On today's episode, I'm joined by a Yale philosopher and author of major works, including

How Fascism Works and How Propaganda Works.

He goes into detail about the ways in which free speech may be incompatible with democracy,

explains how propaganda manipulates language to appeal to man's irrational mind, and reveals

the risks of working in academia during a tumultuous political climate.

So without further ado, here is my conversation with Professor Jason Stanley, and this is

uncovering the truth.

Professor Stanley, I wanted to start out with perhaps an unconventional question, but

what are some of the flaws of liberal democracy?

Because it seems to me that there's a lot of people who are willing to surrender it,

and secondly, if democracy were such an ideal government, how could it let itself

get to this inflection point where it might end?

So let's start out first by emphasizing that there's never been a democratic political

theorist in the multi-millennium history of democratic political philosophy who would

say that you could have a liberal democracy when economic and social inequalities are

so large.

So no one would say you could have a liberal democracy under these circumstances.

No one could say you could have a democracy under these circumstances.

Aristotle's argument for democracy is that it wouldn't allow social inequalities and

economic inequalities to grow so large.

So, you know, Rousseau says democracies are all about equality.

They don't allow resentments to build, you know, large inequalities are incompatible

...