Transcripts For CSPAN3 Francis Fukuyama Liberalism And Its Discontents 20220717

University of Southern California and the Dornsife Center for the political future to promote this particular program. So a big shout out to those tuning in remotely from la. As a longtime fan of the Commonwealth Club and advocate for its civics Civic Mission to convene the community on important issues. I am delighted the club has returned to hosting in person Public Programs on a regular basis. So i encourage you all to check out the programming and learn more. About upcoming offerings at www. Com wealthclub. Org and its literally every week. Theres stuff that youd want to come to and my wife reminds me we still have kids. You know that right at home. Tonights feature speaker is political scientists francis. Fukuyama, dr. Fukuyama is the olivier nomeli nomelini, excuse me senior fellow at Stanford Universitys freeman spokeley institute for International Studies and a faculty member at the fsi center for Democracy Development in the rule of law. His also director of stanfords ford dorsey masters in international policy. Dr. Phukiyama has written widely on issues in development and International Politics and he joins us tonight to talk about his new book. Liberalism and its discontents which builds on his prior book on identity. Theres broad consensus that liberal democracy is under attack or in retreat in many parts of the world. It is being contested not just by authoritarian states like china and russia, but also by populists who have been elected in many democracies that seemed secure. Why is this happening . What has the combination of unbridled neoliberalism identitarian politics and social media wrought . And how do we return to the classical form of liberalism . Dr. Fukuyama is one of the most recognized thinkers on the long historical arc of liberalism and democracy and he will share his critique of liberalism. Conversation with political consultant and writer Tim Miller Tim is a writer at bulwark. I know we are in for a truly fantastic and supremely relevant conversation this evening one final note. Before welcoming the speaker to the stage. We will be taking your questions for dr. Fukiyama tonight. If youre here on site, please write your questions on a card and itll be brought up to the stage. And if youre watching online, please put your questions in the youtube chat box, and those questions will be forwarded to tim. So with that im pleased to welcome, dr. Francis fukiyama and tim miller to the stage. Hey everybody. Its so good to be with you in person. I missed the week to weeks here at the Commonwealth Club and seeing everybody it is really nice to be back. Thanks to ken for supporting this conversation. My name is tim miller. Im a writer for the bulwark as ken mentioned. I also have a book coming out why we did it about why people who knew better went along with trump. Its preorder now, just saying, i dont know that its up to the level of the book that were gonna be speaking about tonight, but i think youll enjoy it. It. Im so excited and honored. Be able to moderate this conversation with frank who ive long admired and i was i appreciated the opportunity to read this book to kind of refresh my memory about some of the Political Science and political philosophy classes that i may or may not have skipped while i was a George Washington university. And so i feel very prepared for this. Its extremely timely and im excited to be here with you. Well great to be here. I just wanted to point out im wearing a ukrainian baseball cap with the ukrainian trident. Im now going to take it off. Although i realize it its actually quite helpful in. Shielding me from those bright lights, but just in politeness to the Commonwealth Club. Im and i had just purchased a slavo ukraine sweatshirts, which i would have worn had you told me that to be in theme tonight that also very relevant. I want to get to ukraine and some politics at the end. Just one more reminder if you have questions if you dont like my questions write them on the cards, and im happy to take some advice from our esteemed audience. I want to start first. The book is liberalism and its discontents. So i would like to start the conversation by defining our term specifically liberalism as a for those of you that dont know. Im a kind of former never trump republican types. So as a College Republican growing up liberal was a dirty word for me. You know, it meant all these San Francisco tax hiking tree huggers and then as ive come to read your book over the past 24 hours. I was like, actually i think liberalism is the opposite of a dirty word. I might im turns out i might be a liberal but over in europe obviously in opposite definition. So when we talk about the discontents of liberalism, what are you talking about specifically . Sure . No, thats very important because i definitely dont mean it in that american sense. I immediate in the sense of the doctrine that really got its start in the middle of the 17th century after the european wars of religion. At that point europeans have been killing each other for about 150 years over whether there are protestant or catholic or what sective protestantism and at that point a number of thinkers said well, maybe we shouldnt actually be killing ourselves over, you know these concepts of the good life and lower the horizons of politics. To life itself and to protect, you know, each citizen in their, you know, personal security and agree to disagree and you know, thats the doctrine that is associated with certain institutions most important of which is a rule of law. These are rules that protect individuals from state power and limit, you know, what executive authorities can do through constitutional checks and balances and it you know is really designed to enable individuals to exercise choice moral choice autonomy. You know, thats what gives them dignity liberalism says. Were all equal human beings universally because we do have this capacity for moral choice, and thats really what the government needs to protect. Its not associated with a particular economic policy. So on the right, you know, you have libertarianism, which is not what i consider liberalism. Thats kind of funny uniquely american antigovernment, you know attitude on you know, economic and social issues. Its not yeah the center right version in europe is like the german freed democrats that are kind of promarket, but socially more liberal thats not my version either. So as far as im concerned sweden social Democratic State is a liberal state because they protect individual rights. They respect the rule of law. And you know, thats really i think the essence of liberalism for me. So youre really breaking it down to a few attributes and when were talking about. Rule of law democratic republic, but you also talked about some other attributes, you know kind of the Scientific Method, you know other elements of a liberal society like what are some of well, thats thats particularly important now in the internet age because liberalism was highly associated with a certain cognitive mode called modern Natural Science. So modern Natural Science assumes that there is an objective reality thats outside of our subjective consciousnesses. It can be apprehended through something called the Scientific Method and that apprehension can be used to manipulate the world and thats really what creates. Not sign not just science, but the technology that flows from science and you know, our modern economic world would not exist, but for that technology and so, you know that cognitive mode is very much embedded in you liberal approach. Well, so i want to get into the very the discontents on the right and left before we do that one other things i think was in the introduction to the book that felt was interesting and timely for what were going through now here is as you assessed it the the threats that we face to liberalism are actually more acute maybe than the threats to democracy right . I dont know we spent a lot of time talking about the thrust democracy. Im sure well have more on here at the club. So we saw in january 6th. We were on a panel together about that. But your point is i take it is basically that you know democracy is not necessarily a protection from illiberalism right demographic democratic winners. So talk about how as you kind of do a threat assessment right now, you know compare the threats favor the liberal order versus democratic order. Yeah, so liberalism and democracy are usually allies and they usually support one another but theyre distinct phenomena. So liberalism is really about law and legal constraints against the abuse of power. Democracy is the legitimation of power through reference to the people and you know governments ought to reflect the will of the largest number of their citizens and although the two support each other in what we call liberal democracy. They can also be separated and so victor orban and hungary had announced you know a number of years ago that hes trying to build not a liberal democracy, but an illiberal democracy meaning hes democratically legitimated. He just won a big election. You know, he got a pretty good majority in parliament. So theres no question that hes democratically legitimate, but hes undermining the independent press and hungary. Hes undermining the court system. Hes fostering a system of corrupt croneism and all of that, you know reflects the erosion of the rule of law on the other hand. You can have a country like singapore or maybe you know imperial germany in the 19th century. That actually does have a strong rule of law. They respect Property Rights and permit individual freedoms, but theyre not democratic they dont hold elections. I think that the reason i wrote about liberalism being under threat rather than democracy is that these days almost nobody can test the principle of democracy that the peoples will should be sovereign even the chinese even putin. Yeah democratic. I mean he pays homage, you know a hypocritically to democracy by holding, you know, fake elections, but he still holds them in the Chinese Communist party say they represent the true democracy because theyre really representing the will of the chinese people, but people dont like liberalism in the first instance and they attack those legal constraints, you know, thats what every populist in the world modi in india orban and in hungary erdogan and turkey and our donald trump here in the United States all get elected in the first thing they do with that mandate is to try to undermine the rule of law and thats why i think that its really liberalism. Thats the first victim now once you undermine the rule of law, then you can go after democracy, which is what youre now seeing, you know, hungry itself. Theres a lot of gerrymandering in our country something similar is going to happen, you know, if federal judges are not going to stand in the way of election manipulation then you know republicans are going to manipulate elections. So the two of them are related, but theyre not identical. So i want to get into the critiques of our liberal right and left here, but for but first just maybe try to put on the hat, which you do i think in the book of what are there what are the legitimate grievances with liberalism that is sort of undermining this Illiberal Movement on each side and how just before we get into that. Can i tell you whats good about liberalism . Okay. I was gonna end with whats good, but we can start with whats good. Okay start with whats good because i think its kind of a baseline from which you can then measure whats not so good. Okay, great, right. So i really think theres three issues very simply theres a pragmatic issue. There is a moral issue and theres a an Economic Issues to the pragmatic issue is very simple as i said, its a way of dealing with diversity in a Diverse Society if you have a system that stresses tolerance for people that are have different opinions from yourself, then its a way of managing violent conflicts and so it starts out managing the conflict between different types of christians in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its an antidote to out of control nationalism and in that respect. Its very good if youre coming out of the, you know, two big world wars that have destroyed european civilization liberalism looks pretty good to you or if youre living under communism a communist dictatorship again, you know having the freedom to come and go and speak your mind, you know looks pretty good. Thats thats pragmatic. The second is moral because liberalism is really about human choice, and i think that its something that is pretty universal among human beings. They dont like to be ordered around they like to be able to decide you know what theyre going to do in life who theyre going to marry where theyre going to live these basic freedoms, but its more than that because you know going all the way back to the book of genesis. What makes human beings uniquely human in that judeochristian tradition is their capacity for moral choice. They can choose right or wrong and that elevates them up, you know above the rest of nature and so by protecting the ability to choose liberalism protects this fundamental human quality, and thats what makes liberals think that all human beings are actually equal because we may differ by skin color intelligence height, you know all sorts of things, but we all are moral creatures, you know underneath thing is economics because liberalism protects Property Rights and freedom to transact and so its historically been associated with prosperity with modern Economic Growth and the like so i just want to say i mean, its important to hit the good points before you hit the critique. I did a lot of critiques lately. Okay, thats fair. I want to run up you actually then lets start about the positive liberalism because you sort of expressed towards the end of the book that that one of your concerns about. You know, i think one of the critiques of liberalism is a sense that it doesnt foster a sense of community and that thats but as i was reading that i was thinking to myself is is that really true. I dont know the second year your second point this moral component this component that everyone has this individual dignity. When put together into a broad Diverse Society, i think there is this sort of communal sense right that maybe we dont agree on every specific thing or you know me. Our backgrounds arent exactly the same we grew up, but we have this one thing in common, which is that we all want, you know to flourish and that we all want everybody to succeed. Im just imagining here in San Francisco. Youre sitting in dolores park on a sunday afternoon, like i was doing on sunday and theres all kinds of people, you know, all races and i think everybody in that park does feel like that. Theres some commute some connective tissue. Weve all chosen to be here and this free country and and so i wonder sometimes why advocates of liberalism arent that good at kind of making the case for . Yeah the communal nature. Well, yeah, i think the problem is that its not one community. Its many communities right so liberal societies produce a very very gated and healthy and vigorous civil society, but you know, there are people doing all sorts of things, you know, their environmentalist. Theyre feminists. Theyre trade unionists. Theyre stamp collectors, you know, theres all sorts of people and you know, that is an aspect of our human freedom to be able to join with other people voluntarily to pursue passions and interests that we share but i think that for many people thats not enough, you know that they would like to actually see a stronger sense of a Broad Community where people you know share more than just these hobbies and you know kind of interest but but you know religious views or you know a sense of National Purpose and i actually do think you can see that in ukraine right now. I mean, youve got us going again. Yeah, i mean you got this unbelievable degree of National Unity right now, so Something Like a quarter million ukrainians that had been living in other parts of europe have actually gone back to ukraine after the war started so that they could fight, you know on behalf of their country and thats something that you know, frankly youre you dont get you know that degree of civic spiritedness and engagement is certainly not and and even in our country. I think its deteriorate one thing. I remember reading dean atchisons autobiography many years ago has a graduate student so world war one broke out when he was an undergrad at yale and every member of his yale class volunteer to join the us army at that point and then went off to europe now. Can you imagine the members of the yale undergraduate class, you know . Stringer we dont need zoomer slander here. Okay. Theres you know, who knows what the threat would be from the gen z credit yale. Thats right, but let me trying to challenge you at that point a little bit though. I i absolutely hurt youre saying about kind of the national for national fervor of whats happening in ukraine, but i think that there has been a sort of reanimation of of kind of what a panwestern, you know, sort of unity and behind ukraine and you see this across europe obviously in some of the countries close to ukraine. Theres a security element, but you know in france, i dont think that that concerned like, you know, russias market gonna march across europe and you you know, i think saw rejection of the of the National Swing there, i think in large part, i think ukraine played a big part of that in the recent French Election here in america. I just speaking to my peer group, you know, i see a lot of people who are like they want to volunteer they want to contribute they want to help me then applying the ukraine to pick up but there is this sort of sense that we dont we might not share this nationalist or religious connection with ukraine, but we we do share something. Its this connection of a free people and and you know, thats exactly right. No and in that perspect, i think ukraine has been really useful in reminding another generation that there are these kind of higher ideals that combine a country together. So i want to make something really clear. Im not in favor of National Identity just any old kind of National Identity, right . The hungarian kind or the russian kind is really toxic because it is, you know, exclusive aggressive intolerant, right . So if youre going to have a National Identity, i think it really has to be a National Identity built around a liberal values. And so we have to take pride in the fact that were a free people. For the americans used to say about themselves, you know, were a free people and were proud of that freedom and were willing to fight for it and it has to be something that is equally accessible by the actual diversity of the people that live in in your society right so you cant like victor orbaugh has say hungarian National Identity is based on hungarian ethnicity. You know, thats kind of what people on the right the mag or write want to do in the United States and thats not the right kind of National Identity, but i do think that you know, there has been a tendency of certain liberals, you know taking seriously the universality of human equality to dislike the idea of National Borders and you know the idea that that were going to treat americans differently from nonamericans and you know, i think a lot of that has kind of conceded the patriotism issue to the right where it shouldnt be because youre absolutely right. Theres no reason liberal society cant you know feel this sense of national i agree with that. I dont know that that kind of critique of the left a little bit because that is frustrating with me as sort of a immigrant i guess to the Left Coalition now having left my old party, you know that came so natural at republican events this sort of patriotism and i understand the concern for people on the left about over doing it, but i dont know. I was saying i traveled to brazil last month and i was at up and you know as i was there on vacation and but i went to a festival i was there and it was a very like this american. It was all these american bands and American Brands and American Fashion and and really kind of the types of people that probably didnt vote for donald trump right as part of that were there for this festival and im thinking to myself the left really should be there is an american cultural identity. That is healthy that does embrace diversity that is not revanchist. Right and and it does feel like sometimes the left is hesitant to sort of wave the American Flag say, you know doja cat and this is all of us too. Right like apple is us and you know, there are these elements that arent you know about throwing back to the 50s. You ever want to be imbued with that spirit, you know go to a naturalization ceremony, right . Yeah. Theyre very very moving in europe if you get naturalized and in most european countries, its actually very hard to get naturalized because they dont want you to be a citizen citizen but in the United States, you know, we typically have wanted immigrants to become citizens and you know, the governor will show up. Therell be a military color guard. Everybody will say the pledge of allegiance and its a very very moving ceremony and i it kind of you know, so this is what i mean about a liberal National Identity my former colleague and mentor Seymour Martin lipset used to say that that you cant be ungerman or unjapanese because those identities are basically, you know, racially based, but you can it be accused of being unamerican because american identity had become detached from ethnicity or religion or race and became a political you know a political thing that could be shared in terms of. You know common love for the constitution rule of law, but also a broader culture in which in a lot of it was popular culture. So you think whats defined american the 20th century . Well, you know the Great American songbook rock and roll jazz hiphop, you know, sure all these incredibly vigorous cultural forms that you know have really defined what it means to be an american and i think one of the really even sports sports football basketball just yeah, right. So like in all these World War Two movies. Theres a nazi infiltrator and you want to find out whether hes a real american so you ask him through the cowboys quarterback. Yes, but unfortunately, you know, thats deteriorating right and even in sports, you know, its become politicized and so you know, theres some sports that are red and some some that are blue and you know, i think that those cultural icons. Unfortunately have seen some deterioration in recent years. Thank you that so then lets take that just then for a moment into you know, what the the right and left critiques of liberalism and then we kind of pick apart. Whats wrong whats wrong with them . Okay. Well, so the right. When critique is exactly, you know what i just outlined that its not enough that you have a diverse civil society. They basically want you know to go back to america that they imagined for some of them. Its a Christian America for some its a White America on a culture. Yeah, monoculture. I think this is kind of a fantasy because right in the 19th century. Everyone may have been christian, but the you know, the protestants hated the irish that were coming in and you know, so nobody told the black people that think. And you know now youve got these. You know conservative intellectuals like adrian vermeul and Patrick Deneen and so forth that are toying with you know integralism where you basically have a state religion thats backed by the power of the state. Thats a kind of extreme version, but i think that that hankering for that kind of you know deeply rooted National Identity is is one of the things that they like about the current. You know diverse america. And on the left you know, its pretty understandable. Liberalism is based on the rule of law. Its highly procedural and therefore its very slow. And so, you know just to point out one glaring example 13 14 15th amendments after the civil war in theory. Give African Americans equal juridical rights to white people, but for the next hundred years, you still had jim crow and its only until the Civil Rights Movement that the legal segregation gets wiped away and thats pretty slow, you know progress, but it is it is progress, but its slow and i think you know anyone interested in social justice wishes that it would be faster, but you got a system that protects Property Rights and therefore youre going to protect the rights of oligarchs and rich people as well as you know ordinary ones and thats you know, thats a problem in on the left. Thats thats the problem in their eyes. So, how are you seeing that left critique manifest . Well so its not just the slowness of the system. Its also a questioning of the liberal premise of kind of under the skin. Were all human beings because theres a couple of you know, versions of identity politics that have appeared as a redefinition of what it meant means to be a progressive so one version of identity politics is actually just liberalism in a different form where you have a marginalized group africanamericans women gays and lesbians, you know, so forth that say weve been excluded were mistreated we want to be treated equally and so thats a liberal understanding of identity, but theres an illiberal one that says, you know, those identities are so essential to who we are that we you know deny the the individualist premise, you know, that thats the thing that you ought to look at first, know when youre portioning out resources or hiring people for jobs and so forth and you know, thats the point at which it becomes, you know, potentially illiberal because youre judging people based on a group characteristic and youre giving rights to groups rather than to individuals. I thought this was maybe the most interesting part of the book is its put some language around a problem that ive been having, you know, because im gay and have a black daughter and so their elements of identity politics that resonate with me right like the representation elements right that its like hard for my mom to go find my daughter a black ballerina toy, right . Its like to be sure to be nice to have some blood, you know representation would be nice. You know, i think i see her and like looking at, you know, black women who are seeing anything. This is you know, this is good. Its its its something that i think does have value, you know petes candidacy. I wrote a lot about petes candidacy and i felt like people undermined how important that was. Just kind of like crazy to me thinking that i cant that didnt even occur to me that i could get married when i was in college and now like married gay man is running for president like that has to have an impact on college. So i thought all of those elements of identity college are good. Well at the same time theres this obvious pernicious element to identity tied in ontarian politics. I think is causing some of the rightwing backlash and and how do you kind of navigate that i well so this is kind of the larger theme so youd ask me whats wrong with liberalism. So were finally getting to that and i think that you know, its not liberalism as a theory itself but interpretations of liberalism that have been carried to extremes and you know one of them on the right has been the evolution of liberalism into whats called neoliberalism, you know, the market is good. So 10 times as much market is going to be 10 times better in the state is a obstacle to you know markets working efficiently. So lets get rid of the state. I mean thats one of the things thats led to the kind of inequality in in the United States, but on the left you have a similar evolution where you say well autonomy is a good thing basically all of us want to be free agents and want to be respected for that, but know under the certain liberal thinkers want to carry that to say autonomy is you know is the be all in good all and all of human life and it doesnt matter what you choose as long as youve chosen it, so its not just your ability to follow the rules as established by a religion or culture, but you get to make up the rules, you know yourself and that in the you know in in a way undermines every existing moral tradition that people have and you know people actually dont want to be completely autonomous free agents can like nietzsche zara through stray just make up, you know a new moral order. They actually want to live their lives according to you know orders that have been existent before them that their ancestors practice and so forth and you know, theres a version of that says no no, you have to start from zero, you know, you get to you get to decide everything. So i think thats you know. Yeah you get into this is a lets i want to get this right so i made a note of this you get into this sort of tension in the book right that youre talking about. Now this liberal value of individual rights, but then a critique of i think what you refer to as were so in individualism, right this sort of that which is what youre getting at now, right the you know, where it goes it goes too far and you know this idea that American Culture has developed now has kind of tried has replaced, you know, some of those kind of uniting kind of values with individualists pursuits, you know, i dont know selfcare this is you know yoga, what is it a little lived experience kind of these cliches modern life, but i guess i was just what struck me is is okay, but where when does that become problematic right i dont you know at an individual level of somebody that wants to find, you know community through these sort of. Selfcare and pampering like thats not is there anything thats like fundamentally wrong with that and free society. I dont think theres you know, it is just an aspect in a way of you know liberal choice where it does become dangerous i think is when it becomes a matter of Public Policy and a kind of formal way of distinguishing groups. And so, you know, if you think of a liberal society not as a collection of free individuals but a collection of you know, sort of closed groups that are competing with one another that becomes a very, you know, problematic sort of society and we have a lot of examples of that, you know around the world political scientists call it consociationalism. I like as we speak lebanon is melting down because its a very Diverse Society but you know in lebanon you dont act as an individual you act as a member of a particular, you know sect and all the political positions are given out based on which sect, you know speaker the parliament the president , you know, theyre all given to different people. Thats a very very extreme example, but i think that to the extent that you can maintain a liberal order that is based on individuals rather than on formally recognized group rights, thats you know, a better way to proceed. Again, if you have questions and the audience you can ride with no cards from youtube. You can put them in the comment section. I want to do a little bit more on the philosophy here when you get into politics at the end. So if you have questions about rawls, thats a good time to get those to get those up here. I want to go. I want to backtrack a little bit to your neoliberal critique. Which kind of caught me off guard i guess in the book. Just how how i think that you argued how central it was to the backlash against to the discontents the liberal order. He said at one point theres been there was an intellectual capture of economists by big business and you know, the incoming inequality and various elements of you know, everyone has brought about this backlash. So, you know talk, you know, because i think that a lot of people i at least i sort of put Classical Liberalism and you know that sort of free market neoliberalism viewpoint is hand in hand, and i guess you were sort of arguing that that theyve been in conflict i get are actually almost undermining it rather than conflict. Well, i think if you only have a liberal society, its probably not sustainable if you dont connect it to democracy in some way and by democracy, i actually mean you have to equalize outcomes to some extent because if the inequalities become too extreme the whole system loses legitimacy, and i think you know liberal societies have saved themselves by allying to democracy and doing a certain amount of redistribution, but you know in the 1980s and 1990s that fell out of fashion, there are a lot of attempts to cut back the state to cut back regulation and if you want to trace i mean just a clear you know line you look at the deregulation of financial sector. I mean of all the parts of the modern, you know late capitalist society the one part that absolutely has to be regulated is the financial sector, but you know under the influence of neoliberal ideas those regulations were taken off beginning in the late 80s and then culminating in the late 90s and that led directly to the financial crisis in 2008 banks were allowed to take these really, you know enormous risks and millions of americans lost their homes and the subprime mortgage crisis, and if you look at the people that created this system, you know, they did fine, you know year two of turmoil and theyre back to being on top of the world masters of the universe and so forth. And so i think you can see you know the the anger at the that those elites had. Manage the system and it was a justified anger. I think so, this is your critique of the neoliberal order. We have an audience question here. Im going to ask you to put your head on the other side which is to defend liberalism in the heart and economic question this for this person argues liberalism leads to unfettered capitalism in the concentration of wealth and the point one percent and i think this is the left lane critique of economic liberalism and that that is inevitable like what is the argument against well, like i said, yeah, i think that liberalism if thats all you had if we had liberalism with no elections and no voting youd end up. You know, that that critique would be right but the successful instances of liberalism were ones where it was paired with democracy and you know beginning in well actually beginning in bismarcks germany, but certainly at the beginning of the 20th century most democracies actually began putting in social protections of various sorts welfare states that guarded people against some of the extremes of market capitalism and i think that liberalism survived, you know Friedrich Hayek wrote. This book called the road to serfdom where he you wanted to make a slippery slope argument that the moment you start regulating this free market. It was inevitable that youre basically going to end up like the soviet union that it would keep getting, you know more and more state less and less human freedom. I in general dont believe slippery slope arguments, but that one in particular proved to be wrong. I actually think that social democracy in europe was what saved liberalism because it did equalize outcomes and it you know, it kind of raised all boats even as the society the you know the wealthy were getting richer so yeah, thats thats a true critique. But you know, we do have democracy as well. Ive got two audience questions here that the kind of pair together about the challenges liberalism in a modern age. The first says americans no longer share the same sources of facts and arguably reality can liberal democracy survive the digital media. The other question to the same point is as a content as the concepts of liberalism continue to adapt in the modern age with social media. How do you think the idea of true liberal politics will take root in the next generation . So its two challenges. How can okay these values in the next generation and is it hopeless given the fake news . And yeah, i wouldnt say its hopeless, but i dont actually have an answer to that question. I i think its a really serious challenge so there are several levels to this. You know one of the chapters in my book talks about the decline of this what i said was a cognitive mode closely associated with liberalism, which is modern science and in my view that critique actually begins on the left, you know, i actually studied with these people when i was young and foolish i spent, you know a better part of the year in paris studying was jacque daily don hes poststructuralists, but theres a theres a line that goes from structuralism to post structuralism to postmodernism to different versions of critical theory a lot of which is a critique of you know, science. Its a belief in a certain kind of subjectivism and it kind of culminates in the work of Michelle Foucault who, you know, very brilliantly makes a critique of science in which he says theyre these you know categories thats that are used that use scientific language about incarceration homosexuality mental illness. That actually are not scientific. Theyre simply using that language to manipulate you these are elites that are using the language to manipulate you and what he called biopower permeates, you know the whole of society and i think a lot of the sensitivity to language that is at the core of Political Correctness really comes from foucault because he said that its really language that is used by these elites to to do this and so in my view, he was really one of the original conspiracy theorists, you know, that that he actually said that science and many respects was a conspiracy that was manipulated ordinary people and now that has drifted over to the right. Where you know the whole critique during covid was of the Public Health establishment, and you know, you hear these. Korean strains that these people are not there they claim to be scientists, but theyre really elites that are using science to manipulate you because all they care about is is power. So you take that . View of science and you combine it with the internet and youve got a big meltdown right . Because the internet at least had been had these filters where there are certain standards for verification, you know legacy media in the science community, you know in the Legal Community in criminal law you couldnt just say anything you wanted but you know with the internet anyone can say anything they want so you go on the internet and say our vaccines safe and youll get 10,000 hits saying no. No thats completely wrong. Thats you know, theyre pulling the wool over your eyes. And how you get out of it is its a question. We actually have a a new center in my institute of cyber policy center, and so people have been trying to wrestle with this for the last several years, and i dont think that theres a good, you know a good answer to this. Me neither, but im not here to give my dark my dark thoughts. I want to i want to move to the right and the concerns about the right, but just one more thing on the left since you you mentioned that and i think this kind of foucaultian mindset sort of led us here on the critical to where we ended up on critical theory with this question, which is what is the most charitable charitable construction that can be given to claims such as math as inherently racist and i think that you see this criticism and the critical left right, which is all manner of you know, liberal values all of things that youve been talking about not just math, but the United Method that theyre that theyre western theyre this inherent racist. Element of them, you know, what is the response to that critique . And what is the most like that takes their critique seriously well in this book. I actually tried to be fair to critical theory. And so i actually go over several especially the early writers like Charles Mills or Carol Pateman so forth were actually steeped in, you know, western political theory and they understood it well, and you know, they make serious charges against liberalism, which i dont think are right, but you know, theyre theyre serious people the problem is that you know, you get these robin dangelos and ibrahim candies that you know, have a kind of cartoonish version of this, you know, where you say that in fact, we had a presentation at a seminar at stanford where some woman was saying, you know, she was critiquing racist western epistemology. I mean descartes somehow in instrument of white power, you know, its a completely, you know, completely nonsensical sort of thing. But so theres no charitable. Account of some of these, you know latecomers that really turn it into a caricature of itself, but there is something to the you know, the earlier critical theorists that said there are many ways in which you know, existing institutions and structures, you know appear to be liberal and open and tolerant but they really do you know hide a more covert form of you know of power that keeps certain people in positions of power and you know, i think you can probably identify a number of them in criminal justice in general a lot of domains of life. And so that part of it i think is okay where it goes wrong is where it attacks the principles of liberalism itself it tax, you know freedom of speech due process the premise that you know, theres a basic moral equality to people those are the points in which you know, i think it veers off into something that i certainly im not going to defend. For sure, so lets now kind of level set because i want to get into the right liberalism which seems more cute to me. But but for you when you look at those threats, you know to and lets say for defining the threat of the liberal left being kind of the critical theory. The right beingness of trumpist, you know, and its in a raw sense and you know, maybe in a more scholarly sense of her mule integralist theory like what what do you if were doing a threat assessment . Yeah, you know of the next whatever quarter century i had how do you you know, look at those two different strains of a liberalism well, to me. Theres absolutely no question that the threat that the clear and present danger is coming from the right, you know, and itll come in the 2024 president ial election. I was just listening to actually to bill crystals latest podcast with judge athletic. Yeah, really good. Its really scary. Its really scary because london is not like a trump derangement. Never trumper like me. Yeah, you know, he was very, you know, very conservative very concerned of yeah, you know, and i think he said a number of things that were absolutely correct that you know, and for january 6th was not a spontaneous rally that just got out of hand. Thats the way i thought about it initially when i was watching it on tv, but now weve learned through the january 6th commission that was planned very carefully that you know that trump was behind all of it and that basically a lot of republicans want to be able to repeat it, you know making use of this electoral count act of 1887 this very defective law in such a way that they can substitute their will for the will of the people in a in a future election and that is just the most overt threat to democracy that, you know, certainly ive seen in my lifetime and so that you know is by far a clear and present danger. The one on the left is is complicated because its a cultural threat it exists primarily in elite unit, you know institutions in the arts and hollywood and universities and its you know slower acting and actually the big controversy among my more with my more progressive friends is a lot of them say, you know, its not that its not that serious. It is just a few incidents that get blown up by the conservative media and everybody thinks that theres no freedom of in fact, ive got conservative friends at assert. Oh, theres no freedom of speech whatsoever place like ridiculous, you know. And say whatever you live in the golden era of speech. This is my biggest pet peeve about the complaint about the left wing liberalism like cranks, you know people like diamond and silk who you know would be writing letters to the editor to their local paper and having them be rejected 25 years ago now have like million followers on social media, you know, i mean this is there are certain threats within these lead institutions, you know, employee speech but but political speeches is thriving. Yeah. Yeah. Well and the threats are really narrowly related to certain civil rights issues having to do with Race Ethnicity gender Sexual Orientation and so forth but you know in this country you can say anything you want about the president of the United States or anyone else, you know in power and to listen to like three conservative podcasts about how Dave Chappelle was being canceled while i was like driving by a Dave Chappelle billboard about how hes gonna build the stadium in new orleans. So its like we sure hes canceled. It seems like hes doing pretty good to me. Yeah, but just yeah, just just to be fair. You know, i i see this a lot of my students that they dont have liberal attitudes towards a lot of things and you know, theyre going to inherit the country at some point so worrying about fair was worrying about i want to go to the more cute threat because were on a time but obviously with with there a couple things happening in the news that are very relevant to your book. I just want to speak about it the first obviously this replacement theory great replacement theory, which is about as a liberal as you can get that that led to the shooting in buffalo, but then we have these kind of republican primaries going on right now where extremely a liberal republican candidate the jd vance candidacy and that all ties together a lot of them sort of use soft replacement theory language. So just putting the like trump is a unique individual threat, but putting him aside for a second. What about these other kind of elements on the right . Yeah. Well, its terrible i mean you know not only was january 6th plan but in a way the worst thing is then the republican reaction which should have been one of shock and horror and the marginalization of the people that were behind the conspiracy but instead theyve tried to normalize it they tried to defend it, you know, essentially sweep it under the rug and as a result, you know, you got 30 more than 30 of the country that thinks that biden is not the legitimate president and its really hard to see how you can have a constitutional democracy when that many people believe something. Thats just a total lie. Yeah, and i mean vance. Whos that was gonna be in the senate. Its like the Senate Candidate was fed by all of the elites that are that are such threat to speech literally. I dont know if you saw the vanity fair article. He literally went so far as to say that, you know, trump should conduct extra legal firings of government officials and if the Supreme Court tries to stop them say send your army. Yeah. I mean, thats very scary rhetoric doing from a competent for like this is someone who i think has would have a more competent ability to do and anti rule of law efforts and and that isnt really related to trump, right . No, thats right. I mean the whole party is now, you know falling in line behind that kind of rhetoric and the damage that can be done in a second republican president ial term in after 2024 is just enormous. How do you tie so this is a one of the questions real audience or from online perceived victimization as proffered by a demagogue also foments friction among groups. And so i think in some ways these things are acting together, right . Theres this sense on the right. Theres this white this is victimization of white culture, right . Were being targeted, you know affirmative action, etc, etc. And then you know, its that that sense of victimization is being hypercharged by demagogue. Youre leading to some of the things may not directly leading some things like buffalo, but certainly leading to the radicalization of young men. You know, like what . But you know, how do you kind of break up that sort of symbiotic sort of relationship this feeling of victimization . Well, i wish i had a simple answer to that and we have two minutes left for you to solve that problem. I guess my basic answer in general is that you win elections . You know that. The people that believe that stuff are not a majority of the country and you know if you play or political cards, right you can marginalize them politically. Its just that right now. I just dont think the democrats are doing a really good job in you know, organizing themselves to really focus on whats important and to persuade, you know, one of the scariest things is as a political scientist, i believe and i you know, tim, i know you believe that you know this threat thats posed by you know, this january 6th stuff is like the biggest danger that were facing in the near future, but most americans could care less, you know, its kind of an elite concern and somehow. Nobody has made it clear to them that they could lose their entire democracy if this stuff isnt stopped. Can we talk about the elite right then and this is a little bit more of our world, right . I live in this world and you know more from a kind of a public intellectual standpoint me from like the Campaign Hack perspective. But like what is your sense when you talk to folks . You know on that that share your Classical Liberal values have true have been traditionally in line with the Republican Party who just dont share that threat assessment to kind of look at what is happening with the Republican Party and decide that whatever cancel culture is a bigger threat. How do you diagnose that like what you know, is there do they have a legitimate reason for their lack of know . So a long time ago i decided that. You know this premise that people are fundamentally rational was a very naive. Point of view and that actually social psychologists, you know had better insight into why people believe what they do, you know that it has to do with social pressure and social acceptability and this in enormous ability of human beings to pursue what is called motivated reasoning where you use her cognitive ability not to actually try to perceive the objective world but to make the objective world fit your wishes in terms of what it should be like and thats a lot of whats been going on, but i must say i mean one of the strange experiences this started really with the iraq war. Where a lot of my Close Friends were big boosters of it and you know, thought it was really great thing and i didnt and i just didnt understand given that we all had very similar backgrounds and knowledgewise. Why is it that certain people change their minds and other people dont and i still dont know what the reason is, you know. I want to do one other political timely thing. Obviously we have potentially the roe v wade. Overturn coming in the next few weeks you write a you wrote a little bit about this about, you know, kind of the equal the how abortion is a challenging question within this constructive of liberalism equal right to autonomy. The mother and the child, how do you what is your kind of sense for . You know how you know people that want to spouse Classical Liberal values, but maybe have differing specific views about you know what the origin of life like, how are we how do we how can we as a group here to come like kind of navigate those differences in a liberal way and like whats your sense for whats coming . Uh, yeah, im not terribly optimistic about how this is all going to play out because it does to me that. You know. Because of the way this issue has been politicized and has politicized the judicial system. I dont think that youre going to get satisfactory answers coming out of that. I mean there was a time when you might have hoped that the judiciary had, you know maintained enough independence that people would actually listen to reasoned arguments. I think its been long since you know, so again, i think there was a classically liberal argument right on the right for a while that overturning roe v. Wade would lead to this sort of you know how our democratic a liberal democracy is supposed to work right where there is, you know federalism and con and you know, you find Common Ground know certain limits. But it also feels hard to imagine thats gonna happen hard to imagine and its also the case that theres a strong common law tradition. Thats you know, supporting starry decisis and if people think that something is a right for two generations and even if the original their questions about the original decision, you cant just take it away from them. And so, you know, i think were in for a you know a tough period where this is going to be fought out politically. Yeah. We five minutes left. I needed to one or two audience questions my last thing with this just me challenge you the book does. Talk about to sports and talk about federalism and like sort of the value of this and may protecting kind of liberal order, but you know sort of pushing more decisions down. But from my concern about that is that there doesnt seem to a lot of evidence. In a month and me this is really to the communications questions right that that are small communities are are at all. Theres a buffer at all from these sort of illiberal trends right and the kind of illiberal National Trends that we see in congress are are being. You know paralleled or even worse than certain cases in various state legislatures and and you know community organizations, so you know, how is is your sense that maybe thats okay right that theres federalism and that theyll just be different outcomes in different places or you know, what makes things that sort of pushing decisions closer would would help. Well, it depends on the kind of issue that federalism is meant to address so there are a lot of issues that are purely local like Building Infrastructure or you know, Running Police departments or so forth. And i think that its too bad that a lot of them have gotten nationalized in you know, the way that people think about them part of that has to do with the disappearance of local news because that used to be a buffer where you know people could talk about things within their Community Without that being tainted but not everything is related to politics that comes out of washington, you know, theres still our substantial number of decisions decisions that are taking locally. People have better understanding the place where you get into trouble again is where you get into these basic rights issues, you know having to do and and that was classically the reason that the federal government would overrule states rights, you know, Southern States wanted slavery and then after the end of slavery they wanted jim crow and that was a uniformity that the basic structure of our rights dictated, you know decentralized and be made uniform on the other hand health care policy, you know, does everybody in the country have to get an identical level of care can it be tailored to Rural Communities or urban areas, you know, is that sort of thing where you is that an area where you didnt necessarily need to have a federalism. I mean a single policy dictated from washington and i suspect, you know, probably not um, this is kind of just now taking the whole conversation to a broader context, you know, even talking about the concerns but liberalism, but it is the i thought this audience question is interesting that that maybe there is an inherent instability in the nature of liberalism that just needs to be embraced right . Its given the human nature of pursuing social hierarchy for power. You know, its is there always going to happen be you know, the sorts of ebbs and flows, you know in any sort of liberal liberal country. Well, i wouldnt already i dont construct a whole theory around it, but theres something to that you know that in many ways liberalism is desirable when compared to its alternatives and i think its still the case that none of these critics on the left or the right has come up with a convincing substitute for liberalism. But you know people do get complacent and weve been living in a liberal world order since 1945, you know a lot of it constructed by the United States where people could assume a basic level of peace and prosperity. And you know, they wanted the liberal order after 1945 because they saw what war could do in eastern europe. They saw what communism meant and they wanted to join the European Union because they didnt like that kind of dictatorship, but you know now in poland, for example, youve had a whole generation thats grown up. No experience. No living experience of communism and so they can believe that its the European Union and not you know a communist. Guy like or dictator like putin. Thats the real danger. They dont believe that in poland now, but you know, you could have this illusion of safety. And so i do think that there may be this cycle. Unfortunately that we do have to go through where you experience all the alternatives to liberalism and then you begin to realize that that peace and prosperity and stability was actually pretty good and you need to fight and you need to be vigilant in order to keep keep it. Yeah, well close with this you did. I kind of bristled at this line and look what you you paraphrased churchill with, you know, the realism is the worst form except all of the others and i felt like after after writing this compelling defense of liberalism against its discontents. Theres that was like a little bit of selfhating about all tests and that and that, you know, maybe hopefully coming out of this. You know, especially whats happening in ukraine, you know, we can kind of sort of re foster some enthusiasm and excitement for these for these principles and and that that maybe we could be in a moment for that right where that with everythings happening the world and i think i think even growing frustration on the left with some of the liberalism unless hopeful on the right they seem to be embracing it but like there could be this moment of sort of reason of reinvigorating moment of Classical Liberalism. So, do you have a closing night . Yes. Okay. I have a closing optimistic note on which to conclude if you look historically the most successful societies and history, you know, lets say beginning with periclean athens, but you know going through the golden age of you know, the netherlands and the in the 17th century or england inventing the Industrial Revolution or you know fantasy icloud vienna that produces, you know, smaller and hoffman stahl and and Sigmund Freud and so forth liberal societies are really the fount of creativity and oracle progress right precisely because they are diverse and revel in that diversity and allow people to do what they want. And so and i think you know when i think about the United States, its culture. It comes out of that diversity. Like i just think you know, i i listen to a lot of music if you listen to American Music in the 19th century, its really its pretty horrible. You know, its really boring. I mean, in fact the calvinist didnt even like people singing and then you know, you get to the 20th century and you think about all the musical forms, you know Great American songbook. Its all written by , you know that were first generation immigrant or Irving Berlin and Dorothy Fields and you know people like that and then they meld that with african American Music with the blues it becomes rock and roll now it you know evolves into hip hop, i mean what it is to be, you know to have an American Culture really does come exactly out of that diversity and we should be proud of that right that thats a great achievement. Its conquered the world you go to these really obscure parts of the world. Like i do pretty regularly and you know, what do you hear you hear American Music so can we put coachella culture on a Bumper Sticker . This is it, right. We all this is a unifying factor. It was really an honor to do this. Thank you so much. And thank you the Commonwealth Club for having me. Do i have a closing thing . I want to thank everybody who joined us here. Thank everybody online. Thank ken and the jacqueline broadfund for its support this program and others are gonna be found on Commonwealth Club. Org. Im tim miller. Thank you. All so much program is adjourned. Well see you in july. True