Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are. And welcome to the politics guys with your host, Jay Carson and Michael Baranowski.

Welcome to the politics guys. I'm Michael Baranowski, a political scientist at Northern Kentucky University.

My guest today is Jason Brennan, an associate professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University.

He's the author of a number of books, including The Ethics of Voting, Libertarianism, What Everyone Needs to Know, Why Not Capitalism, libertarianism, what everyone needs to know, why not capitalism,

and most recently, against democracy. Professor Brennan, welcome to the show.

Great. Thanks for having me. You know, the title of your book seems like a direct challenge to

the conventional wisdom about democracy, and it's something I believe you've called

democratic triumphalism. And I was wondering if you could explain what that is.

Sure. So democratic triumphalism is my term for the idea that democracy deserves three cheers.

So cheer number one is that it's an end in itself. It's just in itself just because it's democracy,

regardless of how

well it performs. Cheer number two is that participating in politics is good for us and makes us

better people. And cheer number three is that democracy is the best functioning form of government.

So I think it doesn't deserve the first two cheers, and I'm skeptical of whether it deserves

the third cheer either. It might turn out that democracy is the best form of government,

but it's actually open to empirical scrutiny, and it might turn out to be false.

Right. It reminds me of that quote of that quote that's often attributed to Winston Churchill,

that the democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. And so you're saying that he perhaps has gotten that, he got that

one right? Or? Well, I think we don't know for sure. I mean, if we compare democracy to the other

forms of government we've tried, in general, I think it outperforms monarchy, it outperforms

theocratic systems, it outperforms monarchy. It outperforms theocratic systems. It outperforms

oligarchic states or one-party states, though there might be some reason to think that

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