Let's go.

Welcome to Citizen.

We're going to talk about something that's been on my mind a lot lately and a lot in American culture, and that is populism.

Populism isn't new. It's not clever. It's not some philosophical breakthrough of the

modern age. It's one of the oldest political temptations in human history, actually,

and it shows up routinely and in the same way. People feel ignored.

They feel lied to. They feel managed. They feel like the system belongs to someone else.

And then a voice appears, loud and confident and righteous. And it tells them, you know what,

you're right. You have been betrayed. But I'm your champion and you can follow me.

And it feels like relief.

It feels like finally someone is saying

what you've been saying in your kitchen for years,

but here's the problem.

Populism doesn't just challenge elites,

it challenges restraint as well.

It challenges the very architecture of a republic,

and it mistakes intensity for wisdom, volume for legitimacy, and majority feeling for moral authority.

And today we're going to talk about what populism actually is, why it's so seductive and why it's

dangerous.

Even when the grievances are real and why the founders built the Constitution to resist it,

not in order to suppress the people, but to protect them from mobs and from the men who would learn to ride those mobs into power.

So let's start where we have to start with the basics,

...