Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/Dominic Erdozain - Can America Live Up to Its Founding Principles?

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Interview Only w/Dominic Erdozain - Can America Live Up to Its Founding Principles? · The Chuck ToddCast

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Speaker 1: vary and rates may vary. So my next guest has
1:49
Speaker 1: a fascinating book out. It's called to Love a Country.
1:51
Speaker 1: Its name's Dominic ERDs name, and in some ways it's
1:55
Speaker 1: a it's a it's an analysis of America, sort of
1:59
Speaker 1: under standing what is American patriotism?
2:03
Speaker 2: What does it mean?
2:04
Speaker 1: I think in many ways the book identifies the inherent
2:08
Speaker 1: tension between American patriotism, American exceptionalism.
2:13
Speaker 3: And.
2:15
Speaker 1: Whether any of that has any sort of divine explanation
2:23
Speaker 1: for America's rise, and things like that.
2:26
Speaker 2: But in some.
2:26
Speaker 1: Ways, you know, I always say, the best thing I
2:28
Speaker 1: learned about the American experiment came from somebody who was
2:32
Speaker 1: not an American.
2:33
Speaker 2: It was detokeful, and his.
2:37
Speaker 1: Uber analysis of democracy in America when back in the
2:41
Speaker 1: nineteenth century is still useful and helpful to this day.
2:44
Speaker 1: So I think in many ways, you know, you need
2:48
Speaker 1: an outsider's perspective to sometimes understand the tension inside a country,
2:54
Speaker 1: and I think this book does a good job of that.
2:56
Speaker 1: Dominic joins me. Now, Dominic, welcome to the top.
2:59
Speaker 3: Touch much, I mean, you're it's a kind introduction.
3:02
Speaker 4: I think that there's a downside of travel and the
3:05
Speaker 4: outside of perspective of Samuel johnson joke that nothing narrows
3:08
Speaker 4: the mind like travel. You know, you go abroad and
3:11
Speaker 4: you cling to what you know and then you judge
3:14
Speaker 4: the other country accordingly. But I think the comparative dimension,
3:18
Speaker 4: you know, Mark Twain talks about that a lot, and
3:19
Speaker 4: I think he he diverted his own passionate kind of
3:22
Speaker 4: anti imperialism from his year of traveling of chasing the equator.
3:27
Speaker 4: So yeah, I love the analogy with the top Fill,
3:30
Speaker 4: And I think the Topville is great because although he
3:32
Speaker 4: does actually criticize this kind of very garrulous patriotism of
3:36
Speaker 4: thinking we're the best, he does it with such warmth
3:40
Speaker 4: that he really does feel that this is the crucible
3:43
Speaker 4: of history. This is the experience of democracy happening for
3:46
Speaker 4: our eyes. And I think that if you're only coming
3:49
Speaker 4: in from the negative side, then you're not going to
3:51
Speaker 4: have illuminating insights.
3:52
Speaker 1: But it's the balance. Well, look, I think the you know, look,
3:56
Speaker 1: you grab you, you sort of get it, this tension
3:58
Speaker 1: immediately because you you separate out. I guess Americanism, right,
4:03
Speaker 1: which would be nationalism, exceptionalism, this providential, this idea that
4:07
Speaker 1: you know, we have a divine right to our destiny
4:11
Speaker 1: versus the promise of America, which is a bit more concrete.
4:14
Speaker 1: Right equity, democracy, human rights, human dignity, right to pursue happiness.
4:20
Speaker 2: That is not divine.
4:23
Speaker 1: That is the assumption that we're all, you know, all
4:26
Speaker 1: humans have this opportunity in essence, and that I think
4:30
Speaker 1: the founders would would have believed that they weren't. I
4:33
Speaker 1: don't think the founders, and I'm curious where you come
4:35
Speaker 1: down on this. I don't think the Founders thought they
4:37
Speaker 1: were creating a country that was to be exceptional from
4:41
Speaker 1: all others. I think they were hoping they were creating
4:43
Speaker 1: a model of a country that would be copied by
4:47
Speaker 1: all others.
4:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they still had an idea of an exceptionalism,
4:51
Speaker 4: But I think you're right that they didn't. They had
4:53
Speaker 4: they believed in natural rights. They believed they did have
4:56
Speaker 4: a doctrine creation, but all people being created equal and
4:59
Speaker 4: being created good.
5:00
Speaker 3: So I quoted.
5:01
Speaker 4: Somewhere a biograph a biographer of Benjamin Rush who said
5:05
Speaker 4: that his theology was what the biographer called the loving
5:09
Speaker 4: heresy of universal salvation. So the idea that everybody is
5:13
Speaker 4: inherently good and everybody has the possibility for salvation. So,
5:16
Speaker 4: if there's a theology, it is on that kind of
5:19
Speaker 4: universalistic side. But the complexity comes in from the fact
5:24
Speaker 4: that they believed in a sort of form of Calvinism,
5:29
Speaker 4: or that are a very specific kind of providence when
5:32
Speaker 4: it came to their understanding of America in history. So
5:35
Speaker 4: someone like Thomas Paine is writing common sense he's using
5:39
Speaker 4: John Locke's idea of natural rights, but he's also talking
5:42
Speaker 4: about this messianic nation, that it's the birth of a
5:45
Speaker 4: new world as at hand, so you kind of there's
5:47
Speaker 4: a tension between the two right from the start.
5:50
Speaker 1: Explain your motivation for doing this book. What was the trigger?
5:54
Speaker 4: I think, you know, we were talking earlier about whether
5:56
Speaker 4: historian is a therapist. You know, I write things to
5:59
Speaker 4: work through my own traumas and dilemmas, and I think
6:03
Speaker 4: that what really got me with twenty sixteen. Of course
6:05
Speaker 4: that was a trauma from my own British perspective. With Brexit,
6:08
Speaker 4: I started to see myself as much more of a
6:11
Speaker 4: European and there was that kind of blow and.
6:14
Speaker 1: Then you didn't know that you had to choose until
6:16
Speaker 1: Brexit was exactly and I started.
6:19
Speaker 4: To sort of like the idea of you know, I
6:20
Speaker 4: never really sort of brought into cosmopolitanism, the idea that
6:23
Speaker 4: you could be of no nation, and I found some
6:26
Speaker 4: writers very inspiring on that level, but it doesn't really
6:28
Speaker 4: go anywhere. Ultimately, you need to have a grounding and
6:31
Speaker 4: attachment to somewhere. But I like the idea of wearing
6:33
Speaker 4: national identity light as a sort of coat rather than
6:38
Speaker 4: a kind of iron identity or iron cage, as some
6:40
Speaker 4: people would put it. I and then the Trump election
6:44
Speaker 4: and this sort of surge of nationalism which.
6:46
Speaker 3: Seemed to prompt.
6:49
Speaker 4: In some ways a rebirth of American exceptionalism. Are kind
6:53
Speaker 4: of grown up American exceptionalism and a few historians talking
6:56
Speaker 4: about the soul of America, and I think the sort
6:58
Speaker 4: of the Biden response to.
7:00
Speaker 3: That in twenty twenty was very much, this is not
7:02
Speaker 3: who we are.
7:03
Speaker 4: And I felt there was something a little bit superficial
7:06
Speaker 4: about that, and particularly in relation to one of the
7:10
Speaker 4: big themes of the book is militarism, and I thought, well,
7:14
Speaker 4: you still get militarism from both sides, and there are
7:18
Speaker 4: more benign forms of exceptionalism that don't see nationalists, that
7:21
Speaker 4: still lead you down the same route.
7:23
Speaker 1: Joe Biden used to use the phrase worthy essential nation.
7:27
Speaker 1: He would not say exceptional, but he said essential, which
7:32
Speaker 1: I found to be, which is just really a synonym
7:34
Speaker 1: for exceptional.
7:35
Speaker 4: I think it is a synonym. And there's been some
7:37
Speaker 4: interesting writing on that recently. And then you've got Madeline
7:39
Speaker 4: Albright saying we're the indispensable nation. And then you go
7:42
Speaker 4: back to Henry Lou's The American Century says we are
7:44
Speaker 4: the vital nation. So you can pick your adjective, right,
7:47
Speaker 4: but if it means that you are not going to
7:51
Speaker 4: listen to other people, it's deeply problematic.
7:54
Speaker 3: I think that the.
7:55
Speaker 4: Tension for me is how it plays out in terms
7:59
Speaker 4: of collaboration or in terms of democratic processes. You have
8:03
Speaker 4: people like the hero of the book at the end
8:06
Speaker 4: is JFK giving these speeches in nineteen sixty three talking
8:10
Speaker 4: about partnership and shared mortality with the Soviets world human
8:14
Speaker 4: we will breathe the same are So there are sort
8:16
Speaker 4: of very exciting mainstream alternatives to this. But the negative
8:23
Speaker 4: side of it would be John Foster Dulles saying setting
8:26
Speaker 4: briefing his own diplomats before the meeting in Geneva, to say,
8:31
Speaker 4: they want to have a quality with us. The Soviets
8:33
Speaker 4: and the Chinese do not do anything that could give
8:36
Speaker 4: a sense that we.
8:38
Speaker 3: Afford equality or we granted.
8:40
Speaker 4: Quality to them, which in a way it's the very
8:42
Speaker 4: opposite of the national creed of equality. So it's that
8:46
Speaker 4: kind of whether you're vital or indispensable, if you're looking
8:50
Speaker 4: down on others, you're betraying the democratic promise.
8:54
Speaker 1: I think, what if you call yourself an American exceptionalist
8:58
Speaker 1: because you believe that democracy is the only way and
9:02
Speaker 1: you're you know, and that's the that's what you're really,
9:06
Speaker 1: that's really what your exceptionalism is about.
9:09
Speaker 4: It.
9:10
Speaker 1: But because America is the leading democracy and has to
9:13
Speaker 1: be the protector of it. And look, let me let
9:16
Speaker 1: me put it this. Sorry, I'm beating around the bush.
9:19
Speaker 1: That's how I view this country. I feel like, I
9:21
Speaker 1: feel as if we are the stewards of democracy around
9:24
Speaker 1: the world, and when we don't defend it, you then
9:29
Speaker 1: we have problems then and things atrophy, and that it
9:32
Speaker 1: is in our national security interest to defend democracy around
9:35
Speaker 1: the world because the more democracy flourishes, the safer we're
9:39
Speaker 1: going to be.
9:40
Speaker 2: Right, And so that's sort of how I come about.
9:44
Speaker 1: A version of an exceptionalism at least when I think
9:46
Speaker 1: how the United States should behave around the world.
9:49
Speaker 2: Where would that fall.
9:50
Speaker 4: In your I think it's perfectly reasonable historically to say
9:55
Speaker 4: that it's a pioneer democracy and that it's the first
9:58
Speaker 4: to have these intitutions that allow universal although manhood, franchise, franchise.
10:06
Speaker 4: You know, it's slow on both the feminist side and
10:10
Speaker 4: on the race racial closure. We all know that I
10:13
Speaker 4: do think there's anything wrong.
10:14
Speaker 1: With you know, it is faster then every other form,
10:16
Speaker 1: every other system that was tried.
10:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I.
10:20
Speaker 1: Mean I hear you on this and I always sit there,
10:23
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's on slavery, with all of these
10:25
Speaker 1: terrible things that this democracy sort of allowed to fall
10:29
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of democracy until until we realized that
10:33
Speaker 1: it didn't. As slow as democracy is, it moves faster
10:38
Speaker 1: than every other system.
10:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:40
Speaker 4: I think someone who comes to mind here would be
10:42
Speaker 4: William Jennings Bryan, because he was a fierce opponent of
10:45
Speaker 4: imperialism in nineteen hundred and he was saying that, you know,
10:50
Speaker 4: if you say that we're a pioneer democracy, it doesn't
10:52
Speaker 4: mean that we can export it. It doesn't come with
10:53
Speaker 4: a gatling gun attachment, the idea that you can impose
10:57
Speaker 4: that on the Filipinos. So I think the question here
11:01
Speaker 4: would be about means and ends that if you really
11:03
Speaker 4: do believe in democracy, you've got to believe in the
11:06
Speaker 4: principle of consent, and consent doesn't go with militarism. And
11:12
Speaker 4: there's a fine line between saying you have to defend democracy,
11:15
Speaker 4: defend the national interest, and actually imposing it at the
11:19
Speaker 4: points begun. The one final thing I'd say to your
11:22
Speaker 4: comment was William J. Watkins, African American freemen of the
11:26
Speaker 4: mid nineteenth century. He says, the essence of the democratic
11:29
Speaker 4: idea is the unity of humankind. So with people like
11:32
Speaker 4: William Lloyd Garrison, the abolition as they have, you know,
11:35
Speaker 4: our country is the world and our countrymen or man kind.
11:39
Speaker 4: For them, equality within the nation involved a basic human solidarity.
11:45
Speaker 4: So when you say the way the guardians of democracy,
11:47
Speaker 4: there's a danger saying we'retle there first, where the pioneers
11:50
Speaker 4: and we get to make the rules.
11:52
Speaker 2: That's fair.
11:53
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this is it a Is democracy
11:56
Speaker 1: and self determination the same thing? Or can you support
11:59
Speaker 1: self determination that leads to a monarchy.
12:03
Speaker 4: That's a good point. No, I think they're not the
12:05
Speaker 4: same thing. And I think nations can vote for undemocrat
12:08
Speaker 4: cratic structures of government and undemocratic leaders. There's a danger
12:14
Speaker 4: that all these things has become a shell for something
12:16
Speaker 4: that is nationalistic or something that is potentially tyrannical.
12:21
Speaker 3: They're not synonymous.
12:26
Speaker 1: If you do something that's a little bit unique for
12:28
Speaker 1: an historian when tackling sort of the American question, the
12:33
Speaker 1: American question, you don't paint Lincoln in the best of life.
12:40
Speaker 4: I don't because I think that as someone who lives
12:43
Speaker 4: in the South and feels a lot of the sense
12:46
Speaker 4: of aba.
12:48
Speaker 1: Let people know, you're in Emory, you grew up in
12:51
Speaker 1: the UK, I think you're and I live in Atlanta.
12:53
Speaker 2: You're in Emory, yeah.
12:55
Speaker 3: And I spend a lot of time in South Carolina.
12:56
Speaker 4: I don't defend the South, and it's it's caused in
13:01
Speaker 4: the Civil War. But I think that so many people
13:05
Speaker 4: at the time warned Lincoln about the cost of the
13:08
Speaker 4: war and that it wouldn't be over by Christmas, and
13:10
Speaker 4: this idea that you call up in ninety thousand militia
13:16
Speaker 4: and it's all going to be over in a couple
13:17
Speaker 4: of months. But if you want to have you know,
13:20
Speaker 4: Winfield Scott is his senior military leader, wanted me, if
13:25
Speaker 4: you want to have political unity at the end, you
13:27
Speaker 4: have to be very careful. Again, we're back to means
13:29
Speaker 4: and ends that you could argue people like Robert ben
13:33
Speaker 4: Warren argue that the Southern identity was actually created by
13:36
Speaker 4: the Civil War, that the US and them there.
13:39
Speaker 2: Were previous hundreds per se.
13:40
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what the Southern identity would
13:43
Speaker 1: be today without the Civil War, do you.
13:48
Speaker 3: No, I don't, and I don't think there was.
13:49
Speaker 4: You know, you look at people like Colin Woodard in
13:51
Speaker 4: his book American Nations, and he will draw strong distinctions
13:55
Speaker 4: between Appalatia, the Deep South, and the Upper South. And
13:59
Speaker 4: the Civil War created an embittered identity which made the
14:03
Speaker 4: foundation of reconstruction almost impossible. I mean, I quote Lysander
14:08
Speaker 4: Spooner saying he mixed analogy with Imagine.
14:11
Speaker 3: Roger Williams in Rhode Island.
14:13
Speaker 4: If he decided, after creating this haven for religious freedom,
14:17
Speaker 4: to suddenly employ the methods of the Inquisition and start
14:19
Speaker 4: persecuting heretics to the point of death, that would be
14:24
Speaker 4: no less extreme than this idea of a civil war
14:27
Speaker 4: for democracy. And I think that that's the long term legacy,
14:32
Speaker 4: is that violence kind of breeds violence, and it was
14:35
Speaker 4: the worst possible foundation for African American freedom.
14:41
Speaker 1: What did we get right with the Marshall Plan that
14:43
Speaker 1: we got wrong with Reconstruction?
14:45
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, that's a good question.
14:47
Speaker 4: I think that perhaps the defeat of Hitler was such
14:51
Speaker 4: that the German nation, well that the German nation itself,
14:55
Speaker 4: but Europe as a whole, did not have any lost
14:58
Speaker 4: cause kind of sentimentality.
15:01
Speaker 3: I think that there isn't.
15:03
Speaker 1: You're building on a grievance and why And I guess
15:06
Speaker 1: that's the ultimate question.
15:08
Speaker 2: Why does Germany not?
15:10
Speaker 1: Look, I'm sure there are pockets that there's some lost cause, right,
15:13
Speaker 1: we know, you know, there's always a small pocket here
15:16
Speaker 1: or there. But why was there not? Why did we
15:20
Speaker 1: not see that lost cause in Germany? But that we
15:22
Speaker 1: saw on this out.
15:23
Speaker 4: I don't know whether it would have been the same
15:25
Speaker 4: thing if Germany had been incorporated into the American nation
15:29
Speaker 4: or into the British nation of Churchill E. C.
15:31
Speaker 1: Interting, had we tried to force them, had they been
15:34
Speaker 1: a they lost their own national identity.
15:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
15:39
Speaker 4: I think it's you know, it's hard to you know,
15:42
Speaker 4: I toughtly did the comparison with the with the revolution War,
15:45
Speaker 4: but most of the loyalists after the Revolutionary War either
15:48
Speaker 4: went to Canada, or they went back home, or they
15:51
Speaker 4: quietly disappeared. It's it's not the same as then governing
15:55
Speaker 4: people under the Bayonets and under the said the authority that's.
16:00
Speaker 3: Just defeated you.
16:01
Speaker 4: So I think that the fractricidal struggle of the war
16:03
Speaker 4: made it in some ways harder to resolve afterwards than
16:07
Speaker 4: you know, foreign languages, you know, and geographically the different nations.
16:12
Speaker 1: I want to sit in Lincoln here. You call it
16:13
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg doctrine. You call it the biggest lie in
16:16
Speaker 1: the nation ever told itself.
16:18
Speaker 3: I was listening to Peter Brad.
16:19
Speaker 4: Peter Brown's a pre eminent historian of late Antiquity, and
16:22
Speaker 4: he's talking about the fusion of Christianity with the sort
16:26
Speaker 4: of honor warrior codes of the Middle Ages, and he
16:28
Speaker 4: talks about Beerwulf the epic poems, saying these poems were
16:33
Speaker 4: the gene pool, the sort of cultural gene pool for
16:37
Speaker 4: a warrior aristocracy. And I think what really gets me
16:40
Speaker 4: with the Gettysburg address is that you have these young
16:44
Speaker 4: men who are, as I explained in the chapter, and
16:47
Speaker 4: pretty much sent to their death. By this point, most
16:49
Speaker 4: of them are either being conscripted or they're being forced
16:52
Speaker 4: into fighting pretty much against their will. Many of them
16:55
Speaker 4: are immigrants and couldn't really follow the ideology. Many of
16:59
Speaker 4: them didn't find their weapons. A large number of weapons
17:02
Speaker 4: incorrectly loaded, et cetera. Were discovered after battle, but they're
17:06
Speaker 4: killed in devastating numbers. And then in the Getsburg Address,
17:10
Speaker 4: Lincoln speaks for them. He basically said, we've got to
17:12
Speaker 4: keep this war going on. Behalf of them. He allows
17:15
Speaker 4: his case to be made through them. So he's kind
17:17
Speaker 4: of been ventriloquising the dead in some way. And then
17:20
Speaker 4: you notice how that language is used by Wilson in
17:24
Speaker 4: the First World War, It's used by Truman in justifying
17:27
Speaker 4: nuclear energy, It's used by George W.
17:30
Speaker 3: Bush and Dick Cheney to justify Iraq.
17:32
Speaker 1: It becomes every doesn't every leader overseeing a military conflict
17:39
Speaker 1: do this.
17:41
Speaker 4: I think they do, But I think what excites me
17:43
Speaker 4: going in to bring out the inner to top film,
17:46
Speaker 4: he's thrilled by the the the non militaristic nature of
17:49
Speaker 4: American society, and he has this He said to America,
17:53
Speaker 4: is that the least militaristic nation in the world, who
17:56
Speaker 4: doesn't need a big professional army, And he sees he says,
18:00
Speaker 4: you ought to destroy democracy basically.
18:01
Speaker 1: Started game one hundred years too soon, it turned out.
18:04
Speaker 1: But anyway, go ahead, Yeah, I.
18:05
Speaker 4: Mean, I think if you if you want to undermine
18:09
Speaker 4: the process of of of of.
18:14
Speaker 3: Freedom of expression and free elections.
18:16
Speaker 4: If you want to undermine the nuts and bolts or
18:19
Speaker 4: that the procedures of democracy, you start a war.
18:21
Speaker 3: So Lincoln attack that.
18:22
Speaker 4: But I think the fundamental issue for me is the
18:25
Speaker 4: myth that unity somehow comes through blood and through conflict,
18:29
Speaker 4: because I think history shows that. You give a good
18:31
Speaker 4: example with Germany, but typically war was to create long
18:35
Speaker 4: legacies of alienation, and that has been sort of baked
18:39
Speaker 4: into our sectional politics and baked into our kind of
18:42
Speaker 4: culture war.
18:43
Speaker 1: In a sense, it sounds like you come down on
18:45
Speaker 1: the side that we haven't resolved the Civil War yet.
18:49
Speaker 2: Psychology we have.
18:50
Speaker 3: And I think I think that there's a lot of language.
18:55
Speaker 4: You know, I follow some of these groups for research
18:56
Speaker 4: purposes on social media, and I think it's there's sense
19:00
Speaker 4: of being judged by the Yankees, and there's the sense
19:02
Speaker 4: of being sort of you know that.
19:04
Speaker 1: Lackaday's elites are the nineteenth century Yankees.
19:07
Speaker 4: Right, yes, And you see that with COVID debates and others.
19:10
Speaker 4: I'm not legitimizing it, but I think if you want
19:13
Speaker 4: heari you aj Musty says, you know the problem with
19:15
Speaker 4: the war comes with the victor and not the defeated,
19:18
Speaker 4: because he thinks he's just shown that the violence pays,
19:21
Speaker 4: and now he finds that it's harder, you know, to
19:22
Speaker 4: win hearts than to win battles. So I think with Lincoln.
19:28
Speaker 4: I used to love his eloquence and the profundity of
19:32
Speaker 4: his statements. And when I looked at it through the
19:35
Speaker 4: lens of there's a book of the people's history of
19:38
Speaker 4: the Civil War, and you look at it through the
19:39
Speaker 4: lens of the ordinary person who's not a slave owner,
19:42
Speaker 4: who is forced to fight. Leave that the family vending themselves,
19:46
Speaker 4: and these people deserted. Some of them were executed for desertion.
19:51
Speaker 4: That war is not about glittering phrases. It's just about suffering.
19:55
Speaker 4: And so I became very I started to see it
19:58
Speaker 4: as a mythology. And then I started to see his
20:01
Speaker 4: own cabinet generally wanting about these things before, and I
20:05
Speaker 4: thought of him in a less positive life.
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22:15
Speaker 2: In some ways.
22:15
Speaker 1: You make the case, but this is true of any
22:18
Speaker 1: nation that survives a civil war. They're going to mythologize it, right,
22:23
Speaker 1: and the winner gets to decide what the myth what
22:26
Speaker 1: the myth is.
22:28
Speaker 3: Totally.
22:29
Speaker 4: But I think that democracy itself, and one of your
22:32
Speaker 4: discussions or one of your shows, you're talking about politics
22:35
Speaker 4: as a way to solve problems without punching each other
22:38
Speaker 4: or having a fight.
22:39
Speaker 1: Now, I mean it's how I defend politics. I'm like, look,
22:42
Speaker 1: we created it as human beings to because we're exhausted
22:46
Speaker 1: from violence.
22:47
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and John Locke would say the same thing.
22:49
Speaker 4: You know that the civil society is a state of
22:51
Speaker 4: peace as opposed to state of war.
22:53
Speaker 3: That you can't get there.
22:54
Speaker 4: I mean, it's complicated with him because he will justify
22:58
Speaker 4: morally justifying armed rebellion against tyranny.
23:01
Speaker 3: But the civil war is a different ballgame.
23:03
Speaker 4: And you're trying to create this civil society, this peaceful
23:07
Speaker 4: union through violent means, and the two just don't add up.
23:13
Speaker 2: Love of country versus worship of country.
23:15
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny that, you know, sort of I
23:18
Speaker 1: feel like you're you're debating. You're clearly on one side
23:23
Speaker 1: that debate. And I always say this about politicians. You
23:26
Speaker 1: can love a politician, but be careful if you worship them. Yes, right,
23:30
Speaker 1: there's this fine line, and you know we were seeing
23:34
Speaker 1: you know, we're seeing it in the Trump movement. Right,
23:37
Speaker 1: there's the point of worship, which sort of where critical
23:41
Speaker 1: thinking disappears and things like that. You know, but there's
23:45
Speaker 1: there's this fine line.
23:46
Speaker 2: So where.
23:49
Speaker 1: You know, how do we both how do we sell
23:52
Speaker 1: the American story without going down a cult?
23:55
Speaker 4: Yeah?
23:55
Speaker 3: I was really struck by something.
23:57
Speaker 1: It feels like that's where you were trying to get at.
23:59
Speaker 4: Here, that spot on and Raphael Wannak said a lovely
24:02
Speaker 4: thing the other day in a Lanti said that, you know,
24:05
Speaker 4: we're as a nation where a family, like all families,
24:07
Speaker 4: we have a complicated family history and just to be
24:11
Speaker 4: And the Emma Goldman quote at the start, you know,
24:13
Speaker 4: there's a different there are different kinds of love. There's
24:15
Speaker 4: a love that can look at a spouse or a
24:18
Speaker 4: parther and not sort of blind worship. You know that
24:22
Speaker 4: there's almost more depth to love that can be critical.
24:26
Speaker 4: And that quote I had at the start from a
24:28
Speaker 4: guy called Abraham Bishop who's saying, really, national greatness is
24:32
Speaker 4: where individual greatness dies because you lose your self respect
24:35
Speaker 4: and you worship a leader, a nation, or an idea
24:38
Speaker 4: that and this is.
24:40
Speaker 3: The point made by Throw.
24:41
Speaker 4: I mean, Throw is pretty polemical about He's talking about
24:43
Speaker 4: Patrick's and being like a maggot in the brain, which
24:45
Speaker 4: is a nasty way to put it, but he's concerned
24:48
Speaker 4: about loss of self respect, that if you sell your
24:52
Speaker 4: identity in a way to the group, you lose that.
24:54
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the examples I do like is
24:56
Speaker 4: Gandhi because Gandhy is wrestling with tagre tagues. This are saying,
25:00
Speaker 4: you know, we don't want He's the poet, the Nobel
25:02
Speaker 4: Prize winning poet. He says, we don't want to be
25:04
Speaker 4: nationalists because nationalism who has ruined us, British nationalism has
25:08
Speaker 4: crushed our people. And Gandhi said, yeah, but we need
25:11
Speaker 4: to stand on our own two feet.
25:12
Speaker 3: You know.
25:12
Speaker 4: I want to have the windows open to my house
25:15
Speaker 4: and let the cultures of the world flow through it.
25:18
Speaker 4: But I don't want to be blown off my feet
25:20
Speaker 4: by any So he's he's quite strong in defending a
25:22
Speaker 4: national identity, but not in worshiping the nation.
25:25
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's so true.
25:27
Speaker 1: It's like, if you don't have an identity, you're probably
25:31
Speaker 1: not going to have a successful country. But every time,
25:34
Speaker 1: but the minute you tip to nationalism, right, that's when
25:39
Speaker 1: you know, people start to lose freedom. Right, any country
25:42
Speaker 1: that starts to embrace some form of nationalism, somebody is
25:46
Speaker 1: going to lose some freedoms. And it seems that's go ahead.
25:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, no, I think that that's that's the issue.
25:54
Speaker 4: And I think that the problem with exceptionalism is that
25:57
Speaker 4: it it inches towards that idea. You know, George Well,
26:00
Speaker 4: it's got a great essay notes on nationalism he sort
26:03
Speaker 4: of teases the idea that patriotism can be the inoculation
26:06
Speaker 4: for nationalism. But when he talks about patriotism, there's such
26:09
Speaker 4: kind of benign and innocent things like gardening or flower
26:12
Speaker 4: ranging or drinking tea in the English sense, that anything
26:17
Speaker 4: that smacks of superiority or kind of egoism is going
26:22
Speaker 4: to be dangerous. So that's that's the problem. And I say,
26:25
Speaker 4: you know, from a British perspective, you know, most of
26:26
Speaker 4: these ideas were taken from us, you know, the Puritan idea,
26:30
Speaker 4: the city on the hill.
26:31
Speaker 3: So it's how to love your country. I think people like.
26:34
Speaker 4: Randolph Bourne I talk about in the World War One
26:36
Speaker 4: chapter capture that, you know, loving the diversity and loving
26:40
Speaker 4: the cities as a model of American.
26:43
Speaker 1: Look, a lot of your critique it has to do
26:47
Speaker 1: with sort of media ecosystems too, whether it's Hollywood, historians, journalists, politicians.
26:56
Speaker 1: That's a part right myth making. Put it this way,
27:01
Speaker 1: the older I get, the more important it is to
27:04
Speaker 1: me to find out more about the author of a
27:07
Speaker 1: history book rather than the history itself, because so much
27:11
Speaker 1: of the history book is going to be through the
27:13
Speaker 1: prism of what they've experienced.
27:16
Speaker 2: Right.
27:16
Speaker 1: One of my favorite examples on this is I've read
27:20
Speaker 1: probably five different books in the eighteen seventy six election, right,
27:23
Speaker 1: And the difference is the facts don't change, the interpretation
27:28
Speaker 1: of the facts change, and it's all based on the
27:32
Speaker 1: author and their sort of wherever their beliefs are right,
27:36
Speaker 1: wherever they sort of fall on the idea of who
27:41
Speaker 1: was voting when you know stuff like this, and I
27:47
Speaker 1: you know, but then again, I don't know how you
27:49
Speaker 1: write a good history book without without sort of your
27:52
Speaker 1: own you know. I always say, we're all born with
27:53
Speaker 1: original bias, meaning where we're born, how who were born
27:59
Speaker 1: into grow up? You know, these are choices we didn't make,
28:02
Speaker 1: but they they create a bias. And how do you
28:10
Speaker 1: how do you talk about yours in your book?
28:13
Speaker 4: I think that's it's a fair observation. I think the
28:17
Speaker 4: issue there wasn't one time the myth of the objective
28:21
Speaker 4: historian and impartiality and.
28:23
Speaker 1: The I don't think that exists at all, and we
28:25
Speaker 1: have to just study that you have it. I always
28:28
Speaker 1: say that there's fairness, like the trope of fair and
28:32
Speaker 1: balanced was you know, balance was bs but fair?
28:36
Speaker 2: Are you fair? I'm fair?
28:38
Speaker 1: I may not agree, but I'll be fair and give
28:41
Speaker 1: somebody their chance to give their point of view.
28:43
Speaker 3: I think that's really good.
28:44
Speaker 4: I don't claim to be neutral, and I say that
28:45
Speaker 4: in the produc I'm not that scientific, you know impartial
28:49
Speaker 4: commentator that you know, Divia Allen is referring to, and
28:51
Speaker 4: he says, you know, no one really approaches patriotism with
28:54
Speaker 4: scientific detachment. I think that the idea of the myth
28:59
Speaker 4: of impartiality is pretty much gone. You might get some
29:02
Speaker 4: old school historians who are very snooty about presentism, that
29:05
Speaker 4: you shouldn't be right for the present, but we.
29:07
Speaker 3: Do live in the present and we've rested with our problems.
29:10
Speaker 4: The great American historians like Richard Hofstatter are open and
29:13
Speaker 4: saying we need to understand our times. And I think
29:17
Speaker 4: as a scholar, you've just got to be I think
29:19
Speaker 4: your word fairness is crucial. I'm not being neutral. I'm
29:23
Speaker 4: trying to be fair, but I'm offering a perspective which
29:28
Speaker 4: takes up so someone like David Williams says it's a
29:30
Speaker 4: people's history. He's looking at the soldiers who had to
29:33
Speaker 4: fight this war, and he's putting their perspective ahead of
29:36
Speaker 4: that of statesmen. And in the same way, I'm owning
29:40
Speaker 4: the fact that I had come from this country. I
29:42
Speaker 4: do love it and I have deep attachment to it
29:44
Speaker 4: and deep immersion in, you know, in the game, so
29:47
Speaker 4: to speak.
29:48
Speaker 3: But I also am very troubled by militarism.
29:51
Speaker 4: And you know, I haven't experienced the race, you know,
29:54
Speaker 4: the race issue that I discussed in the same.
29:57
Speaker 3: Way, but I think the issue of militarism is one
29:59
Speaker 3: that has affiliated me.
30:01
Speaker 4: So that is kind of in the way the lens
30:04
Speaker 4: I'm looking at it through.
30:06
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about and I'm curious because you talk
30:08
Speaker 1: about the patriotic myth when it comes to Cold War
30:14
Speaker 1: mythology and Iraq War mythology. Let's delve more into that
30:19
Speaker 1: a little bit for me of what you were trying
30:21
Speaker 1: to get at here, because I look, I think you're right,
30:24
Speaker 1: you know when it comes to the Cold War, and
30:28
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny sometimes the more we know, the
30:32
Speaker 1: messier it is, and the harder it would be to
30:34
Speaker 1: keep the unity you might have needed. Right, some would
30:36
Speaker 1: argue that a mythology is sometimes useful to create cohesiveness.
30:44
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, I think there are some scholars who'll
30:46
Speaker 4: say that it was an imaginary war, but it was
30:48
Speaker 4: really And.
30:48
Speaker 1: I could argue all religion is a myth, the creation
30:52
Speaker 1: of religion itself is the great mythology maker of our times.
30:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that, and some of that.
31:00
Speaker 4: All Well would say that, yes, but there was religion
31:04
Speaker 4: and the superstition, and then we've just created new versions
31:06
Speaker 4: of that kind of thing around ourselves and about ideologies
31:10
Speaker 4: or about nations. So you know, I think we are
31:12
Speaker 4: myth making creatures. I think that you know that analogy
31:17
Speaker 4: of like a positive myth, you know Roland Bart who
31:19
Speaker 4: I quote you would take normal myths about because you
31:22
Speaker 4: believe the best about somebody. It might actually build trust in,
31:25
Speaker 4: might actually build positive outcomes. But if you're believing a
31:29
Speaker 4: myth about yourself and your own that's dangerous. With the
31:32
Speaker 4: Cold War, I'm persuaded by those who who argue that
31:39
Speaker 4: it was a confected crisis that you know, George Kennan
31:42
Speaker 4: and the Long Telegram, which implied that the Soviets were
31:46
Speaker 4: almost both ideologically and kind of ethnically wired for war,
31:50
Speaker 4: and Soviets had just lost more twenty million people in
31:53
Speaker 4: the Second World War, and when they did not have
31:56
Speaker 4: a nuclear weapon.
31:57
Speaker 3: At the time, they were not gearing up for World
31:59
Speaker 3: War three, and Kennan lived.
32:02
Speaker 4: To regret his role in that, But I feel that
32:04
Speaker 4: that was a situation we could have been spared a
32:08
Speaker 4: nuclear age. There is actually no reason to believe that
32:11
Speaker 4: YUCA weapons were going to become a normal And this
32:13
Speaker 4: is what Kennedy realizes. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco
32:17
Speaker 4: and then the Cuban missile crisis, he starts to realize
32:20
Speaker 4: that the drivers for war were as much within his
32:23
Speaker 4: own government, within his own military, as they were within
32:26
Speaker 4: the Soviets. And then he opens up this back channel
32:29
Speaker 4: of diplomacy. You've got Norman Cousins going over to going
32:34
Speaker 4: over to Russia, and then at one point actually hanging
32:37
Speaker 4: out with Kristchoff at his phillip on the Black Sea,
32:40
Speaker 4: and his children are borrowing Chris joffs swimming trunks. That
32:42
Speaker 4: detail is not in a book, but I can't get
32:44
Speaker 4: over the fact that they wore Chris Jof's swimming trunks
32:47
Speaker 4: six months after the world nearly blew up. And it's
32:50
Speaker 4: a tragedy that JFK died because I think he knows.
32:54
Speaker 4: A British commentator said at the time He isn't just
32:56
Speaker 4: calling for disarmament. He's just called off the Cold War,
33:00
Speaker 4: and I think he demystifies the enmities. We don't need
33:05
Speaker 4: to hate each other, we don't need to agree on everything,
33:07
Speaker 4: but we could admire the Russian people while distancing ourselves
33:10
Speaker 4: from that ideology. He's very clear about that, and that
33:13
Speaker 4: makes me think how many other leaders could have actually
33:15
Speaker 4: or could now be doing that.
33:18
Speaker 1: No, it's a fair point, and you know, we.
33:24
Speaker 2: It's funny what we do.
33:26
Speaker 1: And I always think about what did I try to
33:28
Speaker 1: put myself back in? You know, what did the sixteen
33:31
Speaker 1: year old version of me think of the Soviet Union?
33:33
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old version of me? Then it fell, you know,
33:38
Speaker 1: But it's funny about war. I remember my father being
33:44
Speaker 1: paranoid about Gorbachev because Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader
33:48
Speaker 1: who had no memory of World War Two, and he
33:51
Speaker 1: used to take solace in the previous Soviet leaders who
33:57
Speaker 1: were all a fighting age during World War Two. And
34:00
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, because they paid a deep they
34:02
Speaker 1: paid the deeds. Nobody paid a bigger price in the
34:05
Speaker 1: war than the Soviets, and right they lost more. They
34:09
Speaker 1: and in some ways you know, in his mind he
34:12
Speaker 1: always felt he always felt like the Soviets were never
34:15
Speaker 1: going to start a war because they paid, they they
34:17
Speaker 1: had a memory of it, and his fear was what
34:19
Speaker 1: happens when that memory fades.
34:22
Speaker 2: And I worry about this all the.
34:23
Speaker 1: Time with our own memories, you know, our own whether
34:27
Speaker 1: it's fating memories and how how to regulate a democracy,
34:30
Speaker 1: fading memories of how our constitution's supposed to work. Like,
34:32
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes if things the further away something is,
34:36
Speaker 1: the harder it is to perceive as a as a
34:38
Speaker 1: righteous idea in the present.
34:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think on the war thing, it's it's
34:42
Speaker 4: definitely true that some of the greatest hawks have been
34:45
Speaker 4: people who didn't actually fight and do have this sort
34:48
Speaker 4: of right romanticized view.
34:51
Speaker 1: I've got I've got an uncle who's not a big
34:52
Speaker 1: fan of chickenhawks, as he calls them.
34:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. There's a couple of books with that on
34:57
Speaker 4: that title. And I think it's probably a fair comment
34:59
Speaker 4: that if if you experience it, but I think that
35:02
Speaker 4: you know, books that really do throw out that common
35:05
Speaker 4: experiences are really valuable.
35:07
Speaker 1: Certainly, you do something that I think was very necessary,
35:12
Speaker 1: and we really have it dug into this enough in
35:15
Speaker 1: a scholarly way, and that is what happened to us
35:19
Speaker 1: as a society in the first few years after nine
35:22
Speaker 1: to eleven, And how much we surrendered constitutional rights very quickly,
35:31
Speaker 1: how quickly, you know, if you didn't wear a flag
35:35
Speaker 1: pin right like it was. We took patriotism to a
35:38
Speaker 1: level we'd never done before, arguably or at least not
35:42
Speaker 1: since the draft, those that dodge the draft in the seventies.
35:48
Speaker 1: Do you think we've properly reckoned with that yet?
35:51
Speaker 4: I don't think so, no, And I think that's that
35:54
Speaker 4: this was the background of the book, and I mentioned
35:56
Speaker 4: the issue of militarism and feel that there was a
36:01
Speaker 4: sort of you know with Biden, you know, when he
36:03
Speaker 4: was interviewed on CBS, he was asked, if you know,
36:07
Speaker 4: we're capable of sustaining conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza at
36:11
Speaker 4: the same time, and he just spat at almost, of
36:14
Speaker 4: course we are. You know, it's the United States of America,
36:16
Speaker 4: you know, with the greatest nation in the history, in
36:18
Speaker 4: the history of the world. And that was such a
36:21
Speaker 4: jolting insight for me that that idea is still there,
36:25
Speaker 4: and it's it's a kind of bipartisan idea. I think
36:28
Speaker 4: that looking at the way I mean, I think things
36:30
Speaker 4: have changed in the last six months in terms of
36:32
Speaker 4: the legacy media and their balance on that particular issue
36:36
Speaker 4: of gaza. But I did see a lot of this
36:39
Speaker 4: very kind of block thinking, which is how I would
36:42
Speaker 4: sort of describe the nationalistic mentality of good guys, bad guys.
36:45
Speaker 4: We know who our allies are. And I think the
36:48
Speaker 4: most telling thing for me was someone like Dan Rava,
36:50
Speaker 4: because I quote him on both sides of that, really
36:54
Speaker 4: that he starts off saying, you know, he's the president,
36:57
Speaker 4: He'll tell me how to serve, and I'll just line
36:59
Speaker 4: up and serve, and that I'm basically not going to
37:01
Speaker 4: be a journalist right now, and then in a later
37:04
Speaker 4: interview with the BBC, he says, I'm worried about Patrick's
37:07
Speaker 4: and running mock here and that we kind of the
37:09
Speaker 4: times we really needed to ask the tough questions about
37:11
Speaker 4: weapons of mass destruction, we just didn't.
37:14
Speaker 3: So I think that that's shaking out. There's still people
37:16
Speaker 3: who really did back the war.
37:19
Speaker 4: Who are kind of I'm not saying that should necessarily
37:23
Speaker 4: be tainted, but they are. I do think that that's
37:25
Speaker 4: really worked through that's really been sufficiently acknowledged.
37:28
Speaker 3: How much?
37:30
Speaker 2: Right?
37:30
Speaker 1: But the Vietnam guys were never allowed back into the circle,
37:34
Speaker 1: is that right? I mean, you know, the geniuses behind
37:39
Speaker 1: Vietnam and Kennedy and Johnson, they didn't come back in Carter.
37:42
Speaker 1: They didn't come back if any of them were still
37:44
Speaker 1: a lot, you know. So in some ways, you're right,
37:48
Speaker 1: we've not had that reckoning with the Rocks this day,
37:52
Speaker 1: the way we did even with Vietnam. But this brings
37:55
Speaker 1: back something else. I mean, when do we start reassessing
38:00
Speaker 1: great power war warfare versus supposed lesser nations? And I
38:05
Speaker 1: say this, I mean asymmetric warfare. I mean, you know,
38:11
Speaker 1: in some ways, World War two and World War One
38:14
Speaker 1: are exceptions. Every other major battle that sort of that
38:20
Speaker 1: America is either you know, touched by in some way
38:23
Speaker 1: or a part of.
38:26
Speaker 2: It is.
38:27
Speaker 1: It is asymmetric warfare that has been more successful than
38:30
Speaker 1: great power warfare. Do you mean again with Iran? Yeah,
38:35
Speaker 1: I've seen a.
38:36
Speaker 4: Couple of pieces in the New York Times just saying that,
38:38
Speaker 4: you know, these humble drones are doing more damage than
38:41
Speaker 4: these great mighty Tomahawk missiles. I go back to Kennedy
38:46
Speaker 4: and you know, I reference Jeffrey Sachs as a person
38:48
Speaker 4: who really introduced me to this idea.
38:50
Speaker 3: But what Kennedy.
38:52
Speaker 4: Does in that strategy of the speech, the Peace Speech
38:55
Speaker 4: of nineteen sixty three and then a later one in
38:58
Speaker 4: September of the United Nations, he says, we need something
39:00
Speaker 4: more powerful than incontinental bistic missiles. If you think about that,
39:05
Speaker 4: something more powerful, what is more powerful? Dialogue?
39:09
Speaker 3: So cooperation.
39:12
Speaker 4: I think that to how the leader of the most
39:14
Speaker 4: powerful nation in the world say, actually, our weapons do
39:17
Speaker 4: not provide security because he realizes how to Cuba that
39:21
Speaker 4: the two most the two nations most in danger of
39:24
Speaker 4: nuclear annihilation are you know, Russia and the USA.
39:32
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41:10
Speaker 2: The two that held them right.
41:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's always like the you know, I'm not
41:15
Speaker 1: going to keep a gun in my house because the
41:17
Speaker 1: statistics say the likelihood of somebody getting shot in your
41:20
Speaker 1: house exponentially grows.
41:23
Speaker 2: If you have a gun in the house, you want.
41:25
Speaker 1: To take away. You want to lessen the odds somebody
41:27
Speaker 1: gets shot in your own house. Don't have a gun
41:29
Speaker 1: in your house. You want to lessen the odds. If
41:32
Speaker 1: there's not nuclear weapons used in your country, don't have
41:36
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons.
41:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:38
Speaker 4: I like the way you put that because I think
41:39
Speaker 4: in my own work in more inclined, it slightly more
41:42
Speaker 4: moralistic approach, and I think this takes us back to
41:45
Speaker 4: the loving a country, not worshiping it, and certainly not
41:49
Speaker 4: despising it. Is that's too much of this commentary on
41:52
Speaker 4: the left is of this spirit of some contempt for
41:55
Speaker 4: US empire, and it expresses it plemically. If you can
41:57
Speaker 4: express it like Jeff, hey, look, we're still Americans one
42:01
Speaker 4: hundred percent, but we're not really helping ourselves here.
42:04
Speaker 3: I think those conversations could be had.
42:06
Speaker 1: It can be very well. I mean, if the Kennedy legacy.
42:08
Speaker 1: After that, you could argue is expanding soft power?
42:12
Speaker 2: Right?
42:12
Speaker 1: What it was the peace quote within an attempt to
42:15
Speaker 1: expand soft power. And you know, I look at this
42:17
Speaker 1: current situation that we're dealing with with in Africa with Ebola,
42:21
Speaker 1: and I say, we the world is dealing with but
42:23
Speaker 1: the United States is not on the front lines like
42:25
Speaker 1: we normally are. And you know, here was a case
42:28
Speaker 1: where we understood that was the one you want to
42:30
Speaker 1: talk about. Something we we had gotten right during the
42:33
Speaker 1: Cold War was that, hey, soft power was a great
42:38
Speaker 1: diplomatic tool and it would certainly help us make sure nations,
42:43
Speaker 1: you know, stayed friendly with US, even if they wanted
42:45
Speaker 1: to be friendly with both the Soviets and US.
42:47
Speaker 4: No. Ill, we have a friend here who is whose
42:51
Speaker 4: mother's was a nurse in Sierra Leone and said that
42:54
Speaker 4: they worshiped George W. Bush because of what he did
42:58
Speaker 4: the AIDS prevention and the USA. It's extraordinary to see
43:02
Speaker 4: the other side of that. And and I do think
43:05
Speaker 4: that's necessarily done as soft.
43:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know we're not doing this out of
43:08
Speaker 1: the I mean, that's the thing, like this goes back
43:10
Speaker 1: to what is your what is your motive.
43:12
Speaker 2: You know, I'm.
43:14
Speaker 1: Uh, you know is your were It's all about incentives, right.
43:19
Speaker 1: The incentive for soft power was not just to make
43:22
Speaker 1: ourselves feel better. The incentive for soft power was to
43:25
Speaker 1: just build build alliances that would be or to protect
43:29
Speaker 1: our own shores, like you know why we're why did
43:32
Speaker 1: we regularly have our own folks on the front lines
43:36
Speaker 1: in Africa when they're being a bowler outbreak Because we
43:38
Speaker 1: didn't want it to come here, right, and we wanted
43:40
Speaker 1: to help manage it there.
43:42
Speaker 2: Right.
43:42
Speaker 1: It wasn't just out of the goodness of our heart.
43:45
Speaker 1: It was actually make protecting Americans.
43:48
Speaker 4: You know, at the end of the day, someone like
43:50
Speaker 4: Kennedy could help to recapture the word realism. It does
43:55
Speaker 4: disappoint me the way realism in in setual affairs is
43:59
Speaker 4: linked to militaries, because actually there's much more realism in
44:03
Speaker 4: those kind of strategies. And the other thing I liked
44:05
Speaker 4: from him was saying, as still there's as much prestige
44:08
Speaker 4: granted to the conscientious objective as there.
44:11
Speaker 1: Is to the soldier.
44:12
Speaker 3: You know, we won't have peace.
44:13
Speaker 4: And I think he's still talking about national prestige, but
44:17
Speaker 4: it's a redirected form where it's a more generous form perhaps.
44:21
Speaker 1: So yeah, So let me ask you about Reagan and
44:26
Speaker 1: peace through strength? What do you meant? What does that
44:31
Speaker 1: brase mean to you?
44:34
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean an awful lot.
44:36
Speaker 4: I think that in that sense, if we really have
44:40
Speaker 4: got these weapons that can destroy civilization, and I hesitate
44:45
Speaker 4: to use the word miracle, but it is remarkable that
44:48
Speaker 4: there were not more accidents, that there were not more,
44:50
Speaker 4: that there still hasn't been a major nuclear.
44:53
Speaker 3: Conflict, and there still could be.
44:54
Speaker 4: I mean, this is something that Ted Turner said just
44:56
Speaker 4: before he died with the big regrets is that we
44:58
Speaker 4: still have nuclear weapons. So you say, you know, not
45:02
Speaker 4: you but something that Reagan would talk about peace through strength.
45:06
Speaker 4: But it's just we're very fortunate that it didn't end
45:09
Speaker 4: in disaster. And I don't think it's real peace. I
45:12
Speaker 4: don't think it's I think it's a truce. Is not
45:14
Speaker 4: the same as peace. I think it's a nervous kind
45:17
Speaker 4: of cagy way to live.
45:20
Speaker 1: That's a great line. Truce is is not the same
45:24
Speaker 1: as peace. I like that. Let's talk about your framework, though,
45:28
Speaker 1: When you have a guy like Putin doing what he's
45:30
Speaker 1: doing in Ukraine, at that point, militarism's justified, isn't that.
45:36
Speaker 3: I'm certainly straight beyond my expertise.
45:39
Speaker 4: I think that.
45:43
Speaker 3: The question is how much you're fueling the fire.
45:46
Speaker 4: I mean, I am a believer in nonviolent resistance. I'm
45:51
Speaker 4: not saying that this is something that can be just
45:55
Speaker 4: learned spontaneously. I mean, that's the thing about Gandhi's he
45:58
Speaker 4: spent a long time, nineteen years in South Africa developing
46:01
Speaker 4: these techniques and it comes back to India and applies
46:04
Speaker 4: to them. But it's a long time in the making.
46:07
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying even to suddenly apply that in Ukraine.
46:10
Speaker 4: But I just fear the development of a proxy war.
46:13
Speaker 4: Well it is a proxy war, but I fear the
46:15
Speaker 4: development of something beyond that. I'm not saying that there
46:19
Speaker 4: isn't a role for a kind of an international police force.
46:22
Speaker 4: But it worries me that, you know, you're dealing with
46:25
Speaker 4: nuclear powers here, and you know a lot of the
46:27
Speaker 4: rationale behind mutually assured destruction, et cetera. Base it assumes
46:33
Speaker 4: rational leaders. But as people get older and as people
46:37
Speaker 4: get more desperate, they're not necessarily going to act rationally.
46:40
Speaker 4: So it would worry me that military resistance could provoke
46:44
Speaker 4: a nuclear attack. But then, as I say, this is
46:45
Speaker 4: not my Arab expertise.
46:47
Speaker 1: No, but in some ways though, I mean, do you
46:52
Speaker 1: really think Ukraine could survive by not fighting back.
46:58
Speaker 4: I think in the early stages of you know, World
47:00
Speaker 4: War two and the Nazi invasion of Denmark, there was
47:04
Speaker 4: some very effective non cooperation where everyone just refuses to communicate,
47:08
Speaker 4: to cooperate to.
47:09
Speaker 3: Mount public services.
47:11
Speaker 4: I think if you have enough people, or you know,
47:14
Speaker 4: you look at micro cases like Andre trock May in
47:16
Speaker 4: the village of Shambon and France where you know you
47:19
Speaker 4: have up to five thousand Jews hidden protected and you
47:24
Speaker 4: know you have a small instance of non violent resistance.
47:28
Speaker 3: But again that was through.
47:30
Speaker 4: Intensely well organized and well led resistance. I'm not saying
47:35
Speaker 4: that that's necessarily feasible on a national level, but I
47:40
Speaker 4: do worry when the assumption, I mean, this is something
47:44
Speaker 4: that's Jeffrey Tax has written about quite a lot of
47:46
Speaker 4: spoken about, is you know, there's a kind of provocation
47:50
Speaker 4: with the expansion of NATO, and then when there's a reaction,
47:53
Speaker 4: and I'm not justifying the reaction, of course, the assumption
47:56
Speaker 4: is the militarism is.
47:57
Speaker 3: The only way. One has to keep diplomatic channels open
48:01
Speaker 3: if you can.
48:05
Speaker 2: Does all patriotism have to eventually lead to nationalism or
48:09
Speaker 2: do you think that that there's that it doesn't always
48:12
Speaker 2: have to end up because I agree that nationalism usually
48:16
Speaker 2: leads to militarism.
48:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that the City on the Hill.
48:18
Speaker 1: Does our patriotism lead to nationalism?
48:21
Speaker 3: No?
48:21
Speaker 4: I think the City on the Hill idea does lead
48:24
Speaker 4: naturally in that direction.
48:26
Speaker 3: If you think that, you really are kind of called
48:29
Speaker 3: to lead.
48:29
Speaker 4: But I think that someone like Jane Adams I talk
48:31
Speaker 4: about a lot, and she talks about this sort of
48:34
Speaker 4: this cosmic patriotism where you or cosmic politanism within you say,
48:38
Speaker 4: where you embrace the different varieties of different insights and
48:42
Speaker 4: cultures in a city like Chicago, in a city like
48:45
Speaker 4: New York, and you sort of embrace that. I mean,
48:47
Speaker 4: Frederick Douglas talks about this. He's got this essay The
48:49
Speaker 4: Composite Nation. He says, trust me, we've got something to
48:52
Speaker 4: learn from the Chinese. We should we should let them
48:55
Speaker 4: come and we should should we should learn and brace
49:00
Speaker 4: some of that their ways of thinking. Randolph Bourne, who
49:03
Speaker 4: he talks about transnational America he'ses the analogy of a
49:06
Speaker 4: university where when you're at a university, you make friendships
49:09
Speaker 4: across the globe without even thinking about it, and you
49:12
Speaker 4: don't cease to be American. But the sting of rivalry
49:17
Speaker 4: is is to some extent taken out. I think the Olympics,
49:20
Speaker 4: or obviously we've had doping in the Olympics and we
49:23
Speaker 4: still do. English football is obviously a very bad example
49:27
Speaker 4: of sporting rivalries. But big sporting festivals could be an
49:32
Speaker 4: example of patriotism without nationalism, without hostility. And I think
49:37
Speaker 4: that what could certainly be a patriot without being a nationalist.
49:41
Speaker 3: But I think there needs to be a retuning of that.
49:44
Speaker 1: Look, one of the things that I think you want
49:46
Speaker 1: to talk about a myth that we Americans still feel,
49:49
Speaker 1: and I think you could get this left and right,
49:51
Speaker 1: is there's this great Reagan line during his farewell speech
49:55
Speaker 1: he says, you know, somebody can go to Japan, but
49:58
Speaker 1: they're not going to become Japanese. But somebody can move
50:00
Speaker 1: to America and they can eventually become an American. I
50:06
Speaker 1: think that's at the roots of our exceptionalism trade, the
50:11
Speaker 1: good and the bad version of it, which I think
50:13
Speaker 1: you do a good job of frankly exposing both aspects
50:16
Speaker 1: of it. But that is what makes us different, you know.
50:21
Speaker 1: You bring up the Olympics. I remember Obama made this
50:24
Speaker 1: observation once and he was talking about, like, you know,
50:28
Speaker 1: why we should be we should have we should realize
50:32
Speaker 1: how great immigration has been for the United States. He's like,
50:35
Speaker 1: the reason the United States is one of the few
50:37
Speaker 1: countries that can compete both in the you know, ends
50:42
Speaker 1: up with competitors and near the top of metal standings
50:46
Speaker 1: in the winter or the summer. Americans because we basically
50:52
Speaker 1: come from all over the world, come in all shapes
50:54
Speaker 1: and sizes, so specialty sport. We have the super small
50:57
Speaker 1: people to do gymnastics, the super big people.
51:00
Speaker 2: You know.
51:02
Speaker 1: You know, we're not an ethnic based we're not sort
51:04
Speaker 1: of regionally based, you know, and anything like that. That
51:09
Speaker 1: is a superpower of some sort, is it not.
51:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
51:11
Speaker 2: I love that.
51:12
Speaker 4: I love the Obama statement and the Reagan when I
51:15
Speaker 4: wasn't aware of that.
51:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's farewell, it's a great it's a you know,
51:19
Speaker 1: he says, you can go to Japan, but you don't
51:20
Speaker 1: become Japanese. You can move to France, but you don't
51:22
Speaker 1: really become French. You know, here in America it is
51:26
Speaker 1: one of the few places and when you come here,
51:27
Speaker 1: eventually you become an American.
51:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not sure if I've qualified for that among
51:31
Speaker 4: my circle of friend clothes, but yes, I agree, and
51:35
Speaker 4: I think that you know, you can criticize America and
51:38
Speaker 4: then you go back and look at what's going on
51:40
Speaker 4: in Europe at the moment and you see the sort
51:42
Speaker 4: of the smug this is a with the American patriotism.
51:46
Speaker 4: There is this cest and enthusiasm even though it canceltimes
51:49
Speaker 4: be over the top. I think that when you see
51:52
Speaker 4: this of the negative version of that and the kind
51:54
Speaker 4: of sterile version of that that I think, as we've
51:57
Speaker 4: had and it's coming back in Britain with post Brexit
52:00
Speaker 4: and the Reform Party, you think I definitely take the
52:02
Speaker 4: American side of that equation certainly. So, yes, you can
52:05
Speaker 4: be a patriot, but I think that it's about wearing
52:09
Speaker 4: it more lightly. And I like the sporting a sport
52:11
Speaker 4: is play. You're not taking in theory, you're not taking
52:13
Speaker 4: it stuff too seriously. I loved you know, the speed skating, sorry,
52:17
Speaker 4: the figure skaters aleslu some holding hands with the Japanese
52:22
Speaker 4: medalists on the podium.
52:24
Speaker 3: You know, that's an image of.
52:25
Speaker 4: What I think patriotism should be, because they still want
52:28
Speaker 4: to win, but they're winning in friendship.
52:32
Speaker 1: Well look, I think the thing that you expose so
52:35
Speaker 1: clearly in the book, and i'd like to close with this,
52:37
Speaker 1: is that you're essentially challenging US Americans to live up
52:41
Speaker 1: to the ideals we've written down on paper because we haven't.
52:45
Speaker 1: And I think that's the fairest critique of all in
52:47
Speaker 1: your book.
52:48
Speaker 4: Well, thank you. Yeah, but it's there. It's always been
52:51
Speaker 4: there and happening. But it's a matter of kind of
52:54
Speaker 4: embracing it.
52:55
Speaker 1: That phrase more perfect unions doing a lot of work
52:58
Speaker 1: these days, isn't it? Thing? You know, we do eventually
53:02
Speaker 1: look it incrematically, incrementically, incrementically, incrementally.
53:06
Speaker 2: We are always trying to get better and.
53:09
Speaker 1: We sort of stumble around, and you know, we get
53:14
Speaker 1: there most of the time faster than most other places,
53:17
Speaker 1: but not always, but we kind of you know the
53:22
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King quote the arc of justice, benz towards
53:25
Speaker 1: the arc of history, benstwards justice. What I always like
53:28
Speaker 1: to remind people is, if you've ever been on some arcs,
53:32
Speaker 1: like to get on a highway, sometimes you have.
53:34
Speaker 2: To go backwards to go forwards.
53:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think right now we're on one of
53:38
Speaker 1: those periods of the arc of history where we might
53:41
Speaker 1: be having to take a few steps backwards to make
53:44
Speaker 1: this long arc of a turn towards the future. That
53:50
Speaker 1: maybe we'll get there in twenty forty five. We just
53:52
Speaker 1: need we're just going to take a few detours. I'd
53:55
Speaker 1: agree with that. Yes, let me give me your pitch
54:03
Speaker 1: for why a liberal ought to read this book, And
54:07
Speaker 1: give me your pitch to why I conservative how to
54:09
Speaker 1: read this book.
54:10
Speaker 4: Oh, I think a liberal should see if by liberal
54:17
Speaker 4: we mean a democrat, I don't know that.
54:19
Speaker 3: I know that's not so.
54:19
Speaker 2: I look, I'm more of a classical person.
54:23
Speaker 1: I look at liberal as sort of more of the
54:25
Speaker 1: broader And I think you're a classical liberal. You know
54:28
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are in the writer classic liberals,
54:31
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
54:32
Speaker 3: I think that we.
54:32
Speaker 4: Should see that we could just we're just as inclined
54:36
Speaker 4: to self deception as liberals thinking we have a good polity,
54:39
Speaker 4: we have a good system, and not see how unthor
54:43
Speaker 4: it is and who's who's been the loser of that.
54:45
Speaker 4: And you know I mentioned this theme of war that
54:48
Speaker 4: you know, Lincoln is politically a liberal, but he does
54:52
Speaker 4: find this intensely violent war and it has cut complexities
54:56
Speaker 4: that we weren't aware of.
54:57
Speaker 1: We haven't been aware of so much.
55:00
Speaker 3: I think a conservative.
55:03
Speaker 4: I think it's the degree to which the national rhetoric
55:08
Speaker 4: can cover a I'm saying the same thing because it's
55:11
Speaker 4: it's the rehetric is a cover for unfair. You know
55:16
Speaker 4: that the national gredens com be to cover for really
55:20
Speaker 4: old world thinking, and that you know, we're confident we're
55:24
Speaker 4: not monarchists, but in some ways monarchy is baked in
55:28
Speaker 4: or the divine right of kings is in a sense
55:30
Speaker 4: baked into being the chosen nation.
55:32
Speaker 3: So if you want to be true to the American constitution,
55:34
Speaker 3: we have to be less nationalistic.
55:37
Speaker 1: That's the a libertarian which is really it could be
55:41
Speaker 1: the ideology that we Americans really actually are more foundational
55:45
Speaker 1: about than any other. But good luck watching our libertarian
55:50
Speaker 1: party become a governing force.
55:53
Speaker 2: They can't get out of their own way. Hey, Donic,
55:55
Speaker 2: this is a.
55:57
Speaker 1: Great look intellectually challenging book, uh in a good way.
56:02
Speaker 1: Thank you and it's you know, one of these things.
56:04
Speaker 1: There's no right or wrong answer. This was about you
56:07
Speaker 1: prodding us to look look deeper, uh, at ourselves a
56:11
Speaker 1: little bit. So nothing wrong with that kind of scholarship.
56:14
Speaker 1: So congratulations, thanks very much.
56:16
Speaker 3: Enjoyed it a lot. Thank you, m m hm