they want the tradition but they want to destroy

00:52:47.140 everything that came before them in the tradition it's insane it's it's fatal but it's fascinating

00:52:54.160 to watch because they don't get it ezra klein is never going to grasp this he can't grasp it if he

00:52:59.220 grasp it, it would destroy his worldview. I'm sure that's the same with her here.

00:53:03.980 We are not about the state forming citizens. We are about individual rights, about property

00:53:11.540 rights in particular. And I think that really gave probably the impetus to something that was

00:53:17.860 probably happening already. There's a real feeling among the religious that liberals look down on

00:53:22.000 them, you know, among evangelical Christians and others that they won't even, that they try to use

00:53:27.920 a state to change their behavior that, you know, you can't even refuse to bake a cake for a couple

00:53:35.400 that is getting married of the same sex. And so there is this critique of liberalism that you see

00:53:42.440 throughout the ages, which is that liberals are tolerant of everything but what they consider to

00:53:47.760 be the intolerant. And if they consider you to be intolerant, backwards, bigoted, then they will

00:53:52.900 bring the full force of the state if they control it down upon your head and it creates backlashes

00:53:59.980 but it is this very hard problem like this paradox of tolerance how do you tolerate people who don't

00:54:05.240 want to be tolerant how do you then not become intolerant yeah can you trace a bit of that

00:54:10.360 so they're just walking right into carl schmidt's critique of liberalism that liberalism for all of

00:54:19.280 its words about tolerance and multiculturalism and the toleration of the other, the acceptance

00:54:30.300 of others, for all of their words about neutrality and letting people be individuals and having

00:54:36.060 rights and doing what they want to do. Ultimately, behind all of that, liberalism has a worldview.

00:54:41.640 It has an interest. It has a friend-enemy distinction. It has people who it believes

00:54:46.500 should be in society the way that society should operate. So there are no neutral institutions.

00:54:52.940 There is no liberal society that allows people to be tolerant and free. It never exists. It's

00:54:59.100 simply a ruse. It's a guise. It's a layer of deception over the actual ideology that is

00:55:06.660 operating underneath, the actual belief system, the set of interests that are operating underneath.

00:55:10.880 And so when you buy into this idea that liberalism is somehow navigating these interests, you're blinding yourself to the fact that ultimately liberalism has its own interests, that the people behind it are the ones that are deciding where should we go and what we should do.

00:55:25.740 and they will drop the hammer on you the minute you fall afoul of that so it can never resolve

00:55:30.860 this problem liberalism can never ever fix this because it's not true liberalism is never about

00:55:37.480 diversity it's never about tolerance it's never about respect for others and klein acknowledges 0.68

00:55:42.880 this we can't have these evangelicals out there not baking gay cakes not in our tolerant society 0.86

00:55:49.260 that's intolerant because we don't tolerate christians in our tolerant society we only 0.99

00:55:53.940 tolerate homosexuals sodomy is the only thing we tolerate not not adherence to the word of god 0.99

00:56:00.500 that's liberalism to klein because that's his real religion that's his actual set of beliefs 0.99

00:56:07.780 that is his true political theology but he needs to hide it behind this veneer of liberalism again

00:56:13.800 carl schmidt tears this to shreds it in in uh you know uh his books it's it's fascinating to watch

00:56:21.020 I don't know if they ever solved that problem.

00:56:23.040 They were very, I mean, one has to, if you really try to understand the world from their

00:56:30.620 perspective, you know, it was really hard to be a liberal most of the time.

00:56:34.380 There were such formidable obstacles, such strong enemies, and such intolerance of their

00:56:41.080 views.

00:56:42.100 It was really serious stuff to think of the Catholic Church coming back into power, the

00:56:49.540 counter revolutionaries you know what what would happen to you so do you tolerate them do you allow

00:56:55.000 them to use the free press to uh to uh attack constitutional government at what point do you

00:57:04.160 censor we struggle with this today um and and they certainly did then there is interest so again

00:57:11.380 there is no answer to this they have no answer oh well yeah if people start writing stuff you

00:57:17.340 disagree with you censor them end of story that's the solution i guess we're struggling with a

00:57:25.320 little bit like but ultimately it's so hard to be a liberal and that you know if you let these

00:57:29.080 people get into power they're going to crush everything so again even when they go back

00:57:32.820 historically they just make the same justifications for what they did during covet what they do as

00:57:37.040 soon as they get back into power again today it's that they would become radically intolerant of

00:57:43.600 anyone who is not their version of tolerance there is no such thing as liberalism that's what they're

00:57:49.240 revealing liberalism is a lie it is a ruse it is an impossible way for society to operate if you

00:57:56.280 want a cohesive understanding of the good you must draw lines you must gatekeep you must decide what

00:58:02.980 is good and you must ban what is bad you must encourage the good and you must discourage the

00:58:08.260 bad that's what it looks like to have a cohesive society to achieve the things that they want

00:58:13.420 You must do these things. You must draw these lines, these batteries. You must be intolerant. So the liberalism that they so extol must behave as an intolerant force to create what the real society is, which is just this radical progressive leftism. It's not tolerant in any way, shape, or form.

00:58:30.280 Interesting argumentation over how much to think of the American founders as inside the American liberal tradition, as in tension with what later becomes a liberal tradition, right?

00:58:40.120 They're obviously claimed by all sides here.

00:58:42.800 How do you think about the founding and with its profound internal contradictions around freedom and human bondage?

00:58:51.740 I've become more and more interested in American political thought and institutions and history. Unfortunately, because of the way disciplines and concentrations work, I'm more of an expert on European history. But what I've read about the founding and about the founding fathers and what was going on there just fills me with enormous respect and gratitude.

00:59:15.820 so this is funny because like she starts by saying i don't really know much about the american

00:59:21.360 founding because i'm an academic and because of disciplines i only know my discipline which is

00:59:27.180 true it's kind of weird when i talk to uh college professors they're very very smart they're

00:59:33.240 oftentimes brilliant but they're very narrow like they're siloed they don't have anything outside of

00:59:38.680 their specialization so when you try to bring in broader topics even when it comes to political

00:59:43.440 theory of philosophy they they've only read democracy in america and they know it like the

00:59:48.520 bible they know it the the back of their hand they could quote it chapter and verse but if you ask

00:59:53.100 them how it interacts with anything else they're just like oh i don't know it's not my specialization

00:59:56.440 so she for some reason ezra klein brought on a woman who specializes entirely in european

01:00:03.200 understandings of history so she doesn't know anything about the american founding but she's

01:00:07.140 trying to talk about american liberalism and again this is the problem is they don't treat it as it's

01:00:13.420 own discrete tradition they try to universalize it whatever is true about liberalism in you know

01:00:19.140 germany or france has to be true in america well no actually not at all liberalism is very different

01:00:26.120 in fact question if they're even related in in you know totally but like she only knows the

01:00:33.460 european side and so she's just like fumbling around i think i like the founders i think i'm

01:00:37.620 supposed to say this and you'll see where it goes in a second and i think you know you know for for

01:00:42.920 the wonderful work that they did, being both thinkers and actors. And Frankl and Jefferson

01:00:49.960 came to Paris and were very much interested also in French matters and vice versa. The American

01:00:56.660 Constitution influenced early liberals because, you know, they thought it was an amazing, amazing

01:01:03.400 document. And maybe that's the thing that's so wonderful is to see exactly those things coming

01:01:12.520 together the ideas and the practices coming together in the in the founding fathers to

01:01:17.240 produce this amazing document that's a very glittering answer but but i think a critic of

01:01:22.200 liberalism would say that what good is your liberalism if it can include slavery in its

01:01:30.040 founding constitution or in more of the european case what good is your liberalism if it is so

01:01:35.840 interwoven with colonialism and i mean there were many you know people who certainly believed in

01:01:42.200 many liberal ideas we're talking about here who made space for both of those practices within

01:01:47.500 their liberalism right um well i don't mean to again idealize these um out of proportion these

01:01:55.000 people these are early liberals and liberals whoops whoops sorry sorry i didn't mean to praise

01:02:01.520 the founding fathers my mistake fine immediately goes to it right oh i see you said there was

01:02:08.480 something good about the american founding fathers will have you considered slavery gotcha

01:02:14.020 remember we're never allowed to go more than 10 minutes without saying how evil and racist and 1.00

01:02:20.200 stupid and patriarchal and sexist and homophobic everyone before us was because we're trying to 1.00

01:02:26.440 connect liberalism to a tradition but we hate every single person in that tradition and think 1.00

01:02:31.340 they were evil and to be fair this is not just a liberal thing it's not just a leftist thing it's

01:02:37.820 not just a progressive thing this is what a lot of conservatives believe this is what joel barry

01:02:42.220 believes he can't stop calling the founders racist when he's confronted with their words

01:02:46.340 because like he believes the same thing yeah there were some good ideas in the past but the founders

01:02:51.460 were a bunch of like evil racists and only once their beliefs were perfected by martin luther

01:02:57.040 king jr did we actually have real american values the constitution was actually always pointing

01:03:04.920 towards martin luther king jr the the founders were not honorable wise men who knew exactly what

01:03:11.980 they were talking about no they were flawed racist and yeah maybe they wrote down some nice stuff but

01:03:18.080 ultimately like their values had could not be realized until the the deified civil rights

01:03:25.680 movement brought them into the modern day that's what so many conservatives believe what they'll

01:03:32.440 say out loud and there's not a lot of space between them and Ezra Klein here and uh Helena

01:03:38.600 I believe her name is like the only difference is that uh the the conservatives will remember

01:03:43.600 that they're supposed to say but like George Washington's a good guy somewhere in between

01:03:47.060 that right like the only difference is that the hatred rip dripping from Ezra Klein is a little 1.00

01:03:52.520 more obvious as we're like conservatives are supposed to be like well they were just stupid 1.00

01:03:57.060 and ignorant and in the past and wrong but as we're like Ezra Klein and liberals can be like 1.00

01:04:01.840 oh, no, they were evil. Right. But otherwise, they have the same story. It's the same progressive 0.99

01:04:06.440 story. Many conservatives are just progressives in this sense. They've never been perfect. They

01:04:11.900 often suffer from the same prejudices, the prejudices of their time. There are

01:04:17.240 exclusions. But how did they grapple with this? I mean, we've talked a lot about freedom here.

01:04:22.700 How did they grapple with this? How did they grapple with this? I think there were,

01:04:28.040 I mean, other people can speak more intelligently about the U.S. Constitution and the slavery within the document and say that this is really a question also of compromise.

01:04:37.200 It's a horrible thing to imagine, but I think there was debates going on there and politics going on that are unseemly today.

01:04:45.920 And you have John Stuart Mill seeing absolutely atrocious things about how despotism is okay when you're dealing with barbarians or something, talking about British imperialism in India.

01:04:59.520 You have Tocqueville, who was okay, apparently, with burning silos in Algeria.

01:05:06.540 That's awful stuff.

01:05:09.460 But at the same time, these people were then from within, this was not a liberal position, I would say. This is, as many people were saying, you are betraying your own principles. And conservatives were also for, perhaps even more so for colonialism, imperialism.

01:05:28.500 I'm it's horrible to say, but racism was rampant. Sexism was rampant. If anyone was against it, if we can, we don't you know, they were liberals. It was kind of they thought that Napoleon would.

01:05:43.940 so again she's trapped here because she wants to revere some aspects of liberalism but then she

01:05:51.920 notes that these titans of liberalism you know people who i think of as radically liberal like

01:05:58.780 john stewart mill or a guy who's certainly championed democracy in america alexis de

01:06:03.660 toqueville these people when it came down to it they seem to value liberalism for their people

01:06:12.560 but they didn't care about liberalism in India or you know North Africa it's like yeah what does

01:06:20.300 that mean oh it means liberalism even in the you know tradition you're trying to connect it to was

01:06:27.880 always particular to its people whether you're John Stuart Mill or you're Alexis de Tocqueville

01:06:35.380 you thought liberalism applied to your people not everyone not to the Indians not to the people

01:06:42.520 of Algeria. You're actually fine with treating them differently because that's how everyone

01:06:48.060 understood the world. It was not a universal understanding or application of liberalism,

01:06:53.320 but they don't grasp that. They don't think that's, they think they can remove that element

01:06:58.040 of liberalism and keep the rest and keep it functional, but you can't because all the things

01:07:03.360 that you were talking about, about cultivating virtue and having a civic mindedness, they require

01:07:08.220 an idea of exclusive community. You can't be generous to everyone. You cannot be mindful of

01:07:18.280 orienting yourself towards the good of everyone because their goods are different and in conflict.

01:07:24.140 The world is not one universal place with one universal good. It is a place with many different

01:07:29.140 cultures and peoples with different goods and different needs, and many of them are directly

01:07:33.100 in conflict with each other but liberalism doesn't address this unless you understand it

01:07:39.000 as something that only applies to the people around you my buddy carl benjamin has a great

01:07:45.480 phrase liberalism is the sharia law of the british it is the way they live their lives

01:07:51.580 is what they believe and when you apply it just to them it seems to work but when you try to

01:07:58.120 universalize it when you try to take it to all these other nations and peoples who are no way

01:08:02.120 connected you know it seems to work in other places that are connected to the anglos but when

01:08:07.080 you take it to a bunch of people who aren't in any way anglo don't have the history don't have

01:08:10.460 the tradition liberalism doesn't seem to work there which is why liberalism was always elite

01:08:15.620 and always bound by an identity a people a place a country a nation instead of being applied to

01:08:24.440 everyone even its greatest champions did not see liberalism in this way and ezra klein and his

01:08:31.540 guests keep running into this problem over and over and over again and they just hand wave it

01:08:36.420 because they can't deal with it because if they did it would collapse their entire worldview 0.94

01:08:40.220 yeah there's a world where liberalism works it's where it applies to like a bunch of anglos or

01:08:47.940 maybe people descended from anglos who have that culture and have that tradition and have that

01:08:52.160 understanding maybe there's even like a french version but it only applies to the french it's

01:08:57.480 not universal you can't just put it on everyone and that's why all these liberal heroes keep

01:09:01.660 falling short for you because they understood something about liberalism that you don't it's 1.00

01:09:06.080 not that they were stupid or that they were wrong or they were you know ignorant it's that you are 1.00

01:09:11.960 you want to cut history off at the knees and then you want to build on it and it fails every single 1.00

01:09:17.240 time come and save the revolution so there was a lot of hope that this charismatic figure

01:09:22.880 who claimed to want to save the revolution,

01:09:26.740 was making all the right noises.

01:09:28.500 He was going to bring peace to France.

01:09:30.160 He was going to bring back order.

01:09:31.640 He was going to protect all these things liberals had fought for so hard.

01:09:35.920 And then instead, he became this despot and a demagogue.

01:09:40.980 And he used wars, you know,

01:09:46.360 to divert attention to what he was doing at home.

01:09:50.220 He gave gifts to people. He lined the pockets of his friends. He flattered people, gave them power, but at the same time that he amassed power in his own hands.

01:10:07.660 This was profoundly demoralizing to the early liberals that I'm talking about who had this lofty notion of what a freer, better, more moral, more humane world would look like.

01:10:21.840 And look what it derailed into.

01:10:25.000 So what did they learn from that?

01:10:26.080 They learned that you needed certain safeguards in place.

01:10:29.240 This is really when you get like liberalism as a constitutional way of thinking, balance of power, separations of powers, individual rights, freedom, how important freedom of press is, how important freedom of religion is.

01:10:46.160 Napoleon used religion, you know, to buttress his power.

01:10:51.120 So all of these constitutional ideas really came together then.

01:10:56.540 and they so they want to complain about napoleon and they want to complain about napoleon because

01:11:01.860 obviously they want him to be trump like you'll see even more clearly in just a minute here why

01:11:06.900 that's true but the complaint but again the point she's making here is wildly a historical

01:11:11.700 she is not a historian or if she is and this is what passes for his uh history departments

01:11:17.240 in the united states then it's time to throw the entire university system into the blender

01:11:21.440 like just burn it down salt the earth be done with it raise them to the ground salt the earth

01:11:26.060 it's over okay so the french invented separations of powers now in liberalism after napoleon

01:11:35.800 no not even close not even close baron de montesquieu was writing about separation of

01:11:43.820 powers 100 like at least 100 years before this happened it was in the constitution because

01:11:48.620 baron de montesquieu was writing about it right like that's the point that the french were already

01:11:56.660 seeing this but and you know where baron montesquieu got this you already saw the separation

01:12:01.180 powers you know why he idealized this idea these restrictions on government because he was admiring

01:12:06.440 the british government which put some of their power in the king and some of the power in

01:12:10.560 parliament and some of the power you know you know in the church and all these places and that these

01:12:14.760 things seem to balance each other like that's what he was excited about so the idea that the

01:12:20.800 french didn't know about this before napoleon came to power is insane ahistorical entirely

01:12:27.960 but also it excludes once again the idea that these things already existed

01:12:33.640 in the english government and that's where moscue was drawing them from

01:12:38.480 they were bound to a specific tradition he was admiring a specific tradition

01:12:44.500 from a specific people so once again she is entirely rewriting history ignoring the founding

01:12:51.220 of america the fact that a frenchman had already wrote about these ideas and that's where americans

01:12:56.320 got the idea for the constitution in the first place the idea that those ideas came from the

01:13:01.500 british who had been practicing them for a long time but again we can't contextualize any of this

01:13:07.940 we can't tell any real history and again ezra klein is just nodding along because he doesn't 1.00

01:13:12.220 know anything about history these people are idiots or they're liars maybe they know all 1.00

01:13:19.200 these things maybe klein knows all these things maybe she knows all these things maybe they're 1.00

01:13:23.200 all just putting on the show for their readers and they know they're idiots but either way the 0.99

01:13:29.260 point is this is supposed to be a discussion about the historical tradition of liberalism 0.99

01:13:33.780 and at no point has there been any real history here

01:13:37.300 outside of the whole virtue is oriented towards the good stuff you know that i i praised at the 0.77

01:13:43.680 beginning i was glad that they got into other than that this has just been a farce it's ridiculous

01:13:48.820 you know it happened again and again over the course of the 19th century that you have these

01:13:54.940 very clever charismatic figures who could speak directly to the people i understand you i represent

01:14:02.860 you it i don't need these we don't need these representative institutions we don't i because i

01:14:08.100 speaks directly to you i am you sort of i mean that's what a demagogue does and that's what

01:14:12.960 populism is right is that you don't need the intermediaries so of course we hate populism

01:14:19.320 right we love democracy but we hate populism why oh well are they the same thing no no no

01:14:25.540 populism is very different populism is when the leader speaks to the people and goes around all

01:14:30.060 these mediating institutions. Oh, you mean all the things that will manipulate and control the

01:14:35.020 process in your favor. That's why you hate Trump. That's why you hate the idea of populism,

01:14:39.880 because it's going to bypass all those institutions of control that you have set up in your favor to

01:14:45.800 make sure that your elite class rules. And that's why you hate populism. That's why you hate the

01:14:50.580 idea of right-wing populism, especially, because that's going to allow people to circumvent

01:14:56.360 all of the ideology all of the indoctrination all of the legalese everything else that you've

01:15:02.420 wrapped your system of control in and it's going to allow them to directly address the problems

01:15:07.000 of the people and there's nothing worse for liberal rule than the people actually getting

01:15:13.080 someone who cares about them actually getting somebody who wants to do something for the people

01:15:17.720 that's the worst possible thing all right guys i'm going to stop there like i said this is an

01:15:22.720 hour long plus conversation so if you want to watch the whole thing for context by all means

01:15:27.540 please do so it's over on the new york times uh or or i think ezra klein's youtube channel that

01:15:32.660 kind of thing uh so you can go check that out i do think it's a fascinating look into the mind

01:15:37.400 of the liberal these people trying to reconstruct this alternative history that justifies what

01:15:41.660 they're trying to do uh but i understand i watched it so you don't have to you don't have to do that

01:15:47.280 but again if you if you want to grasp it and get the full context by all means please do

01:15:51.060 let's head over to the questions of the people here

01:15:54.420 shrink this down

01:15:57.540 Ezra is uh Arthur in California says Ezra is the master of

01:16:03.860 sophist rhetoric for liberalism all of this hides his true desire for a blue

01:16:09.380 Caesar again I don't know him that well honestly

01:16:12.160 don't spend a lot of time thinking or you know listening to Ezra Klein

01:16:15.520 but I from his behavior here I think that's probably

01:16:19.200 probably correct

01:16:21.060 Wild Speaker says, liberalism has no blood in it anymore. The old problem of Thumos rears its

01:16:26.580 ugly head. Fukuyama is after Locke's, the most incorrect man to ever live award. Yeah,

01:16:33.080 very, very true. I mean, at least Locke was right about atheists, right? So he at least had that 1.00

01:16:38.260 going for him. Sir Blank says, USA liberalism in 2026, USSR communism in 1989. Yeah, I do think

01:16:48.040 that there's ultimately like something they're trying to avoid here that liberalism has you know

01:16:52.080 this very particular gradient that gets you to something that they don't want to admit uh and

01:16:57.200 that's why they're sitting around saying oh i don't understand why has this destroyed all these

01:17:00.720 identities uh well because marx told you that's what liberalism would do that's why he liked that

01:17:05.380 stage on its way to communism liberalism is a necessary agent of dissolving identities both

01:17:12.820 national and relational uh you know familial uh religious so that ultimately communism can

01:17:20.500 globalize that's what marx said about liberalism and so he loved that stage of liberalism he just

01:17:25.740 didn't want to get stuck there and they don't understand that or they don't want to understand

01:17:29.720 that and they don't understand why it is dissolved everything that they are trying to now put

01:17:34.560 liberalism back on it's dissolved that foundation uh blue gray says liberalism is when you can do

01:17:40.740 whatever you want as long as you're liberal and agree with me yes perfectly said perfectly

01:17:44.980 encapsulated uh weirdy curb says i remember when obama was elected all of my friends were talking

01:17:51.580 about the probability of his assassination because racist funny how that panned out yeah of course 0.96

01:17:56.680 right like that that was the idea is america's full of these racists and they're going to shoot 0.99

01:18:00.380 him immediately but of course it's donald trump that gets shot up because liberals are the violent 1.00

01:18:03.860 insane uh you know evil people and so they want to murder there are people who disagree with them 0.97

01:18:08.480 politically and conservatives didn't do any of that uh and a name i can't say uh says the gop 0.55

01:18:15.940 must fall or one the gop must fall to free the chud uh that's a lot of very online internet uh

01:18:22.500 there's a story i can't get into right now about this guy chud the builder i don't even i never

01:18:27.420 heard of him before i'd stopped it popped out and he i guess went up and uh you know said the

01:18:34.220 no-no word to black people and they got angry and he defended himself, I guess. Again, I don't

01:18:40.660 really know enough about it, so I can't speak intelligently about it. But I guess if you want

01:18:45.400 to understand that more, you can go check that out. All right, guys, I'm going to go ahead and

01:18:50.700 wrap this up. Once again, I want to thank everyone for coming by. It's always a pleasure to speak

01:18:55.080 with you. Fantastic audience today. Great questions. If it's your first time on this

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01:19:15.460 or review that helps with the algorithm there and of course my book the total state is out in

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01:19:23.640 that new chapter it is available on amazon as we speak you can go ahead and pick that up thank you

01:19:28.620 everybody for watching and as always I will talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - May 20, 2026

Ezra Klein Has a Crisis of Faith ｜ 5⧸20⧸26

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