Welcome to Begg to Differ. The Bullworks Weekly Round Table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm Mona

Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor of the bulwark and I am joined by our regulars

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal,

Damon Linker of the week, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanid Center.

Our special guest this week is Peter Wainer who has many

affiliations could have said New York Times could have said the Atlantic could have said

ethics and public policy center all of the above delighted to have you back again Pete

Thanks known. It's great to be with you all right well we are going to get started with the summit for democracy.

110 countries participating at the invitation of President Biden.

And there are many hopes for this conference,

defending against authoritarianism,

fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights among them.

But I will just toss this first to Damon by saying,

whether anything comes from this or not.

I am just glad to say that we have a president now who

doesn't worship dictators who understands the importance of human rights and so at

least in that sense the world seems to be rightly

situated on its axis again in some fundamental ways.

Well I share most of those sentiments all of those sentiments with Umona. I think this is a positive development. I don't think I'm quite as maybe over the moon about it as some are.

I don't see much of a downside to it really.

I'm a little skeptical about the positive

that's gonna come out of this,

...