Kevin Slack Explains How Liberalism Became Despotism
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2023
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guests: Kevin Slack, Karol Markowicz, & Brent Cline
Host Scot Bertram talks with Kevin Slack, Associate Professor of Politics at Hillsdale College, about his new book War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism. New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz takes us inside her recent book, co-authored with Bethany Mandel, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation. And Brent Cline, Associate Professor of English at Hillsdale, returns to continue his series on author Cormac McCarthy, looking this time at Cities of the Plain.
Kevin Slack at 00:50
Karol Markowicz at 20:33
Brent Cline at 35:05
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, |
| 0:11.4 | where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, |
| 0:16.5 | this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:25.2 | What good is law if it lacks all quality of law, right, meaning universal and necessary? |
| 0:31.0 | And instead it consists of these changing and mutable edicts that are proclaimed by administrative agencies. |
| 0:37.0 | This is your host, Scott Bertram, and that's Dr. Kevin Slack, Associate Professor of Politics |
| 0:42.5 | at Hillsdale College and author of the brand new book, War on the American Republic, |
| 0:47.8 | how liberalism became despotism. We talk in depth about that new book with Dr. Slack now. |
| 0:55.7 | Dr. Slack, thanks for joining us. Good to be here, Scott. We'll talk in depth about that new book with Dr. Slack now. Dr. Slack, thanks for joining us. |
| 0:59.8 | Good to be here, Scott. We'll talk in depth about some of the points and arguments in the book, |
| 1:06.3 | but let's get big picture out front. What are you trying to explain and chronicle in this new book? |
| 1:11.7 | Trying to understand what we call Americanism and how that's been challenged throughout its history, |
| 1:18.4 | Americanism, properly understood, was inseparable from the traditions of Christianity and republicanism or the folkways of a people in self-governance that echoed in every relation, |
| 1:24.0 | whether it's the family, local customs, the private associations, private business, |
| 1:29.9 | state laws, the federal union. And so the book's titled, War on the American Republic is, |
| 1:35.8 | it captures the attempt to destroy these institutions, in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, |
| 1:41.5 | to replace the people with the state, |
| 1:47.4 | to take those who govern themselves by honor and shame, |
| 1:51.1 | and to reduce them to management by pleasure and pain, |
| 1:52.6 | to rule them like sheep. |
| 1:56.3 | You point out in the book Madison wrote that the greatest safeguard against tyranny is Republican virtue. |
| 2:03.1 | What does that entail? Is it in short supply these days? Republican virtue refers to the character and the habits necessary for a certain |
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