Can We Keep It?

Tony Mills, a senior fellow at AEI whose work focuses on science policy and political ...

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Tony Mills, a senior fellow at AEI whose work focuses on science policy and political theory, joins the Remnant for an ultra-nerdy exploration of the American political tradition. He and Jonah examine whether liberalism alone can sustain the United States and why our experts have fallen into such low repute. Is free market capitalism corrosive? Why is civic republicanism important? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of bureaucracy?

Show Notes:

– Tony’s page at AEI

– The Remnant with Yuval Levin

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  1. Avatar photo
    CynthiaW

    Good chat. I learned some stuff.

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    Ben Connelly

    Good episode. I look forward to part two.

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  3. Jason

    I enjoyed the podcast.

    I think a broad problem with the discourse is that we get caught up in jargon instead of trying to put the conversation in simpler terms. I tend to think of it as recognizing that there are preconditions to sustaining a free society. Non-free systems sustain themselves at the point of a gun. Freedom does not sustain itself because people can choose to surrender their freedom (or take away the freedom of others) for any number of reasons.

    Instead of looking for a broad umbrella concept, I'm wondering if we're not better off finding the different components for sustaining a free society and then put them together under one banner. At least, I think it sharpens people's thinking.

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    The Bell Tower

    This was one of the best Remnants ever. Really great conversation. I was annoyed towards the end with two things:

    1. There are experts but those experts can only know their field and part of that body of work can’t include what’s best for me.

    If I want to have a bunch cheeseburgers, bourbon and cigars, I don’t really give a fig if my doctor doesn’t like it. He can tell me why it’s bad but he cant make me stop, nor should the state empower him to do so. The irony of perhaps only Florida listeners hearing Click-it or Ticket commercials (the most repulsive state propaganda of the last century) for the first time on this podcast was rich indeed. Seatbelt laws are the devil.

    There is no expert on the social question and that’s where guys like Friedman and Klein make me want to jump from a moving train. Don’t get me started on Radio Free Tom.

    2. You guys need to define capitalism because that whole part of the conversation happened too much on the terms of that bearded scoundrel, Karl Marx. I think most discussions of capitalism and socialism happen on his terms because didn’t he coin the terms? I’m probably wrong about that but the ridiculous influence that guy and his miserable political religion have on modern conversations is unsettling to me.

    Lastly, I thought you guys raised a point I rarely hear but often think about. Bernard Bailyn sort of noted it. We talk about titans like Jefferson or Hamilton but how did an entire generation of farmers and yeomen know so much damned intellectual history as if it was their day job?

    Bailyn notes that a couple of very famous quotes - give me liberty or give me death and I regret that I have but one life to give for my country - were lifted directly from Joseph Addison’s Cato - A Tragedy. That’s the play Washington had performed for his troops at Valley Forge.

    And that brings me to the Romans, whom we don’t talk about nearly enough. I think a lot of that generation read about and discussed Rome the way we talk about Game of Thrones or the MCU. They knew the stories well even if they didn’t always grasp the deep intellectual history and they could talk about it with ease. Bailyn notes that a lot of the pamphlets of that era would commonly misquote or misrepresent the intellectual history but many of them were also classically educated.

    Cicero, Cato, Tacitus, Polybius, Caesar…. these names were bandied about like Iron Man or Bat Man today. They were deeply rooted in the culture. I think that’s important.

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    Matt Y.

    Good conversation. A few thoughts, not in any particular order.

    When I hear these types of conversations and think about why liberalism is not "enough", my immediate thought is to point to the French Revolution. Whatever type of liberal would approve the principles of the American Revolution but be repulsed by the French Revolution - that's the type of liberal I would classify myself as. If I lived in the 1790s I'd be a Federalist. Conservative liberal, Hamiltonian liberal, Burkean conservative, etc.

    I also note that nationalism was a product of the French Revolution. So those "conservatives" who are claiming to reject liberalism by espousing nationalism are actually embracing and conserving one of the worst products of one branch of classical liberalism.

    I have thought of Jefferson/Madison Republicans as "purer" classical liberals than, say, Hamilton and Adams; however, this pod indicates their agrarianism as being a product of republicanism.

    Here is an article that I've read a few times in the last few years, titled "The Liberalism of the Founding Fathers is Not to Blame for Our Current Problems". I would enjoy hearing a discussion of it, or reading something from Jonah about it.
    https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/11/18077/

    Quote: "The liberalism attacked by the critics is committed to a secular individualism, as outlined above. The tradition of the liberal west, by contrast, is committed to liberty as ordered toward human flourishing, free from arbitrary domination. In the classical republican conception, liberty is not freedom from the constraints of virtue or community, since these things were considered to free us to be more human. Political liberty, rather, is the freedom not to be a slave; it is to be in command of those liberties of speech, of movement, of thought, that are proper to the development of virtue and the pursuit of a flourishing human life."

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    Balducci

    This was very good. I liked the discussion of the republican idea of liberty (i.e. freedom from domination) as opposed to the liberal idea, which is the reciprocal idea that underlies the libertarian view of liberty. Often those ideas are confluent -- they are both opposed to government overreach. What's interesting to me over the last few years, especially as corporate power has been employed in cultural politics far more than before, is that a lot of Americans who think they have the libertarian view of liberty (or wanted others to think that) actually have the republican view. You see this the hordes of people on the right who blanch from restrictions on their "right to free speech" applied by private social media providers, or on corporate decisions to require employees to take the COVID vaccine. From the classical liberal or libertarian perspective, it's ridiculous to talk of "liberty" as against the freedom of association/contract or property rights of private entities; but if you take the republican view of liberty as freedom from domination (from government or private entities), it makes more sense.

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    Luke Sherman

    Per Jonah's comment about places that they should go for recording, I have one idea that would probably work better for the standard Dispatch podcast. Since I know that both Steve Hayes and Jonah's wife has Wisconsin connections, it would be really cool to see them do something at Marquette University or something else in the Milwaukee area.

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    1. Ingenero.lux

      As a proud Badger I’d recommend UW-Madison, but Marquette’s great and Milwaukee’s a fun city.

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        Luke Sherman

        As an alum, I am definitely with you on UW-Madison being a great choice. I was just being selfish and picking the one closer to me.

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    Adicesa14

    Now, that was in the weeds and a great hour+. Of all the thoughts and concepts discussed, one sticks out for me. What is the reason we elect our officials? If I heard correctly, it was stipulated that we choose those that will do what we want them to do. I must be odd (In fact I am odd but for different reasons) because I’ve always chosen based on my judgement as to a candidate’s ability to understand issues and reason solutions. That’s a gross simplification but when possible, it’s the core of my voting considerations. Does that make me republican, liberal, or ‘something else,’ as my mother often said?

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      Jonah Goldberg vertical-nib Author

      Thanks Tony. I don't think we stipulated that elected officials to do what we want them to do. But of course we do. The complicated issue is that we want different things. In standard political science the tension is between two models "Trustee" leadership and "Delegate" leadership. Both have merit. Trustees are supposed to provide their best judgement. Delegates are supposed to just do our bidding. The truth of course is that we expect politicians to do a mix of both. Moreover, these days, I think there's a third category which you might call "Performative." Sometimes voters just elect people to send a message, cause a ruckus, or annoy the "right" people. Marjorie Taylor Greene is neither a trustee nor a delegate in the strict sense given that she's been stripped of all committee assignments and literally can't do very much. I suppose she still votes on the floor. But her fans send her to congress because they like her antics.

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    Jake

    This episode was an absolute chef's kiss. I love the recent deep dive into republicanism, and any episode that mentions Schumpeter and Burnham has my attention (plus a well placed swipe at Ezra Klein).

    One thing I don't know is how we bring republicanism into the conversation and the culture? It seems things are too atomized and disconnected, being a deracinated individual myself. We would need some form of non-progressive communitarianism not possible in a secular digital age.

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      The Bell Tower

      Haven’t listened yet but any swipes at Ezra Klein are pre-approved, illiberal as that policy may be.

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        Jake

        Is it not liberal to make swipes at something as inherently illiberal as progressivism? It's like making swipes at Patrick Deneen

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          The Bell Tower

          You know, that’s the issue. I call it the tragedy of liberalism. It doesn’t work unless everyone plays by the rules. Even Ezra deserves a fair hearing rather than a blanket “Ef this guy” which I just gave him.

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            Jake

            But it's not just a blanket thing, it is based on his conduct and beliefs. I am listening to his conversation with Reihan Salam and getting benefit from it (mostly from Reihan). That doesn't mean I can't be very critical, as Jonah was, of the fact that he believes he just follows the facts and everyone who disagrees with him is just possessed by ideology, and is therefore the most possessed by his ideology.

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