Nigel Bigger is a distinguished British theologian and ethicist. His controversial book, Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning, was recently published and hit the nonfiction bestseller list in the UK, and is now available in North America and other English-language countries around the world. In this episode, we discuss the ethics of the colonial enterprise, the reality and falsehood of the idea of privilege, the purposeful and pointless miseries of colonial culture, and the separation of good from evil in the process of historical analysis. We also discuss the circumstances that led him to write the book, and why he decided to take on the task of making moral judgments about complicated moral issues, such as colonialism, empire, and empire itself. This episode is sponsored by Betonline. BetOnline prides themselves with their higher-than-average betting limits of up to $25,000, and you can increase your wager on real-world events outside of sports outside of the realm of sports by contacting their player services desk by phone or email. Or if you're a diehard sports fan, you can spice things up with a friendly wager at BetOnline. Go to BetOnlineag to place your bets. Use promo code DAILYWIRE to get a 50% sign-up bonus of up $250. BetOnlineGOLD to get 50% off your bets! Betonline is betting on your favorite sports teams and the options are endless! Use Promo Code DAILYWEEKS to place a $250 bet on your bets at Betonlineag to win up to 50% of your total wager! Today's episode is Sponsored by BetOnline, the world-wide sports betting website. . BetOnline . You can t miss out on the latest BetOnline Gambling? and the best bet of the week, anywhere else you can bet on sports betting! You get 10% off of $250,000! and up to 20% off the best sports betting that you can win $250! And you can get a FREE VIP membership when you book a VIP membership offer from BetOnlineAG? and get $250 VIP access to $50, $5,000 in the VIP VIP membership. and $75,000 off your first month, VIP VIP + VIP access gets you an ad-only VIP membership only gets you access to VIP access, plus a discount on VIP access.
00:08:09.680So what John told me that weekend was that he had pressing personal problems and just felt he needed to withdraw.
00:08:20.260Okay, so I have some comments about that.
00:08:22.140So I've talked to about 200 people now who've undergone, let's say, a trial by fire of the sort that you describe.
00:08:31.140Now, it's easy to pillory people who withdraw in the face of opposition.
00:08:35.480But my experience has been that most of the people, virtually all of the people that I know who've been subjected to this sort of treatment react to it in a manner that's analogous to either facing a very protracted lawsuit or divorce or a very serious illness on their part or a serious illness on the part of someone close to them.
00:08:57.560Jay Bhattacharya, for example, at Stanford, he was raked over the coals for his attitude toward, for his scientific discussion of the problem of the epidemic response and his skepticism about the COVID lockdown.
00:09:12.880And I know other people who've ended up, well, devastated sufficiently to receive psychiatric treatment and who've withdrawn, you know, into their own personal lives, who've been abandoned by their professional colleagues.
00:09:29.660And so it never surprises me when I hear that someone has, in fact, withdrawn when they've been mobbed because it's a stunningly effective tactic from the psychological perspective.
00:09:39.980And you said Dr. Darwin had indicated to you that he was having trouble in his personal life at that point as well and obviously either couldn't tolerate or didn't need the stress.
00:09:50.240And that's interesting, too, you know, because lots of people move forward professionally despite the fact that they're having all sorts of trouble, right?
00:09:59.380And then if you complicate that so that moving forward brings with it a tremendous psychological or personal cost, then you can bring the whole enterprise to a shuddering halt, which we seem to be hell-bent on doing at the moment.
00:10:11.300So I have some sympathy for Dr. Darwin, but it put you in an awkward position because now your collaborator had disappeared.
00:10:18.340I was stunned, frankly, and I mean, I didn't know what was happening, but I was stunned because our collaboration to that point had been very, very congenial and we were both very happy.
00:10:32.940We launched the project in July 17, it went very well.
00:10:35.960And I was aware there was a connection between this student protest and John's sudden abandonment of the project.
00:10:51.740Given the timing, that seemed to be less than the whole story.
00:10:55.600I was told by a third party that he did indeed have domestic concerns that were preoccupying him.
00:11:01.740But later I discovered on an obscure part of the Oxford University website, a statement by him saying that he had withdrawn from the project because its aims had changed.
00:11:17.640I have to say, as far as I can see, that wasn't true.
00:11:20.680But to your point, I mean, I think, I mean, my experience, not just with John, but with others, too, even some very old and good friends was that one friend described the issue of colonialism as toxic.
00:11:40.660And as a consequence, he was involved in a research center I run and he also withdrew.
00:11:47.960So my experience was a feeling as if I'd suddenly become diseased and people were stepping back.
00:11:55.480Well, I think that's the right metaphor, you know, because I think the psychological mechanisms that underlie shunning and isolation are an extension of, they describe it as a, what would you say, as a consequence of the operation of the behavioral immune system.
00:12:16.160And people who are shunned are essentially treated with contempt and derision as if they are infectious pathogens.
00:12:24.860Now, one of the things I learned, for example, I read a book called Hitler's Table Talk, and it was transcripts of his spontaneous discussions over mealtimes, over about a three-year period.
00:12:38.680I was very interested in the psychology of contempt and derision.
00:12:44.700And Hitler never used language that was associated with fear in relationship to the Jews.
00:12:49.960You hear this notion that Hitler was afraid of the Jews.
00:12:52.300But that isn't the case, is that the language he used was all parasite host language, contempt and derision.
00:12:59.600And it's a much more toxic emotion to have directed at you than fear, because you destroy things that are pathogens.
00:13:10.180And to be targeted with derision and disgust, as you said, you end up contaminated.
00:13:15.620It's about the worst thing that can happen to you socially.
00:13:18.340Yeah, I think in the cases I'm talking about, I think it was more fear than disgust.
00:13:26.220Of course, I've had plenty of disgust and hatred and hostility directed from other quarters.
00:13:30.620In this case, it was more, I mean, you know, I accept now there are people out there who really, really, really hate what I say and think, and therefore hate me.
00:13:44.380But the other phenomenon is of people who are friends or colleagues who don't hate you.
00:13:50.320But I think that they're more scared of what, the way I interpret it is, they step back from you because they're scared of what other people will think of them if they're associated with you.
00:13:59.240Well, they're afraid of becoming the target of that contempt.
00:14:14.960And, you know, another problem you had, I presume, is that you're, in some ways, you're the perfect poster boy for the kind of mobbing that might occur in relationship to colonialism.
00:14:25.640Because, well, you're a professor at Oxford, you're a professor of Christian ethics, you're Caucasian, and, you know, you are...
00:14:41.660You know, it might be that it's easier for people to believe ill of you because they might say, well, Dr. Bigger is only justifying the structure that gave rise to his incredible privilege, his tenured luxury at Oxford.
00:14:56.420And so he's inclined psychologically to support the colonial enterprise because he's a prime beneficiary of it.
00:15:04.760So how would you, how do you, how have you responded to that sort of psychological analysis, typical of the mobbing types, right?
00:15:15.520Going online without ExpressVPN is like not paying attention to the safety demonstration on a flight.
00:15:22.380Most of the time, you'll probably be fine, but what if one day that weird yellow mask drops down from overhead and you have no idea what to do?
00:15:30.060In our hyper-connected world, your digital privacy isn't just a luxury, it's a fundamental right.
00:15:35.020Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport, you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:15:44.380And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:15:47.700With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:15:55.080Now, you might think, what's the big deal? Who'd want my data anyway?
00:15:58.740Well, on the dark web, your personal information could fetch up to $1,000.
00:16:03.120That's right, there's a whole underground economy built on stolen identities.
00:17:47.080I mean, it's easier in the scientific domain, at least in principle, because there are strict methods for separating out personal interest from the facts at hand,
00:17:56.520even though they're not, you know, 100% reliable.
00:18:00.120But it's a lot harder when you're investigating history.
00:18:02.740So, I think, Jordan, and here I speak as a, not simply as a theoretical ethicist, but as one who thinks himself bound to practice a bit of what he preaches.
00:18:17.920I mean, I think one needs to have a sense of responsibility, to be honest.
00:18:23.200And that means a sense that one is morally bound to expose oneself to criticism.
00:18:28.580I'm sure I'm not perfect on that, but I think I do do that.
00:18:35.820And so, in my book, you tell me if I'm wrong, let me just decide.
00:18:42.060In my book, when I'm coming to a judgment about the British Empire, I don't shy away from the really bad bits.
00:18:48.180And insofar as I identify as British, those are painful for me to admit, but I do admit them.
00:18:57.200So, I think one response I have is it is possible to be honest.
00:19:04.160And there are certain marks for an honest person that they are willing to face criticism, they're willing to think about it, and sometimes even willing to concede.
00:19:12.620And I have to say, compared to my critics as I've experienced them, I do more of that than they do.
00:19:30.700As it were, the tactic of psychologizing people you disagree with and saying, well, he's only doing that or saying that.
00:19:40.460He would say that, wouldn't he, because he is white and male and privileged.
00:19:44.640So, one thing I say is, well, it's possible in principle.
00:19:47.880Let's see if it is the case in practice.
00:19:49.600The other thing to say is, it's a dangerous tactic to deploy this psychology of the opposition.
00:19:57.360Because what it allows you, the psychologizer, to do is to say, well, because he's only doing that because he's white and male and privileged, I don't have to listen to a damn thing he says.
00:20:07.060So, I immediately exempt myself from any responsibility to listen to what he says and to respond to it rationally, giving reasons.
00:20:16.040So, it kind of immunizes myself against any responsibility, actually, to be honest and open to the criticism implicit in what he says.
00:20:24.920So, I think it's a danger that the psychologizing dismissal of opposition allows you to be dishonest.
00:20:36.020That casual kind of moralizing, you know, the only reason you think the way you are is because you're trying to justify yourself.
00:20:46.080And I think it is worth taking it seriously.
00:20:48.440You have to examine your own bias in order to think straight.
00:20:52.100I used to tell my graduate students to triple, double, triple, and quadruple check their statistics and to try to make the results they obtained go away.
00:21:01.860Because if they were motivated by the necessity to develop their career to publish something that wasn't true, number one, they would warp the whole research enterprise and send other people chasing a red herring.
00:21:14.420And number two, they could spend the rest of their life investigating something that simply didn't exist.
00:21:21.320And then there's the other complicating issue of just being wrong.
00:21:25.600If you're a sensible thinker and you're a critical thinker, you should subject your own thoughts to the most intense critical analysis possible, knowing that if you put forward second-rate thoughts, you'll act them out.
00:21:38.780And that will cause you no end of grief.
00:21:41.360And partly what we're supposed to do in university is teach people to subject their own thoughts to a multiplicity of critical perspectives so that there's nothing left but wheat, right?
00:21:53.000And so when you're writing, you said you take an even-handed approach as much as possible to the catastrophes and benefits of the British colonial enterprise.
00:22:03.340I mean, how do you, again, how do you, what do you do to try to ensure that you're surveying as broad a range of the evidence as you possibly can, you know, knowing your own potential bias?
00:22:47.260So when I come across material in history that I read about that is negative about the British Empire, I report it in my book.
00:22:59.600So there are a number of pages that deal with the 150 years worth of abhorrent involvement in slave trading and slavery in the second chapter, I think.
00:23:13.820And I quote descriptions of what was done to slaves who tried to escape, for example.
00:23:37.140But in terms of my own work on this topic, so for example, I have read a number of books on controversial issues written by the kind of people who are very hostile to me.
00:23:51.500I read them, and on the whole, I mean, there are a number of cases in the book, I lay out what they say, and then I take it apart.
00:24:01.440And most of the time, in my view, it falls apart.
00:24:06.360But I, as I said, the reader can see what I'm doing exactly.
00:24:09.240And if the reader thinks I'm not playing fair, or I'm cheating in some way, or I'm overlooking something, they can see it.
00:24:16.980So you put enough of the process of the inquiry into the work itself so that people can follow along and double check for themselves whether you're playing a straight game.
00:24:26.260Right, and you, you know, you pointed to something that's extremely important, I think, in this regard, given your position also as a professor of, say, Christian ethics.
00:24:33.860I mean, one of the, I've been investigating the metaphysical presumptions of science, and there are metaphysical presumptions that have to be accepted before you can start to operate as a scientist.
00:24:47.040And so, for example, you have to believe that there is a logos or a logic in the objective world.
00:24:52.680You have to believe that there is an objective world.
00:24:55.220You have to believe that that logic is apprehensible.
00:24:58.140You have to believe that apprehending that logic is a moral good, because otherwise, why would you bother?
00:25:05.660And then you have to believe that truth in relationship to that apprehension is the most important orienting principle.
00:25:13.000Those are all metaphysical presumptions.
00:25:14.740I actually think they're metaphysical presumptions that are derived from Christianity itself, which is why science emerged in Europe and not elsewhere.
00:25:22.300But you said, you know, that you have to live your life in a manner, if you're going to tell the truth when you write, you have to live your life in a manner that indicates respect for the truth.
00:25:33.280And how do you justify the claim that that's what you do do in your life, and why should people take that seriously?
00:25:41.160That's a very germane question, given your position as a professor of Christian ethics at Oxford, right?
00:25:47.420I mean, you above all, in some ways, are required to not only make that case, but to walk the walk.
00:26:17.600I mean, we come and we go, and, you know, I mean, unless we plug ourselves into some larger narrative, what on earth does it matter what I do or say?
00:26:31.500So partly, I'd say that if you think of your life, as I do, as a kind of pilgrimage or an adventure, and the goal is to approximate oneself to what's good and true and beautiful, you might say God.
00:26:53.220Then, in a sense, my little life in this place, this time, it takes on a larger, deeper significance.
00:27:05.360So I think of myself, I mean, I don't know the truth.
00:27:39.940Okay, well, what was it in your life, do you think, that drove you to conclude that alignment with the truth was the appropriate way to conduct yourself?
00:27:50.600Because there are alternatives, obviously, like manipulation and the pursuit of short-term gratification, the use of deception, for example, to get what you want.
00:28:02.000And why did you decide, what drove you to decide that you were going to at least attempt to align yourself with the truth?
00:28:10.740That's, that's a, yeah, it's a really good question.
00:28:19.860I mean, I wasn't brought, I wasn't brought up in a Christian household.
00:28:22.260Um, I, I, I was attracted to Christianity.
00:28:27.940Um, and I think that has something to do with the question you're asking.
00:28:31.860So, um, I mean, for a long, I mean, I, you know, um, for, for a long, long time, I find myself fascinated and admiring of, um, individuals who stand up for what they believe to be true.
00:28:52.240And right, uh, even though the whole world turns against them.
00:28:57.660I mean, I, I know, yeah, I, I'm quite aware that I seem to have become such a person in some respects, but I remember, um, um, age of six, seven, eight, when, uh, the, the, the movie, um, King of Kings by produced by Cecil D.B. Mill came out in, I think, 16, 19, 63.
00:29:18.580Uh, my father took, took me to see it at the local, uh, uh, uh, cinema.
00:29:23.480And I was so moved by the, the story of Jesus and his crucifixion, uh, that at the age of seven or eight, I came back home, um, was, was put to bed.
00:29:36.360And, and I lay there staring at the ceiling, weeping, saying to God, and here, here I was praying, though no one taught me to pray, uh, um, take it off Jesus and put it on me.
00:29:49.800I mean, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit.
00:29:54.980It's a bit, it's a bit, it's a bit messianic for, for, for, for, for that, uh, for that age.
00:30:01.200So, um, so I think somehow the, the, the, the idea that one is bound and, you know, talk about being bound or obliged, it sounds like a burden.
00:30:12.960Yes, it is, but it's also, it's also a fulfillment.
00:30:19.680And so shortly after that, this was, I was talking about age six, seven, age 10.
00:30:25.080I mean, when I was young, I used to steal.
00:30:27.940Um, and I remember an occasion in, in, I was at a boarding school at the age of, I don't know, 10, let's say.
00:30:35.880And I used to steal toy soldiers from some of my school, schoolmates.
00:30:40.340And, uh, one evening I was doing this again.
00:30:45.160And I suddenly thought to myself, no, this is not satisfying.
00:31:22.060Real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:31:26.260Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:31:32.560We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:31:39.320With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:31:47.240He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:31:55.160If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.
00:31:58.320There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:32:01.600Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:32:06.740Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:32:14.620So what makes you, so the radical claim, then we'll get to your book, but I want to go into the trustworthiness of its source, let's say, and how that might be established.
00:32:24.560The radical postmodern slash neo-Marxist claim is that all claims to truth are essentially masks for an underlying drive to power, sort of a demented Nietzscheanism, and that there's really no escaping your motivation.
00:32:44.300That, and even if you claim to be, as you're claiming now, to be the representative of a higher truth, all that is, is a particularly subtle and insidious justification of your underlying motivation.
00:32:57.680And what makes you believe, do you think, you touched on it with regard to the, like the external quality of the voice of conscience, say, and the emotional impact that this admiration you had in the aftermath of the movie, you touched on this.
00:33:16.400What makes you think that there is a truth that can be pursued independent of the subjective striving for dominance and power?
00:33:27.680So, you're quite right, the neo-Marxists and the postmodernists say that it's all about power.
00:33:39.800What they mean is, they're all about power.
00:33:43.520Yes, they certainly do mean that, yes.
00:33:45.880Yeah, but the assumption they're making is, they're all about power and it's wrong.
00:33:53.040They're making that because they're criticizing the way the establishment or the elite behave.
00:34:03.520And the criticism is based on the assumption that they, the neo-Marxists, know the truth and they have it right, which is why they want to dismantle that power.
00:34:11.900But what's, what's missing here is any sense of self-criticism and any kind of self-awareness because the cynicism is directed completely externally.
00:34:23.120And, but, but the cynicism with regard to other people implies actually an oblique affirmation that there is truth and there is morality.
00:34:33.600It's just that we have it, so, so I think-
00:34:36.880Well, that's very, that's very interesting because the other problem with that, so essentially your observation is that, well, the postmodern types, especially with the more neo-Marxist twist,
00:34:48.340accuse every system and every other person other than themselves, let's say, of being motivated by nothing but power.
00:34:57.320Yet, they claim that that doesn't apply to themselves and they implicitly claim that objection to the use of power is moral, but they absolutely never, as far as I can tell, explain why, which is actually why I was asking you that question.
00:35:12.020It's like, well, if it's self-evident that power is wrong and it's self-evident that you stand for something other than the use of power, which is obviously something both transcendent, because it can unite people who are united against power, and higher in that it's morally preferable to power, then exactly what the hell is this?
00:35:32.580And that postmodernists simultaneously disavow the existence of anything like a unifying metanarrative, and they do that explicitly, even though they seem to have a unifying metanarrative in their objection to the use of power, but it's all left implicit.
00:35:48.300It's like an unconscious god, as far as I can tell. It's something like that.
00:35:51.760And so, you elaborated out your relationship to transcendent truth in the confines of conscience, you said, with regards to the theft, but also to the feeling of admiration that overcame you when you were six or seven years old when you saw this particular movie.
00:36:11.120And that's an interesting observation to me, because I think often that our moral intuition is grounded in something like admiration, right?
00:36:21.680And that comes upon us. It's not something we create. You said that happened to you when you were six or seven.
00:36:27.060You learned that there was something to admire, and you didn't come from a religious background, and yet you became a professor of Christian ethics.
00:36:36.640Just on this business of admiration, another reason I would give for saying, for justifying why I think of human life properly as being about the acknowledgement and the approximation and the calling toward truth, goodness, and beauty,
00:37:03.320is that it makes those who adopt that position more beautiful.
00:37:10.740So they become, you know, those who, and I think even postmodernists might agree with this if they were willing to be thoughtful.
00:37:21.240When you look upon, as it were, exemplars of the moral position you hold, those who have risked all for justice or for the truth,
00:37:37.860there's a beauty about them that is fascinating and draws you to them.
00:37:42.260And that raises the question, you know, I don't suppose, you know, cows or slugs react this way,
00:37:48.720but it raises the question of why is the cosmos so constructed that we human beings are really moved by people who do such things
00:37:58.000and sometimes moved to risk all, to risk all, to follow them and to do likewise?
00:38:03.960That tells us something really important about the cosmos.
00:38:08.080Well, it seems to me, and I think your level of analysis is correct,
00:38:14.260I think that it's a truth that's metaphysical and objective and theological at once,
00:38:21.360that the proper pathway forward, all things considered,
00:38:26.040is to be found in establishment of a relationship with the truth.
00:38:29.280And you might say, well, that's because if you're in accordance with reality,
00:38:34.820you can dance with reality in a much more effective manner than if you set yourself up in opposition to it.
00:38:41.060And then you might say, well, that's such a fundamental truth that we're actually oriented instinctively
00:38:46.000to apprehend its presence when we see it.
00:38:49.080And I think the reason that heroes in movies and heroes in literature,
00:38:53.480I think the idea that the king of kings, that that idea of a king of kings even emerged,
00:38:58.100is it's the hierarchical ordering of that which is most admirable.
00:39:02.780And what you have on the Christian front is this peculiar proclamation
00:39:07.440that what's most admirable is the union of what is highest with service to what is lowest
00:46:42.600And so it's so interesting psychologically because what it implies is that if you are called upon to say something,
00:46:48.880to set things right, even at the social level, and you don't, the storms are going to rise around you.
00:46:54.500But that isn't all that happens to Jonah, right?
00:46:57.540The next thing that happens is that this terrible beast comes up from the abyss and swallows him and pulls him all the way to the bottom of the world.
00:47:04.400It's like the harrowing of hell in the Christian story.
00:47:07.300And so the further inference there is that if something calls to you to speak the truth when things are corrupt and you ignore it,
00:47:15.760not only will the storms rise around you, but you will end up somewhere so dismal you can hardly possibly imagine it.
00:47:22.080And I can't help but think about that in light of the rise of totalitarian states in the 20th century.
00:47:28.560Because people in totalitarian states lied to each other and to themselves 100% of the time.
00:47:38.200You know, when Jonah repents and decides to go to Nineveh, the whales spits him back up on shore in consequence.
00:47:44.220And because of that, because he goes there and tells the truth, the god then decides to not destroy the city.
00:47:51.340And what that also implies is that if Jonah would have permanently abandoned his ethical responsibility to say what he was called upon to say,
00:48:00.460that an entire city would have been devastated.
00:48:03.140And that's a hell of a good lesson for the current times.
00:48:07.620Yes, I mean, I guess my, something that puzzles me, I don't know the answer to it, is,
00:48:12.940why are some people so made that they respond to the call?
00:48:19.960I mean, you caught Jonah, I'm thinking of a passage in the book of the prophet Jeremiah,
00:48:27.100where the prophet is complaining to God, he's saying, you know,
00:48:31.080you give me your word and I speak it, and everyone hates me and insults me.
00:48:35.840Bloody hell, I'm not going to do it anymore, he says.
00:48:38.460I'm sulking, I'm not doing it anymore.
00:48:40.540But then he says, but when I do that, this thing burns within me, I cannot hold it in.
00:49:38.480And the rationale was, well, I don't need to make an issue out of this.
00:49:42.920But if you fail to make an issue out of a million micro-catastrophes, then it's a macro-catastrophe and you're weak.
00:49:49.820Now, it doesn't completely address the question because you might say, well, why do people turn to the right or the left in the initial stages of that decision process?
00:50:00.100Like in childhood, in principle, when you were faced with your conscience in relationship to stealing those soldiers, you could have continued to steal them, right?
01:33:03.140Since colonial government was not democratic, did that make it illegitimate?
01:33:09.840So what I say about that, Jordan, is I think any good government has to be government for the people.
01:33:18.080And any government that wants to serve the people's interests needs to understand what it is the people need and it needs to be able to hear from the people so that it forms policies that serve the people's interests.
01:33:34.240So there needs to be communication between the top, the bottom and the top.
01:33:38.640And democracy is one way of doing that.
01:33:40.940And it's one way of holding executive government to account.
01:33:45.820And I just think it is quite implausible to suppose that sufficient political justice only visited the earth with the birth of the American Republic in the late 1700s, early 1800s.
01:33:59.460So the fact that a government isn't democratic, to my mind, doesn't make it illegitimate.
01:34:07.640And mass democracy, mass democracy was only developing in the Western world in the 1800s and in Europe, the late 1800s.
01:34:17.900I mean, Britain didn't give the vote equally to men and women until 1928.
01:34:24.520So if the empire wasn't democratic, it was partly because Britain was only becoming democratic.
01:34:29.520And the last thing I'd say about that is that native people sometimes recognize that even a government that isn't democratic is good enough.
01:34:38.280So in the 1950s and 60s, no one knows how many, but there were several million Chinese who fled the Chinese mainland because it was then in a state of civil war or anarchy.
01:34:51.560They fled into the British colony of Hong Kong.
01:34:54.300They did it voluntarily, not because Hong Kong was democratic, but because at least there was the rule of law and there was sufficient stability to build a decent life.
01:35:03.080So your case essentially is, I think, is that even if there is a hierarchy of legitimate government with highly functional democratic states being at the pinnacle,
01:35:14.280that doesn't mean there's no differentiation whatsoever between states that haven't reached that level of development for one reason or another.
01:35:22.520And that would be well exemplified in the case of Hong Kong.
01:35:25.820And so it's not obvious to me at all that Hong Kong was well served by being returned to the Chinese communists, for example.
01:35:32.080I mean, I know that was a transition away from democracy, but people had been voting with their feet long before that.
01:35:40.340On the inside of the cover of my book, I insisted there be a photograph of young Chinese student protesters in Hong Kong with a placard saying Hong Kong is British.
01:35:56.080Well, so what do you think it is that lends a government legitimacy, if it can be legitimate to some degree outside of the formal structures of the kind of democracy we more or less take for granted now?
01:36:10.480It's because it provides just government, and just government means that the genuine interests of the people are well served.
01:36:19.660And the thing about democracy, we all know government can go bad, and liberal democracy is a way of constraining that.
01:36:28.920It doesn't remove the possibility that even democratic government can go bad.
01:36:31.980But sometimes, without the democratic constraints, non-democratic governments can rule justly.
01:36:51.960Well, we could go back to our early discussion and presume that non-democratic governments that are still predicated on the idea that there's something intrinsically valuable about each individual,
01:37:04.080and that each individual is responsible for the safekeeping and safeguarding of other individuals,
01:37:09.880that's not a bad step in the legitimate government direction.