When Jonah Met Ezra

The assault on classical liberalism.

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Jonah is well-rested which means an extra long and digressive Ruminant in which he recounts his experience debating Ezra Klein at an event in Ohio. He then ruminates on conservative intellectual history (the free spot on your bingo cards), the left-wingification of the right wing, and the benefit of “invisible hand” systems. Ignore the sounds of the asylum staff trying to break through the door.

Show Notes:
— Jonah: Does Reality Change Ideas or Vice Versa?
— Adrian Vermeule: Liberalism and the Invisible Hand

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Comments (103)
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  1. Santanu.Roy

    So, scrolling through your phone all day or playing video games is a life to remember ? I'm quite surprised by Ezra's answer as he's usually smart guy over the years although I haven't read much of his stuff over last 10 or 15 years ( Vox was rubbish ). Jonah had a beautiful and poetic answer. Music, art, films, sport, having a beer with a mate in the pub on a saturday afternoon are all things that make the stuff of life.

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  2. Dave Pattie

    I'd like to watch/listen to the Johah/Ezra debate. I've looked for it on YouTube and on the New Albany website - does anyone know if it's available?

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  3. Steve Barton

    I voted for a crappy person in 2016 to oppose Hillary. I voted for a very crappy person in 2020 because I'd watched Slow Joe Biden be wrong about everything for years and years -- I disliked that vote slightly more than I disliked voting for John McCain. I agree that the crap-monger has shown himself to be thoroughly unfit for any position of trust and I cannot vote for him again. Won't vote for Slow Joe either. I am happy that in 2024 I will not add to my personal list of prez votes I regretted later or even (looking at you Trumpy & Crash McCain) as I cast them. (Carter '76 & Perot '92 are the rest of my regrets)

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  4. Clark.Monson

    What I find despair-inducing is that there are actually people who will take Ezra Klein's advice on how to have hope for the future. Talk about setting people up for disillusionment and a lack of fulfillment.

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    The Bell Tower

    Come with me if you want to live! Did he intend to quote The Terminator?

    Vermule’s problem is the same as Ezra’s problem: the outcomes produced by free men and women making free decisions do not track with the outcomes they would like to see. They would prefer to have someone directing decisions based on producing collective results that they wish society could produce.

    This is precisely the Chinese posture. The one child policy ignored individual suffering for the benefit of the “greater good” which is just another way of saying the government’s preferred outcomes. Those baby girls left in the wilderness and eaten alive by bugs and gnats? That was for the greater economic and societal outcomes - which have failed, by the way.

    Obviously I’m not saying that Vermule or Klein would prefer things like this to happen but rather that their wish for directed outcomes is fundamentally anti-freedom whether they intend it to be or not.

    I’m no anarchist. Sometimes, government must have the power to pursue important objectives. However, we should be mindful of the consequences - especially unintended - of providing the planners the power to pursue such outcomes.

    The normal posture of republican government is a mess. Disagreement, discord, stupidity and delay. That’s a feature, not a bug because efficient government is tyranny. You may ask Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany whether republican government can produce consequential outcomes when consensus exists.

    And that’s the last point: consensus. American government was designed to produce consensus before action. Consensus is not the same thing as a momentary majority or some BS poll reflecting what “a majority of Americans” would like.

    When you can’t pass a crime bill or ban guns or restrict abortions, there is a reason. You haven’t gotten enough people to care or agree with you. That’s a bummer but that’s how free societies work. I thank God every day that I don’t live in the world these people wish could exist because I’m confident that such a world would not look like they think it would.

    What are the ends of liberal democracy? Liberty! Goddammit!

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    Patrick Aris

    Towards the end you talk about how Trump's future VP would not be a check on him, but obviously all well-meaning conservatives are glad that Pence certified the election in 2021 in defiance of Trump's wishes. Pence may have destroyed himself politically but he did his duty when it, arguably, mattered the most. Do you think it matters at all that we have someone quasi-sane in the VP slot for similar reasons in a second Trump term?

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    1. Randall Briggs

      I think that GOP-nominee Trump will be more careful to choose a reliably compliant running mate.

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      Estoppel Enjoyer

      Personally, I’m not sure. Part of Pence was certainly just thinking “clearly that law doesn’t allow this,” but another part was also thinking that Trump was so throughly discrediting himself that it would perhaps help his political career to stand up to him at the last moment (for all Pence knew, Trump would be a pariah within Republican circles for blowing a winnable election to Joe Biden). At best, Pence had no good way of predicting how standing up to Trump’s attempts to unlawfully seize power would affect his long-term political career. But that’s won’t be true of Trump’s 2nd VP, who will know very intimately that it’s never in your best interest to leave the cult.

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    Pgrossjr47

    This episode reminded me of a Karl Popper quote; "The growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement."

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  8. Gsalas72

    I just can't take the "new conservatives" seriously.
    Their whole infrastructure is a criticism of the liberal process that leads to an outcome with which they disagree.
    They seem to want a religion-centric political system with a strong state that provides welfare and restricts liberties. Like Hungary - but overlook that Hungary has become a parasite state living off European Union largesse, with an abysmal demographic collapse as it has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe and one of the highest emigration rates (ironically, the only reason Hungary's population doesn't collapse faster in immigration that replaces the people that leave).

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    TJ

    The whole religious bit that Vermule and Deneen bring into it is ironic to me. The consent of the government is a Judeo-Christian idea that comes directly from Mount Sinai. The Jewish people freely enter into a covenant with Yahweh there. God lays forth the covenant terms, and all the people reply, “all that he has said we will do.“ In Islam, conversion is often done at the end of the sword. In Christianity and in Judaism, it is always voluntary. People freely choose to become a Jewish proselytite. People freely choose to follow or not to follow Christ. The wars in the Old Testament, are either defensive wars, or they are wars of judgment on a nation that has done something wrong. There are not wars in the Old Testament to convert people. So the end of a free society, is for people to freely choose the good. The end of a free society isn’t heaven on earth. That is what the kingdom of God is about. And there’s one person who brings that and that’s Jesus Christ. In the meantime, a society in which people are free to choose what is right and flourish is a Biblically appropriate end of government. That isn’t to say that the society lasts, it may very well be that people don’t choose what is good and the society crumbles. So be it. The offer was on the table and that’s good enough.

    An individual is always free to choose the good, but in an unjust, non-free society, choosing the good often results and imprisonment, death or squalor.

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    1. Randall Briggs

      The end of a free society isn’t heaven on earth.

      I'll go further. The attempt to create Heaven on Earth leads to disaster--from the Reign of Terror to the Holodomor to the Gulags to the Final Solution to today's Islamic theocracies.

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    R Brooks

    Ohio Supremacist reporting in

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