If there is a headline to the past half-decade, it’s this: liberal democracy is under threat across the West and populist movements are on the march. There’s Brexit in the UK. There’s Viktor Orbán in Hungary. There’s Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. And in the United States, of course, there’s Donald Trump.
So today: a debate. Should we be fighting to preserve liberalism, the system that prizes our individual rights and the very foundation upon which America was built? Or is the system itself the problem?
It’s a high-stakes debate—over the future of America and liberal democracy—and we couldn’t have two better people for this conversation: University of Notre Dame political science professor Patrick Deneen; and New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens.
Both Bret and Patrick are what people would label “conservatives,” but there is likely more disagreement between the two of them than between the average Democrat and Republican. Bret believes the problems we see today are happening because we have lost too much of our individual freedom. Patrick, on the other hand, believes that having so much freedom has actually damaged us—that our problems are caused precisely by the system that puts individual liberty on a pedestal.
Patrick Deneen’s 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, grabbed the attention of people across the political spectrum, including Barack Obama, who included it on his “Books I’m Reading” list.
Bret Stephens, who has been on the show before, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. His speciality is foreign policy and his prescient book is called America In Retreat.
Sorry Bari but there is zero chance that I would spend almost 2 hours wasting my time listening to two navel gazing nitwits prattle on about absolute rubbish. The first 10 minutes was more than sufficient to establish that.
The very premise of the discussion is patently absurd -positing that "LIberal democracy is under threat across the West and populist movements are on the march. There’s Brexit in the UK. There’s Viktor Orbán in Hungary. There’s Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. And in the United States, of course, there’s Donald Trump."
No, to the contrary, all of those movements are about restoring individual and economic freedom and the rule of law against the globalist world order that seeks to impose a Chinese-style autocracy on the world's people and to destroy national sovereignty. Did you miss the fact that even the UN Human Rights Commission has fingered the PRC as running concentration camps? And yet our biggest institutions - Nike, Chase bank, Apple, Disney etc. - are in thrall to them. Dimon, Cook, Gates, Iger and the Democrat Party et al bow down to them. Even our imbecilic president is in their back pocket, flush with Chinese cash laundered through his felonious son and brother.
The protection of the rule of law, borders, individual freedom and family is not illiberal. What is illiberal and dangerous is oligarchic, one world state control. And the Democrat Party and its toady media, that would impoverish and enslave our citizens and which enables and advances the insanity that is their currency.
I have to take issue with the idea that Brexit is seen as a threat to liberal democracy. To my mind Brexit was a defence of liberal democracy. Imagine if there was no electoral mandate for the president of the USA. Imagine if congress or the senate was merely a rubber stamping of laws created by an unelected executive. I think you would take issue with that so I find it extraordinary that it is seen as this threat. We all understand the economic benefits of belonging to the EU but not at the cost of democracy.