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The Good Fight

Robert P. George on Free Speech, Philosophical Liberalism, and Conservatism After Trump

The Good Fight

Yascha Mounk

News

4.7963 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2022

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Robert P. George is an American legal scholar and political philosopher. The McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, George is considered one of the foremost conservative intellectuals in America, and advocates a theory of natural law consistent with Catholic belief. With Cornel West, he authored a statement on “Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression.” In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Robert P. George discuss the political philosophy of John Rawls, why democratic republics can’t function without free speech, and what relevance the first principles of conservatism do or don't retain today. This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Please do listen and spread the word about The Good Fight. If you have not yet signed up for our podcast, please do so now by following this link on your phone. Email: podcast@persuasion.community  Website: http://www.persuasion.community Podcast production by John Taylor Williams, and Brendan Ruberry Connect with us! Spotify | Apple | Google Twitter: @Yascha_Mounk & @joinpersuasion Youtube: Yascha Mounk LinkedIn: Persuasion Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

To understand why we should have a right to free speech and to understand the content of the right to free speech, what counts as within it and what is outside it, we need an understanding of the good or goods that are protected by the right

0:16.9

to free speech and I think the one that is most fundamental, it's not the only one, but the one

0:20.4

most fundamentally protected by free speech, both in universities and in Democratic

0:25.2

republics, is the good of truth and truth-seeking as an aspect of our well-being and fulfillment

0:29.9

as human beings.

0:31.9

And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

0:37.0

Today I would like to share with you the contents of chapter 5 of my new book of the Great Experiment

0:48.0

why diverse democracies fall apart and how they can endure.

0:55.0

As a German Jew, patriotism does not come naturally to me.

1:00.0

And yet I have changed my mind about the virtues and the importance of patriotism over the course of the last decades.

1:11.0

I have changed my mind because I saw the way in which the very worst people were able to use the powerful symbolism of a nation when the best, the most aspirational kinds of people retreated from that ground.

1:29.0

I changed my mind because I'm seeing over the course of his past terrible months.

1:37.2

How powerful a motivator patriotism can be for people in Ukraine to volunteer to defend their country against an unjust invasion from

1:48.3

Vladimir Putin.

1:50.2

And I changed my mind when I read George Orwell, one of my heroes,

1:55.1

sit down in the midst of World War II to the seemingly unlikely task of writing a defense of patriotism. Because as he wrote, if British intellectuals had

2:06.6

succeeded in the goal of robbing us of patriotism in the preceding decade, the man of ESS would now be patrolling in the streets of London.

2:17.0

But of course, there is also a big question about what kind of patriotism we should embrace because Vladimir Putin too would claim to be a patriot.

2:28.2

Here's the real contribution I'm trying to make in this part of my book.

2:34.0

Now, one historically influential notion is ethnic nationalism.

2:39.0

It is to say that people are defined by a common dissent and that this is at the core of what a nation is and should remain.

2:48.0

I obviously reject that notion.

...

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