The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair

podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair, that's patreon.com slash

LawFair. Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair

no bull, and the aftermath.

Zionism was about setting up a nation state violently. It was supposed to be a liberal

nation state, but it required a kind of, you know, nationalism and violence that in general,

you know, the Cold War liberals didn't get enthusiastic about even though it was conquering

the whole world in the form of decolonization. And so to me, what's remarkable is, is not

that Cold War liberals kind of weren't interventionist yet of the neo-conservative kind in the

40s and 50s, as that they really say nothing about the decolonization movement of that very

era. And again, the reason that's significant is it fits with my general argument in the book,

which is that they seem to be giving up on the 19th century version of liberalism.

I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is the LawFair podcast September 8, 2023. Liberalism today is under

attack as it often has been. Samuel Moin, the chancellor, Kent professor of law and history at Yale

University, believed that liberalism's failures and a path to its better future can be discerned

through a study of how liberal intellectuals reacted to the rise of fascism and Nazism during

the World War II period and especially to Soviet communism during the Cold War. I sat down to

talk to Moin about his new book on the topic liberalism against itself, Cold War intellectuals

and the making of our times. We discussed how and why Cold War liberals such as Isaiah Berlin

and Gertrude Hemelfarb transformed liberalism and why he thinks the transformation has had

deleterious effects on US foreign and domestic policy. We also discussed the aims of intellectual

history and the relationship between his project and recent anti-liberal projects from the right.

...