Robert Kagan on American Anti-liberalism, from the 1920s to the 2020s

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2024

⏱️ 79 minutes

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Summary

Is today's anti-liberalism a new phenomenon in American politics? What might earlier eras in US history have to teach us? To discuss these questions, we are joined, again, by Robert Kagan, the historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Drawing on his new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again, Kagan argues that we “don’t realize that the [anti-liberal] movement we’re looking at today has been visible in every generation since the founding.” Kagan draws particular attention to the 1920s, when anti-immigration sentiment, white identity politics, and sympathy for authoritarian figures were prevalent in America. Kagan notes that the MAGA movement can be understood as a part of a long history of anti-liberalism that runs counter to the tradition of the founders, yet remains endemic to American democracy. Liberal democracy in America thus needs to be fought for and cannot simply be assumed.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. Very pleased to be joined again today by Bob Kagan. we had an excellent conversation
0:23.1	maybe less than a year ago, I think,
0:24.7	about his second volume of his work
0:27.5	on American history of American foreign policy,
0:29.6	The Ghost at the Feast, which I covers the years,
0:32.2	what, 1900 to 1941 1941 which I highly recommend in case people
0:35.9	haven't quite gotten around to reading it yet and now Bob's out with a very topical book a shorter book so you need to. If you want, you can even read this first before you spend all summer on Ghost to the Feast.
0:47.0	And this book is called Rebellion, How Anti liberalism is T tearing America apart again.
0:54.5	And I want to talk about the book, but talk about things beyond the book obviously, and Bob,
0:59.2	thanks for joining me again.
1:00.7	It's a pleasure, Bill, Thanks. So I thought we talked a second about
1:05.6	anti- liberalism and then about the again part of the title which is you know I think
1:12.1	key to the argument to the book but I mean you wrote a piece and so let me put the
1:16.5	anti- liberalism thing this way I've we've all spoken I think quite a lot about the
1:20.6	ill liberalism of the current authoritarian movement on the right.
1:26.0	We've you wrote a controversial piece was 2016 I think where you said it's worth calling it
1:31.0	fascism of a distinctively American sort but still use that term and
1:35.5	then there was a big controversy about that and has been for years.
1:39.0	But so tell me a little why anti- liberalism as opposed to ill liberalism on on the one hand which is very commonly used or fascism which I suppose is a little more provocative?
1:48.0	Well, you know, it's just a word but I what I'm trying to get to is that there is a real ideological
1:56.2	opposition to liberalism obviously in the world historically and also in the
2:01.2	United States and the thing about illiberalism
	...

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