This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Sunday, December 25th, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Some people who oppose liberalism, broadly speaking, don't oppose it for typical reasons. They oppose it because they

fundamentally don't believe in broad human liberty. Tom Palmer in a new

essay in Cato Policy Report details the challenge of taking seriously the thinking of the contemporary

fascist thinkers.

A lot of people had tried to tie together Brexit, the departure of Great Britain from the European Union, the election of Donald Trump, and this move of

populist movements in Europe as all sort of part of the same rejection of established authority.

Now in Europe of course these are these movements are radically different, but they do have sort of a more

powerful state at their heart.

I'm not sure that's the right way to look at it. Let's begin with something that should be obvious

which is that there were local reasons for Brexit and local reasons for

Trump winning Kentucky by such a margin and so on that had nothing

to do with these wider concerns.

But what we should look at if we're interested in politics is what happens on the margin.

That's where the activity is, what tips it from one to the other.

And there I think there are some commonalities, not that it's a rejection of a common authority by any means in fact they tend to be strong

authoritarian elements that want authority but there's a rejection of modernity that's

involved that is a theme throughout these.

And again, I don't want to over-paint this.

There are other things that account for particular electoral outcomes. even the rain in London on the day of the Brexit

vote, which slightly suppressed the London vote, which is overwhelmingly in favor of Remain.

...