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What Trump and the New Right Really Believe | David French · The Oath and The Office

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome once again to the Oath in the Office. I'm
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: John Peogle Sang, please welcome the star of our show
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: around Brown University. They called this man the mac the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: author of the Oath in the Office, Constitutional Law Professor
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Corey Bretschneider.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Hello, sir, Thanks so much, John.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I just had a note from a listener telling me
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: that these intros are worth the price of admission, and.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: So I appreciate them.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: You know what, It's a free podcast, so I believe
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: they're worth every penny. Absolutely, Corey, I'm so glad that
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: you're here today. There's so much I need to ask
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: you about. Professor. I got to cheat off your paper
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: in many ways. And I understand. We have a special
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: guest on today's show as well.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: You know, we have a really important discussion about the
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: President's disaster in the correspondence dinner. We're going to talk
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: about that and other issues. And the guest really this
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: week an amazing conversation that I pre recorded with David French,
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: the New York Times columnist, somebody who really defies categorization.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: He's been considered a conservative at different points, but he
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: has been a brilliant critic of Donald Trump. And part
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: of what we're going to talk about, which of course
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: relates to everything that we discuss, is the coalition behind
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Trump and how diffuse it is the new right, and
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: it's really a deep dive not only into the different
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: parts of it, including Christian nationalists, White nationalists relevant to
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: topics like the Smithsonian that we'll talk about as well,
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: but also how it relates to really frightening movements in
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: American history, and in particular the VSHI movement in France
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: around the Nazi period, and why really we have to
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: distinguish between the particular threat of Nazi, New Right and
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Old Right and vc France. Really fascinating historical discussion, thoughtful.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: You know, David and I don't always agree, but we
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: also have a common vocabulary and certain a common concern
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: and fighting fascism.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I'm excited for it. But meanwhile, Professor, as you know,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: FEMA and the Red Cross are still surveying the casualties
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: after the human rights disaster that was the White House
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: correspondence to Wow, did you watch Donald Trump? Set Corey,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Did you see any of it?
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: It was really tough to watch, But I think you know, oddly,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: you know much of disaster it is, And you know,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: there's nothing worse than watching comedians bomb.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: As you know, there's something worse than that. There's something
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: worse than watching professionals bomb Corey go on.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Stand up comedy, but the cringe that you feel.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: And yet when Trump bombed, I thought, you know, there
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: is something that we're learning about this man, about his
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: disposition and his lack of ability to be aware of situations.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: His lack of humor tells us something about the narcissism
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: of the moment.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, you're way too polite, Professor. This was
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: like a eulogy for charisma.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Sir.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: This was like ing bar Bergmann directing bass five. Do
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you understand that's how unfunny this was, Like it was
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: so unfunny the crickets walked out, you know, like I
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: have seen funnier Hiroshima footage, Professor Bretschneider, I have seen
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Hiroshima footage with more laugh It was so unfunny. The
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: silence got a writing credit at the end. I mean,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I just felt like Lars von Trier doing crowd work,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Like what could be less funny than this? And it
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: was astonishing in terms of the hate. But I think
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you're right, I mean applying the stuff that we've talked
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: about with authoritarianism. This was all about a tax on journalists,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: his recycled personal insults. Right. The jokes all failed, but
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: it seemed like authoritarian politics relies on humiliation. Do you
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: think this purpose of this speech of Trump was comedy
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: or domination?
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, he got evidently a right wing comic
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: who's evidently not very funny. And part of what made
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: it so cringe, I guess is the word for it
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: is that he saw how badly he was bombing. Because
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: what was happening in that room, and Caitlyn Collins, for instance,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: has given interviews about what it was like.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: To actually watch this.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: There was just dead silence, not only from journalists who
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: were skeptical of him, but from his supporters. Remember that
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: room was filled with the White House staff, and yet
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: even they couldn't laugh because you know, all he was
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: doing was engaging in a kind of you know, bullying,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: the normal put downs about Senator Schiff and the others.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: And yet you know, there was a heroic moment wolf
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: Blitzer giving an award to journalists for covering Trump's connection
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: to the Epstein files.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: For uncovering that disgusting.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Picture that he drew for Jeffrey Epstein and really being
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: detailed in the description of it. I saw Caitlin Collins
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: talking about her friendship with well Blitzer, and really they
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: were the two stars. She receiving the president's hate and
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: really giving him nothing back, and Blitzer just to his face,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: really talking about what it is to stand up to
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: a bully. And that's what gives her award to these
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: journalists was all about.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir, Blitzer literally handed an award to a woman
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: who Trump had doxed, and he revealed how Trump had
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: endangered her safety. And he's doing all this, Corey, and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Trump is sitting right there just Trump has just taking
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: it like a Democrat, just sitting there like a Democrat
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: being a pinata, taking all those I mean, what was
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: weird for me was not so much that he openly
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: blamed the joke writers when the jokes fail, that's him,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: but the speech itself, it seemed to oscillate between demanding
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: approval from the audience while also attacking them. Then you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: notice that like he wanted them to like him, but
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: he couldn't stop insulting them. Does that contradiction reveal something
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to you about authoritarian leadership.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think it reveals two things.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: One is that for him, for this authoritarian and you know,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: I get into this with David French. There are authoritarians
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: who have abhorrent philosophies, you might call them. They write
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: books mind compost Famously, Donald Trump doesn't have a philosophy.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: He has a disposition, and his disposition is both narism
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: looking for praise no matter what. As he often tells us,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: I like people who like me. I don't like people
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: who don't like me. So when Caitlin Collins from CNN
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: asked him a question that he doesn't like, specifically, she
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: asked him famously about his pardons for crypto currencies CEOs,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: who he was in league with and who he's benefiting.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: From, and you know, he shuts her down. He just responds.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: So he both wants that love and he instinctively is
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: an authoritarian in the sense that any dissent, any criticism,
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: any question. And that's actually an important point about authoritarianism.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: It's sat odds with reasoning and questioning that scene as
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: a threat. So he doesn't, unlike some of the New Right,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: have a deep philosophy.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: He has a disposition, but we saw it on full display.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And one last thing to say about this is, you know,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: although I did learn from it, and you know, we're
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: having an interesting discussion about it, the main lesson was
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: it was a mistake. And this isn't somebody that you
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: can invite to an event that is supposed to be
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: a set celebration of the First Amendment, the celebration of
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: the freedom of press. And in the background you saw
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: the First Amendment. You know, there's that was the background
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: that they provide when you have a president who isn't
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: disagreeing with the press or not liking the coverage, he
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: is trying to shut it down.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: That is his goal. Yeah, so it was a mistake.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: And Peter Baker, who I've collaborated with and for instance,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: he did an interview with me about my book right
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: before it came out in the New York Times. You know,
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: somebody really is good at covering this president. He admitted
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: it was a mistake. We shouldn't do it again.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he's completely right. I mean, I just
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: want to say one other thing about the comedy. You know,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: there are no great right wing comics. There are great
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: comics who are right wing, but they don't do material
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: as a right wing comic, because great comedy involves punching up,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: not punching down. And this is something that it's true
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: in religioon it's true in Christianity, it's true in comedy,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and it's true in politics. You don't punch down on
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: those weeks than you. You go to a comedy club
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and you'll, you know, go on a weeknight where you
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of hacks, and you'll see guys doing
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: jokes about the homeless. You'll see guys doing jokes about
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: developmentally disabled people. They'll say they r word all this nonsense,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: and then you know, maybe some people will laugh, and
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: you'll go home and you'll feel dirty because you're punching
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: down on people weaker than you. This is why there
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: are no great right wing comics, because you're defending the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: status quo, and you can't be funny while defending those
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: in power unless you're going to be mean. This is
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: what this new right alt comedy, These these these humps
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: like THEO Vaughn push on us. It's punching down and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: immigrants and minorities and LGBTQ people and journalists as well
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and I just wanted to ask you do you find
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: that politically significant?
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: You know, John, I of course you are a stand
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: up comedian. You do comedy. I am a fan of it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: So you know what you're saying is really making me think,
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: because as I watched him, I thought, this is the
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: least funny thing I've ever seen. The silence in the room.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: You can feel it in your soul watching this person. Now,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: why is it so un funny? Because it doesn't even
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: approach something that would get a laugh.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: It is just pure bullying, and hearth it is.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: And you know he thinks it's funny because the bully
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: enjoys the bullying. The bully thinks that punching down, as
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: you so perfectly put it, is funny. And you know,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: when you watch it, it's just sad. It's just somebody
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: without any awareness and without you know, I think also
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: humor at its best it gets to a kind of
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: humanity or reflection, and that's not what this was.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: This was anti humanity. If anything.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't want you to be sad, Corey, so
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: let me let me give you some good news, and
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that is that the Tape brothers were arrested, and that
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: They are being extradited to the UK for fifty nine
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: charges ranging from child poorn to rape to trafficking, and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: these guys are going to be in jail for a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: very long time now. A year ago we talked about
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: this when Trump was inaugurated and they triumphantly welcomed Andrew
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and Tristan back from their prison sell in Romania, which
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you guys might right if you guys remember them. The
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: tapes are these grifting, violent, misogynist losers with all the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: humanity of a prison urinal, and they do these manisphere
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: videos where they teach guys how to blame real women
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: for their problems in their life and monetize resentment and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: disparage female psychology to other virgins. And these guys who've
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: gotten very rich off of this mentality that women are
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: property and empathy is weakness and reading books is gay.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: But Donald Trump a year ago was welcoming them. The
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Trump kids were buddies with them, and they were saying, how, oh,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Trump's going to help us, and Trump's the greatest, We're
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: going to help him. What does it say now that
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: a year later, Professor, they sprung them from Romania. But
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: evidently Trump or Susie Wiles or someone in this White
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: House decided we're already handling rapists with the Epstein files.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: We don't need these guys. I think the most significant
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: thing about this, what it says about the manisphere, is
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that Trump's cutting these guys loose after all this hype
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and all these years. They're going to England and they're
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: going to be in jail for a long time.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: You know, on this podcast, we're always trying to be
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: honest about the threat to democracy, but we're also looking
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: for moments in which democracy is pushing back and democracy
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: is winning.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I think this is one of them.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Because Donald Trump, you know, his son Baron is a
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: big fan of the Tape Brothers.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: He's evidently in touch with them.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: The idea, by the way, that that shouldn't be covered
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: by the media because this is the son of the president,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: he's no longer a minor. I think that is a
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: fair game, and in fact, it's an illustration of what's
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: so pernicious about the Tape Brothers, because they're not just
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: engaged in misogyny, they are selling it, and they're selling it,
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: unfortunately to children and young people, and teaching them that
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: to be a misogynist is to be a man the
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: worst forum of anti female violence and disparagement. You know,
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: that's what they're selling, and that's why they are such
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: a threat. One thing, you know, this also prefigures some
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: of what I'll talk about with David French. But there's
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: so much of the different coalitions behind Trump so different.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, the Christian Nationalist support for Trump is of
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: course very different than the Tate brother Manisphere support or
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: a related podcast support. And yet you know, all of
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: a sudden there's weakness. Why is their weakness? Because Susie Wilds,
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: this is my surmise, I don't have direct reporting on this,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: realizes that as a result of our guest, Katie Fang's
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: lawsuit and other ways in which the Epstein files are
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: becoming front and center an illustration of Trump's own misogyny.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: After all, this is an adjudicated rapist at the Supreme
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Court has refused to overturn the decision awarding his victim
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: monetary damages for this rape and for his lies about it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: And you know what is all that show that we
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: are starting to become aware of what we should have
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: all been aware of. But even his own base is
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: becoming aware of not just his misogyny, but of his
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: sexual assaults, of his violence. And so if he associates
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: himself directly with the Tape Brothers by fighting their extradition,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: for instance, that just makes things so much worse. So
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: he must be hearing even internally from those who are
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: trying to protect them, like Susie Wilds's chief of staff,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: I should say that no more Tape Brothers because it
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: just highlights your association not just rapist scene, but.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: With sexual abusers and trap. Yeah, exactly right. There's nothing
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: for him to gain. He's not running for office again.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And I just want to say about the Manisphere, because
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: it's very interesting that the Manosphere as they call it,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: is becoming such a comfortable home for trump Ism. It's
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: not really a movement, you know. It's it's more like
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: group therapy where no one's ever allowed to meet. They're sad,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like the Manisphere is a
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: support group for young men who desperately need hugs, and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: they've been convinced that hugs are woke socialism, you know
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like, guys like the Tates don't cure loneliness,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: they feed on it, and I think the manisphere, not everyone,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: but generally it's where emotionally unavailable men go to learn
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: how to become even less emotionally available. And again they
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: masculinity is dominance, right women are adversaries, Empathy is weakness.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of overlap between that worldview and authoritarian politics.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, there are a real deficits in
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: the society loneliness, for instance, among young men, you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: inability to find fulfillment in intimate relationships. And what happens
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: as a result of those failures in the society and
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: the isolation is something is going to fill it. And
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: that's what right wing movements do. They cater to a
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: kind of weakness in the society, but they don't cater
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: to it in a way that lifts it up or
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: solves it.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: It makes it worse.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I should say too, you know about Donald Trump's lack
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: of ideology, as I've been putting it, you know, I
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: would see authoritarian character is a way to put it,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: or personality as opposed to ideas. Because he has no ideas.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: It fits poorly with some aspects of the New Right
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: and better with others. And you know, the Christian nationalism
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: and Donald Trump are not a natural ally.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: You know, this isn't somebody who really is well versed
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: in the Bible.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: He's not going to sit there John and debate with
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: you about any Biblical text, because I'm sure he hasn't
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: read it and doesn't care and doesn't But what he
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: does fit with so well. And this is one of
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: the unfortunate things that helped him I think in the campaign,
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: for instance, his interview with Joe Rogan, which so many
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: people saw, is that his misogyny fits perfectly in the
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: manisphere and that that really is I think part of
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: his power, but also part of what's being exposed for
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: the history of violence that's associated with him, and that
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: really is you know that that is a good thing.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Not oh hey, what's more alpha than four dollars for
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a gallon of gas? All right, we got to take
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a very quick break, Professor. I have a lot more
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: to talk with you about, including some questions about censorship
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: or stochastic self censorship and who's resisting. We'll be right
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: back on the Oath in the office.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: The new John Fiegel Saying Show every day at twelve noon.
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: Good afternoon, John, and welcome back to Afternoon Radio.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I have missed you.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: Now you're back into the daylight.
• 15:57
  Speaker 6: Good afternoon, John, congratuations on the new sh Congratulations all
• 16:01
  Speaker 6: the changes happening with the show.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Excited for you, Excited for me personally, like, oh my god,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: I can call an again.
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: The new John Fugel saying, show every day at twelve
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: noon on Serious XM Progress Channel one twenty seven or
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: on the Serious XM after.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the oath in the Office. I'm John Feugel,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: saying so, Professor Bretschneiter. Donald Trump put out an executive
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: order directing federal officials. This is a weird one, Corey.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I might need you to walk me through this, but
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: you know they've been going after the Smithsonian. They don't
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: like museums that teach actual history that might make the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: grandchildren of racists feel weird. So a little too much
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: truth for some of these people. And this is tied
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: into what they've done with the National Park Service, removing
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: markers about embarrassing, painful parts in our country's history, erasing
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the achievement of anyone who's not a white, heterosexual male
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: from depending on website. But this is weird. He's attacking
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the SMITHSONI a lot. But now they want to put
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: temporary signs outside of the National Museum of the American
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: History in DC on the sidewalks to correct what they
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: call inaccurate information presented in the museum. This is insane, Corey,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is like so I mean, because I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, the Smithsonian owns a printer,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: they can hang their own signs. I'm saying, no, it's
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: all true. It is yourself. They actually have access to
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: a printer. Inside this it is dry. Is controlling historical
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: narratives so central to authoritarian movements. This reminds me of
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the photos i'd see as a kid of how the
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Soviets would photoshop cosmonauts out of old pictures because they'd
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: run a foul of the government, Like they're just doing
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: cultural erasure and they don't care how fake it looks.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'll begin with just the legal explanation
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: of what's happening, because I think it's interesting and as
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: you said, it's quite weird.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: So we need to understand that the.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Smithsonian is not part of the government. It's not an
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: independent agency. It's got an independent border directors in fact,
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: John Roberts, the Chief Justice is the head of it.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And I feel so much better now.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: And actually it's interesting right that he is really trying
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: not to cater. He's supporting the staff who want to
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: tell the truth about American history, including the history of
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: slavery and segregation and American apartheid.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: And you know, I should.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Say, too, is just to frame it when you understand
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: that history. And this is true of my book, The
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: Presidents and the People. It's true the way the Smithsonian
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: tells the story of American slavery and segregation.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of hope in it too.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: So the idea that it's just making people fail bad
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: or it's bad news, that's the first lie here. It
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: really is a story of people resisting tyranny, resisting authoritarianism.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: So it's independence is what allows it to tell continue
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: to tell that story. Even though the President has succeeded
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: in largely gutting destroying independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: They slavery is depressing, slavery depressing, they do we see that.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: They are standing strong. They are an independent entity. So
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: now he can't control them, but he can do the
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: next best thing, which has put these stupid signs up.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: One last thing, John, and then I'll throw it back
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: to you. You know, I talked about how uneasy he
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: is with Christian nationalism. Yes, that isn't something that fits
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: his personality authority, but the racism, I think is pretty
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: native to who he is, and so that is why
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: he cares about this so much.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: So you have a mix.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, racism is white supremacy and is attempted authoritarianism.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: But again, good news. People are fighting back.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: Even John Roberts is not willing to look like he's
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: catering to the president, and that's why we've got this
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: weird story here.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I just want to say one more thing about it.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, because I wanted to ask you about this.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: This executive order. Yeah, it doesn't control the Smithsonian directly,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: so it's an executive order for the sidewalks and the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: public space around. I mean, let's talk about how limp
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: and flaccid and unmanly and pathetic and impotence this is.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, does this it's pathetic, Corey. I mean, you
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: could put a side on the sidewalk saying don't believe
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: what the museum tells you. And this is the president,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: this is all the power he has. Doesn't it reveal
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: we still have limits on executive authority in this country?
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: It does, you know, and people continue to resist. And
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: you know, let's just say a very clear shout out
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: on the same way those civil servants who are remaining
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: in agencies doing their job protecting the law despite this
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: authoritarian threat.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: And that includes people in really all.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Of the federal government which is being taken over by
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: this authoritarian threat. And yet you have civil servants fighting
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: back here. The Smithsonian staff are doing their jobs, I
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: should say. The head of the Smithsonian talked about what
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: it was like to tour Donald Trump around and how
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: he just had no interest, was completely bored about any
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: exhibit about slavery, and course, and one other kind of
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: just deeper point here that there is something you said
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: something about this in the beginning.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I want to pull it out even more.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Part of what authoritarianism and here we're talking about racial authoritarianism,
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: the idea of reinstituting white supremacy, firing military officials or
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: degrading them, or demoting them, or refusing to promote.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Them because they are black.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: That is what this president and Pete hag Seth under
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: his direction have done. And the lack and really almost
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: complete absence of black Americans in the presidential staff, in
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: the cabinet, all of this is an attempt to resegregate America.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: We saw this before, and the role of history was
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: also crucial during the Wilson administration.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: The federal government had been desegregated. Woodrow Wilson resegregated it.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: And it's not a mistake that he was a historian.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: He in his textbook tells the story of reconstruction of
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment providing equal protection,
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: the Fifteenth Amendment protecting a right to vote free from
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: racial discrimination, at least from men. What all of that
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: was turned to into for Wilson was the lie that
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: the post bellum amendments, those amendments didn't add a single
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: right to the Constitution. That's what he was saying in
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: his lectures, that's what he was showing in his textbook
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: where he even celebrated the ku Klux Klan, so reinstituting
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: white supremacy as policy for a president and literally whitewashing history,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: which is what Wilson did and what Trump is trying
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: to do. That is part of the authoritarian playbook, and
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: that's part is not new.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the Trump administration professor subpoena third party providers to
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: seize the phone and text records of several New York
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Times journalists and their spouses and one reporter's mother. This
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: leak investigation was overseen by petulant, unqualified, alcoholic dude pro
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Cash Betel, and it's pretty terrifying. I mean, the DOJ
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: is getting phone records for reporters, subpoenaing phone records for
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: reporters and their family members over a leak of true information. Constitutionally,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: where do we begin to explain why this is so troubling, sir.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: Well, part of it is, you know, in whenever we
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: cover the attack on dissent, we recognize that these reporters
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: are not going to be convicted in a court of
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: law and go to prison in the way that the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: newspaper editors of the Sedition Act in the eighteenth century
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: went to prison at the behest of John Adams.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Something else is going on.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: They're trying to have And if you listen to Jake
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Clayton and to the administration or Todd Blanche, they so well,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: these reporters aren't being targeted.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: We just want to question them under the course of law.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: And what that all is about is is a chilling
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: effect because you know, the family members are involved. They
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: contacted these reporters in some cases in front of families,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: and you know, are hauling them into the grand jury.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: What that is about is trying to get into the
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: minds of those who are doing their job as journalists
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: and telling the truth about what's happening and make them
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: think twice about it, to think, you know, I might
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: not do that story about Trump, maybe I.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Can exactly something else. And so it's not about winning,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: it's about just intimidating.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Self censorship, stochastic self censorship. Yeah, I mean, I got
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to say I was a bit shocked that any journalists
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: would show up at the White House Correspondence Center, much
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: less shake his hand on stage after this. They had
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: just pulled these subpoenas right before the White House Correspondent Center.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: They've already backed down. But I mean, Corey, you're targeting
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: journalists spouses because they leaked true information. Doesn't this cross
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: a line we've rarely seen in American history?
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: Well, John, you can tell me if you agree, But
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: you know, as much as I want to celebrate the
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: courage of those who were standing up, those are the Smithsonian,
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: the journalists who, after all, did cover this story that
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: we talked about last week, the bribe playing from guitar,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: and you know, basically the naked corruption that's existing in
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: this entire administration. Those are heroic acts, but there is
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: also a lot of cowardice. And when you combine that
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: with the real threats that are out there, you know,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: it is frightening. And so I think some journalists, as
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: much as you know, I want to celebrate those who
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: stood up, think to themselves, well, we contame this guy.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: As wild as that is, at this moment, we can
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: at least pretend that things are normal.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: It's not just journalists.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: I'm seeing it from so much of the academy, from
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Vanderbilt University, which seems to be caving in to the
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: Trump administration, from those law firms that really went along
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: with the demand that, you know, stop criticizing the president's
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: not being involved in lawsuits against him.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: And agreed.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: So there is you know, let's be honest, that there
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: are heroic acts. They are made even more heroic when
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: you recognize that there is also a lot of cowardice
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: at the moment, or at least, let me call it
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: something a little less harsh. In the case of the journalists,
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: it's putting your head in the sand.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: And yeah, that cowardice is fine. Cowardice is actually accurate, Professor,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: because I'm thinking about you know again, it's it's not
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: that they're doing government censorship. They're intimidating media into censoring themselves.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: That's the game. And we saw this with Whitney Cummings.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: She just, you know, did a set at the Mark
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Twain Price ceremony for Bill Maher at the Kennedy Center,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and she came out and said that she had all
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: of her jokes about Trump. She said he was late
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: because he got caught in sex traffic and that was cut.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: She said all of her jokes about Trump were cut
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: because the staff at the Kennedy Center was terrified. Nobody
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: formally banned the joke, but people feared the consequences anyway, right,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Self censorship is essential to maintaining authoritarian systems.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, and you know, I think that this is unfortunate
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: that as much as I want to applaud Whitney Cummings
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: for telling the truth about what happened. The fact is
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: that Netflix allowed this to happen. They did televise the special.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: To me, that is giving in it is a kind
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: of cowardice of their executives. You know, you could add
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: something to the special where she talks about what happens,
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: where she retells the joke and says, hey, this is
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: That would have been a great intro to it. But
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: the bottom line is, you know, it's not enough to say, hey,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: I was censored, woe is me?
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: You have to actually do the work.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: And yes, it is difficult to have courage in this moment,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: but it's so important I should say. You know, when
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: government crosses the line of not just saying you know,
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: here's our opinion, or this is information we'd like you
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: to carry, but threatening private entities, including Netflix, if that's
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: what's going on. We had this amazing discussion with Senator
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Wyden about this. Difficult to understand, but I think listeners
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: really got an idea of job owning, which is when
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: it looks like private companies are self censoring, but really
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: it's coming from the government. As Widen's legislation makes it
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: clear that ought to be illegal. So go back and
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: listen to that. I urge listeners to do that. It
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: was an amazing moment. It's certainly relevant to this story.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I want to SKay it one more thing. Before the break,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer said that he's going to block any proposals
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to rename Penn Station after Donald Trump. Sean Duffy, who's
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: our Secretary of Train Intation, who's another no talent racist
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: twit from the Real World and MTV. He's also an
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: amoral liar. I'll put that in there too. Sean Duffy
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: announced that, oh, we're going to renovate Penn Station, and
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: we might tell Amtrak that they have to rename the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: station after Donald Trump. Schumer is saying he'll block efforts
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: for all of this. But Corey, what is the deal
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: with the authoritarian leaders who always need to have monuments
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: or renamed buildings or museums or flags or holidays or
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: public rituals. I mean, it seems like the bigger the ego,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the more fragile the ego when it comes to these guys.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: You know, when Donald Trump says that he admires the
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: dictator of North Korea, when he says that he Admires
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: putin a lot of us rolled our eyes, and now
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: we see that's not what's going on. When you combine
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: the authoritarian shutdown of free speech, the authoritarian white supremacy,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: with this esthetic, which is to try to plaster his
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: name on everything, which as a businessman, now he's trying
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: to do it as president, you really see what you're
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: up against, which is a kind of authoritarianism. And it's
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: why it is symbols matter. The Smithsonian isn't just you know,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: some story. It is the story of our national identity.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think Schumer is exactly right. You know,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: no matter what, we're not putting his name on Penn station.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean it's kind of funny to just
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: realize that he's doing all this because he knows once
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: he's gone, no one's going to name buildings after him.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I was working we haven't heard it like people need
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to want to put your name on buildings, and it
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: seems like enough of them know that is never going
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: to happen, so they're going to try to force it
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: before he dies.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: I was working with a reporter in the New York
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Times around twenty sixteen. I've written a lot about free speech,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: but also the idea of state expression that government sometimes
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: sends its own messages, and its obligation to send messages
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: consistent with, not opposed to democratic values like equal protection.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: And so when I was hoping he was going to
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: lose the twenty sixteen election, which of course he didn't,
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: I thought he did, But go on, well, we need
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: to do we need to do is we need to
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: ensure that he's repudiated, and part of that is never
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: celebrating him on any public building. And you know, his
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: name was taken down from the woman rank, something that
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: I think was really important to.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Do a small gesture, and I look forward.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm talking about a hope there is a
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: good off the Kennedy's sign when we're gonna take his
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: name down. We already have seen it taken down at
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: the Kennedy Center. There should be nothing in Donald Trump.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: And in fact, and I know you and I have
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: talked about this before, and I think you agree, we
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: should be at the point where it's just embarrassing to
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: have that last name, where no descendant of Donald Trump
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: wants to call himself a Trump.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: You're all excited about future buildings losing his name. I'm
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: excited about his grandkids losing their last I want him
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to live long enough to see his descendants change their
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: last name because they realize they can't make a living
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: with a name like that. But hey, I'm a romantic,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: you know, of spiritual. That's why I think about things
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: like this. All right, quick break when we come back
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: at the big interview with David French on the Oath
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and the offer us.
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: Hey, al, Glenn Kirshner here, So, friends, I hope you'll
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: join me on my audio podcast, Justice Matters. Do you
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: care about ethics and government, criminal justice reform, a conflict
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: free federal judiciary?
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I thought so.
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: On Justice Matters, we take on issues involving the need
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: to reform our government and its institutions, and we talk
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: about real, achievable reform.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I hope you'll join us.
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: Look for Justice Matters wherever you usually get your podcasts.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to the Oath in the Office. It's my
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: pleasure to introduce our guest, David French. David French, of course,
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: is a New York Times columnist. He's a graduate of
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Harvard Law School, and I recommend his book Divided We Fall.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: We're going to talk about the ideas of the new
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: ride post liberal is we'll talk about birthright citizenship and
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: whether or not trump Ism can out last Donald Trump. So,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: David French, welcome to the Oath in the Office.
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: I wanted to start off by asking you about birthright citizenship.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: We've talked a lot about the case and the details
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: of the legal issues. We had Cecilia Wang in a
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: previous episode who argued the case. But one of the
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: things I was very interested to have you on is
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: you've been writing in your columns in the New York
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Times about some of the ideas behind the right to
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: birthright citizenship, and so let's start with that.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, what do you.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: See as the main ideas behind birthright citizenship and how
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: do we understand the challenge to it that we're seeing
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: in this executive order?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just the legal issues.
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a really good question, and I think you
• 32:49
  Speaker 6: really have to sort of go back hundreds of years
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: to really understand the root and origin of this, that
• 32:56
  Speaker 6: this sort of is rooted in a notion that if
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: you were born in the soil or the under the
• 33:01
  Speaker 6: sovereignty of a particular king, that you are a citizen
• 33:04
  Speaker 6: of that of that domain, of that regime. And it's
• 33:08
  Speaker 6: an idea that carried across the Atlantic to the colonists,
• 33:11
  Speaker 6: and it's also an idea that matched very well with
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: the American idea, because the American idea wasn't one that
• 33:19
  Speaker 6: was really rooted in this. You know, if you're looking
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: at sort of European notions of citizenship, what you really
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: have had over time is sort of this idea of
• 33:28
  Speaker 6: blood and soil, the sort of notion that you know
• 33:31
  Speaker 6: you're you're if you're going to really be a member,
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: say of the French family or the German family or whatever,
• 33:39
  Speaker 6: then you're going to be have to have a particular
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: kind of lineage that is locking you in. Whereas an American,
• 33:46
  Speaker 6: the American nation is really based on an idea. We're
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: not based on blood. We're based on an idea, the
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: idea that all men are created equal, endowed by their
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: creator with certain inalienable rights. You know, to go back
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: to the Gettysburg Address, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: the proposition that all men are created equal. So we
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: really are an idea, and then from that standpoint, birthright citizenship.
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: This idea that if you are born here that you
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: can become an American is very sort of deeply embedded
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: in the notion of a creedle nation. And so whereas
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: in other conceptions of citizenship it is something sort of
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: handed down by lineage. This is something that you know,
• 34:27
  Speaker 6: and this is the opponent's of birthrights citizenship use this
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: term magic dirt. They derisively use the term magic dirt
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: to say, oh, you're just arguing that there's something magical
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: about being born in the United States. It just suddenly
• 34:40
  Speaker 6: makes you a citizen. No, it's not magic dirt. But
• 34:44
  Speaker 6: America's location of the magic idea, and the magic idea,
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: of course is you know, as we discussed earlier, all
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: men are created equal, and yes, a person who is
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: born here can and is going to merint a in
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: this sort of magic idea. It's not the dirt, it's
• 35:03
  Speaker 6: the idea. And so it really is an expansive way
• 35:07
  Speaker 6: at looking at this American family and really matches with
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: sort of the expansive way in which the founders thought
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: about citizenship. So this is something that goes back a
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: very long time as a distinctive away from sort of
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: you know, however you want to call it patrilineal citizenship
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: or you know, other forms of citizenship that are rooted
• 35:30
  Speaker 6: in blood from your ancestry as opposed to really truly
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: honestly rooted in the idea of the country itself.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you see a continuity.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: It sounds like between the eighteenth century idea in the
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Declaration of Equality and the ideas promised by the Bill
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: of Rights and the nineteenth century fourteenth Amendment guarantee that
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: if you're born in the country, then you are a citizen.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: And as listeners to the.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Show, No, we couldn't be more kindred spirits on that
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: idea of what America is. I mean, I want to
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: pivot a little bit and ask about.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: What we can learn.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: And of course we can learn something from the attempt
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: to revoke birthright citizenship through executive order. Sometimes the new
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: Right talks about ethnicity in in this sort of explicit way,
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: and you have this sort of soil idea that really
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: is not at home in the American founding. Sometimes and
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I mean, you can talk to me
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: about whether or not this fits into the sort of
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: soil idea and the challenge to the American Creedle ideal
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: of America.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: But sometimes or.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: Whether it is just a strategy and a legal argument,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: but sometimes you hear the claim that you did here
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: in the briefs the idea that there was this allegiance
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: theory of America. And the problem with birthright citizenship is
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: that if you're born in America and just get your citizenship,
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: you in a sense didn't earn it, or you didn't
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: buy in to the idea of America. So is that
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: a kind of hybrid of the soil idea and the
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: idea that we're talking about, or is it just a
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: cynical legal strategy and what do you think?
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, just to be clear, you.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Know for the listeners that I don't think there's anything
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: to the idea that there is this allegiance theory. And
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: when you heard the Solicitor General try to defend it
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: that it didn't fit with any of the ideas of
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, but it is what the new writer's saying,
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: at least in this context.
• 37:12
  Speaker 6: Well, it definitely doesn't fit with a text.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: One of the things that's interesting about this argument is,
• 37:18
  Speaker 6: you know, we have a text right of the fourteenth Amendment,
• 37:21
  Speaker 6: which talks about people who are subject to the jurisdiction
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: of this country. If you're born here in subject to
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: the jurisdiction of this country, then you're a citizen. It
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: doesn't say domiciled. It doesn't say swore an oath of
• 37:34
  Speaker 6: allegiance upon reaching age of majority after being born here.
• 37:38
  Speaker 6: It doesn't say these things. And so what they're trying
• 37:42
  Speaker 6: to do is import extra textual tests and extra textual
• 37:48
  Speaker 6: requirements into the text and then trying to ret con
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: the whole history to sort of say, well, this was
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: intended to be there from the beginning, or this text
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: was supposed to encompass all of that, and it just
• 38:01
  Speaker 6: falls apart on a historical basis. I mean, if you're
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: looking at the combination of the Fourteenth Amendment and the
• 38:08
  Speaker 6: wankim Ark decision, what you're really saying is that they're
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: trying to do correct the giant, glaring, horrific error of
• 38:17
  Speaker 6: Dred Scott, where black Americans were written out of American citizenship,
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: not just by creating a rule for freed slaves and
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: for black Americans, but by creating a standard rule of
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: citizenship that applies to everyone. With the word subject to
• 38:32
  Speaker 6: the jurisdiction thereof not that really mysterious in their meaning,
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: to be honest, like, this is not like uncovering an
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: ancient manuscript written in like a lost version of Sanskrit. No,
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: these words are capable and have a meaning. And Wankim
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: Mark outlined it pretty well. Look, who's not subject to
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: the jurisdiction of the United States, Well, children of diplomats.
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: When diplomats are here, they are not. They have diplomatic
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: community there and a special legal status. If you're a
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: soldier in an invading army, for example, you're obviously not
• 39:07
  Speaker 6: subject to the jurisdiction of our country. You're trying to
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: defy the jurisdiction of our country. Supplant it, replace it,
• 39:14
  Speaker 6: et cetera. You know, if you go back generations, Native
• 39:19
  Speaker 6: American tribes had special legal status, they were recognized as
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: sovereign or quasi sovereign in ways that say, you know,
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: if you're a citizen of Alabama, you're not right. And
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: so all of these things were very linked to text
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: subject to the jurisdiction thereof. What the New Right has
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: done is sort of come in and basically said, yeah,
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: forget the text. The text is really trying to put
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: in place a particular kind of history, and that's the
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: history that we're sort of relating to now. It's a
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: history of domicile, as Clarence Thomas wrote at length, right,
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: the allegiance history that you just talked about. So it's
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: sort of pay no attention to the words on the page.
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: We have kind of the special historical. And one of
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: the things that's dangerous about sort of the newer methods
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: of originalism is that it can often just uses the
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: text as a springboard for this sort of open ended
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: historical inquiry, which I think is completely inappropriate when the
• 40:15
  Speaker 6: text is clear. You don't go to the historical inquiry
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: when the text is clear. But what the new Right
• 40:20
  Speaker 6: is wanting to do is do essentially a historical inquiry
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: only basically according to their specific terms.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course, a lot of the techniques of originalism,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: the conservative idea of reading the Constitution for its original
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: meaning and to sort of turn this into a linguistic
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: dictionary idea is to do nothing less than to read
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: out the ideas of the American founding, of the second
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: founding of the Fourteenth Amendment, thirteenth Amendment, fifteenth Amendments, and so.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: That's not a mistake.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: And I thought it was a really important point too,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: that it's not a mistake that they move to this
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: sort of fake interpretation of domicile, which is another way
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: of talking, of course about your point about soil. I
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: haven't heard people making that point, but it's a nice
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: way to say. What they're really doing is reading in
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: this very anti American different tradition of soil or domicile
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: into a text which is really about the idea of equality,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: as so much of the Constitution is, and at least
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: we attempted in the nineteenth century to re up on
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: that idea. One thing, David, that just to switch places,
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: I mean to understand this phenomenon which you've been so
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: great on of the new right, some of which pretends
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: to be originalists. Sometimes there's an idea of common good
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: constitutionalism formule, and.
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: It kind of flips back and forth depending on who
• 41:37
  Speaker 6: you're talking to.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So one thing I wanted to ask right exactly
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: that you know, different conservatives will do different ideas. I mean,
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: one thing I will say about the common good idea,
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: and I want to pivot to to your.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Column about v sheism.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Is it sort of lays on the table what's really
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: going on, and stops playing these games. And so I
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: appreciate something about that as much as I.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Think it's headed.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: But one thing that you've done so nicely that I
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: want to ask you about is we've talked a lot
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: on this show about the collapse of Wymar, the way
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: that the collapse of Ymar shows the fragility of American
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: democracy and all democracies. But you've taken a different angle
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: that I think gets into the cultural arguments of the
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: new ride in talking about VC France and the way
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: that the philosophy of VC France really fits with a
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: lot of the new right ideology. So can you talk
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: to me about what you know, give us the time period,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: tell us something about the history, but also so importantly
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: about these ideas and how they fit with what we're
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: seeing which and just to emphasize for listeners what you
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: and I agree with so much and why I was
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: eager to have this conversation is what we really are
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: seeing in conservatives today isn't a traditional kind of conservative ideology.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: It really is a.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Foreign, anti American ideology, and you pointed that out so well,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: and looking at VC Frands, I think helps us to
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: see that.
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it's really fascinating because you know, we grew up
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: in an era. You know, one of the seminal books
• 43:07
  Speaker 6: of the era that we grew up in was The
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: End of History. Francis Fukiyama's book At the End of
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: the Cold War, often misunderstood, like the last chapter is
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: very eerily prescient of the present moment. But essentially we
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: grew up in the triumph of liberal democracy, where Nazi
• 43:22
  Speaker 6: Germany had been defeated, Soviet Union collapsed in front of
• 43:25
  Speaker 6: our eyes, Imperial Japan had been defeated, at least for
• 43:28
  Speaker 6: a while. I remember the heady days of nineteen eighty
• 43:30
  Speaker 6: nine and tien Men Square. We thought we're communist China
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: is going to fall as well. So we grew up
• 43:36
  Speaker 6: in a time of extraordinary optimism about liberalism. And so
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: it's very hard for us, many of us, to put
• 43:44
  Speaker 6: ourselves in the mindset of, say the late nineteen thirties
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: and early nineteen forties, when liberalism seemed to be not
• 43:50
  Speaker 6: just in retreat, but in a state of total collapse.
• 43:54
  Speaker 6: So you had a liberal government fym Our Germany that's
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: supplanted by a Nazi government. You have the Soviet you know,
• 43:59
  Speaker 6: the Russian Revolution results in the horrific totalitarianism of the
• 44:03
  Speaker 6: Soviet Union. The three great liberal democracy at the time, Britain,
• 44:07
  Speaker 6: France and the United States seemed to be and you
• 44:10
  Speaker 6: have of course Imperial Japan rising power on the march
• 44:13
  Speaker 6: in China. And so you have the three great liberal
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: democracies of Great Britain, France, and the United States, and
• 44:22
  Speaker 6: all of them were failing in certain ways. The United
• 44:24
  Speaker 6: States had pulled back into isolationism and had abandoned, you know,
• 44:28
  Speaker 6: the League of Nations and all of this sort of
• 44:29
  Speaker 6: idea of an international means of preventing another World War.
• 44:35
  Speaker 6: We pop smoke on that and we left that idea
• 44:38
  Speaker 6: like even before it was really born. Britain and France
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: were slow to recognize the threat of Hitler. And then
• 44:44
  Speaker 6: when Hitler attacks into France in nineteen forty, you know,
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: it's I think we are unfair about the French army.
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: A lot of French soldiers fought incredibly valiantly, but the
• 44:54
  Speaker 6: German army had superior tactics, had superior equipment, smashed through
• 44:59
  Speaker 6: French defenses and the French government fell. And you know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 6: we look back at Churchill stand from the standpoint of
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: being the victors and realizing how brave that was, how
• 45:13
  Speaker 6: courageous that was, and how was the key ultimately to victory.
• 45:17
  Speaker 6: At the time, it could look suicidally stupid. Right, So
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: you had a Nazi Germany overwhelming power, France being essentially
• 45:26
  Speaker 6: knocked out of the war, and we look back on
• 45:29
  Speaker 6: Vishi and we say collaborators. Well, that's only a very
• 45:32
  Speaker 6: small part of the story. Actually, what happened is a
• 45:36
  Speaker 6: lot of more illiberal right wing forces in France said
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: this is our opportunity to remake France and to turn
• 45:44
  Speaker 6: from the collapsed the failure of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy
• 45:49
  Speaker 6: has failed, and now it is time to rebuild something new.
• 45:53
  Speaker 6: And so when you look, it's not so much Hitler's Great,
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: Hitler's Great, It's much more reminiscent of the language you
• 45:59
  Speaker 6: read out the new right. Liberalism creates successive individualism. Individualism
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: creates successive selfishness, the foreigners or an invasion that undermines
• 46:10
  Speaker 6: sort of the cohesion of the country. The women's advancement
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: in the workplace is undermining the cohesion of the family.
• 46:18
  Speaker 6: So again and again, it's remarkable. You could put some
• 46:21
  Speaker 6: of the Vshi rhetorics side by side with the rhetoric
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: from say Doug Wilson types in the Protestant world or
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: some of the Catholic integralists, and they would be shockingly similar.
• 46:32
  Speaker 6: Liberalism eats away at institutions like the family, it eats
• 46:35
  Speaker 6: away at the church. So to restore the family, to
• 46:38
  Speaker 6: restore the church, you have to have a strong government
• 46:43
  Speaker 6: that is advancing these civilizational values. And so you have
• 46:47
  Speaker 6: all of this rhetoric about how a woman's place is
• 46:49
  Speaker 6: primarily in the home. You had rules passed where, you know,
• 46:53
  Speaker 6: only children of French fathers could serve in certain positions
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: in the government, and all of this is very reminiscent
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: of sort of this social cohesion project of the New Right.
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: Except the thing that's happening that's different. It's arising when
• 47:08
  Speaker 6: liberal democracy has not failed. It's arising when liberal democracy
• 47:13
  Speaker 6: is actually still ascendant and more powerful in the world.
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: So it's a rising without a Iyemar, It's a rising
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: without a fall of France.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, some ways, I wonder if you agree with this.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, it seems to me, and it makes it
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: more dangerous in a way because this rhetoric is so
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: far into the American tradition, to American ideals of the Constitution,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: to ideals of equal protection and birthright citizenship. So when
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: we hear it, it sounds like, oh, that's kind of new,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: and that's often you know, how Trump's rhetoric was received
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: as something different, and you know, the more philosophical versions
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: of this that talk about soil and talk about family.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know that the threat is quite recognized.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: By putting it in the context of the nineteen thirties,
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: we see what it is, which is it might sound
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: innocuous compared to, you know, the rhetoric of explicit white
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: supremacy or Nazism, but it is meant to be a
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: challenge to liberal democracy. I think too, there's a kind
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: of abstraction when you challenge some of those on the
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: new right to ask, well, what is it that you're
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: opposed to, you know, free.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: Speech or you know, they won't be concrete.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: They'll talk in terms of this generalized idea, you know,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: of soil or blood.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Also, I think is part of it.
• 48:26
  Speaker 6: Let us that's the heritage American concept is how far
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: back can you trace your history? And I mean we
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: can trace ours back to the Mayflower. That doesn't make
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: me more of an American than anybody else, right, it
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: absolutely doesn't. And we define our own citizenship by our
• 48:42
  Speaker 6: own actions. We can be proud of our ancestors, but
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: we don't carry their virtue, nor do we carry their advices.
• 48:48
  Speaker 6: And so this sort of idea that you know, as JD.
• 48:52
  Speaker 6: Vance said, you know that those of who have ancestors
• 48:54
  Speaker 6: who fought in the Civil War have a greater claim
• 48:56
  Speaker 6: to this country. No, absolutely not, absolutely not. But here's
• 49:03
  Speaker 6: what's insidious about the post liberal argument from the right.
• 49:08
  Speaker 6: Many dangerous ideas often begin with some truth to them. So,
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: for example, a country that does not have thriving families,
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: that where you know, sort of this the bowling alone phenomenon,
• 49:21
  Speaker 6: sort of the collapse of belonging to civic institutions, you know,
• 49:25
  Speaker 6: the collapse in church attendants. The all of these things
• 49:29
  Speaker 6: do fray the bonds of a society. It is true
• 49:33
  Speaker 6: that when families fail, it puts a society into stress.
• 49:36
  Speaker 6: It is true that when civic institutions and shared public
• 49:41
  Speaker 6: spaces become you know, they start to vanish, then it
• 49:45
  Speaker 6: does put us I mean, one of the most prescient
• 49:47
  Speaker 6: books of the last quarter century was bowling alone, was
• 49:50
  Speaker 6: Putnam's bowling alone. What it does to us to be atomized,
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: to be individualistic, and that is something to be concerned about.
• 49:57
  Speaker 6: But guess what does not fix it? Poritarianism right right exactly.
• 50:02
  Speaker 6: That is the opposite of the fix. You know, we've
• 50:05
  Speaker 6: had a couple of social experiments in Vladimir Putin's Russia
• 50:09
  Speaker 6: and to a lesser extent, Victori ra Bond's Hungry. They
• 50:12
  Speaker 6: did not. They have not made Russian and Hungry homes
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: of religious revivalism and economic prosperity and deep bonds. No,
• 50:22
  Speaker 6: they have. Just look at the trajectory of Hungary, for example,
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: compared to many of its more liberal neighbors, Hungary has
• 50:28
  Speaker 6: been left behind compared to say, Poland.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think we do well to recognize that
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: the ideas that we've been talking about throughout this episode,
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: that a nation the United States can be based on
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: an idea, that of course is going to come with
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: some vulnerabilities because it's not going to be a nation
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: based on shared family heritage or blood or soil. It's
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: going to be based on an idea. And ideas are
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: tough to form bombs around.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: But yet we've continued to do it.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: And the mistake, I think is to think that somehow,
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: because there's a challenge to a cultural democracy and a
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: multi racial democracy that we've been trying to build for
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: so many years, that a better route would be pure authoritarianism.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: And as you say, we have examples of what that
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: looks like vs. France, Nazi Germany, Putin's Russia, and thankfully
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: now in retreat Victor Orbon's Hungary. I mean, one thing
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: that's been great about this conversation, and I think it's
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: a good way to pull back to the United States
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: into our current politics. And I know you've written about
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: this as well, is the degree to which trump Ism
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: is going to disappear after Trump. And I take it
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: from what you are saying what you've written that you worry.
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: It's not that it might be too strong. Of course,
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: Trump in many ways is responsible, maybe entirely responsible for
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: the spread of trump Ism.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: It's named after him.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: It captures a set of ideas that has a lot
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: of resonance with these authoritarian not just nations, but cultures.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: So what do you think you mentioned jd Vance?
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: Of course, who if I had to pick one person
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: to spread the ideas of the new Right and what's
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: sometimes called post liberalism. Patrick Denin, who I knew actually
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: is a graduate student at Princeton or Adrian Vermule at Harvard.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, he's really taken those ideas and sees those
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: two as mentors. And these are two academics. Also, we
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: have gone over and explicitly met with Warbon. They've made
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: those ties, and they would just be obscure academics possibly
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: if they didn't have leaders in the new right grabbing
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: onto those ideas, and Jade Vance, I think is probably
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: the most prominent person who's done it. You know, would
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: be great if they were just obscure academics who are off,
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: you know, in a corner, arguing in a conference or
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: in journals, but no their books are read. Incidentally, Barack
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Obama might have inadvertently furthered this by naming Patrick's Denien's book,
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: you know, one of the most important of the moment
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: or something. I think he was trying to say in
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: order to understand it, but might have spread that book
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: beyond what he intended. So what do you think, though, David,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, once we get rid of Trump, he won't
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: be with us forever. Is there a danger that this
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: remains a tradition to challenge the American idea that we've
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: talked about, and I guess I also I'll throw something
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: in just you know, I don't know if you'll find
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: this sympathetic.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: I think it is.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: But We've always had multiple traditions alongside the credle idea.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Of course, we've had a ku Klux Klan, We've had
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: white supremacy, and those are ideas explicitly that have drawn
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: on the ideas of blood and soil, and so this
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: is in some ways a new form of it. It
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: is foreign, I think, to the true American tradition, but
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: it does have a legacy. So what do you see
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: as the future of trump Ism? Is it going to
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: disappear after Trump?
• 53:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah? So, you know, I've always been in the view
• 53:38
  Speaker 6: that trump Ism, properly understood is just the ambitions of
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: Donald Trump. MAGA, which is the larger enterprise around Donald Trump,
• 53:48
  Speaker 6: is a really far more diverse political movement than people realize.
• 53:54
  Speaker 6: And because what he's sort of done is he's taken
• 53:57
  Speaker 6: different sort of fringe strands of American life and united
• 54:00
  Speaker 6: them under the red hat. And there's going to be
• 54:03
  Speaker 6: a big battle when he goes to see sort of
• 54:07
  Speaker 6: which part of this coalition sort of emerges triumphant, And
• 54:10
  Speaker 6: I would peg several parts of it. So what we're
• 54:13
  Speaker 6: talking about. The group we're talking about is sort of
• 54:15
  Speaker 6: the most nationalist part of the coalition. These are the
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: people who've taken sort of the nationalist impulses of Trump
• 54:22
  Speaker 6: tied them to sort of a larger, pre existing, more
• 54:25
  Speaker 6: authoritarian enterprise, which is sort of this JD vance post
• 54:30
  Speaker 6: liberal you know what, You've talked about. Their names like
• 54:34
  Speaker 6: Patrick Denien, Adrian Vermule, Douglas Wilson. On the Protestant side,
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: the people the constellation of people that DeCamp to Hungary,
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: and in raw numbers they're probably the smallest camp, but
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: in intellectual horsepower they're the most influential as far as
• 54:50
  Speaker 6: they punch above their weight online, they punch above their
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: weight in academic journals, they punch above their weight in
• 54:58
  Speaker 6: the public conversation. So that's one group. Another group is
• 55:01
  Speaker 6: what I would call libertines. And the libertines are sort
• 55:04
  Speaker 6: of like they kind of gravitated to Trump for obvious reasons.
• 55:07
  Speaker 6: Trump is a libertine. He doesn't like anyone telling him no.
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: On anything he wants to do. So a lot of
• 55:14
  Speaker 6: the anti woke people kind of got drawn into that
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: because of you know, perceiving sort of the woke's golds
• 55:20
  Speaker 6: and you know, and so they they're personified by sort
• 55:24
  Speaker 6: of the Barstool Sports podcastis stan world. That are people
• 55:28
  Speaker 6: that are just like, don't tell me what to do.
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: And the right is already flirting with losing these people
• 55:34
  Speaker 6: because the nationalist right and the libertine right they are
• 55:38
  Speaker 6: on a collision course. And then you also have the
• 55:41
  Speaker 6: religious right. And the religious right is pulled in a
• 55:44
  Speaker 6: bunch of different directions, but it is possibly more driven
• 55:48
  Speaker 6: to the nationalist right, but it's also its own thing.
• 55:51
  Speaker 6: It is just trafficking on decades of Republican loyalty in
• 55:55
  Speaker 6: the evangelical world, a lot of prophecies about Donald Trump.
• 56:00
  Speaker 6: And then you have the conspiracists. You know, Robert F.
• 56:03
  Speaker 6: Kennedy Junior would be your lead guy there. You know,
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: the people who didn't feel at home really anywhere. They
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: had cranky out of their ideas and they found out
• 56:12
  Speaker 6: that they could enter the halls of power if they
• 56:14
  Speaker 6: put on the red hat. So you have all of
• 56:17
  Speaker 6: these different groups of people who found that they have
• 56:20
  Speaker 6: an avenue to be in the room where that happens,
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: so long as they have the red hat on. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 6: so there's going to be a battle royal when Trump leaves. Now,
• 56:30
  Speaker 6: the one thing that you know, I don't think that
• 56:32
  Speaker 6: Democrats watching that should necessarily say, oh, well, that means
• 56:36
  Speaker 6: that the Republican Party is going to be weak and divided.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: No.
• 56:39
  Speaker 6: The other thing that unites all of those groups is
• 56:41
  Speaker 6: they also really hate the modern Democratic Party, and so
• 56:46
  Speaker 6: there's a real possibility that what you'll have is kind
• 56:49
  Speaker 6: of a power struggle between different strands that then tries
• 56:53
  Speaker 6: to unite everybody to take on the hated foe, say
• 56:57
  Speaker 6: in twenty twenty eight or whatever. But I will say this,
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: I think the group of people who are the most organized,
• 57:04
  Speaker 6: who have the most coherent plan or theory of the case,
• 57:08
  Speaker 6: they're all in the post liberal sort of more nationalist
• 57:11
  Speaker 6: right that they're starting journals, they're creating think tanks, podcast
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: to stand. It's not institution building, it's personality building. Right
• 57:20
  Speaker 6: at the conspiracists movement, you know that you can handle them,
• 57:26
  Speaker 6: You can kind of give them some room to run
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: in their chosen areas, and then the sort of the
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: religious right will fall in line against whoever's taking on
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: the Democrats. And so you can begin to see how
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: there's a pat how I JD. Vance could say, even
• 57:41
  Speaker 6: though I'm not a member of, say, the most numerous
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: or even most popular faction of the right, I am
• 57:47
  Speaker 6: a member of the most organized and disciplined faction of
• 57:50
  Speaker 6: the right. And when you hear them talk it to
• 57:53
  Speaker 6: each other and amongst themselves, they are very much convinced
• 57:57
  Speaker 6: that very small, very organized my minorities can capture democracies,
• 58:02
  Speaker 6: and by capturing one of the two major parties. And
• 58:05
  Speaker 6: so so I think that you know what you're looking
• 58:08
  Speaker 6: at as a situation where you know, is Donald Trump
• 58:11
  Speaker 6: a post liberal Catholic thinker.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: He can't say those words that many words together, no
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: any of them.
• 58:20
  Speaker 6: But has he kicked the door wide open for postliberal
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: whitewing thought? Yes?
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: But is that because I mean, it's a really important
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: analysis to sort of carve off the different aspects of
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: the new ride. And what is remarkable about him Donald
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: Trump is that, unfortunately, through his technique, and I want
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: to talk about what this might be, he's been able
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: to combine these without standing for any ideology. He's not
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: smart enough to read Patrick Denin's book or certainly Adrian Vermule's,
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: or to have a conversation about you know, any of this. Right,
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: we know he doesn't read, but yet his you know,
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: kind of like the character Chauncey Gardner, you know, he's
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: able to sort of back his way into these things,
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: maybe more intentionally than Chauncey Gardner, and in that you know,
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: he uses these clips, these words that trigger people in
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: order to think, Okay, this is my guy. Of course,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: his promise to appoint justices, which he delivered on to
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: reverse roversus way that might have helped him, you know
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: ingratiate himself to people who otherwise might not have gravitated
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: to his philosophy. So I mean, one question, I guess
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: to me, the million dollar question is do you see
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: anybody out there who can do what he did, which
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: is to have a form of rhetoric that's going to combine.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: These different things. Because when I think about JD.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: Vance, for instance, watching clips of him on Joe Rogan,
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: he's so uncomfortable and trying to pretend to be, you know,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: one of the cool guys in a way that Trump
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: sort of naturally did just fit with Rogan, and you know,
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: just anecdotically, I've talked to a lot of people who
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: listen to him on Rogan and thought, oh, what a
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: cool guy. I don't think JD. Vans is going to
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: be able to pull that off. I mean, so is
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: that you know, we always look for hope and optimism,
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: and one thing I guess I'm counting on is as
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: much as there's a challenge ahead and we'll have to
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: fight against so many of these ideas of the new Right,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: but they don't have a natural politician and I don't
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: think it's JD. Vance certainly who's going to be able
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: to combine all these forces.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: But I'm wondering what you think and if that's help.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 6: You know, this is not my first rodeo with an ism.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 6: You know. So we've had Reaganism, We've had Clintonism. You know,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 6: we've had Obama and the emerging demographic majority, the coalition
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 6: of the Ascendant, and every single time, the name, ultimately
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: over time proves more important than the ism. So it's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 6: that Reagan had a particular appeal to America. Not necessarily
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 6: Reagan's ideology, now elements of it were certainly popular. Clinton
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 6: had a particular charisma an appeal. Obama had a particular
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 6: chrisma and appeal. And I feel like those of us
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 6: who analyze politics tend to underestimate the personalities and overestimate
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 6: the ideology. And I feel like with Trump, nobody's like him.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 6: You know, I'm in Chicago right now. If you look down,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 6: if you walk out of my apartment building and you
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 6: look to the right, the back of my apartment and
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: you look down Wabash, there's this beautiful skyscraper and right
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 6: there is the word Trump, just like right there. No
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 6: other politician in America has that kind of cultural resonance
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 6: that he has. So I do think the smarter people
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 6: in MAGA know that trump Ism the ism is much
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 6: less important than the name, and that when he goes
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 6: it's going to be very difficult to put together the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 6: coalition that he put together. That's going to be hard.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 6: And so that's why, and you're seeing the sort of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 6: the preview of coming attractions and the midterm elections that
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 6: their theory of the case is not that they have
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 6: to necessarily replicate Trump's particular charisma. They just have to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 6: be more popular than the Democrats. And so what you're
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 6: going to see. And there was this headline I saw
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 6: yesterday that and you know, interesting article that a Republican
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 6: operative said, this is going to be the hate election.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 6: In other words, the entire goal is to turn a
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 6: critical mass of the electorate so much against the Democrats
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: that they are going to be willing and you know, willing,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 6: ready and able to accept whatever the Right offers as
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 6: an alternative to Trump. So I don't think the smart
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: people in MAGA think that they can replicate Trump's appeal.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 6: I think the smart people in MAGA say the way
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 6: to continue to hold power is to relentlessly demonize the Democrats,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: so that we are going to look better even if
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: you're a Ken Paxton with all the corruption and adultery.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: You know, even if you're some of these fringe MAGA candidates,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 6: at least you're not a Democrat. Right is going to
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 6: be the way they're going to argue this case. And
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 6: so look for the rhetoric to really I mean, is
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: it even possible for the rhetoric to escalate. But if
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: it's possible for rhetoric to escalate, look for it to escalate,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 6: because you know that the old saying is I don't
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 6: have to be the fastest person in my hiking group.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 6: I just have to be able to outrun the slowest
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 6: when the bear comes. That's their view is, I'm going
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 6: to outrun the slowest the Democratic Party. And this is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 6: why you see, for example, let's say a DSA candidate
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 6: wins a primary in Brooklyn, or you have a very
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 6: fringe left wing candidate win another primary in some other place.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: Immediately that person becomes the face of the Democratic Party
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: in right wing media. And so this is all part
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: of the you know, at the end of this election,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: you might have I don't know two three, four five
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 6: DSA affiliated members of Congress. They're going to be the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: face of the Democratic Congress in right wing media, because
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 6: this is how the game is played, and so that's
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 6: going to be that's what they're They believe they're key
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: to power is the Democratic Party and the leftism of
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party, because their whole view is they just
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 6: have to be more popular than the Democrats.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: And David, you know'd be impossible to some all this up.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: We've traveled, you know, to the nineteen thirties. We've talked
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: about the American Founding and the Second Founding. But I
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: wonder if one kind of as we start to close off,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: I'll offer you a closing thought and just let you respond,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: is that, you know, part of what the Democratic Party
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: has to learn to do to offer an alternative is
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: to tap into these deep American ideas. Of course, things
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: like affordability matter, and I understand why candidates want to
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: talk about that as well they should, But part of it,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: I think also is that we have to reclaim these
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: ideas that have really been destroyed and degraded by the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: new Right into talking about liberty, thinking that liberty somehow means,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: you know, just lead me alone, rather than a deep
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: commitment to the freedom of speech and religious freedom. And
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: of course there's a long tradition, as you've written about,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: and certainly listeners to this show know from John and
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: from me talking about my wife's grandfather, who's the dean
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: of Louisville Seminary and involved in the civil rights movement,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: that there's a long tradition and believing in the ideas
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: of liberal democracy and religion that of course these things
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: are compatible, and seeing too at the same time that
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: these ideas can fend off explicit authoritarianism and ideas like
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: blood and soil that are not part of the American tradition.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, so what do you think.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's the right thing to believe
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: in a lot of what we've talked about as.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Ideas and political theory.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: But how about a strategy for the Democratic Party. I
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: guess putting my cards on the table of the belief
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: that that has to be part of it, reclaiming the
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: ideas of the Constitution, not just in seeing the threat
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: that is Donald Trump, but affirmatively.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, my message to those people who are opposing the
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: New Right is the Founders are your best friends. Yeah, okay,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 6: so think of it like this. You know, I know
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: a lot of folks, maybe some folks who are listening
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 6: to the podcast it sort of you know, maybe from
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 6: the center towards the left have looked at the Right
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 6: and sort of seeing how the right so revers the
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 6: founding and so revers the Founders that maybe you've been
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 6: exposed to sort of the more of the contrary and
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 6: or more skeptical takes that justifiably point out their flaws.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 6: I'm not here to come here and say embracing the
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 6: Founders means embracing everything they did. No, no, no, okay,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 6: you can hold two thoughts at once. James Madison was
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 6: a slave owner, so was George Washington. And also they
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 6: advocated for American politics some beautiful ideas that we should
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 6: wrap both arms around their ideas, right, And so I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: think that if you want to refute, then you right.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 6: There are few better people to go to than George
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 6: Washington and James Madison. And why this is so effective,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: why this is so effective is that it actually speaks
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: in the language a lot of right leaning people understand.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: Because if it's between James Madison and some politician they
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 6: barely know, they're generally going to go with James Madison
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 6: George Washington versus some random congressman, They're going to go
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 6: with George Washington. And so I really want more liberal
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 6: critics of the New Right to bear hug the founders.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: Guys bear hug think about this, think about how relevant, like,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 6: for example, this statement from James Madison is. And in
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 6: seventeen eighty five he wrote a remonstrance against religious assessments,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: which was Virginia was going to impose a tax to
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 6: pay for religious education. And so James Madison writes just
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: very stirringly against it, and at one point, he says,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 6: the proposed establishment, this would be the tax that was
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 6: going to the fee that was going to be assessed.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: The proposed establishment and I'm paraphrasing it, but is antithetical
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 6: to that policy for which this nation would be attracted
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 6: to the persecutre in and oppressed of all nations and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 6: all religions, and that by bringing these people in, we
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: would add to the luster and number to the luster
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: of the nation and the number of the citizens. That's
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 6: James Madison. So here he is. He's wading in from
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 6: the eighteenth century into the twenty first century immigration debate,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: and he's saying, Hey, you guys who think that immigration
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 6: is only for Judeo Christian people, know all nations, all peoples.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 6: You think that we shouldn't be a home for persecuted
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 6: and oppressed people. James Madison says differently, Do you think
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 6: it makes us weaker? James Madison says, it makes us stronger. Now,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 6: you might be a smart person, and you might be
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 6: somebody who has some interesting ideas worth considering, but I'm
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 6: not putting you over James Madison in wisdom about this country.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 6: And so I do think that there is and we
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 6: talked about George Washington and don't run away from religious
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 6: argumentation in American public life, run towards it in the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 6: way the founders did. So what did James Madison say
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 6: in Remonstrances? He said that this religious assessment would diffuse
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 6: the light of Christ, though it did harm Christianity. When
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 6: George Washington reached out to the Hebrew Congregation of Rhode
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 6: Island to welcome them into this American family, very famously,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 6: he quoted Scripture. So they made religious arguments for pluralism
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 6: and tolerance.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And if I could, yeah, I mean, and
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: if I could just add on to this, of course,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: I knew we'd be kindred spirits.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: And that's been clear through this conversation. I mean, just
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: to add on.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: They use those arguments drawing on religion, drawing on the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: Enlightenment ideals to enshrine them, first of all in the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: First Amendment banning establishment.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: And to argue against theocracy.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: And so much of what we're talking about are theocratic
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: ideas that had their home and v She France, that
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: were anti liberal in the nineteen thirties and that are
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: finding their way here. And although they're drawing on Christian ideals.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: They're using it to reassure a Jewish community in Newport that, no,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: we're not going to have the Inquisition here exactly, We're
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: not going to have the establishment of religion. And to
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: put it bluntly, I think the way to sum it
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: up is, we're not going to have theocracy. And yet
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 3: so much of the New Rite is an argument for theocracy.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: And George Washington, I'm fond of. My favorite presidential speech
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: is the shortest ever given the second inaugural. What does
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: he say, I just took the oath of office. I
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: have to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And if
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: I violate it, you know, criticize me, upbraid me, subject
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: me to constitutional punishment. What a different idea from Trump
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: or trump Ism or the New Writer.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 6: When speaking of George Washington, he had a favorite Bible verse.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 6: He used it almost fifty times in his writing. And
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 6: Mount Vernon very wonderfully highlights this. There's a whole like,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 6: there's a whole web page that's dedicated to his use
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 6: of this Bible verse. And it's Micah four to four.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 6: And what is it? If you saw the musical Hamilton,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 6: you've heard it. Every man shall sit under his own
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 6: vine and his own fig tree, and no one shall
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 6: make him afraid. That is a beautiful Biblical argument for
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 6: tolerance and acceptance. And he used that Bible verse when
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 6: welcoming in the Jewish congregate, you know, when he welcomed
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 6: Jewish Americans into this into our republic. And so realize
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 6: that there is religious argumentation for American pluralism and tolerance,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 6: and embrace the founder's arguments against the new Right. I
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 6: love what George Will said, you know, I think about
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 6: you know, as a conservative, I think, what is conservatism
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 6: trying to conserve in this moment? And George Will put
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 6: it brilliantly, It's trying to conserve the American Founding. That's
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 6: where we're trying to conserve.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'll add one last thing, which is we've
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: been talking, you know, in this part of the conversation
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: about the eighteenth century Founding. We began by talking about
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: what is a refounding of the United States, or sometimes
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: called the Second Founding, and what was the technique that
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: was used there by the most powerful advocates of it,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 3: and Frederick Douglass, I think is chief among them. It
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: was exactly what we're talking about to recognize not that
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: the Framers were gods or they were perfect. No, of course,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: these deeply imperfect people with imperfect beliefs, but the best
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: of their ideas are to be understood as the center
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: of the American tradition. And that's what in refounding the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: United States in the nineteenth century and creating birthright citizenship,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: which we started with. What they did and what you
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: know I as we're looking for hope, what I think
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: we all need to do and trying to recover from
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: this assault on our democracy. David French, what a pleasure
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: to have you on the Oath in the Office podcast.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: I knew I would enjoy it. I know the listeners
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: enjoyed it. Thanks so much.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 6: Well, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Great stuff. Corey, thank you so so much. I'm always
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: learning a lot here. What is the best way for
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: our listeners to follow you, professor and keep up with
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: your brilliance the other six days of the week.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: Well, leave us a review, I should say, first, subscribe
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  Speaker 3: want to go deeper than the show. And let me
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: just say too, John, you know, David French was such
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: a great guest because he just coheres with the themes
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: of this show, especially his criticisms of the New Right.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: And you know, as I told him off air, the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: way in which his project and your projects are so
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: sympathetic to really rescue Christianity from Christian nationalism. What could
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: be more important at a time in which authoritarianism is
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: on the rise.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: Now, you're too kind, Professor I, thank you so so much,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: and I want to tell everyone you can hear my
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: show on Sirius XM Progress Channel one twenty seven every
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  Speaker 1: of Church and Hate. And we just were notified that
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  Speaker 1: we are a recipient of this year's American Book Award,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: which is pretty groovy as well. So yeah, it's amazing
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: and whoopee Goldberg Summer pick on the view, So hey,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: pick up my book, professor. I want to thank you.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I want to thank Wendy and Beowulf and everyone who
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• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: want to thank all of our deeply attractive listeners who
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: are making this podcast insanely popular. My god, Corey, where
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: are we on the on the rankings this week?
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: Well, first, John, I've got to just say congratulations, you know,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: on my behalf, but also I'm sure the listeners would
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: send you the same congratulations. Those are really incredible honors.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: And that book, you know, I'm proud that. On the
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: other in the Office podcast, I think we did have
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: the first interview about it that was great to do
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: and amazing response.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: And if you haven't read that book, go out and
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: get it.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: And then I'll say people are responding because really, you know,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: for a long time we were top ten, and we
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  Speaker 3: were top five in terms of Apple podcast trending episodes,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: and last week and really this has been regularly true.
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  Speaker 1: That's all due to your riz Man. I want to
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  Speaker 1: thank everyone for joining us again. And a reminder MAGA
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: may think that Andrew Tate is some kind of philosopher,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: he's not. He's Tony Robbins. For people who think consent
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: is woke, don't forget. Thank you so much, Professor Bretschneider.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: We will see all of you next time on the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: Oath and the Office