Will the Real Anti-Liberal Please Stand Up?

The anti-liberal tradition that is tearing America apart- again.

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Jonah is joined by Robert Kagan—a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Rebellion: The Antiliberal Tradition That Is Tearing America Apart – Again—to debate Robert’s theory on the anti-liberal history of conservatism and why he thinks Trump is a logical product of the American right.

Show Notes:
—Robert’s profile at Brookings
—Robert’s new book
—Why the South Must Prevail
—Miles Taylor’s book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump

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Comments (120)
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  1. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    I guess what’s missing here is that rejecting decisions from the Supreme Court or calling them illiberal is its own form of anti-liberalism and both Obama and Biden have displayed this tendency. Surely Republicans would do the same and have done so, for example when Roberts “betrayed” them on Obamacare.

    Trump, of course, went much further with his riot but there is also election denial on the left and there is rioting and illiberalism on the left. That those haven’t manifested themselves as severely doesn’t make them not anti-liberal.

    Kagan is right, we have to let this stuff work through the available system. It’s just that when he maligns a fundamental philosophy of individuals who earned their position on the court to do just that, he’s pretty much practicing anti-liberalism. Don’t like Alito? Win elections and get more progressives on the court instead of trying dismiss those outcomes as somehow not legitimate.

    I agree that the risk Trump represents is much more tangible but the risk he represents is also partially a product of the legitimate system. If he wins, it will be the second time he’s won a presidential election (not a third, obviously). What do you do with that? If the people choose the form of their destructor like Ray Stantz, how can we reject the outcome without also rejecting liberalism itself?

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  2. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Didn’t realize Mr. Kagan was the author of Ghost at the Feast. He’s an excellent writer and profound thinker in my estimation. I will be reading this book next week for sure. Excellent episode.

    I think the definition of anti-liberalism is the impatience coming from either side of the political spectrum with accepting the changes that are produced through the system we have in place. Kagan seems to define it as the spirit of change but change is not always progressive. To take an extreme example: Hitler is defined as conservative in most circles but he used his power to execute radical changes. They were intended to go backward in history but they were radical nonetheless.

    I understand Mr. Kagan’s point about originalism. This is pretty specifically exemplified by Alito’s opinion on Roe v Wade where he tried to re-establish traditions he gleaned from the history of the issue. I thought this argument was weak also. But preserving Roe would also have been conservative and a form of originalism in that it would have upheld the tradition established by a previous generation.

    Two points about this:

    1. The states are already hashing abortion out to the dismay of both factions in various instances. This is the system working as intended. Roe was also the system working as intended, by the way.

    2. All of this from the ruling itself to the various state outcomes are products of democracy and republican government. It is all liberalism. Impatience with the results is anti-liberal.

    The founders were conservative radicals as opposed to radical conservatives - a reality that seems to throw both extremes for a loop. The genius of the American system did not spring whole cloth from the convention. Rather, it was the culmination of more than 200 years of experimentation in the wilderness. This is why it’s unique in history.

    We can change whatever we want. To do so requires various levels of consensus depending on what it is we wish to change. The direction of that change is irrelevant.

    Impatience with the outcomes is illiberalism in my book. Acceptance of them even when we don’t agree with them is liberalism.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Ralph

    This was a frustrating episode. Mr. Kagan drifted back and forth between what "liberal" means when you use "anti-liberal" vs what "liberal" means when you are talking about policy choices. Even after defining terms (and Jonah trying to get him to use "progressive" to reduce the confusion) he could not stick to it. I can only think that his book would be a similarly muddled mush. And, as Jonah said, originalism is anti-liberal....huh?? If liberalism is broadly about accepting debate, openness to new ideas, and defining a process to resolve differences about those ideas, how can adhering to the document which best reflects those concepts be anti-liberal? I agree with Mr. Kagan's concern about the risk of letting Trump even near power again, but some of his other arguments are an epic fail.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Bel

    I'm skeptical that anti-liberalism historically originates on the right and also skeptical that it originates in the darkness of the human heart.

    I think of it more as a psychological coping mechanism, aided by a lack of self awareness. One that anyone could fall into but that can be avoided.

    However, if anti-liberalism is a dark trait of humanity, I think that supports Kagan's theory.
    Psychological studies suggest conservatives are less open to new experiences. which could cause someone with those innate tendencies to favor illiberal means of avoiding change.

    We see a lot of that with MAGA; they want Trump to make the world more psychologically comfortable for themselves. They want to revert back to a time, often imagined, that feels more familiar and controlled.

    I think the illiberal lefties who want to beat us over the head with the arc of progress to force change reinforce my hypothesis. They want more change and faster.

    Editing to add that historically there were more opportunities to resist change. Change is not always in the direction of progress but it is the only constant.

    It's all rather anti American but I can imagine people in the thick of those feelings of resisting or desiring change not only don't but can't see that.

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  5. Avatar photo
    MRS

    Kagan's definition of white, Christian nationalism fails to account for all the white, Christian nationalists of the progressive movement and the post-WWII liberals. But he's also right in noting that that the conservative movement never really succeeded in weeding out the illiberal elements. Sure, WFB ran off the Birchers and the Randians, but they never really left and were always adjacent to the more respectable parts of the movement. Think of the laundry list of firebrands that NR has had to fire over the years - Sobran, Francis, Derbyshire.

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  6. _jen

    "Liberalism is an act of faith that the rules work and apply even when you lose"
    This is a wonderful definition. Did Jonah get this from somewhere or was this off the cuff?

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  7. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    7 minutes in, he claims that the South’s anti-liberalism has always been the fault of the right and that anti-liberalism in America has always been the fault of the right? So I take it that Wilson’s progressivism was on the right and Harding and Coolidge were on the left? The famous “rugged individualist, free market, American exceptionalist, the-business-of-America-is-business, Founding-revering left?” I would remind him that the South hated capitalism and the North was capitalist during the Civil War.

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    1. Aaron H Frank

      Don't forget George Wallace and the whole Dixiecrat movement.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Isn’t Robert Kagan the one (or maybe his brother) last time who slandered Warren G. Harding by insisting that the “return to normalcy” meant racism and segregation? And who praised Woodrow Wilson? That’s antihistorical nonsense.

    The truth is that Wilson was the most racist president (a member of the KKK) even by the standards of his time, and that Harding was the most pro-Civil Rights president up to that time. Harding denounced lynchings and stood up for African Americans while Wilson premiered Birth of a Nation at the White House and palled around with eugenicists. I’m still mad about Kagan’s implying that Harding’s return to normalcy was responsible for the Tulsa Massacre, and for castigating the right for how bad race relations were in the 1920s. Like, compared to how they were under Wilson? What? Utter revisionism that seems willful. The left still doesn’t want to admit that conservatives and Republicans freed the slaves and fought against Jim Crow, while progressives fought to instantiate Jim Crow and admired the Old South.

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  9. Avatar photo
    Kit

    Enjoyed the discourse. Complex situations with lots of moving parts do not lend themselves to resolution, but they do spur thoughts along the way.

    Back to Trump (and I am definitely not a Trump fan).

    I think viewing Trump through the lens of illiberalism is interesting to a limited extent. Sure he's illiberal, but he is also not conservative in the Jonah sense of the word. For me, that is the wrong framing.

    Thinking about Clinton for a minute. He got a pass from the feminist crowd for violating several of their most highly valued principles. Hypocrisy? Maybe. But what I saw was that they were faced with reality and had to face their principles when facing them had actual consequences. They decided that principles could be sacrificed for the greater good of keeping Clinton around.

    When this blind man (me) approaches the elephant of Trump, and sees people compromising principles right and left, what I see is a "greater good" in play. I'm not talking about the Barrs of the world - people who want relevance or power or money. I'm talking about the Trump voters. The religious right that will vote for a serial adulterer.

    They are Jungian-ly projecting their fears and perceptions about their decline and the decline of their beloved country onto Trump, looking for someone to save them and it. Recovering their lives and the country that is being lost is the greater good that justifies the sacrifice. A tale as old as Ancient Rome - Gracchus, Caesar, - which often devolves into demagogy.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Retired Prosecutor

    Jonah: Here is a suggestion for a less evasive and doctrinaire guest: Bob's brother Fred, an expert on the current world military situation, including the Ukrainian war.

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