326: America Last with Jacob Heilbrunn
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 February 2024
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Host Reed Galen is joined by journalist and author Jacob Heilbrunn to discuss why the right is so enthralled with authoritarianism and foreign dictators, the evolution of our nation’s culture war (including the role of history and the media), and what the future could look like if Donald Trump’s vision for America comes to fruition. If you’d like to hear more from Jacob Heilbrunn, be sure to pick up his latest book, America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. For more from Reed Galen, subscribe to “The Home Front”. If you’d like to ask a question or share a comment with The Lincoln Project, send an email to podcast@lincolnproject.us.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everyone, it's Reed. Before we get started, I just want to say it's been three years since I took over as the host of the Lincoln Project. And I cannot say thank you enough to each and every one of you who listens, who downloads, who shares. I meet people out who said, I've heard you talk. Thank you so much. And all I can say is thank you. Thanks to everybody out there. As we get deep |
| 0:22.4 | into 2024, please rate us five stars. Share it with your friends. Share what we're talking about |
| 0:29.1 | here at the Lincoln Project and how we're going to win this fight in November. Thanks, |
| 0:32.8 | everybody. And on with the show. |
| 0:44.3 | Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. |
| 0:46.5 | I'm your host, Reed Gaelan. |
| 0:50.1 | Today, I'm joined by author and journalist Jacob Heilberg. |
| 0:57.0 | He's the editor of the national interest, columnist for The Spectator, and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. His latest book is America Last, the Wright's century-long romance with foreign dictators, |
| 1:03.0 | which was released just last week and is available wherever fine books are sold. |
| 1:07.0 | Today he's coming to us in studio from Washington, D.C. Jacob, welcome to the show. |
| 1:12.3 | Thank you, Reed. |
| 1:13.5 | All right, so I have to start with someone who I only ever thought of because he's always like on the top quotables list. |
| 1:22.8 | And they were always funny quotes. |
| 1:24.6 | At least I thought they were until I had a deeper exploration of who |
| 1:28.5 | and what this person believed, and that is the person of H. L. Minkin, satirist, sort of all-around |
| 1:33.8 | curmudgeon, you know, any, I've got my quotes here. You know, every election is a sort of |
| 1:39.1 | advance auction sale of stolen goods. A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both |
| 1:45.4 | ears to the ground. Democracy is the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual |
| 1:49.8 | ignorance. Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. |
| 1:56.2 | Those are all in the abstract sort of funny. But when you explore who H.L. Minkin was and what he believed in the types of people he liked, |
| 2:07.2 | those quotes take on a much darker sort of film, which is he liked authoritarians. |
| 2:13.7 | He said those things not because he was funny, maybe even there's some truth to them, which makes them funny, but because he really didn't like democracy. |
... |
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