91. James Traub — What Was Liberalism? The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2019

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this wide-ranging conversation James Traub and Michael Shermer discuss:

the changing meaning of “liberalism” over the centuries and decades
why the first liberals were deeply skeptical of majority rule
how, by the second half of the 20^th century, liberalism become the national creed of the most powerful country in the world
why this consensus did not last
the giants of liberalism: James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, Isiah Berlin
Karl Popper, the Open Society, and the paradox of tolerance (that tolerating intolerance is self-defeating)
Donald Trump as the first American president to regard liberal values with open contempt
illiberalism in the UK, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Germany
why liberalism lost the support it once enjoyed
the intolerance of the illiberal left, identity politics, and political correctness
what a potential future for liberalism would look like.

James Traub has spent the last forty years as a journalist for American’s leading publications, including the New Yorker and the New York Times magazine. He now teaches foreign policy and intellectual history at New York University and at NYU Abu Dhabi, and is a columnist and contributor at Foreign Policy. He is the author of six previous books on foreign and domestic affairs. His most recent work is John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit. He lives in New York City.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	As usual, every week we feature a author of a new book. Books are always released on Tuesdays, so here we are.
0:06.5	This week's author is James Traub. His book is What Was Liberalism? The Past, present, and promise of a noble idea.
0:16.8	James Traub has spent the last 40 years as a journalist for America's leading publications,
0:21.5	including the New Yorker and the New York Times magazine.
0:25.2	He now teaches foreign policy and intellectual history at New York University and NYU Abu Dhabi. And he is the author of
0:35.0	he is a columnist and contributor at foreign policy.
0:37.0	He is the author of six previous books on foreign and domestic affairs.
0:41.0	His most recent work is John Quincy Adams militant spirit and he lives in
0:46.2	New York City. Well his most recent work is this one. What was liberalism? So it was a
0:50.0	great conversation. We get into well of course Trump and in the
0:54.2	coming election the impeachment hearings just inquiry just started this
0:58.3	week so we talk a little bit about that but really I tried to focus more on the
1:01.4	kind of history of liberalism.
1:02.7	What is liberalism?
1:04.3	How has it changed over the last two centuries?
1:07.8	Classical liberalism, libertarianism, progressive liberalism,
1:12.0	far left, or Regressive liberalism, all these different labels,
1:16.2	what do they mean?
1:17.2	What do they mean early on the 20th century or in the 19th century or 18th century?
1:22.0	Because his book is really a history of all that. It's really the
1:24.4	history of this idea of liberalism as it was mostly embraced also by
1:29.5	conservatives, not just liberals as in Democrats, but pretty much all Westerners and how that idea
	...

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