1 00:00:16,960 --> 00:00:20,679 We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski, 2 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:23,399 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:23,399 --> 00:00:27,000 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST. 4 00:00:27,199 --> 00:00:30,239 Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to 5 00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:34,439 the premium version of our website as well. Today we're joined by Patrick Deneen. 6 00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:38,320 He is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. 7 00:00:38,479 --> 00:00:44,159 Not Notre Dame University, as he said as an epidemic of missnomer is also 8 00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:47,799 for the purposes of today's podcast, the author of one of the best books 9 00:00:47,840 --> 00:00:50,560 that I have read in a very long time, Regime Change. It is 10 00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:55,520 out on June sixth. Patrick Deneen, Welcome to Federalist Radio Hour. Thanks 11 00:00:55,520 --> 00:00:59,640 a ry, Thanks having me Emily appreciate it. The opportunity to pick your 12 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:04,200 brain is just it's an honor. And I want to start with the topic 13 00:01:04,359 --> 00:01:08,079 or the title I should say, of the most recent book, Regime Change, 14 00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:12,560 because buried in that, not buried, but implicit in that is the 15 00:01:12,640 --> 00:01:17,280 idea that we should still have a regime. And that's at the heart of 16 00:01:17,359 --> 00:01:22,760 the book itself. Could you tell us a little bit about maybe why you 17 00:01:22,799 --> 00:01:27,040 wanted to title the book regime change, what it conveys about the argument itself. 18 00:01:27,920 --> 00:01:33,000 Yeah, I think probably people will be talking about the title maybe more 19 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:36,959 than the book itself, which that's always a danger. But you know, 20 00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:40,760 kind of interesting titles maybe get people to pick up something they didn't that they 21 00:01:40,799 --> 00:01:45,079 may not realize they'll encounter. But you know that the phrase regime change, 22 00:01:45,079 --> 00:01:49,159 of course, is well known for the way in which, for example, 23 00:01:49,359 --> 00:01:52,879 the war in Iraq, leading up to the war in Iraq, what the 24 00:01:52,879 --> 00:01:57,719 aim of the US was at that time to overthrow the regime the ruling class. 25 00:01:59,359 --> 00:02:02,560 Of course, at the top of that Saddam Hussein. But I think 26 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:08,439 more fundamentally, and even if you go back and you revisit those those conversations 27 00:02:08,439 --> 00:02:15,159 and those debates, regime changes is at its base the idea that every society 28 00:02:15,199 --> 00:02:20,879 has a core set of beliefs and values that predominate, and a change of 29 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:23,080 regime isn't just a change of government. It's not, you know, a 30 00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:28,639 different set of basis. A change of regime is a change to those core 31 00:02:28,680 --> 00:02:32,280 set of values. It's it's in fact, it may not even require a 32 00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:38,360 change of like everyone in the ruling class, conditions may change such that, 33 00:02:38,719 --> 00:02:44,599 whether through kind of political pressure or circumstance, the kind of prevailing set of 34 00:02:44,599 --> 00:02:49,159 commitments made themselves change. And the argument of the book is that we are 35 00:02:49,199 --> 00:02:53,240 now and I think, at a kind of critical juncture where the predominant regime, 36 00:02:53,599 --> 00:02:58,039 building on the arguments of my last book, Liberalism, it seems to 37 00:02:58,039 --> 00:03:00,120 me have reached a kind of, you know, in some ways, the 38 00:03:00,199 --> 00:03:06,199 kind of logical, somewhat baleful conclusion, how that we're kind of built into 39 00:03:06,240 --> 00:03:10,759 it and we are in need of a regime change. I saw a Business 40 00:03:10,759 --> 00:03:15,800 Insider headline a couple of weeks ago that said the average It was like, 41 00:03:15,879 --> 00:03:19,479 meet the average millennial. They're a married parent with one hundred and twenty eight 42 00:03:19,520 --> 00:03:23,120 thousand dollars net worth. And to that headline, a lot of people would 43 00:03:23,159 --> 00:03:29,240 look and say, liberalism has not failed. And just to sort of confront 44 00:03:29,280 --> 00:03:34,479 that very common libertarian or even sort of establishment democrat line of thinking, that 45 00:03:34,879 --> 00:03:39,840 there's a real, you know, maybe at worst, the malaise that people 46 00:03:39,919 --> 00:03:45,199 sense right now, the populism is part of a transition period. It's a 47 00:03:45,199 --> 00:03:49,479 tough time for liberalism, not the end of liberalism. What would you say 48 00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:53,680 to that argument, Well, you know, we can I'm sure we can 49 00:03:53,800 --> 00:03:58,000 harley back and forth with a lot of the statistics that seem to us to 50 00:03:58,039 --> 00:04:01,400 be the most revealing of the addition that we're in today, and so we 51 00:04:01,400 --> 00:04:04,479 could point you know, I think many would point to, oh, yeah, 52 00:04:04,479 --> 00:04:08,840 we have all these various signs progress and various signs of things getting better. 53 00:04:08,879 --> 00:04:12,080 But of course we also have signs of things getting considerably worse for a 54 00:04:12,120 --> 00:04:16,040 significant portion of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen. You know, we have rising 55 00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:19,519 deaths of despair. We have uh, you know, the kind of you 56 00:04:19,720 --> 00:04:26,480 talking about a sense of malaise. I mean it's being manifested in health, 57 00:04:26,759 --> 00:04:32,920 in forms of addiction, forms of devastated lives, and beyond that kind of 58 00:04:32,959 --> 00:04:40,759 both the economic and social dissolution of life opportunities and chances for people who are 59 00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:44,040 you know, not they're not the poorest of the poor. These are kind 60 00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:46,439 of used to be the kind of you could think of them as the backbone 61 00:04:46,439 --> 00:04:50,560 of America, the kind of you know, the kind of working class that 62 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,879 you know, I think have been lionized in the American tradition and now often 63 00:04:56,399 --> 00:05:00,600 among our ruling class are regarded as a kind of backward and recidivious and sort 64 00:05:00,600 --> 00:05:05,639 of sad and sorry part of our country. Ones who like Kevin Williamson once 65 00:05:05,639 --> 00:05:10,879 advised just rent a U haul and get out of wherever, whatever backward place 66 00:05:10,959 --> 00:05:16,839 you are. But yeah, yeah, so, but beyond so, beyond 67 00:05:16,879 --> 00:05:24,319 all those um you know, the statistics might marshal I view and who knows. 68 00:05:24,319 --> 00:05:26,480 I mean, I can't say this is you know, this is a 69 00:05:26,560 --> 00:05:30,519 little bit looking in a crystal ball, but it's also looking backwards. It 70 00:05:30,600 --> 00:05:34,480 seems to me that one of the things that history as well as classical philosophy 71 00:05:34,519 --> 00:05:40,839 teaches us is that society is always riven between kind of two main classes. 72 00:05:40,920 --> 00:05:44,120 And this is what I talk about in the book The Many and the Few. 73 00:05:44,360 --> 00:05:48,759 And we can differentiate those classes according to different criteria, but there's a 74 00:05:48,800 --> 00:05:53,839 problem in every society, which is that there's kind of natural division and even 75 00:05:53,879 --> 00:05:58,759 hostility between these two classes, and one will always be seeking to get advantage 76 00:05:58,759 --> 00:06:03,079 over the other. And the tradition teaches us that unless in some ways this 77 00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:11,319 divide is in some ways moderated or overcome, the likely outcome and possibly even 78 00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:18,319 inevitable outcome unless it's somehow mitigated, is either civil war or one kind of 79 00:06:18,319 --> 00:06:23,000 form of tyranny of one of these classes over the other class. And this 80 00:06:23,360 --> 00:06:28,519 is the great fear in the tradition. I spend every year teaching authors, 81 00:06:28,519 --> 00:06:32,560 and this great traditional authors that we think about is constituting the Western tradition and 82 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:39,480 who and who argue pretty consistently until relatively modern time that the way in which 83 00:06:39,560 --> 00:06:44,000 this division can and ought to be mitigated is through something that they has been 84 00:06:44,079 --> 00:06:47,720 come to be known as the idea of the mixed constitution or the mixed regime, 85 00:06:47,759 --> 00:06:51,000 which is one of the inspirations for the title of the book, the 86 00:06:51,040 --> 00:06:58,120 idea of the mixed Regime. And if this division is not mitigated through this 87 00:06:59,519 --> 00:07:02,879 effort to kind of have this form of mixing between the classes, we can 88 00:07:02,920 --> 00:07:08,600 talk more about that, then the outcome is going to be a kind of 89 00:07:08,759 --> 00:07:15,600 ongoing, royling, even oscillating form of disorder in the politics. And it's 90 00:07:15,600 --> 00:07:19,079 just from where I stand right now, that just seems to me to be 91 00:07:19,480 --> 00:07:25,000 capture the world that we are seeing right now. So you know again, 92 00:07:26,120 --> 00:07:30,240 yeah, it is. It is a kind of roiling disorder that you know, 93 00:07:30,639 --> 00:07:33,720 maybe we come out of this fine, But it doesn't seem to me 94 00:07:33,759 --> 00:07:39,279 that we come out of this without some kind of intention and effort, in 95 00:07:39,360 --> 00:07:46,959 particular to reduce the kind of consequences of the division between these kind of two 96 00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:51,360 permanent classes, which I think are really a marked marked or mark our particular 97 00:07:51,360 --> 00:07:55,680 division of our age. And tell me if you don't think this is a 98 00:07:55,680 --> 00:08:01,720 helpful thought exercise. But you're in South Bend or Notre Dame, and I'm 99 00:08:01,759 --> 00:08:05,120 thinking of you know, an elite cadre of class traders can form a new 100 00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:09,360 elite to serve the people this prescription for the country. If we focus on 101 00:08:09,399 --> 00:08:13,079 someone, maybe you get asked about a lot because of another day of Pete 102 00:08:13,120 --> 00:08:18,240 Buddha judge, who is sort of the avatar of technocratic elitism. How does 103 00:08:18,279 --> 00:08:22,879 the mixed regime model, how does that fix a Pete Buddha judge, or 104 00:08:22,879 --> 00:08:28,079 how does that make a Pete Buddha judge sort of work better for the country. 105 00:08:28,360 --> 00:08:31,399 Yeah, that's fring such an interesting question. I knew Pete a bit 106 00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:35,799 when he was here. We both have dogs, and so I would see 107 00:08:35,879 --> 00:08:37,799 him every so often in the dog park. Have a few pictures of us 108 00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:41,639 together and our dogs together in the dog park, and it was you know, 109 00:08:41,639 --> 00:08:46,360 it was interesting. Was that I think as a mayor, I'll be 110 00:08:46,360 --> 00:08:48,720 the first to say this, I think as a mayor, Pete was a 111 00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:50,279 great mayor. I think he was a really wonderful mayor. I think he 112 00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:52,720 did a lot of good in the city of South Bend. I know it's 113 00:08:52,759 --> 00:08:58,279 probably I'm driving many of your listeners crazy by saying that that's okay, but 114 00:08:58,559 --> 00:09:01,399 but he did. He did some wonderful things for this city. And it's 115 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:05,840 interesting that when he was mayor he would talk about things that really mattered to 116 00:09:05,919 --> 00:09:09,279 the flourishing of the lives of kind of ordinary people. We have some really 117 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:13,519 great parks now that we're kind of set up or refurbished. During his time 118 00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:20,519 here, he did a lot to help create a kind of more walkable, 119 00:09:20,559 --> 00:09:28,879 pedestrian friendly downtown, not just dominated by automobiles and parking lots. It was 120 00:09:28,919 --> 00:09:35,320 when he began thinking and looking to political office that he began, you could 121 00:09:35,320 --> 00:09:39,840 say, to more manifest those features that we now think about as the kind 122 00:09:39,840 --> 00:09:46,240 of technocratic elite. That he really began to mold himself or to really think, 123 00:09:46,399 --> 00:09:50,000 I think, to portray himself and understand himself in those in those terms, 124 00:09:50,879 --> 00:09:56,039 and also to really begin to adopt a lot of the we would say 125 00:09:56,039 --> 00:10:00,320 the more orthodox positions of the Democratic Party. When he was married, wasn't 126 00:10:00,360 --> 00:10:03,440 clear whether it's a Democratic Republican at all. So in some ways, you 127 00:10:03,440 --> 00:10:05,600 know, I think that's a really good example of the way exactly in somebody's 128 00:10:05,600 --> 00:10:09,960 what I'm talking about, which is that Mayor p is an elite, Like 129 00:10:09,279 --> 00:10:13,480 I'm an elite, you know, I teach a Notre dame, like many 130 00:10:13,519 --> 00:10:16,399 people in our world probably listening to this podcast, or elites. The problem 131 00:10:16,480 --> 00:10:20,480 is in elites. The problem is is when the elites and somebody's become completely 132 00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:28,279 or almost completely detached from the kind of everyday needs of average people who don't 133 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:33,639 have the advantages that we have. We don't have the advantages both financially but 134 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,360 also frankly, I think socially today, where it's more and more difficult to 135 00:10:37,480 --> 00:10:41,759 have a family and to raise a family, to have children, and to 136 00:10:41,799 --> 00:10:46,799 have expectation that they will have good and flourishing lives. So it's not mine 137 00:10:46,799 --> 00:10:50,360 as in an argument per se. In fact, it's it's most decidedly not 138 00:10:50,440 --> 00:10:54,840 an argument against elites. It's an argument for good elites, and that good 139 00:10:54,840 --> 00:11:01,240 elites at some level have to be sort of deeply ground in various ways and 140 00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:05,000 have a kind of deep understanding of the needs and concerns a sort of ordinary 141 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:11,200 people who don't share their benefits. One of the things I found most compelling 142 00:11:11,240 --> 00:11:15,159 about this book is it's in so many ways a history book. And one 143 00:11:15,159 --> 00:11:20,399 of the points you made was about the era that we think of now conventional 144 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:24,600 historian the conventional historical narratives that there's the Gilded Age was the era of the 145 00:11:24,679 --> 00:11:28,879 robber barons. But that was an elite very different from our elite today. 146 00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:35,159 And I found your comparison really helpful there what can we learn looking back on 147 00:11:35,240 --> 00:11:39,519 the era of the so called robber barons and comparing, you know, a 148 00:11:39,600 --> 00:11:45,240 Carnegie to a Zuckerberg. Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to I'm 149 00:11:45,279 --> 00:11:50,440 not going to speak in unvarnished praise of the of the Gilded Era as such. 150 00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:56,080 But one of the things, and you're pointing out, or you're alluding 151 00:11:56,120 --> 00:12:00,480 to a kind of sequence in the book where I talk about the some of 152 00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:03,200 the features of the contemporary elite, so that maybe this technocratic elite that we're 153 00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:07,000 talking about and when I think of the contemporary elite and I teach, you 154 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:09,159 know, I teach them. I've taught them now for about thirty years, 155 00:12:09,200 --> 00:12:16,360 started at Princeton and then Georgetown and now at Notre Dame. More than more 156 00:12:16,399 --> 00:12:20,279 than whatever they major in. It's the ability in some ways to have highly 157 00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:31,320 portable, non rooted, highly alterable or malleable scales. That's really what you 158 00:12:31,519 --> 00:12:37,399 kind of get and you develop when you're especially when you go to elite institutions, 159 00:12:37,399 --> 00:12:41,840 to elite university. So everyone's always agonizing over what they should major. 160 00:12:41,879 --> 00:12:45,000 And I was almost in somebody's kind of amused by this. Unless it's something 161 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:48,600 really highly technical. In some ways, it doesn't matter because regardless of the 162 00:12:48,639 --> 00:12:52,519 major, you're all majoring in that one thing, right, which is this 163 00:12:52,080 --> 00:12:56,399 kind of developing the property of your own mind and your own skill set. 164 00:12:56,440 --> 00:13:00,519 And that's kind of the property that we own. And it's kind of interesting 165 00:13:00,559 --> 00:13:05,399 today when you think of contemporary people, we generally very few of us is 166 00:13:05,399 --> 00:13:09,480 going to own property in the old fashioned sense of the word. We're not 167 00:13:09,639 --> 00:13:15,039 landed aristocrats anymore. The elite is no longer landed. Most of us will 168 00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:18,639 never own the property that notionally we own, we'll own them, you know, 169 00:13:18,679 --> 00:13:22,320 well the bank money on what it is we own. And these days 170 00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:26,879 you don't even own like a record set or or a library, and you 171 00:13:26,919 --> 00:13:30,240 own, you know, sort of digital rights to those things which may or 172 00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:35,919 may not actually remain depending on what you know the fashion is today. So 173 00:13:35,559 --> 00:13:39,919 we really do own these sort of portable skill sets. But this, this 174 00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:43,320 cultivates, we could say, this results in a certain kind of ruling class 175 00:13:43,039 --> 00:13:50,279 that no longer really has a kind of the fixed notion of a kind of 176 00:13:50,759 --> 00:13:56,159 commitment to certain people in certain places, and it kind of leads to this, 177 00:13:56,360 --> 00:13:58,799 you know, this ruling class that floats above, you know, sort 178 00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:05,639 of above the surface level of what lies below them, that they are capable 179 00:14:05,679 --> 00:14:09,840 of living anywhere, and thus see themselves not merely even has people who come 180 00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:13,600 from from a region or from a place, but even who come from a 181 00:14:13,639 --> 00:14:18,240 country, we are to understand ourselves as most fundamentally cosmopolitan. And it's in 182 00:14:18,279 --> 00:14:22,240 the context of talking about this where I contrast this with the age of the 183 00:14:22,320 --> 00:14:26,240 Robert Barons, which of course isn't just Carnegial that's an example of one, 184 00:14:26,799 --> 00:14:35,240 but in which those people at least in the form of the kinds of philanthropy 185 00:14:35,360 --> 00:14:41,759 that they engaged and was actually pretty beneficial to particular places. And so, 186 00:14:41,879 --> 00:14:43,919 I mean, even close to where I live, there's a really wonderful old 187 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,840 corn Carnegie Library which is now no longer a library, sadly, but a 188 00:14:48,759 --> 00:14:52,159 kind of reception hall where my son held a wedding reception in, among other 189 00:14:52,159 --> 00:14:58,399 things. But you could say that this was more broadly, that there was 190 00:14:58,399 --> 00:15:01,080 a kind of ethos of the ruling class. And again, I don't want 191 00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:07,039 to engage in overly engage in nostalgia, but nostalgia also involves the idea of 192 00:15:07,559 --> 00:15:15,840 remembering, and so much of what has we could say is still valuable about 193 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:18,279 the many, many places in this country, not just the New York cities 194 00:15:18,320 --> 00:15:22,960 and the Bostons of the Chicago, but places like South Bend and places like 195 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:26,720 where I grew up, Windsor, Connecticut, a small town outside Hartford. 196 00:15:26,679 --> 00:15:33,759 Some of the most important institutions, buildings, the societies, the opera houses, 197 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:39,159 the civic theaters, you know, all these institutions that you could say 198 00:15:39,440 --> 00:15:43,360 become a kind of public utility of the people in those places. They were 199 00:15:43,399 --> 00:15:52,039 built by elites who weren't just vacuumed up by elite institutions and then remove from 200 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:58,200 those places to become sort of, you know, kind of hogs in a 201 00:15:58,240 --> 00:16:03,799 globalized economic order in which they would never necessarily develop those kinds of commitments, 202 00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:11,720 and therefore that kind of the ideal of building a kind of institutional legacy as 203 00:16:11,759 --> 00:16:15,399 a gift to the people in the places from which they came. You know, 204 00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:19,320 I think of where I'm from in Milwaukee. One thing we're very proud 205 00:16:19,360 --> 00:16:23,759 of is the Papst Theater literally guilded right downtown. Gorgeous. I've been there, 206 00:16:23,799 --> 00:16:27,919 It's just absolutely amazing. Yeah, So again I think we need to 207 00:16:29,000 --> 00:16:32,799 understand that this is the mixed legacy. I'm sure the Paps had, you 208 00:16:32,840 --> 00:16:37,480 know, certain peccadillos and so forth, but those things are you know, 209 00:16:37,559 --> 00:16:42,279 those are really extraordinary features of our landscape. And now when I think of 210 00:16:44,039 --> 00:16:47,120 you know, when I'm sure there are we still have evidence of these things. 211 00:16:47,159 --> 00:16:52,879 But so much of the kind of philanthropy that we see today really moves 212 00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:56,320 now more in the direction of well, you know, think of all of 213 00:16:56,360 --> 00:16:59,879 the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that get that get donated to a 214 00:17:00,279 --> 00:17:03,519 universities by people who went to those universities. Do these places really need more? 215 00:17:04,319 --> 00:17:08,599 It's a place that really need you know, another dormitory name for another 216 00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:14,920 multi billionaire. Yeah, so another jungle gym, Yeah yeah, climbing wall. 217 00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:19,559 Yeah. Tim Cook here and DC restored a Carnegie Library into an apple 218 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:23,960 store. It did a beautiful job on the restoration, but the motive was 219 00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,000 obviously yeah, so I imagine, yeah, I imagine I'm going from a 220 00:17:27,039 --> 00:17:33,039 library to an apple store. It's perfect. Well, another historical element that 221 00:17:33,079 --> 00:17:37,440 you draw to the surface here is the influence of John Stuart Mill. You 222 00:17:37,559 --> 00:17:41,279 read a lot about John Stuart Mill, and this was fascinating history and the 223 00:17:41,359 --> 00:17:45,640 influence of his I guess perspective on the question of subjective claims. She talked 224 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:49,279 to us a little bit about how we see that in the dynamics today. 225 00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:55,119 Yeah. I would say, if there's any bettan noir as it were kind 226 00:17:55,160 --> 00:17:59,079 of the villain of my book, it's it's John Stuart Mill. It was 227 00:17:59,119 --> 00:18:02,359 actually only rere it recently I realized he was all over the place, so 228 00:18:03,160 --> 00:18:11,440 obviously was he was looming large in just thinking about what are the kind of 229 00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:15,400 what in some ways the origins of the current disorder, or the liberal disorder 230 00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:19,599 in particular. And what I really was was striving to do in these various 231 00:18:19,640 --> 00:18:27,160 passages was to reshape and reframe. I think, how many you know, 232 00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:32,039 kind of who many people who receive a kind of you know, maybe some 233 00:18:32,119 --> 00:18:37,119 degree of training or education in political philosophy, how they perceived John Stuart Mill, 234 00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:41,799 largely as a kind of a foundational thinker, which he certainly is, 235 00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:51,000 who establishes certain kinds of especially libertarian perspectives that have become almost default, you 236 00:18:51,039 --> 00:18:53,759 know, default in terms of how we think about what is the nature of 237 00:18:53,799 --> 00:18:59,960 politics and in particular what is what are the justifications of the exercise of political 238 00:19:00,039 --> 00:19:06,160 authority? And the limitations on personal liberty as an area where Mill is quite 239 00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:11,240 famous, and he argues in his very famously in his eighteen fifty nine book 240 00:19:11,279 --> 00:19:15,079 on Liberty, he argues that there should really be no limitation upon the expression 241 00:19:15,759 --> 00:19:22,599 an exercise of personal liberty, speech, action, thoughts, and so forth, 242 00:19:22,559 --> 00:19:30,559 unless those those actions or even those words or thoughts result in harm have 243 00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:36,240 the consequence of harming another person's famously described as the harm principle, and so 244 00:19:36,279 --> 00:19:41,119 this the result of this argument is that it leads to kind of an assessment 245 00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:45,119 of whether or at any sort of thought, word, deed, and so 246 00:19:45,319 --> 00:19:52,240 forth can be shown or proven to result in harm, and if not, 247 00:19:52,839 --> 00:19:57,200 then there should be no limitation upon those those forms of thought and expression. 248 00:19:57,599 --> 00:20:03,519 And so this reduces then a kind of default into the you could say, 249 00:20:03,599 --> 00:20:07,759 into the political domain of a kind of libertarian ethos. And this is why 250 00:20:07,759 --> 00:20:12,440 libertarians find Mill, of course to be very attractive as a thinker. But 251 00:20:12,799 --> 00:20:17,400 the side of this argument that I really want to draw out in the book, 252 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:19,799 and I'm certainly not the first person to draw this out, but I 253 00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:26,240 think I think it's the consequence of this side of Mill's argument are not appreciated 254 00:20:26,400 --> 00:20:32,920 enough and not recognized enough, which is that Mill was making these arguments less 255 00:20:32,960 --> 00:20:37,599 directed against the constraints of the government, in other words, less I mean, 256 00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:42,480 it certainly includes the ways in which government can restrain our liberties, but 257 00:20:42,640 --> 00:20:45,960 is real concern and he states us at the opening of the book, he 258 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:49,519 says, we've actually been pretty successful at limiting government. And this is now 259 00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,079 a couple hundred years into the at least one hundred years into the liberal project. 260 00:20:53,799 --> 00:20:59,559 He said, we've been had fair success at that what we haven't had 261 00:20:59,599 --> 00:21:07,960 succeed yet is limiting the ways that other people, especially through custom, especially 262 00:21:07,960 --> 00:21:12,319 through tradition, especially through religious belief. We haven't been successful in limiting those 263 00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:18,000 domains that limit whatever it is we want to say. So it's you know, 264 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:21,000 we could say, you know, I grew up in a world in 265 00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:26,039 which dropping an F bomb was something you didn't do generally unless you were really 266 00:21:26,079 --> 00:21:29,720 really angry, and then you knew it, like when Dad was angry, 267 00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:33,920 you know, you might, but otherwise you just didn't hear it nearly as 268 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:36,839 much as you hear today. I watched, you know, the last episode 269 00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:41,440 of Succession. I think they counted like five thousand F bombs that episode. 270 00:21:41,440 --> 00:21:47,240 It's just it's just commonplace now. And so that you could say we you 271 00:21:47,279 --> 00:21:49,480 know, Mill was describing a world in which there was a lot of social 272 00:21:49,519 --> 00:21:52,799 constraint, right, He's living in the Victorian Age, so there's a lot 273 00:21:52,839 --> 00:21:59,519 of social constraint. And so the effort of Mill. Mill's argument really is 274 00:21:59,559 --> 00:22:03,319 to say, or its core effort, is to say, we need to 275 00:22:03,400 --> 00:22:08,119 overturn what he describes as the despotism of custom. The despotism not just that 276 00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:14,799 custom is a way of sort of organizing society and its folk ways. It's 277 00:22:14,799 --> 00:22:18,759 a form of despotism, and it's in some ways more dangerous and more insidious, 278 00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:25,960 more pervasive than any government form of despotism or government restriction upon our liberty, 279 00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:30,119 because it's something that so environs our everyday life that we internalize it, 280 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:34,160 this custom. And so the argument of on liberty is to say, those 281 00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:42,720 people that are nonconformists, that seek to do something different from whatever custom or 282 00:22:42,759 --> 00:22:48,279 tradition demand, these are the people who, in some ways should be given 283 00:22:48,680 --> 00:22:51,880 the place of a kind of priority, or to use the word of the 284 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,480 month, a place of pride in our society. That this is, this 285 00:22:55,559 --> 00:22:57,720 is what should become in some ways the default. The person who wants to 286 00:22:59,319 --> 00:23:04,359 do something different needs to be protected from the despotism of everyone around them in 287 00:23:04,480 --> 00:23:07,079 terms of how they think, in terms of what they believe. And you 288 00:23:07,079 --> 00:23:11,559 can see how it switches the default in a very important way, in a 289 00:23:11,559 --> 00:23:15,200 way that think that often escapes us. That the person who defends custom and 290 00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:21,880 tradition is now regarded as the despot and the person who is the nonconformist is 291 00:23:21,920 --> 00:23:25,839 now seen as that's what the norm of our society is. And so you 292 00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:27,440 go from a world in which you know, the uh, you know, 293 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:33,279 in some way sorts of kind of sense that there's a kind of respectable way 294 00:23:33,319 --> 00:23:40,480 of doing things, to one in which being them the disruptor, being the 295 00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:47,839 person who challenges all of the you know, the conceptions and so forth. 296 00:23:48,079 --> 00:23:52,079 This becomes the dominant way in which we recognize what a good society is. 297 00:23:52,079 --> 00:23:56,119 And again when you think, I just watch watch advertising today, you know, 298 00:23:56,160 --> 00:24:00,720 just think about how we how you know, everyone has and somebodys present 299 00:24:00,799 --> 00:24:04,440 themselves as a disruptor. This, I think Mill's influence is quite powerful. 300 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:10,720 And which one last thing, This turns out to have its own power dynamic 301 00:24:11,759 --> 00:24:17,000 because now the people who argue for let's say, more traditional or customary forms 302 00:24:17,039 --> 00:24:21,920 of life, these people have to be constrained. These people, you know, 303 00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:27,559 now constitute the despoit, the threat to the free society. And so 304 00:24:27,599 --> 00:24:33,200 when we see a world in which it's now today, the people who are 305 00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:38,160 deemed judgmental people have a religious faith or tradition especially, these are the people 306 00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:41,519 who need to be quiet. These are the people who are not allowed to 307 00:24:41,519 --> 00:24:45,680 speak, you know, these are the people who now constitute a threat to 308 00:24:45,799 --> 00:24:52,200 the liberty of other people. So it's not it's not a neutral society that 309 00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:56,200 Mill ultimately argues for, it's one that's going to have its own power dynamics, 310 00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,359 right. And this is the This is really what I'm trying to draw 311 00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:03,720 out those various passages on J. S. Mill, is that the ruling 312 00:25:03,759 --> 00:25:07,200 class today, which I think is very much shaped and formed by these arguments, 313 00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:12,319 without ever necessarily leaving ever having read Mill to any extent, has imbined 314 00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:18,640 this basic sort of philosophical viewpoint, and I think helps to describe how we're 315 00:25:18,680 --> 00:25:25,160 experiencing this new radical, transgressive class as a kind of oppressive or even a 316 00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:27,440 kind of, as some have described, a kind of new kind of tatelitarianism. 317 00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:33,799 It makes me also think of the Christopher Caldwell book Age of Entitlement, 318 00:25:33,799 --> 00:25:38,480 in the ways in which identity come to become their own despots as they replaced 319 00:25:38,559 --> 00:25:44,559 custom. And I wonder is in that sense is John Stuart Mill almost understood 320 00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:48,920 as the grandfather of postmodernism? Are we drawing a line from from Mill to 321 00:25:49,079 --> 00:25:53,880 Nietzsche to Butler? Is that, you know, is that a fair sort 322 00:25:53,880 --> 00:26:03,519 of lineage? Interesting? I mean, I think you could say there's a 323 00:26:03,640 --> 00:26:07,680 yeah, there's a there's a kind of logic within Mill's argument that in which 324 00:26:07,920 --> 00:26:15,000 the transgressive figure is always going to be given in some ways that the place 325 00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:19,359 of kind of priority, right, it becomes I often describe it as it 326 00:26:19,359 --> 00:26:23,359 becomes the kind of the default way of thinking about what's the basis around which 327 00:26:23,759 --> 00:26:36,599 we understand and organized society, That this transgressive, anti norm individual becomes the 328 00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,880 way of thinking about of thinking about this. But I guess there's there's you 329 00:26:41,920 --> 00:26:45,240 know. One of the things that Mill that I think Mill also helps us 330 00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:49,240 to reveal, and this is a main theme in the book, is that 331 00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:57,920 the ruling class in many ways is now defined by those who see themselves as 332 00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:07,319 the more progressive of the society and sees the greatest threat coming from those who 333 00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:11,359 are less progressed. Now, in Mills understanding, this is going to be 334 00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:18,400 the masses, the many, right, So mills great fear is that the 335 00:27:18,559 --> 00:27:22,039 many, the demos, however we want to describe them, the masses of 336 00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:27,559 people, that they have a kind of almost instinctive attraction to this kind of 337 00:27:27,559 --> 00:27:33,599 world of custom. They just kind of do things in the same way as 338 00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:37,599 their ancestors did. And in Mills, you it's because they're just uninquisitive. 339 00:27:38,039 --> 00:27:44,440 They're sort of ignorant. They're not philosophers. You know, if we take 340 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:48,359 Edit and Burke's argument, Burke's argument is that they do so because it turns 341 00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:52,039 out that certain things work over a long period of time, and you cold 342 00:27:52,079 --> 00:27:56,359 onto them, you continue to do them because a more conservative mindset is one 343 00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:03,000 in which you don't anything in the name of simply let's just have anue experiment 344 00:28:03,079 --> 00:28:07,240 in our society. Mill is going to praise what he calls experiments in living, 345 00:28:07,039 --> 00:28:11,000 and Burke is going to say, be wary of those who want to 346 00:28:11,039 --> 00:28:18,400 disrupt longstanding ways of life in the name of some unknown yet untried way of 347 00:28:18,559 --> 00:28:26,240 organizing things. So how does Mill then propose to institute this change of default 348 00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:33,559 from a society of tradition to a society of disruption and transgression. Well, 349 00:28:33,559 --> 00:28:37,640 he proposed to do this essentially by putting in place a ruling class that will 350 00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:44,559 restrain and restrict the many, the demos, and so in the domestic realm 351 00:28:44,559 --> 00:28:48,680 and one of his books, he famously argues that those who are more progressed 352 00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:55,839 should be given more vote, that they should be given several votes in order 353 00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:03,880 to sort of combat the sort of the electoral advantages of the many, and 354 00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:08,799 in the international sphere, you may just have to engage an outright imperialism and 355 00:29:08,839 --> 00:29:18,119 colonialism to sort of train up the backward peoples of other countries. So he 356 00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:22,640 really does talk about this in terms of having a progressive ruling class who dominate 357 00:29:22,799 --> 00:29:26,519 over a kind of unwashed masses. And so to me, it's just amusing 358 00:29:26,559 --> 00:29:33,079 to see libertarians who don't like wokeness and don't like the progressive despotism of our 359 00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:37,160 days. To me quite amusing, if not downright alarming, to see them 360 00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:41,680 invoking John Stuart Mill as they're great hero because in many ways, the thing 361 00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:48,039 that they dislike the most about today's progressive agenda and its mindset arises right from 362 00:29:48,079 --> 00:29:53,599 the heart of Mill's own philosophy. That's such an important point. You write 363 00:29:53,599 --> 00:29:59,920 about the Macavellian means to achieve Aristotilian ends, and you sort of prescribe the 364 00:30:00,079 --> 00:30:03,920 cure of aristo populism going forward, and what that might look like if we 365 00:30:04,119 --> 00:30:10,359 hone in on the Machiavellian means um. You know, people will It's flesh 366 00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:11,839 out in the book, and people should should get the book. But just 367 00:30:11,880 --> 00:30:18,200 as a taste of how you sort of envision Machiavellian means in twenty twenty three, 368 00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:21,640 what does that look like? Yeah, so I can already tell that 369 00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:26,759 in addition to the title regime change, that little phrase Machiavellian means to Aristutilian 370 00:30:26,839 --> 00:30:30,920 ends this is going to cause a lot of brains to break. And in 371 00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:34,279 fact it's you know, this is again I'm a political theorist by training, 372 00:30:34,359 --> 00:30:38,200 so I mean this in a somewhat different way than the popular way that people 373 00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,319 tend to think. Machiavelli and means of course sounds like oh he just you 374 00:30:42,319 --> 00:30:45,960 know, the end justifies the means, so like one can do anything, 375 00:30:47,319 --> 00:30:49,759 one one is allowed to do anything. And I'm quite clear that in fact 376 00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:53,720 I'm what I'm speaking of. It's it's in the chapter that, as you 377 00:30:53,759 --> 00:30:57,240 suggest, it's called aristo populism. It's the effort to begin to sort of 378 00:30:57,279 --> 00:31:02,200 shape what would what would it look to have a ruling class. As I 379 00:31:02,279 --> 00:31:07,279 was saying earlier, that has a kind of it is deeply informed by the 380 00:31:07,359 --> 00:31:15,119 ethos and condition and experiences of ordinary people who don't again share the advantages and 381 00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:18,759 benefits of being in the ruling class. What would it be like, What 382 00:31:18,759 --> 00:31:23,720 would that look like to have a ruling class that's closely aligned to the needs 383 00:31:23,759 --> 00:31:30,279 and conditions and that allow for the flourishing of ordinary people without assuming that well, 384 00:31:30,319 --> 00:31:33,000 if everyone can just go to Harvard, will all be well? Right, 385 00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,720 This was almost literally, you know, Robert reichs I should say that 386 00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:41,119 Robert Reich back in the day was making arguments that you know, it was 387 00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:44,880 basically early versions of the argument everyone just needs to learn to program, and 388 00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:48,640 that that that's kind of the answer from the ruling class. They just need 389 00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:56,519 to be more like us. So when I speak of this the formation of 390 00:31:56,559 --> 00:32:00,759 this new ruling class, I revisit this, this classical tradition of the idea 391 00:32:00,759 --> 00:32:07,000 of a mixed constitution, of mixing the classes. And mixing the classes doesn't 392 00:32:07,039 --> 00:32:12,400 just mean, you know, you know, mayor Pea should live, shouldn't 393 00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:16,359 have left South Bend or something. It means, in some ways, correcting 394 00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:25,640 the likely vices of each class with the let's say, the potential and likely 395 00:32:25,759 --> 00:32:34,440 virtues of the other class. So the elite class has certain tendencies that lead 396 00:32:34,519 --> 00:32:37,119 to vices, right, and this is true in everyday and age. They 397 00:32:37,359 --> 00:32:42,319 have the tools to dominate the many. Even though we might think, well, 398 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:45,599 they can be overcome by the many, it's actually we know from history 399 00:32:45,599 --> 00:32:51,000 that a small group of powerful people controlling money and controlling institutions, they can 400 00:32:51,039 --> 00:32:53,599 control awful lot of the society. This is why most societies and some ways 401 00:32:53,640 --> 00:33:00,519 are ruled either by oligarchies or military Huntas a small group of leads, they 402 00:33:00,599 --> 00:33:04,799 have, they have the tools, they have the ability to have the ability 403 00:33:04,799 --> 00:33:07,920 to concert with each other. They kind of know each other, and they 404 00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:12,680 have a kind of sense of self congratulation about their condition. And this is 405 00:33:12,759 --> 00:33:16,880 kind of true across time and places. On the other hand, the many, 406 00:33:19,279 --> 00:33:22,559 the party of the many, the party of the demos, is also 407 00:33:22,599 --> 00:33:25,920 inclined to certain kinds of vices. They tend to be often they're poorer, 408 00:33:27,400 --> 00:33:30,680 which leads I'm not saying poverty is a vice, but it can lead to 409 00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:37,640 certain kinds of advices, kind of condition of being somebody's degraded coarseness, resentment, 410 00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:44,799 and the and that those those last two in particular lead to maybe a 411 00:33:44,839 --> 00:33:50,839 predisposition. Predisposition to being influenced by demagogues, by people who will stoke those 412 00:33:50,880 --> 00:33:55,599 resentments and then use the popular power to sort of government their own behalf. 413 00:33:55,640 --> 00:34:00,839 I'm not speaking of anyone in particular course here, but we might we might 414 00:34:00,279 --> 00:34:04,720 think of some examples from history. But at the same time, in the 415 00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,920 classical tradition, the Party of the Few, in the Party of the many, 416 00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:12,800 had certain kinds of potential virtues. And the few, we could say 417 00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:16,920 would be some of them. We've already spoken of kind of elevated taste and 418 00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:23,760 refinement. So concern with forms of culture, creating civic theaters or operas, 419 00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:29,639 or sponsoring musicians, or art, public art, right, great architecture, 420 00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:36,000 public architecture, great parks. They have more leisure. Typically, they've often 421 00:34:36,039 --> 00:34:40,920 been better educated, so they've had the advantage of a liberal education that is 422 00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:45,840 not you know, as famously as John Adams once said in his Considerations on 423 00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:52,119 a Constitute, Thoughts on Thoughts on Government, that the liberal education of the 424 00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:57,000 many was centrally important, but that would come via an elite. It would 425 00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,480 become, you know, back in those days, would probably come through the 426 00:34:59,519 --> 00:35:04,519 pews, probably come through ministers who went to places like Princeton, which used 427 00:35:04,519 --> 00:35:08,000 to be a religious school. And at the same time, the Party of 428 00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:14,639 the Many have certain kinds of virtues they have ordinary virtues, only virtues. 429 00:35:15,159 --> 00:35:19,039 They tend to be more closer to the ground. They know sort of how 430 00:35:19,079 --> 00:35:22,280 things work. They kind of are often doing the work of hands or work 431 00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:27,039 of the fields, and so they're aware of what the world can give us 432 00:35:27,039 --> 00:35:31,400 and what the world can't give us. They therefore are aware of limits, 433 00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:38,920 the limits of that the world places upon us. They tend to be more 434 00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:44,920 rooted, less cosmopolitan, which can be both bad and good. And one 435 00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:49,400 of the things Polybius says, which is quite interesting, the Roman history writes 436 00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:52,440 the History of Rome says, they've more inclined to be pious, and maybe 437 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:57,559 that's bound up with being in touch with the cycles of the world and in 438 00:35:57,639 --> 00:36:02,679 some ways the limits as well as the potentials of the world. So the 439 00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:12,039 question that these thinkers of the mixed constitution confront is how does one ultivate those 440 00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:19,679 best sides of those parties while reducing the other sides of those parties. And 441 00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:23,760 the answer is consistently, you need to have a mixed regime in which the 442 00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:30,199 one side is limiting the bed devices of the other side while drawing out or 443 00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:36,480 encouraging the virtues of the other side. And so rather than having a vicious 444 00:36:36,519 --> 00:36:38,079 cycle, on which I think that's what we're in right now, in which 445 00:36:38,159 --> 00:36:42,000 sort of the many and the few are and kind of constantly making each other 446 00:36:42,039 --> 00:36:46,400 worse. You actually develop a virtuous cycle in which they are making each other 447 00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:51,000 better. They're sort of demanding that each other be better. And now we 448 00:36:51,079 --> 00:36:54,760 get finally to your question. Macuvellian means to a ristite, Macuelli means to 449 00:36:54,760 --> 00:37:01,280 Aristotelian ends. There's a disagreement in the classical tradition, and the disagreement is 450 00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:05,840 whether or not this idea of a mixed constitution should be a kind of form 451 00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,960 of checks and balances. So should there be basically a kind of antagonism between 452 00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:14,400 these two parties in which they force each other to be better A House and 453 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:17,719 Senate. Yeah, yeah, kind of, although that's a that's a kind 454 00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:22,199 of, let's just say, a fairly incomplete version of the idea of mixed 455 00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:27,159 constitution. Yeah, I mean it basically, it's saying that the elites need 456 00:37:27,199 --> 00:37:31,159 to be checked, right, it needs the elites need to check each other. 457 00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:35,840 But so you have But that's but I mean, you're right that that's 458 00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:42,199 the basic feature of that part of our constitution derives from one part of this 459 00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,079 tradition, which says that there's going to be an antagonism between these two classes 460 00:37:45,159 --> 00:37:49,840 and they'll check each other. And the figure who makes this argument maybe most 461 00:37:50,079 --> 00:37:55,599 powerfully is Nicolo Machiavelli in his work The Discourses, the Discourses on Living, 462 00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:01,679 and he says Rome became great because of this kind of antagonism and dispute and 463 00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:07,639 a kind of balance that arose between the party of the many and the party 464 00:38:07,639 --> 00:38:12,079 of the few. And then you have the Aristotelian tradition of Aristotle in particular, 465 00:38:12,119 --> 00:38:15,159 but also Thomas Aquinas, who argues that there needs to be a kind 466 00:38:15,199 --> 00:38:22,840 of deeper synthesis between these two classes that actually results in a much more blended 467 00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:28,239 regime in which the many and the few basically take on the features of each 468 00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:34,239 other, and both classes in some ways get to enjoy the virtues of the 469 00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,599 other class, in which the upper class takes on certain virtues of the lower 470 00:38:37,599 --> 00:38:42,639 classes and the lower class takes on certain virtues of the upper class. So 471 00:38:42,679 --> 00:38:46,360 now we get to the phrase Machiavelli means to Aristotelian ends, and so we 472 00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:51,519 are we're at a moment right now where it's likely that the elite will not 473 00:38:52,000 --> 00:38:59,880 reform itself without popular pressure, without that Machiavellian assertion of a kind of antagonist 474 00:39:00,119 --> 00:39:02,760 popular power saying hey, things are really bad for us out here, and 475 00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:07,920 we demand that you stop being so self serving and stop giving yourself all these 476 00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:14,400 advantages at the expense of our prospects for flourishing. And that's how I interpret 477 00:39:14,639 --> 00:39:19,480 the kind of populist uprising all around the world, which is, you know, 478 00:39:19,519 --> 00:39:23,880 I think you're popular uprising against this kind of liberal elite. I see 479 00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:29,920 it as a kind of Machiavellian moment. But my hope and the argument of 480 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:35,840 this book is that my preference is for a more Aristotelian foreign mixed constitution. 481 00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:43,840 So the Machiavelian means, I hope moves toward Aristotelian ends. And that brings 482 00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:46,519 me to one of the biggest questions. There's just so much in this book 483 00:39:46,519 --> 00:39:51,039 that I agree with, But because I'm a pessimist, I had this nagging 484 00:39:51,119 --> 00:39:54,719 question in the back of my head about whether, you know, the populist 485 00:39:54,840 --> 00:40:01,599 uprising is representative of much more in a sort of populous slice of the population. 486 00:40:01,679 --> 00:40:06,119 You know, people in Middle America and the rest belt who have been 487 00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:08,719 very poorly served, and um, you know, that's where you see concentrated 488 00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,760 doesn't despair, although there are plenty in urban areas now too. But I 489 00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:22,360 just wonder is there a real movement? Is there a populist appetite for an 490 00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:27,320 end to liberalism? Or are people sated by liberalism? Do they want more 491 00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:31,679 liberalism? When you look at you know, Donald Trump, um in particular, 492 00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:37,880 somebody who went really viral early on by placating Caitlyn Jenner, And this 493 00:40:37,039 --> 00:40:42,320 was fodder for memes and people really enjoyed it. I guess I just wonder, 494 00:40:42,440 --> 00:40:45,880 you know, is there a populist yearning for a return to Christian roots 495 00:40:46,039 --> 00:40:49,599 as you write, or I mean I think there is. I mean, 496 00:40:49,599 --> 00:40:54,880 I think that's a deeply human inclination. M But but faced with the alternative 497 00:40:55,119 --> 00:41:01,280 of pure hedonism, technocratic hedonism, I worry that's really what people want, 498 00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:06,519 and the populist packaging, um, you know, might be covering up half 499 00:41:06,559 --> 00:41:08,880 of people who do want to return to Christian roots and half of people who 500 00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:15,119 want something much darker. Yeah. So I'm in a very odd position of 501 00:41:15,199 --> 00:41:19,519 being or at least trying to present myself as less pessimistic than I am, 502 00:41:19,639 --> 00:41:22,480 because I'm also deeply pessimistic about our or a moment. And at the end 503 00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,320 of my last book Why Liberalism Failed, people said, well, what hope 504 00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:29,239 is there? Right, what what hope do you give us? And they 505 00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,639 kind of faulted me with not having given more of a positive program um and 506 00:41:34,679 --> 00:41:37,800 maybe you know, some some vision forward at the end of that book. 507 00:41:38,000 --> 00:41:43,360 And so I find myself in the strange position now of sort of being accused 508 00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:45,719 of being, you know, too wide eyed optimist about what the what the 509 00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:52,440 what the prospects are. Um. It's with all, with all recognition of 510 00:41:52,480 --> 00:42:00,639 how um sometimes deeply, deeply dire things look, and with little little, 511 00:42:00,639 --> 00:42:07,400 really good prospect for changing the basic dynamic of our current condition, which does 512 00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:10,079 seem to be moving. I think as you describe a condition in which sort 513 00:42:10,079 --> 00:42:15,519 of our you know, technocratic overlords will will feed us, you know, 514 00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:20,880 constant titillation and distraction, so that we're a little bit like the batteries and 515 00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:23,800 the matrix, you know, the human batteries in the matrix in which we 516 00:42:24,599 --> 00:42:28,360 feed me, give me the kinds of drugs and the you know, I 517 00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:30,559 mean up here you can't even walk down. I mean, I was just 518 00:42:30,559 --> 00:42:34,639 in New York, you can't walk through the city without smelling marijuana everywhere. 519 00:42:34,639 --> 00:42:37,360 I mean, just kind of letting me be constantly sedated, self sedated. 520 00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:45,880 And I will gladly assent to this, the conditions of deep and profound human 521 00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:52,280 degradation that that that will be the you know, the kind of the arrangements 522 00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:59,480 that we enter. It's there's I would be the first to acknowledge the following. 523 00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:05,800 Whatever kind of populous moment we have seen and may still yet be seeing, 524 00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:09,599 you can you can be certain and I am quite certain I'm seeing this 525 00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:16,920 that massive efforts are being made to not just defeat it, but really more 526 00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:22,360 dangerously, to co opt it, you know, to take those energies and 527 00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:27,960 to basically sort of redirect them in a very safe direction in ensuring the ongoing 528 00:43:28,119 --> 00:43:31,760 system is not disrupted. And I think this is being This is actually true 529 00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,519 on both the left and the right. I think both the left and the 530 00:43:35,639 --> 00:43:37,880 right sometimes are kind of in the moment, at the moment, co opting 531 00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:46,960 these populist energies in the pursuit of essentially maintaining their status and position. On 532 00:43:47,119 --> 00:43:51,880 the left, I mean, I think this is one of the deepest sources 533 00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:55,360 of identity politics. I don't think it's cultural Marxism. I think it's really 534 00:43:55,480 --> 00:44:01,280 status and class maintenance, and it's in other words, it's the appearance of 535 00:44:02,119 --> 00:44:10,119 deep commitment to equality, especially in institutions that are designed to cultivate the elites. 536 00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:15,239 The more elite the institution, the more certain you can be that these 537 00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:20,679 are the places where they're deep committed to equality of the most loudly trumpeted. 538 00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:23,639 I mean, I teach at an elite university, and this is constantly the 539 00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:28,119 refrain and the kind of the lack of self awareness of exactly what's going on 540 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,320 is just absolutely stunning. But at the same time, the you know, 541 00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:36,519 the right today or the you know it seems to me the sort of right 542 00:44:36,639 --> 00:44:42,519 liberal right is you know, seeking to co op the populace energy in opposition 543 00:44:42,719 --> 00:44:47,559 to wokeness, which I don't disagree with, but basically to say that this 544 00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:52,039 wokeness is basically it's a form of cultural Marxism. It's a threat to the 545 00:44:52,159 --> 00:44:57,840 kind of a good functioning economic order that we're all enjoying. So both the 546 00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:01,199 left and the right are kind of in some ways engaged in this almost faux 547 00:45:01,239 --> 00:45:07,480 battle that will result in no real substantive change that will benefit sort of the 548 00:45:07,679 --> 00:45:15,880 ordinary working class people of this country and around the world. So I part 549 00:45:15,880 --> 00:45:19,119 of the book, and I actually you said this earlier, and I say 550 00:45:19,159 --> 00:45:24,119 this as well. What would be needed to make this populist up surge, 551 00:45:24,119 --> 00:45:28,440 which has really been a bottom up phenomenon, hasn't been planned from the top. 552 00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:31,119 You're actually going to need a class of elites who are going to effectively 553 00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:36,760 function as kind of class traders. You're going to need a set of elites 554 00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:42,400 who are going to give some substantive voice to these you know, I think 555 00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:46,039 the kind of instincts that we're seeing right now, and recognizing that politics is 556 00:45:46,039 --> 00:45:50,079 always going to be the imperfect vessel of this, but to try in some 557 00:45:50,119 --> 00:45:54,159 ways to orient politics in a direction that moves us at least begins to move 558 00:45:54,280 --> 00:46:00,079 us beyond the kind of almost knee jerk liberal responses and efforts to maintain the 559 00:46:00,239 --> 00:46:08,360 liberal order, whether it's social or an economic forms, and to really begin 560 00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:14,599 to move beyond one that prizes above all this kind of million idea of transgressive, 561 00:46:15,079 --> 00:46:21,599 radical liberation and autonomy as the default method of thinking about what the purpose 562 00:46:21,599 --> 00:46:27,239 of politics and the purpose of our social political order is. The book is 563 00:46:27,440 --> 00:46:30,760 Regime Change toward a post liberal future. Like I said earlier, it is 564 00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:34,400 one of the best books I have read in a long time. I highly 565 00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:37,159 recommend you pick it up when it is out on June sixth, Patrick Deneen, 566 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,960 it's been an honor to pick your brain a little bit. I appreciate 567 00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:44,159 it so much. Thanks so much for having me. Of course, you've 568 00:46:44,159 --> 00:46:46,639 been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emilijashnski, culture 569 00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:50,559 editor here at The Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, 570 00:46:50,719 --> 00:47:04,599 be lovers of freedom and anxious for the phrase right wrong me, scribes Ron