Latest / Thinking Class / #141 - R.R. Reno - What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return And Find Nobody Home

Transcript

#141 - R.R. Reno - What Happens When The West’s Strong Gods Return And Find Nobody Home · Thinking Class

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to our Reno.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Rusty is the editor of First Things, the most important journal of religion and public life in America, and the author of Return of the Strong Gods, the book that explained why the post-war settlement is collapsing.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Rusty and I think out loud about what the strong gods look like when they return to a country that may no longer have any gods at all, why Christianity remains a contested but robust force in American public life, while Britain's established church has been abandoned by its own people, how Blair's open society theology disfigured Britain's understanding of itself, Pierre Manan's argument that the modern West has chosen the city of man over the city of God, why the first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm and why the realm has intrinsic value, Alex Carp's observation that Europeans no longer believe their civilization will last, the Parmenidian resurgence in classical schools, and the elite religious revival among young men, and why Trump is the Vishnu of early 21st century politics and who must build what comes after the destruction.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: If you value serious long-form conversations like this, then subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, follow on Spotify, and support the show on Substack.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't already, go and watch The Call of England, my documentary series retracing HV Morton's 1927 journey to find out what is left of the old country and to see the evidence of the new England that has emerged since that time.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Episodes 1 and 2 are live now on YouTube.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates, and now R.R.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Reno.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: R.R.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Reno wrote the book that explained why the post-war settlement is collapsing.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: In The Return of the Strong Gods, Reno argued that the Western ruling class had banished the bonds of solidarity: the nation, our faiths, family, the sacred, all in the name of an open society, and they are repeatedly surprised when these gods seem to be coming back into public discourse.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: And Reno also edits the most important journal of religion and public life in America.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: First things.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Today I want to ask him what happens when the strong gods return to a country that may no longer have any gods at all.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Rusty, welcome to Thinking Class.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: It's great to be with you, John.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Rusty, you wrote The Return of the Strong Gods, and this was a diagnosis of America.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: You had uh written eloquently about how the bonds of solidarity had been weakened.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh this is a thesis that applies to my home country of Britain.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: We we no longer see these bonds, let alone them being weakened.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: They appear to have been destroyed.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: We have a uh an established church, the Church of England, that seems to be so overcome with progressive ideological zeal and it's attended by almost nobody.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Our national identity has been officially repudiated.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Flags are seen as a tool of division and hate, and the monarchy has rebranded itself as a defender of the faiths rather than the faith.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: It's a multi-faith institution, so there's almost nothing left to return to.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I suppose my question is, what do the strong gods look like when they return to a country that no longer has any gods at all?
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Is there a flaw below which even the strong gods cannot reach?
3:22
SPEAKER_02: I don't I uh no, my I mean, part of my thesis is that uh it's an anthropological thesis about what it means to be human.
3:33
SPEAKER_02: And you know, uh John John Paul II often talked about how we're created to give ourselves away in love.
3:41
SPEAKER_02: So we're made to love.
3:44
SPEAKER_02: And so we we want to f we want to unite ourselves with higher things, things greater than ourselves.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's that that asserts itself um kind of no matter what.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh the open society, I as I understand it, emerged after the end of World War II, and for a long time it served as our common love.
4:09
SPEAKER_02: We would all unite together to create a more inclusive, more open, more welcoming, more accepting society.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of people still feel that as a a vocation, as a call, and it gives their life meaning.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: But you know, as I argue in the book, uh you you know, the further we progress in achieving that goal, the more we dissolve uh the substantial things that unite us together, and it becomes a more and more of an abstraction and less and less of a of a kind of real thing.
4:44
SPEAKER_02: And I I do agree with you, I think the United States is less disintegrated than Great Britain in in some regards.
4:54
SPEAKER_02: Uh certainly in terms of the role of Christianity and American public life, it's it remains contested, controversial, but nevertheless robust.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: And you know, you have people like Senator Josh Hawley, who's written for First Things, speaking in direct and unequivocal Christian terms.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: Uh I remember a friend of mine from uh Britain just being dumbfounded.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Uh um being I think Hawley gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in um a couple years ago in Washington, D.C.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And uh and my friend, you know, was just like that's unimaginable that in Great Britain you would have a major politician talking about St.
5:44
SPEAKER_02: Augustine and giving an exposition of the city of God that is uh I mean it was demotic, but intelligible and and within the constraints of uh generalization accurate.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh it's absolutely true.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Our political class, and I don't want to use uh uh our former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as a cipher, but he famously said when asked what his favorite book was, what his frame poem was, anything from the canon, he couldn't name one.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: He he didn't have one.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: We've been so far removed from the classical Christian tradition.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: And and indeed, just to talk about the being dumbfounded as a Brit in America, I have just returned from two weeks in California, and there are a couple of things that really struck me.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Number one, the freedom in which people actually spoke about things, uh, things of import, but it didn't matter what side they were on.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't help thinking that everyone I spoke to was benefiting from that freedom figured out by those English founders and put into law and which we've just forgotten.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: We've just uh and and I feel it.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: I cate I I come back and it's it's night and day.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: No one wants to, even if you're on the same political side, no one really wants to venture an opinion on anything.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: And it it in the event it might be deemed to be too far outside the cordon sanitaire.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: So America really has still got a very contested public life.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: I know there are lots of people who uh obviously are trying to stop people from talking about certain things, but it's a far fewer number, and for the most part, people really do engage in in debate.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And one other point I'd make is yes, the role of Christianity is is is remarkable.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: I uh uh the amount of people that use biblical references in my conversation with them totally intelligibly, and it really just lifted the conversation uh in a way that we definitely did used to have here.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: That used to happen even in my grandparents' time, which no longer does.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: It's um it's remarkable how far we've we've drifted.
7:53
SPEAKER_02: I think an example of this is Barack Obama's speech that he gave, eulogy, but it was a political speech, at uh, I think a manual Lutheran church in Charleston, South Carolina, after um after the murder of seven or eight of the congregants by um a young man, and it was saturated with biblical language, you know, fitting in a church context.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: Um highly partisan interpretations of the Bible.
8:24
SPEAKER_02: One of my friends was outraged that Obama had used the Bible for such partisan purposes, and I said, No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: It is a big win to have the president of the United States use the Bible as the skeleton and substance of a major speech.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: We'll fight about the interpretation of St.
8:46
SPEAKER_02: Paul's later.
8:48
SPEAKER_02: But let's cheer for um for that.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: I do think that having having I I've advised some politicians, if you want to give gravitas, evoke the Bible.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Because even for people who don't believe, even for people who have almost no knowledge of the Bible, there's a kind of resonance of that language, it echoes through our civilization, and people sense its um they sense its its foundational gravitas, uh, to say nothing of the sacred character of those words.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: And and I think that would be true.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: And here is where maybe we can go back to the question about uh is there hope for Great Britain?
9:35
SPEAKER_02: I think that's true in Great Britain as well.
9:38
SPEAKER_02: Um I think there's a mistaken view that uh I mean, I as I was in a debate with someone uh about you know uh neutral public language, and I said, you know, I'm against these kind of abstract criteria for what you can and cannot say in public.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: The real test is salience.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: Does it move people doesn't and it does it move them towards noble ends?
10:04
SPEAKER_02: And if it moves them towards noble ends, then we should welcome that kind of language into our public discourse.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
10:12
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a c there's a there's a John Rawlsian uh assumption that the kind of technocratic language of the management of utilities is the common language that we have to use.
10:26
SPEAKER_02: And I'm all for equitable distribution of utilities.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: But you know, uh man was not made for bread alone.
10:34
SPEAKER_02: And so, and this is true of in a natural sense of our shared life um as citizens of a nation.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: We want to be united towards um higher ends, towards greater ends than just being a little bit richer or um or or a little bit more comfortable.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: And and and I think that um the American situation i we have the advantage that the United States remains um uh a globally dominant force.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And so in our public life, all Americans to some degree or another feel that our nation is consequential.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: And I think that Great Britain still suffers from a kind of post-colonial hangover and uh and the gnawing sense that you're you're a vassal state in the American system.
11:30
SPEAKER_02: And it's difficult, I think, even for leaders, people in the leadership class to think.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: And this is a real challenge, I think it's a challenge for European nations more broadly.
11:43
SPEAKER_02: How to conceive of a national purpose.
11:46
SPEAKER_02: Um now, I think that you know, the Blair uh government was probably the last government to really speak um ambitiously about the role of Great Britain.
11:59
SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, it was Great Britain was going to lead the way towards the global, it was gonna become the exemplary global multicultural nation.
12:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Canada under the Trudeau administration echoed that kind of mission for again, you and I could say that's a self-defeating mission because it undermines the foundations of uh national solidarity, but at least it's a mission, right?
12:24
SPEAKER_02: You know, at least it's uh like we can do something together as a people.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the that's the gonna be the big challenge.
12:33
SPEAKER_02: Like what what is Great Britain gonna do?
12:37
SPEAKER_02: What is this what is what is the historic role in the 21st century?
12:42
SPEAKER_02: What is the mission?
12:44
SPEAKER_02: What is the collective project?
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, having the National Health Service as the kind of national uh the pride of the nation, it's pretty thin beer.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't want to no, I shouldn't say that.
12:57
SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't want again, equitable having an equitable society is a common good.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: And uh we have a disastrous health system in the United States.
13:06
SPEAKER_02: We spend more than anyone on a ragtag system that uh is very frustrating um for for all of us who participate in it.
13:15
SPEAKER_02: So I don't want to discount that as an achievement, but it just seems too narrow.
13:20
SPEAKER_02: It's too much a function a utility function and not enough doesn't have metaphysical density as I often speak of the sorts of things that rouse our hearts.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Well, you raised Blair and he certainly had a theology.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: It was downstream, I think, from his Christian inner life, but as so much about the open society worldview, it was really a heretical Christian way of doing things.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: And I know you've had people write for you in first things, like some up Sebastian Milbank, my fellow Englishman, who has made the point that Christian hospitality was still always bounded in the particular, and there are also limits to it, and there are expectations of those who walked amongst you.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: You have to have a home to invite people into.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
14:11
SPEAKER_02: And if you're and if you're if your policies disintegrate the home, then you cannot exercise hospitality.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the the the theology of Blair, which totally disfigured the theology of the nation through the ages, was openness tolerance, but more importantly, global citizenship.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he was quoted as saying that the challenge for Britons today is no longer to see themselves as British citizens, but as global citizens.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: And you you will know who I'm about to paraphrase uh much more um uh intimately than than I know his work, but Pierre Manan uh he argued in The City of Man that the modern West had irreversibly chosen the city of man over the city of God.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: We'd declared ourselves autonomous and that we've lost a sense of what we are.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Blair's open society is an expression of that thesis?
15:10
SPEAKER_00: It's the final triumph of the city of man over the residual claim that Britain ever existed for a sacred purpose, because we have always understood ourselves up until yesterday as being that this blessed plot set in the silver sea, and it's always fighting over who's going to deliver the right thing for the Isles and and those peoples.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's something in that, or am I taking Manon's thesis and Blair's uh application too far?
15:38
SPEAKER_02: It well, you know, there's a subtle, there's a subt I mean Christianity invents secular politics by the doctrine of the two swords.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: And uh it gives room and scope for uh the political, for the city of man.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: But when the city of man loses its relation to the city of God, when it loses this kind of subtle dialectic of secular purpose but with a sacred foundation or sacred end, um it's very difficult to justify the insularity of of the English city of man from some hoped-for global city of man.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: And I think uh uh the United States were less um that's less that that's less corruptive and corrosive because Americans conceive of our nation, we conceive of our nation as the global nation, um, both in terms of the brute realities of pol of uh economic and military power, but also novus ordo secularum, the new order for the ages.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: And so an American can both be hyper-American, if you will, and global in orientation, uh up to a limit.
16:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think we have we also have the global citizen kind of um conceit in the United States, but I w we we have been less damaged by it the the end of history, post-Cold War belief that we're on the cusp of a new age, in which we're gonna transcend uh uh the particularity of our origins and unite into a global community.
17:23
SPEAKER_02: Do you still get the Vatican talking that way, kind of uh um international fraternity?
17:30
SPEAKER_02: Uh C.S.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Lewis said that friends are shoulder to shoulder working towards a common end.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: And um and it's hard to see, right, how you can have substantive ends at a global level.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: There are global concerns, but they I the global concerns, again, they all turn on utilities.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, uh climate is a is a question of utility, um, having an economic system that's beneficial globally is a utility.
17:59
SPEAKER_02: Um common goods are are um or the substantive richer common goods are are not utility functions.
18:09
SPEAKER_02: You know, the first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: Not and and there's no ultimately the per that purpose is because the realm has intrinsic value, not because it is conducive to greater utility for the people who happen to live there.
18:26
SPEAKER_02: That's why you you're willing to make sacrifices for to sustain the realm, to preserve the realm, to defend the realm.
18:34
SPEAKER_02: Um and that's an interesting question.
18:37
SPEAKER_02: You know, in Germany, I think you know, polling young people like a uh a kind of very small minority are willing to fight for their country.
18:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh and that's a that's a that's a discouraging sign, that's a bad sign.
18:53
SPEAKER_02: That indicates that the political culture is not offering them a vision of something worth making a sacrifice for.
19:00
SPEAKER_02: And the same thing is that that's not true in the United States, but it it doesn't have to be a polit uh a military challenge, it could be fiscal, financial challenges.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: United States, we face um, we have this huge entitlement liability for baby boomers like me that's going to require a common sacrifice one way or the other.
19:22
SPEAKER_02: And unless you have some kind of solidarity oriented around a sense that your nation has intrinsic value and it's worth sacrificing for, it's hard to motivate people to make to make sacrifices, you know, to to tighten the belt or pay more taxes or accept fewer benefits.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: So I I I mean I think I've written on this that the crisis of our time, the crisis of the 21st century is a crisis of solidarity in in the West.
19:56
SPEAKER_02: And the political, wise and responsible political leadership has to um has to uh develop a rhetoric and policies that help to str restore and strengthen solidarity.
20:13
SPEAKER_02: And we go back to Blair and others, it's still the default is uh a kind of multicultural.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: We're all together in building a multicultural society, we're all together in being inclusive, we're all to go together and having a welcoming outlook, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
20:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, but lots of ordinary people are beginning becoming suspicious that this is really a rhetoric of further disintegration, not restored solidarity.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you you've touched on it by citing the example of people not willing to fight for Germany.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: It's true here as well.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I live in a part of the country which typically has provided per capita the most military recruits, and it's dropped off.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: It's about 10% of the people who would usually sign up around here are signing up.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: So there's a sense that people no longer feel like whatever it is that we are as a nation is is worth fighting for.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: But then thinking about how that projects into the future, how long are we going to be around for with a with a mindset and a um and a society that has disintegrated?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I heard a quote the other day uh by the CEO of Palantir, Alex Carp, and he was talking about his experience of dealing with business leaders in Europe and those in the US.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: And he said the key difference he has taken away from the conversations is that it feels like people in Europe no longer believe that their civilization is going to last much longer, which is how they end up doing business and the way they talk.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the US, he gets the impression that when he speaks to people, they believe that they're going to be around for the next thousand years, and this makes it totally different in how we do business.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose that takes me back to your um analysis.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: I suppose, of where America is at the moment?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Because you mentioned you still have people who sign up to the military, that the political space is contested, that there is a sense that there is something more than just the United States being part of an American citizenry.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: What do you make of CARP's analysis?
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And what do you make of the health, I suppose, of the American body politic and the way that the average American sees of themselves and their nation?
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Is it as adult with the cynicism or is it on the way of being as adult with the cynicism as we in Britain or Germany, for example?
22:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the university educated class is uh is different from the ordinary American.
22:47
SPEAKER_02: The university educated class is more globalist and multicultural, more invested in the open society language.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh but you know, I was um I've I'm impressed by just traveling, the people's desire to um to be part of a great nation.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: You know, uh immigrants, ordinary people, lots of so the rally around the flag impulse is still quite strong.
23:21
SPEAKER_02: My European friends who come to the United States are always dumbfounded by how many American flags there are.
23:27
SPEAKER_02: They find it a little my German friends find it a little chilling.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, like, ooh, this is dangerous.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, nationalism can be dangerous.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: I don't dispute that.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: But the alternative to nationalism is um, you know, is uh, at least in my mind in the globalized world we live in, is a global elite that that uh manipulates and uses and neglects the citizenry of their own nation.
23:59
SPEAKER_02: Um the national the ism in nationalism really is that the nation has intrinsic value and we have to make sacrifices collectively, uh, including those who are rich and powerful, in order to promote the interests of the whole.
24:13
SPEAKER_02: Um and and I, you know, CARP has wrote The Technological Republic, identified many of the corrosive elements in our society, denounce the fact that the richest people and the most successful in the American system are often the least loyal to the American project.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's a salutary criticism and a salutary uh chastisement.
24:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh but I I tend to be a kind of American optimist in in in as I think CARP is, but uh that there is uh still a pretty deep residual sense that that this is you know the American project has got a lot of life left in it and that um it's worth um it's worth uh you know it's worth um uh struggling for.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: And but I I would say the strong guys aren't just nation, they're also family.
25:11
SPEAKER_02: Um and and I and this is an area that you know we know that you know fertility rates are in the toilet and uh marriage rates in the United States are quite low.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: Um there's a lot of unhappiness about the male-female dance.
25:27
SPEAKER_02: And I I I think that um all you know police people in positions of leadership need to pivot.
25:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh we don't need to give people more kind of scope for individual eccentricity and choice.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: We need to give them uh pathways toward um towards marriage and and family.
25:47
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think it's the foundation of a free society in the sense that uh um you know typically a family doesn't let the government you know dictate what gets said at the kitchen table.
25:59
SPEAKER_02: Um there's a way that the home becomes a fortress in the positive sense.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's it's a little small unit of independence in in the world.
26:10
SPEAKER_02: It's uh haven from a competitive economic system and it's a haven from a kind of hectoring uh public sector.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: So I I think uh a kind of renewal of marriage is a really important element for the renewal of the West.
26:27
SPEAKER_02: And uh and then religion is also um I mean I've argued that you know the greatest declaration of independence is when Peter and his buddies tell the authorities in Jerusalem and the Acts of the Apostles, chapter six, that they obey God, not men.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: You you were talking there about being an American optimist.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: And actually, I just want to add a footnote to that before we move on, is again my experience of having just spent a couple of weeks in your country and speaking to people who had arrived in this conference from all over the country, is that even those who thought that things collectively have been getting a little bit worse lately and maybe a bit down on the luck, that yet that they still there's there's something about the way the Americans interact and uh articulate themselves that is distinctly different to here in Britain.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: America is an outgrowth of my nation, and yet my nation, I don't seem to get those interactions anywhere near as frequently.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, I think you're right to be an optimist because there's still enough in the reserves to suggest that you can come through it in a way that European nations I think are struggling with.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you uh I'm with you, John.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: The the uh I'm often accused of, well, you know, there is no American character.
27:57
SPEAKER_02: We're a much more diverse nation than we were before, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: All very true.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I say, yeah, get somebody who's not an American to visit, and he'll tell you that, yeah, Miami's different from Seattle, but there's an American personality.
28:12
SPEAKER_02: And yes, people are brown and not just white, and yes, people are Asian and not Anglo, but but there's still this sort of recognized there are differences of regional, but it you you have to get a foreign eyes to come and realize that uh it's a narcissism of small differences.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh amidst it all, there is a strong American character.
28:37
SPEAKER_02: And can't take these sort of things for granted.
28:39
SPEAKER_02: You need to, you know, a good leader uh has to recognize that the globalized economy has very um powerful effects that are almost exclusively dissolving in nature.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and that um, you know, we've been through this long phase of valorizing the open society, and that and that while there are many good qualities to that ideology, that it you know that, you know, applied in an extreme form over a long period of time, it also has been uh dissolved a great deal.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: And so in the present moment, we should be um emphasizing what we share together, not our differences.
29:22
SPEAKER_02: Final note on this.
29:24
SPEAKER_02: One of the things I noticed in the 2018 by-elections in the United States, um, you know, off presidential elections was Democrats ran a lot of moderate candidates who are who are military veterans.
29:37
SPEAKER_02: And I really took note of that.
29:39
SPEAKER_02: And I th I saw that basically voters want reassurance that their pup that their leaders are sort of will defend them.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: And I don't mean defend them militarily, I mean that their leaders are people who have demonstrated their commitment to them, the voters, as a as a collective.
30:02
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's very telling.
30:04
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, baby boomer political leadership, every president, um, every president uh since Dwight Eisenhower served the United States military during World War II in active duty all the way through George H.W.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: Bush.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Um and he his term ended in 1992 with the election of Bill Clinton.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: And every president since Bill Clinton has not served in the United States military, and aside from Barack Obama was too young, took active measures to ensure that he did not serve in the U.S.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: military during the Vietnam era.
30:38
SPEAKER_02: I think that's coming to an end.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: I predicted every president after Donald Trump will have served in the United States military.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: Is that what it's looking like?
30:49
SPEAKER_02: Voters are increasingly anxious that the elites of our countries, and this is Britain and the United States, do not have their interests at heart.
30:58
SPEAKER_02: You know, if you're a global citizen, you got the global interests at heart.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: But hey, wait a minute, what about what about us?
31:06
SPEAKER_02: You know, who's gonna look after uh our interests, you know, our purposes, you know, our common project.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: Um I may be wrong in that prediction, but um I like to make it, because if I turn out to be right out, I'll be very smug.
31:21
SPEAKER_02: If I could get a Democratic Socialist candidate in Michigan who was uh you know, his last name is Gonzalez and uh was uh served in the Marine Corps, I tell you he wins.
31:35
SPEAKER_02: I mean because he can he can hit the economic solidarity and the cultural solidarity button together.
31:42
SPEAKER_02: You can get them to come together.
31:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, DSA, Democrat Socialists of America are pushing an economic solidarity theme.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: Right?
31:52
SPEAKER_02: Which is that for too long, the winners have taken everything.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: We need to have an economic system that we're where you know the winnings uh uh spread to the whole body politic.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think that's a very appealing message, having been through now uh a long gilded second gilded age of of uh in the global economy.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Um but at the same time voters also want cultural solidarity.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: You know, they want both a more equitable distribution of the benefits of our economic system, and they also want reassurance that they're part of a coherent, you know, cultural uh entity.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: Um because you know, it's we're we're again we man does not live by bread alone.
32:41
SPEAKER_02: It's not just about the money you make, it's the feeling that you're part of something greater than yourself.
32:46
SPEAKER_02: And and you're you know, and your your people leading um your country uh have that same goal in mind.
32:55
SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean that was the make America great again, you know, lots of that was met with great derision, but it resonated with many voters because, you know, that's what that's a it's like I to, you know, I'm from the well-to-do class, and my friends were kind of rolling their eyeballs, and I said, look, half of Americans have zero net worth.
33:17
SPEAKER_02: And their citizenship is the most valuable thing they have.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: It will be interesting to see how it develops the the the lean towards socialism, I can understand.
33:29
SPEAKER_00: And you can or cannot.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: I I can I can understand.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: I can certainly understand.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think it's probably on most of us who wouldn't sign up to that ticket to make the case that there's a Christian political economy, which I know J.D.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Vance is quite good at uh articulating, that does make space for uh an appropriate redistribution in a way that recognises people's dignity without going down the socialist route of effectively just uh being quite vindictive and resentful and uh targeted uh targeting of people who've made their money by fair means as well as foul.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, it's something that uh we we've seen the Green Party rise very rapidly in the polls here and they run on quite a similar ticket, really.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: But besides politics, we talked a lot about the the open society and the leadership class in public sector-private sector.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're aware of uh Aaron McIntyre's Total State book and his argument that the administrative apparatus of modern Western governments has grown so vast and so autonomous and it operates independent of elections, of parties, of democratic mandates, even.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: I suppose my question to you is that you've got strong gods that are returning in popular sentiment, whether it's populism, whether it's nationalism, hunger for the sacred, but we do have an administrative state, and we see it here in Britain, that not only absorbs those set sentiments in some way, but they they can crush them, they can stop them, or they at least they attempt to repress them.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: So it almost doesn't matter about how many of the strong gods attempt to return, the total state, as it were, wants to put them to bed, and there's a constant rearguard action against them.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that it's utterly futile for state apparatus to be fighting against them because in the end these strong gods are so strong that they they will prevail?
35:31
SPEAKER_02: The danger is is that uh the repression will only exaggerate the excesses of the r of the of their return, it seems to me.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: Um the repressive you Britain is much more advanced than the United States in this regard.
35:50
SPEAKER_02: Um with with because it's more central the control is more centralized in Westminster.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: And it seems as though the and you have your hate speech laws and things like that that can be used to to um to tamp things down.
36:07
SPEAKER_02: It's more difficult in the United States to do that because of the nature of our system, which is more diverse with uh 50 different states and as well as the fact that um you know, the First Amendment or constitutional system puts limits on things.
36:21
SPEAKER_02: But there are as we saw during the pandemic, there was a public-private partnership where the you know the administrative state commissioned uh private actors, you know, social media companies to to do their repression for them.
36:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh but the public is wise to that.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh and and uh we'll see how that all evolves.
36:43
SPEAKER_02: I I'm not you know, um I'm not against uh some effort to manage social change.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: Um and if the social change is a kind of restoration of of uh strong kind of ethnic and national identities, you know, then you know again, you know, the good leaders need to the question is what end do they seek?
37:12
SPEAKER_02: A healthy unified body politic?
37:15
SPEAKER_02: I think they probably do, but even when they have their misguided multicultural, because multiculturalism is a theory about how you can have a harmonious, united society that's not really united.
37:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's an ideology that's meant to to to explain to people how what they've experienced as a kind of disintegration of the home that they once had, their national home, is in fact the birth of something new that they're going to that they're going to ultimately affirm and and and and uh champion.
37:50
SPEAKER_02: Uh I just think it never it can't work because it's just contrary to human nature.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: But you know, Britain is a is it's a it's a difficult it's uh it's gonna be much more difficult.
38:03
SPEAKER_02: We don't we don't have we have you know you have Michigan, Dearborn, and places like that where you have kind of integral Muslim communities.
38:12
SPEAKER_02: Uh but I think the Great Britain employed the kind of colonial policies and turned them inward.
38:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, in India you gave autonomy to um to you've relied on Indian elites to you gave autonomy cultural and political, not not political, but you give cultural autonomy to uh the different elements of Indian society and relied on elites to manage them rather than trying to weld, you know, convert them or weld them into a kind of you know something new.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: And you've done the same thing with your immigrant populations and in in uh Great Britain.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: You've you've given and we don't do that in the United States.
38:58
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's some de facto, if you get enough critical mass, you vote for uh city councillors who do do your bidding.
39:06
SPEAKER_02: But the ethos of the American elites is remains one of at least moderate assimilation.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: Does it want to make any sense here?
39:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really do think that uh you know the the tolerance of the tolerance for Muslim communities to have their own very insular form of life, which led to the rape gang uh problems.
39:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh that that that was a that was a a kind of thought that you could use the same methods that were used in the colonial era with respect to your own internal diversity.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Um I think that's led to a lot of bad outcomes.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: And it's gonna be hard to sort of think as a country, how can you stop that and begin a process where there's a political and cultural drive towards uh everybody being sort of of a common of a common ancestry and a common purpose.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: With this, it's not it's not flawless.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: There's many examples where it doesn't work.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: Um Somalis, for instance, and Minneapolis being a good example, but that that's not so much a matter of conscious policy in the United States as political reality.
40:28
SPEAKER_02: You get to a certain critical mass in American urban life historically, and you get your insular community that trades votes for for immunity and favors.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: And that that we'll see how long that lasts.
40:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean that was true for early 20th century urban politics in places like Chicago, Boston, and New York.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: Um, but over time it it weakened and uh Italian Americans just became white Americans.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: And I I think Eric Kaufman's I don't know if you heard Eric Kaufman's work white shift, his thesis is at least in in North America, that sort of everybody except uh African Americans become white over time.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, meaning why, you know, scare quotes, uh, you know, meaning they become sort of vaguely sort of Anglo-American in their ethos and out.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: Your your point about India is very interesting, absolutely right, uh, about how modern British leaders manage uh the the nation as though it is a colonial outpost.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: And but the key difference is in many ways, uh, and this is backed up by an Indian professor here in Britain called Professor Titankar Roy.
41:48
SPEAKER_00: He uh works at the London School of Economics, he is a historian of South Asian economics, and he's written a book about the history of the East India Company, and specifically about how Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, these are just fishing villages that were run by the local uh caste.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were signed over to the British to be able to use for their own commercial interests, and the British chose to make them into what they are, so they brought British ways of doing things, so equality before the law, you've obviously got the rule of law, there is contract and all of the rest of it, everything that you would expect of the Anglo inheritance.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I say it's different, in many ways, they're afforded more freedoms there than here is that what happened in India is that you had people moving from all over the country to these places because they were sick of doing business with people who would treat you differently depending on what caste you're in, and so you'd get different interest rates.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, your whole commercial enterprises could just be hamstrung on the basis of what status you were born into.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: And so they loved this new freedom and they loved that they could go to a court of law and have it adjudicated by an independent and impartial judge.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what we have here is yes, we're trying to manage things like a colonial outpost, mainly for every group, apart from people who are British, uh, as in with a long line here.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so we will repress speech, we will change the employment practices so we can benefit those who are more recently arrived than those who've been here longer, uh, which is exactly why those strong gods are threatening to return so um, well, what's the right word, so vigorously, because uh it seems that even compared to our imperial history, where apparently the British were meant to be so bad, which Lord Nigel Biggle will show is not strictly true.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: There's a much wider palette to be seen here, is that things are being applied even more stringently uh against the host population than they perhaps were against others.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: Uh which is and it's exacerbated by the transformation.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: Economic transformations.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: You know, the Metropolitan London is really economically independent of the rest of the country.
44:08
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: And and well, we have some of that in the United States, but it's not as extreme.
44:14
SPEAKER_02: Um and it and and so it's you can have uh kind of the financial dashed technological powers uh and and wealth of London really thinking of the uh uh home counties.
44:32
SPEAKER_02: Is that are we using the right term?
44:34
SPEAKER_02: Think of the home counties as kind of vaguely foreigners.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: And they're they're very unfortunate people because they're being truculent and difficult right now.
44:44
SPEAKER_02: You know, and they need to be managed.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, yes, rather than home counties, I suppose just more the the provinces, regional inquiry.
44:51
SPEAKER_02: Well, home counties are the ones immediately around London.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: Around London.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the ones that are farther afield.
44:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh we get that certainly, I mean, that's the anywhere somewhere uh distinction that David Goodhardt makes.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: Uh and we certainly have that field, and that's what um that's the polemic that Alex Carp mounts against that sentiment uh and warns that you know he warns the um economic elites of America that if you if you harbor that sentiment and act on it, you don't be surprised if they come after you with pitchforks.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:22
SPEAKER_00: Don't refer to them as fly-over country and deplorables, bad idea.
45:28
SPEAKER_02: Uh one time, uh, but again, we have these intrinsic strengths in the United States.
45:33
SPEAKER_02: One time I was in England, this was maybe uh 20 years ago, and somebody I was living at the time in Omaha, Nebraska, where I taught uh theology at a university there.
45:44
SPEAKER_02: And uh somebody said, Well, what's Omaha like?
45:46
SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, it's like some obscure town uh city in England with maybe 50,000 people that I've never heard of, except there are a million people there and the richest man in the world lives there.
45:59
SPEAKER_02: Warren Buffett.
46:00
SPEAKER_02: True, yes.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: He was at that time the richest man in the world.
46:03
SPEAKER_02: And uh and that's a strength.
46:06
SPEAKER_02: There is no uh France and England suffer from uh having everything concentrated in the capital.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: And the financial capital is New York, the political capital is Washington, the capital of innovation is the Bay Area, the capital of media is in Los Angeles, uh, and there are other rival regional places like Houston is the energy capital of the world.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: Um and so this allows for elites to be in a more of a rivalrous relation, and you get better equilibrium and then having everything concentrated into the center at London.
46:44
SPEAKER_02: So having that concentration just exacerbates all of the negative consequences of globalization, it seems to me.
46:53
SPEAKER_02: That we suffer from as well, but not to the same degree.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm going to throw a question from Leftfield here, penultimate question, uh, and uh test the waters with you.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to talk a little bit about the the political moment we're finding ourselves in across the West that are driven by all the things we've spoken about, people beginning to rebel against open society ways of life.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: And there have been lots of uh very um uh uh beautifully articulated analyses of where we're at.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: So we've got Patrick Denin diagnosed the failure of liberalism, Rod Dreyer prescribed the Benedict Doctrine.
47:38
SPEAKER_00: You yourself have uh called for civilizational confidence that there are fruits that we have which we should not allow to rot on the vine.
47:47
SPEAKER_00: We've had Carl Truman talk about the triumph of the modern self and how that's leading to the dissolution of not only our nations but almost everything else about what it means to be human.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: And all of this is great diagnosis.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And apart from in America where you've had a post-liberal counter-revolution almost, and we'll see how long that lasts, is it feels like for the rest of the West, what none of what none of these diagnoses is, is not an institution that will then form the people who build what's next.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So I suppose my question to you, as someone who rubs shoulders with those in the thinking world, is uh are there projects underway, formation institutions that are focused on forming people in these classical ideals that are uh being sought to uh that we're seeking to restore?
48:42
SPEAKER_00: Um and do you think the post-liberal moment will produce anything durable?
48:50
SPEAKER_02: My my big think distinction is Heraclitus and Parmenides.
48:56
SPEAKER_02: Heraclitus, pre-Socratic philosopher, all is fluxed.
49:00
SPEAKER_02: Parmenides, the pre-Socratic philosopher, cling to that which is and cannot not be.
49:05
SPEAKER_02: Parmenides' premanence, uh, Heraclitus' fluidity.
49:10
SPEAKER_02: We've been through a long phase where we think the fluid is a blessing.
49:14
SPEAKER_02: Uh there's lots of economic theories that reinforce that notion, that uh the greater the fluidity, the wealthier we'll become, and the greater the in any amount, transgenderism being a kind of uh poster child for uh the Parmenidean view.
49:30
SPEAKER_02: We'd be a better society if we were, we we adopted a more open and fluid understanding of what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman.
49:38
SPEAKER_02: Uh but the Parmenidean is uh uh kind of resurging, resurgent, that there are anchoring things in life, there are anchoring truths, uh, and that we don't want to tread water forever in a liquid world.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: We want dry land, we want solid ground.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: And there are institutions that have arisen in American society that especially emphasize these premenidean uh elements.
50:04
SPEAKER_02: You know, you think of the classical school movement is kind of obviously an exemplary in this regard.
50:11
SPEAKER_02: It's very small compared to um education as a whole, but we are talking about hundreds of thousands of young people that are now enrolled in these schools, and that that will undoubtedly have consequences um going forward.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: There is a uh move in more conservative states to buttress and strengthen um kind of patriotic and civic elements of education.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: We s we we see that uh happening.
50:41
SPEAKER_02: Uh there is a um religious revival among kind of elite Gen Z.
50:51
SPEAKER_02: Um it's not it's not the third great awakening in America, but to a shocking degree, um elite educated young people and especially guys under 30 are especially attracted to uh to Christianity and not just Christianity, but its more rigorous and dogmatic forms.
51:14
SPEAKER_02: And and that because it's an elite phenomenon, that's bound to have um some consequences of that uh I'll be interested to see how they unfold.
51:24
SPEAKER_02: So I do see those educational and spiritual trends foretell uh a kind of strengthening of this Parmenidean element of of our culture.
51:36
SPEAKER_02: And um so so I you know that's the uh i i you know I all all of the things I described also exist in Great Britain, but in a much more in a much uh more limited form, much smaller form.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh yeah.
51:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I see a lot of the online radical right as uh as being a significant phenomenon because it's in a vacuum.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: And what we need are institutions uh that s supply the need for anchors in life, you know, these sort of ennobling and anchoring truths uh so that young people aren't, you know, for lack of any alternative, attracted to kind of what I would think of as sort of erzat's solution to these problems.
52:30
SPEAKER_00: Hear, here.
52:31
SPEAKER_00: Rusty, you've been very generous with your time so far.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go, I'll ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
52:41
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it was a moral absolute, perhaps something more quotidian that you no longer believe.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you think differently?
52:50
SPEAKER_02: You know, most of us we take our we take our political views wholesale, not retail.
52:57
SPEAKER_02: And I came to conservatism as a religious conservative.
53:01
SPEAKER_02: In other words, uh my initial Parmenidean commitments were theological in nature, the authority of God and the authority of his revelation.
53:14
SPEAKER_02: And uh and that in America tends to put you in the Republican Party, uh, just by the nature of the way things evolved in our politics in the second half of the 20th century.
53:25
SPEAKER_02: And so when I was a young professor, you know, I pretty much adopted the sort of free market uh um uh dogmas as well as supported the Iran War in the aftermath of 9-11.
53:40
SPEAKER_02: And it was really only uh when I took over as editor of First Things in 2011 and I felt like, now wait a minute, uh really?
53:50
SPEAKER_02: And I started to think about I realized that no, and that's when I started formulating my thoughts about the open society, which has economic as well as cultural dimensions.
54:00
SPEAKER_02: And I began to um uh I began to question uh the the free market uh dogmatism and I began to question um I began to question the American imperial project.
54:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean one of my big worries is that we're gonna sacrifice the republic to sustain the empire.
54:23
SPEAKER_02: And uh I I rather like our republic.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: And uh on economic matters, uh it it strikes me that we made many decisions in the 1990s as a nation that um were not unwise and not unreasonable, but they had what are known as negative externalities.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: And uh and and so it's our responsibility.
54:49
SPEAKER_02: We used the power of government to create the global system.
54:52
SPEAKER_02: It didn't avoid it it didn't come ex nihilo.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: The WTO was an act of political, it was a political act, and so we need to use the power of government to moderate uh and uh alter some of the um features of the global economy so that um the media and American can participate in it and not just receive um government benefits.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: So that's what all gets me attacked by the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
55:21
SPEAKER_02: So I'd say those are and as well as my uh increasing belief that uh the United States needs to fundamentally rethink its global commitments in light of the reality of a multipolar polar world.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: And we have to give up our illusions that we run the entire world.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: What chance do you see of that happening?
55:44
SPEAKER_00: Probably not this maybe this presidency.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, sometimes you do hear Trump.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: It's already happening.
55:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:50
SPEAKER_02: We can't even run the Straits of Hermos.
55:53
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
55:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh so if we can't do that, why why then we have to ask ourselves, well, what what can we do?
56:00
SPEAKER_02: Uh we're v we're still a very, very powerful nation, perhaps the most.
56:04
SPEAKER_02: Uh, but we have to think very realistically about what we can do and what we should try to achieve um globally.
56:13
SPEAKER_02: And and I think that um, you know, I think Europeans are in a world of hurt right now um because of this change, which is a long time coming, by the way.
56:27
SPEAKER_02: Uh and every president since um uh since George W.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: Bush has been urging Europeans to spend more on defense to no avail.
56:37
SPEAKER_02: And this president has succeeded with his very rough and crude methods.
56:42
SPEAKER_02: Um and so so uh maybe that's a blessing.
56:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh and maybe the illusions of infinite American power, um once they're dispelled, that will in some way help reinvigorate the European nations to actually exercise agency uh in not just in their own domain, but agency uh uh in a wider scope.
57:10
SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean here we launched this war, which I very much regret against Iran and who pays the bill?
57:17
SPEAKER_02: You know, uh people buying gas and energy in England and Germany and France and elsewhere.
57:25
SPEAKER_02: And well, you know, if you don't want that, then you have to actually be a player um in the global system with interests and ability to project power so that so that you don't you're not just um you're not just a vassal state and not just a victim of our ill-conceived policies.
57:46
SPEAKER_02: That was rather strongly stated, wasn't it?
57:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, don't mention words.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: Don't mention words.
57:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm a very pro-European.
57:55
SPEAKER_02: I do not I think I have many friends on the right who think Europe Europe is dying, and we just need to we just need to cut our losses.
58:06
SPEAKER_02: I think we're part of the same civilization we rise and fall together, and that uh um I also think that there's probably more life left in the in these European nations than many arrogant uh Americans give credit for.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I hope we can rekindle that sense of brotherhood.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: I'd specifically like to see that among the Anglosphere nations.
58:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think I grew up in a period where I didn't understand the deep connection that we all had.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: It was almost a quizzical, why is it that there are people like us and who do things like us all over the world?
58:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh yes, we can all spend quite a lot of time quibbling amongst each other, but as you say, as we go into multipolar worlds, perhaps we can get over our ethnicism of small uh sorry, our narcissism of small differences in this case with regards to our um with our our background both uh kin and culturally uh and uh actually work together because we know we're more likely to be able to trust us than anyone else in many ways.
59:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Trump is the Vishnu of um he's the Vishnu of early 21st century uh politics.
59:23
SPEAKER_02: He's the great destroyer.
59:25
SPEAKER_02: Um someone will emerge uh after him who who is capable of formulating a form we we did this after World War II.
59:37
SPEAKER_02: We formulated a project, I call it the Open Society Project.
59:40
SPEAKER_02: I think it's coming to an end.
59:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh Trump is a great destroyer.
59:44
SPEAKER_02: Somebody will emerge that will will, I think, formulate a plausible project for the West Um in the middle decades of the 20th century, you know, four of the middle decades of the 20th century.
59:57
SPEAKER_02: Europeans tried to do this with global climate change.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_02: That became the great kind of global mission.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_02: That all is turned to ashes uh for all kinds of reasons.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_02: Um and and yeah.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_02: So I'd be very it but I I I I think that's that's the likely I hope that such a person emerges and in the American context, uh and that you and I can have a conversation in di in a decade's time talking about all the problems and difficulties and mistakes of this new consensus.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely, but at least we'll be thinking critically, and that's the main thing.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh Rusty, you've been extraordinarily generous with your time.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on.
1:00:47
SPEAKER_00: I exhort everyone who hasn't come across first things to not only go and read first things, both digitally or in print.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I promise you, first things aren't paying me, but it is absolutely wonderful as a publication, and you should definitely subscribe.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_00: You get an unbeliev an unbelievably wide range of people writing for you.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh you yourself have written some excellent work.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: Can we expect any other books from you, Rusty, or is the editorship keeping you too busy?
1:01:14
SPEAKER_02: I am I I hope by year's end I complete a manuscript of a climbing memoir.
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_02: Rock climbing memoir.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_02: A different, a very different, but very powerful, strong god that bewitched me for um uh in my youth.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: And I remain active as a rock climber, but uh it's mostly about the time when I was under that goddess's very powerful spell.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, that sounds like uh a very nice antidote to all of this heavy stuff that we talk and think about, and I'm sure you'll end up with some rather interesting podcasts being invited on very different to those usually are.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh Rusty, it's been an absolute pleasure.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: Keep fighting the good fight.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: Let's speak again.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: All the best of the house, I'm gonna go to the house.